Purists Will Object

I resuscitated my poor neglected starter a couple of days ago, a process that was much easier than I expected: two feedings and it was chipper and ready to go. I planned to make a loaf of bread and got out the Bread Bible for my usual French Country Boule recipe when something came over me: a weariness of careful percentages and a deep desire to wing it. So I did: I threw some liquid-ish starter in a bowl with rye and white bread flour, let it bubble away all day and rest in the fridge over night. This morning I let it warm up on the counter for a few hours, then added a packet of yeast, a few cups of half bread/half whole wheat flour, and 15 grams of salt. After a rise I shaped it into a boule, let it rise again, and voila: the mongrel you see. It is very delicious. We had it for dinner with scrambled eggs and roasted cauliflower and shiitakes.

Weekend Round-Up

A lot of cooking has happened here lately. When I thought back I realized that in one twenty-four hour period I produced, in addition to regular lunches and dinners, two loaves of sourdough (pictured), a double batch of waffles, several dozen chocolate chip cookies, and a big bowl of potato salad. I don't know what came over me, but it all seemed pretty natural at the time. The bread is mighty good; both loaves used the same starter, but the loaf on the right has about twenty percent kamut flour, while the one on the left has rye and whole wheat. Let's call them identical (conjoined!) twins raised in different environments. The pictured okra family represents our first harvest.

Scrambled Eggs

with Indian spiced okra and the pictured French Country Boule. I think it's fair to say that this is the best bread I know how to make, and one of the best I've eaten. It's pretty simple (white, rye, and whole wheat flours), and, in my experience, hard to mess up. If I had to quibble with this loaf I'd say I over-salted just a wee bit, and I still haven't mastered oven spring, but on the whole, if this is as good as my bread gets, I can happily live with it. I learned two things this round. The first is that I dislike a starter made with all whole grain; both the spelt starter I made a while ago and the whole wheat starter I baked with last week made a bread that was too tangy for my taste. Even in a whole grain loaf I prefer a starter fed mainly white flour. The second is that preheating the oven and using a baking stone are both unnecessary steps. Following the advice of a number of posters on The Fresh Loaf (link to the right) I baked this in a cold oven, on a baking sheet, and it is both delicious and indistinguishable from loaves I baked on the traditionally recommended searing-hot baking stone. Since I always found pre-heating to be just that one extra step that turned the whole thing into a chore, this is big news for me.

French Country Boule

Well, this is a revelation. This is a delicious little loaf of bread; chewy, moist, wheaty with just a touch of sourness. And nothing in it but flour, water, salt (not quite enough, I think), and time! I followed the recipe and instructions in the Bread Bible, and used my stiff starter. I feel I have crossed a threshold.