Om Nom Nom: Bread Basics
This is not dissimilar to an earlier post of mine about bread baking, but was written for commodorified's "Cooking Carnival For People Who Don't." (cut for length)
There are an infinite number of complications in bread baking, but basic bread is very simple indeed. It takes a fairly long time, but almost none of it is work on your part. This post explains how to make a loaf of basic white bread, with suggestions for making it slightly more complicated.
Okay! Start by obtaining flour and yeast. I suggest getting a five-pound bag of bread flour, but if you can’t find bread flour, get all-purpose (AP), and if you can’t carry five pounds or are unsure how often you’ll be doing this baking lark, get a two-pound bag of flour.
Yeast! I buy active dry yeast by the pound and keep a small container in the fridge which I refill from a big container in the freezer. As far as I can tell yeast lasts more or less forever—I’ve been using the same pound of yeast for years. I’d suggest getting a small amount of yeast in bulk from a health food store, or buying the four-ounce jar instead of the little packets, which are unduly expensive. Or, of course, asking a friend who bakes bread for some yeast—bread bakers tend to be a bit evangelical. Like fans, or knitters.
Theoretically you should have dry measuring cups and a separate measuring cup for liquids, although for ages I just used Pyrex measuring cups with amounts on the outside for wet and dry ingredients. And, as an American and a lazy slob, I use volume measurements instead of weight because I don’t have a scale. But if you’re more of a stickler than I am, by all means get a scale and use recipes that use weights.
Ingredients (flour, yeast, oil) should be at room temperature even though you keep them in the fridge, so take them out a few hours in advance to warm up.
Take a really, really large mixing bowl—china or earthenware is nice because it retains heat, but is, of course, vulnerable to being dropped. So in practice I use plastic or metal.
Chuck two cups of the flour into the bowl. Then pour two cups of very, very hot tap water over the flour and mix it well—wooden spoons are convenient because they have long handles. If you’re using the same measuring cup for everything, dry it off really well.
Pour some yeast granules into the cup of your hand—this is about a teaspoon. Scatter the yeast over the flour. Traditionally, you had to “prove” the yeast in a separate cup of water, but now they make instant-mix yeast that goes right into the flour, saving a step, yay! Mix, mix, mix. Add some salt—I use about a cupped-palm-full of kosher salt.
Gradually add three more cups of flour. When the flour is mostly in, drizzle in some oil—the amount Jamie Oliver calls “a glug.” (This makes the bread keep better—the reason baguettes insta-stale is that they don’t have fat in them.) This probably shouldn’t be your good olive oil (although if it is, it’s really nice in semolina bread—see below).
When you have about five cups of flour mixed into the two cups of hot water, you should have a dough rather than a batter. If it’s still a batter, and you’re still a n00b, add some more flour a little at a time.
It really helps to take the leftover shaker from the grated cheese (oh wait—we’re all foodies and would never have such a thing! Movin’ along! Nothin’ to see! BUY a Rubbermaid shaker) and keep it about half-filled with flour so you can sprinkle a little extra on the surface of the dough.
When you have a dough ball, it’s time to knead. You can do this right in the bowl (which is why I specc’d a really big bowl) and don’t have to get the counter dirty. Stand up, so you can exert downward pressure on the dough. Fold over the top quarter or so of the dough toward the center of dough ball, push down with your hand, and squish the dough down again. Then fold in one side of the dough and do the same thing. Keep doing this until you are sick and tired of doing it—or, if you’re an earnest and effortful sort of person, aim for about two hundred kneads. Every once in a while you can pick up the dough and throw it back into the bowl. If the dough gets too sticky, sprinkle on a little flour, but the more flour you whack in, the heavier the bread is going to be.
The purpose of kneading is to activate the gluten in the flour. (See the next post for gluten-free baking.) If you’ve really gone to town, the gluten will be so active that the dough will bounce back at you like a handball. You can tell from the finished loaf that the gluten is properly developed if you can see whiskery strands in the crust.
Now the dough has to rise. In a centrally heated house or apartment, you can just cover the bowl and leave it in the kitchen, but if it’s wintry and your heat is undependable, you might want to leave the bowl in the unlit oven. Drip a little more oil over the top of the dough ball and turn it around so it’s all coated, to keep it from drying out while it rises.
