A Morbid Dread of Kneading

I have probably mentioned that my mother makes delicious homemade bread, which had belatedly—35 years after she started, give or take—inspired me to try making a loaf or two myself. I got the book Kneadlessly Simple, but concluded that it was going to be much more trouble to avoid kneading than simply to go ahead and knead. Why, after all, this morbid dread of kneading?

I consulted my mother, who pointed me to a recipe or two, and I wrote down the ingredients in my favorite Vital Vittles bread (tsk; it contained sunflower oil, which does not have a favorable Omega 6:3 ratio), and then I mentally prepared for a few more months.

Meanwhile, I started looking for a grain mill. Some months ago, Darryl S. brought homemade chocolate-chip cookies made with whole-wheat flour he’d ground himself to dinner at Terry and Nancy’s, and I had ever since wanted to grind my own whole-wheat flour and make chocolate-chip cookies with it. When I decided to attempt the baking of bread, I figured I might also want to grind my own flour for that.

I called Darryl to see what kind of grinder he uses and he said that, by chance, he had spotted the same thing in a store near his place. Tom happened to be going near there in the course of his workday, so he went and bought one—it was only about $20—and left it on Darryl’s porch for a modification Darryl thought it would need. Darryl is a master metal fabricator who once made something for Tom’s bike that Tom raved about for months.

A couple of weeks passed, and then Darryl came over with the grinder and the extra parts he’d made for it, which were beautifully created. Alas, the test wheat came out very coarse. It turns out that a really good grain mill can cost four or five hundred dollars, so it’s little wonder the $20 grinder didn’t provide satisfaction.

Darryl said he could see what the grinder needed and that he would tackle it anew. I was pretty sure nothing was going to help this particular grinder, and I hated to have Darryl spend any more time on it. I consulted Tom—I didn’t want to hurt Darryl’s feelings by suggesting he wasn’t going to succeed, but I also didn’t want him to engage in further fruitless efforts.

Tom said Darryl knows a piece of junk when he sees one, so I called Darryl and said his work is gorgeous, but I didn’t want him to spend any more time on the grinder and that I was prepared to buy a better one, but he said he was sure he could fix it and to hold off on purchasing.

I agreed not to—this was about two months ago—and there the matter stood until this morning, because I couldn’t exactly buy a grinder after I said I wouldn’t. Or at least, I couldn’t have done it right after I said I wouldn’t. (Tom said to just buy a grinder right away and fib if necessary, but one’s better relationships don’t rest on a tissue of lies, though I know Tom, ever the peacemaker, just wanted me to have my grinder and also didn’t want Darryl’s feelings to be hurt.)

In any event, probably I should confirm that I can produce a pleasing loaf of bread with Rainbow’s bulk whole-wheat bread flour before I make a substantial investment in a grinder.

As for the $20 grinder, I did throw it away just this morning. I thought of trying to find a new home for it, but since it’s clear the world is going to piddly-pot on a pumpstick, in the precise and accurate phrase of my old friend Marie, what’s one more $20 grinder in the trash? I’m not saying I’m going to go out and buy a Hummer, but I guess I concede at this point that, given the overall state of affairs, a grinder in the trash probably isn’t going to hasten the end of the world appreciably.

My friend Amy in Michigan (my friend I’ve been friends with for FORTY years) is an expert bread baker for Zingerman’s Bakehouse and gave me some tips while she was making pizza. For instance, she explained that an instruction to “punch” the dough is not referring to a right hook.

My first attempt was moderately successful. My oven more or less cooperated (it waited until I was baking cookies later to unleash its full malevolence) and the result was edible and tasted fine, but was short in stature. Either it didn’t rise enough, or it rose and then it unrose, but it was a thrill to eat toast made with bread I made myself, short or tall.

After that, I took my mother’s advice and acquired an instant-read thermometer; I had probably killed the yeast the first time with too-hot water. The hot water out of my tap is fairly reliably rusty, so I had to heat the water on my gas stove and I’m sure I overshot.

By this time, I had many pages of recipes and instructions culled from various sources. My second loaf came out almost exactly the same as the first, only half an inch taller, though both had pleasing flavor, as anything with a quarter cup of butter spread on it tends to have.

In despair, I appealed again to my mother, who persuaded me that you do have to knead the dough. Here I had bravely resolved to knead, and then not kneaded, this because I was extrapolating from a recipe designed for someone using a food processor, and hadn't realized that the 10-12 seconds of processing equated to some minutes of kneading.

Oh, it’s also not good to mash the dough into the loaf pan so it forms a perfect rectangle, which is what I thought was meant by "shape the loaf" until the Internet clued me in.

So my hopes for my next loaf of bread are high.