The Innocents Guide To Baking Bread

I have always envied those who can make bread. There seemed something basic, primal and fundamentally human about the ability to conjure something tangible and edible from the simple process of mixing yeast with flour, salt and water. Like the alchemists of old, it seemed that those with this arcane ability had mastered some secret, mysterious knowledge at the heart of being human. Some deep insight unknown to us ordinary mortals. 

Bread, after all, has been a mainstay of mankind since the dawn of civilisation, having first emerged in ancient Egypt some 8000 years ago. To this day, the Egyptian Arabic word for bread 'aish', is the same as the word for 'life'. There is something profound about that. Bread is a basic component of human life, one of the building blocks of human civilisation. There is barely a people on earth who do not bake and eat and share bread in one form or another. We see its importance in our day to day language. To 'break bread' together is to commune and forge friendships over food, something that is at the heart of our cultural history. To be the 'bread winner', to be the person who puts bread on the table, is to be regarded as the person who provides, the person who earns a living and feeds his family. 

I wanted to gain this knowledge. I wanted to be a part of this esoteric inner circle. I wanted to be able to produce this most basic and fundamental of human staples. How hard could it be? So, armed with a recipe and a handful of ingredients, I set about my first attempt at making bread. I followed the instructions to the letter, carefully measuring each ingredient precisely before mixing them together into a satisfying ball of silky white dough. A good start. I let it rest for a while before kneading and pummelling it one more time, then I left it to rise. 

I watched my first rise with the wide eyed enthusiasm of an expectant parent, barely concealing my excitement as the yeast performed its magic and it rose out of the bowl and doubled in size. As instructed, I gently pressed the air out of the dough, shaped it into a ball and waited for its final rise before it was ready for the oven. Finally, an hour or so later, I placed my carefully tended and risen ball of dough into the oven and waited for the magic which would turn this ball of dough into a delicious, dark crusted, golden loaf of bread. Despite my curiosity, I avoided opening the oven, just as the recipe recommended. Instead, I paced and waited the required 40 minutes and enjoyed the earthy scent of baking bread as it filled my apartment. 

Finally, I opened the oven door, expecting to be greeted with the sight of my first risen loaf, only to find.... A brick !  A hard, dense piece of barely edible rubble. I didn't understand. I had followed the instructions in the recipe to the letter. What had I done wrong? Clearly this was not going to be as straightforward as I had first assumed. Bread was not going to give up its secrets that easily.  No, if I wanted to master this wizardry I was going to have to go back to basics. 

So, I threw the brick away and set about learning everything I could about bread making. I checked out books from the library. I watched every Youtube video available. I chatted to bakers and to friends who baked. I studied the science and analysed every stage of the baking process from start to finish. I investigated the many different types of flour available, their combinations and their uses and learned their different water absorption rates and protein contents. I immersed myself in the strange and mysterious world of yeast, those remarkable, tiny, living creatures that made fermentation possible and gave life to bread. I learned about the impact of salt on yeast productivity and I learned about gluten threads and proteins and enzymes and sugars. I learned about bulk fermentation and the importance of carbon dioxide and alcohols. I learned exotic new words like 'autolyse' and I studied proofing times and kitchen temperatures.

  I practiced and I experimented and with each attempt my bread making gradually improved. I wasn't there yet. I was still a toddler learning to walk. Yet, with each attempt, I was getting closer and, instead of blindly following the instructions in a recipe book, I began to feel that I increasingly understood what I was doing and why.

Through trial and error, I learned a few important lessons, like the fact that wet dough results in a more desirable, softer, finished bread, something called high hydration fermentation. I also learned, the hard way, that wet dough is a nightmare to handle and more often than not the results were a workspace, a kitchen and a cook completely covered in a useless sticky mess. I found that wetting my hands with cold water made it easier to handle wet sticky dough. I learned that a small coating of olive oil on the workspace made it easier to remove dough after kneading without it sticking. Tempting though it was when faced with a wet dough that just wouldn't cooperate, I learned to avoid the beginners mistake of adding more flour as this would alter the hydration levels and result in a denser final result down the road. 

I practiced the proper techniques for kneading until I felt I had mastered them. The fold and stretch method and the envelope technique, both tried and tested methods of strengthening gluten threads and elasticity. I learned the windowpane technique where a piece of dough is stretched so thin it becomes transparent, hence the window analogy. If the dough breaks, then it requires more kneading and proofing. If it remains intact then it has achieved the required elasticity and was ready for it's final rise. I was learning to read the dough at every stage of the process and to trust my instincts. 

I learned that yeast was happier and more productive in a warm kitchen, so I started leaving the oven door open while the dough proved and rose. Something that shaved time off the process. Alternatively, I learned that one could improve flavour and texture by deliberately retarding the rise, slowing the yeast activity down to a crawl, by placing the fermenting dough in a cold place such as a refrigerator and allowing it to rise slowly over 12 hours or more.

Finally, I learned the most important secret of all. A technique for getting the bread to rise in the oven. In the first 15 minutes or so after bread dough is placed in a hot oven, two competing processes occur. Immediately, the blast of heat unleashes a final burst of activity from the yeast before it dies. A final hurrah which causes the bread to rise dramatically. A process known as 'oven rise'. At the same time however, the outside of the bread begins to harden and thicken to form the crust. If the crust forms too early, it prevents the bread from rising and results in a dense, unrisen loaf. This is what caused the brick of my first attempt. The trick then is to prevent the crust from forming and hardening too early, allowing the bread to rise in the time before the yeast dies.

After puzzling over this dilemma I experimented with solutions. The key was to find a way of keeping the outside of the baking bread damp to prevent it from hardening too soon. One method of achieving this was simply to create a cloud of steam inside the oven by heating a tray of ice cubes beneath the bread. The results were disappointing. The bread rose a little and it was no longer the dense inedible brick I had feared but it remained unsatisfactory and I felt I could do better. After all this effort, mediocre just wasn't going to cut it. I wanted perfection. 

Finally, I came up with the answer. I would create an oven within the oven. I had an old slow cooker which was gathering dust in a kitchen cupboard. Inside it was a removable ceramic pot which was perfect for my needs. I heated the pot inside the oven, then placed my dough inside the pot and covered it with silver foil. The result was nothing less than spectacular. The pot sealed in the escaping steam from within the bread and this steam in turn acted to keep the outside crust damp, preventing it from hardening and allowing the bread to rise. After 30 minutes, I checked on the bread and it had tripled in size. I removed it from the ceramic pot and baked it uncovered on the oven shelf for a further 20 minutes, this time in order to deliberately harden and darken the crust. Finally, I had my prize. A dark, rustic artisan loaf of beautifully risen bread. I had done it. I had crossed the Rubicon. I had passed through the fire and joined the ranks of those who know. 

Now, how do I bake a cake?