If there is one food true to the spirit of F,NRS, it is bread. Few ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. In fact, these all fall into the category of staples and so hardly even count as ingredients in the way it is meant here. But simple procedures? Well, yes and no. It comes down to technique and knowing what things should feel, look, sound and smell like at each stage of the process. For me, making a fruit pie is now a simple procedure, but I've made dozens of them in the past few years. I have a fairly good idea of the tolerances on the procedure, where I can cut corners and where I have to take my time and do it right to get a certain quality of finished product. That's a place I'd like to be in bread baking. Yesterday's effort—a boule of "pain de campagne" or rustic country bread—has a nicely crackled thick crust and good colour and is very moist but the crumb is way too tight and uniform. Also, the salt didn't distribute properly through the dough, so there are some quite salty bites in there.
The Best Recipe by the editors of Cook's Illustrated is my main reference, but my inspiration is a chapter in Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything. There are several loaves I'd like to reproduce: the NYC's Sullivan Street Bakery filone, the "pain aux céréales" from Eric Borderon's in Quebec City and his boule of "pain de campagne". This last loaf has a cracked, blistered deep honey-brown crust with a moist, chewy crumb full of air pockets large and small. I'll post updates from time to time.
Dude! Nice bread. In my few experiments, I have had the same problem -- too uniform!
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