On (baking) bread.
How I became one of those people who bakes (most) of my bread from scratch.
Following on from how much everyone enjoyed my impromptu essay On (mostly chicken) stock. back in September, here is another, this time on baking bread, most of which came to me while baking my everyday loaf.
As ever, your November edition of ingredient will be with you shortly (I’m just testing and shooting the last of the recipes!) but for now, a few notes from the joy I’ve found in baking almost all of our bread from scratch, how I’ve learned to actually fit it around my lifestyle, and on how other food writers make baking bread seem way more stressful than it actually is, simply by going on and on about how easy it is.
Bread, much like stock, is one of those things that is an ingredient in its own right, whilst being made up of other ingredients, in the case of the sandwich loaf that pretty much always can be found on my kitchen counter: flour, water, salt, yeast and dairy.
I started baking my own bread most days when I moved to Los Angeles. I mark this move as what got me started as a food writer, but without a wish to offend American readers, the bread you can get at an American grocery store is absolutely terrible. As some time and cost as a student was involved in catching the bus to visit Monsieur Marcel at The Original Farmers Market in West Hollywood for a proper baguette that actually tasted like bread1 - not sugar or plastic - baking my own white loaves at home was a natural progression. Thankfully Bonne Maman, aka jam that actually tastes like jam is widely available in America so my breakfasts were saved.
Returning to London, and armed with the discovery of the no-knead method in James Morton’s Brilliant Bread (the book I recommend to all Brits wanting to get started with bread making, and incidentally the book that my enthusiasm about at a party helped me land my first book deal) kept me going baking loaves in my student flat between classes. However, while the author talked about how easy it was, even as a student to fit baking bread around your daily routine, I wrote this off as one of those things food writers say that can apply to real lives but never do. You’re sitting here reading a food essay: you know what I mean. This, combined with my weekly trips to Borough Market where I had just landed my first food column which came with ready access to Bread Ahead’s half sourdough loaves put paid to my weekly bread efforts, at least for a few years.
I wrote this off as one of those things food writers say that can apply to real lives but never do.
I left university, I continued to write about food. I left London and I moved back, I had a career in politics which some days I miss and some days I wish had never happened and I’d just stuck to food, and I published two cookbooks. And, eventually, once the lockdowns where everyone else seemed obsessed with bread making were over and I finally had my new kitchen fitted in the house we’d purchased in the country, I started baking bread again.
I don’t watch food television. Some people might think this odd, but it got so repetitive years ago. The Great British Bake Off has introduced hosts I can’t stand, we gave up the TV licence years ago in favour of an Amazon Prime, Netflix and Disney + only diet, and I’m saving the last few episodes Anthony Bourdain ever made for when I want to face them. But at my parents house I caught a few episodes of Nigella’s Cook, Eat, Repeat and that sandwich loaf she made to wrap around a fried chicken sandwich made me want to get started with bread again the moment the book arrived.
That Old-Fashioned Sandwich Loaf on page 43 changed my bread making life forever.
That loaf was the first loaf I’d ever made that was as delicious and soft as my usual water, salt and yeast loaves on first slice, but that was also the perfect shape for sandwiches, and which kept fresh as long as it was out on the counter for the pair of us (no need to slice and freeze or figure out what to do with a solid heel of a loaf). Did I mention that it also makes superlative toast, and has finally been the thing to make me break up with white supermarket loaves for everything except for my toasted sandwich maker? It’s also brilliant for using up what in our house would usually be a waste product: while I purchased a pot of soured cream to first make it and I still add one to every food delivery, there is now usually a milk carton with a big sharpie ‘X’ on the lid full of spoiled milk. I don’t drink the stuff so with just J using it for tea, coffee, and my occasionally reaching for it to bake a fair bit was unavoidably wasted before I started mixing it into this loaf. I also had the idea in my head to add leftover pasta water for extra starch and a better texture which is not in the book so must have been in the show, and while I tried it once and it was excellent, it was just far too much faff.
Needless to say I’m obsessed with this bread recipe.
Other than adapting her light kneading method to the entirely in bowl no-knead method favoured by James Morton and Richard Bertinet2, I’ve done away with melting butter into spoilt milk to make up for the missing fat content in not using soured cream (Nigella adapted this recipe from Dan Lepard’s Sour Cream Sandwich Bread recipe) as I forgot one day and did not notice the difference. Also, occasionally I mix some blends in for a more flavoured, textured loaf. I make all my bread from a giant 16kg sack of Matthews Cotswold’s Canadian Great White Flour I keep in the garage3, and with each order I get some of their Eight Grain Strong Flour Mix and their Cotswold Crunch Bread Flour, both of which are excellent for this. If you’re interested, I go for a 50/50 ratio for a nutty loaf, and a 30/70 just to boost the flavour. It depends on my mood, and on what is left in whatever bag I reach for on a given day.
