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Bread Breakthrough?October 23, 2009 Fleischmann's Yeast has done it again. The announcement arrived in my e-inbox this morning, announcing "Bread Breakthrough! Revolutionary! Dough Kneads Itself Recipes!" Hot on the heels of pizza crust yeast, they've come up with no-knead yeast bread. (No-knead quick breads aren't news, but they don't use Fleischmann's Yeast either.) The gist, as expected, is that you can have all the perks of home-baked bread without kneading the dough. You don't even have to rearrange your schedule or, gods forbid, stay home waiting for the bread to rise. According to www.breadbreakthrough.com, "The dough gently kneads itself during a very long, slow rise." I'm so dying to see those little doughy fingers kneading themselves that I'm tempted to spring for the booklet, which is free if you don't count the $1 shipping and handling charge. (Why isn't the booklet online and downloadable as, say, a PDF? Aha! Maybe they're trying to build their snail-mailing list!) I'm also told that the Bread Breakthrough means that "most recipes are mixed in one bowl with a spoon and need little hand-shaping before baking." The mess is minimal, in other words. Travvy wouldn't be lying at my feet waiting for bits of dough, or -- the jackpot! -- raisins, craisins, or walnuts to fall to the floor. The "slow, cool rise" is said to result in "enhanced flavors, texture and aroma [that] naturally develop with time, producing better bread." Now I'm beginning to suspect that this "slow, cool rise" is what I do with the sponge when I make sourdough bread: leave it out on the counter to rise all night or all day. (For you non–bread bakers, the sponge is batter: you haven't yet added enough flour to make a dough that's cohesive enough to knead.) And finally, in case you're not already 100% sold, this New! Improved! method lets you "perform simple bread-making steps at your convenience." But bread making the pre-breakthrough way only involves about 20 or 30 minutes of "work," and that includes the washing up. It even includes the time I spend clearing off my keyboard-and-mouse table and moving it to the kitchen, where it is miraculously transformed into my perfect-height bread-kneading table. It's not all that hard to arrange one's schedule to accommodate baking once a week, though, true, it's easier if you work from home and have only a dog for a housemate. Well, I'm not all that impressed by the bread on the cover of the booklet. I suspect the gluten was underdeveloped, probably because the dough didn't get enough exercise or the chance to rise twice. A batter bread I make infrequently looks like that. It tastes like an English muffin, especially toasted and slathered with butter, so I'm sure not knocking it, but I don't want all my breads to look like that. What really bothers me about this "bread breakthrough" is that it eliminates most of what I love about baking bread: the mixing and kneading and shaping, all the physical interaction with the dough, and its gradual change from barely coherent lump to springy, responsive mound. I actually like the waiting, too. I've got plenty of things to do while the dough rises, and I don't have to stay home and watch it. I like noting the effects of temperature and humidity on different doughs. And once in a while the excuse comes in handy: "Sorry, can't make it; I've got bread rising." Mostly I'm suspicious of New! Improved! Breakthrough! that promises I can have it all. No, I can't. Neither can you. We're going to give something up in the process. Let's acknowledge that from the get-go and spare a thought for whether what we're giving up is really all that expendable. I like adapting myself to the rhythms of bread baking. I don't want to fit it into a schedule that's as rigid as Travvy's crate. That's why I have a dog in my life. I hope that's one reason why people have gardens, and kids.
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