Bread - Number 30: Easy Spelt

Bread - Number 30: Adjusted recipe delivers tasty results

This is a nice, easy recipe and performs well even with adjusting for a starter instead of commercial yeast. I did include some vital wheat gluten but only because I have an extra box. I am too cheap not to use it, though I have thrown out ingredients that seemed past their peak. I really should put a date on the bags when I purchase flour and not just put bags in the freezer as though they will last forever. [Photograph of my starter.]

This is a recipe that early on originated in the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, always a reliable source. (Reviews of various bread books appear on the book and website review page.) I like that their breads can be made in one day or overnight, and they offer refrigeration advice. Generally, their recipes are foolproof. I basically dumped in a an amount of sourdough starter measured for balancing the kitchen temperature and how long the desired duration for the bread rise. Worked like a charm.

I did not start any dough or preferment on Saturday evening, so I was looking for a bread that could be made in one day. Saturday night was a fun meal out and then, of course, Sunday turned out to be all work and no play. I ended up leaving the dough in the fridge for a day and baked on a Monday night. I was thankful not to be held up with an extra phase or rise, but I tasted a difference in the result - not worse, just less tangy.

Ingredients
27g vital wheat gluten
323g spelt flour
151g bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
102g starter
273g yogurt
160.2g water

Instructions
Mixed all ingredients and let rise - loosely covered with plastic - for five hours in a warm kitchen. This would be an overnight rise in a wintertime kitchen. It rose well.

I put the dough in the refridgerator for almost 24 hours and made one good-size loaf. The Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book advises one shaping of 20 to 40 seconds with a final rise of 90 minutes if the dough has been refridgerated (about 40 minutes for unrefridgerated dough). Since I had not used this book in a while and I was craving easiness over experimentation, I eschewed the rising in a basket or any stretch and folds.

As the dough is wet, I recommend the use of parchment paper. Put some parchment on a baking peel. Shape the dough and place on the parchment paper; loosely cover with plastic. Let sit for 90 minutes for dough that has been refridgerated.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees an hour prior to baking. Write a note next to the oven to remind to reduce the heat to 450 degrees when putting the dough in the oven. Put in the oven the top of la cloche to heat on the baking stone. [Photo of a random previous bread.]

Baking
Reduce heat to 450 degrees when ready to place dough in oven. Removed parchment paper at 35 minutes. Removed top of la cloche at 40 minutes. Left uncovered for three minutes. Total oven time: 43 minutes.

There was good oven spring, a nice opening on top (thank you), which I was thankful for as I had totally forgotten to slash the top of the dough before placing it in the oven. The taste is good, though not as tangy or sour as a bread with a dough or preferment left to rise overnight. [Another random, previous bread photo.]

Great reviews from all family members on this one. Nice, multiple comments. My daughter sees no reason to ever buy bread and feels all store-bought, and even the farmers market, breads are inadequate. My husband offered high praise. The dog, I am afraid, is an unreliable judge; he will happily eat all breads (though his favorite is challah).

Bread - Number 10

Bread - Number 10: A rye sense of humor

Dedicated to that spark that got me out of bed to start the next batch of dough after taking it easy over the holidays and then holding off due to a mid-winter sinus thing that took a while to go away, like it was welcome at all.

As part of that hibernation-mode, mid-winter inertia, could not get myself to commence the sourdough starter process or make an ambitious bread. Like someone with writer's block who just has to write something, anything, I just had to figure out the recipe and start mixing ingredients. And then, on the day planned to mix up some dough, I was out and about the entire day and well into the evening, by which time the making of a bread had been entirely forgotten. Oops.

As if to add insult to injury, also forgot I had wanted to try the River Cottage Bread Handbook two-step dough mixing process. That is what happens with a very early morning wake up, dragging one's feet into the kitchen, eyes barely open. Looked at a few recipes for rye bread, as the rye flour has been waiting for a few weeks to be opened, and settled on the easy way out with a modified rye bread from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. As most rye bread recipes call for starters and I have not started on that process, the field was limited. This recipe uses about one third each of rye, white and whole wheat flours. I used bread flour instead of all-purpose white.

