Hands In The Dough

When I first started baking bread at a young age 50 years or so ago, I found a recipe in my mother’s well used cookbook. I didn’t know much about bread except from tasting it from the local bakery in my small hometown in Belgium. The loaves my family purchased there were crusty and chewy, full of flavor and texture. Those breads were all I knew. When I made my first loaf, it didn’t have those same properties. It was softer and less flavorful. It was once I came to Goshen that I really started doing research about those breads I had left behind.

For one of my teen birthdays, my sister-in-law gave me a folder with photocopies of recipes from The Complete Book of Breads by Bernard Clayton. That was enough to get me started on a deep research path that continues to this day. I started perusing the shelves of the Public Library and checking out all the cookbooks that pertained to bread and baking in any way. Using the intuition I received from my mother, I could look at a recipe and tell if it would turn out well or not. That’s how I found a delicious recipe for a cinnamon swirl sweet bread, and an oatmeal sesame round boule.

I ended up buying Clayton’s book and another one he wrote, The Breads of France. The more I delved into bread and bread baking, the more I knew what I didn’t know. I was now trying to find the recipe to make the perfect loaf. One day, Carol Field’s book, The Italian Baker, popped out at me from the library shelves. This introduced me to starters, also called biga in Italian or poolish in French. In that cookbook, I found a recipe for a lovely round Italian bread. Light, floury, chewy, and full of flavor, it took me back to the bread of my childhood. I made it a few times and it soon became part of my repertoire, baked weekly for years and years. I loved the routine of making the sponge the night before, finishing the bread off the next morning, and then baking it in a very hot oven where it would spring. I could hardly wait for it to come out of the high heat and start cooling. That’s when the magic would always happen. As it cooled, I could hear the crust crackling and popping, and watch the fine lines created as the bread settled into itself. I’d often tell those working around me, “Stop. Listen. It’s happening.”

Now that I’m back home, I finally got the urge to bake that bread again. Unfortunately, I no longer have the recipe. I searched the Internet and found a recipe that looked familiar and I let my muscle memory and experience carry me through the rest of it. Once again, I made the sponge and let it sleep overnight. When I lifted the plastic wrap off of the bowl in the morning, it smelled exactly right. I finished off the dough and let it rise, smooth and soft as a baby’s bottom. I shaped it, placed it in baskets and let it rise again. Then the fun part: I turned the unbaked loaves onto pans sprinkled with cornmeal and poked each one with my fingers. Into the hot oven they go. And the last piece of the puzzle, that amazing crackling sound when the bread cools. I also discovered that our library still carries the book, so I checked it out and found the familiar recipe, its pages stuck together a little with dough.

In my early days as a baker, a woman came into my shop and wondered about the fingerprints on the bread. I told her I poked each loaf with my fingers as part of the process. “I want a loaf that hasn’t been touched by fingers.”, she said. I explained that all of my loaves were touched by my hands since I made them. She thanked me, left the shop and never came back.

In my years of research, I’ve discovered that hands on bread is the best bread. As a baker, I know by feeling it with my hands if it will be good. I use all my senses to decide what breads are keepers. As I continue my research at home, I hope I will always have my hands in the dough.

PANE PUGLIESE

Biga (starter):

1 1/4 c. warm water

1/4 t. yeast

2 1/3 c. white flour

The night before, in a large ceramic bowl, mix the yeast into the water. Let it bubble. Then add in the flour with your hands until just mixed. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit overnight.

Dough:

1 2/3 c. warm water

1 1/2 t. yeast

2 1/4 t. salt

6 c. flour

The next day, add the water to the biga. Using your hands, break the biga up well into a white slurry-like batter. Add 2 c. flour and stir well. Add the salt and mix again. Add remaining flour 1 c. at a time ( you might not need all the flour) until the dough comes together. It will still be somewhat sticky. Turn it out onto a well floured counter. Slowly knead it adding only as much flour as needed to make it into a smooth, soft dough. Place in a greased bowl. Cover with a damp towel and let rise for 3 hours until it has doubled in volume and is light.

Turn the dough out onto a lighty floured counter. Gently round it. Cut it into three and gently shape each section into a ball. Place each loaf bottom side up in a basket lined with a floured towel. Let rise, covered with a damp towel, for at least an hour, until doubled.

Preheat oven to 450°. Sprinkle cornmeal on two baking pans. Turn each loaf out onto the cornmeal and poke it with your fingers. Let rest ten minutes and then place in the hot oven. Bake until brown and crusty, about 45 minutes, turning the pans halfway through the bake. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack and listen to the crackling. Enjoy!