But in baking school, kneading my way through literally dozens of loaves of bread, I felt myself growing more comfortable with doughs of all sorts, increasing in difficulty from the 1-2-and-done loaves of Irish brown soda bread to the tough-but-fair mass of bagels to incredibly sticky, challenging gloops that wanted to glue themselves to my hands, my workbench, my neighbor’s hair. Midway through Day 3, by the time we got to the school’s quick, straightforward recipe for focaccia, it felt like a vacation. It turns out that my Great Focaccia Mountain is actually more like a quaint little hill, but who says things need to be hard to be great?

The version of focaccia I’ll share below is every bit as good as the one I described above, but even better, with a complex addition of a mild, creamy tang, a gift from nature. This bread starts with a poolish, aka the evocatively named liquid sponge, a delicious but mannered yeast-and-bacteria colony that’s the midway point between just using straight yeast in your dough and going all-out with a sourdough starter.

What’s a poolish? What’s a liquid sponge? Two terms for the same thing, a poolish is essentially a light, young version of a sourdough starter that’s used to leaven a dough after it’s developed a little bit of flavor but before it starts to get really sour and funky. After 8 hours to a day or so, a poolish gets a milky, buttery characteristic, the result of the friendly bacteria producing lactic acid. I opened my container of the stuff and the aroma was, I thought, of yogurt and almonds. Others in the class thought it smelled like baby spit. I guess I couldn’t disagree, but it tastes great once you bake it!

Use spring water for your starters and doughs, or do it the cheap way — dechlorinate it: Lots of municipal systems spike their water with a little bit of chlorine to kill microorganisms. I’m anti-tummy ache, so I think this is generally a good thing, but it unfortunately also kills many of the yeasts and bacteria we’re trying to cultivate in our starters and doughs. So when making any yeasted bread, spring water is an aristocratic choice. Or simply fill a bowl with the water you need for your recipe and let it sit, uncovered, for about three hours; the chlorine will naturally evaporate out. Note that water filters won’t remove the chlorine, and avoid distilled or reverse osmosis waters, because they have literally no flavor.

Weight vs. volume: This is sort of an age-old battle in recipe writing — do you give ingredient measurements in cups and pints or do you give them by weights? The reason is that density varies; if your flour has been sitting untouched for weeks and mine is constantly getting fluffed up from my dipping into it, a cup of your flour will weigh more, probably, than my own. Usually, you can assume certain averages (about 5 ounces — or .32 pounds — for a cup of all-purpose flour, for example), but in baking precision really matters, especially if you’re making larger batches. (A slight difference in one cup, but multiplied several times, starts to really make a difference.) Weights, however, don’t change — a pound is a pound, a gram is a gram. So while in the past few recipes I’ve given volumes for convenience’s sake, I’ll start here with weights as well. And buy a scale! They’re cheap and totally worth it.

One way to check if you’re done kneading — the windowpane test: Mixing and kneading bread dough in a KitchenAid-type mixer is convenient, but offers the danger of overkneading, which makes the loaf dense and tough. You really don’t have to worry about that when doing it by hand (and I enjoy the physicality of it), but then you have to think about underkneading. (It’s better to underknead than over, if you have to choose.) In a somewhat firm, pleasant dough like this, you can check on your progress with the windowpane test. Using the thumbs and forefingers of both hands, gently pinch and tug a few inches of dough out of the mass. With your middle fingers, gently tap on the flap you’re stretching. Do you feel a tautness, like a drumhead? Does the dough let you stretch it without snapping or tearing right away? It will eventually rip, but if you get some tension in there before it does so while you manipulate it gently, that’s a good sign. And certain doughs will actually stretch to the point of being somewhat see-through, hence the name of this test.

Focaccia
Recipe adapted from Zingerman’s Bakehouse

I gave the recipe a bit of a health makeover by using half whole wheat pastry flour, plus organic canola oil and fat-free milk. The result was shockingly good, and I was a Pie Queen once again. Not a good thing for my waistline, but great for my happiness level.

Don’t be skeptical, you butter lovers. This crust is so tender and flavorful, people will shake their heads in disbelief when you tell them it’s made with oil. My mother-in-law proclaimed it as good as her grandmother’s lard crust, and that’s about the highest compliment I could receive. A few people who commented on the Saveur site had problems with the crust, but I think it’s nearly foolproof if you follow my instructions and these three rules of thumb:

1. Measure everything accurately. A tablespoon means right to the top of the measuring spoon!

2. Measure the flour by spooning it gently into your measuring cup rather than scooping, then level off with a knife.

3. Never refrigerate the dough.

Heart-Healthy Apple Raspberry Pie

Happily, many of your questions touched on these themes, so I’ll address them — to the best of my ability — below.

