How to cook: bread

Beautiful technique, but I'm sure I shall fill my laptop with flour!

Going to a cookery school is an excellent way to learn these techniques.
You never forget them.

What a terrific video cast.
I've been on a bread making class (with Dan Lepard) and the amount of new skills you come back with is priceless.

You adopt it into your other baking and cooking too.

I've posted a link to your page onto the Beeb food messageboard too, to help people understand wetter doughs, hydration & your clever manipulating show of the dough.

Nice one!

Now I'm bloody starving. Thanks!

Thinking of Richard's fury when anyone uses the word 'cook' instead of 'bake' in his class, I'm sure he'll love the URL for this video.

I love this technique (although it's the only one I've ever used, so other more experienced people can make comparisons) .The key to it in my experience, which I didn't pick up from his books, is keeping your dough constantly corralled in a nice shape. Don't keep splatting it - make sure it remains in a good shape, scraping it together every ten whacks or so.

Also, it's helpful to have a lovely, draft-free, warm kitchen like he has. Bah...

Excellent technique with the heel of the hand. Works with wholemeal too. I have tried it with dried yeast and its o.k but proper yeast is best. And as always, the good bread makers always knead twice and prove twice.

Great video, thanks Tim!

There's a very good demonstration of the wet dough kneading technique here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvdtUR-XTG0

It makes such a great slapping sound when you get in a rhythm, too...

agreed, great video.

only thing is, where is the recipe!? strange there isn't one added.

anyway the video mentioned:
1kg flour
20g sea salt
20g yeast

what about the water?
what oven temperature, fan non fan?
what type of yeast?

anyone! ?

Hi rupert23 - Try 650g water (65% percentage water to flour), and use fresh yeast.
I'd set the oven to 230C.

That's a fan-assisted oven btw

Outstanding.

Would have liked to have seen the bread transferred from table to bowl for proving and a recipe. Can probably use another recipe though and see if I can emulate 10% of Bertinet's method.

And if you're inspired by this masterclass from Real Bread Campaign member, Richard Bertinet, why not bake a Local Loaf for Lammas on 1st August? See our website for more details.

That looks great - thanks. Agree with others about the odd lack of recipe. For a different take on bread making, check this out

@brownshoes and with apologies to Mr Bertinet, this is part of our 'how to cook' series, hence the url ...

I've been a pro baker myself, and I know cookbooks for domestic use have some weird quirks. The best thing is to look for recipes given by weight, and buy a set of scales, and you'll get consistent results.

For me, Felicity Cloake's already posted the ideal bread recipe - which involves almost no kneading - I now make fluffy wholemeal loaves in batches of three with very little effort. The only change I've made is to halve the salt and butter content (I found that the original recipe produced a very salty, and somewhat oily, crust - when using salted butter, I don't buy unsalted).

Felicity Cloake's version of Dan Lepard's recipe

Pretty presposterous calling that stuff bread. It'll have no character.
Actual bona fide bread made from carefully grown and milled grain will produce a very different dough that requires a sophisticated level of care and understanding on its way to becoming bread. What happened in this video might as well be pancakes.

If I put 20g of salt in every loaf I would be back for another heart bypass soon. It is completely irresponsible showing the use of that much salt in bread. There is a campaign still going on to reduce the amount of salt manufacturers put in bread!
Frankly I found this pretentious. I use a bread maker to knead the dough. I make terrific bread with it. Without the machine I would never make bread because there wouldn't be enough time.

If I am not very much mistaken this paper ran a perfect bread article about 4 weeks ago, what's going on? If you want to make bread buy a Panasonic breadmaker and a set of Salter scales, simple.

@Novelist

"If I put 20g of salt in every loaf I would be back for another heart bypass soon. It is completely irresponsible showing the use of that much salt in bread."

Be fair, that was 20g salt for 2kg flour and they made 3 or 4 loaves out of it. It's no more salt than most recipes call for (Nigel Slater uses a 'heaped teaspoon' for 500g flour or around 7g salt here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/apr/11/nigel-slater-spelt-bread-recipes).