I usually give bread two rises, maybe two or three hours the first time, an hour or two the second. It’s all very loosey-goosey, because bread will probably rise sooner or later even if you’ve made some egregious technical error. It also depends on things like the strength of the yeast, the percentage of water, and the proportion of different flours if you use more than one.
Punch down the bread after the first rise—i.e., literally stick your fist into the middle, when air will rush out. Then cover it again and leave it alone for the second rise.
After the second rise, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (I think that’s Gas Mark 3?) and prepare your baking pan. I think you should buy an inexpensive Pyrex or non-stick loaf pan at a yard sale or in a kitchen store, but if you really don’t want to invest at this stage, you can get disposable foil loaf pans. I have to confess that I use baking spray even though it comes in an aerosol can, but you could wipe the pan with a paper towel with a little oil on it.
Now take the ball of dough and sort of fold it so the top, which is usually the more presentable-looking surface, goes into the bottom of the baking pan. Smooth out the top. You could leave a fold at the top, or slash the top with a knife, to give the steam an outlet so it doesn’t tear the crust.
Give the dough fifteen minutes or so in the pan while the oven finishes preheating. Then put in the pan. Since the oven is going anyway, see if there’s anything else you want to bake (e.g., potatoes, root vegetables, apples, or mix up some muffins and bake those too).
It should take about an hour to bake. I know you’re supposed to use a lower oven temp for Pyrex but I never bother, so I guess I’m actually baking my bread a little hotter than normal. Let it cool for a few minutes before you try to take it out of the pan, and use a butter knife around the edge if it seems slightly sticky.
It’s not a good idea to try to slice hot bread, so if at all possible, let it cool. And a bread knife (the kind with a serrated edge) is a really good investment, because it’s good for slicing things other than bread and is noticeably better at slicing bread than a chef’s knife.
I let the bread get fully cool outside the fridge, then when it’s really cool, I slice the loaf in half vertically and wrap each piece in aluminum foil. Then either I freeze one piece and keep the other in the fridge in a plastic bag, or keep both the foil- and plastic-wrapped halves in the fridge. Unsliced bread stays fresher longer, but it’s a lot easier to slice the half-loaf when I need a slice or two of bread.
There are an infinite number of complications in bread baking, but basic bread is very simple indeed. It takes a fairly long time, but almost none of it is work on your part. This post explains how to make a loaf of basic white bread, with suggestions for making it slightly more complicated.
Okay! Start by obtaining flour and yeast. I suggest getting a five-pound bag of bread flour, but if you can’t find bread flour, get all-purpose (AP), and if you can’t carry five pounds or are unsure how often you’ll be doing this baking lark, get a two-pound bag of flour.
Yeast! I buy active dry yeast by the pound and keep a small container in the fridge which I refill from a big container in the freezer. As far as I can tell yeast lasts more or less forever—I’ve been using the same pound of yeast for years. I’d suggest getting a small amount of yeast in bulk from a health food store, or buying the four-ounce jar instead of the little packets, which are unduly expensive. Or, of course, asking a friend who bakes bread for some yeast—bread bakers tend to be a bit evangelical. Like fans, or knitters.
Theoretically you should have dry measuring cups and a separate measuring cup for liquids, although for ages I just used Pyrex measuring cups with amounts on the outside for wet and dry ingredients. And, as an American and a lazy slob, I use volume measurements instead of weight because I don’t have a scale. But if you’re more of a stickler than I am, by all means get a scale and use recipes that use weights.
Ingredients (flour, yeast, oil) should be at room temperature even though you keep them in the fridge, so take them out a few hours in advance to warm up.
Take a really, really large mixing bowl—china or earthenware is nice because it retains heat, but is, of course, vulnerable to being dropped. So in practice I use plastic or metal.
Chuck two cups of the flour into the bowl. Then pour two cups of very, very hot tap water over the flour and mix it well—wooden spoons are convenient because they have long handles. If you’re using the same measuring cup for everything, dry it off really well.
Pour some yeast granules into the cup of your hand—this is about a teaspoon. Scatter the yeast over the flour. Traditionally, you had to “prove” the yeast in a separate cup of water, but now they make instant-mix yeast that goes right into the flour, saving a step, yay! Mix, mix, mix. Add some salt—I use about a cupped-palm-full of kosher salt.
