Making Bread at Home E-Book

Jane Mason

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Jane Mason wants everyone to know how fun and easy it is to bake bread at home – and how much better it is for you than any store-bought, plastic-wrapped loaf out there. You don't have to have made bread before to start creating delicious loaves. This book explains the basic techniques, and shows you, with step-by-step photography, how simple it is to make a huge variety of breads at home. The recipes come from the four corners of the globe, but they all have one thing in common – they are easy to follow and the result is so much better for you than anything you can buy in shops. Choose from more than 50 recipes, such as pitta bread, soda bread, cinnamon buns, cheese rolls, rye bread and cornbread. Spanning wheat and the myriad other grains used from country to country, this book will teach you how to make bread and understand its unique ability to bring people together to celebrate, share and enjoy it.

Leseprobe

MAKING

BREAD

at home

MAKING

BREAD

at home

OVER 50 RECIPES FROM AROUND THE WORLD TO BAKE & SHARE

Jane Mason

photography by

Peter Cassidy

This book is for my parents, who taught me how to love cooking, baking and eating.

Picture Editor Iona HoylePicture Researcher Christina BorsiProduction Manager Gordana SimakovicArt Director Leslie HarringtonEditorial Director Julia Charles

Prop Stylists Róisín Nield and Tony Hutchinson

US Recipe Tester Susan Stuck Indexer Hilary Bird

First published in 2012. This edition published in 2020 by Ryland Peters & Small 20–21 Jockey’s Fields London WC1R 4BW and 341 E 116th St New York NY 10029www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Jane Mason 2012, 2020 Design and commissioned photography © Ryland Peters & Small 2012, 2020

Printed and bound in China

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

eISBN: 978-1-78879-274-5 ISBN: 978-1-78879-190-8

CIP data from the Library of Congress has been applied for. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Notes

• Both British (metric) and American (imperial plus US cups) are included in these recipes; however, it is important to work with one set of measurements and not alternate between the two within a recipe.

• All spoon measurements are level unless otherwise specified.

• All eggs are medium (UK) or large (US) unless otherwise specified.

• Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperatures. All ovens work slightly differently. We recommend using an oven thermometer and suggest you consult the maker’s handbook for any special instructions, particularly if you are cooking in a fan-assisted/convection oven, as you will need to adjust temperatures according to manufacturer’s instructions.

Contents

Bread is a common currency

Understanding bread ingredients

Understanding bread activities

Basic steps for the simplest bread

Demystifying sourdough

Everyday bread

Occasional bread

Celebration bread

Sweet bread

Index

Acknowledgments and Picture Credits

Bread is a common currency

About a zillion years ago, early humans crushed up grains, kernels and seeds, mixed them with water, and cooked them to make something to eat. What they crushed determined what they ate both at the beginning of time and several thousand years later when we first started to bake.

The story of bread in our lives is at the heart of three other stories: grain, travel and settlement. Grain because most bread is made out of grain; travel because nomads, early explorers, conquering armies and settlers carried what they needed when they moved around, and integrated what they found into their lives if it enriched them; and settlement because peace and prosperity enabled bakers to develop their craft, making bread delicious and beautiful as well as functional.

Today, wheat is one of the largest cultivated grain crops, and the main ingredient in the vast majority of bread that is eaten around the world. This indicates simply that it grows like a weed. From its birthplace as a cultivated grain somewhere between what were then Mesopotamia and Eastern Anatolia/the Western Armenian Highlands around 6,000 BCE, wheat has conquered almost the entire world, moving around the fertile crescent, across to Asia, up to Europe, and over oceans to the Americas, Australia, Africa and New Zealand. There are few places where wheat and bread made from wheat flour have not thrived.

