As soon as I read about that NY Times/Jim Lahey no-knead bread, I
thought - what would Brother Juniper say? Peter Reinhart, also known as
Brother Juniper, is a bread baking maven, teacher and prolific author.
I worked with him when he was at the California Culinary Academy, (I
was a lowly staff person, not a chef mind you!) and I took a
demonstration class he gave on poolish, biga and other slow-rise
breads.

When I only had one child, I had time to mess around with Reinhart's
recipes, which were tasty and wonderful but took plenty of planning and
attention. Now I have two kids and they keep me busy -too busy to
bother with a two- or three-day bread process. (okay, there's grad
school too, my other excuse)

Well, out of curiousity I googled Brother Juniper and found his weblog:

http://peterreinhart.typepad.com/

He has put up the nicest comment about the new bread phenomenon. He is
a generous man and looks at bread-baking the way a great research
scientist would - it's all grist for the mill, (so to speak) - he loves
the new technique, he's delighted about the buzz, and he's going to
test some variations to see if it's worth adding a chapter to his
latest book in progress.

When my semester ends in ten days, I'm going to try the no-knead bread
with the kids. And I may bake a Brother Juniper slow-rise bread too,
for good measure.

On 22 Nov 2006 20:58:47 -0800, "Leila"
> wrote:

>He has put up the nicest comment about the new bread phenomenon.

Howdy,

There is nothing "new" about these no-knead techniques.

We've been commenting about them here for years, and I
suspect that folks have baked this way for a few thousand
years before that.

All the best,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

Kenneth wrote:

>
> We've been commenting about them here for years, and I
> suspect that folks have baked this way for a few thousand
> years before that.
>

DITTO....indeed bakers in some developing countries (in the past )
indeed did it that way, the dough baked inside a clay pot .......but
raised with crude sourdoughs starter...
It just don't look appetizing to eat though....

chembake wrote:
> Kenneth wrote:
>
>> We've been commenting about them here for years, and I
>> suspect that folks have baked this way for a few thousand
>> years before that.
>>
>
> DITTO....indeed bakers in some developing countries (in the past )
> indeed did it that way, the dough baked inside a clay pot .......but
> raised with crude sourdoughs starter...
> It just don't look appetizing to eat though....

This may not be strictly "bread"-related but when I was in the RAF I was
stationed at a Middle East airfield in 1963-64. One of the typical
sights in the local market was a young lad with a crate of tinned,
condensed milk; a sack of flour; a smaller sack of salt; and a small,
mud-brick built, gas-fired oven. He sat cross-legged, mixed a small
amount of flour, milk and salt (no yeast), moulded it briefly into a
flattish, circular shape with his bare hands before opening the oven
door, casually tossing the dough into the oven and closing the oven
door. By the time he had mixed the next lot of dough the dough in the
oven was ready to bring out and add to the pile of cooked "loaves".
--
Bruce Fletcher
Stronsay, Orkney
<www.stronsay.co.uk/claremont>
(Remove teeth to reply)
"Some days you are the pigeon. Some days you are the statue"

In article .com>,
"Leila" > wrote:

> As soon as I read about that NY Times/Jim Lahey no-knead bread, I
> thought - what would Brother Juniper say? Peter Reinhart, also known as
> Brother Juniper, is a bread baking maven, teacher and prolific author.
> I worked with him when he was at the California Culinary Academy, (I
> was a lowly staff person, not a chef mind you!) and I took a
> demonstration class he gave on poolish, biga and other slow-rise
> breads.
>
> When I only had one child, I had time to mess around with Reinhart's
> recipes, which were tasty and wonderful but took plenty of planning and
> attention. Now I have two kids and they keep me busy -too busy to
> bother with a two- or three-day bread process. (okay, there's grad
> school too, my other excuse)
>
> Well, out of curiousity I googled Brother Juniper and found his weblog:
>
> http://peterreinhart.typepad.com/
>
> He has put up the nicest comment about the new bread phenomenon. He is
> a generous man and looks at bread-baking the way a great research
> scientist would - it's all grist for the mill, (so to speak) - he loves
> the new technique, he's delighted about the buzz, and he's going to
> test some variations to see if it's worth adding a chapter to his
> latest book in progress.
>
> When my semester ends in ten days, I'm going to try the no-knead bread
> with the kids. And I may bake a Brother Juniper slow-rise bread too,
> for good measure.

