If it weren’t for making the bread I would have no structure in my life at all in these days of social distancing. My schedule revolves around the 15 minutes to mix the flour, salt, yeast, and water; the 10 hours for the dough to rise; the 30 minutes for it to rest after being formed into loaf shape; and then the 30 to 35 minutes to bake. All told, it’s 11 hours, around which I figure out when to go to bed and when to wake up in order to accommodate the bread’s timetable.
It’s hard to resist the aroma of freshly baked bread. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)
My renewed interest in bread making started about 10 years ago when Mark Bittman published Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread recipe in the New York Times. The recipe and technique are unbelievably easy and the resulting crusty loaf of white bread is always good. But the process took 14 to 18 hours or more, so when Bob’s Red Mill artisan bread flour showed up with a no-knead recipe that took 11 hours from start to finish, bread making became feasible and I began making our daily bread. (King Arthur Flour has developed a no-knead bread recipe also.)
It felt like I was creating a bit of tangible love in making this basic food with my own hands for the family, and I didn’t have to feel bad about all those plastic bread bags clogging the ocean. A loaf of homemade bread became my signature contribution to a picnic or buffet. Yeast and my favorite bread flour were reliably available in grocery stores in those days before the pandemic.
But no matter how self-reliant I thought I was by making my own bread, I still counted on the supply of store-bought yeast and flour. Because of today’s shortages of yeast and flour, I have a deeper appreciation and understanding of leavening agents and the role that time has in the transformation of flour into bread. For instance, the longer the rising time, the less yeast needed for leavening. Or, if there is no store-bought yeast, the flour must have the time to make its own rising agent. There are bread bakers who will never again use store-bought yeast, preferring to capture and harness the wild yeast in the air.
Shortages of flour have forced bread bakers (and all bakers) to adapt to the flours that are available and to learn about protein content. I learned that adding gluten to all-purpose flour raises the protein content and replicates bread flour. There is a whole world of flours out there. I saw that small countertop mills actually exist for making small batches of flour from wheat. Then I heard there are even shortages of those.
As a child, I remember my father rhapsodizing about the loaves of bread his mother made, which were devoured by her five children after they jumped off the school wagon and before they tackled their afternoon chores on the farm. Other than my father’s descriptions, I had no experience of real homemade bread, what it tasted like, how it was made, its texture, its aroma, or its science.
For us, children of the ’50s, there was mass-produced Wonder Bread or its ilk, a product so full of air that a precut slice could be squished into a doughy golf ball, and so lacking in food value from bleaching and milling that it had to be “enriched” with vitamins as a way of combating diseases caused by nutritional deficiency. I remember that it took an explicit explanation to grasp the full meaning of cultural, religious, historical, and literary references to bread. Eventually, small bakeries filled that void between factory-produced bread and homemade bread.
The stay-at-home advisory has given us time, that most elusive element in bread making. If the shortages of yeast and flour (and grain mills) are indicators that more of us are making our own bread, we are finding enrichment in a time of disease.
Further reading
If you google “jim lahey no knead bread” a page of articles to read and videos to watch will show up. You won’t be able to access the original NYTimes Cooking article by Mark Bittman that first introduced the no-knead bread baking method unless you are a full subscriber to the paper, but the available articles will give you all the information you need. An enjoyable New York Times You Tube video dated Dec. 29, 2006, with Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey demonstrates the method. In that video Lahey remarks that he publicized this approach so that home bakers could have homemade bread every day.
A Wikipedia article titled, “No-knead bread,” includes a list of references for further reading. The third reference will get you Bittman’s original NYTimes article from Nov. 8, 2006, even if you don’t have a full subscription to the paper.
Bob’s Red Mill artisan bread flour has a no-knead bread recipe on the bag which is even more simplified than the original no-knead method.
A google search for “king arthur no knead bread” will give you recipes.
