What’s In Your Kitchen?
While, in many ways, it’s easier to bake a loaf of bread in a commercial kitchen – you have a bit more space, better equipment – it just can’t bring the joy and satisfaction of creating outstanding bread in your own home kitchen. It’s not that hard. And it’s certainly worth the effort! You’ll find that you have most all you need to get started, and that you can easily and cheaply get what you don’t have. It takes more time than work. And most all that time can be spent doing something else. Let’s start by taking a look at what you have – or should have – in your kitchen.
Environment
It’s important to remember that over the centuries bread was, more often than not, baked in a home kitchen that was, most likely, more primitive than yours. Of course, bakeries have been around for a long time, but they never precluded the possibility that a person with access to water, an oven, and, later, refrigeration, could turn out some fine bread for family and friends. (To this day, refrigeration, while extremely helpful to the bread-baking process, making it much more convenient in these busy times, is not absolutely essential.)
My home kitchen, though not particularly large or specially equipped for large-scale bread production, is still capable of cranking out forty or fifty loaves a day. So your kitchen will do just fine for these traditional breads, particularly if you’re planning to bake somewhat fewer than several dozen loaves at a time.
All the steps in traditional bread baking – milling flour, creating a yeast culture, making dough, shaping loaves, baking loaves – can easily be accomplished in your home kitchen. You need some work space, a fridge, a sink, and a decent oven.
And while your kitchen may have more flour scattered about than usual as a result of this process, as the bread bakes, your house will be filled with the incomparable aroma of real bread taking shape and color. And, of course, in the end you’ll have something impressive to share with family and friends. A worthwhile tradeoff, indeed!
A Clean Well-Lighted Space
I’m going to assume that your kitchen has a countertop or other open, flat workspace near a sink. I find myself turning from one to the other fairly frequently during the bread baking process, much, I suppose, as all cooks do.
I like to have a work area that is devoted to measuring and mixing. Once the ingredients are measured out, they wait their turn in the staging area which is off to the side of the work area. You should be able to turn easily from the work area to the staging area to the sink.
Time vs. Temperature: Who Cares?
Another assumption I’ll make about your kitchen is that its temperature does not fluctuate too wildly. If necessary, you can turn the heat on in the winter and, perhaps, arrange some cooling or ventilation when it’s hot outside.
While a wild yeast culture (the first step in a traditional bread) is fairly hardy and can thrive in a range of temperatures, extremes in these conditions can make it hard to manage a dough’s progress.
Professional bakers with large staffs, lots of expensive equipment, and many varieties of breads to bake have to plan out their complex baking schedules to the minute and, thus, they have to know exactly what temperature their dough registers at all times so they know exactly when to move on to the next step. A home baker doesn’t.
If, as I do, you store all your ingredients, except your yeast culture, at room temperature, you should easily be able to create a consistent baking schedule that works well with your busy life. As long as the temperature in your kitchen is reasonable – say, somewhere between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit – you can adjust the timing within a fairly wide range, bearing in mind that the warmer things are, the faster they’ll go.
The important thing, though, is to be able to identify the warmest spot in your kitchen. Make a note of it.
Appliances
Because this book is based on my experiences baking here at home, I’m going to use, as a starting point, the appliances and tools I have been employing for decades. There are important differences between gas and electric ovens, of course, but perhaps not that much distinguishes one countertop from another (except those damned tile countertops that have hard-to-clean grout between the tiles!).
Now Let Us Praise Gas Ovens!
At home, I bake in a gas oven, a reconditioned vintage O’Keefe and Merritt with dual baking chambers. While I prefer this classic oven, an electric oven, either convection or conventional, can also produce fine results.
I have to admit, however, that I’m partial to pilot lights. Even when the oven is off, they keep the area in and around the oven warm enough for builds and dough to rise gently. These older ovens also have the lovely – if possibly dangerous – feature of an unlimited upper temperature. Turn the broiler on and it doesn’t turn itself off. Given enough time, the temperature will pin the oven thermometer, well exceeding 600 degrees F. (And, yes, this is important for baking traditional loaves.)
