The Fugue

Well, I did it. You probably already knew that because I've been in the process for some time and I've told just about everyone on the planet. I've written up the things I learned while building my oven, so you can see just what all it takes.

Does it work? Yes, indeed it does. I can make pizza and follow up with a batch of bread. But it's a bit more tricky than the ordinary large brick oven. In a large brick oven, you have lots of room and lots of oxygen for a roarin' fire. You don't need a lot of fire-tending skill to successfully fire a big oven. But this oven requires quite a bit more skill. I'm going to write up exactly what I've learned about firing a small oven Real Soon Now™, but in the meantime I'll just tell you the secret: small pieces, lots of oxygen, and start at least ⅓ of the way back in the oven.

If you just can't wait, may I recommend visiting the excellent woodheat.org site which has excellent information on building fires, especially the Concise Guide to High-Performance Woodburning and Top Down Fever.

Back in July we went to a family reunion and I got to play with making dutch oven bread in the great outdoors instead of in my great electric oven. It actually turned out really well. Well, that is, considering everything that went wrong. Nothing went wrong that had to go wrong, it was just plain bad luck or stupidity. I'll let you be the judge.

We were making a lot, something like 6 loaves. Somehow I miscalculated the amount of water. I mean way miscalculated. Then I did the biggest no-no, especially when you don't have extra flour reserves. I dumped all the water in at once. We would have been eating sourdough soup the next day instead of bread. In the morning we discussed the options, asked in vain if anyone had any extra flour lying around in the car, and finally decided to drive back down 20 minutes to Kamas to buy more flour. I got the five pound bag, drove back, and found that it still wasn't quite enough. Yes, I miscalculated by that much. Well, it wasn't enough for normal bread, but it was good enough to call it ciabatta, so we went ahead and made it. Then I forgot to adjust the salt on some of them, so they were a bit too bland. Still, everyone loved it.

So here's the trick to cooking bread in a dutch oven with charcoal. I used the standard sourdough no-knead recipe. The trick of course is heat management. Because the coals are so close to the bread, you don't need as high an internal temperature, so aim to get your oven to 450°. I preheated the oven, then lifted the lid with a nifty lid lifter contraption and plopped the bread in. After 20 minutes I moved the oven off of the bottom layer of coals, and lifted the lid to release the steam. I put the lid back on and baked another 10 or so minutes until done. Actually several ovens took a bit longer to finish than normal, but that may be partly due to how wet they were.

You might need to adjust the timing or the amount of dough. In particular you don't want the dough touching the top of the oven because that's where more of the coals are and it will burn. If your oven doesn't seal real well you might want to put a layer of foil between the lid and base (this goes for home baking too). Don't leave the bread in the oven for too long after it's done, or it'll go soggy. That's about all there is to it!

If I gave you a copy of my no-knead bread recipe, throw it away and download it again. I made a mistake in calculating the amount of start needed for the sourdough variation. The 3 tablespoons I told you to use is too much for a 12–18 hour ferment. You'll often end up with "raggy" dough that won't keep its skin or rise properly. Basically, the effect would be the same as using too much yeast, though I think the sourdough culture byproducts might be harsher to the gluten than just yeast.

The effect is more pronounced with whole wheat, which has a higher ash content which means it can absorb more of the sourdough byproduct (lactic acid among other things) before the ph reaches the level that inhibits sourdough growth. This is why whole wheat sourdough is generally more sour, all other things equal.

The correct amount of start for that recipe is about 1 tablespoon of start. This is roughly 2% of the whole weight.

By the same token, if your room temperature is closer to 90° than 70°, as mine is during the summer, you might find that you need to reduce the fermentation time considerably or your dough will go to rags. This is because yeast (and sourdough culture) grow much faster in the mid 80s than in the 70s. I've talked about this before, with a pretty graph.

As a bread fanatic, I've often dreamed of having my own brick oven. At first I thought it was a complicated and expensive endeavor, and that I couldn't build one because I'm renting. But then I got creative and designed a couple Brick Ovens for the Cheapskate, and I think that I can build a great oven for about $65, which is portable enough to appease the landlord.

I know I've admonished you to weigh your flour before. I've done mean things like put all my recipes in grams and mocked you whenever I heard you mention measuring flour by volume. But if you'll bear with me I have a very interesting anecdote, and it just so happens it happened to yours truly.

I've been trying to refine my recipe before I inflict it on our unsuspecting ward relief society in their cookbook. So I've been measuring my flour like a "normal person", by volume, to make sure it at least comes close.

Thursday I measured it out and it was wet. Way too wet. Like thick pancake batter wet. I added some flour and managed to get it only a little bit too wet, but due to a minor crisis (running out of flour at the wrong moment) I wasn't able to accurately measure how much more flour I had to add to get a decent consistency. And then the bread went to rags, I think partly because it was still too wet. It was a bona fide disaster. So the next loaf I tried with heaping cups of flour, and still too wet (though not as much too wet). This is with my recipe that should give 74% hydration, but I promise you this was not 74%, it was much higher. And, my recipe uses less water than Bittman and Lahey call for in the NYT No-knead bread recipe. (By my calculations Lahey's recipe comes to 83% and Bittman's comes to 90%)

Today I demonstrated the technique at a friend's house, though instead of the overnight rise we did a few stretch and folds. 3 cups flour (again, scoop & shake like Lahey does in the video) and 1⅓ cups water. Dry. Way dry. So I add about another ⅙ cup water, and it gets sticky and soft. It worked fine, but it was a bit on the dry side after all, giving a tight crumb and holding its structure. It was good, but it wasn't wet enough for the true artisan style.

