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    Birdsong Bread: Methods and Recipes for Honest Bread
    Birdsong Bread: Methods and Recipes for Honest Bread
    Birdsong Bread: Methods and Recipes for Honest Bread
    Ebook134 pages47 minutes

    Birdsong Bread: Methods and Recipes for Honest Bread

    By Luke Och

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    About this ebook

    This book is an opportunity to share my skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm for honest bread. My aim is to lead readers through the process of great bread making at home. This bread is well worth waiting for, and it will take some time. I will do my best to clarify the technical aspects, but above all, enjoy the process. In time, your senses and intuition will guide you to that perfect loaf. For now, tie your apron and flour your hands.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateSep 1, 2014
    ISBN9781483536491
    Birdsong Bread: Methods and Recipes for Honest Bread

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      Book preview

      Birdsong Bread - Luke Och

      Resources

      Introduction

      This book is an opportunity to share my skills, knowledge, and enthusiasm for honest bread. My aim is to lead readers through the process of great bread making at home. This bread is well worth waiting for, and it will take some time. I will do my best to clarify the technical aspects, but above all, enjoy the process. In time, your senses and intuition will guide you to that perfect loaf. For now, tie your apron and flour your hands.

      Opus Est Diligo

      Equipment

      Tools were made, and born were hands.

      – William Blake

      The baker’s life is in his hands. There is no substitute for the subtle touch one needs to react to a dough. Although your hands are the best tools to guide your bread, you will need to outfit your kitchen for artisan baking. Below is a list of basic equipment you will need to be efficient and successful:

      Large mixing bowl, preferably metal

      2 metal mixing bowls that fit side-by-side in your oven

      Digital scale

      4 cup liquid measuring cup

      Rubber spatula

      Measuring spoons

      Small plastic containers with lids

      4 quart clear, plastic bin with lid

      Flexible dough scraper

      Bench knife

      Shallow bowls or baskets

      Cotton kitchen towels or old t-shirts

      Serrated knife or razor blades

      Baking stone

      Baking peel

      Wire cooling rack

      Optional: instant-read thermometer

      Most of these items can be found cheaply at restaurant equipment stores. You’ll notice that I don’t include a standing mixer. All of the sourdough breads I will be sharing with you are hand mixed. This is a skill that is both rewarding and fundamental to your success as a baker.

      Ingredients

      Bread is made from just flour, water, salt, and yeast. Just as the earth is made from just earth, air, fire, and water.

      – Carol Field

      At its most basic, bread is comprised of flour, water, salt, and yeast. These ingredients interact, react, and change in tremendous ways through the bread making process. It is important for the baker to understand the anatomy and molecular changes that these ingredients go through during bread making. Knowing the why’s and how’s of bread baking will help you to be a better, more consistent baker, and will hopefully help you to remedy mistakes when they happen.

      The Wheat Kernel

      A kernel of wheat is where flour comes from, and it has three main parts: the bran, germ, and endosperm. Each part has a special job to do, and for the baker, it is important to understand a little bit of the role each part plays.

      Bran: located on the outer surface of the endosperm. It serves as the protective layer for the germ and endosperm. It is comprised of cellulose and minerals.

      Germ: accounts for only a tiny portion of the wheat kernel, but it makes up for its small size in big nutrition. It is packed with vitamins, minerals, and fats. When you plant a kernel of wheat (which is the seed), it is from the germ that the first root and sprout emerge.

      Endosperm: for those of us relying on gluten to strengthen, shape, and expand our breads, the endosperm is the most important part of the kernel. It is here that we find the proteins glutenin and gliadin, which when combined with water, form gluten. Along with these proteins, the endosperm also serves as the storehouse for starch and water. It is the long-term nutritional provider for the whole kernel.

      Flour

      For now, we will only focus on flours milled from spring and winter wheat. These are of primary interest to the bread baker because most flours used in bread production stem from these wheats. I will discuss other flours in more detail in later chapters.

      Whole-Wheat: Flour milled from the entire wheat kernel. It is usually sold as fine, medium, or coarse. The inclusion of the germ and bran in whole-wheat flour makes it more nutritious and flavorful, but also more dense.

      White: Flour milled from the endosperm of the wheat kernel. There are three main streams of flour we get from this: straight, patent, and clear. When the entire endosperm has been ground, sifted, and re-blended it is known as straight flour. Patent flour is flour milled from the center of the endosperm, and it is considered the best for bread making. Flour ground from the outer part of the endosperm is known as clear. It has a higher protein level than patent flour and is darker in color due to greater amounts of minerals.

      The baker can use this information to make any number of breads and to manipulate dough into desired outcomes. The important thing is to find a flour that works for you. One that performs consistently and gives you bread that you can be proud of.

      Flour Choice: Nowadays, specialty flours and flours specifically grown

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