How To Save Your Marriage
The only other major appliance that is particularly useful in this process is a refrigerator. It retards, or slows down, the action of the yeast, causing dough to rise more slowly and flavors to develop more fully. This gives one much greater latitude in the timing of one’s baking. (Rumor has it that in early 20th century Paris the boulanger’s refrigerator was known as “the marriage saver.” Bakers’ spouses were complaining that, operating on the yeast’s schedule, the baker had to spend all night at the bakery. However, with the dough and loaves happily rising slowly in the fridge, the bakers could get a good night’s sleep at home and bake in the early morning. Everyone was happy….)
If you’re not preparing many loaves of bread at once, you’ll be able to store your yeast culture and your loaves in your home fridge. Your yeast will live there all the time, and your loaves will spend the night there. Neither should take up much room. The fridge should be pretty cold, say somewhere between 34 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which is where most fridges are set.
Because this book is based on my experiences baking here at home, I’m going to use, as a starting point, the appliances and tools I have been employing for decades. There are important differences between gas and electric ovens, of course, but perhaps not that much distinguishes one countertop from another (except those damned tile countertops that have hard-to-clean grout between the tiles!).
Now Let Us Praise Gas Ovens!
At home, I bake in a gas oven, a reconditioned vintage O’Keefe and Merritt with dual baking chambers. While I prefer this classic oven, an electric oven, either convection or conventional, can also produce fine results.
I have to admit, however, that I’m partial to pilot lights. Even when the oven is off, they keep the area in and around the oven warm enough for builds and dough to rise gently. These older ovens also have the lovely – if possibly dangerous – feature of an unlimited upper temperature. Turn the broiler on and it doesn’t turn itself off. Given enough time, the temperature will pin the oven thermometer, well exceeding 600 degrees F. (And, yes, this is important for baking traditional loaves.)
How To Save Your Marriage
The only other major appliance that is particularly useful in this process is a refrigerator. It retards, or slows down, the action of the yeast, causing dough to rise more slowly and flavors to develop more fully. This gives one much greater latitude in the timing of one’s baking. (Rumor has it that in early 20th century Paris the boulanger’s refrigerator was known as “the marriage saver.” Bakers’ spouses were complaining that, operating on the yeast’s schedule, the baker had to spend all night at the bakery. However, with the dough and loaves happily rising slowly in the fridge, the bakers could get a good night’s sleep at home and bake in the early morning. Everyone was happy….)
If you’re not preparing many loaves of bread at once, you’ll be able to store your yeast culture and your loaves in your home fridge. Your yeast will live there all the time, and your loaves will spend the night there. Neither should take up much room. The fridge should be pretty cold, say somewhere between 34 and 40 degrees Fahrenheit, which is where most fridges are set.
Tools
You really don’t need many tools to bake a loaf of bread. And these are, with a couple of notable exceptions, simple, cheap, hand-powered tools.
Because this is a book all about using traditional methods to bake outstanding bread at home using techniques and tools that have proven themselves through the centuries, let’s begin by briefly discussing a couple of modern (i.e., electrical) tools that are pretty much indispensable to home bread-baking these days. A mill and a scale.
My Garage at 3a.m.
I tried milling flour by hand… once, and, having found myself at 3am grinding wheat berries in my garage, I can’t recommend this long, laborious, and repetitive process. There is a reason electricity was discovered. Freshly milled whole-grain flour is an important ingredient of traditional breads, and, luckily, there are now a number of small excellent-quality electric grain mills available for the home. (No European home kitchen is complete without one. Just sayin’!) And many natural food stores carry organic wheat, rye, spelt, and other whole grains. (I’ll discuss home milling in greater detail later, but, for now, suffice it to say that grain – after it’s harvested and cleaned by the farmer, ends up in the store as berries, the seeds of the grain, which are milled into whole-grain flour.) You can, of course, buy milled whole-grain flour, but the only way to guarantee its full freshness and flavor is to mill your own. Just don’t mill it by hand: it takes far too long.
