The First-time Bread Baker E-Book

Emmanuel Hadjiandreou

• Herausgeber: Ryland Peters & Small
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

This entry level guide to baking bread at home starts by setting out the tools and equipment needed and explains the science behind the alchemy of turning flour, yeast and water into the bread we love so much. Delicious step-by-step recipes for every day include a 60-minute Soda Bread, a Half-and-half Sourdough Loaf and a Sandwich Loaf. Occasional bakes to have fun with are Puffy Pitta Pockets, Pizza Dough and Crunchy Breadsticks, whilst enriched dough sweet treats to try include Sticky Apple & Cinnamon Buns and a Chocolate & Cherry Stollen.

Leseprobe

THE FIRST-TIME

BREAD BAKER

THE FIRST-TIME

BREAD BAKER

A beginner’s guide to baking bread at home

Emmanuel Hadjiandreou

photography by Steve Painter

Dedication

To my amazing wife Lisa and my wonderful 15-year-old boy Noah. You both bring a lot of laughter and joy to my world.

Design, Photography and Prop Styling Steve Painter

Commissioning Editor Nathan Joyce

Production Gordana Simakovic

Art Director Leslie Harrington

Editorial Director Julia Charles

US Recipe Testers Susan Stuck and Cathy Seward

Indexer Hilary Bird

First published in 2014 as Making Bread Together; this revised edition published 2021, with additional material from How To Make Bread (see pages 76–77, 78–81 and 115–117) and How To Make Sourdough (see pages 39–45), by Ryland Peters & Small

20–21 Jockey’s Fields

London WC1R 4BW

and

341 E 116th St

New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Emmanuel Hadjiandreou 2011, 2014, 2016, 2021

Design and photographs © Ryland Peters & Small 2011, 2014, 2016, 2021

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.

ISBN: 978-1-78879-360-5

E-ISBN: 978-1-78879-403-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A cataloging-in-progress record is available from the Library of Congress.

Printed and bound in China

Notes

• All spoon measurements are level, unless otherwise specified.

• Ovens should be preheated to the specified temperature. Recipes in this book were tested using a fan/convection oven. If using a regular oven, follow the manufacturer’s instructions for adjusting temperatures.

• All eggs are UK medium, US large unless otherwise specified. Recipes containing raw or partially cooked egg should not be served to the very young, very old, anyone with a compromised immune system or pregnant women.

Contents

introduction

getting started

loaves

small bakes

sweet treats

suppliers & stockists

index

acknowledgments

Introduction

My first book – How to Make Bread – was a collection of 26 years of my baking career. I travelled and worked in many different baking environments before settling in the UK, learning a great many new techniques and recipes which has allowed me to experiment and create the loaves in both my first book and this book. In this new book I am in some ways going back to the basics, showing you how to make bread. As a teacher you have to think of all your pupils and the many questions they might ask. I hope this book will help provide answers to many of those questions.

I realized through the enormous response and positive feedback for How to Make Bread that I had opened the doors to baking for many people who never believed they could bake, and made them feel confident in making their own bread. I love hearing from people who are working through my first book and receiving e-mails with photos of the breads they’ve made. They tell me of their satisfaction when they take the loaf out of the oven, tapping it on the bottom to check for the hollow sound, and the delicious freshly baked bread smell that takes over the room. One woman wrote to me enclosing pictures of the different bread she had made each weekend while she worked through the whole book. After she got through all the recipes, she sent me an e-mail asking for my permission to change a recipe and add a new ingredient to change the flavour. I was thrilled she had made all the breads in my book and that I had given her the foundations to experiment and I encouraged her to carry on. This made me extremely proud. She had definitely caught the baking bug.

One of the greatest delights I experience is teaching people to make ‘real’ bread for the first time, the sheer joy on their faces when they take their first loaf out of the oven. The bread might be a little rustic-looking or misshapen, but that’s ok because you made it and you know exactly what went into it from the beginning. I say ‘real’ bread because a lot of the bread today has lost the respect it once had. The supermarket bread is mass-produced and churned out with many more ingredients, additives and preservatives in it than the fresh, simple and tasty recipes you’ll learn how to make in this book.

I hope that you’ll enjoy this book, not only for the tasty recipes, but also for the fun you’ll have making the different types of bread! It’s a good idea to start with the Basic Bread recipe (see paage 24) as you’ll use many of the techniques you learn here later on.

Baking is a craft that everybody can pick up, but if you have the enthusiasm and willingness to learn, you’ll know it for the rest of your life. Remember that time, patience and great ingredients are vital components of great bread!

Have fun and happy baking!

getting started

Tools & Equipment

Accuracy is really important in bread baking. For this reason, I have given all ingredients in metric weights first (including salt, yeast and liquids), followed by American cups and/or ounces, teaspoons or tablespoons.

Precision electronic scales: If you choose to weigh your bread-making ingredients (rather than measure them in cups and spoons), which I highly recommend, you want scales that can weigh between 1 g and about 3 kg. They tend to come in 1-g, 2-g and 5-g graduation, so make sure you buy scales with a 1-g graduation for the most accurate measurement of ingredients like yeast, salt and water. When weighing out your ingredients, make sure they are gram perfect to eliminate any mistakes. Also, make sure you weigh the heavier ingredients first with the lighter ones on top.

