In the cold of winter, when whole cookbooks-worth of soups, stews and sauces are being put on dinner tables, what's comforting to many is a slice of warm, freshly baked bread to sop it all up. But some may be intimidated by the bread making process enough to get away from it altogether, and be content with a store-bought loaf.
Don't get us wrong: Groceries, especially with on-site bakers, can make some pretty fantastic bread. But it's not only cheap to make your own, it's easier than you might think.
The growing popularity of making your own fresh-baked bread isn't lost on everyone. The media brand Food & Wine named bread as one of the biggest food trends expected in 2020. (It even got extra punctuation: "Bread!")
Eater had a 2018 story on increased interest in the low-and-long breadmaking process among the Tech Valley set. A Reddit community thread, named Breadit, hosts homemade bread photos, triumphs, questions and calamities.
(Not to mention there were a handful of mentions of wanting to make homemade bread in our resolutions story we ran in the final Food section of 2019.)
Alexandra "Ali" Stafford has seen a rise in popularity in at-home bread baking for years. The Niskayuna-based blogger (Alexandra's Kitchen) and author of "Bread Toast Crumbs," said the upswing could have started in 2006, when then-New York Times food writer Mark Bittman shared a no-knead bread recipe from Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City.
It was a recipe that didn't require the arm-busting tedium of kneading bread dough by hand, which creates the stringy gluten that develops a hearty chew and airhole-filled structure in a fresh slice. That kneading and looking down the barrel of an hours-long process just for a loaf of bread can offset the desire to make your own.
For Stafford, bread making has never been an intimidating procedure. It was a regular, simple one she grew up with.
Stafford watched her mom making bread — "There was always a bowl of dough with a damp tea towel over the top." — using a no-knead method, baked in a buttered bowl. She started making the bread with her mother when she was in middle school and said she really started earnestly doing it on her own as a senior at Yale University.
She started her blog in 2006, around the time of the Lahey recipe release (no relation). Her mom finally offered her recipe for the peasant-style bread she made through the years for Stafford to share with her readers in 2012, and that's when she saw both the creativity of some of her followers, as well as the desire to get the recipe right.
"I never even thought to stray from my mom's recipe ... my blog readers would add this or that, or sprinkled the top with Parmesan. And then it was those blog readers who would ask questions, and inspired me," she said, about developing the idea for her book. "It was a simple recipe, but bread baking for people was problematic. I was troubleshooting in comments and emails" to answer readers' questions on the recipe.
So people were curious and not just those who were new to bread making. That is evident in the resources out there for wannabe bakers, from blogs to YouTube and Instagram.
Stafford has some suggestions for those who want to start making their own bread:
Invest in a digital scale: "I can't emphasize that enough for a beginner baker ... If you want to measure your flour accurately, it's needed." Stafford added that four cups of flour, depending on how packed it is in a cup measurer, can be wildly different between two bakers. Weighing out ingredients eliminates the discrepancy.
Seek out reliable yeast: For your first yeasted dough, look for instant yeast, which doesn't require an activation process like some forms of yeast. The ingredient is often sold in packets, in jars or as a block. (Especially if you go the block route, a scale will help in portioning out the proper amount.) Stafford's brand of choice is Saf-Instant yeast.
If you want a good crust, a Dutch oven is the way to go. And you don't need a Le Creuset-brand vessel.
Don't let the timing intimidate you: Some recipes may call for 24 hours of time, but the majority of that is largely inactive, either in proofing or resting the dough, or baking the bread. "I ask people what their biggest fear is. They say, a lot of the time, it's yeast and then it's time. You really don't have to spend any time kneading. Bread baking is a misconception that it's so time consuming, but it's so hands off."
For those who've been baking bread before and want to jump to another level of difficulty, Stafford recommends trying to make bread via a starter, sometimes known as a mother dough, poolish or biga. At its most basic, it is a mixture of flour, water and yeast that has been given the time to ferment, which helps develop flavor in the bread.
One can make their own starter, but Stafford said she prefers to buy a starter-making kit, and has gotten great results.
Stafford has also supplied two bread recipes: The basic peasant loaf to get new bakers started; and a starter-leavened loaf for those who want to branch out from their usual bread routine.
THE PEASANT BREAD MASTER RECIPE
MAKES: TWO 14-OUNCE LOAVES
4 cups (512 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 teaspoons sugar
2¼ teaspoons instant yeast
2 cups lukewarm water
Softened unsalted butter, for greasing
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, sugar, and instant yeast. Add the water. Using a rubber spatula, mix until the water is absorbed and the ingredients form a sticky dough ball.
Cover the bowl with a damp tea towel or plastic wrap and set aside in a warm spot to rise for 1 to 1½ hours, until the dough has doubled in bulk.
Set a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat it to 425 degrees. Grease two 1-quart oven-safe bowls with the softened butter—be generous. Using two forks, deflate the dough by releasing it from the sides of the bowl and pulling it toward the center. Rotate the bowl quarter turns as you deflate, turning the mass into a rough ball.
