Want to practice alchemy in your kitchen? Make bread. In what might be the truest expression of “greater than the sum of its parts,” the process transforms flour, water, salt, and yeast into a chewy, flavorsome, craggy-crusted loaf worthy of an artisanal bakery. It’s fascinating and empowering to do, and a simple loaf requires no veteran expertise.
All you need is a reliable formula and, I would argue (especially if you’re a beginner), your hands.
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While you can use a machine with this recipe, kneading with your hands is so much more informative: You’ll notice how the dough loses its stickiness as you continue to work it, and you’ll feel its tension in your fingertips as you stretch and shape it into a cohesive round.
Make it once, and you’ll be rewarded with wholesome sustenance; practice it repeatedly, and you’ll build up muscle memory as well as even-greater proficiency and finesse. Is today’s loaf, made using the same ingredients and method as the previous one, taller and rounder? Congratulations—you’re refining your skills.
Objective number one with any loaf is to build gluten, the protein matrix that gives bread its volume and satisfying chew. It’s accomplished by a series of active and passive steps that, start to finish, take a full day, but each is simple to execute; in fact, the vast majority of that time is hands-off. This primer provides in-depth explanations for what’s happening at every stage—intel that even experienced bakers are sure to appreciate.
The Elements
In a simple dough such as this, each ingredient plays a critical role in the development of gluten and, ultimately, the structure of the crumb.
- Bread flour: Bread flour contains a high proportion of gluten-forming proteins—upwards of 12 percent of the weight of the flour. When it’s mixed with water, those proteins link together to form stretchy gluten strands throughout the dough.
- Yeast: Yeast consumes sugar from starch in the flour and metabolizes it into carbon dioxide that leavens the dough.
- Water: Besides forming part of the gluten network, water activates the dormant dry yeast, dissolves salt and other compounds so that they can be distributed throughout the dough, keeps the bread from overcooking, and forms steam that helps leaven the bread.
- Salt: Most breads contain salt, not only for flavor but also because it strengthens the gluten matrix.
Five Stages of Gluten Development
Gluten is a robustly stretchy mesh of interwoven protein strands that traps the gas produced by yeast and expands, giving bread and pizza doughs volume, strength, and chew. To develop it, you start by mixing flour and water, which encourages gluten-forming proteins present in wheat flour (glutenin and gliadin) to bond.
Then you strengthen that bond by working the dough, which builds its extensibility so that the dough can fill with gas and rise, and resting it, which builds flavor while reinforcing the gluten.
The process, which can be broken down into five basic stages, takes the better part of 24 hours, but the vast majority of the time is inactive for the cook. Note that the times are guidelines; it’s more important to recognize the dough’s visual cues, which you’ll become more adept at the more you bake.
Autolyse (Passive)
WHAT YOU DO: Mix bread flour, water, yeast (wait to add salt); rest dough 15 minutes
TIME: 15 Minutes
“Autolysis” refers to enzymes in the flour snipping the gluten-forming proteins into smaller pieces that can combine easily during kneading to form a more extensible dough. The rest allows the flour to thoroughly hydrate, encouraging the initial glutenin and gliadin bond. It also allows enzymes to break down some starch into sugars—an initial burst of food for the yeast that leads to superior flavor and texture in the bread.
As for the delayed addition of salt: Salt tightens the gluten bonds, which makes the dough more elastic and less workable, so adding it after the autolyse rather than with the flour and yeast keeps the dough workable as you move into the kneading phase.
Knead (Active)
WHAT YOU DO: Thoroughly work dough by slapping and folding it on counter
TIME: 6 to 8 minutes
Kneading builds the gluten bonds, making the dough more elastic and better able to trap air. It also makes the dough less sticky by helping it sequester water into the gluten matrix.
High-hydration doughs such as this are difficult to handle via a traditional kneading method, so I riff on an alternative popularized by French-born baker Richard Bertinet called “slap and fold,” which works and smooths the dough in less than 10 minutes.
The idea is this: Fling (or “slap”) one end of the dough onto the counter so that it sticks, pull the other end toward you, and fold it over the portion stuck to the surface. Repeat until the dough is cohesive and mostly smooth.
All that manipulation—particularly the stretching between each slap and fold—builds gluten. In fact, this method works the dough more than a stand mixer could (though using a mixer is fine—it just takes longer). Plus, there’s something magical about feeling the way the dough changes as gluten builds.
Rest (Passive)
WHAT YOU DO: Place dough in bowl and cover; let it rest at room temperature
TIME: 1 to 1-1/2 hours
As the dough sits, the yeast digests more sugars and produces carbon dioxide that inflates the dough by about 50 percent. The gluten network hydrates and develops further, and several different types of bonds among the protein and water continue to form and rearrange themselves, turning the dough supremely smooth and cohesive.
Shape (Active)
WHAT YOU DO: Form dough into taut round; invert into towel-lined colander
TIME: 8 minutes
You want to handle the dough gently so that it retains enough gas to bake up with a slightly open crumb but make it taut so that it sits up tall. For that, it helps to create a “gluten cloak.” First, invert the dough onto a lightly floured counter, stretch out each side, and fold them inward. Then, turn the dough over and use your cupped hands to drag it toward you until you can feel the outer layer—the gluten cloak—tighten. Turn the dough 90 degrees and drag until the ball feels tight when gently prodded.
Lastly, invert the ball into a towel-lined colander and cover it loosely. The colander mimics a banneton, the basket bakers use to cradle a rustic loaf during fermentation that allows moisture to pass through it so that the dough’s surface dries and forms a skin that isn’t sticky.
Ferment (Passive)
WHAT YOU DO: Cover colander; refrigerate dough
TIME: 12 to 18 hours
Fermentation is about gluten strengthening and particularly flavor development. We ferment the dough in the fridge because the cold temperature slows down yeast activity so that it digests sugars, produces carbon dioxide, and leavens the dough very gradually. This, in turn, prevents the dough from overproofing and allows more time for the development of flavorful compounds that make for a particularly complex-tasting loaf. Cold fermentation also firms up the dough, which makes it easier to score cleanly when it’s time to bake.
The Importance of Slashing the Surface
Scoring the surface of the dough isn’t merely decorative. Bread expands as it bakes, which means the crust is going to split somewhere. Scoring creates weak spaces in the gluten cloak so that the loaf will split in a controlled and predictable manner.
Why Bake in a Dutch Oven?
Baking bread in a Dutch oven mimics the steam ovens used by professionals by capturing the dough’s own moisture. That moisture delays the drying and setting of the crust so that the loaf has more time to expand, which produces a larger, airier loaf. It also helps break some of the starch on the surface into sugars for better browning and even a bit of sheen.
Rustic Boule
This formula not only produces a bakery-quality boule but also gives you the know-how to become a more skilled, hands-on baker.
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