Bread

I believe there is a real art and magic to making bread. Ive had a handful of opportunities to assist. The most memorable being in the mountains of Catalonia, Spain when I was living and working on a vegetable farm. One day I went down to the cellar to fetch a loaf of bread. The house had no refrigerator- just a door in the kitchen floor that lead to a cool dry basement- which works remarkably well, but without preservatives in any of the food (yay!) perishables did not last too long. The bread I found was hard and starting to develop mold. So it was time to make fresh bread. The next day friends were invited over for an all day event. Rob prepared the indoor wood burning oven while Gaella led us in the preparation. This was knead bread and we did it together standing in a circle around a large wooden table in the front room of the old stone house. We would toss our loaves back and forth tearing and recombining various loaves- this was a super soulful experience but resulted in overworked bread, dense with good energy. Fresh out of the hearth, the bread was nonetheless delicious spread thick with the soft cheese we acquired from the farmers on the other side of the hill for a trade of our elegant zucchinis. Back at school in Vermont I learned how to make bread the hearty way with lots of grains and seeds. Years later, I am in this new phase of cooking where I seek to break from my regular way of working and I thought bread baking would be a wonderful way to explore a precise chemistry.  In my hours of online research I discovered Jim Lahey's no-knead bread. Sullivan Street Bakery is without a doubt one of the better bakeries in New York City and so I decided to give it a whirl. Ummm- this is so easy- Jim, I thought I had to have a scale, and a perfect oven and ruin at least a dozen loaves before getting one right... instead its been only success. The unusual thing required is a dutch oven. You can certainly make his dough and cook them as baguettes on a baking sheet (image 1: olive and seed demi-baguettes), but to get that perfect snap of thick crust and a pillowy airy rustic crumb, I recommend a cast-iron or enameled dutch oven. I tried using an all-clad stainless steal deep pot lined with parchment and it worked just fine (image 2). It wasn't as airy and the crust was just a slip cover but that probably makes a more ideal sandwich bread. Here is the link to the Sullivan Street Bakery No-Knead Bread Recipe. I had great success using unbromated, unbleached white bread flour made from high-gluten U.S. Number 1 hard red wheat. I'd like to begin using other flours and additions, such as fruits, nuts and cheeses. Image 3 documents a finished olive baguette and a boule I made using Lahey's recipe except for that instead of using 3 cups of white bread flour, I used 2 and 1 cup of an organic whole wheat, rye and spelt mix. The baguette additionally was brushed with olive oil and sprinkled with maldon smoked salt. The olive oil and salt add flavor but will eventually soften the bread, so if you like a crackin' crust, eat immediately, or toast upon serving. The final image is of the oat bran that did not stick to my bread- cornmeal is also another good alternative to plain flour in keeping bread from sticking to surfaces, and is ideal in pizza making.