On Making Bread

Flour, Yeast, Water, Love

Published: 2024-02-14

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For those wishing for geopolitical news, the most recent Week in Review's reference list should provide plenty. Or, for something more recent, John Lyons' article provides the statistics to horrify us into demanding that whenever people speak of who is being killed and terrorized in the current genocide in Gaza, the first word used should be children.

Bread

This newsletter has been beating around the bush on the topic of grain with a few articles. Lets put the geopolitical economics aside and get personal. Below is a recipe, and more importantly a story, and a suggestion.

The baking of bread is one of those opportunities of doing something new, something different. It is a lot cheaper than sky diving, happens in one's home and provides a rich array of associated benefits beyond the financial and nutritional.

Why should you listen to an amateur geopolitical analyst speaking of bread making?

I have baked, on average, one loaf of bread per day for the last half a year, with the maximum being an 8 (the title image). That was for a family event in which I became embarrassed for people spent much time talking about the bread and little of the other wonderful foods which other family members had provided.

But first, what is bread?

Douglas Adams' description that bread is holes entirely surrounded by bread is an excellent start. It captures the content, the crumb, though leaves the surface, the crust omitted. This surface detail was embraced by the lead Rat in the most excellent Ratatouille. A bread contains contrast.

Last August I lived in a house with a magnificent kitchen. It had a large central bench topped with stone, begging me to use it. I had a meeting with the priest who had delivered the sermon for my father's not so long past funeral and thought that it would be a nice thing to break bread with him. Being the scientist I am, I just got the core ingredients together, flour, water and yeast, woke the yeast up in some water with a sprinkle of sugar and mixed that with the flour to create a sponge. I waited a while as it rose a bit and put it in the oven to bake.

That bread, lifted by some butter and jam, served its purpose because it was served within 2 hours of coming from the oven. The next day revealed the ugly truth. What I had made was exposed as not a bread, but a weapon; a brick made of flour.

It happened that at this time I was making a friend. She was teaching me the rudiments of the art of sewing. So, unhappy with my brick bread I ask her for some help. She, during the CoVID lockdowns had again begun baking and had settled on a recipe which served her and family well. Armed with this method of making not a weapon, I set upon a journey which has lead me to the reality that in the last 24 hours I've eaten bread I've baked, twice and have a 'prove' sitting on the shelf in the kitchen waiting to become the next loaf.

[Evidence of the shower cap, which makes its entry later, can be seen.]

This bread I call 'daily bread', for it is the most trivial thing to do. It is also satisfying. It can be a meditation. It is better than its equivalents I could buy at the supermarket by cost and taste, and I know what is in it. This daily bread feeds and frees me.

Definitions of Terms

When one mixes flour with a yeasty water to make the goop, that is a prove. This one leaves to its own devices for a while to let the yeast do their thing. This produces a sponge. When one works with that sponge to produce the thing which will go in or on a container in the oven, that is a dough. What comes out of the oven is a loaf or a disaster, or both.

Bread is what one sets forth to eat.

The Space

Exploring bread making is wandering around a collection of interacting components; fiddling with ratios of moisture, time, temperature, and enclosures and ingredients. The core things which one is utilizing in one's exploration are flours, ovens, one's wrists, one's time and love. The constants are yeast and water.

I recommend that one acquire a dutch oven. The French make an enameled one called Le Creuset. The traditional version has no enamel. The enameled version is easier to clean. Obtain one of either type. Get the most beat up, cheapest one you can, preferably the enameled variety. I got mine at a 'throw out', when people put things on the street for large garbage collection by the local council. It has a serious chip in the enamel base. This does not matter at all. The dutch oven you get should be round. Mine is about a foot across at the base. Whatever you get, it has to fit in your electric or gas oven.

[My well used, previously discarded and now much loved dutch oven.]

I do not use my dutch oven for the daily bread. I dont need it. But, if I was going to make bread to take with me to an event, or I wished to impress, I would take my handy dutch oven to task.

