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with flour to prevent the dough sticking. They are not generally washed between uses and gradually acquire more of a non-stick character.

      You can make your own proving basket using a piece of linen or thick, unbleached calico and a cheap wicker basket. Do not be tempted to use a tea towel unless it is made of fairly thick linen. It is important that the fabric has an open weave, so that air can penetrate to conduct moisture from the surface of the dough. For this reason, light cotton and muslin are not suitable. Nor is a plastic or steel bowl, because moisture from the warm dough will condense on the surface and make the dough stick to the fabric. In an attempt to save money, I once bought a load of plastic basins to make my own proving baskets when demand for the bakery’s French Country Bread began to rocket. I drilled dozens of holes in the basins to create an air flow to the dough, but it still tended to stick to the liner fabric. You may notice the same effect if you try to make a proving basket out of a plastic colander and a tea towel.

      Cloths

      Known as couches in French, linen cloths, well rubbed with flour, can be rucked up into channels to allow long loaves such as baguettes to prove. The channels are pushed fairly close to each other so that the dough pieces can only expand vertically. When ready, they are gently rolled on to a peel (see below), from which they are slid on to the oven sole. If using cloths, take care to make the channels tall enough to contain the dough: it can be frustrating if a piece of dough rises over the top of the channel and sticks to its neighbour.

      Peels

      A peel is a flat, shovel-like tool, usually on the end of a long shaft, used by bakers to slide risen dough pieces into the oven to bake directly on the bricks or tiles that form the ‘sole’, or bottom, of the baking chamber. A ‘slip’ is a long, narrow peel from which several small rolls or a baguette can be slid sideways on to the oven bottom. If you have some sort of ceramic baking surface in your oven (see below), you will need to improvise a peel, preferably with enough of a handle to ensure you do not burn your hands on the oven as you slide the bread in. A piece of stiff cardboard will do, though there is always a risk of it bending under the weight of a large, moist piece of dough. Some people use the removable flat metal base from a cake tin. Hardboard or plywood can be cut by anyone with basic skills into the characteristic spade-like shape. Quite a few companies now sell ‘pizza peels’, which work equally well for bread. Whatever you use, dust your peel with rice flour, maize (corn) meal or semolina to stop the dough sticking to it. These flours provide more ‘non-stick’ effect than ordinary wheat flour but if you don’t have any of them to hand use wholemeal wheat flour rather than white: the branny bits give a reasonably slippery surface.

      Ovens

      Most domestic ovens, whether gas, electric, fan assisted or solid fuel, will bake bread quite adequately. But, not surprisingly, some are better than others. Understanding the way bread bakes will help you adjust your oven’s settings to best effect and perhaps compensate for, or at least forgive, its little foibles.

      The big issue when baking bread is whether you do it with applied or retained heat. Most domestic ovens, including the Aga type of range, consist of a steel chamber that is heated by applied energy from a flame, element or furnace. A thermostat controls the flow of heat according to the chosen setting. Once the oven is up to the desired temperature, the flow of heat is reduced. However, the temperature in the oven may have to fall by as much as 30°C before the thermostat calls for renewed heat, so the item being baked is subjected to a constantly oscillating temperature. Cast-iron ranges have more thermal mass built into them than normal domestic ovens and should hold a more even temperature.

      The principle of the brick oven is that a mass of masonry retains the energy imparted by the wood (or gas or oil) fire and then radiates, convects and conducts it to the baked object with almost complete evenness. This produces a ‘solid’ bake, where the heat seems to penetrate the bread quicker and more consistently than in applied-heat ovens. Bread that bakes quicker, provided it is baked fully, will retain more internal moisture and so keep a little better, as well as tasting more succulent.

      The best aspect of baking in a masonry oven is being able to place the dough directly on to the hot stone. This gives it a terrific thermal kick up the pants and helps to lift the sagging circumference of a freestanding loaf. You can achieve this effect in a conventional domestic oven by using a ‘pizza stone’ or a large unglazed quarry tile. Heat the stone up with the oven and then tip or slide the risen loaf or pizza on to it. You may need to improvise some sort of peel (see above). For the more ambitious retained-heat baker, a company in the USA sells complete ceramic liners designed to fit inside standard domestic ovens (see page 354).

      Know your oven

      The knobs and dials on domestic ovens are notoriously unreliable. Even where they indicate a precise temperature rather than a rough guide or a regulo number, you should regard the setting as approximate. It can be useful to check your oven’s actual heat with a separate oven thermometer, trying it in various places to see whether there is an even temperature throughout. But all that is really required is to know what setting gives a cool, moderate or hot oven. Remember that a fan delivers an extra 10-20°C of effective heat, so if you have it on (or are stuck with it) use settings slightly lower than you might expect.

      In my recipes I try not to be too precise with oven temperatures. This is partly because of the variability just mentioned but mainly because if you understand roughly what heat a loaf requires (e.g. pretty hot for a big, wet, rye sourdough, moderate for an enriched sweet bread), you won’t go far wrong; common sense and a watchful eye will give better results than sticking religiously to a supposedly precise setting.

      A note on measures

      I recommend accurate measuring when you tackle a recipe for the first time; this makes it easier to see the effect of later adjustments. Once you have more of a feel for the relationship between ingredients and how dough looks and behaves, you can take a more relaxed approach – though it always pays to be careful with salt, spice and baker’s yeast.

      I prefer to use metric measurements. In home baking, quite small quantities of ingredients are used. The Imperial system is unsuited to this because many of the most sensitive ingredients in baking, such as salt, yeast and spice, are required in tiny fractions of its basic unit, the ounce (28.35g). The result is chaos, with three unsatisfactory alternatives being deployed for the measurement of small quantities. For example, 5g is the amount of salt that I suggest for around a kilo of basic bread dough. This can be expressed as, very roughly:

       one-fifth of an ounce – but who has a one-fifth weight for their scales?

       ‘0.2oz’ – which mixes decimals with an essentially non-decimal system.

       one teaspoon – which abandons the Imperial system altogether and relies on your having a plastic measure of exactly the right size or taking your chances with whatever small spoon comes to hand.

      The US system of measuring in cups, while handy for simple cake making, is completely unsuited to measuring small quantities of breadmaking ingredients. A recent serious American baking book for professionals and keen amateurs actually asks home bakers to measure amounts such as ‘3.2oz (7/8 cup)’. Need I say more?

      The metric system avoids all this nonsense and has the added advantage that recipes can be scaled up or down with ease using basic mental arithmetic (or a calculator). A set of electronic scales accurate to 1 gram is a very useful tool.

      Bakers’ percentages

      I may offend the baking fraternity by also rejecting the system known as ‘bakers’ percentages’. This bizarre throwback seems to me to defy logic as much as language by treating the flour quantity in any recipe as 100 per cent and relating other ingredients to that. A typical bread recipe might have 100 per cent flour, 65 per cent water, 1.5 per cent salt and 1.25 per cent yeast, making the total 167.75 ‘per cent’. If you want to

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