Baking Bread I

I'm not sure when I learned to bake bread, but I am sure when I really learned to bake bread -- not the exact date, but the experience. Now you are going to learn how irreverent I can truly be.

There are many good bread books available and I own several, but in my opinion the BEST is the book that helped me the most in understanding bread-baking. You can still get it on-line, which is where I recently purchased a back-up copy and some copies for my friends: "Bake Your Own Bread" by Floss and Stan Dworkin. Somehow I first came across this book back in the early seventies and in using it I learned the most important lesson of bread-baking -- understanding how each ingredient affects the whole. I also learned that bread-baking is NOT a science (though it can be treated that way), but an ART.

It was probably less than a year after I acquired this book that I was 'hired' (paid for my tuition) to bake bread at a music camp for the summer. This book was my bible for that summer as my basic job was to bake a different kind of bread every day for 80-90 people. It was a BLAST! I had the most fun creating, mixing, kneading, fooling-around with everything from whole wheat breads, to ryes, to sour-doughs, to challah, brioche, etc. And through the whole eight weeks I only had one potential disaster, which of course was a great learning experience for me -- sour-dough rises slowly, and my loaves went more sideways than up. Not a real problem as they baked fine and tasted fine. I survived any chagrin by cutting the bread into smaller pieces!

So here's a recipe and irreverent/anecdotal look at how I bake bread:

Unless I am creating something that needs to be tightly controlled (and that is very rare in bread-baking) my methode-du-jour is to toss things in based on what I want the outcome to be -- taste, texture, etc. I once proved this to a dubious group of college students when we had a Romantic Era Music party at my house. The few who knew how to bake were astounded when they saw me tossing (literally) unmeasured quantities of ingredients into the bowl. The were even more astounded when the result was, well, delicious.

Two night's ago we had a friend over for dinner (main course Julia Child's bouef bourguignon) and I decided I wanted some dinner rolls to go with. Here's what I tossed in -- I'll give you approximate quantities in a minute as I go, since that's exactly what I did.

Regular unbleached white flour
Spelt whole wheat flour
Flax meal
Salt
Regular dry yeast
Honey (I used some locally 'grown' PA honey)
Canola oil
Water

My goal was to create some very light, tasty dinner rolls with a hint of sweet.

Now I know this isn't entirely purist either, but I often, these days, use a bread maker to knead the dough (I never bake in one or even use one specifically for a rise unless I happen to forget about it and it sits in there and that's fine, too.)

So, I started by tossing about 2 1/2 cups of white flour into the breadmaker (I'll have to give you approximate quanitities here as I literally dumped the larger quantity ingredients in from their containers, but I'll also give you a big hint on how to know if you got it right -- texture). Next a 1/2 cup or so of spelt flour (spelt is a whole wheat flour that has a nutty flavor, very nice!). Then about 1/4 cup of flax meal (also gives a nutty flavor and is good for you.)Note: I find leftover dinner rolls to be far less desirable than the original hot ones right out of the oven, so I purposefully cut this 'recipe' in about half.

Then I actually measured a scant teaspoon of salt and a scant tablespoon of yeast using the palm of my hand into the mix. Dumped in about a 1/4 cup of honey and a half cup or so of oil. [On oils: I try to use healthier oils when I bake. Canola is a common one, but melted butter is certainly a choice if you want that flavor added.]
This was all followed by about 3/4 to a cup of water. Turn on the machine on dough setting and watch.

Here's the tricky part: what I wanted was a fairly light, wet dough that would hang together, but still create a very light fluffy dinner roll. As the machine did its thing I checked in and added several dustings of white flour until I had the consistency I wanted. This is one of those things you have to get the hang of. Especially if you are working with heavier ingredients like wheat and flax. I definitely didn't want to force flour into this dough

Once the machine had done its mixing thing, I dusted the wet ball of dough with flour, gave it a bit more hand-kneading, and tossed it in an oiled bowl to rise. Luckily I have a rising feature on my oven, so I covered the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and let it go for one hour. After an hour the dough had almost tripled. I punched it down and kneaded vigorishly for five minutes. It was still sticky to touch -- ready for second rise in baking pan.

Important: wet doughs will tend to rise sideways more than up. So I decided to cook these rolls in a heavy ceramic-buttered casserole so that the 1 1/2 inch pinched off balls of dough would grow sideways, hit each other eventually and then go up.

Second rise was also about and hour (remember I wanted very light dinner rolls). Bingo, perfect -- set oven to 350 (I might typically have used 325, but I was timing this with the main course). Baked for about 15 minutes. Buttered tops. Baked a few more minutes and viola! Very light, very tasty with butter. I served a small plateful of rolls at dinner and left the rest in warm oven so we could enjoy more still warm as the dinner lingered on.

So -- bake bread with a flair; be creative; have fun; and most importantly learn what the ingredients do -- Dworkin's book is a good place to start. As you'll see if you follow this blog. I use many, many different types of flours and ingredients in my breads.

Joe Koob