Bread 🥖

Bread, pizzas, snacks. Bread is healthy and savory. The process of turning flour and water into bread is simple, yet very powerful.

#Why?

I live in Paris and can find good bread in plenty places. Why make bread myself?

Well, it turns out that I'm not especially happy with bakeries around me (the people of really great one burnt-out sadly and move further away, the second good one seems more geared towards tourists, the third one is a bit remote, and I don't enjoy the other ones). That wouldn't be a reason by itself though.

The real reason is that I get to make the bread I want when I want. I have the flaw of maybe eating too much bread; I also like bread made with whole-wheat flour. That's a kind of bread that can be healthy but bakeries always use mixes of whole-wheat and white flour due to the difficulty of using only whole-wheat flour (terrible shape and less sweet crust).

A nice bonus is that sometimes I don't have enough bread for the day after and bakeries have closed or ran out of bread, or it's their day off. It's not an issue anymore.

Making bread at home doesn't even require more time once you've integrated it into your routine.

#La panification

In Frenc, « Panification » is the process of using yeast to turn flour, water into bread. There isn't a single English word for that and the closest is « bread-making process » which insist too much on bread being the output while there are numerous and varied foods that use the same process; of course, « pain » (French for « bread ») is the root used in « panification » but it is less connoted. Saying something like « bread-making process as used for pizzas » sounds weird while « breading as used for pizzas » would be somewhat better but « breading » already has another meaning (coating in fine breadcrumbs before frying).

I'll write « the panification » rather than « the bread-making process ».

#Yeast

#Material

jar, preferably glass

#Wheat

organic whole-wheat flour: all this relies on yeasts naturally present on wheat so it makes little sense to use white flour where the wheat shell has been discarded

#Temperature

Everything here depends on temperature. It looks like things get much faster above 21°C-24°C and much slower below 19°C-20°C. Even slower in fridges but not stopped. Difficult to work above 28°C-30°C.

#Water and chloring

Chlorine-free water.

The chlorine in tap water can kill yeast. That's the whole point of chlorine in tap water. I've been told Germany use half the amount of chlorine compared to France (both are fine but it's good to keep in mind that there is no universal amount in use).

I use water from a natural source deep beneath Paris and avoid plastic bottles but tap water let to air for 30 minutes should be fine.

I use the source water for my yeast and tap water for the bread since it requires much more water.

#Creation

50g water, 50g flour
mix
wait 12 hours
repeat until it's bubbly enough; throw some away if you get over 150g/200g before adding more material

#Maintenance

keep it under 200g
add 50g water and 50g flour regularly
does it bubble? Good
is there a liquid above the yeast? Feed your tamagochi

#Percents

In this world of panification, quantities are always in relation to the amount of flour.

For whole-wheat flour, use 75% to 80% hydration: for 100g of flour, use 75g to 80g of water. For white flour, use something around 66% hydration: for 100g of flour, use 66g of water.

#Bread

#Ingredients

whole-wheat flour (say, T150, which is a French measure and I need to find the matching classification for various countries)
75% hydration
1.9% salt
10% yeast

#Steps

Mix tap water and salt
Let rest to air for at least 30 minutes to get rid of the chlorine
Stir well again to make sure the salt is well dissolved
Add the flour
Mix (you can use a thick spoon and keep your hands clean). If you wish you had used more water, simply let it rest for 10 minutes or more and come back to mix again.
Add yeast.
Mix with your hands. I put yeast on top, then grab everything, stretch it, fold above the yeast and then repeat the stretching-plus-folding a few times until it feels uniform.
Wait at least an hour (it T ~= 26°C)
Stretch-and-fold repeatedly
Let rest for 6 hours or so
Put everything in the oven

#Optimizations, a.k.a. daily-life compatibility

I do the last resting step straight in a mold with a lid that goes into the oven and schedule my oven so that it's ready for breakfast using a low temperature (140°C) and a long baking time (150 minutes).

#Pizzas

Not whole-wheat flour. Whole-wheat flour turns pizzas into whole-wheat bread with other food on top. In France, T60 (0 in Italy) because I want to avoid T40 (000 in Italy) due to how white it is.

#Snacks

I've tried to make snacks with dietary characteristics which aren't awful and taste good. Results could be nice and balanced in these regards but it was always trade-offs between taste and health. Using baking powder always requires plenty of sugar and fat to make something enjoyable which is probably not surprising considering how bland raw flour tastes like: there is no reason the result will be nice without a transformative step.