Long Island Larder
On gloomy winter days there are few things more buoying than baking bread. It warms the spirits as well as the kitchen and fills the house with comforting aromas. Then, after all that, you get to eat something beautiful and satisfying: your own personal handmade loaf of bread. It does not, as many people think, take hours of laborious kneading and rising and punching down and baking on a special stone. Yeast dough is almost indestructible and does nearly all the work of turning into a golden, fresh loaf of aromatic bread all by itself.
The cook's actual time mixing, kneading, and forming the loaves takes about 15 minutes. The trick is to arrange the time so that it suits your schedule and not the other way around. Bread can rise slowly in the fridge overnight, it can rise sitting in a bowl on the kitchen table, or, if you're in hurry, it can rise more quickly sitting, modestly covered, in a deep bowl placed in any warm, draft-free spot where it is surrounded by warm air. (You would not, for example, put your rising dough near an open fire where one side might harden and cook and the other suffer a chill.)
You can mix it up, set it to rise, and go out on errands, then return, punch it down and shape it, let it rise again and bake it, all on a timetable that is convenient for you. Furthermore, bread is one of the most elemental and accommodating things you can make. It requires no special pans or fancy ovens and only the simplest ingredients. Yeast, flour, water, and salt are the basics, though bread baked with milk or buttermilk with some added fat keeps a lot better than the spare kind of bread, delicious though it is, really needs to be eaten within a few hours after it comes from the oven, otherwise it turns to stone.
Some of the things other than bread pans that can be used to shape and bake bread are flowerpots and deep clay pot saucers (cured in the oven with an oil rub), cake pans, oven-proof china bowls, Pyrex or ceramic souffle dishes, just about anything that can take the oven heat. Or you can just shape it free form and arrange the loaves, long, short, fat, round, whatever, on a cookie sheet or jelly roll pan spread with some flour and cornmeal, or simply flour, to keep the dough from sticking.
The dough can be made entirely by hand, with a dough hook attached to an electric mixer or, in somewhat smaller quantities, in a regular size food processor. "Pro" size processors can handle dough for up to three loaves of bread. I always make at least two loaves at a time as the whole process takes the same length of time whether one, two, or three loaves.
Even if the family doesn't add up to 19th-century numbers, baking your own bread is a worthwhile pursuit: There's nothing like a freezer full of goodies to give you that warm, I-can-face-the-winter feeling. Yeast-risen doughs are the most forgiving. You can slap them around, arrest their development by refrigerating them, let them rise quickly or slowly, punch them down and let them rise again if you're busy with some other task. They're gluttons for punishment. If you can tell time and have reasonably clean hands, you can make bread.
Whole Wheat-Buttermilk Bread
Aside from being simple to do, the possibilities for variations on the basic loaf are almost endless. There's little point in making just one loaf of bread, even if you live alone. Bread freezes perfectly for up to two weeks, well wrapped. Depending on the rate of consumption, you might even want to double the recipe to four loaves.
Makes two loaves, one pound each.
1 pkg. dry granulated yeast
1/2 cup warm water
Pinch of sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour
21/2 cups unbleached white flour
1/2 cup flour for kneading
1 Tbsp. kosher salt
2 Tbsp. peanut or other plain oil
11/2 cups buttermilk, room temperature
Solid shortening for greasing pans
My usual pan for baking this recipe is a double baguette black steel loaf pan. However, it can be baked in two separate loaf pans of almost any kind, or shaped any way you like and baked on a flour or cornmeal sprinkled baking sheet. Sometimes I shape the dough into two round balls and bake it in two clay flower pot saucers I keep for this purpose. All pans must be greased well.
Traditional bread mixing bowls are usually of thick wood and can be found in any housewares or hardware store. But you can mix the ingredients on a bare board, making a well in the center of the flour. My daughter, Pam, who makes all the bread her family eats, uses a smallish plastic dishpan that holds many pounds of flour.
