It's All About the Bread, Man...

I'm really getting into the manual arts (see previous post about building the wood storage thingy).

I've been on this crusade for the last few years or so to bake decent bread. I know a few people who consistently bake great bread.

One of 'em is a guy who keeps chickens, cooks from scratch, grows his on veg on his allotment, etc., so it's not a surprise that his bread is great. He's pretty much rustic when it comes to knowing how to do that shit.

The other guy is the former singer in a punk band (therefore, NOT rustic) who not only brews his own beer, but also uses the same yeast that he uses for his beer brewing to make his bread. It's pretty amazing to drink the beer and have a slice of the corresponding bread. 

So here I am, year after year, faced with the glory that these two bread-baking geniuses consistently turn out of their ovens, while my bread turns out like a doorstop.

So I started investigating. Knead time. HOW you knead. Type of yeast. Number of times you let it rise. WHERE you let it rise. Order of ingredients. Temperature of water. It went on forever. I asked my mom about how her mom made bread (which she did EVERY Monday without fail, in copious amounts). Turns out my grandma had one huge bowl, and after kneading, would put the bowl on top of the heating pad, and set it to low, and let the bread rise there. So I'm considering investing in a cheap and cheerful heating pad.

But I also had a great suggestion from someone I know who also tries for bread success. She asked if I had a bread machine (which I do), and if I made my bread in the bread machine (I have - see above comment about doorstop, which applies to both machine and hand-made bread). The suggestion was that I let the machine do the kneading, but only that. Once the kneading and the first rise are completed by the machine, I do the rest.

So I tried it. I followed the recipe in the bread machine book. 1.25 cups of water, 4 cups unbleached white flour, 1.5 tsp sugar, 1.5 tsp salt, and yeast (1 packet). I also tossed in a handful of my herbes de Provence, which I buy a large bag of every year when we take our mini-break to visit friends in Valensole. (Please note that the recipe above doesn't have any E numbers, palm oil, stabilisers, or other garbage in it that bread isn't supposed to have. Your bread isn't supposed to stay 'fresh' for 10 days. Yuck.).

The machine did its job. Then I took over.

I also tried the trick for the second rise of turning my oven on low and letting it heat up for a good 15 mins before the first rise was completed. After the first rise, I took the dough out, punched it down, and put it in the opened, still-warm oven, to go through the second rise.

Then I baked it - 25-30 mins at 200C/425F.

And it worked.

Not only was it edible, but it was GOOD. Properly good bread.

I did it again tonight, but tonight I added sunflower seeds instead.











I'm so pleased about this. This means that officially I can bake bread. 

Watch out, geniuses. Your days of lording your MENSA-calibre bread skills over me are about to end.