Becoming Bread

Flat Bread

2012-01-29T22:31:00.000-05:00

Today I applied the knowledge I have been acquiring baking bread to make something different. My bread books have recipes for pizza but as with all of the recipes in the book they require an overnight fermentation, so I went off on my own.

The recipe is essentially the same as the french bread recipe, but it has less yeast and adds a bit of sugar. Then I followed the same procedure I would have used if I was making a loaf of french bread, but when I got to the point where I would have put the loaf in the fridge I just left it on the counter to continue rising. This gets things done in a few hours, but in theory sacrifices some flavor. I guess I will have to try it again with the overnight fermentation to see if it really makes a difference.

Yes the cheese is yellow...I decided to try making pizza pretty late in the afternoon and only had cheddar cheese in the fridge, but...I also had some sopresatta in the fridge. All in all it was a pretty good pizza and I figure it only cost me about $2.

Hands On

2012-01-26T22:06:00.002-05:00

I guess I need to make a slight clarification...apparently when I said "I made bread by hand" there was a bit of ambiguity there. I realize now that I might have given the impression I used only my hands to make the bread...

So here's what really happened...I put the flour in a bowl with the yeast and the salt. Then I took a big spoon and stirred it up. After it was mixed up pretty good I made a little well in the center and dumped in some of the water. Then I took the big spoon and started pulling flour into the water, stir, pull in some flour, stir, pull in some flour, stir, and more water, stir, stir, stir. Eventually it started to become dough and I couldn't really stir so I used the spoon to just kind of moved the dough around in the bowl. Then I did the kneading bit with my actual hands.

In order to make up for my lack of clarity I figured I should make some bread using only my actual hands. I could copy and paste the previous paragraph to right here then replace "stir" with "squish", but I think I will just let you pretend that's what I did. It worked, but I think the spoon did a better job and my hands were less messy. It turned out to be considerably less messy than I expected, but yeah the spoon is better.

Anyway the results were pretty much the same, so I guess since the bread doesn't seem to have a preference I will stick to using the spoon.

I am also going to need to work on some more creative ways to photograph all this bread...

Contrast

2012-01-24T21:10:00.001-05:00

I made bread! Yeah I know I said that before, but this time it is the real deal.

Before I get into that I should probably talk about the other thing I made that was most definitely not bread. It was supposed to be San Francisco Sourdough...it was something more like a brick. I am pretty sure that I didn't screw anything up, so I am assuming that I don't have a good starter. I guess I need to decide if I should start over, or if I should try to strengthen what I have going already...hmm.

Now for something completely different...

Last night I did something new...I guess if you want to get really technically what I did was actually "old", but it was certainly a first for me. I made bread completely by hand...no electric mixer. It was pretty fun actually and I managed to do it without making a huge mess. I only made a half batch so I am sure that made things a bit easier. In order to make the baking process go as quick as possible tonight I went ahead and shaped the loaf last night before sticking it in the fridge. As I left work I called and had my assistant take the dough out of the fridge and fire up the oven. A couple of hours after I got home there was some really great bread quickly disappearing from the cutting board.

Still Baking

2012-01-19T22:20:00.002-05:00

Yes, I am still making bread. I have just been a bit lazy about posting. The problem with being lazy about updates is that I have to remember what's been in the oven since the last update...

I guess I should start with the pain au levain. I think that is frenchy for sourdough. About a week ago I had what I figured was a good healthy sourdough starter so I started on the first sourdough recipe in the book. Everything seemed to go pretty well up to the baking. I made up both loaves figuring I could just bake them at the same time. The first sign that there might be a problem was that they didn't seem to grow quite as much as they should. After baking them for a very long time they never cooked all the way through. I am not sure exactly where things went wrong. Could be that the yeast just wasn't as healthy and strong as I thought, but there was something else odd. The tops halves had big air pockets like you want to see, but the bottom were very dense. So the problem could just be that I screwed up the shaping. The last potential gotcha was whole wheat. The recipe had a some whole wheat flour and I have heard that whole wheat flour gain be a bit more difficult. There was some good news...the bread had great flavor.

