Flour, water, yeast, and salt.
That’s all it takes to make a loaf of bread. But although the basic ingredients are simple, there can be a wide gap between an average loaf and something truly transcendent.
What we were looking for was a bread that you’d normally find at a boulangerie, or a local bakery that takes its craft seriously: a golden wonder with a crackling brown crust on the outside and a tender crumb inside that had depth and texture.
Unlike our great-grandparents, baking bread is not the necessity it once was. In fact, in Madison there are several producers of excellent bread that are easily bought, including Madison Sourdough, La Baguette, Manna Cafe, and Stellas Bakery at the Farmers Market.
However, what you miss is the aroma of fresh baked bread from the oven and the taste of a still warm slice of bread you baked yourself, slathered in butter.
What separates good from great in baking bread isn’t ingredients, it’s technique. More specifically, we’ve found four key tips across a couple different resources to be the keys to baking great bread:
- Measure ingredients through weight ratios rather than volume.
- Incorporate steam early into baking process
- Knead dough sufficiently to build the gluten structure
- Use less yeast and let dough rise over a period of several hours
Ratios
Baking benefits greatly by using weight ratios to measure ingredients rather than cups and measuring spoons. The basic bread ratio from Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio is: 5 parts flour to 3 parts water, with pinches of yeast and salt.
Rather than futzing or worrying about how the dough will turn out, this basic ratio is just about fool proof. And although it requires the use of an inexpensive kitchen scale, the results are worth it.
Steam
At one point in our bread baking history, we would splash a small amount of water on the floor of the oven to create steam. In hindsight, there is something not-so-smart about doing that, especially for a gas oven.
Which is why the dutch oven method mentioned in this no knead bread method is perfect if you’re good with making a boule shaped loaf. You keep the moisture in with the lid closed for the first 30 minutes, and then remove the lid for browning during the last 20 to 30 minutes of baking.
Yeast
Something else we learned from Ratio was that you could use any amount of yeast, as long as you adjusted rising times: more yeast=faster rise. However, by using less yeast, the flavors in the dough have more of a chance to develop, giving complexity to the taste of the bread.
By buying a jar of Red Star yeast (Milwaukee made) and keeping it in the fridge or freezer, you can conveniently measure out the right amount for however long you want the bread to rise, rather than the standard 2 1/4 teaspoons from the pre-measured packets.
Kneading
While we borrowed the dutch oven technique from the famous No-Knead bread recipe, we still find that kneading the bread is helpful. Over a ten minute knead time, you can feel the dough transform as its gluten structure develops. A long rise with a wet dough can do an OK job of this as well, but the bread will lack some substance.
Baking bread for most people isn’t an everday proposition. However, a couple simple techniques can create amazing bread for the days when you do want something fresh and hot, right from the oven.
CK says
Thanks for the basic bread ratio. I’ve been looking for a recipe that I can scale up or way down to a single serving when desired. Baking bread isn’t hard and even modest results are tasty right from the oven. And perversely, I’m both frustrated by and freed by that casual reference to “some” salt and “some ” yeast because I’m used to having precision in baking. Today I’ll find out how much is some. 🙂