WHY BAKE BREAD?
I spent my childhood in the company of women who made bread daily, not just for special occasions. My mother, an avid collector of Gourmet magazine, began training me when I was five years old, giving me a little oak work table and a miniature red-handled rolling pin to make cinnamon pinwheels from scraps of her extraordinary, feather-light pie dough. One of my grandmothers, Bessie, taught me how to make beaten biscuits and spoon bread while the other, my Czech grandmother called Bigmama (although she was very little), showed me how to wrap kolache dough around the buttery poppy seed and farmer’s cheese fillings, which she kept on hand as other people keep salt on the table. By spending as much time as possible in the kitchens of these exceptional and encouraging women, I learned how pleasurable it was to create bread in one’s own kitchen.
In my family, bread did not come in packages, just as butter did not come in boxes. Our butter came from the thick layer of cream skimmed off the milk from Bessie, the cow (named after my grandmother?). My grandfather brought the morning’s milking to the back porch, and with a giant silver spoon, pulled the heavy top cream aside (into a blue pottery bowl I still own and use for making bread), churned it into butter and sculpted it into a half moon mound, using a cold fork to decorate the butter with cross-hatching. All this just for my grandmother’s daily biscuits and country loaves. He knew where his bread was buttered.
Our world was filled with beautiful food on large family tables. Eating was an art and eating alone, unthinkable. The summer’s apples, peaches, apricots, and berries were made into jams and gleaming, translucent jellies, ready for English muffins, airy biscuits, and country breads. I do not remember any bread that was not made in our kitchen: rye breads, white breads, sourdough biscuits (page 66), Boston brown bread, and cream bread (page 65), made in a round cake tin/baking pan and which, to my delight, yielded perfect little round sandwiches for my doll’s tea parties. My mother’s French toast, Pain Perdú, the recipe derived from an old New Orleans favourite (page 192) was made with thick slices of her country white bread dipped in fresh farm eggs, beaten to an amber liquid with cream and cinnamon.
The baking at Thanksgiving and Christmas for the gathering of our extensive clan began at least two weeks before any event. Swedish cookie presses, cornbread and plum pudding moulds, and fancy bread pans were taken out of storage along with vintage tree decorations, all collected over many years. My mother often gave Christmas gifts from her kitchen and the most famous was her chilli pepper cornbread dressing for the turkey. Not only our turkey, but many friends’ holiday turkeys as well! Along with large quantities of dressing, she would make fruitcakes, sugar cookies, butter cookies, rich little tidbits called sand toks and of course, fresh biscuits, rolls and bread. With memories like these, it’s no wonder that I ended up with a bakery.
My new career began one summer afternoon when my friend, Myra Cohn Livingston, having returned from a long trip and finding nothing to eat but a frozen Suzanne focaccia, left a message on my phone machine in so many words that if I did not get my breads on the market, I was crazy – and then she hung up. Sell my bread? She had to be joking. Would anyone buy it? There was so much competition. I was a novice. I knew very little about running a bread business and even less about making bread for the masses, but when our local market started buying my focaccia and several other markets fell in step, I was suddenly making a thousand loaves a week in my kitchen, and everyone in the household including the cat was covered in flour from early morning to the next day’s bake!
And mornings were very, very early! Fortunately, my husband joined in, just to help out on a day when I literally could not rise from the bed, and soon I found myself with an able partner. He left a successful screen-writing career of twenty-five years and never looked back. He tells everyone that he had to prove himself for six months before I would succumb to having a partner, but it was really fear on my part that a few focacce would not generate the riches and perks that Hollywood offers. With this in mind, we began to organize the finances (what there were of them), and we both started having daily “story meetings” about the future of our endeavour.
I remember that one late night, I was sitting alone, thinking to myself, “Can I do this? Alone? It’s a huge decision.” And then, too curious not to, and with no net, I leapt. I’ve always been very thankful for that – that the unknown called me and I followed, come hell or high water.
It was only after my thumbs and my husband’s middle finger gave out from stirring dough so often that it dawned on us to buy a small commercial mixer and to hire our first baker, Leonel Ramos, who was still, after five years, the very able chief of bakers. The thousand loaves, exhaustion and an intractable cat forced us to move out of the house into 215 square metres/2,300 square feet in an industrial area. We bought the same mixer (only bigger), the same ovens (only bigger), and started Buona Forchetta Hand Made Breads which were made the same way they were made at home – by eye and by hand.
The recipes are all my own originals, developed over years of trial and error, and I think people respond to them precisely because they are not like other breads. The crusts are lighter, chewier, user-friendly; the crumb is moist and stays fresh longer than most breads; our ingredients are simple and to the point, no froufrou, as I call it. I left it to the customer to add whatever he or she liked to the bread, steering clear of heavily flavoured additions to the dough, such as mixed dried herbs, onions, garlic, cheeses or sun-dried vegetables. These additions often flavour the plainer breads, which bake in the same ovens, and can be the cause of rancidity when breads are not stored well. Cheese, in particular, will go bad in packaged breads or crackers made without preservatives, and I will never use preservatives.
I often think that the way we made our bread at Buona Forchetta must have looked crazy to other bakers (we used no proofers, temperature-controlled equipment, deck ovens or peels), and we regularly broke every rule in the book about baking, yet our clients were loyal year after year, and the process of making handmade breads gave us great pleasure.
No Need to Knead tells you how to make without tears, anxiety, or special equipment – the same country loaves, filoncini, focacce and other basic breads I sold at Buona Forchetta Hand Made Breads and other retail outlets and restaurants in the Los Angeles area. I have taught many students how to make these breads in my cooking classes and am tickled when I hear that they make their own daily breads at home. These basic breads are not the complicated, multi-ingredient loaves found in so many bread books. They are not bread-machine doughs. They often take less time to make and taste better. They require no lengthy kneading to develop the dough – on the contrary, kneading often destroys the texture and the beautiful big holes I want to achieve. They require no special thermometers or equipment. They do not demand days and days of waiting for starters to ferment in order to get a loaf on the table. I grant that long-process breads are delicious, too, (see Daily Breads) but they never have been my primary focus, especially knowing what I know now.
The majority of the recipes here evolved from going against the grain, so to speak, in order to achieve the moist, wonderfully textured breads I have eaten for years in Italy and France. Once you know the basic dough for a simple bread, you can let your imagination take over. There is very little you cannot put in bread, and I will mention these in individual recipes, but remember that it is best to keep things “as simple as possible but no simpler”, as Einstein said, and let the natural flavours of the bread emerge. By using your intuition, your own allotment of taste buds, and your skill, you will discover just what works for you and what does not.
For No Need to Knead, I selected the very recipes I like to have on hand to make bread a special part of any meal. Many of the recipes are for various basic breads and the rest illustrate how I make use of the basics. I hope that some of my more unusual recipes will inspire you to think creatively about combining flavours, such as a spoon of hot chilli powder added to Skillet Corn Bread (page 72) to add body, or oven-roasted red raisin grapes in the Sicilian Schiacciata with Roasted Grapes (page 110), to give this marvellous focaccia its tartness. My easy Roman pizza dough (page 83) is the basis for many savoury and exotic flatbreads. The Truffle Rolls (page 140) scented with white truffle oil (easily obtainable at supermarkets and delis) will make anyone long to travel to the wondrous truffle grounds of Italy’s Umbria and Piemonte. The Sourdough Caraway Rye, Housewife’s Bread and Focaccia are easy enough to become part of every meal, each bread very different from the next. Even classics such as Russian Kulich and Italian Panettone (page 130) are my own very different versions of these festive breads. Beautiful, tasty and memorable breads need not be difficult or daunting, but in order to have them taste different from all others, you must consider what you do that is unlike anyone else and then simply trust your instincts and your palate.
