Introduction and some things that I've learnt so far....

Greetings,  my fellow TFL'ers!

I've been a silent reader here for quite some time. I've never posted anything here because I've always felt that there is a long way to go before my posts qualify to take up TFL's space. Nevertheless, I've been trying to learn every bit from the beautiful bread recipes .....ooops! formulae here. Every post here is worthy of being bookmarked. 

I'm from India, where bread (that airy, bubbly magic of four, water, salt and yeast) is still considered as a carrier for jams and spreads. Reason being:  we feed on, love, and relish different unleavened flatbreads (roti being one of them) and some leavened ones like naans. Artisan breads are still being sold in bakeries of five-star hotels. In supermarkets one has access to only the mass-produced products. 

Now, my problem was: 

a) How can I experience what a large part of mother earth is madly in love with without burning my pocket?

b) Can I bake and recreate quality breads myself?

The second question, in fact was the answer to the first one. I needed to get down to business!

Like any other beginner baker, I thought "let's see a video, refer a recipe and that's it... As simple as that"

The first problem that I came across was the yeasty-beasty. I purchased a pack active-dry yeast and saw the instructions on "how-to-use". It said.. just put a teaspoon of yeast in warm water and let it sit till it becomes frothy. I waited, and waited and waited.....no signs of activity. I decided to use it anyway.  Result: I baked a mass of wet dough which didn't rise at all. 

Although I knew yeast is a living thing, I didn't know one can kill them easily and make them kaput. I purchased another pack of active dry and the result? Same. At one time, I had four different brands of active-dry yeast! All of them useless. Finally, I decided to get myself instant yeast. It has worked really well till now :D

Lesson: Find good-quality yeast. Learn how the yeast works and take good care of it.

And if you want to REALLY want to learn what yeast is and what it does, what can be a better read than Debra Winks post  to clear all the doubts? Because Chemistry has been one of my favorite subjects in school, this learning has been kind of fun-ride for me.  I now have SD mother in my fridge as well which I raised from scratch. 

My second problem was the climate!

I live in Chennai, a city in southern India, which has a tropical climate throughout the year. Some say that the three seasons that we have in Chennai are "hot, hotter and hottest". It is really a cursed place in terms of weather. Now you may say that, what’s the problem? Yeasts frolic in humid weather. However, this weather is something else. Chennai helps yeasts in a "steroid-al" way.  As a fellow bread baker you might understand the gravity of my problem:  the yeast become so active just after the mixing,  I find it tough to develop gluten by handling/kneading on counter top. Yeah, the yeasts and bacteria burp so much!

My challenge was and still is : how do you work your way around this hot and humid climate? How do you make the  controllable variables, including TIME work for yourself (guess that's what the skill in bread making is? right? ;) ) . Many posts on TFL addressing the same problem have helped me a lot. I guess all you need is a fridge and lot of patience in tropical climates for that good loaf of bread!

 My next experiments were with what Mr. Forkish has mentioned first in his book title : Flour. Trying to be adventurous, in my initial experiments itself, I tried making a bread only out of Durum wheat Atta (WW flour).   Yes, none of that AP flour at all! Because we make our rotis everyday with that flour, I thought it would not be so tough. The amount of water that I used for that experiment was not even 50-55% of the total flour weight (didn't know at that time that it was called the hydration%). The result? You may have guessed it: a really dense bread which we had to throw unfortunately. 

Lesson: Learn the significance of different flours, and the significance of hydration for each type. Learn, why a formula is the way it is? The significance of %of each ingredient.

The next challenge was handling the dough.

Try to imagine a newbie wannabe baker, not having kitchen scale and trying to put water in flour just by his instincts and then kneading it (at that time, I used to underestimate the importance of formula and weighing ingredients) . Yeah...correct! A total mess on the counter top! That's what used to happen in my initial experiments, when I went into the battlefield with an aim to make a supreme bread and just after the mixing process, wanted to clean-up my hands and throw that gooey mess away. 

That's when Mr. Bertinet showed me the way and taught the technique to handle to dough (on Youtube obviously, though who wouldn't want to learn from him in the Bertinet Kitchen? ). I remember the line where he says "believe that it will work" . Since then, every experiment is making me better in finding that right technique.

Lesson: Learn the techniques of handling the dough. They make the whole process of bread making more enjoyable. 

I'm a weekend baker and have tried my hands on traditional French, Italian, SD, Hokkaido, self-made formula, and Pizzas (ooooh...I forgot to mention my homemade pizza) with some really good loaves and some "motivational" ones (I won't call them failures :)). Also, compared to loaf tins, my experiments in Dutch Oven have been more successful. 

I experiment a lot with different flours that we get in here in India and have made a nice formula with a particular flour called Sattu which is basically a mixture of 7 different flours and pulses. I'll share it in my next post with some pictures. 

I've found that as much as I love the finished products, I enjoy the whole process even more. I just adore the way seemingly lifeless ingredients are converted into something so fragrant and tasty. I love handling the dough with my hands and seeing it rise. With every bread that I bake, I just feel amazed and humbled how was bread-making conceptualized at first place. I want to travel back in time and see it being discovered.

Though, revered Poilâne named his cookies as "Punitions" ( French for  "punishments",  as you've to wait till they come out of the oven and cool down), I believe every freshly-baked product in general, and breads in particular are same (yes, I'm biased for breads;) ) . 

Finally, I view the combination of Flour, water, salt and yeast as marriage made in heaven (four partners!). We need to know how each ingredient works ideally. We are here just to enable and create a helpful environment for these ingredients to "do their thing" by  adjusting the controllable variables, and giving the process proper time and temperature. I think this is the ultimate realization. Good bread follows...