However, my day to day bread is a (pretentious?) part white, part rye sourdough that doesn't need salt at all - or kneading. (I used to forget to add salt and couldn't tell the difference so now I don't bother).

@rupert123

I've got his book Dough (it's predictably brilliant)

For one loaf, it's 500g flour
350g water
10g salt
10g yeast

I've had mixed success with the method, but the end result is always fab... try his fougasse....

"It really was Mr Floppy until you handled it"...... I clearly must try harder!

For those of you interested in the recipe....

Basic white loaf (from 'Dough' by Richard Bertinet)
For 4 loaves

1kg strong white bread flour
20g fine sea salt
20g fresh yeast
720g water

Mix the ingredient as shown in the video. Rest for a minimum of 1 hour. Divide and mould. Prove in a tin until nearly double in size (about 1 hour). Bake at 240 degrees with steam (from a water spray) for 5 minutes then turn the oven down to 220 degrees and bake for a further 20 minutes until golden brown. Remove the loaf from the tin and pop it back into the oven for a couple more minutes.

"That genuinely was really floppy until you handled it."

Ah dear!

Thank you! So good to see this - and to see that Real Bread is being baked and given some 'air time'. My bread making improved markedly (though still lots to learn) when I attended a hands on bread course this year (with Tom Herbert). Getting the kneading and forming right is key - as is the temperature and humidity. I liked the idea of the spray water - I use a kettle with boiled water in the bottom of the oven and that works well too.

Crackin' video and about to be tweeted and FBed to friends... Cheers.

Always good to see Mr Bertinet (and Mr Hayward of course) on screen but I'd question the use of the word 'new' in the standfirst to this item, given that the technique and recipes were published back in 2005 in Bertinet's book Dough (referenced by Tim in his post on this thread) which also included an illustrative DVD.

Although Felicity Cloake links to a Guardian article by Dan Lepard dated 2007, his virtually no knead method appeared online 4 years earlier in a report on a baking masterclass led by Lepard and organised by, um, me for eGulllet.org in the kitchens of Locanda Locatelli in 2003 which you can find here http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?/topic/30269-report-on-dan-lepards-baking-day/ .

@cyeng:
Precisely! A nicely made loaf needs no salt. I use a small level tsp per Kg. flour. My "usual" loaf is 25% whole grain and 75% white bread flour. I use olive oil rather than a solid fat.

Almost impossible to get decent bread in UK these days, unless you bake your own. Supermarkets' "fresh bread" is tasteless, fibre-free and stuffed with additive.

Go to any baker on the continent.....

Before I saw the video I thought oh hell go to France, then for obvious reasons not.
What was missing was:
What type of yeast was it? - Sour dough, dry(I think not), or standard bakers yeast.
The French bread is the best by far, in the world.

Thanks Tim - am loving your series and will definitely be having a crack at this bread recipe. Our daily bread is the Ballymaloe recipe but this looks amazing for a weekend treat.

Have also been really getting into our home-made pizzas after your excellent video, and would seriously like to get a pig. Keep up the good work - great to see someone who's managed to successfully make their passion into a job.

That dough looks absolutely beautiful! Far too much like hard work for me though (I'm with you cyeng - no kneading, overnight stand, sourdough or a gram of fresh yeast, and some folding before baking. I had the same thing with salt too - my sourdough has tons of flavour without it! Still need some for yeast-bread though)

asheroy,

it was normal fresh yeast.

@andylynes - the technique Tim is learning is new to him

Though I am a sourdough-only baker who uses a bread machine (horror!) to mix the dough I found this a technically excellent video. It's good that Tim Hayward isn't a complete beginner. I learned a lot. My bible is Andrew Whitley's book Bread Matters. Read it and you will never buy a mass-produced loaf again. His recipes for Russian rye breads are brilliant.

Be careful spraying water into a home oven with a glass-covered light in it: you may well crack the glass.

You could try putting a tray of water in the oven as you heat it up.