By bread alone

Discovering new ways to be obsessed by bread

It’s been eight years since I moved to the US, and in that time I’ve made hundreds* of loaves of bread using my bread machine. But it never really felt like baking, and it never felt like it was that much work — probably because it wasn’t. I don’t even remember which website from which I got the recipe that I use, but this is the recipe:

Ingredients

350ml water

2 tablespoons oil

500g flour (I usually use 245g bread flour to 255g whole wheat flour)

1.5 teaspoons yeast (or half a tablespoon)

2 teaspoons salt

Handful of raw sunflower seeds

Handful of raw pumpkin seeds

Method

1. Put the paddle in the bucket/bowl/ingredient container thing of the bread machine. Do not forget this step otherwise you will end up with a disappointing mess and a waste of 500g of flour. I’ve managed to forget the paddle not once but twice!

2. Put the water and oil in. I’ve forgotten the oil before. It made the bread oddly flat and didn’t rise the way it normally would. Not sure if that’s a coincidence or if the oil actually had an effect. Also it made it hard to turn out at the end.

3. Put in the flour. 

4. I put the salt in the corners. I’ve forgotten the salt before too. I ended up with bread that looked fine and felt fine but just tasted a bit off. Not quite like bread. Salt is magic.

5. Sprinkle the seeds all over. 

6. Make a little well in the middle for the yeast — the important points are to make sure the yeast doesn’t touch the water and doesn’t touch the salt.

7. Put the whole thing into the bread machine, press the buttons for the whole wheat setting, set the timer if you’re using it, then leave it to do its thing.

8. When it beeps and you smell bread, take it out of the machine and let it cool for 15 minutes on a cooling rack before slicing. 

It takes my bread machine 3 hours and 48 minutes to make a loaf of whole wheat bread, and it takes me less than ten minutes to get out the ingredients, get everything set in the machine, and put all the ingredients away. It is shockingly simple and doesn’t feel at all like baking, or like I knew how to bake bread. I just knew how to use my bread machine.

But recently, I discovered no-knead bread. I had made one no-knead bread in the Dutch oven years ago and it was fine but I wasn’t enamoured enough to do it again. For some reason, a couple of months ago I decided to try the no-knead artisanal loaf recipe that King Arthur prints on their bread flour packaging. It too was fine. And this too, wasn’t a recipe I’ve made again. It tasted good but it looked like a cake. It didn’t look like a beautiful round crusty loaf. I’m not against doing it again, I just… haven’t.

I thought maybe I was just destined for bread machine bread. There’s nothing wrong with that — it had been serving me well for eight years. It’s not like I needed more bread in my life. I had my trusty sandwich and toast bread, and we ate plenty of other delicious meals that didn’t require bread. 

And then my friend sent me a recipe for focaccia. She promised me it was easy. That all I had to do was mix the ingredients together, stick the bowl in the fridge overnight, and then plop the dough in a pan and bake. I read the recipe, and it certainly seemed achievable. I had all the ingredients, so I gave it a go. On my first attempt, I followed the instructions and left it overnight for an 18 hour rise. I sprinkled salt and dried rosemary over the top and baked it. It was fabulous. 

So I did it again the following week. The next time, I left the dough for two days in the fridge (unintentionally; the day that I was planning on baking it originally ended up being one of those days when a kid stayed home sick and all my plans went out the window, so the dough got a bonus day of rising time). I changed the toppings too, and used bacon and cheddar cheese. These were even better! They reminded a bit of the cheese and bacon rolls I used to get from Baker’s Delight.

Focaccia seemed to be the new obsession. I was dreaming up all the other toppings I could use. Caramelised onion! Sundried tomato! Feta! Roasted vegetables! I was going to make focaccia ALL THE TIME. 

But I haven’t made focaccia since that second loaf because my friend sent me ANOTHER recipe. I told her one morning that I was making beef stew for dinner, and planning on making a loaf of bread in the bread machine to accompany it. She told me that she had a ciabatta roll recipe that would be great with the beef stew. This recipe didn’t take an overnight rise, and she told me that I had the time and the ingredients to make it for dinner. Such is her influence that I made the rolls that day, and she was right. They were perfect with the beef stew. 

Those ciabatta rolls ended up being the new obsession. It’s a small batch recipe, and I make about five rolls per batch. In the space of one week, I made them four times. They’re chewy and crusty and delicious. I’ve made them to go with the aforementioned beef stew, spaghetti, chicken noodle soup, and lentil minestrone. I turned them into garlic bread to go with the spaghetti and it was the best garlic bread I had ever eaten in my life. The kids would happily just eat these rolls and nothing else.

Making these rolls and the focaccia led me to a discovery that I didn’t know despite years of making bread: how much fun it is to use yeast. With the bread machine, the work of the yeast is largely invisible. The rising, kneading, and baking all happen in the machine. I don’t see the flour, water, salt, oil, and yeast transform into a dough. I don’t see the dough change size. This is all hidden. I can hear it working during the kneading phase, but it largely goes ignored (I usually set the machine to go overnight so we have bread in the morning). I appreciate the convenience and it seems like magic.

Making the focaccia and ciabatta rolls requires a bit more hands-on action on my part. It’s still pretty quick, and it’s a lot of hands-off time, but the process isn’t hidden. I’m the one stirring the ingredients together to form the dough. I let the dough sit in a clear glass bowl, and I can see it change size as it rises and proofs. I put it in the oven to bake and can see the dough turn into bread. I had no idea that this could be so much fun. This takes a touch more effort than the bread machine but it still feels almost a little bit wrong, how easy it is to create such a delicious result. I love yeast. I love bread. How wonderful it is that with just a few ingredients and some ‘largely ignore it’ time you can make something so good. 

*I’ve lived here for 419 weeks. Subtract about 25 weeks for our trips back to Australia and other holidays and you get 394 weeks. I usually make two to three loaves a week, so if you multiply that by 2.5 you get 985 loaves. I made less before the kids started school so my guess is I’ve made somewhere between 780 and 980 loaves of bread in the past eight years.