Yeast Masters - One year into the pandemic

A year ago the world changed. And as part of that a lot of homemade bread began to be baked. That happened in my kitchen as well. By the end of last April I had enough experience of that to write about it. Here are my thoughts now one year later.

I am still making bread. In fact I am every bit as enthusiastic about it as I had been then. I think this is partly due to the fact that this really is almost no work the way I do it. And I have enough variety in the bread I make that it never gets tired and old.

So here are some tips, for anyone that read the post from last April and wonders how this is still going. If you haven’t read that post you might want to go there first since it shows just how easy bread making can be and all the mystery and supposed difficulties are just a lot of hooey. See Baking Bread in a Pandemic.

A lot of my cousins and some friends have been sharing our periodic bread output and suggestions on a text chat thread, which we have named “Yeast Masters”. We post photos of our latest loaves and share tips and tricks. I attribute a lot of my own continued bread baking enthusiasm to being able to share with this group. So tip number one, find a small group to share with. And a big thanks to all of my fellow Yeast Masters.

But in my own kitchen, a number of things are now different in my process, though in the main it is pretty much as I described before.  I still make almost all my loaves in a Pullman pan (it has a lid) not a freestanding boule for instance. I find this both takes so much less work but it also allows for a wetter dough which has some advantages. And I just like it that way as well. The results are more predictable, and so foolproof. I am into eating this stuff, not hanging up on the wall a painting of it.

I still make up a dough in the evening for an over night first rise of about 12 hours. It takes me all of 5 minutes or less to do this. No kneading needed. Twelve or so hours later, I don’t bother to time it, I still put the dough in the loaf pan in the morning when I feed the dogs. This takes even less time. I race the dogs, they eat voraciously and I stir the dough a few times and drop it into the pan. I usually beat them, and they eat fast. 

By mid morning I have a warm fragrant loaf coming out of the oven in time for lunch. That loaf lasts for that afternoon and into the next midday. So I make a loaf every other day. These loaves are about a pound each. My daily consumption of flour is 100 grams a day.

But what has changed.

My basic dough is still 200 g of four (usually AP but sometimes a little bread flour added in), ¼ tsp each of salt and yeast, and somewhere around 160 to 180 g of filtered water. That is actually a lot, but I will explain why.

Typically I also add in one or two large dollops of sourdough starter (and reduce the yeast a bit when I do). I will vary the amount of starter depending on whether I want a strong sourdough taste or not, gives me that option. 

Plus I usually now add a large spoonful of wheat germ. I find this adds a lot of wheat flavor, increases the nutritional value and also makes the second rise more predicable. (More food for the yeast but food that takes longer for them to digest.)

My sourdough starter still lives in the fridge, I feed it about once a week. That isn’t a rigorous exercise. When my jar is pretty much done but there are scrapings on the side still, I just add some flour and water in equal measures, by weight, and set it on the counter for a day. The little bit of starter stuck to the sides of the jar will be enough to get it going. After a day it is bubbling again and I put it back into the fridge. Not a lot of stress or fussing over that. I do all of that when the flour is out anyway so it isn’t much work.

I have also discovered sourdough pancakes and really until you try these you don’t know how much flavor pancakes are supposed to have. Everything else is a faint echo of the real thing. Check out King Arthur online for their recipe, it is so easy I just throw them together now without bothering to check. Only the way I do it is to just make up a cup or two of starter and leave out on the counter overnight, that is my pancake batter, add the eggs and other stuff to that in the morning. Fantastic; add blueberries of course.

Two main things in my bread are now different. I have begun to add a lot of things so that I can make up about 4 or 5 different breads, which I loosely rotate through. Because these are added the night before, they have plenty of time to hydrate in the dough on their own so you just add them raw. No presoaking or roasting needed. 

I’ve added sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, fennel and caraway seeds, and different types of quinoa. Sometimes I add some of these, and sometimes all of them. When doing a lot of seeds in a loaf I have a bag of 6 seeds mixture, which will probably last me a full year. I’ve added stone ground grits and steel cut oats as well. Sometimes I add a spoonful of semolina flour to give it a little different flavor and texture. Often I put some butter and sea salt on top right before going into the oven, and sometimes some olive oil. I have put in garlic and rosemary. And when my herb garden is going, pretty much everything out there ends up in a loaf eventually. Nothing quite beats fresh chives (with their pink blossoms as well) in a loaf of bread. My basic unit of measurement for all of this is just a large soupspoon, I fill up a spoonful and add whatever is going in that day. Nothing needs more precision than that. And any of this adds maybe half a minute to the preparation time, if that.

