If home baking interests you, I have three suggestions:<p>- Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish<p>- The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart<p>- The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion<p>Having never baked anything complex before, those books have been amazing in learning how to bake. The bread is amazing and tastes as good as a small bakery.<p>Ken Forkish also makes a book called "The Elements of Pizza" and shows you how to make Italian, NY, and several over styles of pizza too. That in my opinion is a must have book if you want to make Pizza.
I knew I'd fallen down the rabbit hole when my dad and I started going in on 50lb sacks of wheat berries from Eastern Washington (I'm in Seattle). I can't remember, I think it's like 20 or 30 dollars a sack. I have a mill attachment for a KitchenAid, it's not awesome but it does the trick. My dad bakes 100% ground berries (so completely whole-wheat, by definition), but I mix it with bread flour -- using whole wheat to feed the sourdough starter.<p>It produces an absolutely incredible flavor. If you give it a slow proof and bake in a cast iron dutch oven, you get these amazing cinnamon and nut smells as it bakes. Just the most delicious bread.
One thing I love about France. Delicious bread is <i>everywhere</i>. Even the corner convenience store sells a wider variety and tastier selection of fresh bread than many grocery stores in the US.
Here're a couple videos about Prof Wolfe's method:<p>Wheat Populations at Wakelyns Agroforestry Farm
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDV_tLmeeFE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDV_tLmeeFE</a><p>The story of Wakelyns Agroforestry
<a href="https://vimeo.com/256082580" rel="nofollow">https://vimeo.com/256082580</a>
A question one of you bread fans may be able to answer. My daughter has what we thought was a gluten intolerance, she recently went to Italy though and can eat their bread and pasta fine. Coming back to Australia, and eating bread here - same reaction, she's found a deli that imports Italian bread and can eat that. I've looked at the ingredients list and nothing leaps out, one thing I was thinking maybe the wheat is different and so the Gluten is a slightly different shape maybe, any of you folk know what the difference could be?
As a hacker, I especially like this project:
<a href="https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hendricius/the-bread-code</a>
Due to a broken oven, I've ended up using a breadmaker, and although the results are middle of the road, the simplicity of making a loaf is super. Just throw in the ingredients, set timer, wake to the smell of cooking bread. The kneading is a bit weedy and I get better results by hand. But the breadmaker makes no mess at all.
I really enjoyed this article. I remember reading about the WSU Bread Lab etc a few years ago and it was great to get an update. Here are two older articles about bread that I really liked (both feature the Bread Lab):<p><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain" rel="nofollow">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain</a><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-broken.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/magazine/bread-is-broken....</a><p>Here's a quote that explains what the deal is with the whole wheat bread you can buy in America:<p><i>A grain of wheat has three main components: a fibrous and nutrient-rich outer coating called the bran; the flavorful and aromatic germ, a living embryo that eventually develops into the adult plant; and a pouch of starch known as the endosperm, which makes up the bulk of the grain. Before roller mills, all three parts were mashed together when processed. As a result, flour was not the inert white powder most of us are familiar with today; it was pungent, golden and speckled, because of fragrant oils released from the living germ and bits of hardy bran. If freshly ground flour was not used within a few weeks, however, the oils turned it rancid.</i><p><i>Roller mills solved this problem. Their immense spinning cylinders denuded the endosperm and discarded the germ and bran, producing virtually unspoilable alabaster flour composed entirely of endosperm. It was a boon for the growing flour industry: Mills could now source wheat from all over, blend it to achieve consistency and transport it across the nation without worrying about shelf life. That newfound durability came at a huge cost, however, sacrificing much of the grain’s flavor and nutrition. In the 1940s, to compensate for these nutritional deficiencies, flour producers started fortifying white flour with iron and B vitamins, a ubiquitous practice today. The rise of roller milling and bread factories also put pressure on plant breeders to make wheat even more amenable to the new dominant technologies; whiteness, hardness and uniformity took precedence over flavor, nutrition and novelty.</i><p><i>Today, whole-wheat flour accounts for only 6 percent of all flour produced in the United States. And most whole-wheat products sold in supermarkets are made from roller-milled flour with the germ and bran added back in.</i>
I dislike these trendy breads. They have excessively hard crusts and large holes, both of which I consider defects. My favorite bread is made with low hydration dough (50% water by baker's percentage, i.e. percent of flour weight) for a dense crumb, and cooked by steaming for an extra-soft crust. The trendy recipes also have too much salt, which masks the flavor of the fermentation products. IMO 1% salt by baker's percentage is sufficient. Sourdough is helpful for adding flavor to wholegrain or non-wheat breads, but for standard white bread I find it never develops much sourness, and long proofing with standard dried yeast is just as good.<p>Try experimenting with recipes yourself instead of just copying what's popular. I think a lot of bread recipes are designed to make good looking bread, rather than bread that's enjoyable to eat.
