January 15, 2022: Bread
Writing is harder than making bread.
I’m sitting down to write my first entry since starting this cooking-from-scratch challenge, and I’m very anxious. I mean who do I think I am putting my words out into the world? Am I a famous chef or food writer? Am I the first person ever to cook foods from scratch? Am I an amazing writer? No, no, and no. I’m just a middle-aged, het, cis-gendered white chick who loves to cook and eat. I’m not sure why my voice needs to be out there. Except… I believe we all have something to share. My story doesn’t have to speak to everyone—it just needs to be honest. I think I can do that.
OK. Let’s get started. This month I’ve jumped into bread making. It’s not my first foray into this area. I started making sourdough a few years ago, and I had a pretty regular habit of feeding my dough and baking on a weekly basis. But I have to say, it wasn’t very good. It wasn’t terrible, but I think bread is kind of like pizza, even when bad, it still tastes pretty good. [Didn’t Woody Allen say that about sex? I have to say, I wouldn’t spend a lot of time listening to what Woody Allen has to say about sex…] But it never looked quite like it’s supposed to—there was no hard crust, and it was a dense block. Also, I was adding a packet of yeast every time I baked, so the sourdough starter (which is supposed to be the yeast source) seemed a bit superfluous.
Why add sourdough starter if you’re adding yeast anyway?
And then the pandemic hit. Yeah, I know, most people started making sourdough during the pandemic. I stopped, and here’s why: one of my husband’s clients had to shift her career because of the pandemic, and lo and behold, started a bread and pasta subscription service, Wildgrain. Their fermented breads are so much better than what I was making. I signed on in solidarity with my husband but became hooked for life. [I sort of mean that literally—when I started, they offered new subscribers a life-time supply of monthly tortellini, and I. Will. Not. Give. That. Up.] Therefore, Wildgrain is one of my only-from-scratch exceptions. I’m not making it myself, but here’s the thing, they send me 3 loaves of bread a month, and I eat way more bread than that. I have avocado toast every morning. I love sandwiches. I’ve been supplementing my subscription bread with bread from the grocery store, but that has to stop. So! Here I am, learning to make bread. There are so many books about making bread, but at the end of 2021, I heard an interview with Mark Bittman and Kerri Conan about their new book about no-knead whole grain baking, Bittman Bread. They made some alluring promises: they said they’ve practiced it so much that it’s essentially foolproof. They spoke about the nutritional value of eating whole grain over white, processed flour. And most importantly, they said it was delicious. With that, I was on board. I requested the book from the library, waited several weeks for it (popular!), and got started.
I’d like to say, first of all, that the layout of the book is really appealing. It has loads of informative photos, and the steps are easy to follow. What I like most is that they take you on a journey—you start by making a loaf of white bread. Mine was horribly misshapen because I didn’t do a good job “scoring” the bread. (Folks, if you don’t have a razor blade or bread lame to cut your bread, don’t use an Exacto knife… results not great).
But as part of the the process of that first loaf, you get going on your whole wheat bread starter, a mix of natural yeast and bacteria from your environment, plus enough whole whole wheat flour and water to feed your growing organisms. The yeast is what makes bread rise and gives birth to all the little pockets of air in the bread. Once you have your whole wheat starter, you can make your first loaf of whole wheat bread. I was so excited. I got the scoring better this time, and it looked amazing on the outside. But you know what? I took it out too early, and it didn’t have the hard crust you’d want. Even worse, the bread was dense and tasted like, well, like whole wheat bread… like it was good for me and not that fun to eat. It didn’t taste nearly as good as my previous loaf of misshapen white bread, or even as good as my old breads from years ago. Perhaps whole wheat bread is an acquired taste?
I decided to soldier on. For whole wheat loaf #2, I’d try leaving it in the oven longer. And here’s something important: on my first try, I put the whole mess in the refrigerator partway through the process. The book says you can do that, but it also says you have to give it time to liven up after removing from the refrigerator. I did wait an hour before proceeding, but if I’m being honest, it still looked pretty “un-lively” when I continued through the steps. So for my second loaf of whole wheat, I took it through the entire process without stopping. It adds up to a long day: up at 6:30am to feed the starter, letting it grow until 5pm, feeding it some more, waiting an hour, adding salt, waiting a half hour, then two hours of folds, another half hour, then flouring and scoring it before it goes into the oven for about an hour. It then cools for 2 hours so there is no way you’re eating it that day. But guess what… I sliced it the next morning, and it was really good. Light, airy, and it had a nice hard crust. I am very pleased. I can work with this. I’m a bread maker! Thank you Mark Bittman and Kerri Conan.