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.

I've recently discovered some things about this bread baking process – and myself. I noticed the similarity of ingredients in some of the recipes in the artisan bread book with some of the classic recipes I've used over the years. I started using the ingredients of my old bread recipes, incorporating the easy, time saving techniques of the five minutes a day technique. I found that the finished products in each case are as good in texture as the original, kneaded recipes. I've made my favorite braided sweet bread recipe with nothing more than a good stirring with a heavy wooden spoon and a two hour rise in a large covered bowl. A night in the refrigerator, and the dough was ready to be shaped, given a secondary rising and then baked. It came out perfectly, as good as the original recipe. And I discovered I didn't miss the kneading, which surprised me. I think I've mellowed over the years, growing into a relaxed empty-nester, no longer worried about the condition of the arteries of Child One and the glycemic index of Child Two. I don't need the kneading process for my psyche much anymore, though, adding the last bit of flour to the liquid in the bowl, I do find myself getting rather energetic with the big wooden spoon...

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”

― James Beard