…quote from a King Arthur Flour catalog

The quote fit, since here’s where I get into the geeky, fun part of baking. The tweaking of the forumla that creates a basic bread to get what you want. Any loaf of bread can be made out of simply water, flour and salt, if you have enough time. The fun comes in turning those basic ingredients into the best loaf of bread ever, and understanding the science behind why each ingredient does what it does. I’ll leave the science out, but here are some good ingredient tips for any baker who wants to start playing with bread.

Don’t play until you are satisfied with a basic white and a basic wheat. Only then should you mess with ingredients, primarily by replacing one at a time to see what changes. Once you have THAT down – go nuts.

Part one of two of BamBam’s Bread tips. This had been intended for one entry, but, well, I rambled. Fancy that, me rambling.

- Yeast: Bread will not rise without something to start the process. Quick breads (carrot bread, etc) use baking soda and salt for this, but what I call “real” bread – the sandwich stuff, the rolls, etc – use yeast. Storebought yeast will never, ever be able to produce the same type of bread that a true starter can, but it is fine to use. Active dry yeast can be stored in the freezer, and if you have the time, it should be proofed – soaked in warm water for 10-15 minutes before you start mixing (unless using a bread machine). Take note, a typical yeast packet contains about 1/2 tsp more yeast then most recipes require.

A starter is live yeast (the frozen stuff is just the live stuff frozen, hence the “active”) that needs to be fed and maintained. It can be fun dealing with a starter, but also requires committment – an out of control starter can overflow a refrigerator, and a dead one can be the stinkiest thing you’ve ever smelled.

Bread can also be made without any starter – my two week amazing bread is an example – but it is using wild yeast picked up in the kitchen. ..and before you say “ew” to that, yeast is naturally in the air, everywhere. San Francisco Sourdough tastes, and acts like San Francisco sourdough because of the natural yeast in the region. One person making the same recipe with a homemade starter in two different parts of the world can end up with a very different bread. I think that’s neat.

To answer Dossy’s question from my last entry…I use storebought yeast (Red Star Active Dry) about 75% of the time, and a starter or do the two week thing with the rest. My starter is based on a SF Sourdough freeze-dried thing I reconstituted. I’d had my own back in Virginia, creating a starter really only involves mixing flour and water daily (fairly smelly and sticky flour and water), but it does take a while to get started, and I don’t feel like doing it yet.

- Flour: Another required ingredient. If making sandwiches, use unbleached all-purpose flour, it’ll make the bread a little denser. Use bread flour for fluffier bread. Wheat flour adds flavor, but also density. My favorite wheat bread recipe uses 2 1/2 cups whole wheat to 1/2 cup white bread flour. Nearly every whole wheat bread you buy in the store has some white flour in it, all whole wheat is tricky to do without a massive amount of everything else to make up for it. I’ll get it down some day.

- Sweetener: Not at all required. White sugar and honey are the standard options, but you can use fruit juice, brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk…anything you can think of. You’ll notice the difference in both the taste and crust. If you use real sugar, watch the top, can get very dark and can burn. Splenda is the only artificial sweetener that can be baked, and has no effect on the crust.

- Oil: Not at all required, but unless making french or sourdough bread, it’s probably best to use something, bread without some oil can get a little dense and tough. Oil also adds flavor and fluffiness – use lots of butter in dinner rolls.

- Liquids: Without a doubt, the trickiest part of baking bread is getting the liquid to flour ratio down right. You want your dough to be slightly tacky, but not sticky, and form a ball with a skin over the top that you can stretch, but not rip (the top “skin” helps the dough maintain its shape as it bakes). Bread should always be mixed, kneaded, then checked for consistency before the first rise – if necessary, add flour or water to get the dough to the right state. It is VERY easy to go too far in either direction, but just as easy to fix the problem – add more!

Any liquid added to the bread should be included in the calculation for how much water to use. So, if using an egg, just crack the egg into the measuring cup before measuring the rest of the liquid.

Not sure what’s inspired this need to share baking knowledge, but, it is definately something I enjoy blabbing about.

On to part two!

…quote from Julia Child

This recent article from the NY Times made me laugh.

As any true bread-lover will tell you (and I am a bread geek of the worst kind), whole wheat and whole grain bread is the only kind of bread worth eating. White bread is generally bland, over sweetened and buttered stuff left for dinner rolls, challah, and real traditional sourdough. Other than that?? Whole wheat/grain bread is healthier, ends up with a much better texture, and tastes about a billion times better. White bread’s also boring to play with as a baker. The fun comes in when I play with the other stuff.

King Arthur Flour (the god of all flour companies) has made white whole wheat bread for ages now. It�s not bad, although it still doesn’t act quite the same as real whole wheat. Still better than white bread, though, and marketed as a way to get the wonder bread generation eating whole wheat bread.

I love baking bread. To me, it�s a fun, enjoyable, edible hobby.

I still do buy bread on occasion, the best bread takes time and hours of love, and if I�m not going to do it right, I�d rather not do it. It�ll take me a minimum of 4 hours to bake a basic loaf from start to finish, but can take weeks if I really want to make that fantasy bread of every baker that crackles as it comes out of the oven. The perfect bread is crunchy on the outside, slightly dense, chewy on the inside with the big air bubbles that no storebought yeast will ever produce.

The ingredients in a basic loaf of bread are extremely simple. Some mix of different types of flour, and some mix of additional ingredients, depending on what I’m trying to get out of the bread (light and fluffy vs denser sandwich bread, etc). I�ll use butter or oil, eggs, powdered milk, but I rarely use sugar. If I’m making real, heavy whole wheat, I’ll add splenda, and dinner rolls just have to have a ton of sugar and butter, but other then that? The whole point of making bread at home is that it isn’t that icky sweet sticky storebought fluff balls they call bread.

That said, if someone is going to start baking bread for the first time, the transition is smoother if they use use some sort of sweetener, especially if they’re going to try to get kids to eat the bread. Just makes the transition a little easier, and after a while, you’ll find yourself making up your own recipes. Bread’s one of those great things you can throw half the refrigerator into. Even if you don’t make it part of the actual dough, you can always wrap dough around stuff and suddenly you’ve invented something.

Baking bread is easy, fun, and nowhere near as difficult as people think it is. It’s edible playdough. Beat that.

Below is my recipe for my simple version of whole wheat bread. It�s light, fluffy, has a crunchy crust, and tastes better then anything you�ll find in the store.

Ingredients:

2 tsp yeast
1 � cup white flour
1 � cup regular whole wheat flour
2 tbl honey
4 tbl butter, unsalted
1/4 cup powdered milk
1 egg
� tsp salt
1 � cup water

Mix, let rise (about an hour), pound down, let rise again (about 45 minutes), shape, let rise one last time (until dough has doubled). Bake for 30 � 40 minutes on 425 in a VERY well preheated oven. You’ll know the bread’s done if it sounds hollow when you thump on the bottom.

Once you get the hang of the basic recipe, you can mess with ingredients – the only way to truly “fail” at baking bread is to forget the yeast (or flour, obviously). Play with shaping the dough – any bread loaf can also be made as rolls, or braided, or whatever, and play with the baking temp and time. Ideally, bread should be baked in the hottest possible oven you can get for the shortest period of time.

I’ll write another entry with general tips tomorrow.

Have fun, and happy eating!!

(oh, and thanks for the unanimous recommendation on what host to use, that made my choice easy!)