Bread in Half the Time

[Fat Guy]

There has been a tremendous amount of discussion lately, on the "Minimalist no-knead bread technique" topic and related topics, about simplified bread recipes that require little effort (and no kneading) and produce excellent results. Fundamentally, the no-knead system works because it lets the microorganisms do the work on their own schedule. All you need is patience and these little animals will do everything for you. There's one problem with these methods, though: they require a day of advance planning. It's 24 hours or so from flour to bread.

Back when I started law school, stress was a constant companion. The first year of law school is pretty intense. So I took up bread baking as a means of relaxing. I never became a particularly good baker. But my study group grew accustomed to having, for example, fresh-baked raisin bread in the morning. Sometimes I made bread the old-fashioned way, but other times I had less time and needed a shortcut.

That year, 1991, there was a book published titled "Bread In Half The Time," by Linda West Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts. The book outlined an ingenious method of getting from flour to bread in 90 minutes, by using the food processor and microwave (the subtitle of the book is "Use Your Microwave and Food Processor to Make Real Yeast Bread in 90 Minutes"). Specifically, you use the food processor to knead the dough, and you use gentle doses of microwave heat to accelerate rising.

The method works exceptionally well. From 1991 until 1994 -- at which time my bread-baking career was brutally terminated by my employment at a law firm -- I used the method at least a hundred times. You don't get the flavors of long-risen dough that has been developing overnight, but in all other respects you get really good bread.

Here's the basic approach, which works for just about any dough recipe:

1. You add your dry ingredients to a food processor bowl, pulse to combine, then run the processor and add 120 degree F liquid until the dough forms a ball that cleans the sides of the bowl.

2. Once the dough forms that ball, let the food processor run for an additional 60 seconds to knead the dough.

3. Take out the dough ball, remove the processor blade, shape the dough into a doughnut shape and put it back in the processor bowl (the processor bowl has a hole in the middle so you need to doughnut shape to accommodate that).

4. Stick the processor bowl, with the dough, in the microwave oven, along with a small glass of water in the back of the microwave. Heat on the lowest setting (after experimentation you may go up a notch, but you need a very low setting) for 3 minutes. Rest for 3 minutes. Heat on low for another 3 minutes. Rest for 6 minutes. So that's 15 minutes total. The dough should have doubled in bulk, at least. If it didn't, you needed to use a higher setting, so give it a little more time this time around and use a higher setting next time.

5. Take the dough out, punch it down and form your loaf.

6. Now you have two choices:

6a. You can use a microwave-safe vessel, such as a clay loaf pan. Put your dough in there and repeat the 3-3-3-6 deal in the microwave. Then bake.

6b. If you're going to bake on a metal sheet or in a metal loaf pan, let the dough rise in a warm place. This will take a little longer than 3-3-3-6, but it will double in bulk pretty quickly. Then bake.

That's it. The book has pages and pages of more subtle detail, but you can make it work with just the instructions I've given you here. Again, I've done it a hundred times. It really works.

[hathor]

Fast, quick, no fuss, no muss bread recipes seem to me to be counterintuitive. You need time to develop flavor.

Bread baking doesn't take all that much time..yes, time, spread out over a day or two, but not much dedicated time.

It's just one of those things where you need to plan ahead. In my very humble opinion.

I also think that you need to get your hands dirty....flour will be different from batch to batch, it's a natural ingredient, which makes it difficult to adjust hydration, unless you have your hands in it and can feel what's going on.

I'm currently bread obsessed, and all the hoopla about making bread without time or fuss has struck a nerve as it seems to be circumventing the loss of flavor.

I'm just Old Skool.....what can I say?

[Fat Guy]

I agree with half of that:

- Yes, dough needs time to develop certain flavors. (However, there are still plenty of breads that don't particularly need that sort of flavor development, e.g., cinnamon raisin bread, basic white sandwich bread, etc.)

- No, I don't think you need to touch the dough to get an idea about hydration. The "cleaning the bowl" visual test is quite reliable.

