Post by Christine on Jan 16, 2008 5:30:00 GMT -5
No knead, no worries?
A new book promises perfect bread in 5 minutes
By Diana Burrell, Globe Correspondent | January 16, 2008
Once the pastime of hippies and health zealots, home breadmaking has finally shed its granola image. Gone are the cloddy grain-dense loaves that packed plenty of roughage, but little taste and even less panache. Thanks to evangelizing professional bakers like Jim Lahey of New York's Sullivan Street Bakery, amateur bakers are pulling European-style boules out of their ovens that could be mistaken for the famous loaves from Paris's Poilâne bakery. Food writers Mark Bittman and Jeffrey Steingarten have waxed passionate over Lahey's no-knead method, which promises a thin, crispy crust, a tender crumb, and a complex, wheaty taste - no special ingredients, professional training, or round-trip ticket to France required.
Just when home bakers thought a caramel-crusted round loaf couldn't get any easier, along come Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François and their tempting book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," which promises the crispy crust and tender crumb of the no-knead method. But their method has a twist.
The pair encourage long storage in the refrigerator, not a revolutionary idea, but one that hasn't been written about; the technique develops flavor and a loaf of bread is never more than two hours away. In the Hertzberg-François system, you mix a high-moisture dough, enough for multiple loaves, and bake them within two hours or store the dough in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Like Lahey's no-knead bread, the ingredients need only a quick stir in a large bowl before resting at room temperature. The less the dough is handled, the better the results, which is why beginning bakers sometimes turn out better loaves than experienced bakers. ("They can't resist kneading," says Hertzberg. "It goes against everything they've learned.")
To use the extremely wet, slack dough, you dust it liberally with flour, then cut and shape it. On the first try, this is exceedingly difficult. The bread offers little resistance, so it's like shaping your morning oatmeal. The authors explain that the higher moisture content contributes to the desirable air pockets and "custard" crumb of perfectly baked bread.
After it is shaped, the loaf gets a 40-minute rise on a cornmeal-strewn pizza peel (or baking sheet, as I used), before it is dusted with flour, slashed, and slipped onto a hot pizza stone in a 450-degree oven. Getting the free-form loaf into the oven was also a bit tricky on first try, as the dough stuck in a few places. An even more liberal amount of cornmeal under subsequent breads solved the problem. To help caramelize and crisp the crust, you toss a cup of hot tap water into a hot broiler pan to create a steamy environment.
The remaining dough stays in the refrigerator for two weeks and can be shaped into baguettes, batards, even wheat-shaped epis (impossible with Lahey's method, which requires a covered Dutch oven). Each loaf of bread I baked tasted better than the last, with a pleasant tang, a more nuanced wheaty flavor.
Both Minneapolis residents, Hertzberg, a former physician in general internal medicine, and François, a pastry chef, baker, and transplanted New Englander, say the reception to their method has been phenomenal. "The Web has been an equalizer for authors like us," says Hertzberg on the phone. "We're talking to people all around the world through our blog." Their cookbook, released in November, ranks in the top 10 best-selling cookbooks at amazon.com (it's No. 1 among baking books).
Not everyone is convinced Hertzberg and François's process works. Food critic and author Steingarten remains unswayed in his devotion to his no-knead, cloche-baked boule, which he wrote about at length in the May 2007 issue of Vogue. But he was tempted by "Artisan Bread" when he read a recipe in the New York Times. "Naturally, I tried it immediately," Steingarten says on the phone from New York. He followed the directions precisely and ended up with a boule he deemed "on the edge of worthless." He pauses, then adds, "I'm not going to use the word 'fraud.' "
Steingarten recited a litany of problems: a thick, impermeable crust, almost no taste in the middle, and tiny and significant holes instead of large, irregularly shaped air pockets. He also took issue with the amount of yeast the recipe called for ("double what the maximum should be," he says), and questioned the hot-water-in-the-broiler-pan method to generate steam. "It's ridiculous. My oven is old and doesn't have a tight seal. Also ovens have vents," he says. "All that steam goes away in a second." And of the revolutionary storage time, Steingarten declares, "The idea of storing your dough in the refrigerator is not stem cell research. It's convenient if you want to make a pizza, for example. You can even freeze dough." He's never heard of storing dough for up to two weeks, but thinks such long-term storage would create excessive fermentation, leading to an unpleasant, sour taste.
