Except for monkeying around with my bread machine, which hardly counts, I've never been a yeast bread baker. The mess, the stickiness, the general tar baby experience of it. And did I mention the stickiness?
I have issues with stickiness. By the time I work enough flour into the dough so that I can stand to work with it, I end up with bread that has all the flavor and appeal of particle board.
I've just accepted that I'll never be a bread baker, just like I'll never be able to make omelettes or over easy fried eggs (no matter what I try, I always end up with scrambled eggs). Then I heard about no-knead bread recipes, but I didn't look into them because I do have a bread machine, after all, to do the kneading.
Then ozarque mentioned how she was trying this "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" thingy and it was turning out wonderfully.
Then I was listening to The Splendid Table podcast, while sitting on the train (Is it masochistic to trap oneself in a smelly old train with no dining options beyond a snack bar and then listen to people rhapsodize at great length about fabulous food? Yes, probably), and the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes people came on to talk about their bread and their book and they brought some bread for the hostess, whose reaction was basically "NOM NOM NOM! Where's the butter?" They talked about their bread method, which sounded remarkably free of stickiness because you barely handle the dough. Of course, I was intrigued.
So. I got their book. I watched the video on their website.
I analyzed their method, detecting any points at which stickiness might occur, and figured out how to prevent or avoid sticking. I don't just detest sticky on my fingers, I hate it on pots, pans, or any other kitchen surface. Comes of having been the child stuck (hah!) with doing the dishes for a family of five and never being allowed to soak the crusty pans. (Oh no, those pans, they must be washed right away. No soaking allowed, no matter how nasty and crusty.) I'm a big fan of Teflon. People who turn up their noses at nonstick have obviously never had to scrape a grill clean with their fingernails while the rest of the family relaxed in front of the television. Better living through chemistry, I say!
For this bread, silicone is the answer. Stir up the dough with a silicone spoon, not a wooden spoon. With a wooden spoon you're just asking for misery. Let the dough rest, rise, and bake on a silicone mat. When the dough is done baking, you can just lift it off the mat and set it on a (Teflon coated) cooling rack. For Oz's favorite cinnamon swirl bread, I roll the dough out on the silicone mat with my Teflon coated rolling pin and peel the dough gently away from the mat when I roll it up.
Oh, and all neuroses aside, the bread comes out really well. I even sent a copy of the book to my mom. I've been trying all the recipes (a loaf of olive oil bread is cooling in my kitchen as I type). The crusty loaves travel well too. I bake a loaf the night before I go to Richmond and carry the bread home in my purse for Oz, who is liking this new hobby.
The engineer in me is quantifying everything in the quest for consistent results. Volume measurements are not consistent enough for me, because a cup will measure out a different weight of flour depending on how compacted your flour has gotten sitting around in the bin. Even if you stir up the flour with a knife before you scoop it out, the weights still vary from scoop to scoop.
My 6.5 cups of flour has been weighing in at 857 grams, while the authors say that 6.5 cups is about two pounds (or 906 grams). The lesser quantity of flour yields a stickier dough and flatter loaves, but with a lovely moist crumb. The greater quantity yields an easy-to-handle (hardly sticky at all) dough and nicely rounded loaves with a denser, less moist crumb. My quest for the happy medium has brought me to 883 grams of flour, relatively unsticky dough, a pretty round loaf, and a fabulous crumb. My kitchen scale and I, we are friends.
I am also questing for the perfect level of saltiness. So far, I think their recipe, with 1.5 tablespoons of kosher salt, yields bread which is a bit on the salty side, but delicious. The buttermilk bread has that much salt but isn't salty-tasting at all. I tried the master recipe with 1 tablespoon of salt and it's great, but maybe needs more salt? (Must eat more bread to confirm.) Also, the salt suppresses the action of the yeast somewhat, so adding less salt without reducing the amount of yeast means friskier yeast and more dramatic air bubbles in the bread.
I've also tried the refrigerator rise technique with the dough (after seeing a few comments about it on the authors' website). You can shape the dough and let it rise, covered in plastic wrap, in the refrigerator for eight hours or overnight. Take the dough out of the fridge while you preheat the oven and bake it as you usually would (maybe add an extra five minutes to the baking time). I used this method over the weekend for cinnamon swirl bread with great results (prepare bread in the evening, overnight rise, bake it first thing and enjoy the aroma of cinnamon while you sip your coffee), and today with regular bread (shape the dough and let it rise while I was away at work, bake it when I get home and have fresh baked bread for dinner).
Obviously, this is a great activity for obsessives who like carbohydrates and butter.
I'm happy to say: Good bread can be easy, and it's certainly cheaper to bake good bread than to buy it. You don't have to take my word for it either. Like all good gateway drugs, their basic recipe is free.