Ingredients
1 1/4 cups bread flour
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 3/8 cups rye flour (just use almost one half for that 3/8)
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp caraway seeds (3/4 get mixed into dough)
1 tsp vital wheat gluten
2 cups water

Instructions
1. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly. Yes, trying a little, a reduced amount of vital wheat gluten. Have found that my breads taste better without it, but playing with less in case it actually adds something beneficial to the bread, which supposedly will be a better rise for a bread heavy on the whole grains.

2. Add water. Mine was a nice wet dough, so it took about five to 10 minutes to mix all through, but it was easy.

3. Cover bowl loosely with plastic. Really should use a plastic bag as reuse is possible, but have not gotten out of habit of using plastic wrap. Feeling environmental guilt in ruining the planet due to extreme laziness.

4. Let the dough stand for 12 to 18 hours. Mine needed 13 hours and that was in a warm kitchen. Refrigerate for up to four days or start the next step with the dough.

[Dough after rising for 12 hours.]

5. Sprinkle the dough with flour. This is a pretty sticky, wet dough so don't be shy. Sprinkle a wooden board or counter top area with flour and when ready to remove the dough from the bowl, cover your hands with flour as well.

6. Put the dough on the board or counter. Flatten the dough into a somewhat irregular, though loosely rectangular shape. Apologies to any geometry teachers. From either end of the not-quite-rectangle, fold in one third to the middle and then from the other side fold in a third to overlap the first fold, as if folding to make an envelope. Now with the new rectangle of dough, fold the long side in half. Feel free to shape a little more.

7. Let stand on the board or counter - loosely covered in plastic - for 15 minutes. Mine rose quite well.

8. Generously sprinkle flour into a bowl or proofing basket (still on my wish list) and transfer the dough into the bowl. Cover with a kitchen towel and let stand for 60 to 90 minutes.

9. At about a half hour in, preheat oven to 500 degrees. If using a la cloche, put it in the oven to preheat as well.

10. While waiting, feel free to watch bread baking videos or ponder starting a sourdough starter, for which there are innumerable websites, recipes, and discussion forums.

11. Tilt bowl with dough onto well-floured baking peel or onto parchment paper placed on the baking peel. Since the dough was wet and not standing well (getting me nervous), I used parchment paper this time so that dough would not end up sticking to the peel.

12. Wet a baking brush with water. Brush on top of bread. Sprinkle top of bread with caraway seeds. Amount optional. (Another method I read about in the River Cottage Bread Handbook is to dunk the dough in a little bit of water and then roll it lightly in a bowl with seeds.)

13. Place dough onto baking stone or bottom of la cloche and then cover with already-heated top of la cloche. Leave for 30 minutes.

Note: While one may make bread without a baking stone or a la cloche, in my experience the results are so much better using these that it is not even worthy of discussion.

14. Reduce heat to 450 degrees, open oven and remove top of la cloche and the parchment paper if you used it.

Anxiety
While the  bread is baking is an appropriate time to confess doubts . It stayed quite wet and did not hold its own shape. Worried about it and don't want to see a bread that shows tell tale signs inside that it did not rise well. Perhaps should have allowed it to rise for longer period initially. Feeling like a good bread baking course would be in order.

15. Remove bread from oven after 10 to 15 minutes. Let stand on a rack for two hours if you can manage not to touch this amazing looking bread that smells like a rye bread strolled out of a bakery oven and into your kitchen.

[Bread right out of the oven.]

Ye of little faith
Oh my god, amazing. Tasted like an incredible rye bread. It is an incredible rye bread. Wow, this is a keeper and it is two-thirds whole grain. Despite fear that this bread would not rise, it rose so well and has a wonderful crumb with lots of air pockets.

[So proud, could not resist adding another photograph.]

Bread - Number Six

Bread - Number Six: Spelt Flour with Yogurt 

Dedicated to my sister, who gave me the recipe for my first bread, which I still make often, and think of us both making it when I prepare the dough.

Adjusted olive spelt recipe from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. Photographs of this bread are below.

Purchases
The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast $20 
Barnes and Noble membership $25 - purchased as held onto a list of about 10 bread books that could well be purchased over the next year.
(Do not wish to have bread books on a tablet or other device because sometimes open a few at a time when contemplating recipes.)