Iteration 2.0 is currently in its final rise, and the Le Creuset pot is
heating in the oven. Even though I used the same amount of water this
go-round, the dough was less slack. (Surprising, given the humidity
hereabouts.) It was much easier to shape today. My next-door-neighbor
is intrigued by the method and requested a loaf for today's cooperative
feast, along with some dinner rolls. Said rolls came out of the oven an
hour ago.

So what are you pursuing in grad school???

Cindy

--
C.J. Fuller

Delete the obvious to email me

Kenneth wrote:
> On 22 Nov 2006 20:58:47 -0800, "Leila"
> > wrote:
>
> >He has put up the nicest comment about the new bread phenomenon.
>
> Howdy,
>
> There is nothing "new" about these no-knead techniques.
>
> We've been commenting about them here for years, and I
> suspect that folks have baked this way for a few thousand
> years before that.

indeed the no-knead method seems to fit very well with the setup at
ancient egyptian bakeries discovered around the pyramids - and famously
recreated by Ed Wood

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/AR/93-94/93-94_Giza.html

laters
andy forbes


> All the best,
> --
> Kenneth
>
> If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

atty wrote:
....>
> indeed the no-knead method seems to fit very well with the setup at
> ancient egyptian bakeries discovered around the pyramids - and famously
> recreated by Ed Wood
>
> http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/AR/93-94/93-94_Giza.html
>
> laters
> andy forbes

Except there's paintings and statues of Egyptians kneading bread.

Let's not get too hasty. After all, it really doesn't matter how long
it's been going on. I'm sure anyone that had an interruption or phone
call in the middle of kneading would realise, as I did, that you really
don't need to knead so much if you just take a good break in the
middle. : -)
The first good book that I got said to take a couple of breaks in the
20 minute knead that it suggested, well, me being young and fit, at the
time, didn't think I needed a break. I didn't realise the break wasn't
for me. lol.

Jim

"TG" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> atty wrote:
> ...>
>> indeed the no-knead method seems to fit very well with the setup at
>> ancient egyptian bakeries discovered around the pyramids - and famously
>> recreated by Ed Wood
>>
>> http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/AR/93-94/93-94_Giza.html
>>
>> laters
>> andy forbes
>
> Except there's paintings and statues of Egyptians kneading bread.

Movies?
>
:-)

Mary

TG wrote:
> atty wrote:
> ...>
> > indeed the no-knead method seems to fit very well with the setup at
> > ancient egyptian bakeries discovered around the pyramids - and famously
> > recreated by Ed Wood
> >
> > http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/AR/93-94/93-94_Giza.html
> >
> > laters
> > andy forbes
>
> Except there's paintings and statues of Egyptians kneading bread.

I think you are probably right

in particular http://www.insecula.com/us/oeuvre/ph...000027177.html

the two women kneeling at the back do indeed look to be kneading though
alternately can be interpreted as grinding as indeed is attributed at

http://www.insecula.com/us/oeuvre/O0004972.html

"In the bakkery, men crush the grain with pestles, after which it is
ground to flour by two women. Men mix dough in tall tubs, and it is
shaped into loaves and cakes by others. The four black ovens are each
tended by a man with a poker."

certainly clearly a man is making up into small loaves whcih probably
NYT dough is too wet for. (interesting that brewery and bakery are
portrayed as neighbours so we can assume this bakery was using the same
yeast culture or barm? as the brewery)

however why imagine that anceint Egyptians only had one method of
baking? Ed Wood's Giza experiment involved recreating bakery shops
found on the plain of Giza around the Pyramids. These were both Old
Kingdom sites and much bigger than the bakery shop illustrated by the
model above. I quote from the report

" Our ancient bakeries were composed of low stone rubble and Nile clay
walls with a marl floor in rooms measuring about five and a quarter
meters (north to south) by two and a half meters (east to west). In
both rooms we found a cache of bell-shaped ceramic pots, long
recognized as bread molds in Egyptian archaeology and labeled with the
name bedja in the Old Kingdom tomb scenes. The ancient Egyptians began
to use bread molds of this type just about the time that the pharaonic
state emerged around 2900 b.c. They continued to use them until near
the end of the Old Kingdom, about 2200 b.c. While some have suggested
that pot-baked bread was for special occasions - festivals, temple
offerings, etc. - the Old Kingdom bread mold has been found as a major
component of ceramic corpora in sites of all kinds from Egypt's
traditional southern border at Elephantine to First Dynasty outposts in
southern Palestine. Egyptians in many different settings desired and
produced their pot baked bread.

