New Old Standards: Bread

Just in case you haven't picked up on it, I've been obsessed with bread making. I enjoy creating things with my hands in general and to create bread, one of the building blocks of civilization, one of the oldest prepared foods at 30,000 years old (you read that right, THIRTY THOUSAND)....rocks my socks off.

It's not easy, that's for sure. You have to start with the basics and work your way up. Here are the two pages from my 1978 Betty Crocker cookbook that started my bread revolution. These two pages have all of the information you need to get started successfully and includes the white egg bread recipe, my go to sandwich loaf. In the spirit of copyright violations, here they are:

Master Recipe- No Knead White Bread

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am a total sucker for checkout line food magazines. I hate that I spend money on them, but with snazzy headlines like 'Holiday Baking Extravaganza!' how can I say no? Baking is my thing. You won't find me cooking a roast or perfecting a saute - that's Brian's turf. Show me a bag of flour, a jar of yeast, and send me on my way.

I read once that baking is the harder of the two food arts. With cooking, it's all about a spectrum of taste and flavor. You can mess with it as you go, add more, add less, get creative and throw in the whole fridge and in the end, you still get spaghetti. With baking, most of the time you're not sure if you've messed it up until the very end. You've either made bread, or you've made a flat inedible cardboard pile. You've either made cookies, or hockey pucks.

Anyway, it was from one of these magazines that made me feel like the better master of the kitchen that I tried the following recipe - 'Ultra-Easy Yeast Bread Master Recipe'.   Recipe's with EASY in the title always grab me. This bread, in addition to being easy, is a no-knead bread, which means it sits in the fridge overnight instead of being worked over a few hours. These doughs also tend to be quite wet and make a more artisan loaf instead of the cut bread sandwich loaf. The other appeal of this bread is at the simmering milk stage, you can add other ingredients to get fancier breads like apricot-sage, garlic-olive, and smoked Gouda and ale. 

Here's the abbreviated recipe, courtesy of Better Homes and Gardens Holiday Baking Special:

3/4 Cup warm water (105* to 115*) 1 package active dry yeast
1/2 cup milk
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
Cooking spray or olive oil
Cornmeal
1 Egg
2 teaspoons water

1. In large bowl, stir together warm water and yeast. In saucepan, add milk, sugar, butter and salt; heat till warm (120*-130*) and add to yeast mixture. Add flour (remember, dough will be wet and sticky and seem wrong, but that's good!) Coat large bowl with spray/oil, add dough to bowl (best to use a spatula or two to move the dough, it will just stick all over your fingers) and cover with greased cellophane (use a TON of oil/spray here, or else the dough will stick to the bowl). Chill overnight.



Out of the fridge and wrapped in greased Saran wrap

2. Using spatulas, move dough to floured surface and cover with the greased cellophane. Let sit for 30 minutes.
3. Grease a baking sheet, and sprinkle evenly with cornmeal. Transfer dough to sheet and shape into a loaf. (You can use creative interpretations of 'loaf'!) Cover with a cloth and let rise for 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 400*. Mix egg and water and brush over loaf. Bake for 25 minutes.

Our bread turned out super yummy! Brian even gave it the 'O' face, it tasted so good! I'm excited to try variations now that I've got the basic white dialed.  One addition I do have is to crosshatch the loaf right before you put it into the oven, this allows the dough to rise and not be trapped inside of a crust that cooked to fast, which can happen pretty easily at 400*.

YUMMY!

Anadama Bread - put one down in the 'fail' column.

I've been messing around with breads for a few months now, and I find the whole process pretty fascinating. I enjoy the totality of what makes a success or failure in the bread world. So far, I'm 1/3 successes to attempts. I didn't change much with this recipe, from Yankee Magazine. The description was for a 'sweet, well textured sandwich bread'. Hmmm, sounds good. Plus, combining molasses and corn meal? Crazy!

The taste was alright, but it was damn dense, and didn't rise properly. As far as the rise goes, I had a feeling my yeast might be a little off, and it was Instant, where I think I've decided I'd rather regular active yeast over instant. So, one problem solved.

The problem of density took a little more research. I found these causes:

• Too much flour.
• Too little kneading.
• Those cute crosscuts you see on artisan loafs at the store? They're there for a reason. If a crust forms too fast, it can actually trap the 'growth' of the bread, rather than letting it expand. Cutting the raw loafs will allow the bread to rise more freely.

I found this web discussion to be very helpful - in fact, ChowHound in general has some great resources for your baking maladies. 

Since my bread looked nothing like this and I know I had issues, I won't review the recipe quite yet, I'm going to give it another shot in the near future.