Don’t flour your board: OK, that’s an overstatement. Sometimes it’s necessary to lay down a little flour when you’re working with dough — when you’re folding it or shaping it, for instance. But resist the strong temptation to flour your board so that the dough doesn’t stick while you’re kneading it. Wet dough makes good bread — it keeps the crust crisper and the insides more tender, more chewy, more airy. Adding flour to your board while kneading works that flour into the recipe, and it’s a slippery slope — once you’re used to a nice, dry, easy-to-handle dough, you’ll only want to keep it that way … and the bread will suffer for your convenience.

How to knead wet, sticky dough: OK, so you’re resisting the urge to flour your board, and what are you rewarded with? A dough that’s like glue, sticking and smearing all over the place. Thanks a lot, Lam! But you can get used to kneading this sort of thing. (Of course, you can do it in a mixer, but what’s the fun in that?) First, make sure you start with clean hands – if there’s dough stuck to them from turning it out from the mixing bowl to your table, it’s just going to want to stick to itself. Keep a bench knife or dough scraper in one hand (most people prefer it in their dominant hand). With the base of your tool-free hand, and with a quick motion, push into the dough to stretch it. (Quick, confident motions help keep the dough from sticking to you.) Then, with the scraper, get underneath the dough and fold it on itself before giving it another push. (Also try to do this in quick, confident motions.) Come at it again with the scraper, from another angle, maybe a quarter-turn from where you folded it last. Push into it again. Repeat this combination, varying the angle from which you scrape and fold the dough, and every third or fourth scrape, come all the way around it to make sure you’re gathering up all the dough on the table. Eventually, you’ll develop enough gluten in the mass to help firm it up, and it won’t be quite so blobby.

Now, to the questions:

Supercharging your home oven — getting better heat and creating steam for better texture and crisper crusts

My friend bakes her bread on a large round stone. What difference would baking bread on a big hunk of stone make? — Adrienne S.

One thing I really love is CRUSTY bread. Thick, hard, exercise-your-jaw crusty. I will rip out the doughy innards in order to be left with just crust. So my question is, HOW do I do that? — catnmus

I have been having problems with several tried-and-true bread recipes since I moved into my apartment with a much smaller electric oven. The bread tastes fine, but the crusts are almost impenetrable. Any suggestions are welcome. — Denise K.

The two main differences between a commercial and home oven are heat and steam, but there are ways to level the playing field on both.

Big bad pro ovens just get hotter and, more important, hold their heat more tenaciously. A home oven can lose as much as 50 degrees when you open the door to take a peek. But a baking stone, when preheated for long enough, will actually hold a good deal of heat and “donate” it back to the oven, keeping the temperature more consistent. And, if you bake directly on the stone, the intense heat will give a richly caramelized bottom crust. More magically, it also gives a better rise. When dough — all full of yeasts and puffy with the carbon dioxide they produce — hits a hot oven, the yeasts get excited and start wheezing out more and more CO2. The gas gets more active and tries to push out of the dough, expanding it while the dough is cooking and setting into shape. This “oven spring” makes your bread light and tender and delicious. So a baking stone helps with all that.

As for the crust, there are many reasons why your crust may or may not be fantastic, but one major one goes back to the idea of balancing the relationship between the bread expanding and at the same time wanting to set its shape in the oven. Commercial ovens have the ability to inject steam into the baking chamber during the first 6-10 minutes of the bake; it’s in this time that the yeast and gas are most active, and you want to keep the crust from firming up while it’s moving. So steam helps to keep the outside of the bread pliable. At the same time, it gelatinizes the starch on the crust, so that it will crisp up later in the cooking process.

There are lots of ways to create steam in a home oven, but one that seems to work best requires a well-heated heavy pan (like cast iron) on the floor of your oven. Position the pan so it sticks out from under the baking stone by a few inches. Spritz the inside of a big metal mixing bowl or a disposable lasagna tray with water. Put your bread on the baking stone and cover the entire loaf with the bowl, hanging it over the stone by a couple inches so that there’s a direct line from the hot pan to the bowl. Carefully but confidently pour about ½ cup to a cup of boiling water into the pan and shut the door. The water will create a burst of steam as it hits the hot pan, and the steam will go up around the stone and into the little chamber created by the bowl. (Just be sure to pour the water surely with an outstretched arm so the steam doesn’t attack you.) After 6-10 minutes, remove the bowl (careful!) and let it finish baking.