Old Kingdom tomb scenes show the pots placed rim to rim as a kind of
portable oven for baking in open pits. Our bedja pots were unusually
large, as much as thirty-five centimeters in diameter and up to
thirty-five centimeters in depth. Put together in the manner of the
tomb scenes they would create an interior space seventy centimeters in
height. If the dough would swell to fill the entire space, this would
produce a huge loaf of bread. Indeed, certain tombs scenes show
offering bearers carrying huge conical bread loaves of the shape that
would be produced by our pots. As I reported previously, we seem to
have found all the essential tools required for the production
processes depicted by Old Kingdom scenes and figurines: Both bakeries
originally had three large ceramic vats in the northwestern corner,
presumably for mixing dough. We further presume that a fireplace in the
form of an open platform in the opposite southeastern corner was for
stack heating the pots, a preliminary step often illustrated in
figurines and wall art. Rows of holes at the bottom of a shallow trench
along the eastern wall must have been for holding the dough-filled pots
that were covered by another pot placed upside down. Hot coals and
embers in the trench provided the heat that baked the bread."

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/GIZ/N...ll92_fig8.html

most siginficantly here there deosn't appear to me to be any suitably
sized work surface to knead or rest the quantity of bread this site
obviously produced (this is just one chamber which is duplicated over a
300 metre site)

a bread mould pot
http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/GIZ/N...ll92_fig7.html

tell me this doesn't pretty closely match the NYT no knead method? (at
least to the point where anceient egyptians bake by making a pyrmamid
of these twinned pots in a pit and setting a bonfire around this) Looks
like possibly twin pot mould arrangement was used for both proofing and
baking.

http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/PROJ/GIZ/N...ll92_fig9.html

here you can see that the dough is apparently so wet that it is being
poured from smaller pots into the moulds as a liquid, almost more of a
batter!?

what is actually more intersting to me is how much the move away from
this style of wet dough to a stiffer dough was dictated by the move
away in Europe from communal baking (as practised both in France and
England) where indivdual households make their own dough and then bake
in a communal oven to professional baking and then mechanization. Pre
mechanization in European bakeris there is much mention of dough being
made in large troughs and some indication of being mixed by a paddle,
possibly with its bottom attached to the bottom of trough again
indicating a very wet dough. Certainly a stiffer dough in troughs of
the size portrayed in various illustrations at
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online...fova1/hfr4.htm would be
impossible to imagine one man kneading or even mixing properly in the
modern sense. However the wetter the dough probably the more difficult
to move around and divide into equal portion loaves once out of dough
trough.

Maybe simply mechanization enabled the introduction of stiffer doughs
that could at once be kneaded mecahnically (speeding up proofing) and
were then more convenient for subsquent handling in a bakeshop . Of
course one also has to factor in the introduction, particularly in the
UK of harder wheats from the US, Canada and Australia.

laters
andy forbes

there is much intersting information on pre-mecahnical prfesional
baking, though not empirical in
chapter "COMPARATIVE DATA: THE BAKING PROCESS DURING THE 1840's" of
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online...fova1/hfrt.htm

chapter here http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online...fova1/hfr2.htm
about half way down page paragraph heading "Setting the sponge" and
then next "Making the dough"

at end of "Setting the Sponge" reads as follows

quote "After the "sponge" had finished rising and started to fall it
was, according to some formulas, ready for making dough. Other recipes
called for the stirring in of more warm water or "liquor" (water mixed
with certain ingredients) at this time and letting the "sponge" rise
one or more additional times, adding more "liqour" with each stirring.
Depending upon the amount of water added for each of these "sponges" in
relation to the whole quantity used in the dough, they were called
"quarter," "half," or "whole" sponges."