Hertzberg, now a healthcare consultant in private practice, began baking his own bread out of necessity. "There was no good bread when I moved to Minneapolis [from New York] in 1987," he says. His wife, an accomplished bread baker, taught him the basics. He read everything on the subject, but because he was working long hours, baking time was limited. While experimenting, he discovered the long storage method, which he'd not seen in bread books.
He kept the idea a secret, but one day dialed "The Splendid Table" radio show in Minneapolis and told interviewer Lynne Rosetto Kasper that he wanted to get a new bread-baking strategy into print. An editor at St. Martin's was listening and that began the process of writing a book. "I basically had seven words written on a piece of paper, stuffed in a drawer," says Hertzberg.
He and François met as parents of toddlers. François, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, happened to have a son in the same music class as Hertzberg's daughter. "I've studied with some of the best bread bakers in the world," says François, "and I'd never seen this." She tested the recipe, and in her words, "I was jumping up and down, hysterical about this. Anyone could bake this bread," including her mother in Vermont who, she says, "to be kind, is a terrible baker." Her mother called to say she'd just pulled the most gorgeous loaf of bread out of her oven.
They asked others to bake bread, just to confirm he and François weren't, as Hertzberg says, "Drinking the same crazy Kool-Aid." Novices and seasoned pros got the same results. Their book was in production when the New York no-knead bread stories came out. Hertzberg admits he worried about timing. Had they missed the wave?
"Jim Lahey is an amazing baker," says François. "[These stories] got this incredible buzz going about baking and got people back into the kitchen. In the end, it was a great thing for us.
To log onto Hertzberg and François's blog, go to artisanbreadin5.com.
A new book promises perfect bread in 5 minutes
By Diana Burrell, Globe Correspondent | January 16, 2008
Once the pastime of hippies and health zealots, home breadmaking has finally shed its granola image. Gone are the cloddy grain-dense loaves that packed plenty of roughage, but little taste and even less panache. Thanks to evangelizing professional bakers like Jim Lahey of New York's Sullivan Street Bakery, amateur bakers are pulling European-style boules out of their ovens that could be mistaken for the famous loaves from Paris's Poilâne bakery. Food writers Mark Bittman and Jeffrey Steingarten have waxed passionate over Lahey's no-knead method, which promises a thin, crispy crust, a tender crumb, and a complex, wheaty taste - no special ingredients, professional training, or round-trip ticket to France required.
Just when home bakers thought a caramel-crusted round loaf couldn't get any easier, along come Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François and their tempting book, "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day," which promises the crispy crust and tender crumb of the no-knead method. But their method has a twist.
The pair encourage long storage in the refrigerator, not a revolutionary idea, but one that hasn't been written about; the technique develops flavor and a loaf of bread is never more than two hours away. In the Hertzberg-François system, you mix a high-moisture dough, enough for multiple loaves, and bake them within two hours or store the dough in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. Like Lahey's no-knead bread, the ingredients need only a quick stir in a large bowl before resting at room temperature. The less the dough is handled, the better the results, which is why beginning bakers sometimes turn out better loaves than experienced bakers. ("They can't resist kneading," says Hertzberg. "It goes against everything they've learned.")
To use the extremely wet, slack dough, you dust it liberally with flour, then cut and shape it. On the first try, this is exceedingly difficult. The bread offers little resistance, so it's like shaping your morning oatmeal. The authors explain that the higher moisture content contributes to the desirable air pockets and "custard" crumb of perfectly baked bread.
