Artisan Bread
Several years ago my sister Ann gave me a bread maker. Honestly, at first I was inclined to reject it outright: bread makers were for yuppies who wanted to say that they liked to make bread, but didn't want to dip their hands in the flour. My initial attempts with the bread maker confirmed my worst fears: it was an extremely easy way to make really lousy bread! I didn't give up, though; I tinkered with the recipes given, trying to reproduce the artisan bread sold at the local Grand Central Bakery on Hawthorne. But I never got very close; from casual conversations I had with the employees I learned that most of their breads were from a sourdough sponge, and they used special steam-injection ovens to give their bread that lovely, hard crust. The Grand Central crust took me back to childhood memories: I remember that my grandfather used to insist on buying a rye loaf of bread from a special German bakery on Western Avenue in Chicago, and it had a marvelous crust that was almost carmelized in flavor.
Eventually, my bread maker recipe evolved into a utilitarian whole-wheat multigrain sort of loaf, with a toothiness that came from using cracked wheat, corn meal, and steel cut oats. It was good enough, but not exciting, and certainly not very close to artisan bread. I've used that recipe in my bread maker for many years now, but a recent recipe I ran across has rendered the bread maker obsolete: I know how to make artisan bread at home now! And you can, too. It's easier than you might think.
Kurt on 05.28.08 @ 01:47 PM PST [more...]