No fat, sugar or dairy products are used in the basic doughs. I believe something is wrong when you need more than a glance to read a food label or when you cannot pronounce most of the ingredients on it. A good baker can produce exquisite flavour without additives. A mediocre one cannot.
Many of my breads are made with what I call the cold dough method because it makes better bread with rich flavour. It is also a great time-saver for people with little to spare. You simply put the dough, covered tightly, in the refrigerator overnight to ripen and enhance its flavours. Almost any bread dough may be stored this way, mixed the day or a few hours before use, allowed to build its character in cold storage, then taken out and baked in short order. This is the quickest way to have bread on hand every day, whenever you want it, in very little time. Some doughs actually bake better when cold, because the steam created within the dough leaves the crumb of the loaf moist and chewy (my fougasse is a perfect example of this, page 38). You, the baker, entertainer, mother, father, laundry schlepper, gardener, car-pooler, manager of multi-million-dollar mutual funds, have nothing to do but stir up the dough, get on with the rest of your life, wait and then bake the bread when you choose. The simplest home-baked loaf will be far superior to any store-bought, commercial bread.
I bake bread because my soul needs bread, my senses need the smell, feel and sight of bread every day, and it is the one food that, without adornment, endures on its own. I like to wake up knowing I am about to bake beautiful breads and that my breads can be shared with so many. The timeless taste and feel of bread, as if bread has always been part of the universe, encourages me to create my own. Certainly my past has been filled with bread, and with the recipes in this book, you can make a little history yourself.
I bake bread because bread plays its part in how we communicate with others: we sit at table with total strangers in faraway lands and break bread; we offer bread to please friends, console children, and feed birds on a winter windowsill. Bread unites us with its simple, universal vocabulary, bringing new friends into our lives. In my travels, I sometimes come to a barren crossroads in the middle of nowhere which takes on new colour the moment I find the local bakery. There, as always, is the middle of the village and its life, and many long friendships have begun at such crossroads. Bread is my passport to unknown places and memorable characters. In my daily routine, I trade my bread for shoe repairs, quick consultations on everything from computer programs to organic gardening, fruit from my neighbour’s trees, art supplies or even emergency change for a parking meter. Bread and barter go together as perfectly as mozzarella and tomatoes.
I bake bread simply because it feels so very good to my body. Every one of my senses responds to a bowl of gently bubbling flour and yeast, looking like some primordial lava pool, to the cool silkiness of flour, to the sound of dough slapping hard against granite and wood, to the sweet nutty smells of flour, water, and yeast becoming bread – a magical metamorphosis that still holds mystery for me after all these years. I have never completely understood my lust for bread baking and I now am wondering if I ever will – or if it even matters. I know that I feel content baking bread and when I share it with a friend, we both feel a little more joy in our lives.
I bake bread not only because I love good bread from my own hands (no one else’s bread ever tastes like your own) but because I love surprises – and believe me, there are many when you bake bread. I like to be kept on my toes, I like the challenges of thinking up new recipes, or seeing what evolves from an old one.
Bread is alive. Changeable. It moves. It grows. It often takes it own course and you simply have to follow, but it is also very forgiving, springing right back when you make mistakes. Fortunately, during my years of trial and error, I have made most of the mistakes for you. I had great fun doing it, and you won’t have to work as hard. You’ll have more time to invent your own bag of tricks to make baking a pleasure instead of a chore. In the end, what you will put on your table, to share with lovers, family, friends, is a little piece of yourself, right out of the oven.
(Myth and Mystique vs Reality)
Because of the intuitive way I cook, I rarely think to analyze what is happening at the time, joyful for me but sometimes maddening for others. My way of pinning things down precisely is a bit off-the-wall, but in writing this book, I identified three tenets that I follow religiously. These are quite simple, especially when you think of the time it took to formulate them:
• |
Maximize surface area in relation to volume. |
• |
For the best bread, use a dough that is far wetter than conventional bread dough. |
• |
Severely limit the kneading or mixing of any bread dough (except for the doughs for brioche or cracker dough, both of which benefit from sound beatings). |
MAXIMIZE SURFACE AREA IN RELATION TO VOLUME
My scientifically inclined partner put this into an understandable formula for me, and this formula has become the very backbone of my philosophy of cooking. I am adamant about teaching this in my classes for the simple reason that almost all food tastes better when this tenet is applied.
Basically, by maximizing the surface area of any given volume, you achieve better taste. It works like this: a sphere has the least possible surface area for its given volume and shape. If you begin flattening the sphere into an elongated oval shape (baguette), the surface area will increase. If the sphere were made into an extremely elongated and flattened oval (focaccia), the surface area would still be greater. As you flatten the sphere more and more, it spreads out thinner and thinner, becoming a thin flat shape, like a cracker, thin focaccia, or pizza with the maximum surface area possible relative to the given amount of dough. Elongated or flat breads have more crust than round balls of bread (which you may recognize as the word boule in French). I like crust and I know it provides flavour.
In keeping with this principle, I make elongated loaves called filoncini instead of boule or large round loaves. Some of my other loaves are actually cut down the middle and then pulled into a ladder shape (fougasse) in order to create even more surface area (in relation to volume) than a filoncino. Everyone loves crispy rolls because of their maximum surface area (crust) in relation to the volume contained (crumb). A boule divided in six equal pieces will have over 50% more surface area!
Now here is the paradox: A large round loaf of bread will keep fresh longer than a small, maximized-surface-area loaf because it has more moisture to draw upon from the larger area of crumb. To compensate for my desire to have more surface area and maximized crust, I make breads with a much wetter dough than do most bakers, which gives me the best of both worlds. Of course, a small, elongated loaf with maximized surface area has the added advantage of being eaten much more quickly than a larger loaf so the problem of storage is moot!
Sometimes our customers buy two of the same bread at the market, assuring us that one will be gone by the time they arrive home. I have often had people come up to me in stores, cheerfully accusing me of being the cause of the half-eaten loaf in their shopping cart. It is a fact that Americans, in general, do not shop daily for bread as do people in other countries, and although breads keep well in a plastic bag overnight, it is my strong feeling that, if at all possible, bread should be eaten on the day it is baked.
Once you understand the principle of surface area, you will see that both bread making and cooking are more successful and appealing. Try a recipe one way and then try the surface area approach, and see which one you think tastes better. I can only say that this has worked for me for years, at home and the bakery, where the success of our recipes and breads attests to it.
For example, imagine a whole roasted or sautéed aubergine, browned nicely on the outside but alas, soggy, collapsed, and wet on the inside. Compare this to flat thin slices or thin fingers of aubergine, sauteéd exactly the same way, but which are crisp, separate elements, each one with its own integrity and taste. The truth is that when a volume of food is reduced, the salted, peppered or seasoned sides (or planes) of the pieces that hit the olive oil, butter, grill, or what-have-you, will always be the taste that stands out from the interior taste, just as crust often takes precedence over crumb. (The exception to this theory might be a steak tartare or a white truffle, shaved raw over hot fettucine.) In Italy, one is known as someone who likes the mollica or one who eats the crosta. You are either a crumb or crust person. What this says about your character is a matter of opinion, but it’s a little like wanting white or dark meat, simply a matter of preference. I happen to like dark meat and crust, but I go for the mollica of the Pane Osso at my bakery because of its seductive nutty flavour. Which part of a meat loaf do you love to bite? The soft, steamed inside or the crispy, crunchy crust?
I cut all my vegetables and meats to maximize their surface areas. I rarely cook anything whole, except potatoes, which I love baked in their skins and which, in my opinion, are one of the great discoveries of the New World. But when I roast or sauté potatoes, I cut them all down to size for crispness. If you are assembling, for example, a bread soup (see Leftovers) or any soup calling for onion, garlic, celery, carrot, etc., you will have better flavour if you dice the larger pieces of food and sauté them than if you simply throw big chunks of raw vegetable in the pot. Preference is preference, of course, and there will always be those who love large pieces of potato or onion or thick pieces of meat in their dishes and those who prefer smaller pieces – preferably grilled quickly, tak tak as the Italians say, for a little piece of savoury crust with each bite. For me there is no contest.
