Quick update first: I finished Kavalier & Clay today and hope to post a writeup before Thursday’s Klawchat, which will be at 1 pm. Also, my ranking of the top 100 prospects is tentatively scheduled to go up on January 22nd.
I got two bread-baking books by Peter Reinhart for Christmas: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
I’ve made two recipes so far from the whole grains book: pizza dough and hearth bread, both with 100% whole wheat flour. The recipes worked as advertised, which, for bread recipes, is in and of itself remarkable. Pizza dough has long been a culinary bugbear of mine, as a pizza dough that can be stretched to authentic Italian paper-thin proportions must have excellent gluten development to avoid tearing during the stretching and shaping process. I’ve tried many recipes – including two stalwart sources, Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown – and none has worked; in fact, Reinhart argues that using table sugar in bread doughs is a waste of time, because it’s too complex for yeast to eat, which explains why Brown’s pizza dough (which includes 2 Tbsp sugar) doesn’t rise well and ends up very sweet. So for the last two or three years, I’ve bought white-flour doughs at Trader Joes and Whole Foods; I’ve tried Trader Joes’ whole-wheat dough, but it really lacks gluten and tears too easily to stretch it.
Reinhart’s whole wheat pizza doughs rolled thin enough that I could see light through them and they were almost cracker-like after baking, which is a very Italian-style pizza crust. (I do like New York-style pizza, where the dough is thicker and has a little more tooth, but Italian pizza is my favorite.) If that isn’t enough to sell you, consider this: Reinhart’s “delayed fermentation” method, which he uses for all of his breads, requires less kneading than any other bread recipes I’ve seen by relying on time, refrigeration, and the power of water to break down the starches and sugars in flour to give the dough strength and flavor.
The Apprentice book focuses on bread-making basics, with an emphasis on method and formula rather than just recipes. Reinhart discusses the twelve stages of bread-making; necessary (and unnecessary) equipment; and the science of bread, with explanations of the different types of yeast, flour, sweeteners, and so on. (The whole-grains book goes into more detail on the differences among ingredients.) He also walks you through creation of a wild-yeast starter and through the basic steps to create sponge starters like bigas and poolishes, on which he builds most of the breads in the two books.
The books include just about every yeast bread I could want to bake, including hearth breads, sandwich breads, rye breads, challah, brioche, bagels, English muffin, and baguettes, as well as several international breads with which I was unfamiliar. He also includes a few crackers, including graham crackers and seeded whole-wheat crackers, and corn bread, which is chemically leavened. Together, they form a reference work that gives a real education in the art and science of baking great bread. If you don’t care about whole-grain baking (it’s not just 100% whole wheat, but multigrain breads including all sorts of grains in flour and kernel forms), just get Apprentice, but I recommend both if you want to add more whole grains to your diet.
I’m curious if you’ve ever read The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It’s also loaded with science-y stuff, and all the recipes are listed with weight measurements as well as volume and percentage measurements. She has a pizza dough recipe that results in a dough that’s so loose and stretchable that it’s practically a fluid.
My girlfriend and I recently (circa Thanksgiving) switched over to Reinhart’s pizza dough recipe for our once a week pizza night. I have to agree with you that it is fantastic and so much better than any other recipe we have tried. We have been making pizza once a week for about 18 months or so and this is by far the best dough we have found. While we have found other recipes that we liked, only Reinhart’s seems to give us that true sense of eating “real pizza.”
Anyone have any thoughts on Bread Machines? I have an 18 month old who seems to only eat peanut butter sandwiches these days. That’s a lot of bread. I love cooking but I’m not much of a baker. I have been getting mixed opinions from people I ask. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Also, Keith I would love to know what goes into your sauce?
Given the formulaic approach in Apprentice, would you recommend that for a beginner?
I have been considering to buy whole grain bread book for a while(most exclusively for the whole grain pizza dough), so this is great help. I just wonder the level of difficulty in this one: how is it?
I got The Bread Baker’s Apprentice for Christmas too. I’ve been reading through it, but haven’t had a chance to attempt any bread yet.
Have you tried to make a wild yeast starter yet? If so, how did it turn out?
I’m very curious to know what kind of oven or pizza stone you are using for your pizzas (or breads for that matter). I like to make my own bread but I find myself somewhat limited by the temperature of my oven. It seems that to get a good crust you need high temperatures that I am unable to produce in my standard oven. I haven’t really attempted pizza because it doesn’t seem to come out as well at relatively low temperatures. I’ve considered purchasing a pizza stone but I don’t know if it is worth it when I just order a really good pizza nearby. If you have any recommendations short of buying a new oven, I’d like to hear them.
Also, is the “delayed fermentation” style rising similar to the method described in this NYT article for no-knead bread?
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html
Rob: I have not, although Amazon now recommends it to me
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J: I don’t own a bread machine.
Sutton: Yes, I would. It might be a little intimidating, but I don’t think the book assumes any prior knowledge. Reinhart wrote this for non-experts; he has other books aimed at experienced and professional bread bakers.
Chris: I haven’t tried the wild-yeast starter yet.
