The Lazy Genius Podcast - #55: The Lazy Genius Bakes Bread

Episode Date: March 12, 2018

Bread is one of the oldest, best foods around. I have no scientific evidence of this, but it feels right. You can't really Lazy Genius bread, but you can start with great principles and have a better chance at great bread sooner than you think. Stuff from this episode: How to Bake by Paul Hollywood // has a stellar chapter on bread The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart // great if you want to geek out bench scrapers are necessary for bread and for cleaning up crap under highchairs my favorite recipe for a loaf of white bread, along with a video download a transcript of the episode This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm Kendra and I'm here to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. We are continuing our series on food basics. We've covered chicken and soup and today is episode 55. The Lazy Genius Bakes Bread. You guys have been asking for this for a while now so I'm so excited. Now as we geek out about bread, I want to say that there is a time and a place to talk about food intolerances and diet plans and all. all that, but this is not that time or place. We're very heavy on the gluten and carbs today, unapologetically.

With the exception of those of you who literally can't eat gluten for health reasons, I hope the rest of you develop a kinder perspective toward the beauty of bread in your lives, because it's so beautiful. All right, so there are three main complaints about baking your own bread. And in the playbook today, we're going to discuss all three. And then, of course, I'll share the main principles of how to bake bread. lots of baking goodness is coming your way. So let's jump in with the three complaints.

Complaint number one, it takes too much time. Not as much as you think, but yeah, you're right. It's not as fast as buying bread at the store or even the local bakery. Saving time is not why you make bread. It's also not to save you money. It is cheaper to bake your own bread, but that's probably not enough of a motivation. Here's one of the most important things I can say to you today. Don't try and leave.

genius bread. It's mostly genius, y'all. I'm lazy about a lot of things so that I can be a genius about bread. If you try and shortcut bread, you will end up with crappy bread. It's just the way it is. Basic bread isn't too complicated, but shortcuts don't pay off. Knowing why you want to bake bread is vital. And saving time or money, it just probably isn't going to fly because you're not going to save much of either. So why might you do it? I do it because it makes me feel rooted. It makes me feel like I'm part of something so much bigger than myself. People do it all over the world and have for a super long time. There's a connectedness to bread. It just feels like the best of humanity comes out when fresh homemade bread is on the table.

Also, it smells and tastes divine. So that's an easy reason. You might also find your why in the idea of simple pleasures, lighting candles, playing music, going for a walk, drinking tea, on the front stoop. Those things, along with baking bread, are so simple, but are the things we long for that feel like we're on solid ground. It's just flour, yeast, salt, and water, but really bread is magic. That's why I bake bread. And as you determine your reason, whatever it might be, just make sure it's worth it. You don't have to do this. You don't have to bake your own bread. If you're doing it because you think you should, you'll just resent the bread. And that should never happen. So complaint number one, it takes too much time. Complaint number two, it's risky.

You spend a ton of time on something that might not turn out great. The ingredient list is so short, but when yeast is involved, all bets are off, right? It's just too risky. But bread, like any art, it takes practice. If that sounds lame, just buy bread. There is no judgment. But the more you try, the better you'll get. And if you're armed with a few principles, not just recipes, you'll be an even better shape. Bread dough is literally a living thing, so sometimes it behaves in unpredictable ways. Understanding principles will serve you far better than a recipe will. Yes, baking bread, it might feel risky because things can go wrong and might not turn out, but you'll learn every time that happens and your bread baking will only get better and better. So the risk is never really wasted.

And finally, complaint number three, it's scary. Yes, baking, bread is scary at first. This thing seems like it should be so simple. People made bread for hundreds and hundreds of years without the internet or digital scales or any of it. Somebody just taught you. You practiced every day because people needed to eat bread and you got better and less afraid. That's what I'm doing today. I want to take the fear out of this. I can't make your first loaf of bread or even your first 10 loaves turn out perfectly. There's no such thing as truly perfect bread, but you can go into a new, slightly scary baking situation with a few principles so the process will make more sense. And the good thing, bread ingredients are about as cheap as they come. And even bad bread isn't that bad.