WETTER DOUGH MAKES BETTER BREAD THAN CONVENTIONAL BREAD DOUGH
As I have explained, breads with maximized surface area do not stay as fresh as bread formed in a boule; the boule has a larger volume of crumb from which to draw moisture, especially if the crust is too thick. (Ironically large balls of bread require longer baking time and inevitably emerge with thick crust: this will go stale more quickly than a thinner one, but deep inside, the bread will still be fairly fresh.)
My breads stay fresh even though they have more surface area for their given volume, without the additional crumb, because I make them from very wet dough, much wetter than most conventional bread recipes. This compensates for the additional surface area and subsequent moisture loss and gives me a nice balance between two extremes.
The recipe for the first real loaf of bread I ever baked (to impress my boyfriend when I was 15) did not look or feel right to me. Even the tiny ones I had baked for my dolls were superior. The recipe called for six or seven cups of flour, which seemed way too much for the water content, and to make it worse, the instructions for mixing the dough would surely, I felt, produce a heavy, dry, dull bread. I tossed in more water without considering the consequences, began mixing at my own risk, and learned a valuable lesson. When your intuitions tug at your apron strings, let them in, learn from them and follow them, no matter what the results may be (and there can be some doozies!). In this case, fortunately, the decision to make a wetter dough resulted in tender, moist, and nicely textured loaves, which stayed fresh (like my boyfriend) for several days – even though I had shaped the dough into two smaller loaves to satisfy my crust passion rather than a large round one. Over the years, I have experimented with many breads, using similar wet dough to achieve the seductive textures of the Italian breads I love so much – pizza bianca, pane caserrecio, ciabbata and focaccia.
Mind you, this was all happening long before focaccia and ciabatta recipes took over every bakery from New York to Los Angeles. For me, this was all new territory without many worn paths to follow. My research is usually done by tasting, and for years I had sampled every pizza bianca and focaccia I could find, but the final product eluded me. When I visited my favourite panifici (bakeries) in Italy, the breads looked easy to make: stir up some dough, put some holes in it, wait and bake it. When I tried it at home, mine never had the texture and quality I wanted. I stumbled on the secret by accident.
SEVERELY LIMIT THE KNEADING OF BREAD DOUGH
When focacce and ciabatte finally hit the foodie list, most recipes did not have enough water to result in the chewy, open crumb texture of the loaves baked in Italy. No recipe I used looked, smelled, or tasted right. Each one told me to mix a fairly firm dough and then “knead well until smooth and shiny”. This was simply not going to work for my purposes, plus there was no way on earth my own, much wetter dough could be mixed or kneaded in the conventional way. First it would slide all over as I handled it, and if I proofed it (let it rise) on a flat tin, it would creep into the corners of the pan when my back was turned.
One day long ago, I made my daily bowl of focaccia dough and then ran outside to check the tomato plants which had just been planted and needed water. If you have a garden, you know how pleasurable it is to be distracted, and what with a little planting, a little weeding, and the beauty of the ruby-throated hummingbirds, the focaccia was forgotten. I rushed to find that the dough was behaving like dough: taking off on its own. The yeasts were munching happily away on the sugar and protein in the flour and the dough had begun fermenting with or without me, kneaded or not, rising to a beautiful, light, shiny substance and doubling just as my firmer doughs did, emitting the wonderful nutty aroma of lively yeasts.
I was now at the conventional knock-down-the-dough-and-let-rise again stage of bread making, but there was no way on earth that this dough was going to survive knock down, much less want to get up again. It dawned on me that if I did not knock it around too much, if I gently poured it out onto a baking sheet, the wonderful lightness of its texture might be preserved and it would need no second rise. I reasoned that a very hot oven, hotter than needed for most breads, would give a boost to the already risen dough and open up even more texture in the focaccia, just what I was trying to do. Into a very hot, 260°C/500°F/gas 10 oven it went (after first being carefully stretched with fingertips to make the traditional indentations of focaccia and to insure an even bake), sprinkled first with extra-virgin olive oil (is there any other?), rosemary, and sea salt. What emerged finally was my first real focaccia (page 36), mixed minimally, not kneaded and with a flavour that eventually put our bakery on the map!
This is not to say that I eschew classic ways of baking or cooking – the classics are the basis for how I cook now – but after having cooked for more than 30 years, and having lived off and on in Italy and France for many of those, I have found that complicated, tedious recipes (on which I cut my teeth, mind you) do not necessarily produce the best-tasting results, whereas cooking and baking with simplicity and very fresh ingredients almost always does. There is a memorable saying in Roman dialect which can be used for food or for friends – Parla come magni – “speak as you eat” or, as we say in Texas, don’t be so highfalutin, give it to me straight, just as straight as your fork goes to your mouth. And it is a universal truth that Italian food is about as direct and full of truth as food can get.
None of my recipes requires days of preparation, special, complicated starters, or esoteric ingredients, and in this way, I cook as the Italians do. The flavours in my cooking and baking are allowed to shine through on their own without the necessity of an overwhelming formula or myriad herbs and spices, which can mask the beauty of good raw materials. This is not to say that other cuisines are always complicated, or that they are lacking, or that there are not hundreds of other ways to do things, but for me it is the Italians who have perfected the elusive difficult art of simplicity. I say “difficult” because so many chefs lean towards menus with enforced complexity rather than allowing ingredients to speak directly. Italian breads from wood ovens, for example, are one of the wonders of the world, not to mention the various pizze and myriad focacce that are served in all regions of Italy. And yet they are the simplest foods imaginable, as simple as a perfect tomato or a fresh dug white truffle.
This will be a quick read! I use a large bowl, a spoon with a hole in it, a measuring cup, a heavy frying pan, a baking sheet, a rounded dough scraper, and a strong arm. My two favourite indulgences are a large granite slab and a couple of those marvellous non-stick baguette tins with little holes in the bottom. Over the years, however, I have pared down my bread baking kitchen equipment to a few chosen items, most of which you probably already have in your kitchen, too. You will be surprised to learn how many cooking implements can be used for baking: ordinary glass dishes for pudding moulds, cookie sheets for pizza and various tins for all sorts of great crusty breads, not to mention the indispensable coffee can for such recipes as Panettone and Boston Brown Bread.
There are, however, several specific items that you will find invaluable as you bake, not the least of which is a notebook and pencil to jot down your flashes of genius. A private cooking diary may be one of the best contributions to the continuity of your family’s traditions, a very personal gift to pass on to children and friends. During her life, my mother wrote down her favourites on little cards and passed them on to me in a beat-up wooden recipe box, which I treasure more than my white truffle oil or saffron threads. I learned the hard way that I should have written everything down, beginning at the age of five, which would not have been an easy task, but I miss having a diary of the early years. (My first typed cookbook, written from age 18 to 21 was entitled Cooking for Myself – Fearless Cooking and even had an appendix laboriously done by a friend, John Burnham Cooke, as a thank you for all the menus he had so willingly tasted over the years.)
