Who doesn’t love the smell of fresh bread? What kind of
lunatic doesn’t drool at the very thought of a hot slice of bread with covered
in butter? What sort of damaged soul must someone have that…
Bread is good. I love making bread. And here’s one of my
favorites.
To do this, we’re going to make a poolish starter. This is a
simple starter that you will not keep for very long because you’ll use less than twenty-four hours after you make it. It will impart a lovely yeasty flavor to your bread,
but not a sour one. It won’t be sitting out long enough to develop any sour
flavor. This ingredient is the keystone to a lot of my bread making.
Ingredients list:
Starter:
·
Four ounces by weight of all purpose (AP) flour.
·
Four ounces, also by weight, of water. I like to
use filtered. More on that later.
·
A pinch of instant yeast.
Using a digital scale, measure all the above into a
smallish, say a two cup, pitcher. Mix is thoroughly with a fork. It will be
sticky, and that’s fine. Make sure to wash that fork right away, because when
that stuff dries, it gets hard and difficult to wash off. Get it while it’s
moist.
 |
| Moist |
Cover your pitcher with cling film and let it sit on the
counter overnight, or in the fridge for no more than 24 hours. More than that
and sour flavors will begin to develop. Which is fine if you want to make a
sourdough. This is not a sourdough. We’ll do sourdough later.
Our poolish has aged enough. You’ll see on the pitcher that
it rose and fell, and that’s right how we want it.
Now let’s really get started.
More ingredients list:
·
4 ½ cups of AP flour.
·
2 ¼ teaspoons of active dry yeast.
·
One cup of water.
·
2/3 cup of milk. Whole is best, but 1%, 2% or
skim will work fine.
·
One tablespoon of sugar
·
Two teaspoons of salt, table or kosher. You can
pick.
·
Three tablespoons of potato flour, available at
most grocery stores.
·
¼ cup of dried milk.
·
Six tablespoons of chilled, unsalted butter.
Equipment:
·
Pullman loaf pan – the long rectangular kind with
a lid, although two regular loaf pans
will work just fine. |
| Pullman pan |
·
Stand mixer with bread hook attachment.
·
A bowl in which you will raise the dough.
·
A small sauce pan for boiling water.
·
A small mixing bowl for making a yeast sponge.
In that small mixing bowl, whisk together a cup of the AP
flour, the yeast, and the water. It’ll form something that looks like pancake
batter. The purpose of this is to wake up the yeast and get it lively. Let this
sit for an hour, in the bowl and covered with a moistened dish towel. When you
uncover it it’s going to be bubbly and fragrant.
This is called the sponge method.
Now add the butter and the rest of the dry ingredients. Your
milk, sponge, and starter all go on the top. This is to keep flour from
broadcasting all over your countertop. Seat the bowl in the mixer, put the
bread hook in the right place, lower it into the bowl and…
Put the pan of water on the stove to start boiling. Stay
tuned, I’ll tell you why in two paragraphs.
Start the mixer on its slowest or second slowest speed. Run
it on low for one minute. After that minute your dough will be brought together
into a cohesive, if shaggy looking, ball. Turn the speed up to medium and let
go for three more minutes. Your butter will work in, and this also counts as
kneading where all that gluten that doesn’t actually hurt you unless it
actually does is formed. Three minutes. Set a timer. There’s one on the
microwave. If your dough ball is too loose and not actually coming together
nicely, put a little more flour, a teaspoon at a time, in. If it’s too tight
and clinging to the hook and not actually mixing, try a teaspoon of water.
 |
| ACTION SHOT WOO! |
Once your three minutes is up you can check your dough by
administering the windowpane test. Pull a piece of the dough away but not off
of the ball and run your thumbs over it, gently stretching the bit of dough. If
it gets so thin that you can see light through it without tearing, your dough
is ready. If it’s not yet, give it thirty more seconds in the mixer and try
again.
Assuming your dough ball is ready, take your rising bowl. A
metal mixing bowl works well, although my favorite is a plastic one that can
hold about two quarts. Spread a little vegetable oil or quick spritz of pan
spray in there. Put the dough in the bowl, put the bowl in the oven, and (here
it comes) put the pan of boiling water in the oven with the dough ball on a
lower rack or the floor of the oven. You now have turned your oven into a
proofing box. Your dough will rise a little more quickly this way than if you raise it
on the counter.
In forty-five minutes to an hour your dough should have
doubled in size. Since you already woke up the yeast before you started mixing,
you don’t actually have to worry about your first rise. It already happened.
Your dough is ready for the pan. Cool, huh?
Now, for this exercise I’m going to assume you have a lidded
Pullman pan. If you don’t, that’s cool. Divide your ball in two and use two
regular loaf pans. Easy.
You’ll need a clean work surface for this part. I like a big
cutting board, but your counter will do. Throw down a little bit of bench
flour. Turn your dough ball out of the bowl onto that floured surface. Jab at
it with your fingertips to knock all the gas bubbles out. Stretch that dough
until it’s a rectangle about the length of your pan. Starting at the far edge
of the dough, roll the dough toward yourself. Use the heel of your hand to
punch the leading edge of the rolled bit into the dough. Keep rolling and
punching until you have a tight dough roll. Lube up your pan and the bottom of
the lid. Place your dough roll, seam up, in the pan.
 |
| This is a little different because the top of the dough log will become the bottom of the loaf. |
Take your water pan out of the oven, dump it out, refill it,
and set it back on to boil. Once that’s going, put is back in its old spot in
the oven and the bread pan on a rack. Close up the oven and set your timer for
forty-five minutes again.
One the dough rises to just under the top of the pan, take
the pans (both of them) out of the oven. Make sure that there’s a rack on the
second to bottom position in the oven and enough clearance for the pan itself.
Warm the oven to 400 degrees.
Don't forget the spray down the lid! I have, and it's a pain to slide off.
Start cleaning up after yourself. You should be cleaning as
you go, but this is a good time to get the kitchen back in order. Don’t forget
to give the stand mixer a good wipe down.
Once the oven is up to temp, put your bread in with the pan
right in the middle of the rack running parallel to the back wall. Close the
oven. You’ll have lost a little heat from the door being open, so turn the dial
down to 375 and bake for twenty-five minutes. Then turn the pan around a half
circle, slide the lid off, and back for another twenty-five minutes.
If you have an instant read thermometer (if you don't, then get one), you can check the
internal temperature of the bread for doneness, which means 190 degrees. Once
you’ve hit that, leave the bread to rest in the pan for ten to fifteen minutes.
 |
| The finished product. |
“What?” you demand. “Why can’t I eat my bread hot and fresh
out of the pan? I want!”
That’s how I feel, too.
What happens if you cut into a steak right after you cook
it? It loses its juices and becomes dry. Bread is like that, too. Cutting into
a hot loaf of bread releases its steam, causing the bread to dry out and go
stale more quickly. Rest your bread.
After an hour or two your bread should be completely cooled
off and ready to enjoy. This kind makes a really good grilled cheese sandwich, one of the best plates of French toast you've ever had, or just a sublime slice of bread and butter. Eat up, before the kids
find it.
 |
| Seriously, this is less than 24 hours after it came out of the oven. |
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