I took the bread class at the local Sur La Table on Saturday. I gave the class 10 for information and fun, 7 for organization. It was a little disorganized, but I had a blast and I learned a great deal.
The class was taught by Stephany Buswell, a baker at Beckmann’s, a local bakery. When I bought bread—haven’t bought it for months! go me!—I bought Beckmann’s. We made walnut bread, focaccia, and cinnamon rolls and sticky buns from the same batch of sweet dough.
All of them: excellent. I’m not a big fan of nut breads, but the walnut bread was pretty tasty. And Darin bit into the focaccia, said, “Wow, I don’t usually like focaccia, but this is great!” and proceeded to rip a huge bit more off. And the cinnamon rolls—note to Rob and Laura: these were the rolls I wanted to make for breakfast that morning. I will try again! I have practice now!
We were grouped into threes. The other woman in my trio was also the mother of a five-year-old and a three-year-old, which I found amusing. She’d had problems with making bread in the past, because it always came out too dense. The curse of homemade bread! Too much flour. In fact, I usually err on the side of having too liquidy a dough, figuring I’m going to add more during the folding process.
The last member of our threesome was a guy who’d obviously made lots of breads: he knew how to knead. Me, I ended up with hands covered with dough, but man, this guy knew how to work it. (Key tips: keep fingers out of it. Only use palms. And lift and turn the dough frequently so it doesn’t glom onto the board.)
So I learned a lot about what properly kneaded dough should look like (I’ve been pretty close, but I’ve often not kneaded enough), how to roll bread and form a boule, how to form one of those cool windowpanes, how to properly flour your working surface (you sort of pitch from the side—Stephany was amazing the way she could poof the flour over the board), and how to scatter rosemary on focaccia bread. Okay, that last one wasn’t so hard.
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I have finally settled on my favorite white sandwich bread recipe, and it comes from my current favorite cookbook, How to be a Domestic Goddess. It’s Nigella’s “Essential White Loaf” recipe, and it’s just great. It’s the only white bread recipe I’ve made that contains no sugar (shout out to Bakerina) and it’s insanely moist, undoubtedly because of one of the additions: instant mashed potatoes! Actually, Nigella recommends using “potato water,” but if you don’t have that around, use instant mashed potatoes.
I made this bread for the first time last Sunday—we are currently on loaf #5. It’s crazy. But it’s unbelievably delicious. It’s the first recipe I made that has reliably come out as sandwich bread size, and with yummy moistness. Check it out (directions mine, since I’ve gotten into the bread-making groove now):
3 1/2 cups white bread flour, plus more for kneading
1 tablespoon fresh yeast, or 1 package rapid rise yeast
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/3 cups warm water
1 tablespoon instant mashed potatoes, added to water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened1. Mix flour, water, potato, yeast.
Autolyse.2. Add salt and butter. Knead.
3. First rise.
4. Preheat oven to 425F.
5. Punch-down and shape into a 9×5 loaf pan.
6. Second rise.
7. Bake for 35 minutes. Check for doneness. Take loaves out of their pans, put on oven rack for another 5 or so.
Update 5/19/05: For a few weeks, I thought the bread I was making had suddenly become way too dry, and I’ve decided the problem was that I was letting the sponge sit too long (for the sponge I mixed everything except half the water and the salt, I think). So I went back to mixing everything together, no autolyse, and kneading until I get the gluten window, not necessarily until the dough makes a nice tight ball. In fact, the dough is usually still a little goopy and sticky when I put it in the proofing bucket. I figure I’m going to add more flour when I shape the dough into the pans for the second rise anyhow, and I’d rather have underfloured dough than overfloured (which leads to tough bread). My bread has returned to being gloriously moist for days, so for this recipe: no sponge! no autolyse! knead until you get the gluten window and not a moment longer!
Yum.
OK, I’ll be the first idiot on the block. What’s autolyse?
Heh. Autolyse is one of those things I picked up from the bread books I’ve been reading (Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Bread Bible). It’s probably a totally pointless step when making white bread, but what the hey…
Here’s the definition from Baking911:
“Autolyse: (pronounced ah-toh-leez) Yeasted recipes – A short rest called an autolyse comes right after mixing the flour, yeast, oil, and water. It cuts down on your kneading time and allow the dough to bake into a lighter bread with a more open crumb. Here’s how an autolyse works. It allows the flour time to fully absorb the water, so the dough is less sticky when you knead it; It helps the gluten to both bond and break down, resulting in a dough that’s quicker to knead and easier to shape; It gives the yeast time to rehydrate fully so you don’t end up with yeast bits in the dough. You’ll notice in the recipe that the salt goes in after the autolyse. This is because salt causes gluten to contract and toughen, preventing the gluten from absorbing as much water and thus fully benefiting from the autolyse.”
I guess that, according to this, I ought to be putting the butter in before the autolyse, which makes sense since butter has a ton of water that the flour needs to absorb. I am off to amend my recipe!
Um, that butter is probably 1.5 tsp of water, so I really doubt that will matter. In any case, the flour will have finished hydrating to the point that any added water will also quickly absorb. I’ve done some autolyse recipes that add other liquid ingredients after the first rest (most often sour mixes).
I personally also avoid adding fats during autolyse. That’s going to (in theory) coat the protein “balls” in the flour and interfere with the up-take of the water. I guess most recipes that I autolyse don’t have any fat in them anyway.
Autolyse isn’t completely pointless here in that it does make the kneeding go quicker (and thus easier on your hands if you aren’t using a mixer). However, for a soft white bread with fat in it (ie, pain de mie, potato bread, etc), you aren’t going to be getting an open crumb a la French bread. So the main point of it is somewhat reduced (which is to reduce kneed time to avoid over working the gluten and get the most windowpane out of it. This isn’t required for a pan-based bread).
Everybody listen to Tom! Tom knows all! Tom went to the CIA (the cooking ones…I think) for FUN!
So I’ve changed my recipe back.
Okay. I am sooooooo jealous! What a fabulous experience!!!!!! Thanks for sharing the recipe.
I’m holding off on any bread-making outside of our machine until such time as I have a mixer to handle the heavy lifting. I’m not much for kneading and punching and all of that, but fresh bread… ooo, ahh.
I was reading an artisinal bread baking book the other day, and it noted that another reason for autolyse was that in reducing the kneeding time, you reduced the doughs exposure to oxygen (i.e. air), which can have a bleaching effect on the wheat. The bleaching effect they referred to had a negative effect on color texture, and flavor. I haven’t experienced any of this for myself, but I’m curious and open minded to it.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:
When doing a “AUTOLYSE” only the flour & water, go into the mixing bowl. The exception to the rule is you can add any pre-ferment such as a POOLISH & or a BIGA. Also known as a sponge. Autolyse time is 20 minutes minimum to 1,hour maximum. In mixing just mix till when the flour is saturated with the water then stop & cover bowl very very well in order not to have a skin form. When completed mix in all other ingredients except salt. Salt can be mixed in 3 minutes before your planned mixing time, 8 minutes is optimum. I thought you would like to know this information. Good luck & have a nice Thanksgiving holiday.
~Chef Dunask.