It is also useful to have at least one enthusiastic taster with a good palate to give you additional feedback. Although I have confidence in my own tastebuds, I welcome input from those outside my kitchen whose suggestions might spur me on to even greater inventions, the most influential of these golden palates being my husband, a master taster in his own right. At any rate, once surrounded by your army of tins, spoons, and bowls, you will discover as you go which ones work best for your breads. This is not to discourage you from poking around kitchen shops; on the contrary, I am inspired by visits to my local purveyors of fine equipment, not to mention restaurant supply stores and car boot sales – these being one of the only sources for those old seasoned johnnycake bread pans shaped like ears of corn and the beautiful pudding moulds made in yesteryears. At car boot sales, too, one can find lovely old pottery mixing bowls for stirring up biscuits or housing a biga or starter. Pottery is user-friendly to dough, at least I imagine, because its porosity retains warmth and cold equally well. I use a large old pottery bowl for my breads and starters primarily because it was my grandmother’s and because it is a beautiful blue that makes me happy. I imagine my grandmother beating her biscuit dough or mixing her breads in her own kitchen over fifty years ago, and I feel a connection to the past that makes me smile. Did she dream and plan as I do when I mix the dough? Did her troubles and anxieties flee with each healing stir of the spoon? I cannot imagine that life was very different then for cooks, and the heirlooms of that time, the wondrous old tools of the kitchen, with the patina of generations of use, must be kept and treasured as one would treasure an irreplaceable piece of antique jewelry. My mother’s cracked plastic spoon, which started my business, means more to me than rubies.
Here, then, in order of appearance, are various tools you might need at one time or another:
THE NECESSITIES:
• |
A large glass, ceramic, plastic or stainless steel MIXING BOWL |
• |
A large glass or plastic MEASURING CUP, metric and USA |
• |
If you bake a lot, weighing flour is a good idea because, depending on how heavy or light handed you are, two cups of flour can weigh between 9 and 11 ounces. This is why you want to get yourself a DIGITAL SCALE if you do not have one. Then, 10 ounces of flour is always 10 ounces of flour. |
• |
A long, sturdy SPOON, preferably with a hole in the middle (not easily found but they do exist online or at kitchen shops or department stores) |
• |
A heavy 25 cm/ 9-10-inch PAN/SKILLET – for baking bread |
• |
A 33 x 46 cm/13 x 18-inch BAKING SHEET, for focaccia, pizza, flat breads |
• |
A BRUSH for brushing dough with olive oil |
• |
A DOUGH SCRAPER – preferably half-moon-shaped or rounded for lifting and turning the dough easily, also for nudging it out of its rising bowl with as little deflating as possible |
• |
Small sharp PARING KNIFE to make slashes in tops of bread (works just as well as the French lame which cuts at a 45-degree angle—just eyeball the angle and cut) |
• |
PLASTIC WRAP |
• |
Zip-lock FREEZER BAGS with zipper closures |
OTHER USEFUL ITEMS:
• |
MIXER – a good one like a KitchenAid with a dough hook attachment and a strong paddle for mixing lighter breads, such as brioche and panettone |
• |
FOOD PROCESSOR – I have a Robot Coupe and Bosche in Italy, but all are good for pizza dough and others |
• |
A granite or MARBLE SLAB |
BAGUETTE TINS – found at kitchen shops, usually with perforated bottoms for even baking |
|
• |
COFFEE CANS – small and large, for baking tall breads |
• |
LOAF TINS/PANS – for sandwich bread or Pain de Mie |
• |
PUDDING MOULDS – glass ones are now available at kitchen shops |
• |
Small glass HEATPROOF DISHES – for steaming little breads or puddings |
• |
Large shallow SOUP POT with lid – for steaming breads or puddings |
• |
SPRAY BOTTLE – to spritz bread for a crunchy crust, to spray infusions on breads or salads, or olive oil on pans; pump sprayers for oil are available in kitchen shops |
• |
SCISSORS – to snip dough, cut up herbs, cut focaccia or pizza at the table |
• |
Plastic or rubber SPATULAS |
• |
WIRE WHISK – heavy-duty for aerating dough in the liquid stage |
• |
CORN BREAD MOULDS – seasoned cast-iron ones (they bake better) usually found in thrift shops |
• |
BREAD KNIFE – serrated; a good one will last twenty years (I like my Japanese bread knife which never needs sharpening) |
• |
GRAPEFRUIT SPOONS – for hollowing out tomatoes, little rolls, fruits |
• |
Small GARDEN of fresh rosemary, basil, thyme, and parsley |
• |
BREAD BASKETS – in which to serve breads |
You will have more to add to this list from your own experience and perhaps as many items to delete. The important thing to remember is that there are no rigid rules about what you use for baking. Experiment with what you already have, and then reward yourself with great gadgets after you have baked your first loaf.
HANDS, HUNCHES AND HOW TO USE THEM
Anyone who likes to cook without getting her or his hands in the food will meet a real challenge when baking bread, but anyone who has played with modelling clay or made a lovely mud pie can turn out a golden loaf. There is no question in my mind that hands are superior to machines (even though at a trade show I watched in awe as a marvellous contraption invented by the Italians turned out several hundred fairly good ciabatte, but the baker was also there, pushing here and arranging there to make sure the bread was staying on the conveyor belt properly). It is always a shock to my cooking students to be handed a slippery duck carcass or Cornish game hen and then be asked to disembowel the little creature, but for me, the texture of food is one of the first joys of the kitchen, just as hands are the first tools one uses. Plunging your hands into the buttery dough for Classic Brioche (page 100) or feeling the smooth silkiness of fresh pizza dough as it stretches across the tin are only two of the many tactile pleasures of bread baking. And I still remember vividly a baker in Genzano simply dipping his hands into thick tomato sauce and smearing it over a six-foot-long pizza about to go into the wood oven.
Perhaps I love the feel of smooth, golden dough and the sensation of crashing it against granite because I was introduced to it at such an early age, when touching anything was a revelation. For this very reason, your kids will love helping you make bread (see Breads for Children), particularly the delightfully fun breads such as breadsticks and focaccia.
It goes without saying that it’s best to plunge into any dough with clean hands. Everyone at Buona Forchetta is required to wash first thing in the morning before touching anything and then frequently thereafter during the day. It is wise, too, to wash your hands after handling eggs, just to be on the safe side, to prevent salmonella bacteria from spreading.
Hands are far more than serviceable appendages for holding implements; they are thermometers, sculpting knives and paint brushes, power tools, messengers of good news and ultimately, the bearers of gifts.
When it comes to gauging the temperatures of the starters you will make, and the dough and bread you create from them, your hands are far more reliable than gadgets – hence thermometers. When dough is very cold to the touch, it usually means it must be brought to room temperature before shaping and baking. On the other hand, some dough, such as the dough for Fougasse, is more easily shaped right out of the fridge. Only your hands can tell you what the next step should be. Your hands will feel the coolness or warmth of a baked loaf so that you know when to cut and serve it. Bread should not be cut warm when it is still very fragile. In his invaluable book On Food and Cooking (Charles Scribner’s, 1984), Harold McGee explains that the temperature of the ‘outer layer is very dry and close to 400°F (204°C), the interior moist and around 200°F (93°C). During cooling, these differences slowly even themselves out.’ To paraphrase McGee, it appears that if you cut into bread too early, it will collapse from the inequality of the internal gas pressure and the outer air pressure. When these pressures equalize, the bread is sufficiently cooled and may be cut without mishap and without exuding a mildly unpleasant smell of hot gas (this disappears as the bread cools; your nose, another invaluable tool, will tell you this).
You also use your hands to thump the tops or bottoms of loaves to determine if they are cooked through. You use them to fold the bread dough over on itself three or four times to kick off the yeast action again; you stick your fingers in water, milk and batter to test their temperatures. Best of all, you use your hands to break off fragrant bites of your own breads. Fresh bread pulled apart by hand always tastes best.
Your hands are your tools as an artist, like sculpting knives and paint brushes (making bread is an art!), because it is with your hands that you will form breads into appealing, unusual shapes, which say as much about you as the earrings you wear or the way you speak. The shape of anything you cook sends a message to those who eat your food. For example, I am very partial to heart shapes for my biscuits (and polenta and cookies and anything else that can be shaped!) because anything having to do with love makes my own heart happy. My Grandmother’s Beaten Biscuits (page 70) will give you an empty canvas of dough on which to “draw” with your fork, making all sorts of fanciful patterns. I love large, flat, square pizze because the shape gives me more area for tomato sauce and mozzarella than a round one – and my propensity for long, rustic, free-form baguettes may be interpreted as you see fit….
