Breaking Bread

Every year, I go through a period of baking bread for several consecutive weekends. My 2009 bread-baking phase has just begun. The fact that snow has finally begun to melt has spurred me to end hibernation and start getting active again.

Making bread from scratch is both easy and difficult. The directions for doing it are fairly simple. It's time-consuming, only because there are long periods in which you have to sit back and wait for the yeast to do its job; the manual effort required is minimal. Yet there are books upon books written about the subject because there is no single "right" way of making bread while there are so many ways of getting it wrong.

Flour, yeast and water are the core ingredients. It's not as straightforward as it sounds.

The choice of flour is wide-ranging. One thing for certain, the conventional white flour found in grocery chains are inadequate for making good bread. Hard-wheat flour is the choice of professionals according to James Beard, "the dean of American cookery" and author of the seminal "Beard on Bread".

For leavening, you have a choice of fresh ("compressed") yeast or active dry yeast. You can also grow your own starter. Justin Piers Gellatly -- the head baker and pastry chef at Fergus Henderson's St. John restaurant in London -- nurtures his own starter named "Mother", made with rhubarb, water, yogurt, and a variety of flours. Fleischmann's active dry yeast is probably the most pervasive brand in North America (I remember using it in Home Ec. class). Unfortunately, I find that it gives off too much of a commercial, yeasty smell in any bread made with it. I've tried no-name and organic brands with varying levels of success.

There's room for experimentation with the water as well. While tap water is the obvious choice, some bakers use filtered water. Baguette bakers allegedly benefit from the use of fresh spring water. Nigella Lawson recommends "potato water", which is the starchy water left over from boiling a few potatoes; this tip has worked remarkably well for me. (Another Nigella tip is to mix yeast directly into the flour without proofing it separately first -- it certainly speeds things up, but I'm not totally convinced yet that this is conducive to light bread.) Chinese bakery demands alkaline water, as I learned from Episode 4, Season 1 of "Diary of a Foodie". Water temperature also impacts the bread: if it gets much hotter than 115°F, the yeast cells will start to die. In addition, the quantity of water needed changes significantly depending on the altitude and climate. The volume specified in a recipe is almost never the required amount.

Kneading the dough is another significant component of bread-making. Every baker has a different hand movement that works for them. I've worked out a one-handed, quarter-turn method that allows me to switch sides if one hand gets tired. Other bakers swear by a two-handed stretch method. Either way, the key is to know when to stop. The best rule of thumb I've heard is to keep kneading until the dough achieves the texture of your earlobe. Alternatively, when you poke the dough, it should be elastic enough to spring right back.

Then comes the proofing process. It's merely a waiting game in which you do nothing. Yet if you don't wait long enough, you can end up with a brick. Linda Haynes, founder of Toronto's popular ACE Bakery, advises that you let the dough perform its second rise until it doesn't bounce back when poked. The dough also needs to be covered so that the exterior doesn't dry out before baking.

Baking is another step that doesn't require any effort from you, yet it elicits a wide range of techniques and recommendations from bakers. Do you use a glass or aluminum loaf pan? Do you need a baguette pan? Do you prefer free-form loaves on a baking sheet? On unglazed tiles? Do you line the sheet with parchment? Do you dust it with flour, cornmeal or perhaps oil the surface? Do you spray the oven with a misting of cold water? Hot water? Or do you throw ice cubes onto the oven floor? What about a tray of water at the bottom? Do you spray in the center of the oven or only on the sides? How humid is it outdoors and how is it going to affect the amount of water you should mist into the oven? Do you glaze the top of the loaf with egg wash for a shiny sheen? Or do you slash the surface for visual effect? How hot should the oven be?

These are details that I gathered over the years from many, many sources, and I still haven't cultivated the ultimate bread recipe for myself. Anyone can make bread. At the same time, I admire and respect the hard-earned experience of professional bakers who must have practiced with many many loaves before getting to where they are now. If you have your own special tips or tricks, let me know!