farmdoc's blog post number 112

I’m amazed it’s taken me 112 blog posts to write about baking bread which has been one of my great passions since I baked my first loaf in 1999. Subsequently I’ve read many baking books, experimented with many techniques, and tried many recipes. Predictably, some worked for me and some didn’t. A couple of years ago Sweetheart Vivienne gave me the wonderful book: Dough by Richard Bertinet. Bertinet has a unique method of working the dough, and he’s fastidious about ingredient quantities, for example weighing 350g of water rather than measuring 350ml. I love Bertinet’s recipes and methods. And I’m lucky my digital scale measures to the nearest gram. Ten days ago Sweetheart Vivienne alerted me to a November 2006 New York Times article and video about bread made without kneading, baked in a very hot oven in a lidded container, and with ingredients quantified by volume not weight. Last Friday I made my first loaf by this method. Burnt slightly, but exceptional crust and crumb. Elle Macpherson famously said she doesn’t like reading anything she hasn’t written herself. I know how she feels, because this loaf is the best I’ve ever baked – maybe due to the mixing and baking methods, but perhaps the approximate measuring. It’s art versus science, folks – in medicine in yesterday’s blog post, in bread baking in today’s.