Using bread flour really is one of those things that’s easy to miss but often times discourages first time bakers. The gluten makes a HUGE difference in the crumb and mouthfeel.<p>Also tip for other busy bakers like myself that don’t want to keep two types of flour stocked. Keep some vital wheat gluten in the freezer and throw in a teaspoon or two with each cup of AP flour. Instant bread flour!
This is a great recipe to start out with if you'd like to start making your own bread:<p><a href="https://artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-bread-in-five-minutes-a-day-is-launched-back-to-basics-updated/" rel="nofollow">https://artisanbreadinfive.com/2013/10/22/the-new-artisan-br...</a>
Just make this 3x a week.<p><a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread" rel="nofollow">https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/11376-no-knead-bread</a><p>Once you get it down, you can make it more fancy by adding other things.<p>Yeah, store bought breads are terrible with all the weird crap.<p>Fantastic, delicious, nutritious, satisfying, world-class bread is incredibly simple and easy to make. If your book's recipe is complex and hard to follow, throw it out. They are a poser.<p>Good bread doesn't last long though and has no shelf duration. But it doesn't have to because it will all be eaten quickly. Store bread is entirely about long term storage of something never intended to be stored more than a day. Given those constraints it is what it is.
Artisanal bread making. How it's <i>really</i> done.[1] Note how much takes place before baking.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm_iHgFsPw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qm_iHgFsPw</a>
This article reminds me of a documentary on Netflix about how we prefer to grow surpluses of lower quality wheat crops in the US that has higher yield output. I wonder if we will ever go back to quality as oppose to quantity ….
Sometimes the health food stores in town have whole wheat flat bread with just whole wheat flour, yeast, salt, water. I can imagine my distant ancestors eating it and feeling right at home with it.<p>I am supposed to watch the glycemic index of food I eat so eating a small amount of dense whole wheat flat bread works for me. I also sometimes make pizza crust from riced fresh cauliflower and avoid the wheat altogether.<p>I really like the advice given in the article about only eating what our great grandmothers would recognize as food.
Actually tried making sourdough bread at home, the taste and texture eventually became so superior that we don't want to buy bread in the store any more.<p>Sure, there are "sourdough" bread in the store, but they always add ordinary yeast to speed up the process, tastes nothing near the real thing.<p>There did open a new sourdough bakery in the city that does it correctly, however, a single loaf cost 7€.
Its all about the flour.<p>I'm Australian I recently went through south America for work and was <i>shocked</i> at the poor quality bread products in that country. It turns out their bread has a really poor gluten quality, makes a huge diff to the mouth feel and eat-ability of the bread.
By bizarre coincidence I bumped into my neighbours yesterday, they’d just arrived back from Tuxford Mill after reading the Guardian article. We live only 15 mins away.<p>I’ve been buying Tuxford Mill porridge oats from for a few years. Going to try my hand at sourdough now!
Random thought - I like to bake cakes with the kids, so I always have flour in the cupboard, but seldom yeast.<p>I've looked, but even flatbread recipes I've found seem to include yeast - is there such a thing as bread <i>without</i> yeast?
<i>Quite often, I find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe of butter, a satisfying lunch.</i><p>Who <i>are</i> these people? I would be hungry again within ten minutes. (BMI of ~19)
I wouldn't mind having good bread from time to time, but a loaf is well over 1000 calories, and it goes stale before I have time to eat that much. Frozen bread is difficult to cut, and even pre-sliced frozen bread is a pain to tear apart.<p>Somebody should make good bread that's pre-sliced into several chunks, with sheets of (e.g.) wax paper dividing them. Each loaf could also include a small resealable bag, so you always have a convenient container for the current non-frozen chunk.
> Wholegrain, sourdough bread is a very different beast; crunchy, crusty, chewy, with a complex taste that is rich, nutty and tangy. Quite often, I find a couple of thick slices, spread with a generous swathe of butter, a satisfying lunch.<p>What sanctimony! For my part, I recently discovered Trader Joe’s Canadian White bread. Such a revelation after being subjected to modern bread filling with random seeds and whatnot. Seeds are for birds!