There are plenty of other grains in the world including amaranth, barley, buckwheat, corn, flax, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, rye and teff. They are all delicious and nutritious and are used to make all sorts of food including bread. However, some require special growing conditions (water, cold, heat or altitude), others originated in countries that neither spawned nor experienced the kinds of explorers who popularized these grains in the way wheat has been popularized, and none can be stretched to create the variety of shapes or the fluffy light texture that are associated with stability. Only wheat can do that.

The mass movement of people in the last hundred years no longer spread grains and seeds, but it has spread bread. Most immigrants miss bread more than anything else in their countries of origin and, once established in new homes, many set up bakeries and introduced their bread and bread customs to their new home countries. This is why you can get tortillas in China, steamed buns in Paris, baguettes in Delhi, naan bread in Rome, ciabatta in Hamburg, rye bread in Montreal…

Sadly, highly processed bread, rapidly baked by ‘plant bakers’ has also marched around the world. Square, spongy and soft, this product smells a bit like vinegar, forms a gooey ball if you squeeze it, sticks to the roof of your mouth when you eat it, and simply does not taste like bread. It is time that we demanded something better, or started baking bread ourselves.

Bread is a basic staple, an occasional treat, an inexpensive luxury and a key part of celebration and ritual. It is a metaphor for money and, in many languages, the words for bread and life, joy and celebration are interchangeable. Bread is the stuff of story, song and poetry, and is a symbol for everything that is basic and necessary. To waste bread is a sin. To make and share it is a blessing. On their own, the basic ingredients – flour, water, salt and yeast – do not sustain us. They are only life-giving when combined. Good bread is the result of responsible farming, gentle milling, an element of hand baking and local delivery with minimal packaging. It is a window into culture, affirming both our individuality and humanity.

Observing this makes it clear that the decisions we take about the kinds of bread we make, buy and eat can change the world for better or worse.

Understanding bread ingredients

Basic bread is made of flour and water. Yeast makes it rise and salt makes it taste better. Out of these ingredients you can make endless varieties of bread. You can expand your repertoire exponentially if you choose to add and/or substitute ingredients. You don’t have to be an expert before you substitute wine for water or add raisins. However, there are a few things you may want to know before you begin. They are outlined in the following pages and will be an invaluable guide on you new bread-baking journey.

Flour

You can bake a kind of bread out of almost any flour, although different kinds of flour behave in different ways.

Gluten in flour is like a balloon, expanding as the carbon dioxide is expelled by the yeast. Flour with gluten includes wheat (and its cousins spelt, emmer, kamut and einkorn), rye and barley. Flour that may contain gluten includes oat and hemp (read the label carefully if this is important to you). All other kinds of flour are gluten free.

It is important to know a bit about gluten. Firstly, different types of flour are not necessarily interchangeable and secondly, some people are mildly or severely gluten intolerant. This intolerance, called coeliac disease, affects a small minority of the population and the symptoms can be mild (tummy ache) to severe (neuropathy). This book has some gluten-free recipes for things like fritters, pancakes and ‘skillet bread’ but does not have recipes for gluten-free bread baked as a loaf. There are some great recipes for this kind of bread in Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s excellent book How to Make Bread.

Different kinds of flour behave in different ways

The vast majority of bread that is eaten around the world is made from white wheat flour which, in most of the English-speaking world, is categorized by its strength, ie. the amount of gluten it contains.

Very strong bread flour has a high gluten content, is very stretchy, rises well, and makes great, sturdy bread.

Plain or all-purpose flour is a bit weaker, less stretchy and will not rise as much as very strong flour – it makes bread with a softer texture.

Cake and pastry flour is weaker again, even less stretchy, and does not make great bread although it does make great cake and pastry (funny that).

Rye flour does not have stretchy gluten and cannot really be shaped at all. Gluten-free flours need to be handled much like cake mixture. Even spelt, emmer, kamut and einkorn – wheat’s older cousins – will behave differently from wheat. You can substitute them for wheat in any recipe but be prepared to adjust.

Wholemeal/whole-wheat flour (flour made from the whole grain) performs a little differently from white flour. The bran and germ run interference in the dough, making it less stretchy and heavier.