[dougal]

Most discussion of the "Chorleywood Process" (by which virtually all UK mass-market, supermarket, bread is unfortunately produced) suggests that it *cannot* be reproduced at home. For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_Bread_Process

The process

CBP uses low-protein wheats combined with chemical improvers, and uses intense mechanical working of the dough by high-speed mixers. By introducing several minutes of high-energy mixing into the baking process, the fermentation period is substantially reduced, which increases the production speed of each loaf. The CBP method of making bread cannot be reproduced in a normal kitchen because of this requirement.

Criticism

In the book Not on the Label: What Really Goes Into the Food on Your Plate, Felicity Lawrence observes that the industrial scale of the Chorleywood Bread Process comes at a nutritional cost, requiring larger amounts of salt and yeast than traditional bread recipes.[3] Andrew Whitley in his book Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own criticises the CBP for the inferior flavour and texture of the bread made in this way.[4]

Also worth noting is that Andrew Whitley, in his book cited above: Bread Matters, makes an association between the adoption of the Chorleywood Bread Process and a parallel rise in (clinical) digestive problems.

The suggestion is that eating the tasteless pap just might have negative health implications.

In 1977, Elizabeth David wrote in English Bread and Yeast Cookery -

The Chorleywood Process is, again, an extreme case which does not - at any rate not yet - have much bearing on the way we bake bread at home, although it does of course have a good deal of bearing on our reasons for doing so.

Its fair to say she was not an enthusiast for the Chorleywood Process.

Neither am I.

Now eGullet suggests it can be reproduced domestically.

High speed mixing AND microwave rising.

Just like the real Chorleywood Process.

So that "bread" (even though it doesn't actually taste of bread) can be completed at home in less than 2 hours.

[Fat Guy]

That's pretty harsh criticism based on no actual tasting. Nor is the theoretical comparison between the Chorleywood Process and the food-processor-and-microwave method accurate. The Chorleywood Process consists of:

- "low-protein wheats"

- "chemical improvers"

- "several minutes of high-energy mixing"

The food-processor-and-microwave method uses:

- standard bread recipes including whatever flour those recipes call for

- no chemical improvers

- one minute of high-speed kneading in the food processor

As for "an association between the adoption of the Chorleywood Bread Process and a parallel rise in (clinical) digestive problems," that's pretty hard to swallow, albeit not relevant.

I should also add that "eGullet" has not suggested anything here. I have.

[Anna N]

I am all for artisanal bread and artisanal bakers but I can't see why it has to be black and white.

Sometimes I need bread NOW and Steven's method just might foot the bill. Sometimes I have more time and the no-knead method fills the bill and sometimes I have lots of time and like to do things the old-fashioned way. Any one of these is an improvement on supermarket bread. All of these methods require a compromise of time, effort or flavour but why can't all these methods be part of one's cooking arsenal?

[Fat Guy]

Anna, this method works particularly well for softer loaves that don't strive for that artisan, crusty, hearth-baked look and flavor. So, for example, pain de mie. There's an excellent recipe for pain de mie in the book -- I've used it successfully several times -- that not only gets the job done in 90 minutes but also avoids use of a specialty pain de mie loaf pan. Instead it uses two glass loaf pans, one slightly larger than the other. You make the loaf in the smaller pan, then put the larger pan on top, then weigh it down with dry beans or pie weights.

Incidentally, for those who care about this sort of thing, the book "Bread in Half the Time" won the 1991 Julia Child Award (IACP) for Best Cookbook in America.

[hathor]

I am all for artisanal bread and artisanal bakers but I can't see why it has to be black and white.

Sometimes I need bread NOW and Steven's method just might foot the bill.  Sometimes I have more time and the no-knead method fills the bill and sometimes I have lots of time and like to do things the old-fashioned way.  Any one of these is an improvement on supermarket bread.  All of these methods require a compromise of time, effort or flavour but why can't all these methods be part of one's cooking arsenal?

←

Your right, Anna. The more arrows in the quiver, the better.

