In troubled times, I find myself returning to the simple things, the things that seem to me to be the essence of life. It's like the few deep breaths you take to calm yourself in a crisis. It's not that you stopped breathing before; it's not that these breaths themselves are so very different from others you might take throughout the course of the day. But you give them your full intent and make a ritual of them, and their very ordinary nature links you back to the life you are used to living. Sometimes you can only hope and try to believe that at some future date you will be able to look over all of the disparate events of your life and your times and make a larger pattern from them.
Before the events of September 11, the land seemed to me to be haunted, and I cannot tell now if it seems more so or less so. The glowing beautiful late summer that was so shadowed by the promise of winter's death is fading into a quieter autumn. As I write this in October, the days are shorter, the maple leaves turning and then falling, dancing through the air to the ground. A few weeks ago, we closed the windows against the night air, and now the furnace is coming on in the mornings. "Indoors" and "outdoors" are starting to take on different meanings and make different shapes in my head. Some weeks ago, I lit the first fire in the brick oven since spring. In a few more weeks, as the cold and the dark become more ingrained, I'll starting thinking about lighting one every day.
In China, in rice country (not all of China is rice country), a meal is started with rice and finished with rice. You take a bite of rice before you take anything from the common dish of vegetables or meat to show that you are not greedy for the more expensive food, nor scornful of rice's humble grains. At the end of the meal, one is careful not to leave stray grains in one's bowl, as a similar gesture of respect. Simple rice, plain rice, is the staple and ritual food in that part of the world.
Here it might be a little less clear. Depending on your family, you could make fairly compelling arguments for pasta, oatmeal, rice, yams or corn as the staple food. But for me, whether it be culture, racial memory, literary inheritance or a quirk of fate, it is bread.
I have a lot of tradition on my side. Bread in some form or another was a staple, and often the ritual staple, for much of Europe, the Middle and Near East, North Africa, Central Asia and so on. Of course "bread" is a term flexible enough to cover many things. Grain is ground, mixed with liquid (though not necessarily in that order) possibly leavened and cooked. "Nan," a term used from Turkey through India and Central Asia, is similarly flexible. Other terms are vastly more specific. Of course, bread is first in my heart not because of written history, but because of my personal history. To me, there is no smell quite like the smell of baking bread (perhaps mixed with the aroma of soup simmering on a back burner) to conjure home, safety and comfort. This is a good time for bread.
In this community, it is common to make much of bread in August. I do respect the reasons for this. But in August, it is too hot to fire up the wood oven, and too hot to really enjoy baking bread, though I make bread in August just as I do in every other month. In August, there are so many things to eat, each in their moment as they ripen. It is in the darker months, as the chill sets in and inspires one to linger long hours near the oven, as one lives more by what has been stored from summer (or, at least, less from the garden), that bread comes into its own.
I make almost all of the bread that is eaten in our household. I tell you this less out of pride than simply as an explanation. Making bread for me is part of the pattern of my days. On one day, I notice that we are near the end of the last loaves, or that the ends are growing stale, and I set out some of my saved yeast culture with a bit of flour and water to rise. The next few days are punctuated by grinding flour and mixing and kneading and risings, and at last a baking. I shape the bread and shape my life around the bread. This is comfort food for me, comforting in the making and sharing more even than in the eating. Does this ritual make sense for someone who is not already a weekly baker? I don't know. I only hope it might give someone else a little comfort.
Starter (see below)
2 cups water
Approximately 8 cups flour (wheat all-purpose or bread flour)
1 tablespoon salt
If you leaven your bread, then you need a starter. In these days of instant yeast, this is often a point at which we are disconnected from the history of our bread. We open an envelope and follow the instructions, and the bread behaves more or less as planned. The operation seems to be one of chemical interactions, divorced from the symbiosis a baker has with her colonies of tiny organisms.
Properly, yeast is something that is courted and nurtured so that it will always be available and vigorous to die while giving bread its loft. Once you had wild yeast or no yeast at all, and established colonies could be maintained for generations. The colony that lives in a cobalt blue crock in my refrigerator is fairly feral, in its third year. Originally, I started it by mixing some flour and water into a sticky dough and leaving it in a warm place in my kitchen covered with a bit of cloth. After a few days, it was rising a little, showing some signs of having attracted some wild yeast to its ample carbohydrates. I mixed the little ball of dough with a little more flour and a little more water, because yeast is happiest when well-fed. Another day passed, and the dough rose more, and we were off. Every time I bake, I take about half of the starter from its crock and replace it with an equal amount of fresh flour and water to keep the colony healthy. The half I remove, which will go in to my new loaves, I also mix with a bit more flour and a bit of water and set it aside to rise, because bread is at its best when the yeast is active and it isn't always that spunky coming straight out of the refrigerator.
