25. Tuck the Edges Under, Like Making a Bed

Vera: A letter came this week, and I promised to read it out. "Dear Anton and Vera, my rolls spread across the tray and come out flat and wrinkled, like apples left too long in the loft. My grandson calls them puddles. What am I doing wrong? Josefa."

Anton: Nothing is wrong with your dough, Josefa. It is the shaping. A roll stands tall only when its skin is pulled tight.

A Quarter Past One, at the Scales

Vera: Kalle is guarding the kitchen scales at the end of the table, under the shelf of cookbooks, and he has asked to weigh every piece himself. Twelve rolls, twelve numbers.

Anton: Good. Even rolls bake evenly. Now watch my hands. Fold the edges into the middle and turn the piece over. Tuck the edges under, like making a bed. Then cup your hand over it and roll it in small circles on the bare table.

Vera: It is tightening. Like a bud closing for the night.

Anton: That tight skin is surface tension. It holds the gas in, the way a balloon holds air, so the roll rises up instead of spreading out. The join underneath is the seam. Keep it down, always.

Vera: And then they rise again?

Anton: A second rise, in the tin, packed close. They lean on one another like hens in a nest and grow upwards, and when they bake, they tear apart with soft white sides.

Vera: Where do they eat rolls like these?

Anton: Almost everywhere wheat grows. On the farms of the wide northern plains, a basket of them goes on the table at every midday meal, under a cloth, and nobody sits down until the basket is there.

At the Work Table

For twelve rolls in a buttered tin 23 by 33 cm (9 by 13 inches): 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 30 g sugar (2 1/2 tablespoons), 9 g fine salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 280 ml lukewarm milk (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons), 1 egg, 50 g soft butter (3 1/2 tablespoons), a little milk for brushing. Oven: 190°C (375°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt, then add the milk and egg and stir into a rough dough.

Anton: Two, for a child: knead five minutes, add the butter in small bits, and knead five to eight minutes more, until silky. Use as little extra flour as you can.

Anton: Three: cover and leave to rise for one to one and a half hours, until doubled.

Anton: Four, for a child: divide the dough into twelve pieces of about 75 g and shape each one tight, seam down.

Anton: Five: set them in the tin in three rows of four, cover, and let them rise again for about forty-five minutes, until they touch.

Anton: Six, for a grown-up: brush with milk and bake twenty to twenty-two minutes, until golden brown. Oven gloves on; the tin stays hot long after.

Question: How do you know when the second rise is finished?

Answer: Press a floured fingertip gently into one roll. If the dent springs back slowly and only partway, bake them now. If it springs back quickly, wait a little longer.

A Stairwell in the City, Long Ago

Vera: When I was a girl, we lived on the fourth floor of a grey building beside the railway. Nadia lived across the landing, and her kitchen window rattled every time a train went past.

Vera: On Sundays she baked rolls for the whole stairwell, and because her flat was cold, she tucked the tin under a quilt on her bed to rise, so that every child in the building believed, for years, that bread was something that needed to sleep before it could be eaten.

Anton: The children were not far wrong.

Lunch, the Lamp Still Off

Three quick questions. One: Which side of the roll does the seam go? Two: What holds the gas in? Three: Why pack the rolls close together?

Answers. One: Underneath. Two: The tight skin, its surface tension. Three: So they lean on each other and rise upwards.

Vera: Kalle's twelve rolls have come out like a field of round white clouds. Josefa, I hope yours do the same.

Anton: Then pour a mug of warm clear vegetable broth for everyone and let them dip the torn sides into it. Soft bread and something hot to drink, at the middle of the day. Simple.

Key Words

Surface tension: the tight outer skin a baker gives a shaped piece of dough, so that it holds its gas and rises upwards.

Seam: the join underneath a shaped roll or loaf, where the edges were tucked in.

Second rise: the rise after shaping, just before the dough goes into the oven.

26. Listen for the Hollow Knock

Anton: "Bread, dear brothers, is the staff of life." A writer put those words in a story more than three hundred years ago, and he did not invent them. The saying was already old in the mouths of his grandparents.

