The whereabouts of becoming a chef: And all started with a bread...

It’s been awhile since we’re making at Chez Darlings our own bread. I decided to give it a chance after being hooked up by Paul Hollywood’s Bread, TV-show that we watched religiously for 6 Mondays.

Mr. Paul Hollywood

Bread making is all about practice, I won’t lie and say it’s easy to get it right the first time, nor the second, or even the third. It is important to be consistent and keep making bread, even though you’re not getting the results you’d like. As I’ve said before, bad bread happens to good people, don’t take it personal.

Doughs, and specially bread doughs are something you have to learn how to feel them; each one has its own perks, and qualities. A dough depends on so many things, that even though you get one measured recipe, it won’t work the same every time you make it.

The factors that you need to keep in mind are countless: the flour (as it comes from different harvests of wheat, every single package is slightly different), the water (depending in your region could be harder), the yeast you’re using, the room temperature, the room humidity, the salt, the oil, the temperature of your hands, the oven...

But, there’s no need to fret up. I had several someones who guided me every step of the way (Lorraine Pascale, Paul Hollywood, and most important, MªCarmen, my baking professor at the Culinary Arts academy), so I’ll do the same thing.

Sadly, with my moving to the UK, I don’t have my fancy cooking toys anymore, so I have to endure the task of bread making the hard way. That’s it, by hand.

It's around 40 years old and works wonders. I miss you, Kennie!

But there’s two good things about it: first, I get to show you a way that everyone can do it, and second, it is an incredible workout. If you don’t break a sweat while kneading...you’re doing something wrong.

So let’s get down to business, and make sure you have a lot of time ahead. Bread is something that cannot be rushed.

WHITE BLOOMER LOAF

INGREDIENTS:

500 gr of strong flour

320 gr of tepid water (warm to the touch, around the body temperature. Not higher, or you’ll kill the yeast)

40 gr of olive oil

10 gr of salt

1 teaspoon of sugar

7 gr of dried yeast (if you use it fresh, use around 25 gr)

PROCEDURE:

- Weight the water and divide it in two. Keep one aside.

- Stir in the yeast and the sugar and dissolve well in one of the water halves. Leave it to rest aside, until is quite frothy. It will take around 10 to 15 minutes, depending in the temperature of the water and the room.

- Mix together the flour and the salt.

- Once the yeast has been activated, pour in the mix onto the flour, and add the oil.

- Make a whisk with your hand, like a claw, and mix well the ingredients, trying to get everything incorporated.

- Add more water, a tiny bit at a time, because you can’t never know if you’re going to need it all.

“Important”

The proportions you have to respect are flour to yeast, so, if you dump all your water and it’s more than the flour needs, you’ll end up with a very sticky dough, impossible to work with, but, if you try to solve it adding more flour, you’ll mess up with the proportions, and your dough won’t rise properly, nor will achieve the desired texture upon baking it.

- Once your dough is a bit sticky, but gets away easily from the bowl, pour about a tablespoon of olive oil in your working surface (must be spotlessly clean) and spread it.

- Dump your dough on the oiled surface, and start kneading. Basically, form a ball, and holding it up with one hand, stretch it away from you with the heel of your other hand. Then, roll it back together, turn it 90º and do the same thing. Don’t worry if it tears up, is very forgiving, as long as you put it back together, it’ll be ok.

Take your chance now to steam out some stress, you don’t have to be gentle. Bang it against the bench, punch it, stretch it as far as you can. The more you work it, the more you’re activating the gluten contained in the flour. This gluten (a protein), is what would build the structures in our bread, so you must work it quite thoroughly for our bread to be light and spongy, not dense and rubbery.

-Keep kneading for about 20 minutes, your triceps should be starting to protest by then. It might be ready, but most likely not, so we have to test it.

Some people test it getting one finger well floured and press it into the dough, when the finger is out, if the dough is ready, the dimple should bounce back almost all the way. But the way MªCarmen show me how to do it is with the “handkerchief test”. I know it sounds like a gipsy wedding thing, but no, has nothing to do with that.

- Take out a small chunk of the dough and roll it up between your hands, carefully, with your fingers, start stretching it, to make a disc, as much as you can before it tears. If you can see your hand through the sheet of dough, like you would on a handkerchief, hence the name, it’s done. If not, keep kneading for five more minutes and try again. And so on.

Getting ready for the "handkerchief" test

As you can see, my fingers are visible behind the thin sheet of dough

- Once your dough is properly kneaded, make a ball, and put it in a well oiled bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and leave it to prove. It would take around two hours, or until has doubled in size.

- Remove the cling film (save it, for later), and gently but firmly knock the air off the dough. You might be asking yourself why, why don’t we leave it like that and have an airy loaf?. Because the first rising is to develop the flavour, to let the yeast digest the flour and transform it.

- Dump the dough in your clean and dry surface and give it the shape of your choice; you can make a round loaf, or divide it in two and give them a baguette shape, or as I usually do at home, roll it to the size of my loaf tin and dump it in (it should be oiled and floured in advance, to avoid the dough sticking to the tin). If not using a tin, oil and flour a baking sheet and put your bread on top.

- Cover your loaf with the cling film and leave it, yes, once again, to prove. Again, until it has at least, doubled in size (I’d like to give you a more accurate time, but it depends in the room temperature, so it would be different in winter or summer, in a sunny or a rainy day, here in London or in Spain...)

- Preheat your oven to 200ºC and prepare a tray with water and leave it at the bottom of the oven. This will create a very wet environment, with all the steam, that will help our loaf to rise to the moon.

- Once your loaf has doubled in size, remove the film and, if not using the loaf tin, or making individual rolls, make some cuts, with a very sharp knife, to help direct the rising of your bread.

- Bake it for around 45 minutes, but after the 25 first minutes, retire the tray with water and watch it like a hawk, as the surface might brown quickly. If that’s the case, turn your oven so it just receives heat from the bottom. If you’re unlucky, like me, and your oven doesn't let you, put a baking sheet on top of your loaf, so it’d reduce the amount of heat is receiving.

- At 40 minutes of baking, take it out from the oven, turn it over and knock on the bottom. If it sounds hollow, is done. If not, back in the oven and check again in five minutes.

- Leave it to cool on a wire rack for around 30 minutes before eating. Fresh from the oven bread is scrumptious, but a bit hard to digest. As a stomach ache is never desirable, we must be patient.