The Holy Grail of Bread

Once again, I must apologize for being a lazy blogger and not posting as often as I should. But usually when that happens, you should know that it means I have been kicking butt in my real life, getting things done and being busy otherwise. I've got a crock of sauerkraut fermenting and smelling downright stinky, which is how I like it. I've got a "ginger bug" going for a future batch of ginger beer--more on that later. I have seeds sprouting on the kitchen counter, and a sourdough starter bubbling away happily on the butcher block.

Which brings me to the good news, brothers and sisters. I have cracked the code of bread. You probably remember my bellyaching about how sourdough starters are a waste of time and result in only slightly better bread than a poolish or leaven. Well, it turns out that I just hadn't found the right recipe yet.

I've been baking yeast bread since I was fourteen, or something like that. My beginnings were humble--for a long time I used the whole wheat bread recipe on the back of the King Arthur Flour bag. It was a good place to start, but anyone who is passionate about good bread rarely stays put. I've done white bread--the only kind of bread that plain old tomato sandwiches should be made with (don't doubt, just believe). I've made ciabatta--the long, wrinkled loaf that immediately calls for the good olive oil that you hoard in the back of your cupboard. Then there was the occasional challah for special occasions--burnished and golden with egg yolks and butter. I can also think of a delicious cracked wheat loaf, struan bread (the best toast you'll ever eat), cinnamon raisin swirl bread, and these little Norwegian raisin buns that are so redolant of cardamom that the whole house smells like Christmas. There have also been occasional forays into pastry, but too few to really talk about.

So I've baked a lot of bread. The only problem was that none of these breads was my ideal bread. I wanted sour, but not overly sour. I wanted a deep brown crust as thick as a half-dollar coin. I wanted big, beautiful air pockets in the dough--perfect for forming pools of butter and catching runaway honey. In short, I wanted the effect that a wood-fired oven gives, but without the wood-fired oven.

I pored over baking books, searching for the answer. In most of them, the sourdough chapter is presented in such a way as to make it seem daunting. The smoke was fanned and the mirrors were polished to make sure the home baker felt intimidated. At least, that's how it seemed to me. But I tried anyway, feeding the starter religiously, keeping it warm, judiciously measuring everything by weight and not deviating one iota from the recipe. When it came time to bake the bread, however, the loaf that resulted was unimpressive at best. To have spent so much time and effort (and the better part of a bag of flour) on something so lackluster was pretty depressing. Let's not paint any rosy pictures about that.

But I'm a naturally inquisitive person, and so I continued to read about bread, biding my time until I felt up to the sourdough task again. My theory was that there had to be a reasonable method out there somewhere. After all, sourdough is the essence of rustic. I don't see paintings of pioneers carrying around heating pads and scales for baking their weekly sourdough bread, but I know they sure as hell made sourdough. As a baker, I despise the scientific baking method. The meticulous measuring by weight (in a commercial kitchen this actually makes sense, but unless you're making something really finicky at home, there's a good chance that using a scale will make you nuts), checking temperatures (of water, of flour, of the starter...), and generally making recipes more difficult than they need to be really riles me. In my opinion, those of us in the cookbook world should make baking more accessible and reasonable, not talk about another piece of equipment that you MUST buy to achieve success. Ok, the soapbox is safely stored away now.

Then John bought me a bread book. I had heard good things about it, but as with all cookbooks that double as eye-candy, I was skeptical. Then I started reading it. Beautifully written and photographed, Tartine Bread will inspire in you the immediate desire to bake bread. Every day. In fact, I seriously considered writing a letter to the author of the book and asking for an apprenticeship. No joke.

But the proof is always in the proverbial pudding (or pain, if you will), and so I tried to stave off enthusiasm while I worked on cultivating a starter. The book encouraged me to be patient. There was no time frame--feed your starter once a day (if your kitchen is very warm, twice a day) until it rises and falls predictably. The starter will rise after you feed it, climax, and start to fall slowly. By the time of the next feeding, it will smell vinegary. I gave my starter lots of time to develop. For several days nothing seemed to be happening, but I would pour off the brownish liquid that covered the starter and feed it again. Ultimately, my starter took.

