Part 6: Night

Night brings the slow breads. Their doughs are mixed after supper and left to work in the dark while everyone sleeps: a loaf that is never kneaded, oats soaked until morning, a jar of sourdough fed like a pet, dark rye with seeds, and at the very end, the breads that crown a festive day.

51. Time Does the Kneading While We Sleep

Vera: Try this now, before you clear the table. Stir a spoonful of flour and a spoonful of water in a cup with a tiny pinch of yeast, cover it with a saucer, and look again at breakfast.

Anton: By morning it will be full of bubbles. A tiny pinch. One night. That is the whole secret of this loaf.

Nine o'Clock, the Lamps Low

Vera: Ruth, sleepy in the corner by the warm chimney breast, says she is too tired to knead.

Anton: Good, because tonight nobody kneads. We stir four things in a bowl for one minute, cover it and go to bed. Time does the kneading while we sleep.

Vera: Is that possible? All afternoon our arms ached.

Anton: A very wet dough left for many hours sorts itself out. The flour drinks, the yeast works slowly, and the strands of the dough line up on their own, like reeds in a slow river all leaning the same way.

At the Work Table

For one round loaf, about twelve slices: 500 g bread flour (4 cups), 10 g salt (1 3/4 teaspoons), 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast and 375 ml cool water (1 1/2 cups plus 1 tablespoon). A heavy ovenproof pot with a lid, holding 4 to 6 litres. Oven: 240°C (475°F), then 230°C (450°F).

Vera: In the evening, a child stirs the flour, salt and yeast together in a big bowl, pours in the water and stirs for one minute until no dry flour is left. It looks shaggy and wrong. It is right.

Anton: Cover the bowl and leave it at room temperature for twelve to eighteen hours, until doubled, flat on top and full of bubbles.

Vera: Next day, tip the dough onto a floured table. With floured hands, fold the edges into the middle four times, turn it over and set it on a sheet of baking paper. Cover and let it rise for one to two hours.

Anton: Half an hour before it is ready, a grown-up puts the empty pot, lid on, into the oven at 240°C (475°F).

Vera: Only a grown-up does this part. With oven gloves, take out the pot, lift off the lid, lower the dough into it by the corners of the paper, put the lid back and return it to the oven. Children stand well back; that pot is the hottest thing in the house.

Anton: Bake for thirty minutes with the lid on. Then a grown-up takes off the lid, turns the oven to 230°C (450°F) and bakes fifteen minutes more, until deep brown. Cool the loaf on a rack for at least an hour.

The Bakery Below Our Flat

Vera: When I was a girl, we lived above a bakery, and the night baker was Signe, whose window glowed yellow on the dark street long after every other light had gone out. I used to lie awake and smell the bread coming up through the floorboards.

Vera: Once I crept down in my nightdress and knocked. Signe sat me on a flour sack beside the big tubs of dough, quietly swelling. Who works hardest here at night, she asked. Not me. The dough. Then she carried me back upstairs, asleep.

Before Bed

Question: Ruth asks why the lid stays on for the first half of the baking.

Answer: The lid traps the steam from the wet dough. Steam keeps the crust soft at first, so the loaf can make its last quick rise, its oven spring, before the crust sets. Without the lid, the crust hardens too soon.

Three quick questions. One: How long does the dough rest overnight? Two: How hot is the oven at first? Three: Who lowers the dough into the pot?

Answers. One: Twelve to eighteen hours. Two: 240°C (475°F). Three: A grown-up, with oven gloves.

Anton: Listen, tomorrow, when the loaf cools. The crust crackles like ice on a puddle in the first frost.

Vera: Tonight, though, the bowl is covered, and Ruth is half asleep. A cup of warm milk for her, and for us. Signe gave me one that night, before the stairs.

Key Words

No-knead dough: a very wet dough that is stirred, not kneaded, and left for many hours so that time does the work of the hands.

Oven spring: the last quick rise of a loaf in the first minutes of baking, before its crust sets.

Lidded pot: a heavy, ovenproof pot with a lid, heated empty in the oven, in which a loaf bakes in its own steam.

