Word: bread
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Patience is clearly a key ingredient in almost any artisanal bread. Recipes, which can run to five or six pages, provide exacting instructions on how to measure and mix the flours, water and yeast; how much to knead or mix by machine; how to create the right conditions to let the yeast work its fermentation magic (there are often two or three risings); and how to hand-sculpt the final product to help achieve the perfect crust and right mix of small and large holes in the interior...
...there are plenty of smart shortcuts for the time-pressed breadmaker, says Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Bread Bible (Norton, 640 pages) and the host of a new public-television program on baking. Artisanal breads "don't need to be made all in one go," she says. "A lot of people don't realize that bread is actually better if the dough is allowed to sit overnight in the refrigerator and then baked when you come home, or the following day." Beranbaum recommends using a scale for measurement by weight rather than volume, which, she says, will ensure...
While making artisanal breads demands a high degree of precision--especially for novices--one of the joys of making these loaves, as opposed to the uniform rectangles churned out by bread machines, is personalizing them to one's preferences. "You get to this point when you realize you can relax and allow instinct, intuition and empirical experience to play a bigger role in your efforts," says Jeffrey Hamelman, director of the Baking Education Center at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vt., and author of A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes (Wiley; 432 pages). "If we look at breads...
...Wiggin, 48, an attorney from Columbus, Ohio, who's been baking artisanal bread for almost a year, has already reworked a sourdough recipe to match his tastes. "I like my sourdough fairly strong and chewy, with a fairly sour acidic taste, so I add wheat gluten to the flour," says Wiggin, who bakes about once a week. It takes him two days to prepare the dough, but the payoff, he says, is a sense of exultation when the bread comes out of the oven...
Daniel Leader, owner of Bread Alone bakery in Boiceville, N.Y., sees this response in his students at the Institute of Culinary Education, in New York City. "I get a lot of men--doctors and professionals--who use artisanal baking as way of relaxing and doing simple, satisfying work." There's pleasure in "touching the dough, doing something real...