The Slow Food USA Blog

More Bread Basics

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by Slow Food USA staffer Nathan Leamy
Make sure to check out Nathan’s last post, “Breaducation.”

Often when out and about with friends, I am introduced to people as ‘Nathan: he bakes bread.’  It’s true.  I spend a lot of time baking and eating bread.  But as much time as I spend with baked goods in a practical relationship, it’s not often I spend time thinking about it in the more abstract.  What is at the essence of breadyness?

After some ruminating on the topic, I finally came up with a bulleted list which divides up the taxonomy of bread into four major categories based on how (or if) they rise.

1. Yeast breads (includes sourdoughs and commercial yeast breads, pan breads and hearth breads)
1. White
2. Whole-wheat
3. Egg breads
2. Chemical leavened breads (also called quick breads)
1. Biscuits
1. Crackers (a cracker is a salty, especially flat biscuit, often with docking holes)
2. Cookies (a cookie is a sweet biscuit)
2. Scones
3. Cornbread
4. Fruit bread
3. Mechanically leavened (Steam leavened/fat leavened/air leavened (fat, eggs, etc))
1. Croissants
2. Some biscuits
4. Flat breads and unleavened breads
1. Tortillas
2. Naan (though some Naan and pita are made with yeast and some catch yeast, they are often unleavened)
3. Pita
4. Matzo

 

While bread is simply a baked, fried or steamed good made of a flour based dough – there can be many fillers.  I am lover of most any starchy product, I am fascinated by simple breads.  There are tortillas made of nothing but corn, water, and mineral lime; rice buns made from soggy fermented rice flour; glorious sourdough breads of flour and water.  In France, to call something a “rustic baguette” it legally can only contain flour, water, yeast, and salt. 

Back in college I was part of a baking club (Yeah.  We were the cool kids.) and one week when we were feeling rowdy as part of a quest to make simple breads we decided to start playing with sourdough.  Years later, the fruits of our labor are still paying off for me, my housemates, and my coworkers. 

Making a proper starter is essentially about taming the wild yeast.  Yeast is a unicellular form of fungus which consumes sugars and expels alcohols, acids, and carbon dioxide.  When properly maintained, the power of yeast can be harnessed to produce delicious treats out of otherwise flat ingredients.  Commercial yeast was first created in the mid-nineteenth century as a means of improving the consistency of rise and bake times.  Like many technological changes in our diet, it was widely popularized because of improved regularity – though it also brought along the curse of uniformity. A backlash against blandness began in the 1970s and there has been a resurgence of interest in wild yeasts in cooking.

Wild yeast is a mysterious thing.  Mix flour and water, place it somewhere warm and within a week there’s a good chance something will start bubbling up.  Yeast is in the air, in the flour, on your skin - everywhere.  Given a proper place to land, it will gladly make a home.  Back in college my friends and I began a dozen wild yeast starters – some with grapes, some with potatoes, some sitting in the warm dorms, others left to ferment in the dining hall.  Out of the twelve, two didn’t take at all – but what we did get was an incredible imprint of the strains of yeast which we had living all around us.  Each made a different but delicious bread.

I have kept my current sourdough starter, Concord, for almost four years.  It is sweet and fruity, sometimes with a hint of spice.  I feed it twice daily (giving it flour and water roughly equal to half its volume each feeding), and make bread or pancakes from it at least twice a week.  Beginning your own sourdough can be a great way to connect with your local fungiculture and to reclaim the slowest tradition of baking around.  Tis a gift to be simple.