52. The Oats Need the Night More Than I Do

Anton: In the year 1755, a famous maker of dictionaries wrote that oats were a grain given to horses in his own land, but in the land to the north they fed the people. The people to the north have been answering him ever since, with porridge, oatcakes and bread.

Vera: A good answer. Hard to argue with a warm loaf.

Anton: In those cold, wet hills wheat grew badly and oats grew well, so oats went into everything. Bread made only of oats stays flat as a slate. So bakers mixed oats into a wheat dough, for softness and a sweet, toasty taste, and let the wheat do the rising.

The Oat Tin, After Supper

Vera: Stellan, at the end of the bench beside the oat tin, has lifted the lid and is sniffing. He says oats smell like a field after the hay is cut, warm and a little sweet.

Anton: He is right. Tonight we soak them, mix a dough around them and put the whole bowl in the cold to sleep. In the morning we shape it, let it rise and bake it. The night does the middle part.

Vera: Why soak the oats first?

Anton: Dry oats in a dough drink the water from it and leave the bread crumbly. Soaked oats are already full, so they make the loaf soft and keep it moist for days, the way a snowfield keeps a meadow green underneath.

A Hill Farm in the North

Anton: The summer I was twenty, I helped with the bread at a farm high in the northern hills, where the sheep wandered right up to the kitchen door and the wind never stopped. The kitchen belonged to Una, a small, quick woman who wore her late husband's boots.

Anton: Every night before she went to bed, she stirred oats and water and honey in a big brown bowl, mixed in the flour, covered it with a plate and set it in the cold larder. I asked her once why she did not bake it straight away. She said, the oats need the night more than I do.

Anton: In the morning, the whole farmhouse smelled of it. We ate it with butter and the shepherd's honey, standing up, before the sheep were let out. Una cut the first slice for the old sheepdog, every morning, for luck. The dog knew, and waited by the larder door.

At the Work Table

For one loaf, about fourteen slices: 100 g rolled oats (1 cup), 320 ml warm water (1 1/3 cups), 2 tablespoons honey, 400 g bread flour (3 1/4 cups), 8 g salt (1 1/2 teaspoons), 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast and 20 g soft butter (1 1/2 tablespoons), plus a handful of oats for the top.

A loaf tin for 900 g (2 lb), buttered. Oven: 200°C (400°F). Honey is not for babies under one.

Vera: In the evening, a grown-up warms the water until it feels just warm on a finger. A child stirs in the oats and honey and leaves them for fifteen minutes to soften.

Anton: Add the flour, salt, yeast and butter and knead for five minutes. The dough is sticky; wet hands help. Cover the bowl and put it in the fridge for ten to fourteen hours. In a very cold fridge it may grow only by half. That is enough.

Vera: In the morning, press the cold dough into a rectangle as wide as the tin, roll it up tightly like a rug, pinch the seam and lay it seam-down in the tin.

Anton: Cover it and let it rise for an hour and a half to two hours, because the dough starts cold, until it domes 2 cm (3/4 inch) above the rim. A child brushes the top with water and scatters the oats.

Vera: A grown-up bakes it for thirty-five to forty minutes, then turns it out with oven gloves and taps the bottom. A hollow sound means it is done. Cool it before slicing.

Late, With the Bowl Covered

Question: Stellan asks why the bowl goes into the fridge and not just onto the table.

Answer: In a warm room the yeast would work all night and the dough would rise too far and turn sour. Cold slows the yeast to a crawl, so the dough is just ready by morning, and it tastes deeper too.

Three quick questions. One: How long do the oats soak? Two: Where does the dough spend the night? Three: How do you know the loaf is done?

Answers. One: Fifteen minutes. Two: In the fridge. Three: It sounds hollow when you tap the bottom.

Vera: There. Covered and in the cold. It looks like nothing at all. Stellan asks if he may come back at breakfast to shape it.

Anton: He may, and he can bring the oat tin for the top. Seeds look like nothing too, in the ground in winter. Give it the night. Stellan can turn out the light.