After it is shaped, the loaf gets a 40-minute rise on a cornmeal-strewn pizza peel (or baking sheet, as I used), before it is dusted with flour, slashed, and slipped onto a hot pizza stone in a 450-degree oven. Getting the free-form loaf into the oven was also a bit tricky on first try, as the dough stuck in a few places. An even more liberal amount of cornmeal under subsequent breads solved the problem. To help caramelize and crisp the crust, you toss a cup of hot tap water into a hot broiler pan to create a steamy environment.
The remaining dough stays in the refrigerator for two weeks and can be shaped into baguettes, batards, even wheat-shaped epis (impossible with Lahey's method, which requires a covered Dutch oven). Each loaf of bread I baked tasted better than the last, with a pleasant tang, a more nuanced wheaty flavor.
Both Minneapolis residents, Hertzberg, a former physician in general internal medicine, and François, a pastry chef, baker, and transplanted New Englander, say the reception to their method has been phenomenal. "The Web has been an equalizer for authors like us," says Hertzberg on the phone. "We're talking to people all around the world through our blog." Their cookbook, released in November, ranks in the top 10 best-selling cookbooks at amazon.com (it's No. 1 among baking books).
Not everyone is convinced Hertzberg and François's process works. Food critic and author Steingarten remains unswayed in his devotion to his no-knead, cloche-baked boule, which he wrote about at length in the May 2007 issue of Vogue. But he was tempted by "Artisan Bread" when he read a recipe in the New York Times. "Naturally, I tried it immediately," Steingarten says on the phone from New York. He followed the directions precisely and ended up with a boule he deemed "on the edge of worthless." He pauses, then adds, "I'm not going to use the word 'fraud.' "
Steingarten recited a litany of problems: a thick, impermeable crust, almost no taste in the middle, and tiny and significant holes instead of large, irregularly shaped air pockets. He also took issue with the amount of yeast the recipe called for ("double what the maximum should be," he says), and questioned the hot-water-in-the-broiler-pan method to generate steam. "It's ridiculous. My oven is old and doesn't have a tight seal. Also ovens have vents," he says. "All that steam goes away in a second." And of the revolutionary storage time, Steingarten declares, "The idea of storing your dough in the refrigerator is not stem cell research. It's convenient if you want to make a pizza, for example. You can even freeze dough." He's never heard of storing dough for up to two weeks, but thinks such long-term storage would create excessive fermentation, leading to an unpleasant, sour taste.
Hertzberg, now a healthcare consultant in private practice, began baking his own bread out of necessity. "There was no good bread when I moved to Minneapolis [from New York] in 1987," he says. His wife, an accomplished bread baker, taught him the basics. He read everything on the subject, but because he was working long hours, baking time was limited. While experimenting, he discovered the long storage method, which he'd not seen in bread books.
He kept the idea a secret, but one day dialed "The Splendid Table" radio show in Minneapolis and told interviewer Lynne Rosetto Kasper that he wanted to get a new bread-baking strategy into print. An editor at St. Martin's was listening and that began the process of writing a book. "I basically had seven words written on a piece of paper, stuffed in a drawer," says Hertzberg.
He and François met as parents of toddlers. François, a Culinary Institute of America graduate, happened to have a son in the same music class as Hertzberg's daughter. "I've studied with some of the best bread bakers in the world," says François, "and I'd never seen this." She tested the recipe, and in her words, "I was jumping up and down, hysterical about this. Anyone could bake this bread," including her mother in Vermont who, she says, "to be kind, is a terrible baker." Her mother called to say she'd just pulled the most gorgeous loaf of bread out of her oven.
They asked others to bake bread, just to confirm he and François weren't, as Hertzberg says, "Drinking the same crazy Kool-Aid." Novices and seasoned pros got the same results. Their book was in production when the New York no-knead bread stories came out. Hertzberg admits he worried about timing. Had they missed the wave?
"Jim Lahey is an amazing baker," says François. "[These stories] got this incredible buzz going about baking and got people back into the kitchen. In the end, it was a great thing for us.
To log onto Hertzberg and François's blog, go to artisanbreadin5.com.
