The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [2]
Finally, I want to say a few words in praise of the machines. I have come to appreciate them very much. Machines have their own rules: don’t expect them to follow the “normal” ones. But they do a great job. They are experts at kneading. They provide a splendid place protected from drafts for rising dough. Some are impressively good at shaping. None can preheat their little “ovens.” But if you give them the kind of dough they need, they will give you beautiful, flavorful whole wheat loaves—not to mention excellent dough-on-demand for rolls, pizza, bagels, pita, cinnamon swirls, chapathis, stollen, or any other kneaded fancy you might desire. And, best of all, you can wake up to That Wonderful Smell…
Always a Choice
Always a Choice
THE GREAT IDEAS of the nineteen-seventies haven’t all stood the test of time. You don’t hear a lot about geodesic domes today, or open marriage, or macrame vests. But certain innovations took hold and never went away—not, typically, as mass movements, and not in a big public way, but quietly and steadily, moved along lovingly by individuals whose dedication seems to get a little deeper by the year.
The organic gardening movement, for instance, has unfurled into a global network of activists who advocate a wide spectrum of inter-connected programs like Sustainable Agriculture, Community Supported Agriculture, cooperative urban gardens, and the use of fresh locally-grown produce in school lunches, and who defend the rights of small farmers everywhere, opposing vehemently the use of genetically modified organisms and the patenting of plant and animal species.
Whole-grain bread is another of those new/old “Well, whyever not?” ideas that sprang up alongside solar panels and vegetarianism and went on to win tenure. Not, mind you, that scads of people actually bake it: the workaholism of the last couple of decades, and the seductive availability of not-bad take-out, caught up with just about everyone.
(“Cook?” says one friend, “Not for years. I heat.”)
People may not all bake bread at home, but inspired by the steady influx of good news about the nutritional benefits of whole-grain bread, they do go out of their way to find the best-baked loaves in their areas, and the number of small independent bakeries that specialize in bread made with unrefined flour is steadily growing. The authors of the Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book know this to be true, because we hear regularly from the bakers themselves, who write to say how grateful they are for this very book.
Why grateful?
Because it is the ONLY guide to baking bread that focuses entirely on whole grain flours and that tells you everything you need to know about how to turn out light, evenly textured loaves that are entirely free of refined flour.
Were we extremists in our desire to push past the faux whole-wheat breads that line today’s supermarket shelves? I’d rather think of us as romantics: because, in fact, a certain kind of romance had attached itself to the very idea of wholeness. In every area of life, we kept finding out that the given—what was natural and right at hand—was substantially advantageous over the fractioned and manufactured surrogates most of us had grown up with. In questions of diet, transportation, housing, child rearing, clothing, and more, it became an almost conditioned reflex to ask oneself what the “whole” and “natural” alternative might be, and guess that it would be the better one.
Breast milk, for instance, turned out to benefit babies in so many ways that formulated products couldn’t, including (pediatricians are just now telling us) protecting them against childhood obesity. And breast-feeding didn’t just facilitate bonding between a mother and infant, it lowered the mother’s risk of breast cancer as well. Natural fiber clothing was good for the environment, but it felt so good against the skin, too, and learning to spin and weave and knit linked us up with our grandmothers and great grandmothers.
No, if we’d really been extremists—if we’d made a cult of “wholeness”—we’d have