Vera: A staff is what you lean on when the road is long. That is a good thing to call a loaf.

Half Past One, Under the Shelf of Tins

Vera: Linus has taken down every loaf tin from the high shelf, and Maren is lining them up on the dresser by the bread bin, from the smallest to the biggest. They want to bake a real loaf, the kind you slice.

Anton: Then today we make the plainest bread in this book, and the most useful. A sandwich loaf. A soft square crumb, a thin brown crust, slices that fit a lunch box. Children everywhere carry it to school.

Vera: What makes it different from rolls?

Anton: Only the shape and the tin. The tin holds the sides, so the dough can only rise upwards, like a mushroom pushing through a forest floor. That is what gives the loaf its tall, round top. Before it goes in, we roll the dough up like a carpet.

Vera: How tightly?

Anton: Tight as a fern before it uncurls. If it is loose, a tunnel of air stays inside, and every slice comes out with a hole that the jam falls through.

Vera: Linus would call that a window.

Question: Why must a fresh loaf wait an hour before it is sliced?

Answer: Inside, it is still cooking. Steam is still leaving the crumb, and the soft middle is still setting. Cut too soon, it squashes under the knife and turns gummy.

At the Work Table

For one loaf in a 900 g (2 lb) loaf tin, about 23 by 13 cm (9 by 5 inches): 450 g bread flour (3 2/3 cups), 7 g instant dried yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons), 15 g sugar (1 tablespoon), 9 g fine salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 300 ml lukewarm milk and water, half and half (1 1/4 cups), 25 g soft butter (2 tablespoons). Oven: 200°C (400°F).

Anton: One, for a child: mix the dry things, add the liquid, knead five minutes, then knead in the butter for five minutes more.

Anton: Two: cover and let it rise for about an hour, until doubled.

Anton: Three, for a child: press the dough into a rectangle as wide as the tin is long, roll it up tightly into a log and pinch the seam closed.

Anton: Four: lay it seam down in the buttered tin, cover, and let it rise forty-five to sixty minutes, until the top domes 2 cm (3/4 inch) above the rim.

Anton: Five, for a grown-up: bake thirty to thirty-five minutes, until deep brown. In oven gloves, tip the loaf out and knock on its bottom.

Anton: Six: listen for the hollow knock, like a woodpecker on a dry branch. A dull thud means five minutes more in the tin. Then cool it on a cooling rack for at least an hour.

Vera: And a grown-up does the slicing, with a bread knife.

Anton: Saw gently and do not press. A soft loaf bruises like a ripe pear.

A Night Bakery in the City, Long Ago

Anton: My second bakery, in a big city, worked through the night and slept all day. Olek was the night foreman, and he kept a small radio on the flour sacks by the big oven door, always playing very quietly.

Anton: Thousands of loaves passed him every night, and he knocked on the bottom of every tenth one, listening with his head on one side, like a thrush listening for worms under a lawn. In four years I never saw him let a heavy loaf go out.

Vera: Four years of knocking.

Anton: He said the bread told him everything, if you were quiet enough to hear it. He was right.

The Dresser, After the Bread Comes Out

Three quick questions. One: Why does a tin loaf rise upwards? Two: What sound tells you it is done? Three: How long does it cool before slicing?

Answers. One: The tin holds its sides. Two: A hollow knock. Three: At least an hour.

Vera: Maren keeps putting her ear to the loaf on the rack. She says it is crackling.

Anton: It is. The crust is cooling faster than the middle, and it cracks a little, the way ice talks on a pond in spring. Let her listen. Some bakers call it the bread singing.

Key Words

Loaf tin: a deep, narrow baking tin with straight sides, which keeps the dough from spreading so it rises upwards.

Knock test: tapping the bottom of a baked loaf; a hollow sound means it is baked through.

Cooling rack: a wire grid that lets air reach every side of hot bread, so the bottom does not turn damp.