Homemade bread, I have discovered, is one of the best things you can give to a teacher for Christmas. At a time when they are inundated with gifts from their students, a fresh loaf of bread is something that they actually will enjoy with their families, often over dinner that evening. As Christmas break this year was coming to a close, I got an e-mail from my daughter's art teacher. She loved the bread, and wanted to know the recipe.
Ah, the recipe. The wonder about making bread is that I don't have one particular recipe that I use consistently. I have a recipe I developed that I use as the basis for most of my loaves, but the exact ingredients that I use vary from loaf to loaf.
Here's my basic recipe:
2 tbsp. butter
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 c. flour
1 c. sourdough starter
about ½ c. water
Melt or at least soften the butter, then add the starter, followed by the salt and sugar. Stir in the flour, one cup at a time, stirring at first, but gradually folding it in by hand as the dough gets stiffer. Add additional moisture as needed, generally about a quarter-cup at a time. When the flour is all mixed in, knead the dough for 10 minutes. Let the dough rise until it doubles in size, about an hour, then punch it down. Shape into rolls, loaves or otther shape; place these on a baking sheet; and allow bread to double in size again.
Bake for 35-40 minutes at 375 degrees, or until loaves are brown.That sounds so simple, doesn't it? The difficulty is, I can't remember the last time I ever actually followed that recipe. A recipe is like a set of rules for a good life; you look it as a guideline that has served other people well, but you never should treat it as a one-size-fits-all regimen. Instead, you learn to trust your instincts and make adjustments as you go, so you can find what works best for you. At its simpleast, bread is flour, water and yeast. Everything else is personal preference.
Today, for instance, my family and I went to visit some friends of ours in Somerset County. Since there would be nine of us all told, I doubled the recipe. A doubled recipe means I would need four tablespoons of sugar, and since four tablespoons is a quarter-cup, I used honey, which measures easily in quarter-cups, has a gentle taste and makes the bread smell sweeter.
Other sugars, such as brown sugar, white sugar and cane sugar also would work. It just depends on your preference.
Then there's the flour. Most cookbooks these days call for all-purpose flour, because it's the most common form of flour, and it's often cheaper than the flours made specifically for bread. I found years ago that I prefer the taste and texture of bread made with bread flour, so I go with that -- except that I enjoy the taste and texture of heavier grains as well, so I often mix bread flour with other varieties.
Bread flour always should comprise at least half the total volume of flour in your dough so the final loaf doesn't crumble and fall apart, so in practice, I use 1½ cups of bread flour and make up the remaining half with something else. For a while I was doing this entirely with whole wheat flour; but more recently I've been using combinations of wheat flour with other grains. Today, for instance, I included ground almond meal, rolled oats and rye flour.
Almond meal should never account for more than half the total flour, and rye flour should never account for more than one-fifth of the total amount. I've found it a good idea to limit the volume of rolled oats as well, since all these larger and coarser grains, while they enhance the flavor of the bread, run the risk of making it prone to crumbling.
And of course, the sourdough starter is made with naturally occurring wild yeasts that give the bread a sour, beery flavor. If you don't have a starter, or don't have time to proof your starter adequately, what do you do? You could add a single-serving container of plain organic yogurt to approximate the flavor, but I didn't have any yogurt, so I just added ¾ cup of water and ¾ cup of flour to make up the lost volume, and a teaspoon of baker's yeast to make the bread rise.
What about the extra moisture that gets mixed into the bread dough? The absorbency of flour can vary tremendously, even without all these crazy substitutions I like to make. You want the dough to pick up all the flour, but not to be so sticky that you can't get it off your hands easily. After you've made a few loaves, you start to get a sense for what it should feel like while you're kneading it, and whether you need to add a little more flour, or a little more moisture.
As to which kind of moisture to add, that also depends on what you're shooting for and how experimental you're feeling. The bread I made for my daughter's teachers was made with buttermilk, but you can use something else instead, depending on what's available. Regular milk will do just fine, as will water. Once I had some Coca-cola that had lost its fizz, and I used that. The main thing is to use something with water that will not hurt the yeasts. And remember: Whatever you put into the bread is something you'll be eating later on.
The bread I made today was different from the last loaf I made, and that was different from the one before it. As always, it worked out just fine. Bread is so easy to make, you have to try hard to screw it up.
