Kitchen Science

After conferring with my esteemed colleague, I made some adjustments to my bread baking protocol.


That is to say that one afternoon at work my office mate and I started talking about food. Which we pretty much do every afternoon at some point, and most mornings, too. We listen to KCRW’s Good Food with Evan Kleiman almost religiously. We inspect most of the cookbooks that come through the office. For my birthday, she gave me a copy of the Silver Palate New Basics Cookbook. Anyway, I was telling her how my No-Knead Bread always came out good, but too crusty. She asked a series of questions taking her through my baking process: cooked in a pot or on a stone? Covered or uncovered? Then she made her diagnosis.

“Sounds to me like it might be too hot.” Ah ha! I was baking it at the prescribed temp, but it’s been a long time since I calibrated my oven, and the oven thermometer has since been repurposed as the cabin’s woodstove temp gauge.

So I tried again, this time reducing the both the baking temp by 50 degrees. Success!

Sort of. I did get a less crusty loaf. In fact, not crusty enough. After about two hours there was no crispness at all to the crust. It was barely even chewy. Still, Matt liked it, and the inside was still tasty. At least I seem to have discovered the key variable. Back to the lab!