by James Beard
This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright © 1973 by James A. Beard
Introduction copyright © 1995 by Chuck Williams
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Atheneum Publishers and George Lang: Recipe for George Lang’s Potato Bread with Caraway Seeds from The Cuisine of Hungary, by George Lang. Copyright © 1971 by George Lang.
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.: Recipe for Jane Grigson’s Walnut Bread from Southern Burgundy from Good Things, by Jane Grigson. Copyright © 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, by Jane Grigson. Copyright © 1971 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
The New York Times: Recipe for Finnish Sour Rye Bread and recipe for Sourdough Rye Bread. Copyright © 1968 by The New York Times. Reprinted by permission.
Random House, Inc.: Recipe for Pizza Caccia Nanza from Italian Family Cooking, by Edward Giobbi. Copyright © 1971 by Edward Giobbi.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Beard, James Andrew, 1903–1984
Beard on bread.
1. Bread. I. Title.
TX769.B33 1973 641.8’15 73–7266
eISBN: 978-0-307-79055-2
Published October 23, 1973
v3.1
ALSO BY JAMES BEARD
Hors d’Oeuvre and Canapés
Cook It Outdoors
Fowl and Game Cookery
The Fireside Cookbook
Paris Cuisine
(with Alexander Watt)
Jim Beard’s New Barbecue Cookbook
James Beard’s New Fish Cookery
The Complete Book of Outdoor Cookery
(with Helen Evans Brown)
How to Eat Better for Less Money
(with Sam Aaron)
The James Beard Cookbook
James Beard’s Treasury of Outdoor Cooking
Delights and Prejudices
Menus for Entertaining
How to Eat (and Drink) Your Way
Through a French (or Italian) Menu
James Beard’s American Cookery
Beard on Food
Theory & Practice of Good Cooking
The New James Beard
Beard on Pasta
This book is dedicated to
ELIZABETH DAVID,
who loves bread
I am grateful to the following people who helped to test and retest the recipes which appear in this book:
John Ferrone
Neil Micucci
Pearl Bresev
Janet Wurtzburger
Emil Kashouty
Eleanor Noderer
Tina Cassell
Felipe Rojas-Lombardi
And at least twenty others who were eager to test the recipes.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Observations
Basic Yeast Bread and Other White-Flour Breads
Whole-Meal Breads
Sweetened Breads and Coffee Cakes
Egg Breads
Batter Breads
Baking Powder and Soda Breads
Rolls
Flat Breads
Filled Breads
Fried Cakes
Griddle Breads
Index
Introduction
Jim, as James Beard was known to his many friends, loved to make bread. He loved the feel of the dough against his hands, and, as he often expressed, “You really can’t make good bread unless you can feel the texture, softness, and elasticity of the dough through your hands.” Ask him how long to knead the dough and the answer would probably be: Until it feels right!
Jim was an imposing sight standing at a table with a mound of dough in front of him, his large hands caressing the dough, turning and folding it, until just the right moment, when he would stop, poke it with a finger, and pronounce it ready for rising.
During the months and months this book was in its formative stages, bread was an all-consuming interest for him. It was a rebellion against the lifeless and characterless bread found on the shelves of the American supermarket. America had developed the automobile, the airplane, and the refrigerator, and had won the wars, but had failed miserably at making bread. Soft, spongy pre-sliced white bread with little flavor, slathered with butter or margarine and topped with peanut butter or jam, was what America was eating. There was little objection from most people, but Jim thought differently and was on a crusade to correct this sad state of breadmaking.
I remember Jim in his New York kitchen kneading yet another version of sourdough bread with the hope of replicating the crusty sourdough of San Francisco’s North Beach. I remember him in my kitchen in San Francisco trying out a buttermilk honey bread. It was a time for experimenting with new flours from small mills, new and stronger yeasts, putting tiles and pans of water in the oven to create steam—all in the quest to duplicate the crusty loaves of France. Jim had great and lengthy discussions on why the bread in France was so crusty and delicious. Was it the yeast? Was it the brick ovens in the basements of those charming Parisian bakeries? As I remember, the final consensus of opinion from Jim, Elizabeth David, and others was that it was the flour. Yes, the flour—French flour was different! Yet, how different? Elizabeth David’s final pronouncement on the whole dilemma was, “You cannot duplicate it. You do not have the French flour and you are not in France, so there is really no reason to discuss it further.” But Jim was never one to dismiss a challenge. He continued with his experiments and his discussions on how the best of European breads could be reproduced on this side of the Atlantic. Of course he was right. Now there are excellent European-type breads baked in this country.
After its publication in the autumn of 1973, Beard on Bread accomplished what Jim had in mind—encouraging home cooks to bake bread. And bake bread they did! Not only that, they became more interested in taking cooking lessons. Also at this time, a new breed of chef was in its formative years—the Young American Chef! These young American chefs, fresh from a cooking school or culinary academy, emerged eager to change the way we ate. They wanted better bread in their restaurants, so they began baking their own crusty loaves. Some of the young bakers getting their first chance at creating these breads in the latest “in” restaurants soon started their own small bakeries, baking crusty country loaves of French and Italian origin.