Your hands are powerful tools, because certain doughs need some pretty rough treatment, such as the aforementioned beaten biscuits. If you are going through a particularly trying time in your life, you can sometimes alleviate the symptoms with a good dough thrashing or brioche crashing. Whenever I teach a class there always are at least two or three students who mention how much they love to bang their bread dough around to change their moods. You may have deduced that with my no-knead policy, you would have to take up kick-boxing or primal scream classes to let off steam, but even without beating up everyday bread dough, you will discover plenty of areas in which your hands will be instrumental in helping you let off steam or simply allowing you to create, which always makes a body feel good. Rolling out Rosemary-Pepper Breadsticks (page 142) is certain to make you smile, as will shaping pizza or slapping Quick Chappati for Curry (page 136) into a frying pan and watching them bubble. And you will be amazed at how strong your hands become after several weeks of baking. Stirring and shaping dough builds muscle, strength, and dexterity in your hands, just as using heavy pans or copper cook-ware will develop great triceps, biceps and a firm pattable derrière.
Your hands are messengers because they are the conduit for your emotions, a very crucial element in anything you cook or bake. Like Water For Chocolate, a passionate book and film about food and love, is a perfect example of how emotions can either lift your cooking into a higher echelon or relegate it to the ninth circle of hell.
On the days that I head towards my kitchen, more weary from work than I might like to be, or agonizing over some imagined disaster, I try to remember that my mood will travel directly from my body to my delicate Truffle Rolls (page 140), or possibly cause my Bread and Cheese Soufflé (page 161) to fall. The sooner I can come up with a smile, the faster my dough will rise and the sweeter my sauces will be.
Hands as giftgivers is self-explanatory. It is with your hands that your breads and pizze and savoury dishes will be placed upon the table for family and friends, or even just for yourself. Although I am fortunate to have a partner with whom to break bread each day, I have on occasion sat down alone at table, and it has never occurred to me to give myself anything less than I would give my husband or dinner guests. I prepare Pomodori al Riso, one of my favourite Roman dishes or Pasta con le Sarde (page 168), make a salad of my garden lettuces and some of the rogue nasturtiums that grow amongst them, cut myself a piece of fresh Rosemary Filoncino, pour a glass of Pinot Grigio and feast. All alone with my good friends, the gifts from my own hands.
FLOUR, WATER, YEAST AND SALT – DOWN TO BASICS
The columnist Herb Caen once wrote that saying pasta is nothing more than flour and water is like saying a sunset is only air, light, and dust. This same observation can be applied to bread, since it is nothing short of a miracle that such an amazing assortment of breads can be made from such simple ingredients as flour, water, yeast, and salt. Most of the delicious basic breads in “Daily Breads”, such as focaccia, ciabatta, and pane casereccio are easily made from the four basic ingredients, and from these, one can spin off limitless variations. I think it is good to start with very simple breads and get more adventuresome as you gain confidence. You can rest assured that your bread will never taste like any other, no matter how humbly you begin. If every person in the universe were given the same flour, water, yeast, and salt and asked to make a loaf of bread, every single loaf would taste different from the next.
When attracting customers at demonstrations or expos, I often mention that there are no fats, sugar, or dairy products in my basic bread doughs (the tozzetti, our dipping cookies, do contain butter, free-range chicken eggs, and dehydrated cane juice but are considered a low-fat cookie because of the small amount, 3 grams of fat). The curious crowd always has a few skeptics who seemed relieved when assured that the fats in the olives and hazelnuts are the good monounsaturated kind. Finally they taste a tiny sample and suddenly there is no resistance at all! But it is so odd to me that there is always a section of the population that is wary of such a basic food as bread, and so overly concerned with fat.
If there is one message I try to get across when I talk to classes, clients or curious crowds at a demonstration, it is that a well-rounded, moderate diet of fats, carbohydrates and proteins, and especially a nice glass of red wine every now and then thrown in for good measure, is just about the best way I know to keep healthy. Bread is an integral part of this diet. Certainly there are people who have diet restrictions and allergies, but generally speaking, bread is never the enemy. The only enemy is the abuse of food and perhaps, little understanding of the wondrous role it plays in our lives. There is the old cliché that “a piece of good bread does not make you fat – it is what you put on it that does”. It is true, but to enjoy a little sliver of Reblochon or Brie on a fresh baguette will never propel you into purgatory.
Flour, water, yeast, and salt simply are not dangerous to your health, at least not when combined in a golden loaf. And many healthful breads are made with only flour and water, such as matzos served during Passover, variations of the flour and corn tortillas found throughout Mexico, and almost all plain crackers.
FLOUR
The kind of flour you use will make a difference in your bread, although even this is contested by some. The rather poor, soft flours of Italy which are labelled 0 and 00 are used in some of my favourite bakeries in Genzano, just outside Rome, and are the basis for large, open textured loaves with the flavour of the biga made the day before (see Just for Starters). There are better flours milled in Italy from the region of Altamura, and there is durum flour used for making pasta, but in general, the Italians use a minimal flour to get maximum results. This means that even if you only have access to a commercial, supermarket flour, you will be able to make a better tasting bread using it in your home kitchen than the one that comes in a package. I recommend, however, that you buy an unbleached hard bread flour to make your breads superior; the flours milled for bread use have a protein content around 10 to 12 percent, which will give the dough strength and elasticity. All health food stores carry unbleached white and brown bread flours, both organic and non-organic. As a rule organic flour comes from wheat fields on which no spray or pesticide has been used and which has had no chemical fertilizers added to the soil for three years. You know you are getting as pure a product as you can get, short of growing and milling it yourself, as, believe it or not, some really serious bread bakers do!
Flour is a substance containing protein, sugar, and enzymes. Basically, there are three wheats grown: hard wheat for bread, durum wheat for pasta, and soft wheat for pastry. The plain/all-purpose flour you buy in supermarkets is a blending of hard and soft wheats, which meets many requirements in the kitchen, from biscuits and bread to pie crusts and cakes. It is not as high in protein as the bread flour you find in health food stores, but it has its own merits: pizza dough made with this flour will be far superior to pizza made with high-protein flour, because it will not have as much resistance and will be easier to stretch on the baking sheet. The softer wheat flour will also give pizza a delicate little crunch when you bite through the crust, much like that of a good pie crust, except more textured. There is no question in my mind that so-called inferior flour makes superior pizza.
For more detailed information on flour, I recommend On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, already mentioned a few pages back.
WATER
In the No. 45 Winter Edition of The Art of Eating, one of the best culinary newsletters available, edited by a very erudite Edward Behr, I was thrilled to find confirmation that water is water is water, as far as baking goes. Short of having to use rusty water from an abandoned well or desert mirage water, tap water will work just fine in breads unless it has been labelled “contaminated”.
I must admit that I love the sound of “spring water” or the names of the several of the waters of Rome such as the Acqua Marcia (“festering water”, actually my favourite, as it has a delicious taste!), Acqua Vergine (self-explanatory) or Acqua Acetosa (“acid water”). But after lugging a litre of Roman water back with me on the plane for 17 hours, along with a kilo of Altamura flour, and then making bread with both Italian and American ingredients, I found there were no dramatic differences. In Italy, the image of the baker in his undershirt, his muscles gleaming with sweat, paired with the fragrance of loaves baking in a 600-year old oven and the centuries of crumbs under the stones of the forno undoubtedly influence my tastebuds. However, I have had great success baking a similar bread in a gas oven, and the baker was fully dressed! Spring water makes no difference.
