Thoughts on baking and my daily bread

Being a baker's daughter from Sweden, where most people still do quite a lot of cooking and baking "from scratch" I am always surprised at people's ignorance when it come to baking. (Incidentally, there is no word for 'from scratch' in Swedish, that's the way it is assumed to be done.) Once when serving a bread-loaf filled with olives and feta cheese, someone asked how I got the stuff so seamlessly into the middle of the bread. And after having talked at length about my newest sourdough bread (yes, I know...) my colleague asked whether I used self-raising flour for that. And last but not least, the deprived take-out dinner child's surprised look when she saw me make pizza made me want to cry. She did know that she can make her own pizza!

Real mozzarella and parmesan cheese - from Italy and not the Australian varieties widely available here i Singapore. The latter tend to have an aftertaste of milk powder, which I find difficult accept. And homemade tomatosauce, the only one with my picky kids' stamp of approval; only a little onions and garlic, boiled for at least half an hour with canned tomatoes and then mixed until completely smooth.

My daily bread

My best friend when making bread is the sponge (raskdeg på svenska!) - it's a mix of flour, water, salt and yeast that is made in the evening, to bake with the next day (or any 8-12 hour period that suits your schedule). My dad always made a sponge, but he never left it overnight.  As for the quantities, I use around 700 ml of water for a teaspoon of dry yeast, a couple of teaspoons of salt and then enough flour to make it into a loose dough. I usually use normal white wheat flour to get the yeast and gluten into action (as described above), which is the whole point of the sponge. Mix it for a while to make sure the gluten wakes up and starts forming threads. Then leave it over night.

If you want to add some healthy ingredients in the dough, it's best to it from the beginning. So before adding anything else to the water, I mix oats, oat bran, wheat germ, ground flax and other ingredients that like to soak a little into the water, and leave for 15-30 mins. Then I add the flour, yeast and salt and mix to a gooey consistency, and wait until morning. (Some would advice leaving out the salt in the sponge, but I find that it makes little difference to the proofing process and I don't run the risk of forgetting to add the salt the next day, which used to happen about every other time or so...).
In the morning, this is what you get; a visibly bubbly dough ready to feed with more flour and knead until manageable:

Sponge in the morning, after proofing in room temperature over night. 

Into the sponge, I usually white and whole grain flour of some sort, and add some soy-, blackbean-, buckwheat- and quinoa flour for added nutrition and variation. But not enough for the kids to notice. Then let it rise a few more times, about an hour or two each time, knead in a machine before the first proofing period (if you have one), then on the workbench. Add more flour to make it workable, but you may keep the dough fairly loose if you can manage it. You will see it growing and becoming really alive as you go through this process. Before the final proofing period, sift a generous amount of flour and/or oats/oat bran/polenta on a tea towel, place this in a basket or large bowl. Shape the dough into some sort of round shape and place it on the towel in the bowl. (Later you can experiment with other shapes, but this is the easiest, especially if you have a loose dough.) Turn the oven on 240 degrees and put a tray in to heat it up.

When the big bun looks fully grown in the bowl - after maybe an hour - take the oven tray out, gently place your big dough bun on it, floury side down on the tray, and place in the oven. Leave at 240 degrees until the bread has gotten crusty and brown, then lower to 200 degrees. It should take an hour until it is ready. Take it out and let it cool on a rack. The looser you keep the dough, the crustier and chewier the bread will be. This is the result:

My daily bread. 

My kids love it, also toasted when it's a couple of days old. It's easy once you get the hang of it. Especially if you live in countries with not much bread tradition, it is such an asset to be able to make your own bread. Here in Asia, bread tends to be the American toast variety, and often filled with a lot of additives to keep it fresh forever. I love most Asian food, but when it comes to bread, I gotta make my own!