Bread in Half the Time

[hathor]

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.

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Bertinet's theory about artisinal breads being healthier is two pronged: the smell of good bread activating the saliva glands which jump starts digestion, and the longer chew times required for eating results in the bread being easier for the body to process. Typically it does take longer to chew through artisinal bread than thru standard sandwich bread, but I'll check around to see if there are any scientific studies that have been done. In the meantime, you can read this.

[Fat Guy]

Bread made with the food-processor-and-microwave method smells like bread made any other way, and you can make denser breads as you wish. You can even make very dense, chewy bagels. But really, it's hard to, um, swallow the notion that it's easier to digest bread that's harder to chew. That claim doesn't pass the smell test, as it were. Such a theory would have us avoiding brioche at all costs, etc. Common sense says you have to chew it more exactly because it's harder to digest.

[rgural]

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.

No flavor, no crust, no mouthfeel, in what way is this good bread? Is there a single classic bread of any tradition, French, Italian, German, etc. that can be made competently using this technique? As a professional baker I've had to make breads as fast as possible on occasion, but I don't delude myself into thinking this makes a respectable product. So why promote it? It's one thing to say if your really screwed and need to make bread in 90 minutes here is what you can do, but after you do it you should hope it never happens again. (At times like this you're thankful that most people aren't that attentive and won't realize the difference, but secretly you know you've committed a small crime.)

It's truly getting a bit depressing seeing all these "incredible breakthrough" bread books that are essentially bread for dummies with no time and no taste. I saw the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes authors claiming "their" technique can be used to make Panettone, of course it all works perfectly providing you have no idea what an even mediocre Panettone tastes like. "Oh but it's warm and sweet!"

I made scones at home with my son the other day, in all the process can be done in 45 minutes. So in half the time it takes you to make marginal crap a 3 year old can make a legitimate product without any specialized equipment or spending money on a fad cookbook.

Please god kill me if I have to learn to program a microwave to make bread. That is just wrong.

[Fat Guy]

Bread isn't like an apple, where you pick it off a tree and eat it. It's a manipulated product from the time the wheat is planted, through the milling process, through the use of laboratory-created yeast, through mixing in electric mixers, through time spent in proofing cabinets, through mechanical punching machines, through baking in a steam-injected electric deck oven. Even the artisan bakers use several of those technologies -- it's not like they mix dough by hand. Given all the technology used in professional baking anyway, I don't see any rational argument for drawing the line at food processor and microwave technology. A food processor is a faster dough mixer, and a microwave is a faster proofing cabinet, that's all.

There are breads in many legitimate traditions that can be made very well using the food processor and microwave method: brioche, challah, pain de mie, Parker House rolls, cinnamon-raisin bread, most yeast-risen pastry-type breads, etc. There are, in addition, a whole lot of breads that can be made well enough, as in better than what you'd get from the supermarket, which, for many people, is the only bakery anywhere nearby.

[vengroff]

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.

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Is bread really that outstanding an example in this regard? There must be hundreds of other dishes that very few home cooks can produce as well as the better New York restaurants that serve them. Fish dishes are great examples. I don't have access to seafood of the quality that Eric Ripert and David Pasternack do, nor do I have their skill in preparing it, but that doesn't stop me from cooking and enjoying fish at home.

I've never tried the 90 minute bread approach, so I can't comment on the quality of the result. But I can say that the best bread I ever baked was when I was baking every weekend and keeping a good clean healthy starter during the week. Maintaining that rhythm over a series of months dramatically improved both my technique and the flavor profile of the final product.

[hathor]

I've never tried the 90 minute bread approach, so I can't comment on the quality of the result. But I can say that the best bread I ever baked was when I was baking every weekend and keeping a good clean healthy starter during the week.  Maintaining that rhythm over a series of months dramatically improved both my technique and the flavor profile of the final product.

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Amen to that! It's the L O N G story short!

[joancassell]

The authors who wrote Bread in Half the Time did a subsequent book on European Breads from your Bread Machine (or some such title). The doughs were mixed in the bread machine, then shaped by hand and baked in the ordinary old-fashioned way. Some recipes used poolish (poolishes?), bigas, etc. I usually had good results with their recipes.

The Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, however, does not make what I consider "artisan bread." If you use Wonderbread as a benchmark, it surely is better, but then Pepperidge Farm bread is better than Wonderbread (I generally have loaf lf that in the freezer for when I need fresh bread crumbs). I guess the book is good for people who never baked bread, or succeeded at baking it -- look Ma, homemade bread!

But there does seem to be an inverse relationship, at least with crusty artisan-type breads, between the time spent making it, and the taste.

I often got great bread from what is billed as Lionel Poilane's recipe, in the Patricia Wells book on Paris food-shopping. Spent several days making a starter from scratch, then made the bread, using old bread as a subsequent starter. But I found the recipe very antsy -- sometimes great bread, sometimes great-looking wonderful-smelling bread that, although it read 205 on the instant read thermometer, was damp inside. Not knowing enough to be able to correct this, after three failures in a row -- fresh starter, then bread -- I gave up on it. (I wonder if it's the season? My failures were generally in the summer.)

Edited December 27, 2007 by joancassell (log)

[Fat Guy]

Okay time for a demonstration.

Your friends call. They're in town for the day. They're at the museum around the corner. Come on over. In an hour.

Here's how you can serve them some fresh-baked bread.

This is pretty much the quickest recipe in the book, and it's very simple. It's for single-rise dinner rolls. They're not artisan bread. But they're absolutely addictive when served warm with butter. Somewhere between a biscuit and a Parker House roll.

So, on the counter:

- 3 cups of flour (in the processor bowl)

- 2 tablespoons sugar

- 1.5 teaspoons salt

- 5 teaspoons dry yeast

- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

- 2 large eggs, with the white of one egg separated

- 3/5 cup hot water (120 degrees F)

The recipe also calls for poppy seeds -- the point is to brush the tops of the rolls with the separated egg white and sprinkle with poppy seeds. I didn't have any around, or any sesame seeds, so I skipped this step. It doesn't really make much of a difference.

You can see the timer on the countertop. I started it when I was laying out the ingredients. This whole recipe will go a little faster from here on in if you're not taking photographs, of course.

Flour, sugar, salt and yeast in the processor bowl. Pulse to combine.

Cut butter into the bowl:

Pulse to combine until there's barely any visible butter left.

120 degree F tap water, mixed with the egg yolks and one white.

Start the processor and drizzle in the liquid, holding back at the end to see if a ball forms. Keep adding until a ball forms. Then keep processing for 60 seconds.

Grease a round glass casserole dish. I'm making a half batch, and refrigerating half the dough. A larger dish or two dishes would accommodate all the rolls, of course.

Divide the dough into 16 pieces, or in my case half the dough into 8 pieces. Total amount of dough came in at just under 2 pounds so I made each piece 1.9 ounces.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Form into balls, arrange in dish:

Into the microwave for 3-3-3-6 (or whatever works for you to get approximately a doubling of volume) as described up-topic.

This is when you have a little downtime to load the dishwasher, so that at the end of the process it will be pretty much no-impact.

After rising, into the oven for 18-20 minutes, until the tops are nicely browned.

And, here we are, rich golden rolls in 59 minutes and 22 seconds:

[pennylane]

Oh my goodness! I am sold.

I love to make bread the long, slow way, and I do live in a city where great bread is always just around the corner, but sometimes it's 1 a.m. and I just need to have a veggie burger! This will come in so handy!!

[mhjoseph]

They're not artisan bread. But they're absolutely addictive when served warm with butter. Somewhere between a biscuit and a Parker House roll.

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I've always been of the opinion that almost anything taste great right out of the oven.

[lebowits]

In the end, the discussion isn't whether this is a valid technique or not. It is about how you want to make bread. Some of us will wish to be "purists" to the artisinal form. Others of us will understand that there are times when a quick method may not be only acceptable but preferred for a particular use or situation.

I personally am rather intrigued in the "Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" method as it suggests very long, slow fermentation which should yield complex flavors. I'll let you know what my experiments produce when I get around to them.

Choice is a wonderful thing.

[vengroff]

OK Steve, I'm convinced. I'll give it a try, though I may not be able to break the hour mark on the first try.

[Fat Guy]

Okay if you're actually going to try this there are two big things to look out for:

1. Overkneading. Stay under a minute. And, you may find, in your first attempts, that it takes some adjustment of the liquid balance before you get the ball. Too much liquid, add a little more flour, etc. At some point that time starts to add up so you want to subtract it from the minute if you've already done a lot of pseudo-kneading during the mixing process.

