Julia Child, pain de mie

This is sandwich bread. The dough is proofed and deflated twice, handled three times, to produce a tight crumb with no large bubbles inside, like a synthetic sponge.

Americans call the type of bread pan that's rectangular and with a sliding lid a Pullman pan, named after the Pullman railway cars, but they did not invent them. I never had an interest in buying one because I never had an interest in sandwich bread. All my bread making efforts go away from sandwich style bread and all my sandwiches go on non-sandwich bread.

But if I wanted to then I can buy such a pan for 40% off the usual price at Amazon right now. I bet if, say, three of us bought one then by Amazon algorithms the price would go up. "Hey! There's a sudden demand for this pan." A lot of people on Amazon rated this pan five stars. 88% of 1,063 reviews = 935 people. I guess a lot of people like this type of bread.

Pullman. How romantic.

Comments to this video on YouTube are touching and sweet. People are fond of Julia Child. They say, "Thank you, Julia. You taught me so much." And she did. 

I made bread yesterday by another technique and I'm happy with the result. The technique relies on a clay cloche. Good Lord, they want $94.00.  It ain't all that. I see one on eBay for $40.00 but with outrageous $31.00 shipping from Australia. If you decide to make a boule shape, a round loaf, instead, then your regular casserole dishes or heavy pots work just as well. Unscrew the handles if they are plastic.

I watched the YouTube video of Bitterman for the NYT with a cook showing his no-knead method. I watched the thing some half dozen times and never realized his amounts equal mine exactly. This video changed the world of bread-baking for thousands of home bakers. They all copped a new attitude.

1 + 1/2 cup of water determines the size

3 cups of flour makes 100% hydration, an equal amount of water by weight.

1 + 1/2 teaspoon salt, I used flaked kosher salt so I used 2 shallow teaspoons.

1/4 teaspoon dry yeast. 

12 hours time.

That's 12 oz water and 12 oz flour. Most the water evaporates during baking, so roughly a 1 lb. loaf. And that's small. It's a small pile of dough. Wet dough.

The ingredients are mixed carelessly and allowed to proof overnight. The yeast reproduces and grows past the amount that would grow the usual way in the usual time. The time overnight allows a short fermentation that doesn't occur by the faster techniques. At the start, the salt retards the yeast making the process slightly slower. We want it to be slow. When Bitterman uploads another video to demonstrate his adjustments for the process to go faster, it shows that Bitterman misses the whole point of time as desirable and crucial ingredient. Yes, the whole thing can be faster, then you must knead it. Or else your careless mess is just that, a baked mess.

As it is, I did knead this because I like messing around. I stirred is as wet dough until stringy gluten developed then added more flour by handfuls until the dough held the shape of a ball. All with a dinner knife. I never touched the dough. 

The size of the loaf is perfect. I can have a few slices of excellent bread and if the rest goes stale or mold grows on it before I can finish it then no great tragic loss. 

French baguettes are made with very wet dough. The wetter the dough then more difficult it is to handle. Wet dough allows large bubbles to form inside. The cloche contains the moisture long enough for the dough to expand like a ballon. That's why they push it around the table to form a stretched outer skin. Absent a cloche, bakers spray the oven with water to produce steam. To keep the skin wet and prolong the time for the dough interior to heat and form bubbles that cannot escape the skin. Then the skin bakes and expanding bubbles must break through. Bakers slice the top of the skin to control the direction of expansion. 

Much less yeast than you think will work. A shallow 1/4 teaspoon. Slightly more than 1/8. 

A shallow cup of flour is 4 oz. A level cup of flour is 5 oz. That's just about perfect amount for wet dough, approximately 90% hydration by the way that bakers figure their craft, and bakers have their own strange math. Water, whatever the amount is considered base 100%. When flour exceeds the weight of water than the hydration decreases. I think. Watch a genuine baker come along and contradict me. 

There is more salt in the dough than there is yeast. Yeast doesn't like salt. But yeast reproduces and salt doesn't so yeast wins eventually. 

Twelve hours later the yeast produces CO2 and alcohol. The alcohol makes the dough wetter. 

This olive oil is really good. From California. Here it tastes like a basket of apples smells.

The fermentation, however brief, begins the digestion process. Organisms help humans digest things. It's why all those fermented foods are so great. Sauerkraut, kimchi, soy sauce, Tabasco sauce, vinegar, miso, tempeh, yogurt, beer, cocoa, sour cream, crème fraîche, fish sauce, salami, nattō, pickles and a million other weird things worldwide that you never heard of. Possibly a hundred.