Home made bread

I used to be the supermarket bread type. Whatever was easy to grab and not too expensive, I would buy, toast it up with some cheese and that was the extend of my bread eating. Mind you, I come from a country where a “bread meal” is served twice a day, so I would go through a lot of cheap and awful bread just to keep the machine going.  Forgive me Lord, for I have sinned.

But our years living in France have opened my eyes and I have seen the bread. Moist interior, crunchy crust, rich in flavor, stale in a couple of hours; classic baguette.  Since coming back to the US, I have tried many supermarkets and bakeries for the best bread. Results were mixed. Italian Bread from Wegmans is very good and now the default bread in our household. But at $ 2.25 per loaf quite pricy. Considering it cost 20 cents in materials to make, and knowing  I do not part with my money very easily, makes me wonder about an alternative solution.

Like every budding amateur chef, I have ventured into making my own bread. Just 4 ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. Simple, No? I have tried almost every recipe available, and a variety of techniques and methods.  Up until very recently the results were OK. The bread is eatable, but missing something; the peanut gallery just does not eat it.

Click here to see how to make bread

A short list of things I tried:

•  double rising,
•  blooming the yeast,
• steam filled oven,
• adding sugar to the yeast/water mixture to kick start the blooming,
• spraying the crust with water to add extra crunch

In short, close enough for jazz, but this is an artisanal  process, so simply not good enough.

Then somebody whispered biga in my ear. Oh Biga, oh starter,  where have you been all this time? A biga is a starter, a very wet mixture of a scant amount of yeast and equal parts of water and flour, taken from the ingredients, which has been fermented for at least 6 hours. The biga is what gives the bread its rich and slightly sour taste.  Now we’re cooking with gasoline! We are really making bread now.

Biga

•  ¾ tea spoon dry yeast
•  6 ounces (by weight) water
•  6 ounces (by weight) flour

Mix together in a bowl until you have a wet batter-like consistency. Cover bowl with plastic wrap, and walk away for at least 6 hours.

After the biga is all fermented happy, transfer to the working bowl of your bread mixer, or roll up your sleeves and get ready for kneading

Add to the biga

• 10 ounces (by weight) flour
• 4 ounces (by weight) water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon yeast

 Mix for 20 minutes until you have bread dough, stretchy like elastic bands, and does not break apart. Drop the dough in a bowl, coat with a little bit of olive oil (prevents dough from sticking to the bowl) and let it rise for at least 1½ hours until the dough has doubled or tripled in size.

Punch air out of the dough; form loaves; cut incisions on the top and let rise until at least double in size. 

Cook in a 500 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, spraying the top with water a couple of times to get an extra crunchy crust.