Bake the Perfect Bread From Scratch: Challenge Accepted!

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Baking cupcakes and brownies are easy. You just get a box of mix and add in eggs and water. There’s even a version of brownies that only require three ingredients. But bread, on the other hand, is a different story. If you can make bread from scratch, then you are a legend amongst men.

As we look forward to another week of quarantine at home, the idea of warm, freshly baked sourdough bread is enough to make my mouth water. And while I’ve seen lots of bread recipes online, a little part of me doesn’t actually believe it’s actually possible for an amateur baker with no fancy bread making equipment at home, to bake a loaf. That is until Beijing expat foodie Greg Monk sent a photo of his freshly baked walnut and raisin wholewheat sourdough to one of the foodie groups on WeChat. If Monk, who’s not a chef by trade, can do it, it gives hope to the rest of us amateur foodies.

Made from scratch by Greg Monk

Monk shared his recipe from Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.

Ingredients:
Overall Formula
Break flour: 3.2oz
Whole-Wheat Flour: 12.8 oz
Water: 9 oz
Salt: .6 oz
Yeast: .13 oz, instant dry
Walnuts: 7 oz
Dried cranberries: 2.6 oz
Raisins: 2.6 oz
Total yield: 5.9 oz

Levain Build
Whole-Wheat Flour: 3.8 oz
Water: 2.5 oz
Mature culture (stiff): .8 oz
Total: 7.1 oz

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Instructions:

1. Stiff-textured whole-wheat levain: Make the levain build approximately 12 hours before the final mix, and let stand in a covered container at about 70-degrees Fahrenheit. During hot weather, or if the levain will ripen for longer than 12 hours, the flour in the levain can be salter at 1.8 to 2.1 percent to slow its activity.

2. Mixing: Add all the ingredients to the mixer except the walnuts, cranberries, and raisins. In a spiral mixer, mix on first speed for 3 minutes in order to incorporate the ingredients. If necessary, correct the hydration by adding water or flour in small amounts. Finish mixing on second speed for three minutes, to moderate gluten development. Mix the walnuts, cranberries, and raisin together and add to the dough Mix on first speed only until they are evenly incorporated. Desired dough temperature is 76-degrees Fahrenheit. If you don’t own an electric dough mixer because, you know, you’re not a professional chef and even if you bought one on Taobao you’d probably only use it about once a year, you can do this part by hand. Monk recommends “About 10 minutes. It’s too wet to knead so you need to apply a different technique that involves using your finger and thumb like a pincer, pinching the dough up/down left/right and diagonally, then stretching and folding. When the dough sticks just scrape off what’s on your hand and wet your hand”.

3. Bulk fermentation: 1.5 to 2 hours.

4. Folding: Fold the dough halfway through the bulk fermentation.

5. Dividing and shaping: Divide the dough into 1.5-pound pieces (or larger, as desired); shape round or oval, or make into pan loaves.

6. Final fermentation: 1 to 1.5 hours at 75-degrees Fahrenheit.

7. Baking: With normal steam, 460-degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 420-degrees Fahrenheit to avoid excess darkening due to the fruits. Loaves scaled at 1.5 pounds should bake for 35 to 38 minutes.

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Source: Bread:A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman
Photos: Greg Monk, saveur.com, rawpixel.com, Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash, giphy

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