I've been baking bread for over 25 years. I started, as do most bread bakers, baking a couple of simple loaves, using a recipe from who-knows-where. I progressed to one or two "real" bread books and worked through them. I collected recipes from whereever and tried my hand at many different breads.

Along the way, after about 10 years, I realized that I liked bread made a certain way, a bread made with what could be termed "old-fashioned methods." Lots of time, a little yeast, maybe some preferments, different flours. I found that the older methods could be updated to take advantage of some modern technology, as many people have discovered. So that's part of what this site is all about -- the old methods brought up to date and used today. I also found that there weren't many sites that made it easy for the new bread baker to learn, and that's another reason I put up this site -- to be a place where a bread baker could read about and "see" what was going on.

On another level, over the past thirty years I have noticed a decline in the ability of the average American to do a lot of the things that we expected people to be able to do 40 or 50 years ago. Americans, and I assume most others in the First World, have lost the ability, or the need, or both, to make, repair or, in most cases, even think about a great range of topics we used to call the "manual arts," things like fixing cars, building things, and, yes, baking bread. This site is also about helping people who want to reverse this slide into helplessness, if only in one small way. I can't show you how to tune dual or triple SUs over the net (well, maybe I could), but I can help you learn to bake good bread.

I hope you learn something from this site. I figure if we can bake some good bread, learn something new and have some fun, we're ahead of the game. Pretty simple, eh.

Artisanal Bread Techniques and Topics.

Extended fermentation

Nothing seems to define Artisanal like extended fermentation, spreading fermentation over a period of many hours or days. As you progress in bread making, you will be exposed to recipes that require periods of fermentation in the refrigerator or in a cool place, sometimes for periods of over two or three days. The best advice I can give you is this: After you have mastered a simple recipe, look for a way to ferment the dough for a longer time. Maybe you use a biga that you leave in the refrigerator for three days. Maybe you make the dough, ferment it for one hour and then put it in the refrigerator. Maybe you just leave it for a normal fermentation and fold it a lot. Whatever you do to extend the fermentation, you will probably be rewarded with a bread that tastes a lot better even than the bread you mastered.

Extended fermentation can cause a problem. The optimum temperature for yeast development is 95F / 35 C, but developing a dough at this temperature will result in a dough that is fully-risen before the flour and water have worked together to develop maximum flavor. The trade-off between time and temperature usually reults in a temperature of 70-75 F / 21-23 C. This allows the yeast to develop more slowly, which gives the flour and water time to work their magic.

Preferments

A preferment is exactly what its name indicates: if is a mixture of flour, water and yeast (sometimes salt) that is prepared in advance of making the main dough. The purpose is to unlock and improve the flavor of the flour. Two preferments seem to predominate in artisan baking: Biga and Poolish.

Biga

A Biga is a mixture of some of the water and flour from a recipe mixed with some or all of the yeast. The usual ratio is a bakers percentage hydration of 60%, which means 10 ounces / 285 grams of flour and 6 ounces / 170 grams of water, or other amounts in the same ratio. Because the mixture is allowed to ferment for some hours or days before making the final dough, the yeast has a chance to work fully with the flour. As a result, the baker can reduce the total amount of yeast by as much as 1/2. The longer a biga is allowed to ferment, the smaller the amount of yeast required in the biga. For a recipe requiring 1 tablespoon / 15 milliliters yeast when made as a straight dough, the dough made with the biga might require as little as 1/2 tablespoon / 7 milliliters of yeast. Since it is a 60% hydration, (see above) this mixture will knead like a French bread dough. When the mixture is smooth and well-mixed, it is placed in a covered contained for a few hours on the counter to develop, after which, the biga can be used or placed in the refrigerator for a period of extended development. Make a biga

Poolish

This is the equivalent of a biga, but it is made with 100% hydration, which means equal parts of flour and water, plus some or all of the yeast for the recipe. The same comments apply regarding yeast and development. Make a poolish

Why Two Different Preferments?

Biga is an Italian preferment. Poolish is a French preferment. (I'll leave it to your imagination why the dry preferment is used in Italy, where there is a tradition of wetter doughs, and the wetter preferment is used in making a drier, 60% hydration, French baguette. I have no idea. Probably a historical accident.) They are interchangeable. Try them both in various recipes and see which works better for you.

The only distinction I make between the two is that I tend to use a biga for longer on-the-counter developments and the poolish for shorter developments, since I think that the yeast in the poolish could get exausted if subjected to a very long room-temperature development. This is a subjective opinion, not backed up by any scientific evidence. Try various methods and see what works for you.

Autolyse

This is a French term for a resting period after adding the water to the flour and before commencing kneading. The way I use it most of the time is to add most of the ingredients except salt, then mix for a minute or two. I let the dough rest for 15-30 minutes to let the flour thoroughly absorb the liquid, then I add the salt and knead for the proper time. If you feel the dough at the start and finish of the autolyse and at the end of the kneading, you will be struck by the differences. The real surprise will likely be the difference between the dough at the beginning and the end of the autolyse. The fairly short rest will have turned a shaggy mass into a reasonable approximation of dough. I did some experimentation several years ago trying to determine the limits of yeast-less development. I found that if I developed a biga or poolish for two or three days, and developed a water and flour mix for the same time, I got a superior flavor and texture. I'm not sure if I wasn't starting to get some sourdough-like activity in the flour-water mix. It was an interesting experiment, and I still use the method from time to time. Try it and see how it works for you.