Ingredients
2 cups spelt flour 
1 cup bread flour 
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 to 1/2 tsp yeast
1 cup plain whole milk yogurt (prefer with the fat)
1 cup water
Note: Left out from the recipe the 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten and the 1 cup olives. Also adjusted yeast and baking instructions.

Instructions 
1.  Mix dry ingredients well.

2. Mix in yogurt. Prefer whole milk rather than nonfat. 

3. Mix well to get all of the flour. Mixing is easy as the dough is wet.

4. Cover loosely with plastic. Leave out for 12 to 18 hours. See if dough has risen and has some small bubble-like holes formed. Left mine out for 15 hours in a cool kitchen. Warmer the kitchen, the less time the dough will need.

5. Next day the dough was still wet and added a little whole wheat flour. 

6. Spread flour onto a board or countertop and cover dough with a thin layer of flour. Put dough on board and flatten gently. Fold in three parts as if putting a large piece piece of paper in an envelope. Fold in half. Let sit for 15 minutes. 

7. Though recipes say to cover loosely with plastic to prevent drying out, this dough needed some dehydrating, so left it uncovered.

8. In large bowl. spray non-cook spray and cover with nice layer of flour. Place dough in bowl and let sit for 60 to 90 minutes. Will not rise much. Again, skipped the loose plastic or kitchen towel to cover. Wanted the dough to dry out as much as possible as it remained quite wet.

9. At one half to one hour before baking, put top of la cloche in oven on top of baking stone (my baking stone remains in the oven 95 percent of the time). Let them stay in oven as it gets hot. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.

10. With still wet dough, added a little more whole wheat and shaped into a boule. Cut slashes into dough with bread knife. No movement is necessary. Just cut into dough about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in one motion. Do not slide knife as if cutting a slice of bread. This is literally a single motion of putting the knife sufficiently into the dough. (If this does not work, eat a tasty bread and try this again with another one.)

11. Put dough onto parchment paper (instead of directly onto baking stone) because it was wet and had little confidence it would fall onto baking stone without great mess. Placed dough-on-parchment-paper onto baking stone and covered with la cloche top. Left in at 500 degrees for 20 minutes.

12. Reduced heat to 450 degrees and left dough - with la cloche top on - for 15 minutes.

13. Removed la cloche top and left dough in oven for another 10 minutes.

14. Take that beautiful bread out of the oven. Mine was crackling, a lovely sound in a quiet and warm kitchen. Immediately ran out to farmer's market with a smile. 

Christmas music playing
Maybe it's the cheesey Christmas music playing or the fact that family will be visiting soon, but there is confidence building with each bread. 

And how does this spelt beauty taste? Very nice indeed. My husband and Brad enjoyed it. It crackled when first cut. Ate so much, need to make another bread dough for the week. Here's how the spelt beauty looks inside and out.

Look at those wonderful holes. And the crust? Marvelous. 

Bread - Number Four

Bread – Number Four: Same Recipe/Different Technique

Okay, just slightly different (think controlled experiment).

Dedicated to Scout, my dog, who patiently waits for pieces of dough and bread, and always thinks whatever I make is fantastic. Really, what says “great!” better than a wagging tale and sweet, begging eyes?

Once again using the master whole wheat bread recipe from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, this time using a lazy sourdough starter, last little batch of Bread Number Three, much, much less yeast, and giving a long time for the first rise. Had been playing anyway with doing the first rise overnight, so just making it official. 

Ingredients

7 cups whole wheat or white whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon yeast (reduced with recommendation in Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day about how to adjust for much-reduced yeast amount)
¼ cup vital wheat gluten
4 cups lukewarm water (with slow rise, it’s perfectly fine)
 

Instructions

Very easy. Put handful of last batch of previous dough with water. Let sit while mix together dry ingredients, about five minutes. Mix well all of the dry ingredients. By the time return to bowl with water, the dough will almost dissolve. Take out that miracle of the immersion blender and blend for 30 seconds or however long it takes to make the wet mixture into a soupy concoction. Then pour wet mixture in with the mix of dry ingredients. And mix, and mix, and mix.

[Building in Portland, OR.]