Never, ever put a dough in a dutch oven to bake without baking paper underneath it, else lots of unnecessary cleaning will be required. You will do this once, and then perhaps once more, and then never again. If this happens, I say "well done". You are baking. That little error is just a part of the journey.

It is obvious from the outset that the key ingredient is flour. However, I'm stubborn at times, and I wanted to make a reproducible, reliable loaf of good quality with the cheapest possible flour. My logic was that if I could achieve this, then I had completed 'Baking 101' and could then explore further, taking with me not the recipe but the knowledge, the feel, the mechanics, the understanding which came from the effort to do this.

The daily bread has 50% of this cheap flour in it. The other 50% is the good stuff, to which we shall come.

Following the dutch oven, the next item to acquire is a set of scales. I like modern digital scales which one can 'zero' at the touch of a button. I'm going to use metric from here, so grab your converter if you use imperial.

[Scales, bowl and cheap flour.]

Next one needs a bowl. Kitchen working bowels are fundamental. I like the light stainless steel ones for most things, for they are easy to work with and light. They are also rather ugly, so belong in a cupboard when not in use.

Lastly, one needs a thin, clear, elasticized plastic shower cap which hotels provide to keep one's hair dry in the shower. This is the optimal item. Regular plastic film will do. The shower cap can be reused hundreds and hundreds of times, while the plastic film, perhaps 10 or so.

The Making

One cup of yeasty water

To the bottom of a cup (a coffee cup, for example) pour in a thin layer of dried yeast. Add a sprinkle of sugar (half a teaspoon or less). Add water to just below the brim. You want about 260 mL (or grams) of water.

[Yeast and water, with a little sugar.]

One can use live (wet) yeast, which I did when I was in Europe. But, I'm back in Oz and dried yeast is what is available here. In Europe, I used live yeast to make pizza for my children. Do not confuse pizza and bread.

The dried yeast will need about 10 minutes in the slightly sugared water to wake up, to start processing and replicating. This will become apparent when a scum begins to appear on the top.

330 g flour

Using the cheapest flour you can get, measure 330 grams of flour in your bowl. Put the scales away and add the yeasty water to the flour and mix with a large spoon.

The mission of the mixing is to connect all of the water with all of the flour. There should be no dry flour. This can be done with that large spoon, scooping and turning and pushing and folding. Lastly, we want this to be one thing. It needs to be pressed together. One could turn it out onto the bench and work with one's hands. This is a nice thing to do, to get one's hands directly involved. But, it is not needed. With the flat of the spoon push the mixture down. Then one can add a sprinkle of dry flour to the top and push down with one's knuckles.

Well done. You have made a prove. Seal it with the shower cap (or plastic film). What it needs now, is time.

The yeast will have already eaten all of that tiny amount of sugar. What they want to get their exterior surfaces against are the carbohydrates in the flour.

Yeasts are fascinating. There's 20-something of them and a few are used in brewing and bread making. They are single celled, have a nucleus within the cell wall, and fall within the Fungus kingdom of life. Their cell wall acts as a stomach, across which they exchange compounds, using the mechanisms of the cell to process/transform some.

What we are looking for is carbohydrate processing. We want the carbon dioxide gas which is a waste product (for the yeast) to make the holes so accurately identified by Adams.

This is what is happening in one's prove. The yeast are doing their thing for us. They are simple and wonderful things, and they will do the easiest first. Which is to say that they will grab the easiest foods (carbohydrates) and process those, and produce more yeast and some holes. Eventually, they may be forced to process more difficult, complex carbohydrates. These will produce different by products as well the gas.

Over time, a prove produces different flavours depending on the flour. Time is an ingredient. The yeast are forced to deal with different types of carbohydrates producing different flavours the longer they are at work.

