Once I learned that you are supposed to put shmura matzah in the oven for a few minutes, I developed a brand-new love of Pesach. But after eight days, I was happy to be reunited with my sourdough starter. (Speak with your rav regarding how you might or might not put it away for Pesach.)
I’ve
already baked a lot of bread since the end of Yom Tov. Challah, of course.
Sandwich bread, because it only takes a couple of hours – and, it goes without
saying, sourdough, because it really is the mother of all bread. My freezer is
well stocked.
There
are other breads I am yearning to bake. By the time you read this I will
probably have made them all. Here’s my wish list: pita, laffa, pizza dough, focaccia,
and pumpooshki.
Breads Galore!
Although
the basic ingredients of bread are just flour, yeast, and water, different
cultures around the world have developed their own delicious variations on a
theme. When we bake these exotic breads (and plain ones, too) in our own
kitchens, an important thing to remember is that bread baking (and baking in
general, as opposed to cooking) is as much science as art. You can be “off” by
a bit but not by a lot. Follow the recipe and save improvisation for other
foods. Because most bread recipes are very specific, and I did not create them
from scratch, I can’t publish the recipes I use, but I can let you know how to
find them.
Pita and laffa use the same recipe but require a slightly different
execution. My favorite pita/laffa recipe is from Mike Solomonov’s cookbook, Zahav (page 212). You can find the book
in the library or the recipe at bakefromscratch.com. (If you Google “solomonov
pita” you will get a lot of variations on his recipe. Start with the original.)
Turn on your oven light while it’s baking and watch the pita puff. Time from
mix to eat is approximately 2.5 hours.
Homemade pizza is nothing like pizza store pizza
(full disclosure: I love both). The problem with making your own pizza dough is that you really need to
decide a day in advance that you want to make it. If you must have homemade
pizza tonight, you might have to go to Trader Joe’s. Their pizza dough is
actually pretty good. True pizza dough is made with “00” flour, and until
recently I could not find a source for 00 flour with a hechsher. King Arthur now has 00 flour with an OU and a recipe on
the back. So while the time from mix to eat is more like 24 hours, homemade
pizza is delicious. I recommend putting your “toppings” between the sauce and
the cheese.
Focaccia is
a fluffy bread that is made with lots of good quality olive oil. While I tend
to make the overnight version from the book Salt
Fat Acid Heat (available from the library or get the recipe here:
www.saltfatacidheat.com/fat/ligurian-focaccia), there are some same day
focaccia recipes that should work beautifully. If you use Google, try searching
for “focaccia art” to see some amazing focaccia with toppings that will inspire
you to create “bread gardens” with vegetables.
Pumpooshki
is a Ukranian recipe for dinner rolls. Like a super-fluffy pull-apart challah
with herb oil poured on top after baking, pumpooshki will make your kitchen
smell heavenly, is beautiful and delicious and worth trying. Because the recipe
I use is from an Israeli website, you might have to use your browser to
translate to English. Here’s where I found it: www.lioroooosh.com.
Challah
This
wouldn’t be an article about bread if we didn’t talk about challah,
the bread that takes its name from what we remove from it. Unscientific polling
says that many people, mostly Jews, mostly women, bake only one kind of bread,
and that is challah. There are almost as many variations of challah as there
are those who make it. Many chasidim eat only water challah, which is essentially
vegan challah. Sephardim also traditionally make challah without sugar and
eggs. Ashkenazim tend toward fluffy, eggy, sweet challahs. There are yeast
recipes, yolk-only recipes, whole wheat recipes, spiced recipes, recipes with
toppings and without.
Challah
comes in many shapes and sizes including traditional braided challahs, pull-apart
challahs, and the massive challahs baked for weddings and bar mitzvahs. No two
homemade challahs will taste the same, but they can all be delicious, and
leftovers make great French toast on Sunday mornings. Braiding has become
traditional; the possible reasons for this abound, but no one reason “rises” to
the top. Most people are happy to pass on their challah recipe, so if you eat
some amazing challah at someone’s home, definitely ask. But even if you use
exactly the same brand of yeast, sugar, oil, flour, and eggs, yours will taste
a little different and can become your signature challah.
Ingredients Matter
That
segues into the next topic: the importance of ingredients. For fluffy breads, high-gluten or high-protein bread flours will give you more “oven
spring” – that is what makes the bread puff in the oven. Some breads, like
pita, will work with all-purpose flour. Unless a recipe explicitly calls for a
different type of flour, do not use pastry flour or self-rising flour in bread
baking. Whole wheat flour is a bit harder to work with. It requires a little
more water in a standard recipe, and your bread will be denser. If you are just
getting started with whole wheat, try starting with 40% or 50% whole wheat vs. white
bread flour and work your way up from there. Stay away from bleached flour for
bread. You might want your cakes to be super-white, but bread doesn’t need that,
and the bleaching has an effect on both the taste and the final consistency.