Bowls: Plastic, metal and glass bowls are all fine to use. Make sure you have one large mixing bowl (approximately 2-litre/8-cup capacity) and at least two small mixing bowls (approximately 1-litre/4-cup capacity). You want to be able to fit one bowl on top of the other snugly. You can either turn the smaller one upside-down and put it inside the bigger bowl, or you can turn the larger one upside down and place it over the smaller one. I find this the most convenient way to mix wet and dry ingredients, as well as providing an easy covering while the dough rises. When using metal and glass bowls, rinse them out with hot water to warm them up if they have been stored in a cold cupboard.

Loaf pans: 500-g/6 x 4-in. (or 1-lb) and 1-kg/8½ x 4½-in. (or 2-lbs.) capacities are what we mainly use in this book.

These are my tips when working with loaf pans: Firstly, always grease your pans even if they are non-stick as it is really frustrating if your loaf sticks when trying to take it out of the pan. Another tip: don’t wash them with soapy water if they are dirty, just rinse them with hot water and let them dry out in a hot oven. And one more tip, the darker your pans are, the better they will absorb the heat compared to a new, shiny one. To work out how much dough will fit into a loaf pan, add up all your ingredients including the water i.e. 500 g/1 lb. of mixture will fit a 500-g/1-lb. pan. The dough should fill the pan about ¾ of the way up. I highly recommend using the right size pan for your mixture, because if you’re making a small loaf in a big pan, it will turn out flat.

Roasting pan: You will need to put a cup of water in this to create steam in your oven. Put the pan on the bottom of your oven before preheating it.

Shower cap: A disposable shower cap is a very useful tool! Use it for covering the mixing bowl while the dough rises as well as the loaf pan when the loaf rises before baking in the oven. It can also be re-used many times. Clingfilm/plastic wrap can also be used as an alternative.

Plastic dough scraper: A dough scraper is one of the most important pieces of equipment you need for bread making. This is used for scraping out all the dough and stray ingredients cleanly from the edge of the mixing bowl. It can even be used for shaping and kneading.

Metal dough scraper (Scotch scraper) or sharp serrated knife: A metal dough scraper makes dividing dough accurate and easy, but a sharp serrated knife works well, too.

Danish whisk: With its stiff stainless steel wire head, this is an excellent tool for mixing both the dry and wet ingredients, helping to break up any lumps in the process.

Proofing/dough-rising baskets: These come in various shapes and sizes and are used to hold the dough during proofing (the final dough-rise step before baking). They keep the dough shaped and create attractive patterns on the crust of the baked bread. They are made from a variety of materials. These baskets are not essential to bread making but are a good investment for an enthusiastic baker. Always remember to flour your basket before placing the dough into it; this helps it not to stick to the basket.

Bread or pizza peel: Use this to slide the bread into and out of a hot oven.

As well as the more specialist pieces of equipment above, you will also need many of these common kitchen items:

Baking trays/sheets

Balloon whisk

Chopping/cutting board

Clingfilm/plastic wrap

Deep muffin trays/pans

Fine sieve/strainer or flour sifter

Kitchen timer

Large knife

Measuring jug/pitcher or cups

Measuring spoons

Palette knife

Muffin cases

Non-stick parchment or silicon paper

Pastry brush

Rolling pin

Round cake pan (16 cm/7 in. in diameter)

Saucepans

Scissors

Wire rack for cooling

Wooden spoon

Flour Power

Just as a builder needs concrete to make part of a house, so a baker needs flour to make bread. And both concrete and flour need water to make them work properly. Once you add water, the magic begins! On page 17, you can discover the different parts of wheat and how it grows. Once the grain has been stripped from the grass, it is left to dry out and then sent to be milled – the process of grinding grain into a powder, and that’s what flour is.

A sample of the wheat is ground to check its quality – it needs to contain a lot of protein to make good bread – then the grain is cleaned to remove straw, animals droppings and seeds. Finally, the outer husk or shell is removed, leaving a clean berry to be milled into flour. The berry is checked to see how dry it is: if it is too dry, some moisture will be added to it to make it easier to grind.

There are two ways to make flour. One is stone grinding and the other is roller milling.

Stone-ground means that the grain is squashed between two stones that are powered by wind, water and sometimes by hand. It is up to the miller to decide if the flour will be coarse (a bit rough) or fine (smooth); if he sets the stones very close together, he will get a finer flour, but if he sets the stones further apart, the flour will be coarser. Stone-ground white flour is made when you pass fine wholemeal/whole-wheat flour through fine sieves/strainers. It will never be completely white because there will always be tiny amounts of bran (the hard outer layer or skin of the wheat berry) in the flour. Stone-ground flour is healthier for you as it retains all the natural vitamins and oils in the grain. This is because everything that goes in one side gets ground up and comes out the other side, and nothing is lost or thrown away.

