No bread flour? No problem

LONDON — Are you struggling to find bread flour and fresh yeast at the moment? Ken Forkish’s white bread with 80% biga recipe, from his 2012 book “Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast,” is perfect for these testing times. If your search for both bread and all-purpose flour proves fruitless but you have yeast at hand, Chris Young — the co-ordinator of England’s Real Bread Campaign, which champions independent bakeries across the United Kingdom — has posted a recipe online which uses plain flour — roughly equivalent to pastry flour in the United States. “It has less protein than bread flour, but a combination of more water and a longer rising time than home bakers might be used to makes the most of it for great results,” says Young, adding: ”Even if your first loaves aren’t pretty, they’ll still taste delicious and, like everything, you’ll get better with experience.” Rather than kneading the dough, Young promotes the “stretch and fold” technique, whereby flour, water and a small amount of yeast are mixed together in a bowl and then, once every hour, the home baker lifts one section of the dough at a time and folds it over to the opposite side. Finally, if you’re out of both instant dry yeast and all-purpose flour, French baker Richard Bertinet has some handy hints about sourdough — a method which dispenses with shop-bought yeast entirely in favor of a natural fermenting “starter” — made solely of flour and water.