by Marna Nightingale
“It is all a question of weeding out what you yourself like best to do, so that you can live most agreeably in a world full of an increasing number of disagreeable surprises.” M.F.K. Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf
It seems like everyone, including me, is suddenly baking bread.
Ordinarily I love making pies and cookies but there are only so many desserts one household can eat.
Something less fancy, more nourishing, and more homely seems called for now.
So many people are discovering, or rediscovering, bread-making right now, and at the same time we’re all—I hope—trying to shop less often, at fewer stores. It can be a challenge to lay hands on flour and yeast.
Bakers can—and will—talk for hours about favourite flours. Most bread recipes call for “hard” or “strong” flour…but if you have flour, any flour, it will make bread as good or better than you can get at the store. (Also, Canadian all-purpose flour is a entirely different beast from American, much higher in gluten and thus better for bread; worth knowing if your recipe book is from the US).
Similarly, there are many kinds of yeast, and many opinions about yeast…and it all makes dough rise.
Use what you have or can get and don’t worry; people have been baking, eating, and enjoying bread made with what they could lay their hands on for nearly as long as people have existed.
If you’re lucky enough to have yeast, and it’s still alive (combine a pinch of yeast, a teaspoon of sugar, and a little warm water in a cup and wait 15 minutes to see if it bubbles and smells bready), Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Loaf is simple, reliably, delicious, and easily found online. It uses a parsimonious 1/4 teaspoon of your precious yeast, too.
If you don’t have yeast, and are willing to wait a week or more, you can make a sourdough starter.
Or, you can make a quickbread.
I spoke to some of the people who have helped me with my baking conundrums through the years and asked them for their favourite no-yeast recipes.
For myself, when the ancient jar of yeast in my fridge let me down with a bump last month, I discovered (I’m sure I didn’t invent this) a quickbread variation on Lahey’s loaf.
Marna’s Emergency Bread
Combine:
- 3 cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 1/3 cups cool water
Mix just until flour is incorporated, forming a loose, shaggy dough. Cover tightly and leave for 12-18 hours.
Preheat oven to 375F
Sift together:
- 1 Tbsp double-action baking powder
- 1/3 cup flour
Work this well into your dough. When you have a soft, springy ball of evenly-mixed dough, turn it onto a greased or floured pan and bake it for 45 minutes or until the loaf is brown and sounds hollow.
Let sit for 30-60 minutes before slicing.
Leaving the dough for so long before baking develops the gluten. While the results are denser than a yeasted loaf, they’re still very nice indeed.
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Sarah Darkes and Melody Mielke shared quickbread recipes with me as well.
Sarah’s Baking Powder Biscuits
You can add cheese, herbs, or both to these. Sarah does a rosemary-cheddar version I love.
Use the highest-fat milk you have.
The basic rule of biscuits is to handle the dough as little as possible with your hands to keep your fat as cold as possible.
I like to freeze lard or butter and use a grater to shred it, so I can mix my dough quickly and without having to use my warm hands to rub the fat in.
Measure frozen butter with a sharp knife, going by the markings on the label.
Combine:
- 5 cups flour
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 Tbsp double-acting baking powder
- About 1 1/2 cups milk, buttermilk or soured milk
- 1/2 tsp salt if you use unsalted butter; otherwise none
To make soured milk, add 2 Tbsp lemon juice or white vinegar to 2 cups of milk; set aside for 20 minutes or until it thickens slightly and turns a creamy pale yellow.
Sift together (or fluff with a fork) flour, salt, if used, and baking powder. Add any extras.
Incorporate butter, mixing with a spoon or kneading gently until the mixture feels like raw oats.
Add milk slowly, mixing gently with a fork or spoon just until you can form a ball; the dough should not be sticky.
If dough becomes too wet, add a bit more flour to even it out.
Preheat oven to 400F and grease a cookie sheet.
On a well-floured surface, roll the dough into a rough rectangle about 1/2” thick, fold the rectangle into thirds, re-roll the dough to 1/2” thick, and cut out biscuits with a coffee cup (dip the cup in flour periodically to stop the dough from sticking).
Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown.
Sarah’s Soda Bread
Best with a mix of white and whole wheat, oat, or rye flours, but they’ll be perfectly fine with what you’ve got. (If you have a spice grinder, or you’re willing to clean your coffee grinder twice, you can make oat flour by grinding up any kind of oats: steel-cut, instant…)
Preheat oven to 400F.
Combine:
- 3 1/2 cups flour, ideally half all-purpose and half whole-wheat or oat
- 1 tsp salt if using unsalted butter
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 2 Tbsp butter
- 1 large egg
- 1 1/2 cups buttermilk
Sift together flour(s), salt if used, and baking soda, or combine and fluff together with a fork. Add and incorporate butter.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg and milk together just until mixed, and add gradually to dry mix; you may not need it all.
As with the biscuits, you want a soft and not too sticky ball of dough; adjust with more flour or more milk or even water if needed.
Shape the dough into a round loaf and turn onto on a cookie sheet which you have either greased and floured or covered in parchment paper.
Bake for about 40 minutes; check the colour at 30 minutes. The loaf will sound slightly hollow when done. Let sit 10-15 minutes before slicing.
Mel’s Lakota-style Frybread
Combine:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup sugar OR 1/4 cup fat, any kind (for sweet or savoury)
- 1 cup water
Mix dry ingredients, rubbing in fat, if used, until the dough feels like cornmeal. Add water slowly until dough is sticky but can still be worked by hand.
Divide dough into four balls and roll or pat each ball out on a floured surface until about as thick as pizza crust.
To fry, heat about 1/2 inch of oil or grease and cook as you would pancakes, flipping each once, until golden brown.
You can also bake it in a 400F oven or cook it on a griddle or a BBQ.