YEAST
Yeast or fermented dough added to flour and water makes bread dough. The little yeast babies (actually microorganisms) munch on the sugars naturally occurring in the flour and as they digest, throw off little farts of CO2 and waste water, which break down the resistance in the dough, make it easier to handle and ferment it, and give it its final flavour. Yeasts are strange organisms. Even the guru Harold McGee says, “The behaviour of yeast is not entirely understood”. This will be evident to you as you bake. What yeast will do for your bread depends on which bread you are making. Some breads, such as pizza, require no more than a pinch of yeast, because you do not want a pizza to rise very high, while other breads need a little more help levitating, perhaps because of heavier ingredients or because you’re in a hurry to pick up your kids at school or take your mother to the doctor and want the bread to rise faster.
Some yeasts are commercially grown on very specific sugar sources, such as sugar cane; other yeasts may be found in the wild, such as yeast from grape must and various kinds of fruit. I have found by experimenting that either fresh, compressed yeast or dry yeast gets the job done equally well in a home kitchen. There is no need to get involved in the lengthy process of growing your own for starters – unless you want to. Wild yeast lives everywhere; as you read this, it is flying around your kitchen. It is not indigenous only to vineyards and cane fields, so even a little bowl of flour and water on a countertop can serve as attraction for the yeasts that live with you. The more you bake in your kitchen, the more the yeast community will thrive and multiply.
Both wet yeast (commercial yeast) and dry yeast may be frozen to preserve their powers, but I normally keep dry yeast in a tightly closed jar in the refrigerator, and keep a few cubes of compressed yeast in the freezer. Usually I buy bakers’ yeast at the nearest health food store. If you are pressed for time, buy a rapid-rise yeast, which will enable you to make a decent focaccia in about one and a half hours, start to finish. All supermarkets carry bread yeast and all health food shops carry several kinds of bakers’ yeasts, all equally good.
Yeasts love a tepid, not hot, water (40°C/105°F); it gets them into a frenzy. A pinch of sugar added to the water of compressed yeast will also give a jump-start to its activity, a kind of antipasto for the little devils. When dough rises the first time, the yeast are busy multiplying and throwing off gases and liquids at a phenomenal rate; they do this best when you have used slightly cooler water in the mix (30-35°C/85-95°F).
SALT
Salt is added to almost all breads for flavour and also to help strengthen the dough. In the mix, salt can inhibit yeast action, however, and must be used sparingly. There are exceptions, of course, like the famous unsalted breads of Tuscany, which are made exactly as they were in the distant past when salt was an expensive commodity. I have always thought of the Fiorentini as stoics who made salt-free bread because in the Middle Ages only the very rich could afford salt, and so eating salt-free bread puts everyone on the same level. But I have seen even the Fiorentini sneak a sprinkle of salt on their bread every now and then.
There is salt from mines and salt from the sea. I use fine sea salt in my dough, but coarse sea salt on top of my breads only because I like thinking about its origins. It seems less salty than iodized, commercial salt, but it is not imperative to use it in these recipes. Plain salt and coarse Kosher salt for the tops will do just fine.
FATS, SUGAR AND DAIRY
One of the great attractions to our bread at Buona Forchetta was that we used no fat, sugar, or dairy product in the basic bread dough. I use additional ingredients only for special breads because I hold the strong belief that the best breads for everyday eating are made with only flour, water, yeast, and salt. In addition to these four basics, many bakers sometimes use fats, sugar, and dairy (which includes eggs) in their basic breads for preserving flavour, texture and richness. These breads are often very fluffy and light with fine, sandwich bread textures, but not the kind for a good bruschetta.
Basically, sugar activates the yeasts more readily by giving them extra nourishment. Breads made with sugar retain more moisture and last longer, which is why it is used so often in commercial breads which have to have an acceptable shelf life for the consumer. These breads also taste sweet and leave a residue on the tongue. Sugar enhances the flavour of breakfast breads, rolls and muffins, plus we like the little jolt it gives us in the morning, but because I was born with a salty tooth rather than a sweet one, I developed recipes such as Cinnamon Focaccia and Apricot Focaccia specifically for my own breakfast. There is no sugar in the dough itself – only the apricots, themselves both tart and sweet, and just enough sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top to be satisfying.
I use cottage cheese in various recipes, including Bigmama’s Kolaches (where it is used as a filling) and Gabriella’s Ricotta Cake. I discovered that all cottage cheese benefits from a breath of air so that after sitting out at room temperature for a specific amount of time, it acquires a lovely, slightly sour taste, similar to my grandfather’s homemade cottage cheese, which had this flavour from the word go.
The commercial, often tasteless brands on the market today will change before your eyes when left out for a few hours. I remove the carton lid and leave it resting on top, and let the cheese sit at room temperature for sixteen to twenty-four hours, no more. If the top of the cheese turns pink, I scrape off about a half inch and use the rest – but it is unlikely that the cheese will colour in 24 hours. When “aged” cottage cheese is used in cheesecakes, pancakes, fillings or pasta sauces, the flavour of the recipe is 100 percent better. Trust me.
NUTS, GRAINS AND SEEDS
As you start making more and more exotic breads, you may want to experiment with nuts, grains, and seeds and throughout the book I have included recipes explaining how to do so. Walnuts, pecans, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts, and even cashews are wonderful in bread. Cracked wheat, bulgar wheat, rye, millet, and grain mixtures may all be used in breads. Soak the grains for 15 minutes in a little tepid water to soften them, as you would for tabouleh and then add them to the dough. Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and flaxseeds are all tasty in the dough itself but are normally sprinkled on top of breads. Use your own imagination and intuition to create the flavours you like.
You will have a better tasting bread (and this applies to all recipes) if you toast all nuts and seeds before using them in the dough. I also toast all dry spices to release their flavours and, at the same time, seal them in. Primarily I do this to avoid the terrible raw taste of these ingredients, which almost certainly ruins a dish. Raw curry powder or cumin are good examples of how uncooked spices can overpower a dish and cause you to burp all day!
DRIED AND FRESH FRUIT
Dried raisins, apricots (my favourite), dates, currants, figs, and peaches, and other dried fruits, may be used in breads. I make my own raisins for Schiacciata with Roasted Grapes (page 110), and whenever possible, I try to dry other fruits on my own. Fresh fruits, such as the apricots in the Apricot Focaccia are actually fresh-frozen Blenheim fruit from my local open market. Peaches, bananas, apples, pears and plums may be used in their natural state, pitted and seeded of course, and sometimes peeled depending on the find of fruit. I leave the skins on apricots and plums, for example, but peel peaches and pears, as in the recipe for Pears in Caramel with Cheese on Toast (page 180).
VEGETABLES
If the olives are considered a vegetable, then I use a vegetable in my bread. Originally, when I was very naïve in my purist mode (and not wise enough to keep an open mind at all times!), I scoffed at olive bread or any kind of bread flavoured with what I call “stuff”. When my first fragrant Kalamata focaccia came out of the oven and the toasted olives crunched under my teeth, I was a convert. Many different types of olives, including the green ones, go very well with bread dough. French bakers love to use tiny olives, which are cured in oil and often flavoured with herbs, (but I prefer real Kalamata olives, cured in brine). In Rome, huge green olives are added, chopped or whole, to a large round loaf, which is unsalted to accommodate the taste of the olives. Most Italian bakers in small towns leave the pits in the olives, so you have to be careful as you chew, but at Buona Forchetta, we used only pitted olives. To avoid surprises and dental repair, I recommend that you do, too.
Because too many flavours compete with the natural taste of bread, I use no onions, garlic, dried spices (the exception is the sage in our Hazelnut-Sage Filoncino), or any kind of cheese in my breads. I reason that breads made with these ingredients make the ovens smell funny and then affect all the other breads. I prefer plain, simple breads and let the buyer put whatever he or she wants on it at home. If you must use onions, garlic, aubergine, or peppers in or on your bread, slice them thin and then sauté or roast them first in a little olive oil. Dried vegetables such as tomatoes, aubergine, or peppers should be reconstituted in a little water before being added to bread dough. Once again, experiment with your own favourites and surprise yourself with new combinations.