Room for improvement

Now here is where might change practice in the future. The Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book recommends a food-safe plastic bucket and lid, with the lid open a bit during the slow-rise phase. In the alternative, the authors suggest a loose covering of plastic wrap, but if this 108 project is some back-to-the-land thing (not that there's land to return to as only lived in the most densely populated areas on the East Coast), then plastic wrap is none too primitive (unless you count the first season of Mad Men, set in the fifties, as ancient history). Well, what has been happening, and happened in this case, is that even with the giant basin I have been using, the dough rises right to the top of the bowl and makes one with the plastic wrap, seemingly leaving little or no room for some air. Wondering, and really have no idea, if this marriage of dough and plastic wrap (a disgusting image) allows in enough air to circulate and help the dough to do what it should be doing after the moment when the dough reaches so high.

New book, Breadtime, recommends what is a more old-fashioned approach, which has some early phase of the dough being covered with a wet kitchen towel.

Ghosts and goblins, princesses and super heroes

Made this dough on Halloween evening, constantly interrupted by the cutest of ghosts, ninjas, princesses, sports heroes and miscellaneous strange characters (quite a few indeed wearing “The Scream” costumes) who showed up on my doorstep. The activity of baking a bread and mixing together the next batch of dough, what with the running to the door and refilling the candy bowl, made it easy to ignore that it was the first Halloween since my daughters were born that no girls were home, no pumpkins carved, no mass roasting of pumpkin seeds took place, with a few tummy aches (including my own), and no counting of the number of pieces of candy reaped or planning or discussions of costumes.

Tiptoed into the kitchen

Left out the dough overnight for the slow rise, but not without a middle-of-the-night peak to witness a lovely risen dough, right up to the top of the bowl, a lot higher than where it was left in the evening after the trick or treaters were done and kitchen cleaned.

In the morning, put that dough in the refrigerator, where it can be left for up to two weeks. Will be making some bread at about four days in.

Back to instructions

Four days later:
Took out about one quarter of the dough, preheated the oven to 450 degrees, with baking stone on middle rack and a large pan just below. Put plenty of flour on a wooden cutting board and lots of flour on my hands and around the dough. Manipulated the dough into a nice boule shape and left it for an hour and a half on the cutting board. Did not cover with plastic as starting to suspect this was unnecessary. One video had a covering of a kitchen towel. Since this time of year we do not get bugs, took the risk of having naked dough in the warm kitchen. It rose a little during the hour and a half – successfully avoiding the plopping, wet globs of dough experienced with the last batch. Cut through the top – about one quarter of an inch – in the continuing attempt at professional bread crust appearance.

Floured the pizza peel to transfer the dough onto the baking stone and quickly threw in a large mug of ice (which definitely works better for me than a cup of water). Increased the baking time to 39 minutes, though checked it at 35 minutes to find a gorgeous bread, truly a mesmerizing creation. Almost do not want to take a bite right now because, based on looks alone, Bread Number Four iappears to be perfection.

[(Contemplation?) Stones in Portland's Japanese Garden.]

Hmmn …

Taste: good, solidly good, but still that little bit of aftertaste that makes me wonder about its source. Is that the “complex” flavor? Good rising produced a decent, light bread that is two-thirds whole wheat. Wonderful crust, beautiful, delicious and crunchy.

A few days later:

Baked half of the dough as one large bread for a dinner party we were invited to.  The dough was quite wet, with that fat pancake look. Did not even slide off the peel though there was a decent amount of flour underneath. With such a wet dough should have used parchment paper. Attribute the foggy brain to another early morning endeavor. Choice was either running late by a half hour in the morning and getting the bread baked before work, or coming home and needing a couple of hours, thereby arriving an hour late to the dinner party with bread that would still need to rest for a while before eating.

Nostrovia?

Bread sprung up beautifully when baking in the oven. That ugly duckling wet dough had matured into a lovely peasant-looking bread. Half expected to instantly sport a kerchief and start spouting Russian myself. Baked it for 40 minutes, but honestly, should have given it about four minutes more. Despite its gorgeous appearance and quite a decent taste, the nagging thought kept poking me that those few extra minutes would have been beneficial. The crust was very nice, however.

Despite nagging thoughts, the last batch of bread number four managed to get itself eaten.

P.S. Just purchased a baking clouche. More on that in a future bread.    