You put enough salted butter on cardboard and it'll be okay. So don't sweat that. All bread is magical because it's alive by your hand. But the newness does not have to be scary. You don't have to be afraid of yeast. You're stronger than the yeast. Okay. So now that we've touched on the three main complaints, let's jump into some basic bread principles to help you get more prepared. I'll list these in the show notes in just a bullet form. So this episode is where I'll go into all the detail. And if you want to check out the show notes, including links to a couple of my favorite bread cookbooks, which I'll mention soon, and my favorite recipe for a just basic loaf of white bread, including a video, go to the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash bread.

Now, let's get a crash course on bread. I have 12 bread principles. Yes, 12. This is indeed a crash course. It's a lot and I'm so excited. And now I'm just, I'm sad that it's not 13. It would have been a baker's dozen. I feel like I missed the mark on that one. That's fine. All right, let's get started. Know your flower. Principle number one. Know your flour. There are so many kinds of flowers. And when it comes to baking bread, it's important to use, you cannot use whatever you want. You need to use like specific breads. Don't go willy-nilly on this. Flowers have different. levels of protein, which basically means there's more gluten. The more gluten, the more structure. That's why gluten-free bread and all baked goods are super crumbly. Without gluten, you have to manufacture structure. So more gluten equals more structure. In general, you're all set with bread flour. If you watch the Great British Bacon Show, they call bread flour strong flour. It's strong because it can hold up the bread better. But bread flour is actually. absolutely the only flour you need to bake most breads, especially as you get started.

But all purpose is fine too. It just won't have quite the same structure. Whole wheat is another ballgame. So it's best to keep it as simple as you can as you learn. I love King Arthur brand flour. It is a tiny bit more expensive, but it's a higher quality. And I know this because it takes more water. The flour absorbs more water. The better the flour, the more water it needs. And you can use, I mean, you can use any brand that you like a course, but as with any recipe that requires so few ingredients, you'll have a better result with higher quality products. So, principle number one, know your flour. Gluten equals structure, and bread flour is all you need. Principle number two. Yeast is alive and unpredictable and sometimes

makes you feel like you have a moody teenager in the house. No offense to teenagers, but I know when I was 16 and came downstairs, nobody knew which kinder would arrive. Because yeast is alive and strongly affected by lots of variables, it needs to be babyed a little. When you read bread recipes, you'll see that the yeast has to be added at a certain time or it needs to bloom in a specific temperature of water. It feels high maintenance and that's just because it might not respond well if you shock it. Okay. So yeast is, it is a little moody, but that's okay. Principle number three. Don't mix salt and yeast. Salt is beautiful, but also a bit of a bully in bread, if not rained in, and it can essentially

kill the yeast. We don't want that. Basically, just don't dump your yeast into the flour and then the salt right on top. Put one on one side of the bowl and the other on the other side of the bowl, and then you mix it individually into the flour and then all together. As the baker, you're making sure everyone gets to shine in their own way. And sometimes that means managing everyone's being. It's like in 30 Rock when Liz would make up fake awards for Jenna and Tracy to keep them from going crazy.

Ease and salt are a little bit like that. They just have to have their egos managed. So don't mix them. Speaking of salt, principle number four is salt makes the gluten and therefore the bread stronger. If gluten is your skeleton, salt is like the ligaments and the cartilage. They need each other to create a structure that works. salt also gives bread its flavor and you need a lot of it to basically make flour and water taste like something awesome that's how powerful salt is principle five water determines how firm the bread will be there's something called a baker's percentage which we won't go into detail about but the idea is if the amount of flour you have is a hundred percent you compare all the other ingredients by weight to determine their percentage compared to the flour that was a time of the flour that was the

terrible description. Okay, let's try again. If you have 500 grams of flour and 250 grams of water, your baker's percentage for the water is 50%, because there's half as much water as there is flour. Does that make sense? You don't need to know standard baking percentages right now, but the idea is important in understanding water's role. A firm, very closed-textured bagel, let's say, has a 50% baking percentage. So half as much water as flour. While chabata or facacha or other rustic doze with those giant air holes, it has anywhere from a 65% to even an 80% baker's percentage of water. We're usually just working with four ingredients, right? Flower, yeast, salt, and water. and if those four ingredients can produce such a variety of final products, it's all about the percentages.

