Baking under

Whenever I get into conversation about baking with someone, I very often hear them say something along the lines of ‘I once tried making bread, but it came out rock hard.’ I haven’t subjected this observation to statistical analysis, but I’ve heard it so many times that it seems to me that inedibly tough crusts are a major cause of failure in bread-making. This echoes my own early experience, and reminds me of the minor epiphany I underwent whilst reading Elizabeth David’s English Yeast and Bread Cookery many years ago.

My first experiments in bread-making took place in fits and starts over a period of several years. Every time I tried to make a loaf, it emerged with a boilerplate crust that could turn a knife. After a couple of attempts, I would give up in frustration until, after enough time had elapsed for the emotional turmoil to subside, I would try again, only to encounter the same problem.

Many of the books I consulted contained troubleshooting guides that, for reasons I have never been able to fathom, made no reference whatsoever to tough crusts, although they did address a whole range of complaints that I’d never encountered. One Christmas, however, my girlfriend bought me a copy of Elizabeth David’s classic book. I won’t eulogise about it here; suffice it to say that buried innocuously in the recipe section was the answer to my problem (it’s on page 303 in my Penguin edition).

David explained that in some ovens, the surface of the dough would dry out very rapidly and a crust form too quickly. As a result, while the interior of the loaf baked through, the crust over-baked, becoming very thick and hard. The solution was something she called baking under, which involved nothing more complex than upturning a preheated container such as a large cooking pot over the dough while it baked. The container would trap the steam escaping from the dough and keep the atmosphere moist; this in turn would prevent the surface of the dough from drying out and hardening too quickly.

I tried it once and never looked back. It has its drawbacks, of course. The shape and size of your loaf, and the number of loaves you can bake at a time, are obviously restricted by the shape and size of the container you use, and fussing about with a large steel pot that weighs several kilograms and has been heated to over 200°c is a hair-raising experience at the best of times. Nonetheless, it enabled me to bake decent bread for the first time. Whether or not other people find any benefit in it will depend on the character of their ovens, but I’m forever in Elizabeth David’s debt.