Bread making : crafting the perfect loaf from crust to crumb

297 Pages·2011·101.24 MB·English

by  Chattman

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A HOME COURSE
Lauren Chattman
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11
Storey Publishing
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Illustrations by Alison Kolesar
Indexed by Christine R. Lindemer, Boston Road Communications
© 2011 by Lauren Chattman
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chattman, Lauren.
Bread making: a home course / by Lauren Chattman.
p.cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60342-791-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Bread. I. Title.
TX769.C41662011
641.8'15-dc22
2010050577

of bread began in
HEN COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION
the midnineteenth century, our ancestors gladly
shrugged off the responsibility of making bread for their
households in favor of purchasing loaves from a local
baker. Why not buy bread that was just as good as what
could be made at home for the same price? There were
more similarities than differences in the recipes of home
and professional bakers at that point in our history.
As commercial baking grew into a mass industry, every innovation
seemed to take bread further from its origins as a wholesome, homemade
food. The industrialization of milling resulted in the removal of valu
able nutrients from flour. Superheating the grain to speed up the process
also damaged the starches to the point where they couldn't feed yeast as
efficiently as before. The mechanization of mixing, kneading, and shap
ing bread dough required a certain kind of dough - extensible so it could
be extruded through a machine and quick-rising to speed up production.
None of these changes were good for bread.
Most people have nothing against progress. Even the most avid home
makers are not nostalgic for the days of beating dirty laundry against a
rock or building a fire to cook every meal. But many of us who grew up
with preservative-packed sliced bread have welcomed the resurgence of
old-fashioned bread baking. Artisan bakers have set up shop across the
country, producing all-natural breads that haven't been processed to
within an inch of their nutritional lives. After tasting these beautiful and
delicious breads, many home bakers have grown more interested in mak
ing quality bread at home. If you are among them, there is nothing to stop
you from achieving and surpassing this modest goal. Flour with integ
rity is available in most supermarkets. Foolproof yeast sits near it in the
baking aisle. But unless your parents run a bakery, you probably haven't
learned to bake bread from them. You have the will and access to good
ingredients. Youjust need some tutoring in the basics of the craft.
Wine and Cheese Are Difficult. Bread Is Easy.
Like wine and cheese, bread is fermented. All three rely on the activity
of yeast to transform a foundational ingredient - grape juice, milk, flour
- into an entirely different and much more delicious food. Not all wine
and cheese are artisanal - there are plenty of mass-produced examples
of both that rival Wonder bread in their banality. But there are many
transcendent examples: a Lafite Bordeaux, a Montgomery cheddar. Bread
experts argue that fine breads exhibit a complexity akin to these.
However, there is an important difference. While making a palatable
wine or cheese can take hundreds oft ries, and homemade wine and cheese
rarely if ever achieve the excellence of a Lafite Bordeaux or a Montgomery
cheddar, making great bread takes just a little knowledge of the basics of
the process and a little experience to get a feel for bread dough. It is not
inconceivable that after a few tries your bread will be as good as, or bet
ter than, anything you can buy at your local bakery. With some study and
effort, you may even be able to bake breads that rival the loaves sold by
Acme Bread Company in San Francisco, Amy's Bread in New York, and
even the legendary Poilane in Paris.
Becoming a Bread Baker
The wonderful thing about bread baking is that you can be as casual or
serious as you like about it. This book is organized to help you find an
entry point and to guide you to other places when you are ready. Maybe
you just want to take some baby steps, because someone's given you a
bread machine as a holiday gift. Rather than just follow the recipes in
the machine's manual, spend a little time learning about the basics of
bread baking, and you will be able to use your machine to craft exemplary
loaves. Even if you make them start to finish in the machine, if you make
them with knowledge and care they will have some artisanal flavor.
You may want to stop there, and that's fine. But I am betting that you
will be so intrigued by what has occurred inside your machine that you
will want to take the next step: mixing a simple straight dough, kneading
it by machine or even by hand, and seeing what happens.
Maybe you've let that dough ferment overnight and are impressed
by the dramatic improvement in your bread's texture and flavor that has
resulted from this simple technique. This may get you thinking about
something you read about extended fermentation. You might take a look
at a bread recipe made in two stages, with a simple sponge, and give
it a try.
Then you think that it was so easy to mix that sponge a few hours
before mixing the dough itself. You perhaps wonder what your two-stage
dough would have been like if it had been raised with sourdough instead
of a starter made with commercial yeast.
The next thing you know, you will be mixing together some rye flour
and water, hoping to encourage wild yeast to grow in a bowl on your
kitchen counter. Maybe you'll never get to the place where passionate
amateur-turned-sourdough-entrepreneur Dr. Ed Wood was when he
volunteered to capture wild yeast and cultivate an authentic Egyptian
sourdough as part of a scholarly expedition sponsored by the National
Geographic Society; he went so far as to plant heirloom grain, mill it in
the ancient Egyptian way, and bake some bread using his yeast and flour
in a replica of a New Kingdom oven. But you just might order some of Dr.
Wood's sourdough online to see what he got so excited about.
I hope you'll use this book to discover the many ways to bake bread
at home. As you read and bake, take notes alongside the recipes you try,
recording your successes and disappointments. At a certain point, your
own experience will guide you as much as what you've read here, helping
you to get where you want to be as a home bread baker.