The Bread we Eat

At a restaurant in Buenos Aires, Argentina, hungry customers see a Buenos Aires man of Italian descent throw a sniffing counter into the air, take it and repeat the show indefinitely to make a pizza. In Lebanon, a housewife spins a similar disc from forearm to forearm and twists it each time to maintain her circle. In Mexico, a young woman caresses a piece of torture between her palms, just like her counterpart in distant India.

Otherwise, a chef in Ethiopia spills a ring of liquid soup on a hot plate while he prepares injera and fills it counterclockwise with smaller and smaller circles that leak from a ladle. However, a chef in Europe or America cuts a fluffy dough and sees it "grow" again. In China, a housewife will work and "rest" in a similar balloon.

There are many different ways to shape the hundreds of ways our daily bread appears.

Some of the above-mentioned breads, even if they are flat, contain yeast or brighteners, substances that make them grow. However, yeast is particularly effective in creating doughs that contain wheat flour.

The case called gluten

What makes wheat flour this difference? The amount of gluten it contains. Gluten is described in the dictionary with the following words: "Elastic, hard and resistant protein substance". . . This gives the dough cohesion and the ability to retain gases. These words are the symbol and the heart of what gluten is and does. Yet the wonderful God-given chemistry remains invisible in her or in the mass under our hands.

I came across gluten for the first time on the battlefield. This is what my kitchen looked like when I, as a girlfriend, first tried to make bread. I had the noticeable difference of making a sourdough bread that shrank instead of expanding. Then they condensed into something that the Egyptian pharaohs would have greeted if they were looking for rye stones!

Subsequent efforts were not so bad, but they did not achieve the required quality or reliability with the help of valuable ingredients. My problems did not go away until I discovered that making bread was like learning a second language. Professional bakers may hesitate when I say this; Like you, when you learn a language, you have to stop translating and thinking about the new language. So with bread, you need to separate the measured amounts and think about the structure. Ingredients vary from place to place, and most importantly, the moisture content and chemical structure of the flour vary so much that the measurement volume can be catastrophic.

For example, use American ingredients and follow an unchanged recipe for French bread. You can make a product that does not taste like the delicious bread you find in the city along the Seine. Celebrity chef Julia Child and her partner Simone Beck offer an eleven-page recipe for making French toast with American flour and sourdough. It takes another six pages, or a total of seventeen pages, to explain it in its various forms! All this to make a product that contains Four Ingredients, including water! However, the chemistry is so balanced that anything other than following these instructions lacks the brand when you perceive the taste and structure of the well-known product from Normandy to Provence.

It is true that accurate weight measurement can lead to great finesse in terms of texture and taste, but most of us need a way to create a nutritious daily bread that tastes good and stays. fairly good. and you can get it in a safe way. A word of caution: you can make this bread very quickly, but when Julia Child warns against sour products, you will miss something if you do not let the yeast taste develop. Whenever possible, I start my bread at least a day before baking and take it up to as cold a temperature as time and material allow.

Right now we have flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, a can of milk and a little vegetable oil or melted butter. For the bread we're going to bake, that's all we need. If there is no sugar or oil, you can do without it. Under difficult circumstances, you may even run out of salt. It doesn't taste good, but it feeds you. What is absolutely necessary is flour, baking powder, a can of milk or some other liquid, even water. But now we are going to make this bread in excellent condition.

Start with the yeast

I don't really measure and the purpose of this recipe is to teach you not to measure; but since you are not in my kitchen and there is a difference between a teaspoon and a gallon, I am going to speak roughly so that you can get an idea of ​​the amount of "Ball Park". Drink a cup of warm, not hot, water. Add a teaspoon of sugar and a packet of dry yeast or yeast cake; dissolve it.

If we follow this recipe, we will explain why we are doing things. You may not know it, but if you put the yeast in the water, you will have created a garden. Yes, and her teaspoon of sugar was "fertilizer" for her. When you look at this beige “soup” that you created, you actually see a microscopic botanical explosion that you can't see. Now add enough flour to thicken the soup. You just gave your yeast something really essential to eat and then you upped it a lot. But you also started another invisible drama!

The marriage between gluten and yeast has begun. Because just as water animates and reproduces yeast, water releases gluten from the flour and begins to transform into microscopic elongated threads, a process that can be accelerated by shaking. And this is illustrative, but not technical, the beginning of a symbiotic relationship. What is symbiosis? He lives together in two different things by interdependence.

