Read Online Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients by Zoe Francois, Jeff Hertzberg MD - Free Book Online
Authors: Zoe Francois, Jeff Hertzberg MD
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temperature with a thermometer.
Make sure you are allowing the dough to rest for the full time period we’ve recommended .
Your dough may benefit from being a little drier. Increase the flour by ¼ cup (or decrease the liquids a little) and check the result.
If you’re baking a large loaf (more than 1 pound), let it rest and bake longer.
Be sure not to overwork dough when shaping, or you will compress the gas bubbles.
One final word of advice if you’re finding the breads just a little gummy: Don’t slice or eat your loaves when they’re still warm . We know, hot bread has a certain romance, so it’s hard to wait for them to cool. But waiting will improve the texture—breads are at their peak two hours after they come out of the oven. Hot or warm bread cuts poorly and dries out quickly. When cool, loaves don’t compress so easily when cut. Once the bread has cooled, use a sharp serrated bread knife, which will go right through the crisp crust and soft crumb.
Having said that, sometimes we just can’t resist, especially with rolls or very small loaves where gumminess is less likely to be a problem.
The top crust won’t crisp and brown nicely:
Be sure you’re using a baking stone where called for, and preheat it for at least 30 minutes, in an oven whose temperature has been checked with a thermometer.
Bake with steam when called for . Use one of the methods described.
Try the shelf switcheroo: If you’re a crisp crust fanatic, we’ll give you one ultimate approach to baking the perfect crust, but it takes a little extra work (remember, this does not apply to egg-enriched breads). First off, place the stone on the bottom shelf, not on a middle shelf as specified in the recipes, and start the loaf there. Two-thirds of the way through baking, transfer the loaf from the stone directly to a rack on the top shelf of the oven (leave the stone where it is). Top crusts brown best near the top of the oven, and bottom crusts brown best near the bottom. This approach works beautifully with free-form loaves, but also helps crisp the crust of hard-crusted loaf-pan breads, where popping the bread out of the pan and transferring shelves makes a big difference. With this approach, you can permanently park your baking stone on the very lowest rack, where it will help even out the heat for everything you bake, not just bread. Then there’ll be no need to shift around the stone or racks just because you’re baking bread.
Overbaking Problems, Dryness
The crust is great, but the crumb (interior) is dry:
The bread may be overbaked. Again, make sure your oven is calibrated properly using an oven thermometer.
Another possibility is that the dough was dry to begin with. In traditional recipes, there’s usually an instruction that reads something like “knead thoroughly, until mass of dough is smooth, elastic, and less sticky, adding flour as needed.” This often means too much flour gets added. Be careful not to work in much additional flour when shaping.
Flour blobs in the middle of the bread: Be sure to completely mix the initial batch. Using wet hands to incorporate the last bits of flour will often take care of this. This can also be caused when shaping the loaves, with extra flour that gets tucked up under the loaf.
Varying the Grain That Covers the Pizza Peel
Most of our breads are baked right on a hot baking stone, after having been rested and slid off a pizza peel. Cornmeal was the usual “lubricant” in our first book. It prevents the loaf from sticking to either the pizza peel or the hot stone. But cornmeal is only one of many options. We tend to use cornmeal for the more rustic, full-flavored loaves, and whole wheat flour for the more delicate breads, like the French baguette. Even white flour works for the purpose (as in pita and pizza). But coarser grains like cornmeal are the most slippery, and fine-ground wheat flours may require a heavier coating to prevent sticking (sometimes you’ll have to nudge the
Make sure you are allowing the dough to rest for the full time period we’ve recommended .
Your dough may benefit from being a little drier. Increase the flour by ¼ cup (or decrease the liquids a little) and check the result.
If you’re baking a large loaf (more than 1 pound), let it rest and bake longer.
Be sure not to overwork dough when shaping, or you will compress the gas bubbles.
One final word of advice if you’re finding the breads just a little gummy: Don’t slice or eat your loaves when they’re still warm . We know, hot bread has a certain romance, so it’s hard to wait for them to cool. But waiting will improve the texture—breads are at their peak two hours after they come out of the oven. Hot or warm bread cuts poorly and dries out quickly. When cool, loaves don’t compress so easily when cut. Once the bread has cooled, use a sharp serrated bread knife, which will go right through the crisp crust and soft crumb.
Having said that, sometimes we just can’t resist, especially with rolls or very small loaves where gumminess is less likely to be a problem.
The top crust won’t crisp and brown nicely:
Be sure you’re using a baking stone where called for, and preheat it for at least 30 minutes, in an oven whose temperature has been checked with a thermometer.
Bake with steam when called for . Use one of the methods described.
Try the shelf switcheroo: If you’re a crisp crust fanatic, we’ll give you one ultimate approach to baking the perfect crust, but it takes a little extra work (remember, this does not apply to egg-enriched breads). First off, place the stone on the bottom shelf, not on a middle shelf as specified in the recipes, and start the loaf there. Two-thirds of the way through baking, transfer the loaf from the stone directly to a rack on the top shelf of the oven (leave the stone where it is). Top crusts brown best near the top of the oven, and bottom crusts brown best near the bottom. This approach works beautifully with free-form loaves, but also helps crisp the crust of hard-crusted loaf-pan breads, where popping the bread out of the pan and transferring shelves makes a big difference. With this approach, you can permanently park your baking stone on the very lowest rack, where it will help even out the heat for everything you bake, not just bread. Then there’ll be no need to shift around the stone or racks just because you’re baking bread.
Overbaking Problems, Dryness
The crust is great, but the crumb (interior) is dry:
The bread may be overbaked. Again, make sure your oven is calibrated properly using an oven thermometer.
Another possibility is that the dough was dry to begin with. In traditional recipes, there’s usually an instruction that reads something like “knead thoroughly, until mass of dough is smooth, elastic, and less sticky, adding flour as needed.” This often means too much flour gets added. Be careful not to work in much additional flour when shaping.
Flour blobs in the middle of the bread: Be sure to completely mix the initial batch. Using wet hands to incorporate the last bits of flour will often take care of this. This can also be caused when shaping the loaves, with extra flour that gets tucked up under the loaf.
Varying the Grain That Covers the Pizza Peel
Most of our breads are baked right on a hot baking stone, after having been rested and slid off a pizza peel. Cornmeal was the usual “lubricant” in our first book. It prevents the loaf from sticking to either the pizza peel or the hot stone. But cornmeal is only one of many options. We tend to use cornmeal for the more rustic, full-flavored loaves, and whole wheat flour for the more delicate breads, like the French baguette. Even white flour works for the purpose (as in pita and pizza). But coarser grains like cornmeal are the most slippery, and fine-ground wheat flours may require a heavier coating to prevent sticking (sometimes you’ll have to nudge the
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