My "I need bread NOW" technique is to slightly underbake a batch of bread, wrap in parchment paper, put in a food grade plastic bag and freeze. Then when I need some bread...I throw it in the oven. I bake a bunch of smaller, roll shapes, and by the time the coffee is ready in the morning, so is the bread.

[Fat Guy]

My "I need bread NOW" technique is to go to Le Pain Quotidien, which is a few minutes walk from my apartment, where I can buy a baguette à l'ancienne that's approximately five times as good as the best bread I'll ever make at home using any method known to humankind. I only know one person -- and I know a lot of serious amateur bakers -- who consistently produces bread at home that's as good as the bread from the better New York bakeries. Fundamentally, baking bread at home when you live in a major city with access to good bread is kind of nutty. But still, sometimes you want to do it. And sometimes you want to do it fast.

[Jmahl]

Interesting you should bring up this topic now. Just this week the "Splendid Table" on NPR had a piece on 5 minute bread. With an interview with Jeff Hertzberg. The book reference is appears below. I have not tried their method - but it is interesting. Look for the link and listen to the program if you have a chance.

From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). Copyright 2007 by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

Wishing you good baking,

Jmahl

[Fat Guy]

Yeah the 5-minute book has come up on a couple of other topics. But the idea there is that you spend an average of 5 minutes a day on a process that takes several days to complete. It's a long-fermentation process with limited prep time, as opposed to a quick process start-to-finish.

[dougal]

Steven, the Chorleywood Process, with improvers, was introduced here in the 1960's when we were rather short of foreign exchange, and provided a way of industrially using locally-grown (not imported) lower protein wheat.

My understanding is that the mixing can be even shorter if higher gluten flours can be used.

60 seconds 'kneading' in a processor *after* the dough has balled, is a pretty intense workout.

I think its plausible to suggest that the work you can do in a minute in a food processor would be rather more than any industrial scale mixer would do in the same time. Hence, I suggest its equivalence to "high speed {industrial} mixing" for several minutes.

As you report, the rising time can be accelerated following this treatment.

Chorleywood informs us that this is a direct consequence of the intense mixing.

It seems to me (maybe not to everyone) that processor kneading followed by accelerated microwave rising is the very essence of a domestic analogue of the fast-throughput industrial Chorleywood process.

In breadmaking, speed is the enemy of flavour.

Bread flavour that is, rather than added flavours.

It seems that you are recommending a method of reproducing supermarket-style bread-taste-less bread at home.

Just like Mrs David, my motivation in troubling to bake at home is to produce something way better than supermarket sliced. Its after 1am now, and I'm struggling to find words to express my astonishment at the existence of a thread on eGullet recommending the rapid production of bread that doesn't taste of bread.

There's room in the world for all sorts of tastes and opinions.

However some are more surprising than others.

I *don't* live in a major city.

I can (often if not absolutely always) make bread better than I can buy locally.

I do have ready (24/7) access to supermarket bread.

Hence to me it seems "kind of nutty" to try and reproduce a supermarket-style technique.

Mr Whitley may be a bit of a polemicist, but his opinion is that accelerated rising un-naturally denies the opportunity for enzyme and bacterial action, which added to the different hydration of the flour, produces a product that is less digestible than "real bread"*. (I summarise from memory, having returned his book to the Library some while ago). His criticisms, in those specific respects, would I'm sure apply equally to the food processor technique as to Chorleywood. Which (valid or otherwise) seems pretty relevant.

* http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/

I'll continue to explore and enjoy the wonderful tastes and textures of bread itself, produced by sourdough ("wild yeasts"), beer yeast, bigas, autolyse, retarding...

Steven, I hope you manage to enjoy your quick stuff as much.

Edited December 20, 2007 by dougal (log)

[Anna N]

Anna, this method works particularly well for softer loaves that don't strive for that artisan, crusty, hearth-baked look and flavor. So, for example, pain de mie. There's an excellent recipe for pain de mie in the book -- I've used it successfully several times -- that not only gets the job done in 90 minutes but also avoids use of a specialty pain de mie loaf pan. Instead it uses two glass loaf pans, one slightly larger than the other. You make the loaf in the smaller pan, then put the larger pan on top, then weigh it down with dry beans or pie weights.

