KNEAD TO KNOW

Learn the basics of baking bread

Of all the fundamental kitchen skills for new cooks to learn, baking bread isn’t very high on the list.

It’s far more important to be able to roast or steam vegetables, boil a grain and saute a protein. Once you master those basic, easily interchangeable cooking methods, you can cook with just about anything on the outer edge of a grocery store, where you traditionally find unprocessed foods. That’s the healthiest, most affordable way to feed yourself, and that’s a plus no matter if you’re a new graduate or someone who has come to rely on eating prepared food for lunch and dinner every day.

Store-bought sandwich bread isn’t going to break your bank and, to be honest, is hard to re-create at home. However, it’s easier than you might think to bake nicer artisan breads at home, even if you’ve never baked before.

My first bread-baking attempts were while I was still in college. A friend had given me a copy of “The Enchanted Broccoli Forest” by Mollie Katzen, a delightful sketch artist and writer who walked me through a laborious technique that involved long kneading sessions. The truth is that I loved kneading bread for 20 minutes at a time — it was soothing — but it was time-consuming, and the final product was never as airy or crusty as I wanted.

It wasn’t until I found Jim Lahey’s no-knead recipe that I started baking bread now and then. I loved baking the moist, bubbly loaf in a hot cast-iron Dutch oven, but the dough still took some baking know-how to handle, and I didn’t experiment much with variations.

However basic it was, that was the only no-knead recipe I felt like I needed until Alexandra Stafford’s “Bread Toast Crumbs: Recipes for No-Knead Loaves & Meals to Savor Every Slice” (Clarkson Potter, $30) hit my desk a few weeks ago. The book is based on a single master recipe for a

so-called peasant bread that her mother made just about every week. The dough balls are baked in a buttered Pyrex bowl. You can use any kind of oven-proof bowl, but the Pyrex ones are the easiest to find, especially in thrift stores.

I didn’t know you could bake in a Pyrex bowl, much less that it would be so suitable for creating a nice crust on a perfectly round loaf of bread, but how do you build a whole cookbook around a single bread recipe? By offering variations on that master recipe and dozens of ideas for how to use the slices, heels and even stale leftovers from the many loaves of bread the book will inspire you to bake.

Just how many loaves are we talking about? In the weeks after baking Stafford’s simplest loaf, I made loaves of cinnamon raisin, quinoa and flax, and olive bread, sometimes several times each. Each recipe makes two loaves, so I was always giving them away or tucking them into the freezer. During that bread-baking frenzy, my reward was the thickest, most tender slices of toast each morning, and I was reminded why it’s so fun to know how to bake bread.

That’s a wish I have for all cooks, which is why I’m publishing all three of these recipes, just in time for countless families to be sending their kids off into the next stage of their lives after graduation.

You make the bread in four steps: 1) Mix together the dry ingredients with a fork and then add the lukewarm water, folding the wet and dry ingredients together with a rubber spatula. 2) Let the dough rise in a warm area. 3) Divide dough into two bowls and let rise again. 4) Bake.

That simple, shaggy dough ball rises quickly and bakes beautifully in less time than it takes to finish an episode of whatever you’re bingeing on Netflix or Hulu right now. And the smell of bread baking enhances your Friday night lounging, I promise.

A few final tips before you break out your flour and dig into the pantry for a Pyrex bowl:

Use yeast that hasn’t expired. If you haven’t baked bread in years, throw away any yeast that might be in the cupboard. I store my yeast in the freezer so I don’t have to worry about it spoiling quite so fast. Stafford recommends

using instant yeast exclu- sively, but if all you have is active dry or RapidRise yeast, don’t stress about it. The leavening will vary slightly between them, but I’ve used them all with success.

Iliketouseascalewhen making these breads to measure the dry ingredients, but don’t let that intimidate you. All you have to do is zero out (or tare) the scale each time you add a new ingredient by weight.

You can use other bak- ing vessels than a Pyrex bowl, but I love the shape and ease of the bowls that have lips on the side for handles. They are easy to pull out of the oven and release the bread without having to use a knife.

It’s hard to resist cutting into the bread as soon as it’s out of the oven, but the loaf needs to cool before you slice it. I let mine cool on a wire rack, but a cutting board is fine, too. Stafford suggests mak- ing lukewarm water by mix- ing together 1/2 cup boiling water and 1 1/2 cups cold water,butIalwaysusethe old trick of running the water on my wrist until it feels slightly warmer than my body temperature but not hot.

To make a swirled cinnamon loaf, you’ll spread out half the dough on the counter, coat it with an egg wash and then sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar. You then roll the dough like a cinnamon roll and place it in a bread pan.

You can use a larger bowl to make a larger loaf, but it will take a little longer to finish baking.

ADDIE BROYLES / AMERICAN-STATESMAN No-knead breads are a great introduction to baking bread. With one base recipe, you can make savory or sweet loaves, such as this cinnamon raisin swirl bread.

CONTRIBUTED BY EVA KOLENKO Alexandra Stafford’s method calls for baking the dough in a buttered Pyrex bowl, which is a great use for this common cooking vessel. Other oven-proof bowls are fine, but two 1 1/2 quart bowls are the right size for two loaves.

Alexandra Stafford’s book “Bread Toast Crumbs” revolves around a noknead bread technique that is infinitely adaptable. She also includes recipes for dishes you can serve with or make with the bread.