<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html?ref=dining>
November 8, 2006
THE MINIMALIST
The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work
By MARK BITTMAN
INNOVATIONS in bread baking are rare. In fact, the 6,000-year-old
process hasn't changed much since Pasteur made the commercial
production of standardized yeast possible in 1859. The introduction
of the gas stove, the electric mixer and the food processor made the
process easier, faster and more reliable.
I'm not counting sliced bread as a positive step, but Jim Lahey's
method may be the greatest thing since.
This story began in late September when Mr. Lahey sent an e-mail
message inviting me to attend a session of a class he was giving at
Sullivan Street Bakery, which he owns, at 533 West 47th Street in
Manhattan. His wording was irresistible: "I'll be teaching a truly
minimalist breadmaking technique that allows people to make excellent
bread at home with very little effort. The method is surprisingly
simple - I think a 4-year-old could master it - and the results are fantastic."
I set up a time to visit Mr. Lahey, and we baked together, and the
only bad news is that you cannot put your 4-year-old to work
producing bread for you. The method is complicated enough that you
would need a very ambitious 8-year-old. But the results are indeed fantastic.
Mr. Lahey's method is striking on several levels. It requires no
kneading. (Repeat: none.) It uses no special ingredients, equipment
or techniques. It takes very little effort.
It accomplishes all of this by combining a number of unusual though
not unheard of features. Most notable is that you'll need about 24
hours to create a loaf; time does almost all the work. Mr. Lahey's
dough uses very little yeast, a quarter teaspoon (you almost never
see a recipe with less than a teaspoon), and he compensates for this
tiny amount by fermenting the dough very slowly. He mixes a very wet
dough, about 42 percent water, which is at the extreme high end of
the range that professional bakers use to create crisp crust and
large, well-structured crumb, both of which are evident in this loaf.
The dough is so sticky that you couldn't knead it if you wanted to.
It is mixed in less than a minute, then sits in a covered bowl,
undisturbed, for about 18 hours. It is then turned out onto a board
for 15 minutes, quickly shaped (I mean in 30 seconds), and allowed to
rise again, for a couple of hours. Then it's baked. That's it.
I asked Harold McGee, who is an amateur breadmaker and best known as
the author of "On Food and Cooking" (Scribner, 2004), what he thought
of this method. His response: "It makes sense. The long, slow rise
does over hours what intensive kneading does in minutes: it brings
the gluten molecules into side-by-side alignment to maximize their
opportunity to bind to each other and produce a strong, elastic
network. The wetness of the dough is an important piece of this
because the gluten molecules are more mobile in a high proportion of
water, and so can move into alignment easier and faster than if the
dough were stiff."
That's as technical an explanation as I care to have, enough to
validate what I already knew: Mr. Lahey's method is creative and smart.
But until this point, it's not revolutionary. Mr. McGee said he had
been kneading less and less as the years have gone by, relying on
time to do the work for him. Charles Van Over, author of the
authoritative book on food-processor dough making, "The Best Bread
Ever" (Broadway, 1997), long ago taught me to make a very wet dough
(the food processor is great at this) and let it rise slowly. And, as
Mr. Lahey himself notes, "The Egyptians mixed their batches of dough
with a hoe."
What makes Mr. Lahey's process revolutionary is the resulting
combination of great crumb, lightness, incredible flavor - long
fermentation gives you that - and an enviable, crackling crust, the
feature of bread that most frequently separates the amateurs from the
pros. My bread has often had thick, hard crusts, not at all bad, but
not the kind that shatter when you bite into them. Producing those
has been a bane of the amateur for years, because it requires getting
moisture onto the bread as the crust develops.
To get that kind of a crust, professionals use steam-injected ovens.
At home I have tried brushing the dough with water (a hassle and
ineffective); spraying it (almost as ineffective and requiring
frequent attention); throwing ice cubes on the floor of the oven (not
good for the oven, and not far from ineffective); and filling a pot
with stones and preheating it, then pouring boiling water over the
stones to create a wet sauna (quite effective but dangerous,
physically challenging and space-consuming). I was discouraged from
using La Cloche, a covered stoneware dish, by my long-standing
disinclination to crowd my kitchen with inessential items that
accomplish only one chore. I was discouraged from buying a $5,000
steam-injected oven by its price.
It turns out there's no need for any of this. Mr. Lahey solves the
problem by putting the dough in a preheated covered pot - a common
one, a heavy one, but nothing fancy. For one loaf he used an old Le
Creuset enameled cast iron pot; for another, a heavy ceramic pot. (I
have used cast iron with great success.) By starting this very wet
dough in a hot, covered pot, Mr. Lahey lets the crust develop in a
moist, enclosed environment. The pot is in effect the oven, and that
oven has plenty of steam in it. Once uncovered, a half-hour later,
the crust has time to harden and brown, still in the pot, and the
bread is done. (Fear not. The dough does not stick to the pot any
more than it would to a preheated bread stone.
The entire process is incredibly simple, and, in the three weeks I've
been using it, absolutely reliable. Though professional bakers work
with consistent flour, water, yeast and temperatures, and measure by
weight, we amateurs have mostly inconsistent ingredients and measure
by volume, which can make things unpredictable. Mr. Lahey thinks
imprecision isn't much of a handicap and, indeed, his method seems to
iron out the wrinkles: "I encourage a somewhat careless approach," he
says, "and figure this may even be a disappointment to those who
expect something more difficult. The proof is in the loaf."
The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule
that is produced more easily than by any other technique I've used,
and will blow your mind. (It may yet change the industry. Mr. Lahey
is experimenting with using it on a large scale, but although it
requires far less electricity than conventional baking, it takes a
lot of space and time.) It is best made with bread flour, but
all-purpose flour works fine. (I've played with whole-wheat and rye
flours, too; the results are fantastic.
You or your 8-year-old may hit this perfectly on the first try, or
you may not. Judgment is involved; with practice you'll get it right
every time.
The baking itself is virtually foolproof, so the most important
aspect is patience. Long, slow fermentation is critical. Mr. Lahey
puts the time at 12 to 18 hours, but I have had much greater success
at the longer time. If you are in a hurry, more yeast (three-eighths
of a teaspoon) or a warmer room temperature may move things along,
but really, once you're waiting 12 hours why not wait 18? Similarly,
Mr. Lahey's second rising can take as little as an hour, but two
hours, or even a little longer, works better.
Although even my "failed" loaves were as good as those from most
bakeries, to make the loaf really sensational requires a bit of a
commitment. But with just a little patience, you will be rewarded
with the best no-work bread you have ever made. And that's no small thing.
Bob the Tarheel Baker