So as water in a recipe goes up, so do the size of the earholes and the softness of the texture of the bread. Okay, so you need to know your flour. Remember that yeast is alive and needs a little bayying. Don't miss mix yeast and salt, but still use salt because it makes the gluten stronger and gives the bread structure and flavor. And water determines how firm the bread will be. Principle number six, don't rush it. Y'all, this might be the most important point, and this is why you really can't lazy genius bread.

You can't rush it during any of the stages. If you mix too quickly or aggressively, it messes up your gluten. If you force the yeast to rise quicker by using hotter water, it lessens the flavor. If you don't let the bread dough rise for the maximum amount of time, the texture will suffer. So I'll say it again, don't rush the bread. But honestly, this is what's beautiful to me about baking your own bread. Recently, a friend was talking about the meandering nature of poetry, how poets are not utilitarian in their words, that it's a good thing to use more words

than they need, that the enjoyment of creating poetry and reading it on the other side is extravagant and even a little wasteful. And when my friend said this, I thought it was nuts. I don't think that way. And that's probably why I've never really responded to poetry. But guess what I realized? Bread is my poetry. I love shortcuts and finding ways to skip things that don't matter. And I love sharing them with you. There's not a lot of extravagant uses of time in my life or in what I share with you here, but bread is one of my few exceptions. Lingering wasteful time serves you well way more than it gets in the way. Practically, you'll mess up bread if you rush it, but the magic lies in the whole. waiting, and I love that. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us

in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast. Join me for Cities of Aw, a special series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. Principle 7. Fat makes bread soft. Some of you might be wondering where the oil and butter and egg yolks are. Breads that have fat in them are called enriched does.

And enriched doze make the angels sing. Think cinnamon rolls and briose. Delightfully soft and rich and awesome. You can certainly bake bread with fat, which will give you flavor and a softer texture. But there are two things to remember. First, fat makes the yeast slow down. down and the colder the fat, the slower it goes. That's why you'll see bread recipes that call for room temperature enriched ingredients so that the yeast doesn't freak out. Again, it has to be

babied. Oh my gosh. The second thing to remember is tied to the first. Because fat, even room temperature fat, because it makes the yeast slow down and therefore rise more slowly, it'll take a lot longer to rise, like the whole dough well. Like brioch dough is so packed with butter and eggs that it usually has to rise for an entire day. In bread, once the yeast is activated by slightly warm water, it starts to feed on the sugars in the flour or any extra sugar you add to the dough. And as it feeds, it releases carbon dioxide, which creates bubbles, which creates the rise. And in enriched breads, that rise is just a lot harder. The dough is heavier and even a little more slippery because of the fat. So you can imagine it's more of a fight.

So if you're making bread and decide to throw in a little melted butter or olive oil for flavor, just know that the rise will happen a little slower. Principle number eight. Use your hands. You can mix in a mixer with a dough hook, of course. But I love mixing with my hands. You're gentler with the dough, which is important for the structure. You understand its emotional state.

And you can learn quicker by feeling what happens to the dough as you mix and knead it. it. Now some super wet doughs suggest using a mixer and sometimes I do. You're not bad if you use a mixer at all. But for most standard loaves, your hands are your best tool. Don't be afraid to go a little sticky. I learned from the Silver Fox, Paul Hollywood, whose book is my favorite bread book so far by the way. I'll link to that in the show notes. That you mix the yeast and salt into the flour and opposite side of the bowl. You mix it all together a bit. Add maybe three quarters of the water and gently mix with your hand and then add any remaining water to bring the dough just together. Most of your mixing will actually happen while you're kneading. So don't expect a smooth dough ball at this

stage in the very beginning. It will be gloppy and weird, but all the flour is gathered up. And yes, I think you should use your hands. If you've ever made dough in the steed mixer with a dough hook, you know that so much of the flour, it stays on the sides of the bowl and it takes forever to get incorporated in. And that extra time of mixing the flour, with a tiny bit of aggression that comes from a stand mixer, it can damage the gluten and therefore the structure of the bread. Now, I'm not the boss of you. I would rather you bake bread with a mixer than not bake at all.

