Bread is a funny thing, isn’t it? One of the biggest staples of our entire culinary lives, it has presence in almost every single aspect of our meals — dry, buttered, sliced, jammed — we serve it in the most humble and fancy of situations. Whether used for PB&J sandwiches or as crumpets for High Tea, bread has suits for every occasion.
At its root, it’s so very simple — flour, water, yeast. Various modifiers exist to enhance flavor, texture, and presentation, but those are the basics. With a little simple science involving the gluten proteins in the flour, our soggy lump of wet ground wheat turns into a fluffy, soft, spongy, and utterly delectable concoction.
Simpler foods exist — heck, most fruits involve far less labor and toil, and don’t require any modification to the way they come off the plant in order to eat them. Â For bread to be viable, you have to harvest the grain, separate it from the rest of the plant, dry it, grind it to a flour, mix it with water, yeast, and other ingredients, kneed it, let it rise, kneed it again, form it, and bake it.
Despite all this, it still remains one of our biggest staples.   What a curious thing to choose, I think.
I bit the bullet and made some homemade bread the other night, since my son is allergic to milk and soy, I was able to make a good loaf without any of those items and I turned out two of them.   I have new appreciation for the effort involved, as it took probably 3 hours of time and plenty of elbow grease, but there’s nothing quite liek the texture of good bread when done — and the smell!  Well, let’s just say, the candle makers haven’t gotten that one correct yet.
As you can see in these photos, the loaves turned out well, and Keston had a great time watching daddy be a baker.
So, dear reader — what’s your thoughts on this primal and universal of foods?
But the real question is whether Keston has discovered the joy of being a “dumper”–participating by dumping the ingredients into the bowl. Wish I knew what the great allure is for adding flour, sugar, etc. into a mixing bowl.
What you need is a good scale and a copy of Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “Bread Bible” — and the errata from her website. I’m telling you, it’s the most maddening thing to wait for a starter to rise overnight in the fridge, and things like “4.2 grams of this specific brand of yeast” seem overly picky but it is ABSOLUTELY worth it in terms of flavour.
I convinced myself not to go to Breadbar for lunch. I love their bread; I do not love the idea of a $15 sandwich, even six steps from Beverly Hills.
I’m a sourdough fan, m’self. Love the stuff. And with all these no-brainer, super simple recipes floating around these days, what’s the excuse for not making some?
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I think if you call anything “universal” I’m automatically going to comment.
Especially as I’ve just visited Japan…
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Patrick: No, not yet. He’s not quite at that age yet…right now, he’d be satisfied to dump it all over the floor, and then eat it, I think.
Dave: Interesting…not heard of that book, although I’ve seen her Cake Bible before, although I don’t have a copy. Will put it on my list to pick it up. Got a scale for shipping that is portable and pretty accurate…might have to give it a shot in the kitchen.
Niche: Amen…sourdough rocks, although I’ve not tried it yet myself.
Becky: Damn, I should have guessed you’d say that. ARGH. Uhm…how about, ‘pervasive’…does that work better for you? And yet, you comment, and don’t comment on the role of bread (or lack thereof) in Japan….c’mon! Content, content, content! Show me the content!
I love bread!!!
That’s all I have to say about this!
Nothing quite beats home-baked bread, cut thick, toasted, with real butter.
I have a bread making machine, which makes my kitchen smell nice, and saves me all the grunt work. It’s satisfying enough to watch the machine beat the dough down through the little window at the top.
I love bread. It is the best! if you get really into it, I highly recommend getting a stand mixer. Much like driving a stick shift, I’m too lazy to knead bread on my own too – I’d much rather have a machine do it for me.
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I love bread too but there are now doctors who are saying that this is not a true staple of eating (like fruit or meat is), but because it is processed, it is artificial and part of the reason we are overweight and have high cholesterol. Has anyone else been frustrated by this lately? All my favorite food have high fructose corn syrup or flour.
@Julie
Doctors will say anything. Funny how obesity was not a huge problem for millennia while most humans ate a starch- and grain-heavy diet (bread in colder climes, rice in hotter climes, or cassava root in very hot climes), yet in the last 50 years it’s taken off. I don’t think we can blame bread.
You’re probably right that it’s processed foods, but bread is not “processed” and most varieties contain no cholesterol — the ingredients needed to make breads from whole wheat to baguette are flour, water, yeast and usually salt. Only sweetened breads (like raisin-cinnamon) or brioches/egg breads (like challah) have anything else like butter, milk or eggs.
High fructose corn syrup is NOT food. The UK and Canada won’t allow its use; Mexico regulates it strictly and won’t allow it in foods destined for under-18s. I hate it and it is one of the reasons I cook from scratch — there is no use for corn syrup in my house, because the only thing I would make that needs it is caramel and with sufficient skill (to prevent sugar syrup from crystallising) I don’t need it.
I’m overweight because I don’t take enough exercise, simple as that. When I exercise, I lose weight.
Oh, and do you know what they call the guy who graduates last in his class from medical school?
“Doctor”.
Bread is yummy. My parents used to have a bread machine and there is nothing that smelled so good as bread baking in that thing. That makes me want a bread machine, not that I have space for one.
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Marie: Yeah, I’ve got a bread machine, and I like using it, but the stuff it produces is…not bread. It’s close, but it isn’t REALLY bread. It’s a bread product, which is close to, but not quite like, the Real Thing. That’s why I gave it a shot on my own.
Shelley: Some day the gods will bless our kitchen with a KitchenAid. This is not that day, sadly.
Julie: Agreed with Dave about this one. Plus, I’ve made a lot of breads that are heavy in whole grains, flax, wheat bran, and so forth. That “healthys” it up pretty quick.
Dave: Agreed on your points about bread, and agreed on HFCS. I hate it, and it’s so hard to avoid, especially on a budget. Some day we’ll figure out that it’s really terrible and ban it, but….
Courtney: Yeah, it’s one of those appliances that you love desperately for about 3 months and then eventually you only pull it out when you can be bothered. Kinda like a fondue pot.