The Leaping Rabbit

I am making bread right now. Or rather, the bread is making itself while I write this blog. I mixed the ingredients about an hour ago, kneaded the dough for a bit, and set it aside to rise. It’s in a bowl on the countertop, doin’ its thing. I’m using a recipe from a book called Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, by Laurie Colwin.

The author writes, “The second best thing about this bread (the first is its taste) is that, unlike most things in life, it adjusts to you.” It’s true – you let the dough rise for as long as you need to; there is no need to watch the clock. It’s a perfect recipe for a Saturday when you’re running errands or busy doing stuff around the house. You can leave the house for a few hours while the dough rises at room temperature. It’s fine. (I usually allow 5-8 hours total rising time. I might, for instance, do a 4-hour first rise, a 3-hour second rise. It doesn’t really matter.) And it’s entirely okay to substitute ingredients you have for ones you don’t have.

Here is the recipe:

Combine:

• 1½ cups unbleached white flour
• 1½ cups stone-ground whole-wheat flour
• ¾ cup coarse ground whole-wheat flour. (I use oat bran instead, because I like its flavor and texture, and because I usually have it on hand. The author also says that if you don’t have coarse ground, you can use more regular whole wheat flour.)
• 1 heaping teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon wheat germ (or corn germ)

Mix:

• ½ teaspoon yeast
• “1 ½ cups liquid – half milk, half water, or more water than milk – whatever you have to hand.

1. “Pour liquid into flour and stir it up. The dough should be neither dry nor sticky but should tend more toward the sticky than the dry. If too sticky, knead in a little more flour.”
2. Knead dough, place in a warm bowl, cover bowl with a towel. Let it rise at room temperature.
3. Eventually, whenever works for you, punch down the dough, knead it again, roll it into a ball, put it back in the bowl and “forget about it until convenient.”
4. “Sometime later (with a long first rise, a short second rise is fine, but a long one is fine, too), punch the dough down, give it a final kneading, shape into a baguette, slash the top with four diagonal cuts, brush with water and let proof for a few minutes (and if you haven’t the time, it can go straight into the oven).”
5. Okay, here’s where the author and I differ quite significantly. She suggests that you bake it at 450 for half an hour, then bring the temp down to 425 and bake 20 more minutes. When I try that, the crust comes out too thick and dark for my taste. I find that baking it at 400 for 40 minutes total is quite enough. So see what works for you.

I’ve made this bread about eight times now, and it’s been good every time, although I think it’s gotten better as I’ve made slight adjustments to suit my taste. Even if you’ve never made bread before, don’t be afraid to try it. It’s rewarding!