No
Longer Kneady
Child
One was a carnivore. We considered her an exceptionally picky eater,
refusing all cereals and vegetables. She would willingly consume
large quantities of any red meat, preferably steak and prime rib.
Child Two was a carbivore. He would eat a wide variety of foods as
long as they fell into the carbohydrate food group, preferably some
form of bread. White bread, whole wheat, French toast, pancakes,
biscuits, muffins and anything that fell into the cake category was
willingly consumed. A single fast food hamburger, appropriately
divided, would happily feed both Child One and Child Two, she getting
the meat, he eating the bun.
Perhaps
out of guilt for not raising my own grass-fed beef for Child One, I
taught myself how to bake bread for Child Two. It seemed more
doable. For several years, I baked all our bread, hoping to make it
as nutritious as possible. I used wheat flours, added wheat germ,
honey, bran, even found a recipe for tofu bread. Eventually, Child
One learned to eat cheese, chicken, fruit and an occasional piece of
Mom's bread, slathered in honey. Child Two spent some tough
childhood years crying over his plate whenever I served chicken, but
as a teenager he developed a taste for red meat to supplement his
ever-growing carb intake. (Child Three, fortunately for us, would
eat anything.)
I
enjoyed my intensive bread baking years. I read books, copied
recipes, tried all sorts of techniques to make bread baking more
efficient. One of the peripheral joys of bread preparation was the
somewhat time-consuming but emotionally satisfying task of kneading
the dough. Bread-making machines were new to the market at the time,
but I resisted getting one. I couldn't imagine making bread without
the tactile component of kneading. Leading the typical hectic life
of a young mom with three small kids, I found that kneading dough
allowed me to work out a lot of my frustrations on the counter top.
Squeezing and stretching the dough, slamming it down repeatedly in
the name of gluten development was definitely stress-reducing. The
longer I kneaded the dough, the better I felt, and the better the
texture of the bread.
I
still bake bread occasionally (a lot more than occasionally, if I
count homemade pizza dough as bread). I make rolls for holiday
dinners, baguettes or breadsticks for winter soups, an occasional pan
of sticky buns for a weekend breakfast, and a braided sweet bread for
a random treat. Child One gave me a bread cookbook a few years back.
(Ironic...) It's a great book – Artisan
Bread in Five Minutes a Day
by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë
François. It taught me to make a dough I keep in the refrigerator, baking
it as needed. The basic recipe is simple, the technique even simpler.
The water, yeast and salt are put in a bowl and the flour is added,
using a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients into a soft, sticky
dough. No kneading is necessary. A two hour rise at room
temperature, and then the bowl of sticky, risen dough goes in the
refrigerator for two hours or up to two weeks. Each full recipe of
dough will make about four round loaves, four baguettes of bread or
multiple small pizzas, to be baked individually whenever I have a
hankering for fresh bread.
“Good
bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good
bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”
―
James Beard