So last night I started up a batch of "San Francisco Sourdough". The big difference is that this recipe has no whole wheat flour. In theory my starter is a bit healthier and stronger so it should perform better. I also only made half a batch, so if things go all hinky again there will be less wasted flour.

After the sourdough failure I was a bit discouraged so I decided to make another batch of french bread. I can't quite make it from memory yet, but I am getting pretty comfortable with the process. One area that I am still not real happy with is the shaping. What I am doing seems to work, but I know that it isn't quite right. I have been watching some videos and think that I am on the right track, but the thing you can't really learn from a video is touch. I am not sure how much pressure I am supposed to be using, so I just need to keep practicing.

Bread Flour

2012-01-10T22:41:00.001-05:00

OK...I am a believer! If you want to make bread, get some bread flour.

See it's all about gluten. Gluten is the stuff that holds the bread together...kind of like glue, but it also makes the dough stretchy or elastic. Regular "all purpose" flour generally has 10-12% gluten protein, bread flour is more like 12.5-14%. So more gluten is more better right? Well I am thinking it depends, because it is possible to get flour with an even higher percentage of gluten protein, but the recipes in my book call for "bread flour". So it makes sense that as with most things it is all about having the right balance.

When I started this little bread making adventure we already had a big bag of King Author brand all purpose flour. I had read that King Author flour was a higher gluten flour, so I figure it is something like a 12%. My thinking was that this was almost the same as a bread flour so it should work fine. Upon reflection, I didn't take into account that the author was developing these recipes using a high quality bread flour. So his recipes are most likely expecting a bread flour on the higher end of the scale. In other words I was thinking I was only off by half a point when in reality I was probably off by more like two points.

So last night I started a batch of french bread using bread flour and everything worked more like the book describes. Something I really didn't expect was how much better it was at "doubling". I figure that has something to do with the elasticity part. Since the bread is more "stretchy" the yeast was able to perform better...it had more room to stretch out. I probably should have reflected on this a bit more when I decided that it might make things a bit easier if I just made one loaf...one HUGE loaf. My previous loafs have all seemed a bit small and I figured the full batch would give a loaf more like the loaves I see at the store. What I got instead is a loaf that is twice as big as those.

However, the biggest surprise is that it tastes better. Without a doubt we can thank the yeast for this too. More "fermentation"...more flavor. We are definitely getting close to something pretty great. I am also wondering how much less frustrating rustic bread would have been with the proper flour...not that I am ready to go down that read yet.

Anyway...buy some bread flour.

Into the Wild

2012-01-09T22:54:00.001-05:00

Let's talk about micro-organisms...

So you have "quick breads' and "flat breads", but really...these are not bread. If someone says to you "hey you want some bread" and they hand you a pita, there is a good chance you are going to throw it at them. Of course there is a caveat...a big caveat...there are some regions of the world where bread is flat...all of it. So take note of the region you are in before you start playing frisbee with their "bread". I assume however if you are reading this particular blog then you are like me and when you say "bread" you want bread that has life.

So to give bread life we need yeast. The easy way to get life into our bread is to use a "commercial" yeast. Go to the store and pick it up in handy little packets that you dump into flour. The yeast that most people are familiar with is called active dry yeast. Essentially it is yeast that has been put into suspended animation. This gives it a pretty decent shelf life, you have to wake it up before you can actually use it and the process generally requires about 25% of the little guys to give up the ghost. The bread I have been making has all been made with instant yeast. Instant yeast is mostly alive, but it is also much more perishable. When you are looking at a bread recipe make sure you know what kind of yeast the recipe is expecting because you are going to need more active dry yeast than instant yeast.

But I digress...tonight we are going wild. I am sure most of you have heard of sourdough, but what makes sourdough different. Well, as you might have already figured, sourdough breads are made with wild yeast. The term "sourdough" is often used to describe any bread made with a wild yeast even when the bread isn't really sour. I haven't really wrapped my head around that bit just yet, so let's get on with rounding up some wild yeast.