P.P.S. The Breadtime recipes will not followed any time soon. When that book refers to baking day, it means the whole day. Stopped counting the number of steps, kneading, resting, more kneading, more resting etc. when eyes glazed over and realized that might need classes or more videos. A little scary.

Bread - Number Three

Bread – Number Three: Using Some Regular Flour

“Master Recipe” from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book

Dedicated to the idea of a bigger bowl; size matters when dough rises and expands.

Purchases thus far:

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day $16

Old-fashioned kitchen scale, which I haven’t used yet $21

Breadtime – purchased at a used book store – $7

In the name of giving credit where credit is due, many of the ideas below are from the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, with details below the recipe. Sometime in the next couple of breads, I am going to move beyond this book.

Ingredients

7 cups whole wheat or white whole wheat flour

1 ½ tablespoons yeast

¼ cup vital wheat gluten

4 cups lukewarm water (or longer rise if cold)

Instructions previously mentioned

The steps are the same as in the breads one and two in terms of mixing of ingredients and preparation and baking. The only big difference is there are no fats – no oils, no butter, nothing. The bread purists would approve, though it could be I have already committed all sorts of sacrilege that they cannot forgive. So here goes.

One major advantage is that this dough is supposed to last in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. I was excited that perhaps this dough would be lighter.

Beware of bread with weird karma

So, I got up real early on a work morning, anticipating the results from a new yeast jar. My goal is to make the regular master recipe from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book and see how it compares with the entirely whole wheat bread. Not sure this is a good controlled experiment. In spite of the new yeast, this bread has its own special karma.

First, mixing the bread takes about a half hour, including cleaning time and taking moments to jot down notes that will jog my memory when I write about making the dough. Jotting down notes, not even full-scale writing, is a big delay. Now Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day means 35 divided by seven, rather than an actual five minutes each day. I had counted on 15 minutes. As the minutes wore on it became clear that I would have to rush to get out of the house on time and that major parts of the morning routine (exercise, shower) had gone out the window.

Not only that, but the top kept coming off the spatula; I was afraid it would get buried under the dough. Also felt the mixing would never be complete; so I took off my rings and, as the authors suggested, put my hands right in to mix the last of the dry flour at the bottom of the bowl. Hands covered in wet, sticky batter (forgetting to wet my hands first), I wondered who had the brilliant idea of jumping out of bed in the still-dark early morning to make dough, especially when the plan is to not bake it until the end of the weekend. I could just as easily have prepared the dough after work. I wanted aged dough, the more complex flavor, so I jumped out of bed, but not quite early enough, seduced as I was by warm blankets and listening to just one more story on NPR.

It gets better, or, actually the story gets better, but the bread did not.

[Pacific coast in California.]

Attack of the glob

Also used a somewhat smaller bowl, a regular-sized large bowl, instead of the giant metal bowl. Well, returned home from work and the dough had risen right over the sides and onto the back of the stove – and some globs had hardened. Nice.

Felt at one with Lucy Ricardo in the Vita-veta-vegimin episode – without being drunk.

Not sure what to do, put all the goop back in the bowl, including the hardened globs, replaced the goop- covered plastic wrap and put the bowl in the fridge as if nothing untoward had happened. Thinking, will be lucky if a half-way decent bread comes out of this batch; if not, Ian either not count it or count it as a not-quite-spectacular effort.  Indeed, with a nice big number like 108, there is a luxury of some failures.

And so we hearken back to a previously mentioned rule – that I am the sole arbiter of what constitutes another bread in the series. Might be a do-over on this one.

Three days later

Have a suspicion that when this bread is made, will be quite glad that it was not Bread Number One. Depression would have set in and I might never have made it to number two, let alone 108. Right at this moment, it is baking in the oven. Not optimistic. The second rise finished with the dough looking a little thicker than a lumpy pancake. It went from nice, boule shaped to pancake like pretty quickly. Convinced that something in that first rise in a two-small bowl and trapped in plastic all contributed to what is likely to be a debacle. On other hand, if only smashing successes, will not be learning much. Also want a few good breads out of this. Even 50 successful breads would be a bit much. Rationalizing totally.

Also apologies to the authors of the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. Except for the initial dough preparation, the other stuff takes two minutes at most. So, a half hour a week, plus a couple of minutes any other day is about as minimal as one can expect and still have home-baked bread.