Different types of flour make different kinds of dough and different styles of bread. Even if you stick to one kind of flour, you have to remember that from season to season and field to field, grain differs, and from bag to bag, flour differs. Every time you change the brand or the bag of flour that you use, you will notice a difference.

Further, countries categorize flour in different ways. This is one of the reasons it is difficult to replicate bread from place to place. Shopping for flour can be confusing, and good-quality flour is not always easy to find. Healthfood stores are often the best places to get flour and the owner can usually advise you.

Thankfully, flour is relatively cheap, so disasters are not expensive. Besides, everything is good toasted. Even if it’s ugly.

Stone milling

Stone mills process grain more gently than most industrial mills. The result is a better product from both a performance and a nutritional perspective.

Further, because mill stones (see photo, below) are ‘dressed’ by the miller by hand, every mill stone and, thus, all stone-milled flour is unique to the miller. There is individuality and humanity in stone-milled flour and although it is dearer, I am certain you will decide it is worth it.

If you would like to know more about flour, the Real Bread Campaign in the UK is an excellent resource.

Yeast

Yeast is a micro-organism that lives in the air. It is all around us and its job is to ferment things, breaking them down. We learned to cultivate yeast so that we could actually hold it in our hands in the mid 1800s. Before that, all bread was baked using natural yeast trapped in a paste of flour and water, ie. sourdough. These days, we have four kinds of yeast to choose from: instant, dry, fresh or sourdough.

The same quantity of flour requires different amounts of instant, dry or fresh yeast to make it rise. Quantities for each kind are given with each recipe. Do use the amount that is called for – you simply don’t need more. Please don’t get freaked out by yeast. The only thing that kills yeast is heat, so don’t mix it with anything hot. Instructions that tell you to use warm water, or put your dough in the airing cupboard or resist slamming the door when dough is rising are simply misguided. Yeast is not that sensitive or vulnerable.

Instant or easy-bake yeast

This looks like a fine powder. The benefits include: long shelf life, easy availability, and no proofing required. You measure it into the bowl and get going straightaway, saving yourself 10–15 minutes. However, instant yeast is about 93% yeast and 7% additives of various kinds. You may want to explore what those additives are and what they do in order to make an informed choice about using instant yeast.

Dry or active dry yeast

This looks like little pellets. The benefits of dry yeast include: no additives and long shelf life. However, it is getting harder to find and it normally requires ‘proofing’ which adds an extra 10–15 minutes to the preparation time.

Fresh yeast

This looks like a beige eraser. The benefits of fresh yeast include: no additives and no ‘proofing’ required. However, it can be difficult to find and it has a short shelf life. You must keep it in the fridge and it is only good for about three weeks, but you can freeze it if you are in danger of not using it before its shelf life is up.

Natural yeast

We cannot see natural yeast because it is trapped in its paste of flour and water that is a live sourdough culture. See pages 20–27 for more information, a couple of recipes including how to make sourdough starters, and some guidance on how to adapt ‘normal’ bread recipes into sourdough recipes.

Water

Just about the only thing that kills yeast is heat. Using cold water to prepare dough is 100% safe.

Because all flours are different, water quantities are only ever a guide. The quantities given in these recipes are for the flour I use and I need to adjust them from time to time. I have given the metric measurements for water in grams rather than millilitres simply because it tends to be more accurate but please do not worry too much about it. Start with the quantities given, then knead or stir. If you need to, adjust the ingredients to get a soft dough that is a pleasure to knead. If your dough is a little sticky, it does not mean you need more flour. Persevere, take a deep breath and keep going – you have not done anything wrong.

Salt

Whether you add sea salt or table salt is up to you, however, do add salt because bread without salt is not just boring, it’s dreadful.

Optional extras

Milk

Enriched bread calls for milk that has been warmed. The milk is not warmed in order to proof the yeast. It is warmed because the sugars in milk break down and the flavour changes when you warm it. When this is called for, heat the milk to just below boiling point and let it cool completely before using it.