2. Cooking the dough in the microwave. You can only push so far before you kill the yeast and dry out the dough. Finding the right settings on your microwave is the most difficult part of the whole process, especially when you've never been through the process before. Once you get a feel for it, you can calibrate to someone else's microwave pretty quickly. But at first you're flying blind. Just take it slowly. If you have to do several 1-minute bursts and keep watching and touching the dough to make sure it's not starting to feel hot to the touch, you can do that. You'll start to see where the dough hits the point of optimum energy accumulation. You may have to play for 30 minutes to get the rise, but you'll acquire the knowledge for next time.

[hathor]

I just went back to the original post when this thread started, and to me, this is the crux of this conversation: "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."

Lebowits, I agree with you, it's about choice and where and when you are willing to make compromises. No one is a 100% purists, and if they are, chances are they are boring as hell.

Here's yesterday's batch of rolls, and a summary of the time it took.

hands on wait time

in minutes in hours

Poolish 3 18

Mix * knead 20

1 st rise 4

Degas 1.5

2 nd rise 24

rest time after refrigeration 1

shape/couche 10

rest 1

bake 0.33

Total hands on time: 34.5 minutes

Granted, I can't make biscuits or rolls in an hour, and that's a choice that I'm making, but the overall time investment in making a developed flavour bread is just not that much. Once you work with bread and start to understand rise times....you know when you can just throw it in the fridge, or somewhere cool to retard it. That way you own the bread baking schedule and not vice versa. For me, that's the trickiest part, manipulating the rise time so that it's convenient for me.

[andiesenji]

Okay if you're actually going to try this there are two big things to look out for:

1. Overkneading. Stay under a minute. And, you may find, in your first attempts, that it takes some adjustment of the liquid balance before you get the ball. Too much liquid, add a little more flour, etc. At some point that time starts to add up so you want to subtract it from the minute if you've already done a lot of pseudo-kneading during the mixing process.

2. Cooking the dough in the microwave. You can only push so far before you kill the yeast and dry out the dough. Finding the right settings on your microwave is the most difficult part of the whole process, especially when you've never been through the process before. Once you get a feel for it, you can calibrate to someone else's microwave pretty quickly. But at first you're flying blind. Just take it slowly. If you have to do several 1-minute bursts and keep watching and touching the dough to make sure it's not starting to feel hot to the touch, you can do that. You'll start to see where the dough hits the point of optimum energy accumulation. You may have to play for 30 minutes to get the rise, but you'll acquire the knowledge for next time.

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Steven, how about variable power microwaves? Both of my big microwaves have power settings from 1 to 10 and the microwave emitter cycles on and off to maintain the "mix" of microwaves in the chamber at that setting.

I have used this successfully to slowly bring milk or cream to a specific temperature, without boiling it, as happens with full power.

[Fat Guy]

Right, you want to start with the lowest power setting and work from there. Some microwave ovens, like the one I had a decade ago, you need to go up to setting 3 out of 10 or so. But there are other microwave ovens where even the lowest power setting will kill the yeast in 3 minutes. So for those you may have to scale back to 2 minutes. And some microwave ovens only have a single power setting, in which case you're probably looking at using several bursts of 1 minute or less followed by a minute or two of resting.

[Fat Guy]

Here's the loaf from the other half of the dough.

[kbjesq]

My hat's off to all the artisanal bakers and folks that have the time (and energy) needed to make the perfect loaf. I genuinely appreciate the talent involved. - there is nothing better than a fabulous loaf of bread. However, I live in a place where I cannot buy such bread (readily), and between work, volunteer, and family commitments, it's just not possible for me to make "old-fashioned" bread on a regular basis. (Case in point: I received the BBA last year and have only made a few recipes because so many do require an investment of 2 days to finished product).

Since I acquired a Zojirushi bread machine, however, I am no longer a slave to yucky supermarket bread. I can easily whip up a perfectly serviceable sandwich loaf in 1 hour, 54 minutes (start to finish). Total investment of human time - about 5 minutes to measure and load the ingredients. The result is far superior to supermarket bread (and I suspect less expensive, although I haven't done the math).