I don’t plan any of this ahead; I just do what feels like what I want for the next day. But as I rotate through all these varieties, I always come back to the simple plain loaf on a regular basis to stay grounded. Not only does that return my palate to the basics but also it ensures that my basic practice stays within what works. And it almost always is the case that those days, with the old tried and true basic loaf, are the best anyway.

I like to put in whole grains and seeds rather than crushed and milled whole grain flour, because I don’t want the fibers and bran to mess up the gluten and the expansion of the bread. But I get the fibers anyway in the whole grains or seeds. Along with all the good fats and the good proteins in them as well. And I also know a whole grain or seed is going to be fresher than one that has been milled and put into a bag for a while. Most “whole grain” flours have been milled with the parts separated and then they put them all back together again when put in the bag for sale. Even whole wheat flour is probably a lot of processed stuff. I don’t use them milled in the first place and I think that has to be better. 

My basic recipe makes all of this just fine. When I add more grains or seeds I just up the water amount a bit, I don’t even measure it anymore. I just want an easy to work and glistening dough the night I make it up. That will provide all the moisture needed to hydrate the additions overnight. Also a wet dough aids in gluten formation.

And the basic recipe will provide many other options, such as foccacia. Just put the dough into a flat pan after the first rise, drizzle some olive oil on top with some garlic, herbs, peppers or whatever you want. After the second rise put in oven (@450) to bake, but only for about 10 or 12 minutes. Wonderfull stuff.

Foccacia with parmesean, red pepper, chives and rosemary

A trick I have incorporated in my process has made a large difference in predictability. I haven’t seen this recommended anywhere else but I do it every day now. My wetter than average dough (sometime reaching up to 90% of the amount of flour) not only gives all the seeds some water to soak up, but it allows for this trick. 

In the morning before I put the then 12 hour old dough into my loaf pan, I first add a good heaping spoon full of more flour. I usually use “00” flour for this because that is very fine, but when I have used AP it works as well. A heaping spoonful amounts to about 10% of the flour that is in my dough overall. I then vigorously stir that new bit of flour into my wet dough. And then plop it all into my Pullman pan. 

The addition of a new bit of flour in the morning brings my overly wet dough down to a hydration level that is more appropriate. And adding this burst of new food for the yeast to feed on ensures that they still will be active. Often, it can happen that the yeast will have almost fully eaten and so depleted their food overnight, which means they wont be active in the second rise. By adding this new food for them, I have never once had a bad second rise. And the amount of new flour added is not enough to dilute the great fermented bread taste and aroma from the long rise dough. My second rises might be 3 or 4 hours long, but they always come through. (I feed the dogs around 6 or 7 am and I am making bread by around 10 or 11 am).

As I say, I have not yet read about doing this second feed anywhere else. But I swear by it now. I don’t want a failed second rise and with this easy technique I never have one. And I still sometimes beat the dogs in the race between them eating breakfast and me preparing my dough for the second rise. It is almost no additional work at all.

Now, how has eating bread been for my diet and health? Well, I have experienced the Covid 40. Meaning my weight has changed by a little more than 40 pounds since a year ago and is still trending in the same direction. It has gone down. Not up. I attribute this to a few things, but more than any I think has been the fact that as I make and enjoy my own food, including its most basic part, the bread, I eat far better and also consume overall far less. I don’t put crap on a fine slice of bread, I put on it good things. Like prosciutto, pesto or real cheese. 100 g of flour a day is not a big deal as long as you are not also still eating a lot of candy or pasta or other carb dense things. 100 g of flour is 350 calories. The rest of my daily calories come mostly from something other than carbs. That is a healthy mix.

A typical main meal at lunch

I think you will gain weight while making and eating your own bread if you still eat everything else you usually did before. For me, making my own bread changed what I eat overall, and how much of it as well. This stuff fills you up, and the good things eaten with it make that full feeling last. Homemade bread is real food, stick to real food. If you only eat food that you actually make, you will probably not overeat.

So my bread, in all its varieties, constitutes the main source of carbs for me. If I do eat some rice or potatoes or pasta, then that is a day I won’t make up a loaf of bread. And generally I wish I had eaten my bread instead. But I do make up these other things for the variety. But when I do, I find usually that I end up eating more overall. My bread does a better job at keeping other calorie dense things out of my stomach.

Making your own bread will not only give you better tasting meals, I think it can be part of eating a lot less and much more healthily as well. I eat now only a couple of times a day, I don’t get hungry in the interim and when I do eat, I savor it.

That is a winning combination.

 Copyright © 2021 D Abbott