With the increased interest in breadmaking, new flours appeared on the market—unbleached bread flours, hard-wheat flours, stoneground flours. Also new, improved active dry yeasts—stronger yeasts, faster-acting yeasts, most of them meant to be simply added to the flour. Some dedicated bakers would disdain commercial yeast, developing methods for capturing wild yeast to create “starters.” The shelves of the ubiquitous soft white sliced breads began to shrink while more interesting country-type loaves began to appear.
Today there are even more inducements for making your own bread. As well as the faster-acting yeasts, now there is a wheat gluten flour on the market that increases the gluten content of regular flour for better rising. New bread boosters, also containing wheat gluten as well as malt, will make your doughs rise more and give home-baked loaves the delicious malt flavor that we love in good crusty country breads. The electric bread machine, developed in Japan, has been a big hit with bread-loving Americans from the moment it was introduced here. The idea of fresh warm bread produced in your own home at a preset time and with little effort has great appeal, especially among people not particul
arly interested in cooking. Jim would have been fascinated with the machine, as he was with the food processor when it first appeared, and would have experimented at great length with it. I am sure that his final appraisal of the machine would be that it has a rightful place in the homes of people too busy to bake or really not interested in baking, but that it cannot replace “hands-on” breadmaking any more than machine-made pies have equaled handmade ones. Unfortunately it will not produce, on its own, the crusty country loaves I have been talking about. If you want to understand the art of bread baking, get your hands in the dough.
Even though breadmaking has changed considerably since the publication of Beard on Bread, the book is as viable today as it was in 1973. With its simple instructions and easy-to-follow recipes, new dimensions in breadmaking have been created for the home cook. To quote Jim: “I find it always pleasant at the beginning of a day to “proof” the yeast, to plunge my hands into the dough and bring it to life, to watch it rise, and to wait for the moment when the finished loaf can be taken from the oven. There is no smell in the world of food to equal the perfume of baking bread and few greater pleasures in eating than sitting down with a slice of freshly baked bread, good butter, and a cup of tea or coffee.” I heartily agree!
Chuck Williams
OBSERVATIONS
Flour
Special Flours, Meals, and Additives
Leavening
The Electric Mixer
Bread Pans
Greasing Bowls and Pans
Tiles
Cooling and Storing Bread
Freezing Bread
Bread Knives
Bread and Butter
Toast
Stale Bread
Choosing the Right Bread
Flour
To make yeast bread we need wheat flour, which contains a protein called “gluten.” When we stir and knead dough, gluten is the ingredient that makes the elasticity, holds in the gas caused by the fermenting yeast, and creates the architectural plan of the bread. The flour called “all-purpose,” which is the most generally available flour, is wheat flour. It comes both bleached and unbleached, and because it is a sturdier flour and has better texture, the unbleached is preferable. Unbleached flour has long been available from Standard Mills under two brand names, and it is interesting to note that the larger mills, like Pillsbury, General Mills, and Robin Hood, who up until this time have promoted bleached flour, with its “enrichments,” are also beginning to offer unbleached flour, as well as flours that are much more vigorous, such as coarsely ground meals. This is a great advance in the world of commercial foods, one that I am sure is motivated by the tremendous interest in stone-ground flours and special flours turned out by small mills across the country in the last five or six years now that breadmaking has become a popular art again. People will even go right to the source to buy these flours, or buy them in specialty health food shops.
While I have used all-purpose flour extensively in testing recipes for this book, it is not the best flour to use for making breads. The choicest kind is the hard-wheat flour used by professional bakers, and if you have a cooperative bakery in your neighborhood you might ask if you can buy some. You can also buy hard-wheat flours from some health food stores or by mail order—some made from North Dakota hard wheat, some from Texas hard wheat. Any of them will make a beautiful, firm-crumbed bread, a bread that will elicit compliments from practically everyone who tastes it.
There is no standardization of flours from one brand to another or from one part of the country to another to help the breadmaker produce uniform loaves of bread, although at one time General Mills offered an all-purpose flour that was considered to be standard throughout the country. I am afraid that this is no longer the case, so one can safely say there are no two flours on the market that really react alike.
As I will mention many times throughout this book, it is almost impossible to give an exact amount of flour for each recipe because of the difference in the characteristics of flour, as well as variations in the atmosphere. Therefore when a recipe calls for kneading in extra flour, you may require more than I suggest. If this happens, do not be alarmed. Go ahead, add flour, and try to achieve a dough that has a good consistency. Eventually your hands will learn when you have reached the right amount of flour and the right degree of kneading.