If you have an electric oven, you can actually throw the water right on the floor of the oven, and just open the door 6-10 minutes into the baking time to let the steam escape. (This doesn’t work in gas ovens because they have flues.)

Finally, there can be many reasons for crusts that are too thick as well. Adding steam may help, since it retards the crust’s setting and browning process. Turning up the heat (or using an oven thermometer to make sure the heat is accurate) may also help, since baking a loaf too slowly will give more time for the outside of the bread to dry out and become thick. Or it may simply be over-baked, or the dough allowed to proof without being covered with plastic or a moist towel, forming a dry skin even before it goes in the oven.

Yeast in the hot, humid summer, and how to check if your dough is properly risen

How sensitive is bread dough to high summer humidity? I live in coastal Mississippi. All my bread comes out a bit “homemade,” in that distressingly dense-but-dry way. Do I just throw in extra yeast? — KZ

If it’s really hot and humid, you can actually cut back on the yeast you use, because it will multiply so quickly in those conditions. If you decide to stay true, quantity-wise, to a recipe written for room temperature (and 99.99 percent are), be sure to keep a good eye on your dough as it rises. If it starts to bubble up and lift quickly, and is looking like it might collapse, then move on to the next step of the recipe, or put the dough in the fridge to retard the yeasts’ action. An overproofed, collapsed dough will make for dense, dry bread.

Another way to help mediate the temperature is to use cold water for the dough and instant yeast, which doesn’t need warm water to activate. Or even go so far as to refrigerate your flour for a bit as well, so the dough doesn’t start out hot.

A test you can use to see if a loaf is properly proofed and ready for baking is to poke a finger about a half-inch into the formed and shaped loaf. If it doesn’t collapse the dough, you feel a little bit of resistance, and the indentation pops back out maybe 1/3 of the way you pushed it in, you’re ready to bake. If it bounces back all the way, you may want to let it continue to proof. Of if it collapses or doesn’t come back out at all, the bread might be overproofed.

Some questions on sourdough starters

1) I have always been led to believe that they will die if you don’t take them out and feed them every couple of weeks. However, I have neglected my starter (in the fridge) for months at a time without any negative effects. So, what are the limits? I believe that yeast forms spores in times of deprivation, so it seems like it should be essentially impossible to kill a starter with neglect. As I recall, the “wake-up” time (the time it takes after adding flour and water before bubbles start to form) was longer when I hadn’t used the starter in a while, but other than that there were no problems.

2) Any info on whole wheat versus “white” flour in starters? I like to give mine whole wheat every now and again, just so it has a bit of variety in its diet (anthropomorphizing one’s starter is an indispensable part of owning one).

3) I’ve also read that metal utensils and bowls are bad for the starter (since it generates acid, which can dissolve some metals). However, most metal bowls for the kitchen are stainless steel, which ought to be nonreactive. Is stainless steel OK?

4) I’ve noticed that my sourdough rises better (more evenly, not more quickly) at room temperature, whereas when I use commercial yeast it is better to incubate the dough in a warm (90-100º F) spot. My working theory is that since it spends most of its time in the fridge, my starter’s yeast population is better adapted for colder conditions whereas commercial yeasts have been optimized for the higher temperatures that most recipes call for. Is this true? — -Pentiptycene

Wow. OK, here goes:

1) I believe you had a liquid starter, that is, a starter with a much higher percentage of water than a firm or solid starter, which is basically a literal piece of sour dough. I’m not sure of the science behind this, but yes, liquid starters can stay viable for much longer than firm starters and can take all kinds of neglect and abuse, though “months” I would think is pushing it. Two weeks is about as long as you really want to go between feedings, but the thing with more frequent, even daily, feedings (whenever it gets frothy and bubbly) is that they will help to develop a much more mature, complex-tasting starter in a much shorter time. Some say that a liquid starter will never develop as complex a flavor as a firm one, but for an occasional home baker, a liquid starter is a great thing to have for convenience’s sake. It has great survival skills, but it will flourish if you take regular care of it.

2) OK, well, you better have a name for your starter then. And whole wheat is fine.

3) Yes, stainless steel is nonreactive and OK. You might want to avoid aluminum, though.

4) Hm. No idea. It must be intelligent design!