I gave it a few days to strengthen and develop even further before using it. The day finally arrived. By 3:00 in the afternoon, I had two absolutely perfect loaves of bread. No, really. Perfect. Crusty, deep brown, heavily air-pocketed, gently sour loaves that rose like phoenixes in the oven. Magic, I swear.

The trick is the cast iron combo cooker. A combo cooker is a Dutch oven with a lid that doubles as a frying pan. You get the pan hot in the oven (both parts of the pan), turn the dough into the frying pan part of the cooker, cover it with the Dutch oven part, and bake it for 20 minutes. Then, you remove the Dutch oven part and let the bread brown for another 20 minutes. The Dutch oven captures the steam from the bread and results in a dramatic oven spring. The bread essentially steams itself. Taking off the cover gives the bread its crust. I am utterly stunned. I have found the Holy Grail of Bread.

The Secret of Baking Bread

I learned an important lesson yesterday--you don't need a recipe to bake bread. I suppose I should have known this all along, but sometimes obviousland is just too far away for me to channel it. I blame the cookbooks. I have several bread baking cookbooks, and they are all illustrated with beautiful photos of perfect bread. Who doesn't want to bake perfect bread?

The problem is that each recipe can stretch out to 4 pages or more, so by the time you finish reading it, you're already discouraged and would rather just pay someone else to bake perfect bread for you. Well, I have tried several methods in the past few weeks and got fed up with baking mediocre bread that takes seven days for this and four days for that and two more for the fermenting and then you have to stand on your head and recite the Bhagavad-Gita and even then you're not guaranteed to have great bread...I just don't have time for this sort of thing, and I'm sure most of you don't either.

Well, yesterday I got smart. I had a sourdough starter in the fridge that had been glaring at me with its little bubbly eyes because I hadn't fed it in over a week. I took it out, prepared to throw it away, and of course it was alive and thriving so I couldn't throw it away. I controlled myself and did not reach for the bread book.

1.) I just added water and flour to make a wet starter (1 1/2 cups flour and 1 cup water) and let that sit overnight. If you don't have a starter, you can make a quick one by mixing 1 cup flour and 1 cup water with 2 teaspoons instant yeast. Of course, you can make a sourdough starter, but that will take several days to a week. It's your call.

2.) The next morning I added another cup of water and enough flour to make the dough--I did this by feel, not even bothering to measure the flour, and I added some salt and a little yeast for good luck even though there was a sourdough starter in there. I mixed it in my KitchenAid stand mixer until the dough came together, but you can do this by hand as well.

3.) I let it rise once (2-3 hours), deflated it and divided it in two, and let it rise again (about 1 hour).

4.) Meanwhile, I preheated the oven to 450 with a baking stone in the oven (never put a cold baking stone into a hot oven). A baking stone is really the best way to bake free-form loaves--it results in a nice, crispy crust and insulates the dough when you have to open the oven. You can also use a cast-iron pan for this. Make sure your oven has been preheated for 30 minutes before you put your loaves in--this ensures that the stone or pan is very hot.

5.) Then, I scored the loaves and slid them onto the baking stone on a piece of parchment paper (you can use a peel if you have one; if not, turn a large baking sheet over and place a piece of parchment paper on it--use this flat surface to slide the paper and dough onto the hot baking stone inside the oven)

6.) I quickly sprayed the inside of the oven with a mist of water (get a spray bottle that you reserve just for baking--the mist creates steam inside the oven that helps the bread rise initially--it's called "ovenspring").

7.) I shut the door for five minutes and then opened it and sprayed again.

8.) Then, I turned the temperature down to 400 and let it finish baking (about 25-30 minutes)--the bread will be a deep brown color.