First of all the way I understand it we don't actually have to catch the yeast, it is already hanging around in the flour. So we just have to give it a happy place to live and it will grow and multiple. I started the process of cultivating the little guys last with with some all purpose white flour. Apparently I didn't do a very good job at building the habitat because nothing happened...well actually something did happen, I grew mold.

Thinking that maybe the flour was the problem I started over with some organic whole wheat flour. Last night when I checked on it I found a stinky bubbly blob...in other words I had some happy yeast. At the current rate I should be able to take this starter and turn it into a mother by tomorrow night. The mother is our long term housing. With proper care mother will keep the whole colony happy indefinitely.

So in summary...this weekend we should be eating sourdough.

Rustic Bread

2012-01-08T19:18:00.002-05:00

It has not been a good day for baking...

First an update on "Batch #3". Things began to go wrong last night when I baked the second loaf and it came out flat. I am not entirely sure why, but I suspect that it didn't like spending a second night in the fridge. The yeast just didn't have enough oomph to give the loaf some "spring".

I figured I would make up for the failed loaf with a new batch of bread for today, so I started on the next recipe in the book...Rustic Bread. This recipe is what they call a wet dough or no knead. In other words it is a wet sticky mess that you couldn't knead if you wanted to. Prepping the dough was messy, but it did seem to go well enough even though I did all the mixing it by hand.

This morning the trouble started right away. When I got the dough out of the fridge it had not come anywhere close to doubling in size. So I let it sit out for an hour or so with no noticeable change in volume. I figured I should go ahead and get on with the shaping...

Shaping "wet dough"...is well, let's just say...I am try to figure out how to put this. OK, let me say it like this...I hate this bread. Seriously. I don't think this bread and I have any chance of being friends. Don't get me wrong, I know it's me not the bread, I am just not a wet dough kind of guy.

Anyway I eventually managed to make some loaf like shapes, and to get them in the oven. However, I was so frustrated after the shaping ordeal I forgot to put the baking stone in place so I had to bake the loafs on the cookie sheet and I think they came out a little under cooked. All of this trouble might have been worth it had this bread been something special, but it is really just average.

So where do I go from here...well the first step was to make a trip to the store today and pickup a bag of proper bread flour. I figure some of my issues are most certainly a result of not having the right kind of flour. And since I seem to have a pretty good relationship going with french bread I figure I will spend a little more time seeing where we can go together. Once I get to a point where I am not forgetting things like putting the baking stone in place maybe I can take another spin with the rustic...

Batch #3-1

2012-01-06T21:50:00.001-05:00

At around 7:30 PM this evening the nagging stopped...we had a loaf of fresh french bread, a couple hours later there is less than 1/4 of the loaf left. Based on that I think this french bread recipe is a winner. I don't think that proofing the loafs in the fridge made any significant change to the crust and crumb, but it did make the baking bit pretty easy. When I got home from work I took the loaf out of the fridge and set it on the counter, and turned on the oven. An hour later the bread was baking. So in theory I could arrange for someone to take the dough out of the fridge and fire up the oven while I am driving home and speed things up even more...

Anyway, keeping in mind that the goal is to eventually "master" one of these recipes, this one is for sure a potential candidate. Thinking about it now though, ideally there will be two recipes that I attempt to master. One recipe that uses commercial yeast (like this one) and one sourdough. Of course making sourdough will depend on get a starter to start...more on that at some other time.

And it has already started up again..."When are you making more bread? This one is almost gone..."

<imagine a picture of the empty cutting board here>

Batch #3

2012-01-05T22:26:00.004-05:00

Everyday this week I have heard..."When are you making more bread?" So tonight I gave in and started a new batch. The book has a suggested variation for the french bread I made last time, so I figured I would give it a try. The change is to mix up the dough then let the bread proof at room temperature for 90 minutes, instead of parking it in the fridge. After it proofs, you shape the loafs, then figure out how to put two loaves of bread in the fridge. Now you need to find a nice comfy spot where they can double in size without smashing into something, and it would probably be a bad thing for stuff to fall on them...anyway if they survive the fridge, the nagging should end sometime tomorrow evening. Oh and something to take note of...shaping cold dough is quite a bit easier than shaping warm dough.