so clearly here we have some bakers with a very wet dough (a sponge)
and some who then knead in more flour - though again its hard to
imagine the degree of kneading that coudl subsquenlty be done
mechnically

incidentally there is much intersting info higher in the page re wood
fired oven management that augments simular information for those with
a wood fired oven like myself from Alan Scott and other modern wood
fired oven experts

yours
andy forbes

atty wrote:
...(interesting that brewery and bakery are
> portrayed as neighbours so we can assume this bakery was using the same
> yeast culture or barm? as the brewery)
> ..> laters
> andy forbes

Hi Andy,

There has been recent discoveries of large mixing machines driven by
donkeys made by the Romans. Anyway that aside. We know the Egyptians
made bread and must have mixed it in some way, 'kneading' is really a
semantic discussion. On that semantic topic.

Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. The word isn't synonymous
with yeast culture. But now in the UK it is used, though not understood
by most, as the ferment that has mashed hops to keep the leaven sweet.
Here in the UK there isn't quite the same desire for sour breads. See
Barm. Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barm

Jim

TG wrote:
>
> Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. The word isn't synonymous
> with yeast culture. But now in the UK it is used, though not understood
> by most, as the ferment that has mashed hops to keep the leaven sweet.
> Here in the UK there isn't quite the same desire for sour breads. See
> Barm. Wikipedia.

Did you mean mashed barley?

On 25 Nov 2006 08:58:20 -0800, "TG" >
wrote:

>Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. The word isn't synonymous
>with yeast culture.

Howdy,

On the US side of the pond, "barm" is defined as the "yeasty
froth" that forms on the surface of beer and similar
beverages as they ferment.

All the best,
--
Kenneth

If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."

> Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. The word isn't synonymous
> with yeast culture. But now in the UK it is used, though not understood
> by most, as the ferment that has mashed hops to keep the leaven sweet.
> Here in the UK there isn't quite the same desire for sour breads. See
> Barm. Wikipedia.

I was putting the word 'barm' in my mail in the sense used by
Elizabeth David in English Yeast Bakery to describe the practice in
early industrial towns and cities of the UK of continuing to bake in
the indivdual home but rather than keep one's own sourdough culture as
traditionally on a farm, go to the local berwery to get fresh yeast
culture - effectively a bi-product of brewing -though I don't know what
stage in brewing it was produced.

how much this was also practice of european mediaval towns prior to
industrailzation isn't clear, in any case the point is that from the
egyptian model, unless its just shortcut by the model maker, its clear
the yeast culture used by the baker hasn't diverged from that of the
brewer (it would have been impossible to keep seperate in such close
vicinity)

I am not certain at what date brewers started to become aware of and be
able to manipluate different yeast strains to be able to produce
different styles of beer (lager, bitter etc) but its cerainly ahead of
the official scientific description of yeast by Louise Pasteur, and
remains today way ahead of the identification of different strains of
yeast suitable for baking.

Somehow I have held the opinion for a while that 'baker's yeast' is in
fact a spin off discovery from 19th Century brewing industry of a yeast
dedicated solely to producing CO2 at the expense of anythign else, and
not a yeast strain originated in baking. Is this correct? anyone know?

laters
andy forbes

Will wrote:

> TG wrote:
> >
> > Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. The word isn't synonymous
> > with yeast culture. But now in the UK it is used, though not understood
> > by most, as the ferment that has mashed hops to keep the leaven sweet.
> > Here in the UK there isn't quite the same desire for sour breads. See
> > Barm. Wikipedia.
>
> Did you mean mashed barley?

Hi Will,

No, I did mean hops, sorry Will, I'm no brewer, perhaps I should have
said mashed grain with the addition of hops. This kind of true barm
'cake' or bread isn't easy to find these days. I'm lucky in that my dad
sold hundreds of them a day so it was commercially viable to make
proper ones.

I just want to underline here that until Pasteur the only brewing
medium was a naturally 'caught' variety. Some beer is still made this
way but not easy to find.

Jim

Kenneth wrote:

> On 25 Nov 2006 08:58:20 -0800, "TG" >
> wrote:
>
> >Barm is a froth on fermenting malt liquor. .
>
> Howdy,
>
> On the US side of the pond, "barm" is defined as the "yeasty
> froth" that forms on the surface of beer and similar
> beverages as they ferment.
>
> All the best,
> --
> Kenneth
Hi Kenneth

: -) is that not the same thing?

Jim