Eventually, the yeast will break down everything they can which produces a very interesting sloppy puddle. This can be reconstituted by adding more flour, but this means one has left the yeast having their fun with the prove/sponge for too long. 3 days is too long. 2 days is edgy. I like anywhere from 6 to 20 hours. But, it is flour dependent. You'll have to work it out yourself, which is lots of fun. Another way to look at this is that a prove costs almost nothing and can be used anywhere from 1 to 50 hours later to make a tasty loaf of bread.

A prove is a living thing. Bread making is playing with life.

Making a dough

The next core tool is a rubber spatula.

[This is actually the daily bread. Notice the darker colour of the sponge. This is from the other 50%, the good flour. But, the cheap flour, bowl, spatula and plenty of flour with which to knead, are shown.]

All non-cleaning, useful actions in a kitchen produce items which require cleaning. Kitchens need to sit in a state of relative cleanliness otherwise one gets sick, which is less fun than cleaning. I like my cleaning to be meditative, meaning that it requires the least amount of focused attention. Thus, kitchen actions need to minimize the production of items to be cleaned which require focused attention. The danger territory is scrubbing. Working with egg or dough and failing to clean promptly creates scrubbing, a total no-no.

The mission is to get the sponge from the bowl onto the bench, have fun with it as one converts it into a dough, and then transfer it into the oven to bake and become a loaf, all the while minimizing the amount of cleaning and avoiding scrubbing like the plague.

The rubber spatula is key because it enables one to get almost all of the sponge onto the bench, leaving very little in the bowl, which means, easy cleaning (and more bread).

By experience I guess that the amount of flour to put on the bench, on to which one will scoop the sponge, is about a third of the flour one used to make it. This is quite surprising. One is not only sprinkling some flour on the bench to stop the sponge from sticking to it. One is providing a layer of flour which one will work into the sponge. One is 're-flouring' the sponge as one kneads it into a dough. Also, do not be concerned by 'too much flour on the bench', one merely wipes the excess back into one's flour bag.

So, sprinkle around plenty of flour, scoop the sponge onto it and then take the bowl and spatula to the sink. Add a little detergent and fill the bowl with water and leave it there with the spatula in the water. If you feel like washing and drying your hands, have at it. I tend to do that before I begin, or dont at all because I've just come out of the shower.

One flours one's hands by rubbing flour around one's fingers, akin to spreading soap on one’s hands. Using the palms of one's hands flatten the sponge out. When it is flattened out (an inch thick or so) is the time to add stuff.

Salt. Diastatic malt. Fresh chilli. Spring onion. Sauteed mushrooms. Olives. Herbs.

[Diastatic malt, and salt.]

I always add a pinch or two of salt, and diastatic malt, about the same.

When one is adding a wet thing, like olives, I have found that it is a good idea to mix them with a bit of dry flour to make them a bit 'sticky', to reduce the moisture. In this state they seem to bind better into the dough which will become the crumb.

With the additions made, fold, I repeat, fold, the sheet of sponge onto itself. Repeat several times, pushing down to re-flatten.

You are now at a fork in the path. You can put this thing in the dutch oven and bake away. The bread will have large holes within it, which is nice. Some people like this. Or, one can proceed to kneading. This will homogenize the size of the holes in the bread. The more kneading one does the more even the size of the holes will be. Choose based on what one wishes to produce, or for whom one's target audience is, or just how one feels that day.

However, if one starts to knead, one should feel that the dough begins to get tougher, firmer. It is informing that the kneading is not yet finished. One kneads through this phase until elasticity is returned.

Various bread makers have stressed the idea of 'stretching' the dough when kneading. One holds the closest edge with one hand and pushes away with the heel of one's other hand. I've yet to decide is this is actually important or not. What matters is working the dough, pushing into it, and the easiest way to do this is by pushing away from one’s self.

This is, in my view, the most enjoyable part of the entire process. This is when I am connected with the bread. It is in my hands. I am making it, with it. It is still alive, and the yeast are going to do their magic again in the oven. I am with the dough. This, for me, is where the love is most apparent in the making, though it pervades the entire process.