I haven't decided if I will just bake both loaves at the same time or save one for Sunday morning. Something that I eventually want to try is cooking a loaf in my Big Green Egg cooker. If you are not familiar with the "Egg", it is a wood fired ceramic grill/smoker/oven. In other words it should work pretty much like a real hearth style oven. The main concern is making sure that the bread doesn't get overwhelmed by smokiness. In theory the amount of time it will take to get all of the thermal mass heated up to around 550 degrees will burn off the smoke. And really once it is heated up enough the fire could be snuffed out and the bread would still bake from the radiant heat. Maybe I will pick up some charcoal this weekend and cook one of these loaves outside...

French Bread - Part 2

2012-01-02T14:41:00.001-05:00

This morning I baked the second loaf of french bread...overall uneventful. However I didn't get a crispy crust like I wanted. When it came out of the oven it felt like it was going to be crispy, but once it cooled it was soft. Not sure what I am missing. The flavor of the this loaf seems to be exactly the same as the first, so I don't think there were any real issues with the primary fermentation of the first loaf. At this point I am pretty sure that the first loaf was just a bit smaller.

OK, so at this point I am already making good bread, but...I still don't think it is great bread. Don't get me wrong I wouldn't be ashamed to serve this bread to anyone, but I doubt it would leave a long lasting impression. The next recipe in the book is "Rustic Bread". It includes instructions for turning it into ciabatta or focaccia and is very similar to the recipe for pizza dough. This sounds like the kind of recipe that would be good to know.

However...to really get into some really interesting flavor, I think we are going to have to explore the wild yeast option...aka sourdough. For sourdough the first step is to make a starter. It takes about 6 days to build a starter and then another day or so to turn the starter into the mother. Once you have your mother you are ready to make some sourdough. Since today is the last day of vacation I expect it will be a couple weeks before the oven sees a loaf of sourdough. Even though the book says "artisan breads every day", I am not sure that I will be up for any weekday baking just yet.

Oh yeah...when building the starter up to a mother you only use half of the starter, so you are supposed to throw out the other half or pass it along to someone...just figured I would put that out there in case anyone is interested.

French Bread - Part 1

2011-12-31T13:45:00.000-05:00

December 30, 2011 - French Bread...flour, water, yeast, salt.

The French Bread recipe is very similar to the Lean Bread, more salt and less water. There is also some slight variations in the technique. Mixing starts the same, this time using the dough hook instead of the paddle, and it worked much better. Then he wants us to do some hand kneading...I am thinking "I have a fancy mixer why do I need to get my hands all gummed up?". OK...so I was wrong, not about the gummy hands...that is definitely something to work on. Also the dough sticking to the table, but it really was nice to work the dough...with my gummy hands even.

Another interesting thing with this recipe...for some reason the last step reads a lot clearer to me...it says if you aren't going to bake everything at once divide it now and stick it in the fridge overnight. This actually was a bit of a hiccup because first of all I only have one glass bowl that I figured to be big enough to hold the doubled up dough. So I put half of it in a stainless steel mixing bowl. Next I didn't have room on the shelf for both bowls, so the stainless bowl went in the crisper. This morning it appeared that the dough in the glass bowl was significantly bigger than the metal bowl. Either of these variations could have caused the difference or it could be there was no difference and not being able to see into the bowl from the side distorted things. Also I just eyeballed "half" so it is possible that there was just less dough in the metal bowl. I am not really stressing about it, but I am looking into getting two matching "fermentation vessels".