Spices

Spices are lovely in bread but go easy on them – you want bread eaters to say, ‘yummy what did you put in this!’, not ‘wow, this tastes like curry!’ Follow the recipes at first and then, if you like stronger flavoured bread, do add more.

Butter

When you add butter to bread dough, you want the flour to absorb all the butter before it melts. If a lot of butter is called for, you should knead all the ingredients for 10 minutes except the butter. Then add the butter and knead for 10 minutes more. The recipes will guide you.

Seeds, grains, dried fruit and nuts

Seeds and grains can break teeth, suck moisture out of your dough and be difficult to digest, so soak and drain them before you add them. Dried fruit also sucks a lot of moisture out of the dough and is more succulent if you soak it first. Dry-roast nuts then allow to cool before using to bring out their flavour.

Understanding bread activities

There are as many ways to make bread as there are to fall off the proverbial log. I developed my style over years of wandering around the world baking with different bakers, and it works for me. I hope it works for you too but if you have an approach that gets you results with which you are happy, don’t change them. In any case, please go towww.virtuousbread.comand check out the videos for help on some of the basic activities involved in making bread.

Mixing

Bread recipes will begin by asking you to measure out some or all the ingredients, and to mix them together in a big bowl. Some recipes call for a ‘predough’ that you make anywhere from one hour to one day in advance. To that end, do read through the recipes thoroughly before you start.

Adding yeast

The recipes will give you clear instructions regarding how to use different kinds of yeast. Please follow them to get the best results.

Kneading

Once you have mixed all the ingredients in the bowl according to the recipe, scrape the dough directly onto a clean surface and knead it for a good 10 minutes or as stated in the recipe. Gluten is like a balloon and the first thing you do to a balloon before you blow it up is stretch it so you can blow it up more easily. Kneading is the same. It is simply stretching, and you can stretch the dough any way you like: one-handed, two-handed, in the air, with your knuckles, using a dough scraper, folding over and over – just be sure you give the dough a good stretch for at least 10 minutes.

I like to knead and I like the results it gets. There are ‘no-knead’ methods and they have plenty of merits but in this book most recipes ask you to knead. You can knead by hand or by machine. Generally, a dough hook is a better option than a paddle unless you are kneading dough with a high rye content, in which case use a paddle and stop part-way through to turn the dough over by hand in the mixing bowl.

It’s worthwhile to knead by hand the first time you do a recipe so you can feel for the texture the recipe seeks. Set a timer because it’s easy to cheat! Listen to the radio, talk to someone, dream a little and relax.

While you knead, the ingredients come together and the dough begins to transform. You will observe that it changes from a sticky, ragged mess to a slightly sticky, silky, stretchy parcel of loveliness that you can pick up and stretch, bounce, wobble or swing like a rope. You want to be able to stretch it so thinly that you can see light through it. Please don’t be tempted to add more flour unless you are panicking. Sticky is good. Err on the side of sticky rather than on the side of dry. Once you have kneaded it, you pop it back into the mixing bowl to let it do its first rise. Unless this is called for, you don’t need to grease the bowl.

Can I over-knead?

It is almost impossible to destroy dough at this point, especially if you are kneading by hand (although one of my students who is a serious sportswoman did destroy her dough by over-kneading). If your dough suddenly begins to fall apart and look a bit like spongy cottage cheese, you have over-kneaded it and you have to throw it away and start again.

How do I add things?

If you would like to incorporate fruit, nuts, cheese, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, etc., knead the dough without them first, cover the dough and allow it to rest for 15 minutes, then add them in. Imagine how much your hands would hurt if you tried to knead dough with walnuts in it for 10 minutes, and what a black smeary mess you would get if you kneaded olives in for 10 minutes. Don’t worry about the dough – it will recover. Fold the ingredients in gently to keep them whole, especially if they are fragile. Cover the dough once more and allow to rest according to the recipe.