Getting All Scientific
Is bread baking an art or a science? I like to think of it as a craft, which is somewhere in between. Creativity and perception are critical, of course, but measurement – the basis of all science – plays an important part, too.
Traditionally all measurement in baking (and cooking, for that matter) has been “by eye”, which is a fine talent to cultivate but leads to varying results. Professional bakers, of course, strive for efficiency and uniformly outstanding results and thus veer towards the scientific approach, which means accurately measuring time, temperature, and weight.
As a home baker, I have, within limits, not strived for minute accuracy in measuring time or temperature. I’ve discovered that it’s possible to work within a range and still produce delicious results.
Weight, though, is a different matter. Because I’m not as concerned with the first two variables, I pay more attention to the third, and that means investing in an electric kitchen scale. It’s worth it.
Measuring all ingredients out by weight (using the metric system, if you please: the English system is… eccentric, to say the least!) rather than volume enables you to easily achieve a remarkable consistency, makes creating and changing recipes much easier, and allows you to quickly scale up or down your yields. It’s worth it!
All the Other Tools
I’ll get into specifics later, but you probably already have in your home kitchen most of the hand tools you’ll need to bake bread. Those that you don’t have you can easily find at local shops or online. And so, with an oven, a fridge, a countertop near a sink, a scale, some hand tools, and a mill, you’re ready to begin!
Next Chapter: Baking Bread at Home for the Fun of It
You really don’t need many tools to bake a loaf of bread. And these are, with a couple of notable exceptions, simple, cheap, hand-powered tools.
Because this is a book all about using traditional methods to bake outstanding bread at home using techniques and tools that have proven themselves through the centuries, let’s begin by briefly discussing a couple of modern (i.e., electrical) tools that are pretty much indispensable to home bread-baking these days. A mill and a scale.
My Garage at 3a.m.
I tried milling flour by hand… once, and, having found myself at 3am grinding wheat berries in my garage, I can’t recommend this long, laborious, and repetitive process. There is a reason electricity was discovered. Freshly milled whole-grain flour is an important ingredient of traditional breads, and, luckily, there are now a number of small excellent-quality electric grain mills available for the home. (No European home kitchen is complete without one. Just sayin’!) And many natural food stores carry organic wheat, rye, spelt, and other whole grains. (I’ll discuss home milling in greater detail later, but, for now, suffice it to say that grain – after it’s harvested and cleaned by the farmer, ends up in the store as berries, the seeds of the grain, which are milled into whole-grain flour.) You can, of course, buy milled whole-grain flour, but the only way to guarantee its full freshness and flavor is to mill your own. Just don’t mill it by hand: it takes far too long.
Getting All Scientific
Is bread baking an art or a science? I like to think of it as a craft, which is somewhere in between. Creativity and perception are critical, of course, but measurement – the basis of all science – plays an important part, too.
Traditionally all measurement in baking (and cooking, for that matter) has been “by eye”, which is a fine talent to cultivate but leads to varying results. Professional bakers, of course, strive for efficiency and uniformly outstanding results and thus veer towards the scientific approach, which means accurately measuring time, temperature, and weight.
As a home baker, I have, within limits, not strived for minute accuracy in measuring time or temperature. I’ve discovered that it’s possible to work within a range and still produce delicious results.
Weight, though, is a different matter. Because I’m not as concerned with the first two variables, I pay more attention to the third, and that means investing in an electric kitchen scale. It’s worth it.
Measuring all ingredients out by weight (using the metric system, if you please: the English system is… eccentric, to say the least!) rather than volume enables you to easily achieve a remarkable consistency, makes creating and changing recipes much easier, and allows you to quickly scale up or down your yields. It’s worth it!
All the Other Tools
I’ll get into specifics later, but you probably already have in your home kitchen most of the hand tools you’ll need to bake bread. Those that you don’t have you can easily find at local shops or online. And so, with an oven, a fridge, a countertop near a sink, a scale, some hand tools, and a mill, you’re ready to begin!
Next Chapter: Baking Bread at Home for the Fun of It