The first loaf...So far so good, figured I should start with the "smaller" batch. Since my last entry I did some more reading on the shaping process and I think I managed something very close to a batard (pretend there is a caret thingy over the "a"). All of my early attempts were cooked on a sheet pan, but these recipes are meant to be "hearth baked" so when I made the Lean Bread I baked them on a stone. With those loaves I learned that I could proof the dough on parchment paper, then put it straight into the oven on the parchment. I also learned that after a few minutes it is a good idea to take the parchment out of the oven...

Anyway...I put my "batard" on the parchment and let it proof for the suggested 90 minutes. Much better job scoring this time...and into the oven...lower the temp from the 550 degree preheat to 450...and we are good. Wait I am forgetting something...oh yeah steam! Part of the "hearth baking" thing is to have some steam going for the first few minutes the bread is in the oven...it's a crust thing. So I scramble and get some water into the "steamer"...aka a cast iron skillet on the rack under the stone. Remove the parchment...spin the loaf...golden crust...cool for an hour...

We have bread! Looks good, tastes good, but I think I may like the Lean Bread a bit better. Of course it is probably a good idea to wait and see how the second loaf comes out, just in case there was an issue with the fermentation part...

Lean Bread

2011-12-29T20:30:00.001-05:00

So the family is sending me a message that reads something like..."hey we think it is cool that you are making bread...now make some that doesn't suck". Maybe that is not the message they intended to send, but that is the message I received...

They gave me two books...artisan breads every day by Peter Reinhart and another one put out by a chain restaurant. I was not all that impressed with the chain book so we took it back to the store. I wasn't planning to get another bread book, but I found another one by the same author called Crust and Crumb that looked interesting and was sporting a James Beard award so I went ahead and got it. When I started this bread baking journey one of the books I looked at was The Bread Baker's Apprentice also written by Peter Reinhart. I guess this is like THE book to have if you are serious about becoming a baker, so I figure this guy Reinhart knows his stuff. The problem for me with The Bread Baker's Apprentice was information overload...it is like an encyclopedia of bread making knowledge and I just want to make a loaf of bread.

See I am not looking to become a master baker, I just want to be able to make some good bread. OK, that is understating it a bit, because I do want to master one or two recipes, but I am never going to make pumpernickel or any other kind of rye for that matter. And I really don't care about the differences between European and North American flours. I just need to know that basics. So far it seems that artisan breads every day is exactly the kind of book I need. Crust and Crumb goes a bit deeper into stuff so for now I will just be using it as reference material. ABED will most likely be doing all of the driving for the first leg of this journey.

The concept of the book is to take classic artisan breads and make them simple for the "home chef". The key trick is cold fermentation. Mix up the dough, kneed it a bit, then throw it in the fridge overnight. The next day you can take it out of the fridge, shape it into a loaf and bake it. Parking it in the fridge slows down the fermentation allowing for the development of more complex flavor. One of the suggestions in the book is to keep a log of your baking making notes about what works and what doesn't work. This seems like a good idea considering what I am trying to do, so instead of just creating a google doc, I figured I would share my adventure with the world...

December 27, 2011 Lean Bread...flour, water, salt yeast.

Up to this point I had been making small batches of dough because I was just flying by the seat of my pants and didn't want to waste too much, but now I am jumping in with both feat...plus I was concerned that trying to cut the recipe would introduce extra complications that would make it harder for me to troubleshoot. So I followed the recipe to the gram and loaded everything in the mixer. Actually this is where I made my first flub. The recipe calls for 2 1/4 cups of water. My measuring cup is only 2 cups so I turned on the mixer dumped in the 2 cups and went back to the sink for the 1/4. There was a big clump of dough on the paddle and a bunch of dry flour in the bottom of the bowl. Oops. After the fact I am thinking that the problem was more with the mixer than the missing water...the instruction said to use the paddle blade, but the dough hook for my mixer is designed to mix and kneed. So put all the water in at once, and use the dough hook. I think I flubbed a bit with the stretch and fold technique that is used to "kneed" the dough, but in the end I got it figured out and into the fridge.