MIXING
You will mix different breads in different ways, depending on the dough, but in general, for most of the breads in this book, mixing is kept at a minimum – just enough to dissolve the flour, salt, and yeast in the water and then a bit more to form a rough and ragged dough without lumps. The dough will always be more wet than dry. Sometimes, lumps are necessary to make the final product even better, such as when you are making light biscuits or pancakes. When you mix flour and water, you tangle up the gluten proteins in the flour (kneading attempts to straighten out this mangled mess). An overworked dough is tough and resistant (or too straightened out), making it difficult to form easily into biscuits, pancakes, or whatever.
Even in a commercial bakery, mixing is a strange blending of intuition and simply observing the dough to see what it tells you. When gluten flour is mixed with water, it begins to form strings; the strings attach themselves to the side of the bowl, like threads of taffy, and are not easily broken because of their strength and flexibility. When these strings come away easily from the sides of the bowl, the gluten in the flour is reaching its optimum state. At this point, I stop mixing, or continue for only a few seconds if I see white specks of raw flour, salt, or pale brown yeast not yet mixed into the dough. On the other hand, most commercial bakeries mix their doughs for longer than we did at Buona Forchetta, and these resulting very elastic doughs tend to produce fine-grained loaves. Unless I am making a sandwich bread such as Pain de Mie (page 65) or a steamed, tight-textured bread, I try to avoid fine-textured breads by under-mixing and minimum kneading. Especially when making ciabatta or focaccia, the dough should be mixed and handled very little in order to get the open texture that mops up and holds that last bit of pasta sauce or olive oil. In Italy, mopping up one’s plate is called fare la scarpetta, “making the little shoe”, and for me, it is right up there with dunking a breakfast tartine in café au lait or a crunchy tozzetto in vin Santo.
STIRRING
I stopped kneading and started stirring my breads when I developed my soft dough recipes. Conventional kneading simply did not work with these wet doughs. The kneading process changes the molecular structure of dough and creates a balance between plasticity and elasticity, plasticity being the strength of the dough which is a result of mixing a liquid into flour, and elasticity being the ease with which dough can be handled and formed without excess resistance. I found that this balance can be achieved with simple stirring just as well as and often better than with kneading.
Stirring dough differs from lengthy kneading in that the dough’s structure is not broken down as much, and the crumb of the baked bread will have a chewy, open texture, rather than a tight, closed one; a good brisk stir is often all the exertion you will have to use to start your dough towards being a loaf. I think of stirring as gently coaxing the dough to form its malleable structure, a kind of caress with a spoon or paddle instead of an assault with a dough hook or firm hands, thereby damaging the yeast by overheating it, or damaging the dough by overworking it. Every baker has his own opinion of how to stir, and I am only telling you mine because it has worked so well for me. There are exceptions to any rule. Brioche is a perfect example of dough that requires more man-handling than any of my daily breads. Brioche dough is extremely resilient and strong because of its high-fat content (eggs and butter), and gets even more so when lifted off a flat surface and crashed down again. It can be kneaded quickly, although I would more aptly call it “slammed”, since it responds well to lifting off and crashing against a flat surface such as Corian, marble, or granite.
INTUITION
Intuition tells you that to get more crust, you must minimize the crumb – i.e. make thin, flat focaccia or long, skinny Rosemary Filoncini instead of fat loaves. You might have a hunch that your yeast is not as active as it should be when you note that there is no bubbling and the surface of the mixture is flat and dull. You may test it by feeding it a little sugar or flour to see if it gets livelier. That’s a small hunch, but the small ones will sharpen your intuition for the bigger, more significant ones, and big hunches often make the difference between mediocre cooks and great cooks. Think, as you bake, of what other recipes tell you to do, and ask yourself: Do the instructions seem logical or even feasible? Can you imagine the results? The tastes? Do they feel to you to be way off base? Compare these instructions to what you would do instead.
When you feel doubtful about your bread making, ask yourself a few simple questions and use your senses to gauge the process: How does my dough look? Normally, it should be rough and ragged when you begin and then turn supple and smooth as you stir. Does it have life or does it simply lie in the bowl, limp and flaccid, stringy and without elasticity? How does it smell? Rich and yeasty or unpleasant and gaseous? How does the raw dough taste? Slightly salty with the nice nutty taste of flour – perhaps a little sour but pleasant – or gassy and acrid from too much fermentation, yeast or salt?
Trusting your intuition as you bake and cook can be a formidable task, especially for the less confident. It sometimes helps to seek the opinions of family and friends, or someone with tastebuds you trust, but in the end, it is only you who will really know how you want your breads and dishes to taste. Corraggio! Have some fun! This is only cooking, not manning a space shuttle.
Fortunately, mixing and baking are forgiving activities. If the dough is fighting you, walk away and let it relax for a few minutes while you do the same. If you smell something too soon after putting it in the oven, the oven is probably too hot. If you don’t smell anything at all after half an hour, most likely the oven isn’t even on! These things do happen, although infrequently, but nothing has to be a disaster if your intuition is working well. When you mix up a batch of dough that is so difficult to manage that you want to throw in your spoon, use the recipe for my Grandmother’s Beaten Biscuits (page 70) to turn it into an exotic homemade cracker, or add a little water and flour to see if it responds to feeding. If the pizza dough becomes too soupy after a couple of days in the fridge and has a grey pallor to its complexion, throw in some more flour and watch how the texture and colour suddenly come alive and the dough regains its elasticity.
It is when you are most in doubt that you must call upon your intuition. Never compare your breads to others, just keep on your own path, and listen to yourself and the answers that bubble up from your sub-conscious. Failures provide marvellous opportunities to improvise and hone your intuition. Mistakes often do not need correcting but can instead be the inspiration for a new and exciting bread. Chilli powder in the Skillet Corn Bread; hazelnuts and sage in the filoncini; apricots in the focaccia or roasted grapes in the Schiacciata, all are the fruits (not to make a pun) of intuition. I am sure that the first humble breads thousand of years ago were the result of an accidental spill from a sack of grain into a forgotten basin of water. A few nights later as the cook laboured over dinner, she mused over the bubbling dough. “Hmm, let me just put this funny stuff on the fire and see what happens….”
CLARIFICATION OF TERMS
Throughout this book, the following terms are identified as follows:
DICED means cutting ingredients into small (1 cm/½ inch), medium (2 cm/¾ inch) or coarse (2.5 cm/1 inch) squares.
MINCED means chopping very small, smaller than dice.
MASHED means puréed unless otherwise stated.
DRIED SPICES are always toasted or roasted before using.
FLOUR is unbleached white bread flour or plain (all-purpose) flour unless otherwise stated.
BUTTER is unsalted unless otherwise stated.
EGGS are large and at room temperature before using.
VEGETABLE shortening is the semi-solid kind that usually come in a can, such as Crisco.
OLIVE OIL is always extra-virgin or cold-pressed extra-virgin.
MOZZARELLA is always the fresh kind, packed in water (not, as the Italians charmingly call it, sottovuoto, “under empty”, meaning vacuum packed in plastic). Hard mozzarellas have nothing to do with fresh mozzarellas and will give you a different taste and texture.
SALT AND PEPPER are not mentioned except as ingredients, but it is understood that you will use them to your taste. Salt as an ingredient means table salt.
A DASH of something is, to be a bit more technical, a little slosh or approximately 15 ml to 30 ml/1 to 2 tablespoons of anything, as in “a dash of vinegar”. When salt is used, it is a pinch instead of a dash.
HEAPING means a rounded measurement, as in “ a heaping teaspoon of salt”. A teaspoon of salt is a little curved, not flat.
ROUGH AND RAGGED, pertaining to dough, means that the dough is just barely mixed with a few turns, still a little tattered-looking, not yet smooth and shiny.
CREAM is heavy cream, not half-and-half or dairy substitutes.