Rising

You need to let dough rise at various stages that will always be laid out in the individual recipes. Typically, dough made with yeast rises a couple of times before it is baked to help achieve a light crumb in the desired shape. The first rise takes place in the bowl in which it was mixed and the following rises vary according to what you are baking. At a temperature of 20˚C/68˚F, the first rise takes about 2 hours and the second rise takes about 1 hour.

At any point, you can put your dough in the fridge to slow it down. At 5˚C/41˚F (the temperature of the average fridge), dough will take about 8 hours to double in size. So if you all of a sudden need to go out, don’t worry – just cover the bowl with clingfilm/plastic wrap so it does not dry out and pop it in the fridge until you are ready to use it.

There are a few things to know about rising.

i) If dough significantly more than doubles in size during its final rise, it risks using up all the power in the yeast before it is baked and it may collapse when it gets into the oven. You know your dough has over-risen if it collapses before you put it in the oven; if the crust has come away from the crumb during baking leaving holes between the crust and the crumb; or if the top is mottled with little black, burned spots. If you spot that your dough has over-risen before you bake it, eg. if the top of the loaf is uneven and wobbly looking or it has completely collapsed, don’t panic. Pull it out of the loaf pan (or off the baking sheet or out of the proofing basket) and knead a little bit more flour into it. Shape it again and put it back to rise. It will recover quickly, so keep an eye on it.

ii) If dough has not risen enough, it will split in the oven. It splits along the top where the pan meets the dough or along the bottom where the baking sheet meets the dough. Chalk it up to experience and be a bit more patient next time.

iii) The texture, flavour and digestibility of bread are nicer if the dough has taken longer to rise. The Real Bread Campaign advises that ‘real bread’ takes a minimum of 4 hours to make. As dough rises, the yeast is literally eating the flour, breaking it down and making it easier to digest. The longer the dough rises, the more broken down the flour gets. Natural yeast is less powerful than commercial yeast, which is why sourdough bread takes a long time to rise. As a result, the flour is very well broken down. Many people find they can digest sourdough bread more easily. You can mimic sourdough bread by putting your normal dough in the fridge to rise, thus stretching out the rising time.

Covering dough for rising

Whatever the bread is rising in (the bowl, loaf pan, on the baking sheet or in a proofing basket) you should cover it so it does not dry out. For bread in a bowl, pan or basket, the best thing to use is a clean shower hat – the cheap, transparent kind you get in hotels. Yes! They are elasticized so they don’t let air in and they are gathered so you can puff them up to stop them sticking to the dough when it rises. If you don’t have a shower hat, you can pop the pan or basket in a clean plastic bag, blow it up and seal it. If the dough is rising on a baking sheet, or in a roasting pan, cover it with a dry tea towel so that it does not stick. The recipes will guide you.

Pulling risen dough out of a bowl

When the dough has finished rising and you take it out of the bowl to start shaping it, take it out gently. The recipes will state whether you should take it out onto a floured or an unfloured surface. Either way, please don’t ‘knock it back’. The dough has lots of lovely air in it and in most cases you want to keep it that way. Some recipes call for the dough to be rolled flat with a rolling pin, in which case you don’t need to be so gentle.

Shaping

How on earth do you get the dough from a blob in a bowl into the shape you want it to be? How do you get air bubbles? The answer is that shaping is hard and it takes practice, and these guidelines will help.

i) Dry dough is easier to shape. If you are getting frustrated, put flour on the counter or knead more flour into the dough to make it easier to handle. Over time, as your skill grows, you will need less flour and become more comfortable with a wetter dough.

ii) Cold dough is easier to shape. Try doing the first rise in the fridge and then taking it out to shape it. Just remember that your cold dough will take several hours to double in size during the second rise. Be patient otherwise you will bake it too early and it will crack. If you are making enriched bread (with lots of butter), it is always much easier to shape when it is cold.

iii) The recipes give you some guidance regarding how to shape your dough but there are plenty of ways to shape and there is no single right way. If you have a way that works for you please use it – and let me know.