But yes, this was the loaf that made me into a daily (okay, it is just the two of us so daily only a couple of times a week) bread baker. It turns out the key to achieve this was not only to find a recipe that was forgiving enough to suit someone who gets distracted easily (it takes me hours to remember to hang out the washing, for example) but to find one that was forgiving enough for our lifestyle: aka leaving it out for days on end because obviously I’d forget to slice and freeze it if that was I thing I needed to do do avoid waste, as with other loaves. We’ve gone out to buy a sofa (a long time planned purchase but carried out on a whim one Sunday morning) and forgot about the dough rising on the counter and while it had somewhat left the confines of it’s cling film lid, all I had to do was shape it and carry on. This loaf finally suits me the way so many others have not because it can take a few hours or overnight: I tell it when I’m ready for the next step, not it. Which I really think is what makes it the perfect recipe, and one of the few I have committed to memory.
I mentioned briefly, just now, how everyone became obsessed with baking their own bread during the pandemic. While I myself only tackled a few bread baking projects out of boredom (foccacia and challah, if I remember correctly) I do get the obsession. Bread is a daily staple, most people buy it fresh, and going to the supermarket was scary. Not everyone had local bakeries, and once the flour shortage was over, it was an obvious pastime. There is something so satisfying about watching dough rise, shaping it, watching it rise again and slicing into it still warm from the oven that is difficult to replicate.
Because there were so many sourdough discard recipes that looked fun popping up (again: I don’t like food waste) I made my third ever sourdough starter, and then promptly forgot to feed it, bake with it, etc. Thinking about it, while I love an elaborate cooking project as much as the next obsessive home cook, sourdough was never going to suit my personality and routine, so why did I keep on trying to force it? Because food media was telling me that I was supposed to?
The pandemic made me realise that sourdough starters are one of the biggest barriers to home bread baking.
The pandemic made me realise that sourdough starters are one of the biggest barriers to home bread baking. You have to look after them, they demand your time and energy, and they punish you if you forget about them. They required you to plan ahead. And then they’re trickier to bake with than regular yeast. I don’t care if they give you a better flavour than dried yeast: if you like the idea of becoming a regular bread baker, don’t be put off by all those people who say sourdough is better and who are obsessed with their historic family starters. Do not feel guilty for using instant or easy bake dried yeast. It is a frankly idiotic thing to feel guilty about in a scenario where you’ve still baked your own loaf from scratch versus buying one from a shop.
I’ll say it again: do not feel guilty for using instant or easy bake dried yeast.
Okay, so now I’ve got that little lecture out the way, why am I telling you all of this? If I just wanted to ramble about food without a point I have a food blog for that where most people will just skip past it all to the recipe anyway.
Well, just like with my essay on stock, I wanted to remind you all that it’s okay. No, I’m not a failure as a food writer for not making stocks out of fresh ingredients like other food writers do, and you’re not a failure if you have not had the ‘so I can bake fresh bread at home and it not take over my life’ epiphany yet that I finally had after years of trying, of if you had, but you’re doing it in a way that suits you, not my colleagues and I in the recipe writing business. People learn to put their own perceived (but usually non existent or unreasonably labeled as such) failures to one side by sharing in the experiences of others, so I wanted to share mine.
Though, there is one unfortunate by-product of my hatred of food waste and my finally becoming one of those people who bakes all their bread fresh at home: the entire top shelf of my indoor freezer (because of course I have two, my mother and I tried to name a Jewish woman over the weekend who did not and failed utterly) has been taken over by a bag of loaf ends because J is not a fan of them and I eat far less toast than he does: there are only so many Herby Bread & Sumac Salads a girl can make! Recipe suggestions on a postcard please.
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Yes, I know there are many fantastic bakeries in Los Angeles making fantastic bread, but I was always bothered by how expensive they were as a student, and how artisanal. I’m British, and I spent most of my summers growing up in France: I just wanted a basic sandwich loaf, boule or French stick that tasted like bread, and if I was going to fork out $5 or more I wanted it to be for the comforting familiarity of a baguette.
Essentially you turn the bowl a quarter turn each time while using wet fingers (to stop the dough sticking) to scrape the dough away from the side and fold it into the middle until it has formed a smooth, resistant ball. I picked this up from Brilliant Bread, and while I’ve never actually read one of Richard’s books he told me he was the one who had passed it on to James while we were both waiting around on set to star in a Lurpack Butter advert.
Legally speaking I need to let you know I discovered them when they sent me a tonne of free flour when it was sold out everywhere during the pandemic, but I’ve purchased more than enough since then - I’m a genuine fan!