MILK need not be scalded before using. Scalding milk in the old days was to kill anything dangerous in it, and now there is nothing dangerous in it! Room temperature is fine, although warming milk before using in a recipe can sometimes help the yeast action or help to melt butter added to it, but is not necessary.
COFFEE should be strong, real coffee, preferably Italian or French roast, not instant coffee. Use instant if it is the only thing available.
PARMESAN is always cheese and is always Parmigiano Reggiano or Rocca.
BALSAMIC VINEGAR should be the best you can afford.
MASCARPONE is always cheese, found in the dairy section of large supermarkets or Italian grocers.
TIPS ON BAKING AND COOKING:
When dough has risen the first time, do not deflate it but only fold it over on itself a few times for the second or third rise.
A gear-operated or electric, hand-held eggbeater is the best tool for whipping whites. If the whites are beaten in a copper bowl, they easily beat to a high volume. In addition, most food processors have an egg white attachment, which works very well.
A few dried porcini mushrooms in your cornmeal makes a wonderfully flavoured polenta, Anadama Bread, Skillet Cornbread, Cornmeal Spoon Bread (page 73).
A sprig of rosemary in the water in which beans are soaking imparts a lovely, subtle taste to the finished product.
Let me start with this: Everyone seems to have his or her own view of what a starter is. The subject can make your head swim. My view is that any kind of flour, water, and yeast (commercial or otherwise) mixture that is left to ferment before using it in the final recipe is a starter – a jump start for your dough, just as cables give a jolt of electricity to an engine. (In the old West, gold rush hopefuls, eventually nicknamed “sourdoughs” because they travelled with their starter in a bag next to their body, used to spit in the starter to give it a boost…I do not suggest this!)
The French have terms for starters such as levain, and the Austrians, poolish, and in the levain’s first stage, a chef and several other names to boot. I plan to concentrate on simple terms and straightforward techniques for making starters. Simply, a starter is an active mixture of flour, water (or milk, yogurt, grape juice and grape skins or any one of hundreds of variations, depending on the baker) and the specific yeasts attracted or added to it, which cannot easily digest maltose (a sugar) and which thrive best in an acid environment.
The sour or tart taste of most starters is from lactic acid produced by very distinct bacteria. For example, the lactic acid-producing bacteria in the San Francisco Bay Area of California produces that region’s world-famous sourdough breads. They are literally called Lactobacillus sanfrancisco, a name I have always loved, and these bacteria are not found anywhere else, which is why the bread in San Francisco tastes different from its many impersonators. The yeast in this particular starter is called, according to author Harold McGee, (On Food and Cooking), Saccharomyces exiguus and is not Saccharomyces cerevisiae, or brewer’s yeast (used in making beer), which is also used for bread. Beer yeasts are all over the place, as you will discover when you bake. Bread baked in a pub is probably uncontrollable!
For the starters in this book, we are going to use various methods. First is a straight dough method, which does not require any starter. Next is an old dough method, which uses a previously made dough (such as dough from the day before) as starter. Third is a sponge, which is simply a thicker mixture than a liquid starter. Last is a biga, which is the Italian name for a certain kind of starter resembling a sponge. That’s about all.
If you want in-depth, professional definitions for these and other terms, I suggest you read The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz (Ten Speed Press), learn the terms he has so carefully laid out for aspiring bakers, and if you are an aficionado who has all the time in the world, experiment with every starter that catches your fancy. Have fun with them. However, if you have limited time and still want superior results, learn my simple methods and then elaborate on them as you wish, time willing.
It does not really matter what you call something if you simply want to make bread. When you run across a name of something that is made with flour and water, and sometimes yeast and has to sit for several hours, overnight or several days before being used in bread dough, you should know that you have a fermentation or a starter. A sourdough starter (as in the sourdough of San Francisco) is very specific and in fact, will change with the particular yeasts of the region. Some starters are more liquid than others and are called “starters”, others are more spongy and are called “sponges”. It’s that simple.
STRAIGHT DOUGH METHOD
The process of making bread with flour, water, yeast, and salt mixed together, left to rise and then baked is called the straight dough method. Breads made with previously fermented flour and water (a starter, a sponge or some dough from a previous mix) cannot be called breads made from the straight dough method. The straight dough method most often produces a soft, airy loaf, much like the bread from a bread machine, but even with a straight dough method, one can get a chewier texture and more interesting crust if the dough is wetter and not kneaded, as in focaccia.
OLD DOUGH METHOD
Breads made with a mixture which incorporates a piece of the dough from a previous batch of bread are made by the old dough method. The focaccia at the bakery is made this way. We mix up focaccia dough each day and reserve a certain amount of it to use in the next day’s focaccia as the jump starter and to add flavour. In the beginning, when you start to make bread, simply mix up about a quarter of the recipe for the bread, and let it sit overnight in a covered bowl. The next day, use that piece of dough to make the same recipe, using the precise measurements in the recipe. You will have a quarter more dough than the recipe normally produces, right? Simply save that amount for the next time you bake, and so on.
The old dough method may be continued for years, if you bake on a regular schedule. The old dough may lose its life if left too long in cold storage, but more often than not, adding equal parts of flour and water to the seemingly dead dough will give it life. To confuse you, some Italian bakers call their old dough biga ; the French appropriately call it vieille pâte (old dough). In our bakery we call it levadura, but that’s because almost everyone speaks Spanish! Whatever you call it, it is an already fermented dough from one day to be used in the next day’s bread.
SPONGE
A sponge is a thick mixture of flour, water, and yeast (not as thick as dough but not as liquid as biga or sourdough starter) that is allowed to ferment before using it in a bread recipe, usually for 4 to 5 hours or overnight. Its finished appearance is very like that of a sea sponge, with a texture full of holes and an active surface. Panettone uses a sponge, as does a brioche dough.
The Italian name for starter is biga; the French call it levain and often stir a little yeast into the mix to encourage development. Some bakers feel that biga does not give bread the same complex flavour that a lengthy sourdough process does, but I disagree with this. It is my biga that makes our Pane Casereccio, Pane Trattoria, and our Pane Osso different from others. Our breads made with biga are some of the tastiest around, and because of their moisture content, they stay fresh much longer than breads made by straight dough methods.
WHY STARTERS?
Just why do we want to use a starter of any kind to make our breads? Basically, starters, sponges, or old dough are used for achieving more complex taste and, as mentioned, to jump-start the recipe. Not that straight yeast doesn’t work just as well, but it is the consensus of bakers the world over that if these little yeast babies are allowed to feast for longer periods of time, they impart special flavour to the bread which is simply not achieved with a straight dough method. However, a perfectly wonderful focaccia and basic bread can be made relatively quickly without pre-fermentation (starters), and then, if you choose to wait overnight to make your bread, the bread will automatically have an even better flavour because of the time you have given the little yeasts to munch away in the wee, small hours.
My bread recipes give you more choices and flexibility than most, in that they use this yeast action to produce several different tasting breads from one basic recipe (page 36).
THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT STARTERS
• |
Flour, water, and a pinch of yeast mixed together and left for 6 hours to overnight will give many breads a better flavour, but it is not necessary for great bread. |
• |
If you are making a sourdough starter from someone else’s recipe, it really should be bubbling when used, not limp and flat looking, and certainly not pink. A pinkish tinge means it has gone too long and the acid has polished off the yeast. |
• |
Starters do not have to be kept for generations. New ones are better than old ones as they have more life, and besides, the yeasts from a starter made years ago have already been replaced by new yeasts. Is it the same starter as fifty years ago? It’s like the hammer: the top breaks so you buy a new top, then the handle breaks so you replace the handle. Is it the same hammer? |
A mystique has been built around starters and fermentations, but basically anyone can jump start a loaf of bread with any easily made starter; there is no mystery to it. Just get into the kitchen and start experimenting (or read Harold McGee for technical support!).
