Baking Bread

by Jackie

I have a confession to make. I... don't really go in for New Year's resolutions. In my mind it really just seems like a set up for failure. At least for me. However, this year, I seem to have subconsciously made one: I haven't purchased bread since January. I've been making it all myself. It wasn't something I intentionally set out to do, but it's been far less of a hassle than I would have imagined. I find that I really only bake once every 10 days or so. Most of the time I fall back on the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day recipes because, well, it's so easy and makes a decent loaf. Although their 1.5 pound loaves are laughably small. I generally up them to two pounds so the loaf lasts longer and I bake less. We find the recipe for the American soft-crusted loaf the most practical, but we've enjoyed everything we've made. The pumpernickel was fun to make since it required coffee for that signature color.

I thought that I was a little weird, but then I looked into the most popular search terms in the library's catalog and it turns out I'm not alone. Bread making was one of the most popular searches Sno-Isle patrons were looking for in 2014. Specifically, "bread" was the third most searched term and "bread machine recipes" the sixth. They were searched for over 15,000 times! We decided to make a list for all of you searching to make your own bread:



I can now lose a shameful amount of time on the King Arthur Flour website (the English Muffin Toasting Bread is amazing for those Midwestern transplants like me who miss that spongy texture) or thumbing through their books.

Wild yeast sourdough success!

But it's the sourdoughs that I really wanted to tackle. All the rest have just been practice. I've been interested in wild yeast starters for a couple years in concept, but other than one failed technicolor disaster, I hadn't fully committed. Wild yeast starters are where you mix an equal amount of flour and water and wait for the mix to become active and bubbly while it sits on your counter for a week or so (you have to feed it occasionally with more flour and water). Sourdough is intimidating. It seems that every book and baker you consult has an entirely different method. I've checked out innumerable books that promise the only way to create authentic sourdough is with complicated sounding brams and sponges, cultures and proofs, pineapple juice, or insulated heating boxes. One loaf of bread by any of these methods will take 3-5 days. That is just completely not a practical timeline for me.

There had to be another way. I really didn't think that the ancient Egyptians were as fussy as, say, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I finally, improbably, stumbled across a more relaxed approach to the starter in a book called (and this may give you an inkling to how many books I checked out searching for a realistic sourdough approach) Build Your Own Earth Oven : a low-cost, wood-fired mud oven, simple sourdough bread, perfect loaves. I have no intention of building an earth oven, just to make that clear. And then, still not happy about the steps from starter to loaf, I broke down and checked my go-to source: The Joy of Cooking. Yep. It was there on my bookshelf in the kitchen the whole time; see the above photo for proof!

I like to think that I went through all of the practical research so you don't have to. Michael Pollan's Cooked also has a really interesting section (to the bread-inclined academics among us) about yeast and fermentation in bread.

Moroccan Tuna Sandwiches for two!

I used the baguette featured above to make these Moroccan Tuna Sandwiches (based on the amazing one you can get from Sam's Moroccan Sandwich Shop in Seattle). The boule was used for toast and less interesting sandwiches.

Let's see if I can make this bread baking habit last through the heat of summer!

What's your experience with bread making? Do you have a favorite recipe, technique, or book?