But try it with your hands, at least once, please. It's so magical that way. And you get a better experience plus a better loaf. And if you are really scared of that, be sure you go to the show notes, the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash bread. And I will send you a video, a bread video, and it shows the whole thing,

my mixing it with my hands and you can see the stages so that you when you make your own bread you don't look at your bread and you're like this is wrong because it's not okay principle number nine this one's really important needing with a k changes the texture of your dough the temptation as you're kneading is to add more flour because the dough is sticking to the counter and to your hands and what is happening oh my gosh but please don't add more flour That baking percentage we mentioned earlier, it will be gravely affected by you adding a lot more flour to keep the dough from sticking. The dough is going to stick.

It is, especially in the beginning. The crazy thing about needing is that it does change the texture as you need the texture changes. It'll start like a ball of dough that makes sense. It's not super sticky. Like if you're going to need it and you're going to feel like a rock start. But then it starts getting stickier and harder to handle. and you assume something is wrong and you need more flour. Nope.

This is called the wet stage and every bread dough has it. As the water hydrates the flour through the process of needing, the dough simply gets more wet. You haven't done anything wrong. In fact, you're doing everything right. You just need to keep kneading. I have two tricks that help that process along. One is to knead on a counter that's slightly coated in oil, not flour. It keeps it from sticking as badly without affecting the texture of the bread.

You can use olive or canola for those. either one. The other thing that's really helpful is using a bench scraper. I'll link to my favorite one in the show notes, but it's basically a thin piece of plastic. I usually use plastic instead of metal with my bread. I use metal for other things. And that helps lift the bread off the counter and even off your hands when it gets so sticky you think you're going to lose your mind, which might happen the first time or two. By the way, take off your rings, folks, on my worst. But bread dough is like, it's a beast to get out of diamonds, so please don't try. But kneading on an oil surface, and having a bench scraper handy are major tools in your bread baking arsenal.

And eventually, after you've needed for a few minutes, you'll notice the dough change. It'll stand, um, it'll like stand up. It'll kind of firm up and it'll lose its stickiness. It'll get smoother and easier to maneuver and you'll be so excited. So I, I actually made bread today. And it went from sticky to mostly smooth in less than five months. Um, it still needs a solid like 10, 15, even 12. 20 minutes of kneading depending on the bread, but it won't be a sticky mess the entire time.

You will also have gotten your workout for the day. Every time I make bread, the next day I have sore biceps and abs. So it's carb cardio. That's the thing. And then you get to eat the bread. It's like the bust of both worlds. So that's principle number nine. Needing, it really changes the texture of the dough.

So be patient. Principle number 10. Cover your dough while it proves or rises. you've worked so hard to create this awesome structure and if you don't cover it with a teetow or plastic wrap or something the dough will start to dry out as it rises which means the yeast can't actually rise you'll have stunted bread and that's such a bummer so be sure to cover the bowl when the dough rises but don't let the covering be so close to the dough or restrictive that it'll prevent the dough from rising as high as it needs to so basically basically put the dough in an

obscenely large bowl and cover it with a thin towel all as well. Principle number 11. Trust the dough more than the time to know when it's ready to bake. So most breads go through two proving stages. The first prove is in a ball for a couple of hours and then you shape it into a loaf or a cob or a beautiful braid or whatever the shape is going to be. You shape it. And then you let it rise for another, it depends on the bread anywhere from 20 minutes to even an hour. It kind of depends. but rather than paying attention to the clock, I want you to pay attention to the feel. So here's the test. If you press your finger into the dough and it slightly bounces back, you're set.