Let's put it somewhere that's neither too hot nor too cold. If you want, this little "garden" can last for several days as long as you "feed and water" it. You can make it sour or use buttermilk as a liquid and start as a long lasting starter for the yeast. * 

If yeast is hard to find where you live, then if you plan to bake bread every day, then “grow” a lot of yeast. Then add the liquid and flour (“feed”) over a period of time until you have had enough. You should use at least a cup of what you have grown here if you want to save anything for future use. However, we continue to assume that we will only do this once. Sometimes in the first fifteen minutes you will see bubbles indicating that your yeast is alive and everything we are talking about is happening. If you don't want to worry or lie down for several hours, add 1 to 1 1/2 cups of flour. If it's a little harder than the "glue," add water. At this point, it's almost impossible to do anything to damage it other than overheating it or killing it with too much salt. So I didn't tell you to add salt.

Watch! The dough begins to rise

You will find that the mass increases over time. This is because the two ingredients are developing. Gluten has become a fantastic cellular network that traps the natural by-product of living organisms. YOU are alive and the by-product of your lungs is carbon dioxide. It is also a by-product of active yeast! As the gluten bins slide outward and upward, they snap together and encapsulate the live yeast gas.

Once you've scaled the sides of the collapsible bowl, mix it up, add enough flour to make it work, and start the oldest job for bakers around the world. Knead. It will be natural. With the live action in the palm of your hand, use your fingers to bring the dough closer together and press the beat down and out, moving the dough in circular motions as you go. What's still going on inside? It stimulates gluten activity by helping to stretch and lengthen the gluten strands. Therefore, just as you can stretch the fabric of a tapestry by adding more weft threads to the canvas, you sharpen it.

To prepare certain types of Chinese bread, or manou, a Chinese housewife also uses yeast to harness the power of the dough. But with her other man-tou products, her mother taught her to "let the dough rest." Why? There is Chinese cuisine on the stove. Chinese bread, including Man Tou, is steamed. You want your steamed bread to be soft. As the dough is allowed to "sit", the gluten gutters relax, wither and shrink. Your "dragon" is sleeping. Quickly and smoothly, you will shape pieces of your dough into flower-shaped rolls and place them on your steam grill. In a few minutes, something will come out between a western soft dumpling and some bread. Delicious!

The same desire not to stimulate gluten triggers the warning "run easy" in yeast cakes or muffin recipes. The latter bakers tap easily with a fork or fingers, just enough to pick up the ingredients. The desire here is to have a cooked product that is soft and "short" and so soft that it breaks.

More supervision and work

Let's go back to the mixture of yeast, flour and sugar. After mixing, why not add all the other ingredients? Pour into a regular jar of condensed milk at 13 ounces. You can start by mixing a teaspoon of salt in this dry milk or flour, about 4 more cups. It can be at least 3 1/2 cups or up to 5 cups. At this point, you can add 3 tablespoons of oil or chilled melted butter. This improves the shelf life of the baked bread. A little more will not hurt, nor will your total absence. Keep in mind, however, that the only standard measure you have here is milk. Add the flour slowly until you get a spoon. Insert. Over time, it will hold enough to be scooped out of the bowl on a floured plate. Now knead the dough, knead, add more flour along the way, knead and keep thinking about what happens to the gluten that it contains. This will encourage you not to quit soon. (Egyptian rye stones. Do you remember that?)

In fact, all baking recipes require you to use your own judgment. Take a look, do they not say something "until it is soft and stretchy"? That is the Council. Take a look at your you. It will remain moist and sticky even if you have packed as much flour as possible. But that will change sometime, just move your hands while pressing them against the board. The outer surface becomes smooth and the development of elasticity can be felt. The dough no longer opens and will be sticky inside. If you separate, it would be the same inside and out, it would have a unit, a cohesion, so that it resists when you stretch. From the moment you recognize this quality, you can make this bread from that day. . . without measuring. The key to your bread is not the amount of something you put on it; but to know when he had reached that step. And that knowledge outweighs the variations of the ingredients from one moment to another or from one place to another.

Pour some oil or fat into the bowl, take the dough and roll it in the bowl. This covers the dumpling in oil. Lightly cover the bowl with a towel. Fold. Beat, work a little and now put in two greased forms. Touch the dough. He will buy to help you climb. Grease the lid and let it fold.

Once you have found your reliable "non-prescription" recipe, you may want to branch out, but no matter the size of your branches, always remember that you are "gardening" and "weaving" while baking bread. The pizzaiolo that dumps the dough, even if it is only partially at the bottom, weaves a solid tray with gluten threads for what it is to serve on top. The Lebanese do more or less the same.

The moment of success and satisfaction

But now we have reached the moment where you will share the wonder of baking for your family for the first time. No, do not put it on the table. That's when you put it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit and you can smell what you are cooking first. It is an aroma that reaches the deepest container for physical well-being. Do you want a shiny scab? Grease the top. Do you want a thick crust to bite into? So make sure a pot of water comes with your bread.