Bread

I recommend making your own bread.  I must be quick to admit that not every loaf in my house comes from my own two hands, but I do make pizza dough from scratch every single time.

There is infinite variety in bread - flavours, textures, shapes, uses.  Sweet or savory, as a modest container for other flavours and textures, or as an aggressive centerpiece, there is a reason that bread is called "the staff of life."  Every bread-eating culture (which is pretty much all of them, if your definition of bread is even moderately broad) has its specialty, a distinctive combination of flavours, shape, texture and traditions.

People are unwarrantedly nervous about making bread, especially yeast-raised bread, as working with yeast has a reputation for trickiness that really is only rivaled by pastry.  The truth of the matter is that dry yeast needs a warm, moist environment in order to wake up and get going, but will die if overheated.  Since yeast's job is to raise the bread by producing CO₂ that pushes the network of gluten strands upward and outward, you don't want to kill it until it has finished.  The low-tech way to avoid early yeast-death is simple.  If the water (or milk or other liquid) that you are using is too hot to pour on the inside of your wrist, it's too hot for the yeast.  That's it.  The big trick.

You can use any grain at all to make bread, but wheat flour, with its high gluten content, is the hands-down favourite.  Most loaf recipes in Europe and North America use at least a portion of wheat flour in order to develop the elastic qualities in the dough that allow for maximum yeast-rise without yielding a crumbly loaf.  In areas where wheat flour is expensive, you'll find at lot of variety in composition of the local breads.  Potatoes, oatmeal, cornmeal, rye, barley, buckwheat and many other grains are used to eke out the precious wheat flour, each bringing a different flavour and texture to the party.  Some grains are quite dense, which may inhibit the rise of the bread somewhat, but potatoes actually accentuate the rise.  Yeast seems to love the starch in potatoes, and will grow faster and lighter in response.  Some of the lightest breads I've ever had have been potato loaves.

I like to make bread for housewarming gifts.  A tall, prettily golden double-decker braid of challah elicits all the ooohs and aaahs a baker could ever want, and that's even before people start eating it.  Bring a good hunk of cheese, too, and you risk upstaging the party altogether, at least for a while, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

So, bread machines: useful tool, or evil incarnate?  Frankly, the limited charm of having fresh bread seemingly make itself begins to pall very quickly in the face of the end product.  Because most breadmakers only allow for one rise, the texture of the bread is often loose and the flavour under developed.  Add to that the peculiar shape of the loaf (enormous square slices that are too broad for most toasters, for example) and the paddle-indent in the bottom of the loaf rendering the last slices fit only for making into bread crumbs, bread pudding or panzanella, and the liabilities are starting to stack up.

Many of the people I know who have bread machines, enjoyed a brief surge of bread making in the beginning, and after a year (or less) find that they use their breadmakers for either a) mixing the dough only, after which they proceed by hand, or b) as an expensive, counter-hogging tchotchke.  If you're only going to use your machine to mix the dough, however, you might as well be using a good stand-mixer or food processor, which is a kitchen workhorse and multi-tasker in a way that a bread machine can't be.  Oh, sure, the bread machine has wonderful temperature controls to make sure that your yeast gets off to a good start, but it hardly seems worth the trouble and expense.

I do not mind to get my hands dirty in the kitchen.  The fact that making bread by hand will invariably create a gummed-on patina of dough stuck to my fingers and palms is not sufficiently discouraging against the promise of fresh-baked bread.  Even the orneriest dough comes off easily enough with cool water and a quick scrub, and you'll need to rinse the mixing bowl anyway, so that the dough has a place to rise.  Frankly, while I've had good results using my food processor, it's more time consuming to wash than a bowl, a spoon and my fingers.

I enjoy making bread by hand for a number of reasons.  The scent of yeast, the smooth, warm silky feeling of the dough as it comes together under your hands in the roll and flex of your wrist and fingers.  The process of kneading, which drains tension from the maker even as it gives a light workout to the arms.  The more a bread is kneaded, the finer the texture of the crumb, so the more anxiety you have to release, the more delicate the bread you produce.  That's pure alchemy.  I even find simple pleasure in seeing how the bread has risen from the small lump of dough into a magnificent loaf, and the wonderful smell of the bread as it bakes is a panacea for any tired spirit.

August 2004