Too soft with no bounce back. It won't cook all the way through and it needs to rise some more. And too much of a bounce and it's already gone a bit far. You can and should still bake it, but it probably won't rise quite enough in the oven. The crumb will be a little bit inconsistent. but it will still taste totally awesome. You're only sacrificing texture. But rather than pay attention to the clock,

poke the bread, pay attention to the feel. You want a little bounce. When that bounce happens, pop it in a hot oven. And then principle number 12, let it cool. Guys, I know that warm bread smells delicious and beckons you

with its siren song, but you really need to let your bread cool. I kind of want to say complete room temperature, but I know that some of you will be mad to hear that. You will, under no circumstances, wait several hours to eat the bread you are so hard for. But just be aware that the longer you let it cool, the better the structure will be, the better will slice. If you cut into your loaf with a

serrated bread knife when the bread is still super warm, it'll just collapse and it won't really slice at all. You might have had that happen with like an Italian loaf that, you know, you got at a restaurant. It just is really soft on the inside. The structure is, it doesn't hold up to a knife as well. So just move forward at your own risk. That's all. But please try and let it cool just a little bit if you can before you dig in. Okay, so to recap, know your flour. Yeast needs babying. Don't mix yeast with salt. Salt adds flavor and structure. Water determines how soft or firm the bread will be. Don't rush it. Fat makes bread soft. Use your hands. Needing will change the texture of your dough, so don't add more flour. Cover the dough while it rises. Trust the dough more than

the timer for that second rise and then let it cool. You can certainly check out different recipes and follow them, but understanding how these simple ingredients interact together and ways to kind of troubleshoot certain problems will help you become better at baking bread quicker than if you just made recipes. Speaking of recipes, though, I will link to, like I said, my favorite cookbooks and a bread recipe I have developed and I love for a regular white sandwich loaf and there's a video and everything. So check out the show notes at the lazy geniuscollective.com slash lazy slash bread. And don't forget to join me on Instagram every Thursday, around 1215 Eastern to talk about whatever that podcast topic is that week. And so this week, I'll answer all your bread questions as

much as I can in the 15 minutes or so that we have together. I might even, if there aren't as many questions, I might even have time to tell you a story about how I once auditioned for a television baking show. And I bake the same bread recipe almost a dozen times over the course of like three days. Tune in for that riveting tale if you want. Okay. Now on to to our lazy genius tip of the week before we leave. Last month on Instagram, I asked you guys about how you tidy. And your responses were so great. And one of my favorites was a tip on tidying with kids from Jessica Springle. Hi, Jessica. She says, quote, it helps my kids to pile everything they have to put away in the middle of the room. That way they know when they're done.

They have a hard time noticing the stuff around the edges. They think that if the middle of the floor is clean than the room is clean it makes it easier for me to check their progress too oh my gosh jessica i love this idea so much the fringes and edges are absolutely where so much of our messes lie and can make otherwise clean rooms look like they're a mess so if you have little kids or even husbands sometimes who don't see clean the same way that you do grab everything and just push it to the middle of the room and then let folks have at it right i love this idea i will absolutely Absolutely do it at my own house for sure. Thank you for sharing with us, Jessica. And thanks to the rest of you for your ideas. I will probably use most of your tips in future

episodes. So keep them coming. Okay. That's it for today. Remember to check out the show notes with all those links you need at the lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash bread. And if you would like an opportunity to support this show, we don't have ads at this point, obviously, but podcasting, it does cost a good bit of money. So you can go to patreon.com slash the lazy genius. Patreon is p-a-t-r-e-on.com slash the lazy genius. You can even leave like $1 a month to help offset costs. Or if you'd like to pledge more,

you get an entirely new show that I host with my sister called The Lazy Sisters podcast. It's an extra bit of fun to say thank you for supporting this work. and I'm so grateful for each and every one of you. We hit our supporter goal, like our first one. We have several. We hit our first supporter goal within like the first week and we were just blown away. Our next goal, it will actually allow us to make more lazy sister episodes. So if you're curious to learn more, head to patreon.com slash the lazy genius.

Okay. Thank you so much for listening. Go make some bread. And remember be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. See you next week. Have you ever felt like you were living? just a B or B plus life, it's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life, because when you're living a B or B plus life,

you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves. Listen to Becoming You wherever you get your podcasts.