Sprinkle the yeast into a cup containing the water and sugar. When it thickens and bubbles this indicates that the yeast is alive; this is called "proofing." Mix the two flours together, leaving aside the half cup for flouring and kneading. Mix in the salt, oil, and buttermilk. Knead according to the directions with your processor or mixer, or, by hand, knead the dough on a wooden or marble surface sprinkled with flour for about 10 minutes.
Even when I use a mixer or processor, I always finish kneading the dough by hand to make certain of the texture. It should be smooth and elastic; if not, knead in another tablespoon or so of flour until it is no longer sticky. Form it into a ball and turn it around in a well-greased bowl. Cover with greased plastic wrap and put it in a draft-free place to rise. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen it will double in bulk in about 1 hour or so.
Or, if you wish to delay the baking, set it in the refrigerator and let it rise overnight, but not longer than 10 hours or the yeast may exhaust itself and go flat. Many experienced bakers are adamant about a long slow rise to produce the finest flavor in bread. I take a middle ground and find that ordinary room temperature (in winter) produces a fine-tasting loaf.
When the dough has doubled in bulk, knock it down (deflate it completely by pounding it with your fists), knead it a bit, and shape it into two loaves, seam sides down, before putting them into whatever greased pans you have chosen.
After 30 minutes, slash the loaves in three places with a razor blade held at an angle nearly parallel to the top of the dough and make cuts about one-quarter-inch deep. If your cuts are not exactly perfect, never mind. Attempts to correct the slashing will simply deflate the dough.
Let the dough rise for an additional 20 minutes or so, when they will be just about as high as they will ever get. The hot oven makes them rise a bit more, but not all that much unless you have a professional bread oven - that's how commercial bakers manage to get those large, air-filled loaves that weigh only half what they should.
During the last rise, heat the oven to 400 degrees and put the rack in the middle position. When the cuts have opened, spray lightly with cold water and put the loaves in the oven along with a cup or so of ice cubes tossed on the floor of the oven. The burst of steam forces the dough to rise higher. If you prefer to skip the steam/ice cubes bit, don't bother - bread rises inexorably.
After five minutes, lower the oven temperature to 375 degrees and bake until the bread is light brown and sounds hollow when the bottom is thumped, about 25 minutes. Thick round loaves will, of course, take a bit longer than long thin ones. If the bottoms aren't brown, put the loaves turned on their sides, minus the pans, five minutes.
Cool on wire racks. When cold, wrap in plastic or foil and store at cool room temperature, or freeze.
Despite these lengthy, but necessary, directions, your actual working time is no more than 20 minutes. The dough does its own thing as you do yours.
You may knead in herbs, or chopped nuts, raisins or currants, tiny bits of firm cheese or coarsely grated Parmesan. But don't get carried away with the extra ingredients or your bread may be soggy and heavy.
Home-baked bread is surprisingly heavier than commercially baked bread because there is a much greater ratio of flour to yeast. Some commercial breads, the kind with slices you can roll into a small ball, are mostly air and yeast.
Homemade bread has a fine, firm crumb and slices cleanly. It costs almost nothing to make. The buttermilk bread here described uses more ingredients than most plain loaves, which are made with flour, water, salt, and yeast and little else. Baguettes, for example. But the lack of milk, eggs, or oil is the reason the baguette stales and hardens so quickly; they're delicious but must be eaten within a few hours after coming from the oven.
Frequent bread baking leaves "free" yeast spores floating around your kitchen, and the more you bake, the faster the dough rises. The aroma of baking bread is better than any room spray or scented candles I can think of. Added to these benefits, bread making becomes a relaxing, therapeutic pastime that gets easier and easier with every loaf.
And the possibilities of yeast-raised doughs are almost endless. Bernard Clayton has written some excellent books on the subject and one of my favorites is an old one, "Beard on Bread," as well as Elizabeth David's scholarly treatise "Yeast Breads in English Cookery," which is probably more than most people would ever want to know about the subject, but great reading.