A Simple Pleasure

The guiding principle is one chefs guard closely: the basic ratio between major ingredients that form the backbone of a recipe. But once you have the ratio down, you don't know just one recipe ... you know a thousand.

Ruhlman's book also explains the role of various ingredients in something like a cookie. Egg white produces a more delicate crumb; an increase in sugar adds crispness; more butter creates a softer, chewier cookie.

Thus, I've amused myself with pate a choux (cream puffs), gougeres (cheese puffs), pancakes from scratch, crepes, fresh pasta (no machine!), Yorkshire pudding, and fresh bread (no machine!).

And then I promptly took a deep breath and dove off the end of the pier. I am not an experienced baker; I've made bread only a handful of times, twice using a recipe by Jamie Oliver, and twice with the ratio provided by Ruhlman.

So attempting something like cinnamon bread is ambitious, to say the least - and I did write to Michael Ruhlman for advice on when to roll out the dough (answer: after the first rise). But the filling itself was an experiment.

The end result is a tasty cinnamon bread. In my opinion, I need to add slightly more sugar and cinnamon to the filling mix (my initial attempt was essentially a compound butter, 4 oz. butter, 3 tbsp light brown sugar, 1 tbsp. cinnamon), and add additional egg white as a leavener, since the rolling out process can cut back on the usual role of yeast.

I'll definitely try this again. Not only is making bread a surprisingly grounding/soul-nourishing thing to do, it's fun. What you'll produce isn't a store-bought loaf packed with fortifiers and preservatives, but simple, good food.

And you don't need a fancy bread machine to do it. It's about a 3 1/2 hour process from start to finish, but most of that time, your bread is rising or baking, and your actual hands-on time is fairly short.

I'm no Iron Chef, but Ratio will definitely help improve your game.

The Ministry has received 2 comment(s) on this topic.