Registration for a tour from modernist kitchens near Seattle is a catnip for food writers like me. Not only do they have all the toys, but they have industrial versions of all the toys: rotovap appliances, freezers, steam ovens, that’s what it’s called. But the thing I remember most about my tour a few years ago was a Samsung Samsung type home oven, in the middle of it all. The chef of the modernist, Francisco Migoya, opened the door and pointed to a cast iron pot in the middle of it, which was so dark that it seemed to reflect no light.
In the midst of this gadget treasure, he said something like: The forty-dollar pot? This is the best tool you can buy to make good bread at home.
Thanks to the dish and an almost perfect recipe, I now make fantastic breads several times a week. This is not a praise. The bread I make takes almost no skill from me. I was lucky in what turned out to be the tip of what you can get by combining culinary laziness and the right tool for the job. While the internet is full of people who are obsessed with the dough breads they have served (it is a whole process), you can make a remarkable bread with little time and almost zero effort.
The 3.2 liter combined cast iron cooking machine (also called “LCC3”) is where the magic happens. It is a curious animal. Detached, the “lid” is also a pan, and the bottom is a large sauce pot. Put the first one on top of the last one and you have a Dutch oven that, with the two handles, looks a bit like a child with a side ball cap. Turn it over so that the pan is underneath and you have an ideal pan for baking bread. The breads they make have a wonderful dark crust and a beautiful, elastic interior, known as crumbs. If I bought what I did at an elegant bakery, I would be 100% satisfied, every time. Priced at 50 USD (only 40 USD on Amazon) and weighs 13 kilograms, the combined stove is so cheap that it occasionally offers it as a gift, as long as the transport is free.
Much of the reason I love it so much is the recipe that makes it shine: Jim Lahey’s Unbreaded Bread, something that got a huge boost from a couple of Mark Bittman stories in New York Times, then was consecrated forever in his own book and Modernist bread. Instead of requiring a lot of kneading or mixing, time does not work. Combine flour, yeast and salt, then add water and stir until held together in what is known as a “shaggy meal.” After that, stick it on the counter overnight. Shape it into a ball in the morning, let it rise a little again, then put it in the preheated cottage and bake it. When in play, manual labor takes about 10 minutes. Waiting for it to rise overnight, allow the gluten in the dough to harden and develop the flavors in the fermenting yeast, a technique known as both autolysis and sleep.
There are still a lot of magic tricks left when you go to the pot. One of my favorites is how, with the dough in it, it becomes a steam oven, a fetish object among bakers and cooks. With the relatively tight sealing of the vessel, the steam released from the dough is trapped inside, contributing to the efficiency of heat transfer to the dough. It is actually a very stable small oven inside the largest one and keeping the steam inside allows the surface of the bread to stretch during baking, so that the inside can grow as it cooks.