So on the one hand, way too wet. On the other hand, too dry even when following Lahey's recipe. Same person measuring. Same weather. Same city. Same week. I think it's obvious. Measuring flour by volume is just plain silly.

This week I'm going to do a binary search and find just the right hydration, by weight, for the artisan bread that Lahey and I want you to have. Then if necessary I'll update my recipe, using the 5 oz per cup conversion, hopefully putting things in the middle so that on the average, average Joe/Jane will get reasonable results. I'll probably err on the side of too-dry-for-artisan-but-still-makes-good-grandma-bread, because people are much more likely to be satisfied with grandma bread than the seriously frustrating experience that is trying to manage dough that's tooo wet.

In a quest for technique tips on baguette forming, I found a page at The Fresh Loaf with some great tips on bread slashing. Even more importantly, the page includes a nice video. I don't like the bread with such deep slashes, I prefer shallow and more slashes. In any case, the technique tips are pretty good.

But the real gem here is the link to Le Petit Boulanger which is le site de la boulangerie artisanale. I don't speak french, but I know enough to follow the silent videos (with one exception) posted in the Vidéos page. They are excellent videos of a real boulanger showing you how it's done. Notice how supple the dough is - obviously fairly high hydration. Notice how firmly but gracefully he moves the lame. Notice his neat coat.

So anyway, my conclusion is that the scalpel I got from the bookstore is probably not sharp enough. I'm going to get me some coffee sticks and double-edged razor blades and use a more acute angle. Hopefully I'll stop tearing the loaf and get some nice slashes like the ones you see in those videos.

Made some delicious pizza tonight. As much for my benefit as yours I'm posting the recipe, since I always forget how much dough to make to feed n people.

Pier 42 Pizza
-------------
Serves 4 (two pies)
As hot as your oven goes

340  g   flour
230  g   water
1.33 tsp salt
30   g   active sourdough start
         olive oil
         sauce
         toppings

Mix and let set 8-18 hours. Longer would be even better, but you'll want to do
it in the fridge (take it out a couple of hours before). If you're in a hurry,
add 1 tsp yeast and let set 3-4 hours. If you're really in a hurry, get 
Papa Murphy's.

Divide dough in two and stretch one half into your favorite pizza shape. Get
your toppings ready, then spread some olive oil over the crust, then spread
some sauce on top of that. Add cheese and toppings (or toppings and cheese),
and place in the preheated oven, preferably on a preheated pizza stone but a
cookie sheet would be ok too. Bake until the crust and cheese are golden brown
and delicious (5-15 minutes).

I didn't make the sauce for tonight's pizza, and frequently we just open a can of tomato sauce and spread that on and then sprinkle oregano, basil, and salt on top. But for completeness I'll give you the sauce recipe as it was told to me (and as far as I remember it correctly):

Sauté some garlic in some olive oil. Add a can of (mostly) drained diced or
crushed tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Salt to taste. Cover with sprinkled
basil, then add oregano and perhaps some thyme. Fresh is best of course, but
you can use dried. Simmer until you declare it done. Or don't simmer it at
all, someone told me that was the purist way.

If you're interested in going all Mario on us, jump on over to Jeff Varasano's Famous New York Pizza Recipe. There's a lot to read and ponder there, and though I don't agree with everything on the whole it's a great starting place. You certainly can't deny that he has some delicious-looking pizza!

If you're blessed enough to have a kitchen scale, here's my version of the recipe that the last few posts have been about:

450  g   flour
325  ml  water
1.25 tsp salt
0.25 tsp instant yeast

Mix, cover, let sit for 12-18 hours. Dusting surface and hands as necessary, spread the dough out on the counter and fold like an envelope. Shape into boule/bâtard/loaf/really big baguette/whatever, and let rise until the dough doesn't spring back quickly when poked. Slash and bake at 500°F in a preheated cloche or heavy metal pan with lid for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake to your favorite shade of brown (another 10-20 minutes).

I actually measured how much a cup of flour weighs this evening, something I've been meaning to do. Relative humidity is 61% at present, and a cup of scooped King Arthur whole wheat flour is about 135 grams. A cup of Gold Medal all purpose flour is about 150 grams. Since whole wheat absorbs more water anyway, I'm going with the convenient 150 grams. 325 ml water is about 72% hydration, and actually a bit shy of what the original recipe called for (355 ml). I like 72%, it's a nice number that has worked well for me in the past.

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!

The New York Times website has a nifty short video (and accompanying article) that shows you how to make no-knead bread. It's so simple, a six year old could do it. It's not quite the way I tend to make bread, but I know the no-knead bit works and works well, so do yourself a favor and give this a try. It couldn't be easier. I guarantee it will taste deeeelicous.

I'm serious. Try it. This weekend. Go ahead. I'm watching you.