Crumbs! Is this why bread can bloat?
A recipe for no-knead seeded brown bread
Over to the Netherlands for the weekend to see Emptied City, the contribution to Utrecht’s Festival of Light of UK Slam Poet Champion Sophia Walker, whose deplorably still-relevant Tedx Talk poem I urge you to watch. Her new site-specific poem, projected onto the walls of a pedestrian and cyclists’ tunnel and triggered word-by-word by their motion, can be read both forwards and backward.
Despite the compacted snow and ice underfoot, Utrecht was a revelation, a beguiling and manageable version of Amsterdam without the tourist crowds.
There’s something about being abroad that liberates you to do things you wouldn’t on home ground, wherever that ‘home ground’ might be at the time. In the two interminable years I spent in Brussels, I never once ate a waffle. But no sooner did I go on holiday to France, there I was, guzzling one smeared in melted chocolate. As to the prime food (apart from waffles and mussels) that Brussels is famous for: fries - I never had a one. Yet, decanted from the Utrecht train into the freezing Dutch capital, I rushed to line up with the crowd for a cornet of them doused in their own-brand sauce at Mannekin Pis, Amsterdam’s outpost of top Brussels fries chain.
Why? I asked myself. They’re only fried potatoes covered in glop and the Brits do them just as well with vinegar and battered fish, and the Americans do them just as well, if not better, with pretty much everything and ketchup.
The most peculiar discovery in both Utrecht and Amsterdam was just how many shops are devoted to cheese. Anyone who has even the most featherlight interest in cheese would surely agree that the Netherlands can’t begin to come close to the range offered by the French (over 400), the British (more than 750 - oof! zut, alors!), and the Italians (victorious at over 7,500, of which around 500 are commercially recognised and over 300 have protected designation of origin).
Despite their lush grass and roughly 1,570,000 happy cows consuming it, and more than 975,000 metric tonnes of cheese sold, the Netherlands produce only approximately 15 varieties of the stuff, most of the cheeses similar to each other in their colour of beeswax and texture of fudge, just four of which are internationally familiar. Yet cheese shops are more prolific than Starbucks outlets are everywhere else. I slouched past 5 at Schipol Airport alone, shelves laden with vacuum-packed Gouda, Leerdammer, Leyden, and red wax-coated hockey pucks of Edam.
Much more seductive are Dutch breads. There the variety is enormous, from the white loaf that once was considered the ‘luxury’ bread to breads in different shapes made from wholewheat, rye, malt, sourdough, spelt, and the even more ancient grain emmer. Alongside loaves, bakeries boast a huge selection of rolls, from Dutch Crunch, a white roll made interesting by the mixture of rice flour and sugar brushed over to create a crackling top, to tiger rolls and multi-grain rolls covered with savoury toppings, and the ‘beschuit’, a twice-baked and brittle white rusk-like roll, as well as ‘speciality’ breads studded with figs, or nuts or covered in roasted vegetables, ham, or melted cheese.
No surprise, then, that per capita, they eat over 54kg/120lbs a year, as against the 50kg/110lbs in France, or the Italians’ 44kg/97lbs. Mind you, the Dutch don’t come close to the Turks, who each guzzle 199kg/440 pounds a year - more than there are days - and all they have for choice, in the main, are variations on the theme of flatbread: pita, yufka, pide, lavash, bazlama, gözleme or ramazan pidesi, simit, and mısır ekmeği, a cornbread.
Bread has become controversial. The number of people who believe they are gluten intolerant is on the rise. In the US, research suggests, about 0.6 to 0.7 percent of the population, around 1,986,000 million people, is gluten sensitive, while coeliac, a crippling disease, affects about 1 percent. The World Population Review finds 1 percent of Britons are gluten intolerant, and between 0.2 and 0.4 percent of the population across Europe.
It may be the fault of the wheat. The primary variety grown in the US is ‘hard’ wheat, wheat that despite its name produces softer, more elastic crumb than European wheat which although called ‘soft’ contains less gluten than ‘hard’ wheat. Or it may be the fault of chemicals: the EU has banned a list of additives, preservatives and synthetic dyes, many of which are still approved and used in breads and foods in the US.
The following has zero scientific research on my part behind it, but I’m inclined to believe what I have been told by different bakers in France, the UK and the US. Each of them made the point that before the baking of bread became a commercial enterprise on an industrial scale, bakers would leave their dough to prove overnight, turning up at the bakery around 4 in the morning to form the loaves and allow them to rise one further time before sliding them into the oven. These days, commercial loaves can be submitted to a proving time of as little as 40 minutes, which means once the bread has been eaten, the gluten continues its proving process inside your stomach. It certainly explains to my satisfaction why I feel bloated and gassy with all but artisan sourdough loaves, which are given a far longer proving time.
It can take 2 to 3 days for all traces of gluten passing through the stomach, then the small intestine, then the colon to be eliminated. Uncomfortably more for some people with gluten intolerance.
This is a no-knead, no punch-down bread that you leave to prove for 4-6 hours or overnight. Someone who I didn’t know to be gluten sensitive couldn’t resist eating 2 slices. She telephoned the following day to say she had had no reaction to the loaf so could she have the recipe. Here it is:
420g/14½ oz malted flour
350g/12½ oz whole-wheat flour
175g/6 oz white (strong) bread flour
2 teaspoons powdered yeast
1½ teaspoons salt
generous handful of mixed seeds (pumpkin, sunflower, linseed, sesame, chia, etc)
720ml/1½ pints warm water
Mix the flours, yeast, salt, and your choice and quantity of seeds together in a large bowl. Stir in the water till absorbed. Cover with plastic wrap, and leave the dough to rise in a warm place for at least 4 hours and up to 8, or overnight.
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.
Generously grease to 1kg/2lbs loaf pans. Divide the risen dough, without punching it down, between them, and bake for 40 to 50 minutes. Remove from the pan and tap the base. If it sounds hollow, it’s done. If not, put it back for 5 minutes then test again. Leave to cool on a rack before slicing.
Dutch cheeses have one saving grace to my mind: what is simply referred to as oude kass (literally old cheese) which is aged at least 12 months until it is delightfully deeply colored and tasty. Nothing like the ubiquitous jonge kass. Would be delightful with your bread and a dab of Branston pickle.
This is sensible. Though, my oven is broken right now, and whilst usually I bake most of our bread from scratch letting it rise by eye (so varying times depending on the type of year) not what I wanted to read whilst eating a piece of supermarket sliced white...!