Bakers percentage

This is a notational method to describe the ratios of the weight of the various ingredients to the total weight of the flour. Consider the total weight of flour as 100%. Say that this is 32 ounces / 908 grams in our recipe. If you have 20 ounces / 568 grams of water, then the water represents 20/32=62.5%, or 568 / 908= 62.5% of the weight of the flour. (These ounce and gram measurements are not conversions of each other.) You can do this with all the ingredients: yeast, salt, sugar, molasses, wheat germ, butter, oil, etc. The only limitation is the accuracy of your scale. For this reason, I usually use grams, milliliters, teaspoons and tablespoons for things such as yeast and salt that are present in small amounts. There are many sites on the web and many pages in bread books dedicated to this topic, probably a lot more than it deserves, given that it's a pretty simple idea.

Once you've got the basics of bakers percentage sorted out, you can apply it to just about any recipe. The first step is to realize that certain types of doughs or breads have their own percentage or ratio of flour to water. For example, French Bread is usually around 60%; Ciabatta is usually 70-72%; Italian bread is usually 63-65%; and so on. With this knowledge in hand, and some pictures of what the various doughs look like, you will be able to anticipate what your dough will look and feel like as you make it.

Punch down, knock down, fold

Many recipes tell the baker to punch down the dough after a period of fermentation, then ferment some more. Other recipes tell the baker to slam the dough to the counter really hard to make the yeast happy. The modern thinking is that the fermentation of many breads should be made up of several relatively short periods of fermentation, broken up by a 5-20 second period of gentle mixing or folding the dough over on itself several times. I've found that when I ferment in the mixer bowl, I can just drop the dough hook back into the dough, turn on the mixer, and give the dough a 10 second kneading. I may do a second 10-second kneading after turning the dough over. This works especially wellfor higher-hydration doughs. Or, I may simply take the dough in my hands, hold it in the air and fold it several times, all the while shaping it and rounding it. Another method is simply to flatten the dough gently and roll it up. Flatten it again and roll the other way and you have folded the dough. The purpose of folding or punching down is to expell some of the gas and expose the active yeast to more nutrients. These techniques are equivalent. Folding methods

Gimme Large Holes In My Bread, But Hold the Flying Crust!

Bread contains holes in the crumb; it's one of the defining characteristics of a yeast bread. A lot of people seem to think that an artisan bread should have very large holes in the crumb, in certain breads, almost to the point of reducing the crumb to a spider web. However, as in most things in life, there is (or should be) a practical limit. So it is with holes in bread. In all but a very few cases, I consider very large holes in a loaf to be a fault, the result of sloppy technique and inattention to detail. Let me explain.

If you look at a cross-section (the sliced surface) of a loaf of artisan bread, you'll no doubt notice that the holes near the top of the loaf are larger than the holes at the bottom. This is normal. It's the result of the weight of the dough pressing down with enough force, and it doesn't take much, to limit the expansion of the holes at the bottom. However, as we look at the loaf progressively toward the top, the holes get larger, and the weight of dough above the hole get less, until finally there is very little dough above the layer of crumb under the crust. If the dough is left to rise for a considerable length of time, the holes in the top will get very large. If it is left for an even longer time, something bad happens.

Welcome to the FLYING CRUST problem. A flying crust is a tunnel under the top crust and above the crumb. The crumb may be normal, but there is a chance that the crumb will be a bit glassy and tough. A flying crust is formed when several things come together. First, the dough may be a little on the wet side, say 65% hydration. Second, the final rise may be a little too long, maybe one hour, maybe even longer. Third, the atmospheric conditions may be warm and dry.

Here's what happens. The dough expands, as it should. The top crust dries out a bit because the air is dry. Then, because the rising continues past the point that is optimal for the dough, the interior of the loaf, the future crumb, collapses. Because the top crust is dry, it can't fall back with the interior, so it stays up and a tunnel forms. Viola! Flying Crust! In many ways, a flying crust is the logical ending point of a search for huge holes in bread gone wrong.

Here's how to limit the potential for a flying crust.

• Don't let dough stay too long in final rise, in fact, bake the dough slightly before it's fully risen.
• Don't let the crust dry out.
• If a certain recipe always tends to flying crust, figure a way to turn the fully-risen loaf over as you put it in the oven.

Of course, not all large holes are a flying crust. Some are just very large, so large that butter and raspberry jam won't stay on the bread. Certain breads, such as ciabatta, are known for large holes and almost spider webs. Others, such as classic French baguettes, are supposed to have moderate, evenly-distrubuted holes. So it's a matter of having the holes fit the bread, not a case of "all breads should be spider webs." I find that the expectation of large holes seems to rise with the hydration of the bread.

As an aside, some time ago, a friend brought me a loaf of bread from a famous Italian bakery in Brooklyn, I mean like world-class. It was one really good-looking loaf. However, when I cut into it, there was a tunnel separating the crust and the crumb that I could have put a cannoli in. World-class flying crust. Even the "experts" have problems with this.