Bread, the reviews

It was delicious. I made a similar loaf a few weeks ago with a commercially yeasted starter. This wild yeast loaf had more flavor; a hint of sour lent depth the the taste. A win, and an encouragement to maintain the mother starter.

My daily bread

OK, then. Setting up the blog took far less time and talent than I imagined. Guess it pays to be a late adopter!

Since it’s already a few days into February, I’ll tackle what I think will be an easy topic this month: baking my own bread.

Why? My history of bread:

I started baking my own bread, every week, about 18 months ago. No ordinary white sandwich bread for this gal. Oh, no. 100% Whole Wheat. Organic. Hearth Bread. Occasionally I’ll make bagels, or, for the holidays, pannettone. I like to mix it up a bit and try new things.

Good bread is hard to find. Simple, tasty, whole grain, vegan bread, with ingredients I recognize is in short supply, even at the health food stores. And if I do find it, it’s pricey.

My bread has improved greatly with time. The first attempts were leaden and best forgotten. Now my loaves are crusty, chewy, and well risen. I am currently using a delayed fermentation technique from Peter Reinhart’s latest book. Fabulous. It’s by far the best tasting and easiest-to-make whole wheat bread I’ve encountered.

This week’s experience:

Saturday afternoon

I decide on a whole wheat and kamut batard. I need to start the pre-ferments on Saturday so I can bake the bread on Sunday. Making the soaker is easy. Making the starter is a bit less familiar this week, as it is only my second loaf using a mother starter. (I created the mother starter for a loaf of volkenbrot that my husband requested last week. It was a disaster in so many ways.) I have been struggling to understand how to maintain the starter in perpetuity with the least amount of waste. The process is not clearly explained anywhere in this book, or so I thought. Today, I happen to glance at one of the sidebar commentaries, and there it is, on page 80, in small print, on the left hand side: the mother starter epiphany. This small discovery makes the afternoon’s effort completely worthwhile.

Sunday morning

I take the starter out of the fridge; it has to warm up a bit before I can make the final dough. After the gooey, gluey mess that was last week’s bread, I thoroughly enjoy making a predominantly wheat dough. It is a comfortable rhythm of scaling, mixing, kneading. I proof the dough on the warm side of the kitchen table, near the window. It rises beautifully. I shape it and let it rise again. Into the oven it goes along with water for the steam pan. It springs into a beautiful loaf. The steam burns my face when I open the door later to retrieve the pan. I forgive; for it is this steam that makes the crust just the way I like it. In forty minutes the bread is done. I realize, as I set it out to cool, that I forgot to slash the loaf before baking. Ah well, I can still enjoy the nutty aroma as it cools atop the washing machine, knowing that it will be delicious.

Conclusion

I am a total bread geek and can go on at great length about it. It interests me intellectually as I seek to understand the why and how of making good bread. It gives me sensory pleasure to knead the dough in my hands, inhaling the yeasty aroma, to see the handsome rustic loaf come out of the oven, to taste the bread, its flavor unadorned. It gives me confidence, knowing that this is something I can do well. And, I get to eat good bread!