Finally, some unsatisfying answers to a few miscellaneous questions

Ask Shelby what he thinks about “Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.” I started baking bread last year with this book, but I’ve read enough online to recognize its limitations. Where do I go to get to the next stage? — Ryan K.

Well, I asked, and while he’s familiar with that book, he hasn’t actually read it and so can’t comment on it. But one should never limit oneself to one source, and two books he really recommends are “Bread” by Jeffery Hamelman and “Bread Science” by Emily Buehler.

Hope you will find out how different flours affect the finished product, such as whole wheat, soy, oat, buckwheat and spelt. Can you make a buckwheat bread? Anyhow, I have access to all of these flours and would love to experiment once the heat of the summer is behind us. — Trace element

Well, this is a huge question, and I’m sorry I didn’t find any good answers! Whole wheat will certainly add flavor to a dough, but will also absorb more moisture, so the dough and bread may end up drier or a little denser than if made with white flour. It also kneads a bit differently, as the bran and germ will actually inhibit some gluten formation (they will physically cut the gluten strands as they form), giving you a little less rise and less chewiness. But obviously there are incredibly delicious whole wheat breads; you just have to factor in those traits.

Aside from spelt, the other flours you mention don’t have any gluten at all (though oat and buckwheat flour are sometimes contaminated with wheat in processing), so they will have a very different texture. A great source to start your research is “Gluten Free Baking” by Richard Coppedge, a certified master baker and an instructor at the Culinary Institute of America. 

But the world does not respect the integrity of the bagel. Nay, the ubiquity of the sucky bagel can no longer be ignored: big, puffy, dry, characterless, insipid, stupid, ignorant, offensive, socially maladjusted circle-shaped breads called bagels exist in every supermarket freezer aisle, in every corner deli. They besmirch the bagel’s good name.

Happily, my baker friend Shelby once set his mind to creating the very best bagel he could, and because this is a man who once drove across the entire country without a radio in his car because he set his mind to it, he came up with a killer recipe, full of firm chew, a crust with self-respect, and a subtly sweet, wheaty flavor. Even more happily, these bagels also represent a fine lesson in key baking skills, so even if you’re not going to join the bagel resistance, they’re still worth making to learn techniques in mixing, kneading, proofing and baking. (If you know all this stuff, feel free to skip to the recipe, but it was all news to me.)

What is a straight dough, and the best kind of yeast to buy: While the soda bread we learned about last time is a chemically raised quick bread, bagels are in the straight dough family, which is to say doughs that are leavened through the use of commercial yeast. One of the reasons I’ve always avoided bread making is having to deal with proofing yeast, activating it with water that’s warm but not too hot, so they come alive but are not killed by the heat. It all seemed a hassle. Happily, instant yeast (aka bread machine yeast, quick yeast or yeast with some reference to its speed) is made so that it dissolves quickly and works fine in cold and room-temperature water, so there’s no need to fuss with a thermometer.

Standard mixing technique: In the recipe below, you’ll see that the dry and liquid ingredients, minus the flour and the salt, are mixed together first. Then you add half the flour and mix some more, then the rest of it with the salt. This is the standard technique for mixing together doughs, and it works nicely because it allows for the dry and wet ingredients to mix and dissolve evenly before the thirsty flour shows up and hogs all the water. Adding half the flour at a time also allows for more even hydration of the flour, and it also provides the yeast with a bit of protection from the salt, which scares poor yeast to death. (Salt actually does slow down yeast’s activity, which is important in all kinds of ways for bread.)

Kneading stiffer doughs: People develop their own moves for kneading dough, but the three things to keep in mind are that you want to keep stretching, folding and rotating the dough. It’s really not about pressing into it hard or beating it up. The technique Shelby taught me, which works really nicely for this and other doughs that aren’t super wet or sticky, is to stand at the table with one foot slightly forward. In this stance, you can rock your body weight back and forth to give you force and rhythm and keep your arms from tiring out. Using your body weight, push forward on the dough with the heels of your hands, pushing it down into the table only as firmly as you need to make sure it’s stretching the dough forward somewhat. Then, as you rock back, use one hand to pick up the top of the dough to fold or roll it down back over itself. Use your other hand to give it a quarter turn at the same time, so that your next push forward into the dough is in the same location and direction on the table, but you’re effectively working a different area of the dough itself.

