I’m Making Bread: A Journey

I have made bread several times over the course of my mumbley-odd years of life; indeed, for the past 2 weekends I have made No Knead Bread that turned out mahvelous! An amble through the Internet reminded me I have a clay bread loaf pan, and all the posts about it made me want to bake a loaf in it. Because I never retain a memory for long, I imagine I may have even used this pan before but have not one single memory of doing so (it might also be something I pinched from my folks when they moved to Houston in 2011).

I have had bread making machines over the years, and really loved the result except for that big wad o’ bread the machine steals from the center. This time I’m making a loaf from scratch – not even a food processor or stand mixer (ooh, the wants are strong here, tho). I turned to my current favorite food blog, Kitchn, for some ideas but also rambled around looking for some recipes using clay loaf pans. I seasoned it this morning, by rubbing the inside with coconut oil and baking it at 350 F for one hour. There must be a different opinion from every clay pot maker and owner in the world – don’t season, do season, soak in water, don’t. I washed it (no, I didn’t use soap), let it dry, used coconut oil because it’s solid up to about 72 F. This process brought out the faint ghost marks of previous use that were not apparent before – maybe Mom used it to make something? Not sure – she wasn’t someone who did a lot of bread baking, in my memory (see above about my memory).

I’m following Kitchn’s How to Wing It: Homemade Bread formula because, well, I’m pretty lazy and all the other recipes I found sounded too intensive. Even another post at Kitchn, How to Make Bread, was a lot more work. Of course, I had to read about 20 different recipes and get confused: 450F or 325 F or 425 F or 350 F – same basic formula, but a range of 125 degrees different? What? Some recipes have you do all kinds of fancy yeast proofing rituals, while No Knead Bread and this bread just plop the yeast in or sprinkle it over water then mix it up with flour.

I guess I’ll find out why these differences exist as I do my bread-baking journey. The No Knead bread is wonderful and crusty (although it’s so crusty I think I injured the top of my mouth last week). I was considering using my new Chef Alarm thermometer too, to tell when it’s done. Now, another wide range of temps – Kitchn says 190 F, ThermoWorks (Chef Alarm) says 200 – 210 F for “lean” breads made with just flour, yeast, water and salt. They got this temperature from America’s Test Kitchen – doesn’t that sound like the expert? Well, as it turns out, the Cook’s Illustrated article says not to rely on the bread reaching the optimal temperature.

Internal temperature is less useful than appearance as a sign of a well-baked loaf. We found that bread can reach the optimal temperature for doneness—210 degrees for the rustic Italian bread above—well before the loaf is actually baked through. You can take the temperature of your bread, but stick to the recommended baking time and make sure the crust has achieved the appropriate color before removing the loaf from the oven.

ThermoWorks weighed in on this article as well. I think the takeaway for me is to take the temp at the end of the recommended baking time just to be sure it is done, as opposed to using internal temperature as the time to remove the loaf from the oven, eh?

Before plopping the dough into the clay loaf pan, I decided on some insurance, and sprinkled corn meal in it. And I stuck the Chef Alarm probe in too, with 213F setting since that is higher than it should get. It got there before 30 minutes, so I increased the high temp alarm. I took it out at about 33 minutes because I was afraid of over-baking.

It did come out of the pan very easily after poking around the sides gingerly with a table knife. I had a few moments of, what next? Like, am I supposed to let it cool inside the clay pan? I didn’t.

Look how pretty! Except it’s not really, so I see why bakers are inspired to keep working on their craft. For one thing, I skipped the scoring of the top, and then panicked after it had baked for 10 minutes that it would do something weird. It didn’t.

The crust is really perfect, although not at all like the crusty No Knead bread. Now I’m wondering where I hid my bread board that catches crumbs and matching bread knife that cuts a 1/2 slice?

Print Recipe

Basic Bread Recipe for 1 loaf

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Ingredients

• 1 cup water
• 1 package yeast
• 2 cups flour to start
• more flour will be needed - I probably worked in another 3/4 cup
• 1 - 1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I used my cute pink Himalayan salt)

Instructions

1

Pour water in a large bowl - I'm not using a stand mixer

2

Sprinkle the yeast over the water, wait 1-2 minutes

3

Dump the 2 cups of flour in the water, and add the salt (this is where you can also add other things like seeds, cheese, spices)

4

Stir until it becomes a shaggy dough

5

Adding a little more flour as needed to keep it from being sticky, I kneaded for 10 minutes in the bowl

6

Cover the bowl with a kitchen towel, put it in the microwave (to be out of drafts, only) to rise (double) - Kitchn says 30-60 minutes

7

Take it out, punch it down again, let it rise again, less time than the previous rise

8

Punch it down again, shape it, and put it in the loaf pan which I covered with corn meal as no-stick insurance

9

Preheat the oven to 450 F (this gives the dough a little more time to rise)

10

Slash the top with a serrated knife or other blade

11

Bake 35 - 40 minutes

Notes

It reached 213 F in about 28 minutes, which is hotter than it's supposed to get. I increased the temp alarm to 217 F to stop it from beeping, and took the bread out at about 33 minutes.

I also made butter from the 1/2 cup of cream left over from making ice cream yesterday, in my cute little butter maker I got at Sur La Table on sale and with a coupon.  You don’t need a cute little butter maker – you can put room temp cream in a mason jar and shake it like crazy for a few minutes to get butter, or even use a blender. I like this little butter maker, though. Both times I’ve used it, it’s taken less than 5 minutes to get butter out of the cream.

So this pairing – the home-churned sweet butter and the warm bread – is delicious! But you know what would be even better? A blend of mascarpone and peanut butter with vanilla salt! Ahhhh….