“Since March is National Nutrition Month, I thought it would be appropriate to look at how the average American workday — the way most of us spend the majority of our waking hours — affects our physical activity. It used to be that work was the source of our exercise, but that’s certainly not true for most of us today.”

George likes to quote Michael Pollan (“Food Rules”): “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” – from his bestselling book “Omnivore’s Dilemma”, concluding that “if we all followed this simple directive (with a corollary of “cook frequently”) we’d be in good shape”.

“In just 3 or 4 generations, we as a nation have exchanged shovels and tools for power tools, desks, telephones, and keyboards. We have fully entered an era in which little activity is demanded from our lives. Being paid for physical work has for the most part changed to paying to work out.”

Taking a closer look at his own years as an artisan baker and comparing his dad’s CEO lifestyle with his mom’s busy homemaker’s days, George finds inspiration and wisdom for his common-sense approach to eating and activity habits.

“Mom never needed to ‘work out’ in any modern sense of the word; she was in a constant state of activity, except for the single hour in the afternoon when she laid down for a refreshing nap. A life full of work and activity has kept her trim her entire life.”

As the manager of this blog for George Eckrich I can testify to a definite positive impact of George’s teachings in my life. And I’m a German meat and potatoes hard head! So, mosey on over to Dr. Kracker’s web site and read the full newsletter here: “Recreating our Activity and Exercise Culture”

Dough rest is the amount of time that bread dough ferments after being mixed and before being shaped into loaves. Many bread recipes require only a single resting period. The more preferment and the amount of yeast generally determine the length and number of dough rests. The best breads use less yeast and have longer resting periods, some even overnight, in order to maximize the flavor that ultimately characterizes the bread. This is the stage where your signature as a baker is developed, and the richest and fullest flavors come from the longest fermentation.

Punch and Fold Method for Making Bread Dough

I like to call this technique “stretch and fold” since artisan bakers want to preserve the gases and bubbles rather than punching them out of the bread dough. The stretch and fold organizes the gluten and improves its ability to capture fermentation’s gases. Check out our video explaining this technique, since it is much easier to understand when you see it.

Proof Times and Bread Dough Rise

How long a bread dough rises or proofs will depend on a variety of factors. The amount of yeast in the recipe, the temperature of the dough and the ambient temperature all can increase or decrease the speed. As a young home baker, waiting for the bread dough to rise always challenged my youthful impatience. As the slow food movement has showed us, good food takes time, so follow the directions of the recipe, and know that cooler temperatures require more patience, and warmer temperatures will speed up the process.

Bread Dough Baking Temperatures

Bakers like very hot temperatures to guarantee oven spring and toothy crusts. After my apprenticeship in Germany, I found books for the home bakers specified too low of temperatures for bread doughs. I prefer to preheat my oven and start my baking at 500. After 10 or 12 minutes, I bring the temperature down to 375 to 425 to finish the bake. I use a baking stone in my home oven, and I sometimes brush bread with some water before baking. Unfortunately, there is no way that a home oven can generate steam like a commercial oven. The steam prolongs the oven spring and maximizes the volume of the bread dough and the color and the crispness of the crust. But don’t despair. What you can’t achieve in the crust, you can still guarantee in the crumb by the judicious use of preferments!

Baking Odds and Ends

Salt Rising Bread Dough

When I first read about salt rising bread, I wondered how the salt could make the bread rise, since salt restrains the yeast and thus slows the rise. Later, I learned that salt rising referred to a place to let the dough or starter rise. Rock salt makes good insulation, and home bakers would heat up a bowl filled with salt and then incubate the starter on top of this warm container of salt. The salt radiated heat and allowed the starter to develop faster and created unique flavors because of the warmer temperatures. Making salt rising bread dough is not as difficult as constantly feeding a sourdough, and a heating pad will work just as well as a bed of rock salt.

In a bakery, maintaining the correct temperatures for preferments—generally cool—and proof boxes for dough rising are critical for consistency of flavor and an efficient daily baking routine. The ideal dough temperature is around 75 degrees, and to keep it at this temperature requires an ambient temperature of the same. However, our own house is generally cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. In the winter I rest the dough on top of the refrigerator where there is more heat. And I always cover with a large trash bag to prevent air from blowing on the dough and drying out the surface. Unless the house or kitchen is extremely cold or drafty, I wouldn’t worry about temperature too much. Colder dough requires more patience.

Mixing the Dough

For many home bakers kneading the dough and bread baking have become synonymous. There is something fun, sensual, physical and complete about folding dough on a board over and over again, until the arms give out, or until some ideal texture—I was told like the lobe of an ear—is achieved. Professional bakers, for the most part, attempt to maximize the amount of water in the bread, because more moisture means better aromas and longer shelf life.