Using your two forks and working from the center out, separate the dough into two equal pieces. Use the forks to lift each half of the dough into a prepared bowl. If the dough is too wet to transfer with forks, lightly grease your hands with butter or oil, then transfer each half to a bowl. Do not cover the bowls. Let the dough rise on the countertop near the oven (or another warm, draft-free spot) for 10 to 20 minutes, until the top of the dough just crowns the rims of the bowls.
Transfer the bowls to the oven and bake for 15 minutes. Reduce the heat to 375 degrees and bake for 17 to 20 minutes more, until evenly golden all around. Remove the bowls from the oven and turn the loaves out onto cooling racks. If the loaves look pale, return them to their bowls and bake for 5 minutes longer. Let the loaves cool for 15 minutes before cutting.
Reprinted from Bread Toast Crumbs. Copyright © 2017 by Alexandra Stafford. Photographs by Eva Kolenko. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.
Simple Sourdough Bread
Makes: 1 boule
400 grams (3 1/4 cups) bread flour (see note)
8 to 10 grams (2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons) kosher salt or sea salt
300 grams (1 1/4 cups) water
100 grams (1/2 cup) active sourdough starter
Rice flour, for dusting
In a large bowl, combine the water, starter, and salt. Stir with a rubber spatula to loosely combine. Add the flour, and stir with a spatula to combine — it will be a wet, sticky dough ball. Transfer to a straight-sided vessel and cover with a tea towel or bowl cover for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, grab a corner of the dough and pull it up and into the center. Repeat until you've performed this series of folds 4 to 5 times with the dough. Let dough rest for another 30 minutes and repeat the stretching and folding action. If you have the time: do this twice more for a total of 4 times in 2 hours. Note: Even if you can only perform one series of stretches and folds, your dough will benefit. So don't worry if you have to run off shortly after you mix the dough.
Cover the vessel with a tea towel or bowl cover and let rise at room temperature for 6 to 18 hours. The bulk fermentation will end when the dough has nearly doubled in volume and you can see bubbles throughout the dough and on the surface. Try not to let the dough rise beyond double.
Gently transfer the dough to clean work surface. I prefer to use no flour and a bench scraper at this step, but if you find an unfloured work surface to be difficult, feel free to lightly flour it. Fold the dough, envelope style: top third over to the center; bottom third up and over to the center. Then repeat from right to left. Turn the dough over and use your bench scraper to push the dough up, then back towards you to create a tight ball. Repeat this pushing and pulling till you feel you have some tension in your ball. Place the dough ball top side down and let rest 30 to 40 minutes. Note: This is called the bench rest.
Line a shallow 2-quart bowl (or something similar) with a tea towel or flour sack towel. Note: Flour sack towels are amazing because the dough doesn't stick to them, and therefore you need very little rice flour, but if you only have a tea towel, you will be fine. If you are using a tea towel, sprinkle it generously with rice flour. If you are using a flour sack towel, you can use a lighter hand with the rice flour. After the 30-to 40-minute bench rest, repeat the envelope-style folding and the bench scraper pushing and pulling till you have a tight ball. Place the ball top side down in your prepared towel-lined bowl. Cover bowl with overhanging towel. Transfer bowl to the fridge for 12 to 24 hours.
Place a Dutch oven in your oven and heat it to 500 degrees. Remove your sourdough from the fridge. Open the towel. Place a sheet of parchment over the bowl. Place a plate over the parchment. With a hand firmly on the plate and one on the bowl, turn the dough out onto the parchment-paper lined plate. Carefully remove the bowl and towel. Carefully remove the plate. Brush off any excess rice flour. Use a razor blade to score the dough as you wish. Grab the ends of the parchment paper and carefully transfer it to the Dutch oven. Cover it. Lower oven temperature to 450 degrees, bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover. Lower temperature to 400 degrees. Bake for 10 minutes more or until the loaf has darkened to your liking. Transfer loaf to a cooling rack.
Let loaf cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting.
*Notes:
I prefer making this bread with 350g bread flour and 50g of freshly milled, stone-milled flour, which provides both flavor and color. I've been using a mix of Anson Mills graham flour and rye flour, but there are many great stone-milled flours out there, and you may have a local source, which is even better.
50g may seem like a tiny amount of stone-milled flour for this recipe, but I am constantly amazed by how much flavor this small amount of freshly milled flour adds. If you are new to sourdough baking, I recommend starting with 100% bread flour (King Arthur Flour is my preference) because it's so forgiving and easy to work with. Once you get the hang of it, start incorporating stone-milled flour a little bit at a time. I don't like using more than 100g (25 percent) of stone-milled flour in this recipe.
Reprinted from Bread Toast Crumbs. Copyright © 2017 by Alexandra Stafford. Photographs by Eva Kolenko. Published by Clarkson Potter/Publishers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, LLC.
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