What Is it about Baking Bread?

sourdough demi baguettes

I’ve been baking a lot of bread lately and I’ve begun to think about why. Of course, there’s the immediate aroma and taste of fresh bread. There’s the delight in giving bread to friends and neighbors. And then there is the work itself, tactile and supple and real at a time when we're battered by things we can't control - like the the financial implosion of the economy. At times like this, it's good to be close at home, working with water, flour, yeast and salt and feeding your family.

I’ve been baking now for about a decade, with periods where I baked little, or like now, when I bake rather constantly. Working at home, it’s not hard, since the “work” part of bread is rather minimal. For the breads I make, I mix up the dough in the afternoon or evening, and then let it rise slowly through the night, baking off the loaves the next day. This breaks up the work and lets me control the schedule -- which isn’t always the case when you’re working with a living thing.

I’ve also wondered how to explore this activity, whether it was right for ChewsWise or another blog, but decided, I’ll just write about it here, so I’m launching a new category, “bread,” to talk about this activity. After all, what can be more “sustainable” than making bread.

So I’ll start off with a few pictures, and in the future will be posting some recipes and thoughts about techniques for the home baker.

I also had the opportunity recently to visit Paris and to work at the elbow of a master baker at boulangerie Arnaud Delmontel (whose baguettes are in the bin on the left). I will be writing about this in a new magazine being launched this summer, Afar, but will expand on it here too before too long.

It’s funny, but recently I've been getting more and more requests from people to learn how to bake. In the past few months, I’ve got four people hooked and I don’t think it’s a coincidence. People are looking for something real and solid to sink their hands and teeth into. What is better than bread?

Sourdough pain de campagne with pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds

Comments

[Marc Gunther]

What beautiful photos. I am eager to read your account of bread-baking from Paris, and as someone who works at home, I want to hear about how you work the rhythm of baking into your evening and day.

[Sam Fromartz]

Marc, will do so shortly with some tips for people starting out. Sam

[Marc]

I think that the subject of bread baking completely fits into Chews Wise. After all, the industrial food system "worked its wonders" on bread in the late 20th century, stripping it of all character and flavor, while adding plenty of additives, until a new generation of commercial bakers like Acme, Sullivan Street, and La Brea (and many others) went back to the old ways and reintroduced really good bread to mass audiences. (Of course, there were always home bakers using traditional methods.)

In addition, baking your own bread is a way to take more control of what you eat and bring some more excitement into the kitchen.

I look forward to your future posts and suggestions for integrating bread baking into daily life. In the past, I have found the 2-day bread baking schedule in Nancy Silverton's "Breads from La Brea Bakery" to be helpful, but since it's a sourdough bread, it isn't something that one can do without advanced planning (i.e., refreshing the starter for a few days).

Your sourdough pain de campagne with pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds is quite impressive. I can never manage to get such a variety of hole sizes in my sourdough loaves.

[Sam Fromartz]

Marc, the secret to getting holes in dough is to be gentle with it -- do not "de-gas" or press too much while shaping. This is a fine line because you want a taught skin on the dough but you don't want to destroy the holes inside.

Secondly, another major problem is over-proofing, in either the first or second rise. If you let the first rise go too long, the dough won't have the oomph to rise in the oven. So watch your rising times, or as a rule of thumb, try rising sourdough 1-1/2 times on the first rise, rather than doubling it. I think overproofing is a major mistake of beginning bakers. It was for me.

Third, if you are bulk retarding the dough in the refrig, try to shorten the length of the second rise after removing it. IE, remove the dough, let it relax for 15 minutes, shape the loaves, let them rise maybe 45 minutes and pop them into the oven. Or if you've retarded already shaped loaves, try popping them into the oven straight from the frig without warming them up.

You might get blow-outs (where the crust bursts because it was underproofed) but at least then you can back off from there and extend the time if you need to. If they come out perfect you're all set.

In my next bread post I'll show some loaves that were proofed in the refrig and then put directly into the oven without warming up.

[Karen Schuppert]

I am thrilled you will be featuring bread baking! How wonderful you spent some time with the experts in Paris. We were lucky enough to stay across the street from Poilane last summer.
Now my first question is - will it truly be for the novice (or in my case, the flunkie?) I consider myself a pretty good baker - EXCEPT when it comes to bread. It's the yeast thing - I cannot get my yeast to activate or my breads to rise. I do use mostly whole grain flours, but otherwise I follow directions to a "T." So...I will have plenty of questions for you once you get going.
(I may send you a picture of my most recent failure - delicious but hard as a rock.)

[Sam Fromartz]

Karen, Not sure it will be purely for novices. But I will offer some thoughts on beginning baking and try and steer you to already existing sites that offer beginning material, like the no-knead bread in my latest post on "For the Home Baker, Time is a Friend."

On rising, make sure your yeast if fresh, not sitting around in your kitchen for 2 years.

Also if you substitute whole grains for white bread flour or all purpose flour, it will alter the recipe. Whole grains need more water, so you can't really use a white flour recipe to make whole grain bread. Or if you do, you need to increase the water.

If you want to bake with whole grains, I would suggest you start with a whole grain bread cookbook. I would recommend "Peter Reinhardt's Whole Grain Breads."

Finally, I have been baking for years and have made a lot of TERRIBLE, AWFUL loaves. You need to do that to learn. But it gradually gets better.

[Ang]

Likewise, looking forward to it. I have been baking bread for (gasp) the better part of two decades, but still consider myself a beginner. Nonetheless, people marvel at my everyday loaves and swear that they could never perform like miracles in their kitchens. I wish more people realized that the hands on part of bread making is relatively simple, and most of the time involved is waiting.

[torrat]

I've recently come across this one - http://file.sh/Peter+Reinhart+The+art+of+baking+bread+torrent.html - lots of great recipes on baking bread.