The Fugue

I took a little bit closer look at that article and recipe, and I'm sorry to report that the reporter spoiled everything.

Ok, not everything. If you make it his way it will still turn out very good. But he has replaced the no-frills down-to-earth perfectly elegant technique you see in the video with overcomplicated Betty Crocker-ish instructions. To take the words out of the mouth of one of the presenters at ICMC today (who was talking about quantizing Brazilian drum patterns), he destroyed its very soul. And he got some things wrong, too.

Let's start at the top of the recipe. Step one: blah blah blah, add 1 5/8 cups water. 1 5/8? One and five eighths? Do a sloppy one and a half cups water like the real baker in the video does. A little more? Fine. A little less? No problem. The humidity difference in one place alone, let alone the difference between New York and wherever you live, will make that 1/8 cup water mostly irrelevant anyway.

I wish "warm room temperature" was 70 degrees where I live. That's cool room temperature to me. Whatever. You don't need a thermometer here. Just let it sit at room temperature. If you live in the Sahara, put it in the shade and shoot for less time.

"Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles." No, the dough is ready after 12-18 hours, whenever it's convenient for you. Statements like these are for when you're watching a pot boil, not for many-hour ferments.

The one place where he should have gone into journalistic detail he failed to do so. Don't just "fold it over on itself", which is vague. Fold it like a letter going into an envelope. Once one direction, and again in the other direction.

He wants you to let it rise for 2 hours. I'm betting it won't take that long, but it will depend on your altitude and ambient temperature. He's right about when it's done rising though.

"Heat oven to 450 degrees." How much do you want to bet the PHBs at the NYT wouldn't let him put 500 to 515 degrees out of some silly (un)written safety policy that says, "Never ever under any circumstances tell people to bake at more than 450 degrees. They will undoubtedly burn their hands off and start a fire. Do not break this regulation no matter how much better the bread would turn out, or you will be sentenced to life in the same kitchen as Julia Child."

Finally, and this isn't the reporter's fault, I think 30 minutes + 20 minutes at 500 might be a little long, and the bread in the video confirmed it for me. Some of his crust looked charred a bit beyond maillard. Not a hard variable for you to adjust to your taste. Enjoy!