BOB — Broiled White Free-Form Loaf

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This was the sev­enth loaf I baked from Beard on Bread. (This is a con­tin­u­a­tion of my sil­ly lit­tle project that involves try­ing every recipe in this clas­sic cook­book. I start­ed doc­u­ment­ing my tri­als and tribu­la­tions after my fourth loaf.) See the bot­tom of this post for Beard’s recipe.

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The set-up and the prep

Beard explains in his head­note to this recipe that he was test­ing a ver­sion of the free-form (not the ver­sion I made a few weeks ear­li­er) when he made a mis­take that “proved to be extreme­ly inter­est­ing.” That mis­take was turn­ing his oven to “broil” instead of “bake.” He described the unin­tend­ed result as “brown­ing mag­nif­i­cent­ly” in the oven and hav­ing a “beau­ti­ful­ly brown, crisp top crust” and a loaf that “tast­ed absolute­ly won­der­ful, and the upper crust was superb.” That is some hype!,” I thought. I won­der if my result would be as mag­nif­i­cent and wonderful.

Before I dis­cuss the actu­al prep, I must share the yeast con­ver­sion chart I’ve been using: Yeast Con­ver­sions for Recipes from The Spruce Eats. Since I’m often using instant yeast not pack­aged in indi­vid­ual envelopes, I turn to this arti­cle often to make sure I’m using the cor­rect amount when a recipe uses envelopes of yeast as the only mea­sure of the required quan­ti­ty of yeast. 

Alas, for this loaf I’m not sure I got the yeast amount right. I still have the scrap of paper I used for my cal­cu­la­tions and I some­how con­clud­ed 4 tea­spoons would be the cor­rect amount for the recipe, though 5.5 tea­spoons should have been the amount … right???

Any­who, noth­ing inter­est­ing to note except it seems knead­ing dough seems to take a toll on on my KitchenAid mix­er, which seems to jerk around a lot dur­ing knead­ing. Though I can’t say for sure that the knead­ing has any­thing to do with this, the met­al mix­ing bowl I use with the mix­er now seems per­ma­nent­ly attached to the mix­er; nei­ther me nor my hus­band can get the bowl off the mix­er! Coin­ci­dence? Hmmm.

The two bowl ris­ings were unevent­ful; the first went for 2 hours, the sec­ond about an hour and a half. 

And, oh yes, I final­ly got a lame! So I was able to give the loaf a few good slits before it went in the oven:

The gnarli­est part of this pro­duc­tion was inter­pret­ing Beard’s bak­ing instruc­tions for use with my oven. My broil­er has a high and a low set­ting, but no way to spec­i­fy a par­tic­u­lar tem­per­a­ture. I start­ed with the broil­er on high, and, start­ing to see dark col­ors devel­op on the loaf rather ear­ly on, I chick­ened out and changed the broil­er set­ting to low after just sev­en min­utes. And on low broil for only two min­utes before I gave in and turned off the broil­er set­ting alto­geth­er. But, then … for how much longer should the loaf bake? No idea! After 25 min­utes I want­ed to try knock­ing on the bot­tom of the loaf, but the loaf was stick­ing to the pan. Grr. So I quick­ly looked up a few sim­i­lar bread recipes that gave tar­get inter­nal tem­per­a­tures to deter­mine whether or not the loaves were done. I decid­ed to go with a tar­get of 200 degrees F. After 15 min­utes more I took the loaf out and care­ful­ly pried it off the pan. Total bak­ing time, includ­ing the time under the broil­er: 49 minutes. 

The result

A nice dark-ish loaf … I can’t help but won­der if I made the slits a bit too deep.

The crust was very nice, but per­haps not as crisp as Beard’s ver­sions. The bread was OK untoast­ed, and pret­ty good toast­ed (with a good chew), but it def­i­nite­ly need­ed some sort of top­ping, for the fla­vor pro­file of an unadorned slice was, to me, salt. Not salty, just salt. Not all that pleas­ant. Oh well.

The fin­ished loaf weighed 1.75 pounds.

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White Free-Form Loaf

[1 free-form loaf]

2 pack­ages active dry yeast (I, per­haps erro­neous­ly, used 4 tea­spoons SAF Red Instant Yeast [see “The set up and prep” sec­tion above].)
¾ cup warm water (100° to 115°, approx­i­mate­ly)
4 cups unbleached all-pur­pose flour
1½ table­spoons coarse salt
3 table­spoons olive, veg­etable, or peanut oil
½ cup but­ter­milk
Corn­meal
1 egg white, beat­en with 1 table­spoon water

Dis­solve the yeast in the warm water and let it proof. Mea­sure the flour into a mix­ing bowl, add the salt, and blend well. Add the yeast and blend thor­ough­ly, prefer­ably with your hands. Add the oil, and then, grad­u­al­ly, the but­ter­milk. Mix with the hands or in an elec­tric mix­er with a dough hook until the dough comes off the bowl. Turn out onto a light­ly floured board and knead for 10 min­utes, until the dough is smooth and resilient. Remove to a but­tered bowl and turn to coat the sur­face with but­ter. Cov­er and let rise until dou­bled in bulk.

Punch the dough down, knead for 3 min­utes, and let rise once more. Punch down again, then, using both hands, gath­er the dough into a big cir­cu­lar pack­age, draw the top togeth­er to close it, and pinch the ends togeth­er. Turn the dough over, and set it, pinched-end side down, on a bak­ing sheet sprin­kled with corn­meal, and let rise until dou­bled in bulk. (Corn­meal may be sprin­kled on the top, too, for for an extra accent.) Slash the top in three places and brush with the egg wash. Broil at 375° for 20 min­utes, then switch to “bake” for 25 min­utes, or until the loaf sounds hol­low when tapped with the knuck­les. (If your broil­er has no set­ting, place the bread as far as pos­si­ble from the unit and watch care­ful­ly. You may have to switch from “broil” to “bake” more quick­ly.) Remove the loaf from the bak­ing sheet and let it rest direct­ly on the oven rack for a few min­utes to brown the bot­tom. Cool on a rack.

Beard on Bread, James Beard, Knopf, 1974, p.40–41

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Broiled White Free-form Loaf recipe from Beard on Bread by James Beard. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1974, p.40–41.