By Suzanne Martinson
Pittsburgh Post-GazetteThere's not much chance I'll ever skydive from a speeding airplane. I probably won't take up scuba diving, and, unlike my devil-may-care sister and her husband, I doubt I'll cycle pell-mell down the side of a volcanic crater.
But I can try to make bread in a machine. It's the least I can do.
"That's a mighty big piece of equipment," my husband, Ace, said when I plopped my friend Nancy's bread-maker down on our kitchen counter, which already had more machines than an airplane hangar.
When you get right down to it, there's no greater miracle than bread. Besides, I figured I had been behind the trend curve long enough. Still, I had suspected that bread machines are among those appliances that are met with a burst of enthusiasm, used for a few frantic weeks, then discarded either because:
The baker discovers that eating a warm loaf of bread every night with enough butter to provide permanent employment to a Jersey cow is fattening. Or:
If she (or he) wanted to be a commercial baker, she'd have gone to culinary school and would be getting paid for doing yet another task between loads of laundry.
But I was willing to give the bread machine a shot. I decided to start with whole wheat bread, even though the recipe I had been e-mailed by a bread-machine company had the capability of my making bread-cum-brick. Most recipes I'd seen combine whole-wheat and all-purpose white flour for a better rise. This one was all whole-wheat.
The machine immediately made me nervous, allegedly doing all the work. Every now and then, I'd run down to the kitchen, look in the machine's little window and see what was happening. Not much, as far I could tell, although it occasionally made funny groaning noises. There was some strange unmixed flour lying on top with some damp batter poking through.
Nervously, I began reading the troubleshooting section of the booklet. Nothing like closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out. Too much flour? Poor yeast? That false start while I readjusted the buttons for whole-wheat bread?
Finally, after what seemed like a day, it was time to remove the freshly baked loaf. It was a horrible, brown, dry lump. I didn't even consider giving it to our devoted dog, Socks, and no bird — even a crow — deserved this.
I remained undaunted. I would begin again. With sourdough. No machine is going to best me, though I am the poster child for mechanical ineptitude. I had bread flour; the loaf would be mine.
The second batch seemed better right from the first. The machine hopped about the counter, just as my hard-working stand mixer does when it's going hand-to-hand with a ball of bread.
I decided to do two loaves, one using dough mixed in the machine, but shaped by hand and baked in an oven; the other mixed, shaped and baked by machine. The machine-made bread has a strange little hat — the yeast must have gone crazy — but the other looks normal. You be the judge.
In case you're interested, I have a nice whole-wheat doorstop, too. Cheap.
Sourdough Bread
We fell in love with sourdough bread when a Gresham (Ore.) PTA had a fund-raiser in which it sold the starter and a recipe booklet. Ours lived for years until a baby took precedence over "feeding the starter." The booklet is in tatters, but the love for sourdough remains.
1/2 cup sourdough starter (recipe follows)
3/4 cup warm water
2 teaspoons sugar, honey or maple syrup (optional)
1 tablespoon oil
3 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour (we used King Arthur bread flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons dry yeast
Add all ingredients to machine's bread pan in the order given. (We used maple syrup and canola oil.) Make a well with your fingertip for the yeast; it should not touch the liquid ingredients.
Choose your setting for brownness for the loaf's crust. Depending on degree of browning desired, the machine will take from 2 hours, 40 minutes to 3 hours.
If you set the machine on Dough, you remove it after 1 1/2 hours and shape into a loaf. (We made our dough into an oblong, cutting five slits in the top, and then allowed to rise, about 1 hour.) Bake in a 350-degree oven for 30 to 40 minutes. We placed the loaf on a cornmeal-covered pizza stone, though a cookie sheet would also work.
To crisp the crust, we placed a small bowl of hot water in the oven near the bread dough. Halfway through baking, we brushed the loaf with butter. The bread is done when an instant-read thermometer reaches 190 degrees. The loaf sounds hollow when tapped.
Sourdough Starter
2 cups warm water
1 tablespoon sugar, honey or maple syrup (optional)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon dry yeast
Beat all ingredients together in a 2-quart bowl. Cover the bowl with a towel and place it somewhere warm. (Use a towel, not plastic wrap, to allow airborne wild yeast to enter — it will contribute to the unique character and flavor of your starter.)
The mixture will begin to bubble within a few minutes. Initially, it will double in bulk, but as it begins to ferment, it will settle down.
Let the mixture sit in a warm place, stirring the liquid back into the batter (as it will separate) once a day for 2 to 5 days. When the bubbling diminishes and it has a sour, yeasty aroma, it is ready to use.
Stir the mixture and measure out the amount you need. It will be the consistency of pancake batter.
To keep your starter going:
Store the finished starter in a sealed jar in the refrigerator.
Each time you remove some starter to bake, replenish it with equal amounts of flour and water. (If you use 1/2 cup of starter, stir in 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup water.) Then let the starter sit in a warm place for 12 hours and let the yeast bubble and grow again before returning it to the refrigerator.
A starter can be kept indefinitely. Just stir and feed it very week or two. Stirring, removing and replenishing your starter serves to feed the remaining batter.
— Healthy Bread Recipes & Menu Planner by White-Westinghouse (Kmart Corp.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, SHNS.com.)
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