Incidentally, for those who care about this sort of thing, the book "Bread in Half the Time" won the 1991 Julia Child Award (IACP) for Best Cookbook in America.

←

Thanks! That's the kind of bread I expect when I need it NOW. I don't live in a major city and don't have transport to a supermarket at a moment's notice so I will certainly be giving this a try and looking for a copy of the book.

[saucée]

I don't live in a city with decent bread so I had to learn to bake. I started off kneading my sourdough breads in the food processor which works particularly well with high hydration doughs in my experience. I processed them for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes to good effect. I've since moved on to a stand mixer because it's more versatile and easy to clean, but I mention this because I don't think you can associate processor kneading with bad bread automatically. It's a different process, a faster and rougher one, but not intrinsically worse.

As for the microwaving, I don't see a problem with it for pain de mie, because the flavor there is not about unlocking the nutty flavor of grain but about the added flavors of egg, sugar, milk, and butter. If you don't like breads like this, then this method is perhaps not for you but I don't think that heating the bread to speed up the process is any more artificial than cooling it down in a refrigerator (a.k.a. retarding). These are just different methods for different occasions/purposes.

Josh

ETA: My name.

Edited December 20, 2007 by saucée (log)

[Kerry Beal]

I"ve had the book since it came out, and have incorporated the microwave technique for quick proofing of certain doughs. As Steven suggested there are lots of doughs where flavour development doesn't matter as much as with others.

I use the technique for sweet doughs and things like parkerhouse rolls that rise quickly. But I stopped using it for making any doughs that needed a long cool rise for good flavour development.

As for the food processor - that's how I make most of my doughs.

[Fat Guy]

Yes, fresh squishy dinner roll variants are excellent candidates for the method as are yeast-based pastry items.

[Serj]

In his continuing ed class at the French Pastry School earlier in the year, Laurent le Daniel gave the case for mixing doughs in the robot coupe - you get the same number of revolutions in a much smaller amount of time. Granted he was talking about tart dough and not bread dough, but I think it's essentially the same principle. He said as the blade heats up, gluten will start to develop (so obviously with tart dough you want to stop mixing before this point).

I would never try making bread dough this way at work, but at home sometimes I think it would be nice to have a quick way to just make blah bread. Sometimes when you go to a restaurant, the bread can be delicious and addictive - but by technical artisan standards it's crap. And as a disclaimer I hate hovis/wondabread style bread! And I live in a big city with several good bakeries, including one 2 blocks away.

Anyways, thanks for the info about the technique, it'll be fun to try. Never know when it'll come in handy!

[Jmahl]

Interesting you should bring up this topic now.  Just this week the "Splendid Table" on NPR had a piece on 5 minute bread. With an interview with Jeff Hertzberg.  The book reference is appears below.  I have not tried their method - but it is interesting.  Look for the link and listen to the program if you have a chance.

From Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery that Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois (Thomas Dunne Books, 2007). Copyright 2007 by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

Wishing you good baking,

Jmahl

←

Well we tried the Hertzberg method - and like Steve says, short prep time - overnight fermentation. Not exactly what is being dicussed on this thread. However, here are the results. And like most bread you have to get a feel for it. But for a first try--very good results - wonderful mouthfeel and taste. Where we live now, there is no bread worth a darn within 150 miles. So if that is your situation - and you are not blessed like Steve with a bakery down the block, try this.

[richardv]

Anna, this method works particularly well for softer loaves that don't strive for that artisan, crusty, hearth-baked look and flavor. So, for example, pain de mie. There's an excellent recipe for pain de mie in the book -- I've used it successfully several times -- that not only gets the job done in 90 minutes but also avoids use of a specialty pain de mie loaf pan. Instead it uses two glass loaf pans, one slightly larger than the other. You make the loaf in the smaller pan, then put the larger pan on top, then weigh it down with dry beans or pie weights.

Incidentally, for those who care about this sort of thing, the book "Bread in Half the Time" won the 1991 Julia Child Award (IACP) for Best Cookbook in America.

