Just Baking

Last week, I got yet another bread book, called “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes”, by Jeffrey Hamelman. I’d heard this was about the best book out there. I really like the “Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart, but Bread has some great information, too.

I’ve been trying to get bigger holes in the crumb of my bread (the crumb is the part that’s not crust), but I hadn’t been having much success. The breads tasted good, but I really wanted that holey look and texture. Hamelman describes a technique for folding the dough during the first fermentation (rise, or bulk fermentation). Simply put, the dough is poured out onto a heavily floured workspace, and the dough is folded, right to left, left to right in thirds, then the same top to bottom and bottom to top.

When folding, the flour helps the dough not stick to the surface. The right third is folded over and pushed down gently to only partially degas the dough, then the left third is folded over the rest and again gently degassed. The top third is folded down, degassed gently, followed by the same treatment of the bottom third. Each time the dough is folded, the excess flour has to be brushed away to ensure it isn’t left between layers, as it won’t be incorporated into the dough and will leave streaks in the final bread.

This sounds more involved than it really is; the folding is simple. the end product is worth it, and I don’t know that I’ll ever punch anything down again!  I did 3 recipes, all using the folding method, and all came out with much better crumb than before.