Retarding: Fermentation in the dough, which is what gives us rising, happens slowly when the room is cool and quickly when it’s warm. Knowing this, it’s possible to prepare a dough up to almost any stage and put it on hold until you’re ready to come back to it by putting it in the fridge, which will nearly stop the fermentation process. This is called retarding. (Just make sure you cover the dough with plastic so it doesn’t dry out.) The recipe below is great to make all the way to the point where you’re ready to boil and bake the bagels, pop the dough the fridge overnight, and have them ready to cook fresh for breakfast. (OK, probably it’ll be more like brunch.)

The importance of the baking stone: One of the two major differences in professional and home ovens is that the big boys get much hotter and stay hotter; they don’t lose all their heat when the door is opened, making the baking process wonky at home. (Even a quickish peek into a home oven can cost you 50 degrees.) But a good-quality baking stone (also called a pizza stone) can go a long way toward equalizing the two if you let it preheat for a good long time; it slowly builds up heat in itself, and so even if the hot air escapes your oven, it will “donate” its heat to rewarm the air much more quickly. And its intense heat helps give breads baked directly on it a great crust. Put your stone on the bottom rack of the oven (not the floor of the oven), and just make sure you get a nice thick one, ¾ of an inch or so; the thinner ones you get for about $20 have a nasty habit of cracking.

True, honorable bagels

Recipe courtesy of and adapted from Shelby Kibler and Zingerman’s Bakehouse

Makes 16

These bagels are really at their best within the first couple of hours after they’ve cooled, and they’ll remain good for 6 to 8 hours or so. After that, they’re better toasted or put in the freezer.

So step 1 in joining this crazy brotherhood of bakers is getting over the fear of the unknown; it’s getting a few easy wins under the belt to develop a little confidence. And the first lesson in baking school, quick breads, was meant to do just that.

Quick breads are breads that are made with chemical leaveners — baking soda or baking powder — and, because they can go from raw flour to delicious food in minutes, you usually come across them on the breakfast table: biscuits, muffins, even pancakes and waffles, technically. But for bake-phobics, their ease and quickness are also important because you can reliably turn out superb products in a hurry, giving you an inkling of your hidden talents. “Hey, why not me?” I said, looking at my loaf of gorgeously browned, sweet-smelling Irish soda bread.

I know, I know — Irish brown bread is not everyone’s idea of a great time, dense and with a harsh metallic taste in bad versions. But the recipe I’ll share with you below is really striking, especially if you’re an unbeliever: full of nutty, toasty flavor, an undercurrent of sweetness, and a tender crumb that doesn’t need butter, but definitely wouldn’t kick it out of bed either. It’s fantastic with dinner or on its own.

While making it or any other quick bread, here are some key tips to keep in mind:

Don’t overmix: Unlike other styles of bread, baking soda- or baking powder-raised breads really don’t want to be mixed very much once you add the liquid to the dry ingredients. Follow the particular recipe, but usually just enough agitation to get the dry ingredients moistened is enough, and leaving a few lumps floating around is usually OK. A light hand keeps the final product tender; an overmixed batter makes it dull, dense and tough.

Have your oven preheated and be ready to bake immediately after mixing: Bread rises when gas builds up inside it, trying to escape the dough (heat causes the gas to try to escape with even more force, so it puffs the bread even more while baking). In a quick bread, that gas is the carbon dioxide that is released once an acidic ingredient hits the baking soda (or water hits the baking powder). The reaction is instant, so if you leave the batter or dough sitting around unbaked after it’s mixed, sooner or later it’s going to run out of gas.

The difference between baking soda and baking powder: Baking soda reacts with acidic ingredients (lemon juice, vinegar, yogurt, buttermilk, etc.) to release carbon dioxide, which will lift and raise dough. Baking powder is mostly baking soda, but combined with a powdered acid — cream of tartar. When it gets wet, the baking soda and the acid combine and react to one another, so there’s no need for an acidic ingredient in the recipe. Note that both of these leaveners will eventually lose their effectiveness as they sit in your pantry. To check if your stash still works, add some lemon juice or vinegar to a bit of baking soda, or some water to a sample of baking powder. If they bubble and fizz, they’ve still got some power.

An imperfect but reasonable substitute for buttermilk: When you see buttermilk in a quick bread recipe, it’s usually there to react with baking soda. If you don’t happen to have buttermilk, you can make a functional substitute by stirring one tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to a cup of milk and letting it sit for a few minutes. Substitute this mixture in equal amounts with the buttermilk. The flavor won’t be quite the same, but it’ll do what you need it to do. 

Irish Brown Soda Bread

Makes two 1.5 pound loaves

Recipe courtesy of and adapted from Zingerman’s Bakehouse