←

Any chance you would share that recipe with us? No need to repeat what you've told us already about the kneading and rising; just ingredients and quantities would be fine for me.

BTW, I have many sizes of those specialty pain de mie loaf pans. This might be the perfect way to put them to use.

[andiesenji]

I agree that there are many breads that do not require the effects of extended yeast activity to achieve a nicely flavored loaf with good crumb.

For the last several years before I retired, I had a bread machine in my office and used the boxed mixes (Hodgson Mill, Krustez, etc.) with perfectly adequate results. The other employees and the doctors all enjoyed it and considered it a treat.

Granted, it was not the "artisan" bread that I baked at home, but it was good and particularly so when we were having a hectic day. Being able to produce a still-warm loaf of fresh bread went a long way toward reducing stress.

Nobody was on a diet on the days I baked bread!

The machine I used had a super-rapid cycle which I did not use but did use the 90-minute cycle.

I learned a "trick" which was very useful. Making a double batch, which does not allow the dough to double in size, produced a loaf that filled the pan and had a denser crumb. Very nice for sandwiches and for toast.

[Fat Guy]

Any chance you would share that recipe with us? 

←

The book has several recipes that use a sponge, so there's a whole 'nother step in addition to what I've outlined above. This, plus the special circumstances of the pain de mie baking arrangement, makes it one of the more advanced recipes in the book. But, after making this particular recipe the right way a few times, I found that it worked pretty much as well without the sponge step. So you can certainly merge the first couple of steps if you like. This is my summary of the recipe, with parenthetical comments that aren't necessarily part of the official recipe. Mind you I haven't made it in a while, but I think I've got all the knowledge captured here:

- 1 cup milk (at 110 degrees)

- 2.5 cups plus 3 tablespoons bread flour (needless to say this should just be taken to mean "a little more than 2.5 cups")

- 1 teaspoon sugar

- 2 teaspoons yeast (the recipes in the book call for "50% faster" yeast but I ignore that -- everything works just fine with whatever yeast you happen to have)

- 1.5 teaspoons salt

- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter (I use whatever butter is around)

For the sponge: fit processor bowl with metal blade, add 1 cup of the flour plus all the sugar, all the yeast and 3/4 cups of the milk. Process for 10 seconds. Remove the processor blade. Put the processor bowl with sponge into the microwave. (Small glass of hot tap water at the back corner of the microwave.) Heat on low for 3 minutes. Rest for 3 minutes.

Put the processor bowl back on the machine and put the blade back in. Add the remaining flour, the salt and the butter. Process for 10 seconds (until well blended), then start adding the rest of the milk, drizzling until the dough forms a ball (you may not need all the milk). Continue processing for 45 seconds. You may have to add a little flour if the dough starts acting too wet and sticky.

Remove the blade, do the doughnut thing with the dough, put the dough in the bowl and the whole package in the microwave with that little glass of water at the back of the oven. Heat on low for 3 minutes. Rest for 3 minutes. Heat on low for 3 minutes. Rest for 20 minutes (it usually takes less than 20 minutes). Dough is ready for the next step when it has doubled in size.

Remove the dough, punch it down and manhandle it into a ball, and then shape it a bit and put it in a greased glass loaf pan. Cover with microwave-safe plastic wrap. Put it in the microwave. Heat on low for 3 minutes. Rest for 3 minutes. Remove the plastic wrap, cover the loaf pan with a piece of greased aluminum foil with the greased side facing down. Cover that with another glass dish, weighed down with beans or pie weights.

Bake at 425 F for 40 minutes.

(A few more parenthetical comments:

The trick is getting the right size loaf pans so that, in the last rise, the dough comes up three quarters of the way to the top of the loaf pan. That way when it bakes it will hit the top with the right amount of energy to make a nice pain de mie loaf. The book recommends 8.5" x 4.5" x 2.5" for the loaf pan, and recommends a 6.5" x 9.5" casserole dish to put on top. I actually use a clay loaf pan that's 8" x 5" x 3" and it works fine. I cover it with a 10.5" cast-iron skillet so I don't have to use weights. It's a little precarious, but so what?