Also apologies for what seems to be a truly awful attempt at their master recipe healthy bread. Did not rise; it is a bit higher than a flat board bread, though more lumpy. Would taste it, but am already full and as the description suggests, this bread’s appearance is not a selling point.

About to take the bread out of the oven and am ready to throw out the rest of this batch of dough.

[Storefront in London.]

Next day – a taste test

Hesitated repeatedly and now bracing myself for the taste test. Surprising. First, the crust is wonderful – hard and crunchy. There are tons of air holes inside. Fantastic. Tastes light, but too spongy, especially considering the pathetic rise. I will do a do over and hope it actually rises next time.

My husband commented on a funny taste, which, am pretty sure, is the high yeast amount in this bread as compared with my usual whole wheat. Might try one of the very low-yeast suggestions, which only requires a longer first rise, something I am doing anyway.

Seeing some future possibilities

P.S. Reading the new book, which is a whole different philosophy of bread making, very concentrated on a variety of whole grains. Has wonderful descriptions of grain properties and must-have baking tools. Already starting a list.

P.P.S. Due to the positive aspects of the Bread Number Three dough, decided to check out the extensive troubleshooting chapter of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. This chapter builds upon the very helpful baking-for-dummies approach to the book, which helps tremendously. They do not use such terms as proofing or doubling in size of dough, specialized concepts (at least to me) that are difficult to execute in the real world of inexperienced people.

So, the suggestion for a wet dough that does not rise well is to mix in more flour. Makes sense, especially with the additional advice of adding time to the second, or pre-baking, rise. Also, since this is a do-over of sorts, am using flour on the pizza peel to slide the dough directly onto the baking stone, eschewing my parchment paper, to which I am very addicted.

Voila

Three hours later:

A personal triumph, if you consider the possibility that a triumph can be relative, and yes, if a triumph can be declared before tasting the bread.

So, followed the instructions in the book, adding the recommended amount of flour, then allowing the dough to sit out for longer than the standard time of 90 minutes so that the added flour, mixed with the dough, would have sufficient time to ferment. Ferment, scherment, whatever. The dough was as wet, as spread out, as the first attempt with this batch.

Channeled the inner Sarah Palin, went rogue, so to speak, relying on my experience with bread-machine-produced dough, and just added a bunch more flour, maybe another quarter cup, and manipulated the dough with my hands more than the book advises. Slid that puppy onto the baker’s stone in the 450-degree oven, poured the large cup of ice into the pan on the bottom rack – and waited – until the timer alarm shouted out 30 minutes – before I looked. I am nothing if not superstitious. Not one peek until the loud bleeping. Deep breath, donned the oven mitts, and opened the door. There it was, beautiful as all get out, and risen way, way, way beyond the lumpy blob of the first batch. It looked like a nice, small loaf of real bread, albeit not as shapely as one would expect an artisan bread. Who cares. A weird shape makes it unmistakably homemade.

Will taste with dinner.

After dinner:

High praise from the spouse that bread is as good as any artisanal stuff we’ve bought. Still, finding it a bit spongy. Needed better first rise, more time in oven, weird result of the vital wheat gluten? Confused.

Bread - Number Two

Bread – Number Two: Variation on Bread Number One

Themes Emerge (well, that is if one can accept that two constitutes a large enough number from which one can derive a theme)

Dedicated to Brad and my husband; Brad because he is my baking muse and my husband because he is still waiting for his home-baked baguette.

To give credit where credit is due, many of the ideas below are from the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book, with details below the recipe.

Ingredients

7 cups whole wheat or white whole wheat flour

1 ½ tablespoons yeast

1 tablespoon kosher salt

3 ½ cups water (they say lukewarm, but the only difference is amount of time for the dough to sit out)

½ cup olive oil

Small handful of dough from Bread Number One batch

Instructions

1.      Keep a handful of dough from a previous batch in the bowl (in this case from Bread Number One). It is the lazy sourdough starter. (More on sourdough later.) Do not clean the bowl. You heard me. Just scrape whatever small amounts are on the sides of the bowl into the handful.

2.       Add the liquids, the water and oil, to the starter. Scrape again. In fact, really all the scraping could wait til now.