When I bake at home, mixing and kneading are one and the same. I use a large bowl and a very heavy duty spatula or dough scraper to fold the dough onto itself. This is very wet or tacky dough that defies any hand mixing. I aim for 100 strokes, give or take a few. I rely on the organic acids that form during the fermentation to finish the gluten development and to achieve the structure of the bread. I only touch the dough with my hands to stretch and fold it, at least until I shape it or place it on the baking sheet. What I have sacrificed in the physical joy of baking, I have gained with much better bread results.

Spelt is often called the biblical wheat. And many people who have a wheat allergy and avoid eating wheat (which is not the same as Celiac disease) find spelt does not affect them in a negative manner. In fact, spelt is an early variety of wheat and underwent a spontaneous mutation. Technically speaking, spelt is hulled wheat, which means that the extra hull has to be milled off before the wheat can be milled into flour. Spelt bread is not easy to bake, and the same mutation that lost the hull changed the balance of the gluten proteins to create a grain and flour that was preferred by bakers. This is wheat as most of us know it. Since proteins are the usual culprits in allergies, I would assume that the mutation that improved the bake-ability of the wheat also made it more difficult to digest. Because of the difficulties of baking, spelt almost disappeared from the agricultural scene, but fortunately has made a strong return. Dr. Kracker uses spelt flour extensively to bake its flatbreads. To bake with spelt, try using the biga for best results. The weaker spelt proteins like the extra organic acids developed with the preferment.

What Is Durum Wheat?

Durum is yet another variety of wheat that is known for its large kernels and high protein content. Most all of the durum wheat in the US is milled into semolina flour, the basis of pasta and macaroni. When added to bread, semolina flour imparts a rich yellow color and a buttery flavor. Most all recipes combine semolina with regular bread flour for the best results.

What Is Kamut?

Kamut is one of the durum wheats and is known for its sweeter flavor (it is amber rather than red wheat) and the large size of its kernels. Kamut is the Egyptian word for wheat, and the initial seeds were carried to the US as a curiosity from Egypt. Today, most all of the kamut in the US is grown in Montana. Like spelt, Kamut does not have ideal baking characteristics, but can be combined with wheat flour. I like to cook Kamut—or spelt for that matter— as a rice substitute or together with rice, and Kamut can be precooked and added to the dough. The large plump kernels make for a fantastically chewy texture.

All-Purpose Or Bread Flour?

Bread flour for the home baker is milled from hard winter wheat. If you want to bake with preferments and use long fermentation, always look for bread flour. All-purpose flour is milled from softer wheat varieties which have less protein and whose protein is better suited for cakes and cookies. You would not want the tough, chewy texture of sourdough bread to characterize your cookies! Flour is labeled specifically for bread baking or all-purpose baking.

Wheat can be planted in the fall and harvested in the spring or can be planted in the spring for a fall harvest.

The first are hard winter wheat varieties. These are mostly grown in the Western plains states. The wheat is planted in the early fall. The seeds germinate and the wheat grows until the cold weather forces the plant into dormancy. In the best years, a light snow cover can protect the young plants and provide sufficient moisture for the crop to rocket out of dormancy in the spring. Harvest begins in Texas as early as June. The winter wheats are considered to have the best protein characteristics for artisan baking.

Spring wheat is grown throughout the Midwest and is most often high protein wheat. High protein flour has special applications in the pan bread and pizza bakeries, and should not be used for home baking.

Red wheat or white wheat?

Most home bakers never realized that they have an option. In the last 10 years, hard white wheat has been widely introduced to professional bakers. Just as there are several colors of corn such as blue, red, yellow and white, to name the obvious, wheat can be hard red wheat or white, depending on the color of the bran layer.

White whole wheat flour has gained in popularity as consumers and bakers have noticed a sweeter flavor in the white wheat in contrast to the slightly bitter flavor of the red wheat.

Traditionally, whole grain recipes call for honey or sugar to mellow this bitter flavor. But with white wheat, there is no need to add any sweetener to the recipe. If you are looking to bake whole grain, King Arthur sells a 5-lb bag of white wheat, and you can be certain that it is whole grain and will have the same excellent baking characteristics of hard red winter wheat.

Dried yeast has almost completely replaced fresh or cake yeast for the home baker. Years ago, dried yeast required re-hydrating before mixing, and the home baker had to take great care to use the correct temperature of water so as not to kill the yeast. These days, most dried yeast does not have to be hydrated, and it is best to follow the directions on the package. Frankly, even when the package says to mix directly into the flour and water, I always make a small poolish or slurry to dissolve the yeast and to make certain that the yeast is active. I make this slurry first thing while I am organizing the kitchen and all my ingredients, and this mix is generally ready to go after 10 or 15 minutes.