The
difference between active dry yeast and
instant yeast is how fine the yeast granules are. Active dry yeast
generally needs to be proofed (add a bit of sugar and warm water and let it
bloom), while instant yeast can be directly incorporated into a recipe. The
amounts you will need differ slightly, so you might not be able to do a
straight substitution if you only have one or the other. I keep a little jar of
each in the back of my refrigerator and pull out the one that is called for in
my recipe.
Choose
oils carefully. Most challah
works best with a neutral oil like canola or avocado. Focaccia requires the
very best olive oil you can find. Remember that olive oil does not do well in
high heat environments (on the stove or in the oven).
Here’s
an interesting tidbit: Jews generally don’t bake bread with dairy ingredients. In
halacha, bread is viewed as being pareve. If we must make a dairy bread, we
make sure that the bread is shaped in an unusual way, such as a triangle, to
show that it is different. Most bread recipes with dairy ingredients can be
made pareve by using plant-based “milks.” To substitute for buttermilk, add an
acid like lemon to a plant milk.
Let’s Talk about Tools
If
you bake a lot of bread, you might want to invest in the tools that make the
process easier. But don’t worry. There are definitely improvisations and
substitutes that will give you good results, and I will list them here as well.
For
all bread, a reliable oven (gas
or electric, or even a large toaster oven) is obviously a requirement. You
could also bake bread on a covered grill (use indirect heat). Reliability is an
important requirement; get an inexpensive oven thermometer to leave in your
oven to make sure that what you set it to is actually what you get. A search on
Amazon for “oven thermometer” will get you a perfectly adequate one for under
$7.
For
pizza and pita, invest in pizza
stone(s). Solid pizza stones are big. For storage purposes, I have pizza
stones that come in four seven-inch square pieces that make a 14x14 in my oven.
I’ve got two sets – one set for pizza and one pareve set for making pita and
laffa. One is Pizzacraft brand; the other is Outset. Both are found on Amazon
in the past five years or so. Pizza stones are placed in a cold oven and heated
at the target temperature for about an hour to absorb heat. If you don’t have a
pizza stone, a large baking sheet placed in the oven upside down when you turn
the oven on will do the trick.
I
knead some of my doughs by hand and some with a mixer. (Some doughs need no kneading at all, just stirring). I
have an over 35-year-old KitchenAid mixer which still works as if brand new,
but it won’t hold five pounds of flour. If you want to make challah with a bracha, you would have to make two
batches and rise them together. Or, consider a Bosch or Ankarsrum mixer. But for
working out stress, nothing beats hand kneading! If you have stone or stainless
countertops, you can knead directly on the counter. Otherwise, get the biggest
wooden board you can find, or purchase an extra-large silicone pastry mat.
You
will need some big bowls or
containers with lids for proofing your dough. I proof my challah right in my
KitchenAid bowl covered with plastic wrap. (Skip all the other brands of
plastic wrap and go directly for Stretch-Tite brand.) For all other doughs, I
have six-quart Cambro (or equivalent) buckets with lids, but any bowl or
covered bucket that has enough room for your dough to rise is fine.
After
you shape sourdough, it is best to put it in the refrigerator overnight. I put
my dough in coiled-cane proofing baskets, called bannetons or brotforms. You dust the banneton with flour, place
the dough inside, and then slide the whole thing into a plastic bag and then
into the refrigerator. You could use any bowl dusted with flour, but the dough
will release well from a banneton without deflating, which is the goal. It’s a
bit harder to release from a standard smooth-sided bowl.
Sourdough,
or any other dough that needs to be crusty outside and soft inside, requires a
source of steam during baking. The easiest way to accomplish this is with the
use of a Dutch oven – a heavy,
oven-safe-to-500-degrees deep pot with a lid. (Make sure that the handle on the
lid will also withstand high heat.) Placing dough into a covered hot Dutch oven
will allow the steam generated by the evaporating liquid in the dough to create
a soft, fluffy interior, and removing the lid halfway through the baking will
allow the crust to get crispy. Extra heavy duty oven mitts are also a must.
Challah
is the only bread that I make by volume (i.e., scoop into measuring cups).
Everything else is made by weight, in grams. I use my kitchen scale for many things other than weighing flour or dough,
and I consider it one of my necessities – on par with measuring cups and
spoons. The MyWeigh KD8000 is the gold standard for home kitchen scales and is
well worth the investment, but any scale that is large enough to hold your bowl
and measure in both grams and pounds is fine.
sidebar
Recommended
books (to buy or borrow):
The Sourdough School by Vanessa Kimball
Rising: The Book of
Challah by Rochie
Pinson
Baking Breads by Uri Scheft
Salt Fat Acid Heat by Samin Nosrat
Zahav and Israeli Soul by Michael Solomonov
