It’s been a while since my last Baking Journalist episode. I had been mulling over the topic of not being perfect, or needing to fail, to make progress in journalism and in bread baking.
I couldn’t bake, or type, or do many of the things we don’t often think about every day. All of the sudden I had a lot of time to think about those things, and so much more.
Bread seems to be having a renaissance: amid the coronavirus pandemic, people seem to be buying bread (if they can find it), flour, and yeast at unprecedented rates. I’ve been a bread baking and journalism evangelist for a good while, and I was honored to talk little about my journey so far, and about home bread baking on the radio recently.
Lisa Sands and photographer Laura Watilo Blake stopped by my humble abode while talking, baking, and (hopefully) enjoying some of my basic breads. It really was a pleasure to share this project with them and their readers.
I was a little apprehensive that my breads wouldn’t be good enough, or my kitchen wasn’t big enough, or whatever. But Lisa said Edible Cleveland likes to talk to real people, creating and enjoying food. I definitely qualified!
Laura Watilo Blake makes my bread look better than ever before!
So much of my bread journey so far has been about no-knead breads that serve a purpose, and the Swiss Zopf bread sort of fits in that trend. My sandwich bread is helping to save us a little money; my Rosemary Asiago is helping us to, well, eat more Rosemary Asiago bread; but the Zopf is a nice looking bread that connects us to the Swiss part of our lives.
Zopf bread, right out of the oven
The great thing about this bread is that it looks complicated, but is relatively straight-forward once you figure out the braiding pattern. “Zopf” in German literally means “braid,” but a traditional Zopf only uses two strands instead of three. (Although I saw one with five!) Continue reading “A first attempt at Swiss Zopf bread”