I have been using my bread machine two or three times a week now for the last 9 months, and have only just got to the point where my bread is good enough for my discerning 6 year old daughter. I’m absolutely delighted to be able to stop buying her white sliced, because it is full of salt and goodness knows what other rubbish, and also because she never used to get through the whole loaf before it went mouldy (it was only her that ate it), meaning we had lots of waste. Now that she eats my bread I know exactly what she’s getting and it’s a huge improvement.
Here's what I have learned about baking salt-free bread.
1. Flour – use the best you can – we are lucky enough to have a mill down the road from us at Redbournbury - although it's not cheap, it's great flour and I like the fact that it's so local.
2. Salt - plenty of people will tell you that salt is an essential ingredient in bread. That’s a load of rubbish - I use no salt at all and make delicious bread. However, you may find you need to experiment a little to get the quantities right. Without salt, I generally find that I need less sugar and perhaps a little less yeast than the recipe recommends (sugar stimulates the action of the yeast; salt damps it down). I am told that salt-free bread goes stale quicker than shop-bought bread (but it will be so delicious that it probably won't be around long enough to get to that point).
3. Water – I generally use a splash more than the recommended quantity. I then go back to the bread machine when it’s 10 minutes into its cycle (I use the cooker timer to remind me) and take a look to see if I need any more.
4. Flavour – in just a few weeks, you will get used to the taste of salt-free bread. If you do miss the salt however, adding a little bitterness seems to compensate - try finely chopped rosemary added to the dough, or poppy seeds sprinkled on top.
5. Bake it in the oven instead of the machine - my bread machine produces a decent enough loaf, but it's a cube shape, with a hole in the end where the blade was, and doesn't always have the best texture. To get much better results...
- use the "dough" option on the machine to make the dough (on my machine, this takes 90 mins)
- shape it and pop it into a loaf tin (I don't "knock it back" too much), put a cut lengthways along the top (glaze and add seeds at this point if you want)
- leave in a warm place for half an hour
- bake it in the oven for half an hour. I use the small top oven of my cooker (sitting on the bottom of the oven rather than on a shelf). This gives a really good, crusty loaf.
3 comments:
Our daily loaf has a little salt in it, but I sometimes make salt-free bread - just like the Tuscans, whose bread has been salt-free for centuries (ill-advised tax began this in the middle ages). Great to have your tips, thank you for sharing.
Last week I made poppyseed rolls with the seeds IN the bread rather than ON it - day one, you couldn't taste them at all, so I thought it was a failure; day two, the rolls were completely suffused with poppy, very good eating.
Joanna
Hi Joanna - thanks for your comment, and a good point about the tasty salt-free bread which I have had in Italy. I like the sound of the poppyseed rolls with the seeds inside, will give them a try. Today's bread is 5 parts white flour to 1 part spelt which I can recommend - it gives a lovely texture and flavour (and means I can sneak in a little fibre too without my daughter noticing!). I'm going to carry on experimenting - I have followed some of the "artisan bread" links on your site and am determined to get some results of that sort using the machine.
I've just made the BPA recipe bread, my son just came in from school and went wild with the smell. He demanded I cut him the crust off to eat NOW. He's raving about it, so I just had a little piece. Mmmm! I forgot how good home cooked could be, I'll freeze what's left over bearing in mind what you say about it not keeping so well.
I used the dried active yeast you reactivate in water so it froths up, rather than fast acting stuff, so it took a bit longer - but has worked a treat.
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