You could, of course, put the risen blob from the bowl right in the oven and bake it. It would bake right through but it would not rise any more, it might collapse, and it would continue to be a blob – edible, but not exactly beautiful. The reason for this is because the surface of the dough, when it has completed its first rise, is soft and squashy and there is no longer any structure against which the carbon dioxide bubbles can push. Imagine a balloon with holes in it: you cannot blow it up very well.

If you want your blob to rise, you need to give it some structure, creating tension on the surface so the carbon dioxide has something to push against (think of that balloon again) while leaving the nice, soft, pillowy dough as intact as you can on the inside. If there is no structure, the loaf will not rise well and will come out like a brick.

Right: Shaping is really what makes your loaf yours. Every recipe in this book will explain how to shape the dough for that particular bread, but once you have gained confidence, you can experiment with any shape you like.

Regardless of the final shape, you frequently start by pulling the dough gently out of the bowl and onto the counter. At that point you do the ‘stretch and fold’.

i) Pretend the blob of dough is a clock. Starting at noon, gently pinch about 1 cm/½ inch of the edge of the dough and pull it away from the blob, stretching it as far as you can without breaking it. Don’t worry if you do, just try not to.

ii) Fold that pinched bit right back over the blob and gently lay it down. Repeat this action all round the blob of dough, essentially stacking it on itself. As you do it, you can turn the blob of dough, or move yourself around it. A scraper helps.

At this point you may be asked to make a loose or a tight ball, or a loose or a tight sausage.

To make a loose ball, simply flip the dough over so the folded bits are on the bottom and tuck the edges in all around the blob to make a ball.

To make a tight ball, flip the dough over as above. Then, place your hands gently on the dough and tuck the edges in firmly by moving your hands down the surface of the dough and right underneath it so that your little fingers actually touch underneath the dough, pinching some dough between them. Repeat this action, turning the dough blob after each tuck. You are effectively pulling the skin of the dough around itself. Once you have done it several times – and remember your little fingers should actually touch underneath the blob, pinching dough between them – your dough blob will look and feel like a big golf ball.

To make a loose sausage, simply roll the dough into a sausage shape after you have stretched and folded it and turn it seam side down, ready to rest for the next phase.

To make a tight sausage, roll the dough up after you have stretched and folded it but do it ‘on the spot’, gently stretching the dough toward you before each roll and tucking the dough into the roll with your fingers as you go. Think of trying to get a sleeping bag into a very small bag. Once you have done it should feel as firm as a foot stool. If it does not, turn it 90˚ so the short end is toward you, and try again. Once you are satisfied it is really firm, flip it over so it is seam side down and stretch the dough around each end by pulling the surface of the dough down and around the ends toward the table to seal them in.

After this, each recipe takes over, directing you how to deal with the dough to get the shape required. Of course, there are exceptions to the ‘stretch and fold’ starting point and they will be clearly indicated. You may, for example, be asked to pull the dough out and gently stretch it out or roll it out into a rectangle before stuffing it, or folding it up like a business letter ready for an envelope. You may also be asked to divide it into smaller pieces before shaping them into buns, rolls, or sausages.

I truly hope the shaping instructions are clear. If they are not, please let me know. However, be patient and be forgiving. They are not always easy to describe in words. If they are not clear, you can also watch the videos at www.virtuousbread.com

What can I proof and bake my bread in?

Once your bread is shaped, it has to do its second rise. To get a square loaf you need to shape the dough into a sausage and pop it in a loaf pan.

For something different, you can do the second rise in a flower pot, proofing basket, or even in a bowl lined with a floury tea towel.

If you want bread rolls or a freeform blob, you make the shapes and let them rise directly on a prepared baking sheet or roasting pan.