If this seems daunting, or if it fails (summer is the best time for starting a new colony), one can always obtain a start from an existing colony. (Mine, for instance. Drop me a note at tylik@eskimo.com if you'd like to bargain for a bit.) This, too, has a lengthy tradition behind it. These colonies of natural yeast, by the way, are sometimes called "sourdough," but in fact the sourness of the dough depends both on the colony and how one treats it. Mine is only a bit sour under normal circumstances.
If you would like something a little quicker, or a little more reliable, make a similar starter (try using approximately half a cup of flour to one third cup of water) and add a few grains of commercial yeast to it. Mix it well after an hour or two, and then set it aside at least overnight. From this point on, assuming it rises as it should, it can be treated like the other starter mentioned above, including the part where you save a bit in the refrigerator, feeding it from time to time on fresh flour and water.
And if you have absolutely no patience -- or perhaps little confidence in your own bread-making ability -- mix half a cup of warm water with half a cup of flour, and add to that a teaspoon of yeast. Let it sit and rise for an hour or so, until it has increased its volume by 50 percent or more. (This might happen in as little as 20 minutes, depending on the vigor of your yeast, and the temperature in which you raise it. But let it sit a little longer, anyway.)
The most common failing of homemade bread is that is flat and crumbly, or at least flatter and more crumbly than bakery bread. No wonder -- the elasticity of bread, which gives it both a chewy texture and loft, comes from working the gluten in the flour. You work the gluten through kneading, and even if you have the patience to knead your bread for 20 minutes, there are things a commercial mixer can do that your hands cannot. So, we work around this.
Select a large mixing bowl (it will need to be able to hold at least a gallon). Add to it 2 cups of cold water and 4 cups of flour. Mix this until you have a sticky dough. It should be thicker than pancake batter and yet wet enough that, when you mix it, the dough still sticks to the sides of the bowl. (If necessary, add more flour or water, as needed.) Take your starter, of whatever variety you have chosen, and add it to your dough.
Now, take a large fork or other appropriate mixing implement and mix your dough further, using deep, slow strokes. What you are doing here is working the gluten, causing it to form long, elastic strands. As you work your dough, the texture should change, the surface becoming smoother and more even, the dough in general more elastic. When you lift your fork from the dough, the dough should pull up with the fork in long, smooth strands. You'll need to mix your bread at least 100 full circular strokes. This is a lot of work, but you can take breaks, mixing 20 strokes and then resting. If you aren't using commercial yeast -- or at least not more than a few grains of it -- you can stretch this mixing over and hour or two. Otherwise, you probably want to finish it within a half-hour. If in doubt, mix for another 50 strokes, and perhaps another 50 yet.
Eventually, your wet dough will be satiny, and your arm will be sore. Cover your bowl with a dish towel, and leave the dough to rise.
You should leave your dough to rise until it has doubled in volume, more or less. This isn't something to lose sleep over. If you use commercial yeast, this can take as little time as an hour and a half. (A rule of thumb: The longer bread rises, the more flavor it will have.) If you use a wild starter, the time can stretch to 24 hours. You can shorten this period of time by placing the bowl in a warm place and lengthen it by sticking it in the refrigerator. The first rising is fairly flexible -- make it work around your schedule. I usually count on the bread rising either all day or all night. Bread made with commercial yeast can easily rise overnight in the refrigerator, or all day while you're at work. Really, you don't have to spend a lot of time waiting around because of your bread.
Give your foamy mass of dough a couple of vigorous strokes with your mixing fork. This will hopefully get it back down to a reasonable size. If you wish to use some flour that is not wheat flour, add it now, right after the first rising. I wouldn't recommend having nonwheat or whole-wheat flour make up more than a quarter of the total flour used unless you are an experienced baker. If you'd like to add other things (say, a cup or so of leftover oatmeal, or ground sprouted wheat) add them now, too. Add the salt. Slowly mix in more flour, one cup (or even half a cup) at a time, first with your fork and then with your hands, until the surface of the dough is no longer sticky.
Clear off a good space on a countertop or breadboard for kneading, and sprinkle the surface liberally with flour. Turn your dough out onto the work surface, and knead it for 10 minutes. There are many ways to knead bread. If you don't have a favorite one, I suggest the following method.