3.      Take out an immersion blender. The best thing to do is to if you do not have one is to go out and buy one. It is not expensive and you will love this tool. Just put the immersion rod end right into the handful of that dough, the starter, sitting on the bottom of the bowl. Turn it on and in less than 30 seconds, you will have a soupy mix.

4.        Separately, mix the dry ingredients and mix well, which I did not (hoping a mediocre mixing job will not ruin the result).

5.        Add dry ingredients to liquid gunk.

6.        Mix and mix  and mix until a cohesive dough encompasses all of the dry and wet ingredients. You will see some flour at the bottom of the bowl. Keep mixing until you don’t. This whole operation will take about five minutes. gunk.

7.        Rising: An alternative to figuring out whether the dough is done with rising and is in the right condition to be put in the fridge is to leave it out overnight. There is no harm and you don’t have to drive yourself crazy figuring out if the dough is sufficiently flat, particularly if you were too busy to notice when the rising peaked and that it is now post-peak. One thing I noticed, perhaps because of the starter or because it was left out overnight, is that seemed to be more of a stretchiness and air worked in at the top.

8.       Put the bowl in the fridge, where I would suggest you do not leave it more than five days. Though the recipe in the book said seven days, at that point mine had possibly (totally unsure) become a tiny bit post peak. That is why I was careful to take a handful from the bottom and to examine closely whatever was on the side of the bowl before using to make the current dough. (At day six, I ended up throwing out half of the first dough batch.)

9.      For baking, take out as much dough as you want; the amount will only affect the baking time. Lightly sprinkle flour on the dough when separating and sprinkle some flour on the dough. Shape the dough into a boule or oblong, or whatever. If using parchment paper, place is on the pizza peel and then place dough directly on the parchment paper. Let rise, lightly covered with plastic, for 90 minutes.

10.   Continue as with Bread Number One: Preheat oven to 450 degrees about an hour before placing bread in oven. Make sure baking stone is on the middle rack and a pan is somewhere else in the oven, probably below, meaning in a place where you will not accidentally pour the water or ice onto the baking stone or the dough instead of into the pan. (Really the stone can be anywhere, depending on your preferences.)

11.   When the 90 minutes is up, and there is no shame in being addicted to kitchen timers, use the pastry brush to brush the dough with water; then use the serrated knife to cut into it about a quarter inch thick a few times. (I went overboard this time and did end up with a bit of a cartoon-like loaf.) Slide dough and parchment paper onto baking stone. Quickly, pour one cup of water or ice into pan. Make sure not to drip liquid or ice directly onto the oven door (an expensive misstep). Use a towel to cover the opened oven door. I always forget that. Remember to remove it before closing the oven door.

12.   If using parchment paper to slide dough onto baking stone, take out the parchment paper after 20 minutes and leave dough directly on the baking stone for the rest of the baking time to get a good crust on the bottom. 

13.   Baking time for a quarter of the dough is 30 to 35 minutes. Add more for a larger bread. Make sure that bread is crusty, even dark brown, when removing it from the oven. You will be taking a risk if you, like I am doing this time, ask someone else in the household to remove the bread from the oven as that person might not wish to be entrusted with the task of determining whether the crust is at the right point for removal of the bread from the oven.

14.   After removing from oven, let the bread sit for at least half an hour. Some authorities, meaning websites or books I have glanced at, say to let sit for a few hours.

What constitutes a sufficient variation for another notch in the 108?

Okay, this is a very small variation from Bread Number One, but this is my project and that is what I want to do. What constitutes a sufficient difference to count as another bread on the 108 list might not make sense or be consistent.  The suggestions for the lazy sourdough starter and not cleaning the bowl are from the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book. You can sue them when you are poisoned. (Being sarcastic. The authors might not find that funny.) The other suggestion, which also constitutes a change from Bread Number One, is leaving the dough out overnight for the first rise.

Other possible variations involve types of grains and less yeast, both of which I intend to try, probably still using this book, though improvising. However, I don’t want to spend too long on this book. There are so many others to buy and so many websites to visit. Well, 108 is a nice large number; there is plenty of time for resting on one approach for a while before moving on.

