Really, I just wanted to keep a journal of my new adventures in bread baking. I've been baking bread on and off (mostly off) for over 20 years. When my wife and I were first married we began cooking for ourselves as a way to cut down on the cost of eating out, and improving the quality of meals we ate. Restaurant costs were high, and in general the food wasn't very good. Plus we occasionally got the chance to go to decent restaurants and learned the difference between well prepared and poorly prepared food.
Through trial and error, a lot of cooking shows and a variety of cookbooks, we became competent in the kitchen. Our kitchen chores are split - my wife actually feeds our family, and I cook the oddball stuff (bread, pizza, chinese food, soup) and do some dessert baking. We are hardly gourmets, and there are probably much better home chefs than us, but over the years we have elevated our repertoire.
Bread baking was always a fascination for me. Not sure why, but maybe because the difference between good bread and the stuff in the supermarket is so dramatic. And, like most people I guess, I love bread. I grew up near a great bagel place (never knowing how extraordinary it was until I moved away) and a terrific neighborhood bakery with mouthwatering fresh rye bread. We lived near the Arthur Avenue section of the Bronx and took advantage of the wonderful loaves from the local bakeries there, and have had baguettes and other great bread in NYC from time to time.
Our first apartment in the bronx was nowhere near a good bakery, so it made sense that I would want to make great bread at home. Plus I just like the idea of making things myself. I tried, but failed, at making pizza dough, and at properly kneading and rising whole wheat bread. My first bread was more of door stop than a food product.
Eventually I gave up, and bought a bread machine, which made pretty good bread. Bread machine bread tends to be soft in texture, but sadly the best bread I made in the machine came out of a box, premeasured and pre-yeasted. I just had to add water. It was a wonderful dark rye loaf, with a soft but firm texture.
The best thing that came of our bread machines (we are on our 3rd) was the ability to make pizza dough. I've perfected (well, almost) home pizza and feel my pies are as good or better than anything made in our local pizzerias. Better still, they come to the table fresh out of the oven, rather than steamed in cardboard from a pizza shop.
Over time I stopped using the bread machine to make bread. The only machine that did a decent job of it was the first one, a Toastmaster. The second one was a Breadman, and always created a loaf with a mushroom cap on the top, with bread that's too soft to make a sandwich without being toasted first. Our current model was the most expensive, a Zojirushi Home Bakery. It also makes disappointing bread - it tastes ok, but the loaves always come out lopsided. I need to take the dough out before the 3rd rise, reshape it and then let it bake. It comes out OK, but having to be there just at the moment before the last rise defeats one of the primary positives of a bread machine - waking up to fresh bread in the morning with no overnight effort.
The Zoji makes good dough though and we use it all the time to make pizza dough. I've had good success making whole wheat bread by having the machine do everything through the end of the 2nd rise, then move it to a loaf pan for the final rise and bake it in our oven. We've also made unbelievably good french bread, using the King Arthur recipe, that calls for a poolish. I have the Zoji do everything until the dough is separated and rolled out, including the making/rising of the poolish.
Making french bread is a 16 hour process, start to finish, and requires a significant amount of "pahtchky-ing", but it's fun do do as a project with my daughter, and the results are unbelieveably good. I bought a 2 loaf perforated french bread baking pan which gives a very professional result. In fact, it's the first bread I ever made that had a professional style crust, thanks to a healthy dose of water brushed onto the loaf just before it goes in the oven.
But bread making is hard, and other things diverted my attention. Little by little I made bread less and less, although I still make pizza frequently. Until a week ago.
I stumbled on Mark Bittman's No Knead bread video on YouTube. I was searching to see if anyone had a video of Wolfgang Puck's chocolate souffle recipe (which is wonderful, just amazing) and found Bittman's choc souffle video. I then looked for other Bittman videos and found the No Knead bread recipe. It looked so easy. Frankly the bread didn't look that great on the video, a little too grey. But a quick search on google and I found that this recipe created a craze about 3 years ago.
The chance to make great bakery bread, easily and at home, was exciting. I bought a $30 cast iron pot (afraid that my rachel ray enamel dutch oven would crack in 500 degree heat) and gave it a shot.
I am not at perfection yet. The results have been terrific and I have made 3 good loaves so far, but I still have a bit of experimentation to go before I feel I have it just right.
So I created this blog to chronicle my efforts. Not sure if anyone will ever see it, but I'll leave it open just in case.
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