If you become a serious breadmaker, you will want to play with various special flours, like graham or barley flour. There are also meals and components of the grain you can use, but these are strictly additives; they cannot be used alone to make bread, since they do not react to yeast and must therefore be combined with wheat flour. The veteran breadmaker is always on the lookout for special flours and additives, and if you search your city or countryside you may discover some new varieties for yourself.
Special Flours, Meals, and Additives
Meals are coarsely ground grains, a number of which are used extensively in breadmaking. The best known of these is oatmeal, also known as steel-cut oatmeal, and rolled oats—that is, oats that are rolled into a very coarse meal, giving them an entirely different texture from the whole grain.
Barley meal, which is a coarsely ground version of the whole kernel of barley, is called for in a few recipes. Barley flour, a finer milling of the kernel, is used in combination with wheat flour in some breads.
Whole-wheat flour is different in texture from whole-meal flour or whole-wheat meal; the latter two are much more coarsely ground and contain rough bits of bran and crushed kernels.
Rye meal should be differentiated from rye flour in much the same way; it is coarse, rough, and bakes into a more crunchy loaf.
Bran is found in whole-wheat flour and whole-wheat meal and is also sold by itself. It is very coarse and has little to offer save its texture.
Graham flour is a ground whole-wheat grain that includes the bran. It was developed by Dr. Sylvester Graham.
Gluten is the protein component of grain. Gluten flour has had practically all starch removed and is used widely in diatetic breads.
The wheat germ is the sprouting section of the seed and is often removed from flours because it contains fat, which limits the keeping qualities of bread. But it is full of nutrients and today it is available separately and is much used as a cereal, as an additive to breads, and as animal food.
Whole-wheat kernels or whole-wheat berries are the whole kernels of wheat, which contain the bran, the germ, the gluten—everything. Some people like it whole in breads to add texture (it must be cooked first); it can also be eaten as a cereal, or you can grind it to use as a meal.
Cracked wheat is coarsely ground whole wheat, which is commonly used as a cereal; it adds a crunchy taste and nutty flavor to breads.
Buckwheat was originally known as beechwheat because of its triangular seed. It is native to Russia and was brought to Europe during the Crusades. It is used principally for buckwheat cakes, for blini, and sometimes as a cereal. Buckwheat can be ground—in fact, it is one of the few grains that can be ground in a blender.
Stone-ground flour is flour that has been milled by stone rollers, which are very often propelled by water power. Many people feel that this method of grinding produces a more nutritious and honest flour than modern milled flour. It is apt to be coarser and heavier, and you will find that you need to use about double the amount of yeast when you are making bread with stone-ground flour.
Hard-wheat flour is usually made from spring wheat, particularly that from the West, Middle West, and Southwest, and notably from Deaf-smith County in Texas. Hard-wheat flours are noted for their mineral content and for making firm, rather elastic breads. In England it is called “strong flour.”
Soft-wheat flour in this country comes mostly from the Midwest and is noted for its smoothness, which is an asset in making pastries and cakes.
Soybean flour is finely ground soybeans; it may be added to other flours in baking. It is an enrichment rather than a flour, and has a low fat content.
Bro
wn rice when milled produces a heavy, dark flour called rice flour, which has a very rich flavor and gives a heavy character to anything to which it is added.
Leavening
A number of leavening agents are used in breadmaking, but the most common is yeast, in either compressed or active dry form.
Compressed or fresh yeast, as it is sometimes called, is sold in cakes in three sizes—a little over one-half ounce, one ounce, and two ounces—and also in quarter-pound and one-pound packages. It can be kept in the refrigerator for about ten to fourteen days; it can also be frozen successfully, but it must be defrosted at room temperature and used immediately. If you buy a large package of yeast, it is wise to cut it into one-batch pieces and freeze them separately.
Active dry yeast has replaced compressed yeast in most parts of the country. It is most commonly available in individual packets, containing approximately a tablespoon, and it can also sometimes be found in four-ounce jars. The yeast in a small package has the expiration date marked on the outside, but if you buy it in larger bulk in health food stores, the packages aren’t apt to be dated and you should “proof” the yeast before using. If you buy yeast in larger quantities, measure 1 scant tablespoon to equal 1 package of active dry yeast or a half-ounce cake of compressed yeast.
Active dry yeast should be dissolved in liquid at a temperature of about 100° to 115°, while compressed yeast should be dissolved in liquid that is no warmer than about 95°. These limits should be carefully observed. The first few times you make bread, you should take the temperature of the water with a thermometer, noting how warm it feels on your wrist when it is at the proper degree. After that you can gauge the temperature accurately enough just by the feel.
There is a new method being promoted today whereby dried yeast is simply blended with the other dry ingredients and then mixed with liquid that has been heated to as much as 120° to 130°. A lot of people like this method because it is so easy. Frankly, I find that while it may cut down your time, I prefer the old-fashioned way; perhaps the dough rises faster, but it is at the expense of the final flavor, it seems to me.