Most white flour is roller milled. The grain is crushed through a series of metal rollers and sieves. The first time, it is crushed with rollers with deep grooves cut into them so that the bran and germ (the reproductive part that forms a seed) are removed and then sifted out. Then the grooves of the metal rollers get finer, as well as the sieves. The grain is split up into different parts: bran, wheat germ, coarse semolina, fine semolina and finally white flour. To make wholemeal/whole-wheat flour, all the parts of the grain are put back together again.

A Wheat berries

B Coarsely chopped wheat

C Coarse semolina

D Stone-ground wholemeal/whole-wheat flour

E Stone-ground white flour

Wheat

Wheat is a member of the group of plants grown all over the world which produce the edible seeds (or grain) known as cereals. Cereal is also the name given to many of the foods made from these grains.

First harvested and sown by humans around 9,000 BC in what is now a small region of southeastern Turkey, wheat is now cultivated worldwide. A special type of grass, like all plants, wheat grows, flowers and produces seeds, but it’s the seeds, or grains of wheat that are so special, because they’re used in so many foods that we eat every day. The grains of wheat are separated from the inedible part, and are then ground into the fine powder called flour (see pages 14–15).

Wheat grass – the young grass of the wheat plant – can even be used to make a drink which is full of vitamins and minerals. However, not all wheat is suitable for either making flour or for us to eat, and this goes to make other products such as animal feed and, amazingly, biofuel.

Among the many types of wheat now grown, some have been specially developed for high levels of production and ease of harvesting. However, some specialist farmers still grow the old varieties of wheat, such as spelt, einkorn, kamut and emmer – these are known as ancient grains. They tend to grow much higher than modern varieties and were useful in ancient times as the long stems could be used to thatch roofs and keep buildings watertight.

Wheat is typically planted in spring or winter, and is then harvested in the late summer or early autumn/fall. There are three different components of the harvesting process – reaping, threshing and winnowing. Reaping is the process of cutting (usually involving a long bladed tool like a scythe, see bottom right image on opposite page) and then collecting the wheat; threshing involves loosening the edible portion of the cereal grain from the protective casing (or chaff) that surrounds it. Winnowing is the process of separating the grain from the chaff. All three of these processes have been performed by humans for centuries, but these days, the vast majority of crops are harvested by machines, like combine harvesters. This specific machine gets its name from the fact that it performs (or combines) the three components of the harvesting process at once. The development of such machines completely transformed crop production in the early 20th century. Modern advances have now seen features like laser-guided hydraulic steering and GPS tracking to make the process even more efficient and precise.

As well as breakfast cereals, wheat is a vital ingredient in bread, cakes, biscuits/cookies, pizza, pasta, noodles, muesli, pancakes, pies, pastries, muffins and doughnuts. It can also be used to make a number of alcoholic drinks, most commonly beer.

The Other Stars of the Show

Flour isn’t the only star of the show! Water, yeast and salt are also crucial ingredients when it comes to making bread. Water brings all the ingredients together, while salt adds flavour and texture, but it’s the yeast that provides the real magic, transforming a raw lump of dough into a lovely loaf of bread.

Water: the foundation of breadmaking

Water dissolves and changes other ingredients so they can work and transform into other things. It brings all the ingredients together and activates the yeast used to make the bread rise. When water is combined with the dry flour mixture, the proteins gluten and gliadin start to form, which is what makes dough elastic and easy to shape.

The water also brings out the starch (white milky liquid), which is the food source for the yeast. You need to be careful with the temperature of the water you use when it comes to yeast. Really cold water will slow the yeast down, while heat will kill it. A hand-warm temperature (between 30–37°C/86–99°F) is perfect. If the water is too cold, mix it with a little boiled water to get it to a hand-warm temperature.

Make sure you use drinking water (or bottled water) to make your bread. If you can’t drink it, the yeast will not like it.

Always remember, you can add water to a recipe, but you can’t take it out. It’s better to do this rather than adding extra flour in the beginning as this will change the recipe. So as a rule, I always dissolve or activate the yeast in about ¾ of the water specified in the recipe, then I add the flour mixture and mix slowly. If all the flour has been incorporated and it’s a bit dry, add a little more water from the ¼ water you have reserved. If you find that you have used all the water and the mixture is still too dry, you can add some more water but keep a record of how much you have added for the next time you make that recipe.

Yeast: the magic ingredient

If water is the foundation, and flour the concrete, then yeast must be the builder. Yeast is a fungus – a living micro-organism made of tiny cells (that you can only see under a microscope). These cells have the ability to divide and form more and more cells extremely quickly. When yeast is added to flour, it converts the starch in the flour into simple sugars, feeding the tiny yeast cells, which then multiply rapidly. A by-product of this feeding process is the release of carbon dioxide and alcohol. This is known as fermentation, and it’s this amazing process that makes the dough rise.

There are a number of different types of yeast available: liquid yeast, fresh yeast, crumbly yeast, dried/active dry yeast, quick dry yeast and frozen dry yeast. The yeasts home bakers use are: fresh yeast, dried/active dry yeast and quick dry yeast.