As I type, a bowl of warm bread dough is rising in my oven. It is a miracle. Every loaf of bread is a miracle.
A few years ago, I purchased Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads,revised and expanded, mind you. It has sat on my cookbook shelf, like most of my cookbooks, completely ignored. Occasionally I'd glance at it and think that I should methodically for my way through all of its 748 pages, 336 recipes (if I counted correctly). Visions of fame and fortune found by Julie Powell of Julie and Julia danced through my head. Yet there it sat. It's not like Thane and I really need that much bread anyway.
Until just after this last Christmas. I was being too lazy to go to the store and buy groceries, so I decided I'd bake bread. "Why not try a new recipe?" I thought. I decided I might as well start at the beginning, with Clayton's appropriately-named The First Loaf. It was a basic white bread that turned out no better or worse than other loaves I've made in recent years. I did learn, however, that one key to a nice, brown crust is using milk instead of water.
With five adults in the house, it didn't take long to go through two loaves of fresh bread, so I moved on to the second recipe in the White Breads chapter: Thirty-Minute White Bread. It got its name because, after mixing and kneading, it only needed 30 minutes to rise before baking. Heaven! This bread was easy, quick, and delicious. It had a perfect airy texture and a nice light crumb. (Do I sound like I know what I'm talking about?)
I say I started at the beginning when making The First Loaf, but I didn't really. I skipped all the boring parts about yeasts, flours, milk v. water, yada yada yada. While making the 30-minute bread, however, I did go back and read about flours because I wondered if using all-purpose flour rather than bread flour would make a difference. The gist of the section was that, while there are different kinds of wheat that make flours better and worse for different recipes, our modern all-purpose flour is just fine for the bread recipes in this book. I'm still going to buy some bread flour, though, just to try it out.
Once the 30-minute bread was quickly devoured, I deviated from the book for a batch. I wanted to make sourdough pancakes one morning, so while I was at it I made bread, too. It's always good, but I think it could be better. I'm sure Clayton will teach me how when I get to the sourdough section on page 278.
Today, once again too lazy to shop and a little bored, I decided to bake the third loaf - Cuban Bread. Clayton calls this loaf "a beginner's dream" that is a close kin to traditional French bread. He never actually said that it's traditional in Cuba, though, so I'm not sure where the name came from.
This time I read about yeasts, mostly because I wanted confirmation on how many teaspoons is in a standard packet of yeast. I didn't get that answer (I went with my usual assumption one tablespoon per packet), but I did learn that modern yeast is very different than that available commercially in the 1950s and earlier, even excluding the rise (all puns intended) of rapid-rise yeast. Standard yeast now is meant to be used with much hotter water than previous yeasts, 120-130 F, and apparently works better when mixed with the flour first rather than proofed in the water. That is the method used in the Cuban loaf, so I was excited to try it out.
(There was a pause in my writing to shape the dough into two round loaves, slash a cross in each one, and put them into a cold oven that was then turned on to 400 degrees for 50 minutes.)
Hmm, I think I need to invest in an oven thermometer and check my oven. I just pulled the loaves out 15 minutes earlier than predicted because the tops were getting too brown. The same thing happened with the 30-minute loaves. Clayton says, "Assume that the oven thermostat is not accurate until proven otherwise." He claims to have seven ovens in his studio-kitchen, so he may know a thing or two.
Oh, yum. Even having been cooked at the wrong temperature, it's yummy. The crust is nice and chewy, and the inside is soft. Of course, it's still hot enough to melt butter, so that doesn't hurt. Sorry, I tried to capture the rising steam, but my iPhone just wasn't good enough for that.
I might try this recipe again after checking the temp on my oven, but so far my favorite is the Thirty-Minute White Bread. With something like 333 breads to go, however, I may change my mind.
If this entertained you at all, I'll be happy to keep writing about my journey with bread. I have no intention of being as methodical as Julie Powell - no one could reasonably get through all these breads in a year - but it'll be fun nonetheless. Next time, maybe I'll tell you why I think all bread is a miracle.
Oh, hey, here are the photos of The First Loaf and the Thirty-Minute White Bread, shown in that order. Thanks for drooling...I mean reading!