Inspired by this thread, I measured how long it takes to make cinnamon buns using the machine to make the dough. From start to shaping the buns, a total of 40 minutes. Followed by a proof in my oven (125 F) for 30 minutes. Then bake for 15 minutes. Total time - start to finish - 1 hour, 25 minutes. (The recipe makes 20 buns, which is enough for 2 round cake pans. I give one pan to a friend, and I am a hero!)

I'm sure that the 2-day method for Dorie Greenspans' pecan honey sticky buns (described in Baking from My Home to Yours) produces a far superior result. But like I said, I don't often get the free time needed to invest in such a project. Much as I love her book, like the BBA, I just find that I really don't have the time to attempt too many of the recipes. Anyway, for quick, homemade cinnamon buns , I think these are pretty good, and they are always well-received:

[joancassell]

Yes, and with Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine, by Eckhardt and Collingwood Butts (who wrote the Half the Time book), you can get excellent bread, far better than the Bread-in-Five-Minutes stuff. If I remember correctly, the Eckhardt-Butts ciabatta calls for an initial starter, and then you keep using old bread for subsequent loaves. Some of their recipes call for starters, some can be done immediately, most are pretty darn good!

So, unless you have a really good bread source close to home, you can decide just how much time you want to invest to put good bread on your table. Half the time, bread machine, whatever -- they're all a lot better than supermarket bread or, for that matter, the somewhat pallid (although still better than Wonderbread) stuff from the mislabled Five Minutes a Day book.

Yes, the recipes from Amy's Bread book are even more delicious (as, indeed are the breads from Amy's Bread in New York), but I'm rarely willing to invest several days to make one batch of bread, let alone the energy to collect the various flours called for.

[prasantrin]

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It looks a bit dry--was it, or does it just look that way because of the lighting? Does the bread keep as well as non-microwave bread? I'm not comparing it to artisinal loaves, but just your average white bread recipe, or even store-bought white bread (of a slightly higher quaility than Wonder Bread).

If I weren't too lazy to stand by the microwave (or go back and forth to the microwave), I'd try it.

[Fat Guy]

Dry? Heavens no. Have a look at the ingredients. Think about how brioche is supposed to look -- it's a similar concept.

There's no difference in keeping ability attributable to use of the microwave.

[prasantrin]

Dry? Heavens no. Have a look at the ingredients. Think about how brioche is supposed to look -- it's a similar concept.

I've only made brioche once, and I overbaked it, so it was dry.

But I see your point.

There's no difference in keeping ability attributable to use of the microwave.

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I wasn't thinking about the use of the microwave affecting the keep-ability, but the quick rise. I took baking classes that relied on somewhat quick rises, and I found the bread I made in class tended to harden more quickly than other bread I've made at home. That didn't just apply to the flour/yeast/salt/water breads we made, but also to the breads that used milk and butter in the dough. Usually, the day after baking, the breads would be a bit harder, but two days after, I wouldn't want to eat them because they were hard beyond my liking (they probably would have made good bread pudding, though).

It could have just been the recipes we were using, but the recipes weren't much different from other Japanese bread recipes I've made at home, so I've always attributed it to the quick rises (we usually made the dough, let it rise in a 40C proofing box for 30-40 minutes, shaped, then put it back in the box for another 15-20 minutes).

[Fat Guy]

I don't have first-hand experience with that issue because I use the freezer. I eat whatever bread I'm going to eat on day 1, slice and freeze the rest, then toast whatever I need later. Sourdough breads with ultra-long rise times do keep much better than quick-risen breads, but I don't imagine there's much difference between microwave-quick-risen and making the exact same bread in a couple of hours longer without the microwave.

[pennylane]

Just tried this method, but ended up making it even faster by inadvertently forgetting the first 3-3-3-6 step. So my rolls took about 45 minutes from start to finish, hehe. And when I say "finish" I mean exactly that - there's no trace of them left! They were actually some of the best rolls I've ever made. Very nicely risen, with a beautiful crumb and surprisingly good flavour, even though I used just flour, salt, water, a hint of cinnamon and a few raisins. I would have taken a picture but the tops (although nice and crusty) weren't as nicely browned as Fat Guy's. How do you get your crust such a nice colour?

[Fat Guy]

The sugar and butter in the dough probably help with browning, at least in the recipe I posted about here, and also I have a fake-professional oven that seems to do crust a little better than normal ovens.