Salt

Salt works in two ways in the dough. Salt imparts an important flavor, and without it, bread is very bland. Secondly and more importantly, salt lends strength to the gluten and reinforces its elasticity and extensibility. Unsalted dough exhibits little strength, tears easily and is most likely to collapse when going in the oven.

Is there a big difference between kosher and regular salt? The answer is no, except that the bigger grains of kosher salt mean that a tablespoon of Kosher salt will weigh less than a tablespoon of regular, more fine grained table salt. Bakers always weigh their salt, and a dough should have 2 percent salt based on flour weight. Teaspoons and tablespoons are very imprecise measurements, but most recipes seem to function. If your bread is too bland or too salty, be certain to make changes in your measurements, adding or decreasing the salt in small increments.

Regarding sea salt, Himalayan salt or regular salt, many people want to believe that the quality of the salt makes a difference in the flavor of the final bread. In all the blind taste tests that I have heard about, no taster has been able to identify breads made with a particular salt. But if you have a favorite salt, by all means use it!

Pate Fermente

Pate fermente is nothing other than a piece of dough which can be mixed separately or taken from a batch of dough during the day’s baking schedule. The pate fermente is fully fermented, and by using it as a preferment, the baker has found the reservoir of organic acids and flavors that have already been developed. In my professional baking days, I preferred pate fermente because it was much easier to handle than poolish when we needed to mix, ferment and portion 500 lbs of preferment. Nonetheless, I would not recommend it for home use, since it requires a ready supply of fully fermented dough.

Levain

Levain is used interchangeably with sourdough to describe a somewhat stiff mixture of flour and water that relies on naturally occurring wild yeast to leaven and to create the flavor profile. Levains can be as loose or as wet as a poolish, but these wet levains are used for very specialized applications.

Sourdough

Sourdough is the greatest American contribution to baking vocabulary. Everyone knows the stories of California’s gold miners carrying their sourdough starters bundled in their shirts or jackets to protect the starter from the cold. In the sourdough, the wild yeasts and acid producing bacteria live in a symbiotic relationship that has been the source of great American bread for 200 years. This mix of living, eating and reproducing bacteria requires care and feeding, which is difficult to maintain in a consistent fashion at home, except for the most dedicated home bakers. Depending on the desired flavor profile, a sourdough may undergo as many as 3 feedings every 24 hours. Check out: sourdoughhome.com for building and caring for your own starter.

For additional info on bread starters, see the previous post on biga, preferment, and poolish.

Preferment

A preferment is a catch-all word describing any amount of flour, water and biological leavening agent (as opposed to chemical) which the baker prepares before mixing the dough. In almost all cases, the preferment will not contain salt, since salt inhibits fermentation. (But there are exceptions, such as the rye salt sourdough or the pate fermente, discussed in the next post.) Fermentation is the source of the gases that make the bread rise, but more importantly, fermentation creates organic acids that strengthen the gluten and facilitate the creation of the thin sheets that trap the CO-2 from fermentation. Every artisan baker strives to create signature flavors, and preferments are the primary tool.

Poolish

The word comes from a technique which is ascribed to Polish bakers. The poolish is mixed with equal parts of flour, water and a small amount of yeast. The amount of yeast will vary depending on the amount of time the preferment develops: short fermentation require more yeast; longer times less. For home baking, I use 1/3 teaspoon of dry yeast for 2 cups of flour and 2 cups of water and 12-hour fermentation. The poolish is mixed together to blend out any lumps, but there is no extensive mixing or “kneading” required. Poolish is the preferred method for baguettes and other French style white breads. I let my poolish sit at room temperature in both winter and summer, and try to limit its fermentation to 12 hours; if it sits too long, the somewhat sweet profile that the baker desires can turn sour.

Biga

The biga is an Italian baking technique developed in response to the weaker gluten that characterizes Italian wheat flour. The ratio of flour to water is 2 to 1, and the amount of yeast is similar to the poolish. The stiffer consistency of this preferment is said to create more organic acids during fermentation, and the organic acids fortify the protein structure and thus improve baking characteristics. The biga is also very appropriate for the whole grain breads, and again, I aim for a 12 hour fermentation period at room temperature, and I use the same amount 1/3 teaspoon of yeast for 2 cups of flour.

My dear vegan friend George Eckrich is the most energetic person I’ve ever met. He radiates kindness and happiness, and he’s always willing to share his insights on healthy eating and proper nutrition. So I asked him about vegetarian protein intake and good sources for B 12 vitamin in a plant based diet. Watch his reply in this video…

There’s a huge difference between a mass-produced loaf using refined, bleached flour and an artisan bread made from organic whole grains, oats, and other highly nutritious ingredients.

Listen to bread artisan George “Dr. Kracker” Eckrich’s answer to my question: “Is bread healthy?”