Gradually add three more cups of flour. When the flour is mostly in, drizzle in some oil—the amount Jamie Oliver calls “a glug.” (This makes the bread keep better—the reason baguettes insta-stale is that they don’t have fat in them.) This probably shouldn’t be your good olive oil (although if it is, it’s really nice in semolina bread—see below).
When you have about five cups of flour mixed into the two cups of hot water, you should have a dough rather than a batter. If it’s still a batter, and you’re still a n00b, add some more flour a little at a time.
It really helps to take the leftover shaker from the grated cheese (oh wait—we’re all foodies and would never have such a thing! Movin’ along! Nothin’ to see! BUY a Rubbermaid shaker) and keep it about half-filled with flour so you can sprinkle a little extra on the surface of the dough.
When you have a dough ball, it’s time to knead. You can do this right in the bowl (which is why I specc’d a really big bowl) and don’t have to get the counter dirty. Stand up, so you can exert downward pressure on the dough. Fold over the top quarter or so of the dough toward the center of dough ball, push down with your hand, and squish the dough down again. Then fold in one side of the dough and do the same thing. Keep doing this until you are sick and tired of doing it—or, if you’re an earnest and effortful sort of person, aim for about two hundred kneads. Every once in a while you can pick up the dough and throw it back into the bowl. If the dough gets too sticky, sprinkle on a little flour, but the more flour you whack in, the heavier the bread is going to be.
The purpose of kneading is to activate the gluten in the flour. (See the next post for gluten-free baking.) If you’ve really gone to town, the gluten will be so active that the dough will bounce back at you like a handball. You can tell from the finished loaf that the gluten is properly developed if you can see whiskery strands in the crust.
Now the dough has to rise. In a centrally heated house or apartment, you can just cover the bowl and leave it in the kitchen, but if it’s wintry and your heat is undependable, you might want to leave the bowl in the unlit oven. Drip a little more oil over the top of the dough ball and turn it around so it’s all coated, to keep it from drying out while it rises.
I usually give bread two rises, maybe two or three hours the first time, an hour or two the second. It’s all very loosey-goosey, because bread will probably rise sooner or later even if you’ve made some egregious technical error. It also depends on things like the strength of the yeast, the percentage of water, and the proportion of different flours if you use more than one.
Punch down the bread after the first rise—i.e., literally stick your fist into the middle, when air will rush out. Then cover it again and leave it alone for the second rise.
After the second rise, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (I think that’s Gas Mark 3?) and prepare your baking pan. I think you should buy an inexpensive Pyrex or non-stick loaf pan at a yard sale or in a kitchen store, but if you really don’t want to invest at this stage, you can get disposable foil loaf pans. I have to confess that I use baking spray even though it comes in an aerosol can, but you could wipe the pan with a paper towel with a little oil on it.
Now take the ball of dough and sort of fold it so the top, which is usually the more presentable-looking surface, goes into the bottom of the baking pan. Smooth out the top. You could leave a fold at the top, or slash the top with a knife, to give the steam an outlet so it doesn’t tear the crust.
Give the dough fifteen minutes or so in the pan while the oven finishes preheating. Then put in the pan. Since the oven is going anyway, see if there’s anything else you want to bake (e.g., potatoes, root vegetables, apples, or mix up some muffins and bake those too).
It should take about an hour to bake. I know you’re supposed to use a lower oven temp for Pyrex but I never bother, so I guess I’m actually baking my bread a little hotter than normal. Let it cool for a few minutes before you try to take it out of the pan, and use a butter knife around the edge if it seems slightly sticky.
It’s not a good idea to try to slice hot bread, so if at all possible, let it cool. And a bread knife (the kind with a serrated edge) is a really good investment, because it’s good for slicing things other than bread and is noticeably better at slicing bread than a chef’s knife.
I let the bread get fully cool outside the fridge, then when it’s really cool, I slice the loaf in half vertically and wrap each piece in aluminum foil. Then either I freeze one piece and keep the other in the fridge in a plastic bag, or keep both the foil- and plastic-wrapped halves in the fridge. Unsliced bread stays fresher longer, but it’s a lot easier to slice the half-loaf when I need a slice or two of bread.