The next day we had something planned for first thing in the morning, but figured we would be back home in a couple hours and I could bake...couple of hours turned into all day and when I finally grabbed the bowl of dough from the fridge I was already on edge. First thing I did was divide the ball in half and stuck part of it back in the fridge. I am pretty sure this was about the only thing I did right and even that was wrong. The instructions about when to divide the dough are something like "Put the dough in the fridge for 4-12 hours or up to 4 days. If you aren't baking the whole thing divide it at this point." At this point...is that the point when it goes in the fridge or at the end of 4-12 hours? Anyway I am pretty sure he means if I know a head of time that I am splitting up the batch then I should split it right away...but I digress.

The first loaf...don't do any of those things again. No need to get into everything that went wrong lets just leave it at...there are times when you should just leave the dough in the fridge...or something. The upside of the disaster...there was some pretty good flavor lurking in the thing that came out of the oven.

The second loaf...I made bread! Good bread even. Not quite great bread yet, but it is way past "meh".

There are a couple of issues to resolve. First I am still trying to get a handle on shaping, this one came out OK, but I really need to get a better handle on how to do it "right". The other thing that comes to mind is I need to work on the scoring. Apparently there is a special knife that bakers use to do the scoring, but there is no way I am buying a knife that only exists cut slash marks in dough...I will find a good compromise.

Notes from the peanut gallery..."You are getting better" and "it's too chewy".

The next recipe in the book is "Classic French Bread", pretty much the same recipe with some variation in technique, so I figure I will try that next.

Another thing that you might want to stay tuned for...the mother. I will most definitely be making a real sour dough, even if it is just so I can call home one day and yell into the phone "FEED THE BITCH!"...

The beginning...

2011-12-29T14:32:00.001-05:00

The beginning is usually a good place to start...

A few months ago I woke up early on a Sunday morning and decided to make a loaf of bread. For the most part I would say it just came out of nowhere, but the first glimmer of the idea occurred several years ago after watching a cooking demonstration. For the demo the chef made some of "Granny's Bread". For me there was quite a revelation in that it only had 4 ingredients....flour, water, salt and yeast. I am not sure why, but I had always figured there was more to it than that. Of course my experience up to that point with baking was with boxed cakes and one attempt at scratch dinner rolls. I don't really remember the roll recipe that well, but I do remember that they didn't turn out like I expected them too.

Anyway, I woke up and said...let's make some bread. I started digging through many of the cookbooks we have in the house, including some on just making bread, and couldn't find anything as simple as I remembered "Granny's" being. So I gave up and turned to google..."simple bread", "easy bread"...grrr..."basic bread"...BINGO! Flour, sugar, salt, yeast, water...at the time I didn't remember that "Granny's" bread didn't have sugar, but I did know that yeast feeds on sugar so it seemed reasonable to me that this was about as simple as it could get.

A few hours later I had a decent loaf of bread. It certainly didn't blow me away, but it was good. I know that there were issues and at this point I can't recall exactly what was wrong with that first loaf, but I am thinking that it was mostly...boring. I am pretty sure that was the main issue because I remember that with subsequent attempts at the same recipe I tried different techniques to build more flavor. Each attempt failing to overcome boring. A couple of them also failed pretty big in one other area. Density. They were kind of brick like. Don't get me wrong all of the bread was edible, but it was all "meh".

It was suggested that I should use a recipe from King Author flour. So I found a recipe similar to what I had been making, I think it was called "hearth bread". As the dough was spinning around in the mixer it never started to form the "ball of dough" that I was expecting so I added more flour...a little more...a little more. Let's just skip the details and jump to "meh". Looking into it afterwards I figured out that this was a wet dough and wasn't going to come together like I was expecting.

Last week we came across "Granny's" recipe..."hmm no sugar...interesting". So Christmas Eve I dived into this even simpler recipe. It was a huge mess...literally. I converted the recipe from volume to weight, then cut it in half. "OK...I guess this is another wet dough." "Hmm...I don't think this was supposed to be flatbread"

The next day I got a not so subtle message from my family...wrapped up under the tree, two books on baking bread....and that is where we will begin our adventure.