One is ready to move the dough onto the baking paper in the dutch oven.

When one finishes kneading is when one remembers that tomorrow one is going to put the baking paper in the dutch oven when one wakes the yeast up, so that one does not need to do this with messy hands. This, of course, is a good idea, but matters little because that is why we left the soapy water in the bowl in the sink, and that is why we keep forgetting.

Wash and dry hands. Line the dutch oven with baking paper, if required, and place the finished dough on it.

Surfacing and Scoring

The next bit of love is semolina. One can purchase semolina flour in a coarse form, not quite ground to a flour. I like to wet my hands and gently (!!) wipe this water across the dough waiting in the dutch oven, twice. I then sprinkle this coarse semolina over the wet surface of the dough.

Now is the time to consider scoring the surface of the bread. It will expand as it cooks and the surface will break at its weakest point(s). Scoring is to use a knife to cut deliberately placed weak points into the surface.

Whether to score or not is too dependent on flour, moisture ratioes, the oven and other things for there to be a fixed rule. This is classic ‘learning doing’ territory. But, you may learn that it is important for some breads cooked in some tins and/or ovens, and this is the time to remember to consider if it would be appropriate.

Ovens

Every oven is different. They take differing times to heat up. They have different air flows. The key point of the dutch oven is that it gets rid of the air flows. The air around your dough will not move. The amount of air in the dutch oven is less than the big oven. It is tenderly interacting with the dough/bread's surface as it is warmes and rises while it cooks.

The amount of time you want your bread in your oven is something you will need to learn. That which you know is that you want your oven on full whack, as high as it will go. After somewhere between 23 and 35 minutes (start at say, 27) you make a change.

At this point, the bread has risen and is 'cooked', but it has no crust of which to speak. Carefully, take the dutch oven out of the oven, lift off the extremely hot lid, place it securely, and return the dutch oven to the big oven. Extraction is after 10 to 20 minutes. The time depends on how brown and thick one wants the crust.

It is almost impossible to burn bread in an oven. I was quite surprised to learn this. It is actually impossible to burn bread on baking paper, in a dutch oven, in an oven. When I forgot some bread in the oven, what I got was lots of crust and very little crumb. Bread is a strange and beautiful thing.

When you're ready, carefully take the dutch oven from the oven, turn the oven off, carefully extract the bread from the dutch oven and place it on a cooling/drying rack.

The bread needs to cool to just above room temperature on its surface before one begins to slice it. Use a bread knife. This is their purpose.

With this article at 3000 words, the discussion of the daily bread and the special flour will have to wait.

Recipe

Ingredients

• a few grams of yeast and sugar with 260 mL water in a cup

• 330 g cheap flour in a bowl

• a few grams of coarse semolina flour in a bag

• baking paper in dutch oven

Method

• mix awake yeasty water and flour, cover, and wait 6 - 24 hours.

• fold and perhaps knead sponge into dough and put on baking paper in dutch oven

• wet dough surface and sprinkle on some semolina flour

• put dutch oven in big oven at Max for 30-ish minutes

• take off lid of dutch oven

• bake for another 13-ish minutes

• cool the bread on a rack

• don't burn fingers on dutch oven or big oven

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Sources

Week in Review: 2024, week 06, YesXorNo, 2024-02-13

Children are bearing the brunt of the horrors in Gaza. How can this go on?, John Lyons, ABC News, 2024-02-12

Wheat, Fertilizer, Pipelines and Trade, YesXorNo, 2023-07-22

Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa: Ports, Trade, Bridges and Brigades, YesXorNo, 2023-07-25

US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia: Musical Chairs in Galicia, YesXorNo, 2022-01-22

Culture

Crowded House - Fall At Your Feet, Crowded House (from their 1991 album Woodface), Neil Finn, uploaded 2018-06-18

Pietro’s Bread

Community contributor Pietro provided his recipe and sent me a picture of his “daily bread”:

Yum!

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