9.) Make sure the loaves cool completely before you slice them. I know it's hard, but if you slice the bread while still warm from the oven you will ruin the texture of your bread--it will be gummy instead of springy and chewy (if that makes any sense at all). If you desperately have to have warm bread, toast it before you eat it.

Obsession series #1: Farm and Sparrow

This is my first post in the Obesssion Series: a series of posts about dedicated craftspeople (this includes farmers, bakers, cheesemakers, and actual craftspeople) who do what they do because they love it. They work hard, wake up early, and stand at market booths ready to answer questions and talk about their work. I think we see a lot of glorification of politicians, celebrities, and corporations and very little of those who give life meaning through their dedication to a trade that might be viewed as obsolete. And indeed, we, the craftspeople of America, are obsolete. There is technically no need for cheesemakers when machines can do four times as much work in half the time. There is no need for bread bakers and their stone ovens when factories can turn out thousands of loaves of bread a day at a fraction of the cost of an artisanally made loaf. But then, we haven't completely forgotten what it is like to taste sheer pleasure, and so the craftspeople work on. These posts are dedicated to the obsolete Americans.

Farm and Sparrow is a local wood-fired bakery that makes all sorts of incredible breads and pastries. I am very particular about my bread in general, finding the supermarket stuff to be spongy, flavorless, and boring, so I do not use the word "incredible" lightly. I always set up beside them at market, and the smell is enough to make you crazy. Their pastries are superbly buttery, golden, and flaky, and while they always have the good ol' standbys (plain, chocolat, and apricot) they are always experimenting with really unusual flavors and local, seasonal produce. Recently, the local apple tarts with apricot glaze have been at market. The glaze makes them glisten, and caramelizes on the bottom of the tarts, making them slightly crunchy. They also feature a savory pastry (although I have to say that even their "sweet" pastries aren't too sweet--for instance, the pain au chocolat is made in the traditional manner, placing a square of high-quality dark chocolate in the center), which is always fascinating. I distinctly remember one that I had--green beans, cherry tomatoes, and cheddar. The latest one has purple potato puree in it among other things, and the only reason that I haven't tried it is because I'm trying to cut back on spending. But then, I might just cave in if I think about it too much.

And their breads...the seeded loaf is my favorite, covered in nicely browned seeds that crunch. Their Russian Raisin bread is wonderful as well. It's a dark, dense bread made with rye flour and kirsch-soaked raisins. It will last for weeks, and the older it gets the better the flavor is. They use mostly heirloom grains, and they grind some of them themselves. They always sell out at market--always.

I think what inspires me about bakers is the same thing that inspires me about cheesemakers--patience. Bread is improved by time. Long-time bakers will often brag about their 25 year old starter. Most yeast breads require at least a couple days of rising time before baking. You mix together the starter and let it sit overnight (if not longer--I know that the starter for Amish Friendship Bread requires about 10 days to mature, and all sourdough breads are similar to this), and then you still have a few hours of rising time for the dough before you can put it in the oven. Bread is not a microwave food. It takes time, patience, and strong wrists for kneading. And if you rush it, the bread just won't be as good as it could be.

Bread baking is also more scientific than you might imagine. My favorite bread book is The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum, because she gets really detailed about the ratios of fat to water to yeast to flour, about the life cycle of yeast, and about the different types of "sponges." You don't necessarily have to know these things to be able to make good bread, but I tend to appreciate looking at things from a scientific viewpoint. If we begin to think of our food not as just food but as a living thing, we will begin to eat very differently, and consequently we will be healthier, happier people.

Here's to the bakers.

Reprieve, the theater, and crusty bread

1.) I woke up to find a delightful e-mail in my inbox telling me that my mid-morning meeting had been cancelled.

2.) I have obtained tickets for two plays free of charge. Seldom does the college student have the privilege of dressing up and going to the theater.

3.) Challah bread sliced thin, topped with parmesan and oregano, and toasted. Enough to make the gods in my stomach weep with joy.