So you’ve reached the point when the bread goes into the oven.. You’ve mixed, you’ve kneaded , you’ve proved and now there’s nothing more that you can do. The tray has gone in, the timers set and it’s fingers crossed.
Making bread always feels like a strange mix of baking at both it’s easiest and it’s most difficult. You look at the ingredients required and what could be simpler ? At its most basic you’re talking flour, salt, yeast and some liquid, even when you start to get more adventurous it doesn’t go much beyond that. But as anyone who’s tried will tell you there is much more to it that that.
For most baking, and come to that most cooking, you know what your ingredients are going to do when you mix them. Of course there will be the occasional failure or disappointing result but fundamentally you know what is going on. Somehow baking bread just isn’t like that.
You can mix that same quantities of flour, yeast, salt and liquid but you are never sure that you are going to get the same dough as you made last time. It doesn’t matter if you knead to exactly the same patterns and prove to exactly the same times there is always something just beyond your control.
Whether you use fresh or dried yeast you have to remember that once activated it’s a live thing and won’t always react the same way.
I know that some cooks find that to be that thing that puts them off bread making. For me I think it’s one of the great attractions and part of what keeps bringing me back to it.
#That and the fact that whatever the finished bread might look like you just know that it’d going to make the kitchen smell wonderful.
David in the kitchen. 