I’ve been baking homemade bread every weekend (when it’s not too hot) for a couple of decades, as no store-bought bread quite matches it. Over the years my approach has gradually changed, but now I’ve happily settled into creating a less work-intensive sourdough. I especially like this technique because it uses an overnight rise that augments the flavor.
The difference in taste between an overnight rise and a two-hour rise is like the difference between a tasteless whitebread and your grandmother’s best cheesecake: there’s just no comparison. Second, the interlude between the preparation of the dough and the actual baking splits the cleanup workload in half, so (perhaps just by an illusion) it seems to take considerably less effort. The actual amount of work-time required to make this bread is around an hour, including the clean-up.
This essay isn’t so much about a particular type of bread (and it’s a far stretch away from being a recipe), it is rather about the process of breadmaking. The quantity of ingredients tend to “work themselves out” as the method unfolds — since breadmaking is about the right stickiness and “doughiness” you end up gradually adding sufficient flour to make everything copacetic. The variety of bread you prepare depends upon what you add along the way (the list to “choose your bread” is a bit further down) but the basic method stays the same.
The Hardware
A kitchen thermometer
A large plastic bowl to hold the rising dough
A smaller plastic bowl (I use an empty Cool Whip container) to rise the Starter
An easily cleaned hard flat surface (for kneading)
A large hand towel
A refrigerator
A bread loaf baking pan
A regular oven
Permanent Ingredients
Always keep the following ingredients in stock:
Flour (white and whole wheat); Cornmeal; Rye flour; Salt; Sugar; Dry nonfat milk; Yeast; Safflower or Corn or Canola oil
The Starter
This technique is designed so that you bake your bread on Sunday morning. Since there’s an overnight rise for both the Starter and the bread, you begin the preparation on Friday late afternoon or evening. Partway fill the small plastic bowl with around two cups of warm water. Stir in a heaping tablespoon of sugar. Now sprinkle on top a rounded three-quarters teaspoon of yeast. Over that sprinkle a half cup of Rye flour, and then stir it all up. Next stir in enough white flour so you end up with a Starter the consistency of a thick soup. Loosely cover and place the bowl on the top shelf inside your refrigerator.
Here We Go!
Start this part on Saturday afternoon. Take a large plastic (or glass) bowl and add three to four cups of warm water. Stir in a half teaspoon of salt, then go grab that Starter out of the refrigerator and stir it into there as well. Stir in about two-thirds of a cup of dry milk. If you haven’t already, now is the time to figure out what flavor bread you will be baking exactly…
Optional Ingredients (choose your bread)
Olives and Dill (*)
Raisins and Sugar
Cheese and Jalapenos
Brown Sugar and Cinnamon
Egg (*) and Poppy Seeds (*)
Toasted Sesame Seeds (*)
Marjoram (*) and Oregano (*)
Cornmeal (*) and Caraway Seeds (*)
White onions
Cooked Yam and Pumpkin Spice
Mashed Potato (*)
(*)= add before kneading, not(*) = add after kneading
Mixing and Kneading
Stir in a couple cups of flour (your choice, white or wheat), and then any dry spice or ingredients indicated by (*). Maybe add a cup of cornmeal. Now keep adding and stirring in more flour, a half cup at a time, until the dough becomes quite tacky. You want a consistency where it pulls away from the sides of the bowl as you stir. Now cover with a wet towel and let it sit in a warm oven (around 100F) so it can autolyze for a half hour.
Flour your kneading surface and don’t be timid: use lots and lots of flour. This is also the point where your kitchen and your clothes will get “dusted” — it’s smart to clear off the chotchkas and don an old white shirt or an apron.
Scoop the dough onto the floured kneading surface and sprinkle a generous amount of flour on top of it. Knead for four minutes at least. Kneading is very therapeutic when done properly; if you need some pointers visit:
Extra ingredients from above that weren’t (*)-indicated (Olives, Raisins and Sugar, Cheese and Jalapenos, Brown Sugar and Cinnamon, White Onions, or Yam and Pumpkin Spice) need to be added at this point by creating a dough roll. Make sure you still have plenty of flour on the kneading surface and press your dough flat to around a half-inch thickness. Spread the additional ingredients atop the dough, roll the dough up (only once!), and then knead lightly for another minute or so. Don’t worry if your additional ingredients clump together or fall out of the ends.
Avoid the urge to flatten and roll again as your bread will come out too tough and chewy. The dough doesn’t mind being pushed around and pressed in, as in kneading, but it screams and hollers when you stretch it. When you finish kneading you can put the leftover flour in a plastic container for the next time you bake — flour is a kitchen recyclable .
Now of course your dough needs to rise: it develops the most taste with a slow rise in the refrigerator. First though it needs to warm up just a bit. Rinse out and dry your big mixing bowl, add around a tablespoon of oil, and wipe it all around so the inside of the bowl is coated. Press your dough down inside the bowl, cover with a wet towel, and place back into the warm oven for another half hour. Then remove it and place the towel-covered bowl on the bottom shelf of your refrigerator (make sure the towel is still wet). In another half hour you will need to punch down the dough as it will likely have risen to the towel.
That’s pretty much all of the work, outside of cleaning up. Pleasant dreams!
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In the morning it’s time to bake. Oil and flour the bread baking pan, remove the dough from the refrigerator, and press it down into the pan. It will be rather firm and resistant to your pressure. Remember: pushing, not stretching! Give the top a light dusting of flour. Now you need to let it warm to room temperature (and rise a bit) but you must cover it tightly. I happen to have a Tupperware lid that fits nicely over the baking pan, but you can also stretch a piece of plastic wrap over it. Leave it in a warm oven to rise — even though the numbers don’t go that low, I can turn my gas oven on just slightly and it will warm to 80F. After letting the bread sit for 45 minutes remove the cover, score the top of the loaf, and bake at:
400F for twenty minutes, then 375F until it is done (fifteen to forty minutes)
Bake breads with moist additives (olives, yams, and onions for example) cooler but for a longer duration. With other breads you can engage the hotter temperature for a shorter bake. When you think the bread is ready remove it from the oven and take it’s temperature with a thermometer inserted diagonally in from the middle edge: it is ready at 170F.
Let it cool (still in the baking pan) on a wire rack for 5 minutes, run a knife around the edges and remove from the pan, and allow the loaf to cool for at least another 15 minutes, although you can let it cool longer if you have the self-control of a Jedi warrior 🙂
I am especially grateful to the contributors to the Usenet newsgroup alt.bread.recipes.
Essays by J. Chapman 