Gather your dough into a ball on the work surface in front of you. Push away from you on the ball with the heels of your hands, flattening out the ball. Grab the far end of your new flat oblong of dough, pull it toward you, and then form the whole thing back into a ball. Rotate the ball of dough one-quarter turn, and then repeat. If your dough begins to stick to the countertop, add more flour.
If, after 10 minutes, your dough feels springy and your arms are tired, put your dough back into its bowl and cover it again. If you think you might have been a wimp, or that your dough is particularly recalcitrant, give it another 5 minutes for good measure.
Again, the dough should more or less double its volume. Again, this isn't an exact science. Don't stress yourself.
If you are using a wood-fired oven, start the fire now. I usually do this part early in the morning, or just before dinner, and often arrange to have other things to do in the kitchen during the final rising. There's nothing quite like the heat and glow of the fire in the oven and shapes of the loaves modestly tucked underneath towels for their final rising.
Punch down your dough. This is just what it sound like -- give it a good punch, right in its middle, straight down into the bowl. Turn it out onto your work surface, and knead it for about a minute. Now, decide how many loaves you want. I'd recommend at least two, unless you like very large loaves of bread. Next, you get to decide in what shape you want the loaves.
Cut your dough into as many sections as you want loaves, and form your loaves into those shapes. If you want to keep it simple, knead each section lightly, form it into a ball, and there you are. Or roll it between your hands like a snake to make a long skinny loaf. Or do several of the long skinny bits and braid them. Pretend it's Play Doh. It's real dough.
Now, if you have neither baking stone nor brick oven, you can put your formed loaves (some distance apart from each other) on baking sheets, cover them with a towel and let them rise that way.
If you are going to bake them directly in some kind of stone, I'd suggest having them rise wrapped in dishtowels.
Either way, you should let your loaves rise until they are at least twice their original size, and three times would be all the better. This process usually takes me between one or two hours, though depending on the starter it can be as short as 45 minutes, or as long as a day. (Hint: If your bread has been slow to rise in the past, it will probably be slow to rise now, though perhaps a little less slow. But if the second rising took around eight hours, you should make sure to check your loaves after two hours. If all has gone well, your yeast should be reaching a peak of activity then.) This is the one rising that's worth a bit of extra effort.
Your oven, of whatever variety, should be at about 400 degrees F when your bread bakes. If you're using an electric oven with a baking stone, preheat your oven to 450 degrees and reduce it later (you want to make sure the stone itself is nice and hot).
If you are going to cook your loaves on a baking sheet, remove the towel, slash the top of the loaves to give them some room to expand, mist them lightly with water (or brush them with water if you don't have a spray bottle handy) and shove the whole thing in the oven, which should now be on bake, not preheat.
If you are cooking on some kind of stone, you need to get the delicate, soft loaves onto the stone. This can be accomplished by using a peel, if you happen to have such a thing. You can also slide them off of a sideless cookie sheet -- sprinkle flour or cornmeal on the sheet first, or the loaves will not slide -- or in a pinch let them rise in a bowl, or on a sheet, and then turn them upside down onto the stone. These loaves need to be slashed and misted, and the oven should be turned down to 400. In my brick oven, I bake at any temperature between 350 and 450, but such is life when temperature control is largely a matter of wood and oxygen feed.
If you are not using a stone and think it sounds interesting, I highly recommend obtaining one. The stone cooks the bread from the bottom, giving a more even rise and hence better loft and a better crust. The most common ones, unfortunately, are round stones sold for pizzas. This is silly, as you can cook a pizza just fine on a rectangular stone, and round stones do not adapt well to most shapes of bread. Your stone should be placed in the oven when it is cold and for the most part can just be left there all the time. I also recommend brick ovens, but only for the obsessed.
After 30 minutes, you should check on your loaves. Are they a dark golden-brown? If they are paler, let them bake. If they are darker, it is likely your oven thermostat is broken. I wouldn't really expect them to be done until 40 minutes have passed. If they look about right, put on an oven mitt, lift them up and give them a good thump on the bottom. If it sounds very hollow, it's done. If you like the crusts to be chewy, return the loaves, turn off the oven, crack the oven door open a few inches and let the loaves sit for another five minutes. Either way, when you finally do take them out of the oven, set them on a drying rack.
You now have bread. Probably at least two loaves, which is one more than you can eat while it is fresh. Traditionally, one wraps the spare loaf in a piece of cloth and gives it to a friend or neighbor.