Like I said, this is one of the more advanced recipes in the book and has several steps that kind of need to be adjusted for your ingredients, equipment and luck. So unless you have a decent amount of baking experience, I wouldn't start with this recipe as your first foray into micro-rise baking. You can be almost assured that this recipe won't work on your first try. At least, it took me several tries to get it right. But once you get it right, I think you'll agree it makes a pretty good pain de mie.)

[weinoo]

Mr Whitley may be a bit of a polemicist, but his opinion is that accelerated rising un-naturally denies the opportunity for enzyme and bacterial action, which added to the different hydration of the flour, produces a product that is less digestible than "real bread"*. (I summarise from memory, having returned his book to the Library some while ago). His criticisms, in those specific respects, would I'm sure apply equally to the food processor technique as to Chorleywood. Which (valid or otherwise) seems pretty relevant.

* http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/

I'll continue to explore and enjoy the wonderful tastes and textures of bread itself, produced by sourdough ("wild yeasts"), beer yeast, bigas, autolyse, retarding...

Steven, I hope you manage to enjoy your quick stuff as much. 

←

Richard Bertinet (click), in a bread making class that hathor and I attended, also suggested that supermarket breads as well as accelerated rising times, make for a much less digestible product than bread which is produced by allowing the natural activity of yeast, bacteria and enzymes to take place.

I'll stick with my sours, yeast, bigas, poolishes, autolyse, retarding, etc. as well, as I believe the movement should be more towards slow bread rather than to see how fast I can turn out a loaf that might be edible.

[Fat Guy]

The quick-rising method I've outlined above doesn't just produce edible bread. It produces delicious bread of certain types. In 90 minutes.

In terms of Whitley and Bertinet's health claims, what are their scientific sources, or what experiments have they performed to confirm that claim? If a baker tells me something about baking technique, I tend to believe it. If a baker starts talking about issues of public health, without more, I assign it no more credibility than a claim by any random person.

Anyway, in my direct experience serious artisan breads are harder to digest than cheap supermarket breads. Nor does the digestibility theory stand up to basic logic tests. Whole-grain breads are so much harder to digest than white breads, that difference has got to overshadow any possible variance between white supermarket bread and white artisan bread. Even if it is the other way around, any bread is easier to digest than a hundred other foods we eat, so there can't be much impact to differences in bread digestibility in a population where bread is only part of the diet. Anyway, what about all the flatbreads, quick breads, pastries, etc., that rely on flour that hasn't undergone much rising at all, or is risen by baking powder or baking soda? Plus, we're not talking about supermarket bread here. If there's a problem with supermarket bread, it seems far more likely that it's from the additives and preservatives rather than from the speed of the rise. And that's not what we're talking about with the quick-rise method. This method works with the same ingredients as artisan bread. If everybody switched from supermarket bread to quick-rise homemade bread, I bet that would be a big step up.

Until somebody presents credible supporting data, I think the contention that fast-risen bread is hard to digest has old-wives'-tale status at best.

[paulraphael]

The fast method should make a lot of sense for rich or semi-rich breads ... anything with added butter, milk, and especially sweeteners, herbs, etc..

These breads don't depend as much on the enzyme-developed flavors you get from long fermentation. In my own limited experience, I'm not even sure I can taste the benefits of long fermentations with bread that has a lot of stuff added.

Edited December 23, 2007 by paulraphael (log)

[joancassell]

I tried the method in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes. Mis-labeled, far more than five minutes a day. And it did not taste as good, to me, as my version of the no-knead 18-hour sitting, 2-hour rising bread baked in a casserole. I tried twice. Perhaps I zigged when I should have zagged, but I gave up after the second try. Moreover, the lovely photos in the book are of what seem to me to be very small loaves. I like something larger and gutsier. (The book does have interesting-looking side recipes though!)

Cook's Magazine has "improved" the no-knead bread, suggesting that 3 ounces of the water be replaced by lager beer and a Tablespoon of white vinegar. Haven't decided whether I like their recipe better than using plain spring water.