CT Mike: I have eight unglazed quarry tiles in two layers on the bottom of my (gas) oven, and then a square pizza stone that happens to fit perfectly over that stack. At 500 degrees, pizzas come out perfect – crisp bottom, fully cooked top – in about six minutes. The key is to preheat the oven a minimum of 30 minutes at 500 degrees before cooking anything, so that the stone is heated through.
The “delayed fermentation” method is a little more involved than that recipe. Most of Reinhart’s recipes involve three stages rather than just one.
Another question for you: Do you use the basic ingredient tables in the recipes or the baker’s percentages?
I’m more inclined to use the ingredient tables out of habit, and it seems like the percentages are much more geared for scaling/larger batches.
I’ve had good luck with Wolfgang Puck’s pizza dough recipe. Note that he uses honey, not sugar.
http://www.wolfgangpuck.com/recipedetail.php?Alias=RE_WP0096
The Bread Bible is a fantastic read, and the by-weight recipe measurements lead to much more consistent results than those listed by volume. I suspect the same would be true of ingredients listed by percentage (as long as they are percentages by weight).
Beranbaum also recommends pre-baking her pizza crust for 5-7 minutes. I’ve used this technique using the dough balls from Whole Foods with great success.
Rob,
The baker’s percentages are based on the proportion of other ingredients in proportion to the amount of flour used in the recipe.
For instance, if a recipe called for:
15 oz. – flour,
10 oz. – water,
1 oz. – yeast, and
1/8 oz. – salt,
the percentage formula would look like this:
Flour – 100%
Water – 66%
Yeast – 7%
Salt – .8%
Again, it seems like the percentage formula would be the best way to go if you plan on scaling a recipe up or down as the calculations would seem easier.
If you would, post a link to your chat. I’m having trouble finding the chat content on the new ESPN page…
why not just buy the pizza dough from your favorite local pizzaria?
Chris – No doubt that percentages work well for scaling a recipe, but if the percentages are based on volumes instead of weights, scaling is still problematic.
It’s unlikely that any recipe would call for 15 fluid oz of flour, but were that 16 oz instead, I’d want to make sure that the recipe intended that to be a pound and not a pint.
Reinhart’s recipes are all based on weight. He emphasizes a good kitchen scale as one of the critical tools for baking. And I’d add that a scale that does metric and English measurements is essential.
Rob,
The percentages are based on weight. Volume measurement can be tricky for home bakers, since flour can compact causing 1 cup of flour by volume to vary by weight by a sizable amount.
The same issue applied at the scale used in professional bakeries could ruin a batch of baked good. I worked in a bakery for a time, and everything was measured by weight. The exception was this powdered flavor enhancer they added to blueberry muffins, which was added by a (small) scoop per batch of batter.
I’m surprised that Reinhart suggests that table sugar is too complex for yeast to ferment properly. From what I’ve read about brewing beer, sucrose is 100% fermentable and contributes all of its weight into alcohol and CO2.
Rob: He’s not saying that sucrose isn’t fermentable, but that baker’s yeast can’t break it down (or maybe they can’t break it down fast enough?). Given the amount of time that beer takes to brew, perhaps the sucrose is broken down by other enzymes that don’t have a chance to work their magic in the 24 hours used to make bread.
I found these class notes, with the lines: “In this lab, you will demonstrate the production of the enzyme invertase (sucrase) by yeast. The enzyme invertase catalyzes the hydrolysis of the disaccharide sucrose to invert sugar. Invert sugar is a mixture of glucose and fructose, which are both monosaccharides. Yeast cannot directly metabolize (ferment) sucrose. For the yeast to utilize sucrose as an energy source, it must first convert it to the fermentable monosaccharides glucose and fructose.”
That certainly makes sense.
In fact, now I’m going back over this, I see that you’re right. In A Textbook of Brewing, Jean de Clerck writes that “sucrose is not directly fermentable by yeast, and must first be inverted to glucose and fructose by the enzyme invertase which is secreted by the yeast” (A Textbook of Brewing, 1957). And in Principles of Brewing Science, George Fix also writes that “in the fermentation, [sucrose] is rapidly ‘inverted’ into glucose and fructose units” (Principles of Brewing Science, 1999).
I’ve just made two loaves from Peter Reinhart’s book so far: the multigrain hearth loaf and the cinnamon raisin bread. Neither rose well and developed the kind of structure they should have. i was meticulous in following the recipes/formulas though i’m afraid i didn’t develop the gluten well enough. i certainly kneaded them longer than PR’s instructions but the windowpane test was a bit of a stretch for me (pun intended!). any recommendations.
Katherine: Hm, good question. Was the multigrain loaf the struan? I’ve made that successfully although it was always a little dense.
What kind of whole wheat flour did you use? I’ve had to use a little more water than PR’s recipes indicate because the flour I use is quite coarse.
I’ve definitely found that the gluten development comes as much or more from the soaker as it does from kneading. How long did you let the soaker soak? Was the water at room temperature?
I’m just thinking of potential problems.
Peter Reinhart has a excellent video class on Craftsy.com that goes through his recipes step by step. Reinhart is a fantastic speaker and presenter, and the breads I’ve made based on it are amazing. That one costs some money (worth it for me), but there’s also a free mini-class on pizza making that includes his crust recipe