Right now, my dough is on the second rise, the hour and a half sitting out before going into the oven. I have to make sure to have the pastry brush, serated bread knife, water and cup of ice ready for the preparation and quick toss of everything into the very hot oven. Later: Just put in dough, which, even with parchment paper, did not exactly slide off, as I pulled the paper onto the stone, making sure not to burn myself, and, after dumping the ice cubes into the pan, made sure to take the towel off the oven door and not leave it in the oven during baking.

Tiny tidbit on sourdough

While the bread is baking, let me very briefly define sourdough. Google will do for more information. Indeed, a Google result provided my brief definition. “Leaven for making bread, consisting of fermenting dough, typically that left over from a previous batch.” Translation: Use old dough to make new, without using yeast. That is why my old dough was a lazy sourdough – I also used yeast.

When creating a new starter, without old dough, there are methods that involve yeast and those that do not. The more old-fashioned way would be eschew store-bought yeast. Translation: Maximizing the artisanal quality and ancient bonafides of the bread will require doing without yeast much as your great-great-great grandmother did not have a supermarket or yeast in packets or bottles at her local store. Okay, yes, that was sexist, as your paternal ancestors might have been bakers, or owned bakeries, or made bread at home.

Some people tend the same starter for years, which involves feeding the starter and a whole complicated, and cult-like, set of rituals, which I will not go into here. Just dipping my toe in the sourdough ocean with this bread. Please slap me if I refuse to go on vacation because the sourdough starter’s life force will dwindle, evaporate or otherwise cease to exist.

Friend and encouraging a fanatic

Now, for Brad. He is a mutual friend of my friend Rebecca, for whom I dedicated this project. The bread I made this afternoon is for him. It is not big and it does have a somewhat funny appearance because I too-enthusiastically cut those slats with the serrated knife. After I baked, Brad and I took a long walk; we have an actual route we always take; and we talked about Rebecca and the latest news of our friends. He bakes with me sometimes and cooks for us occasionally. He is especially wonderful when making a new, intimidating recipe because he retains his composure and has a sense of humor that stays active even when he is busy in the kitchen. He introduced me to fanatic (yes, that is fanatic) bread making with the book 52 Loaves, and he refers to me as a baker, which I treasure, even though I don’t feel like any kind of an expert.

As for my husband, I am about to go into the kitchen to take out the dough for the baguette, something very intimidating. He will give me a completely honest, perhaps negatively-tinged, assessment when he eats it later. He says that this means that I know he really likes something when he says so. He knows nothing of this plan and as today is Sunday, he is so involved with football that I could have an entire harem of women walk through the house naked and he might not notice. Actually, he would notice that and tell them not to block the TV. This will be a surprise.

Results

Brad’s bread, which he shared with us, was good, nice crumb (interior) and Rick (my husband) said the crust was better than Bread Number One. I agree and am sure it was attributable to the longer baking time. All around we liked it better, which, I will just credit to the lazy starter dough.

The baguette for my husband came out looking fine, but I made the same mistake as with Bread Number One: I did not bake it for enough time. What am I scared of? Dryness? With this oven, have to err on the side of longer baking times. Anyway, for a bread it is decent; just not a great baguette. Rick ate some, but stated he did not want any more of it.

Rest of the dough and other post scripts

P.S. On the last batch of Bread Number Two dough, I did a slow rise in the refrigerator for the second rise. So instead of shaping the dough and leaving it out for an hour and a half, I shaped it, put it on parchment paper on a cutting board, and put it in the fridge overnight. Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day suggests doing such a rise all day so that one can pop the dough in the oven, basically, soon after getting home from work. In the morning, I took out the dough, so it could return to room temperature, and turned on the oven to 450 degrees. Only I must have not hit “start” because it was not on an hour later. I am hoping, an hour later, that the extra time the dough will be sitting out will not do serious harm.

P.P.S. Brad was not so enamored of his bread.; he is not the biggest whole wheat fan. He left it at our house and I made him a favorite bread of his, taking out the bread machine for that dough, and making up for experimenting on him with Bread Number Two.

P.P.P.S. And Bread Number Three? With going away next weekend, it will be the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day book’s basic recipe, which has about a third regular flour to two thirds whole wheat, and has no fat of any kind. A big reason to the basic recipe is that the dough will last up to two weeks in the fridge.