BREAD
I currently do one kind of bread, occasionally I do a slight variation such as chocolate and raisins or olives and lemon but not often. It’s somthing I will maybe work on over the Winter. I almost always make it with organic flour and hopefully Wild Hive local flour from neighboring Dutchess County, NY, which I am now buying in bulk to facilitate that.
People seem to like it. It’s a sourdough that I started after reading Chad Robertson’s book, Tartine. I had made bread before and been on a CIA bread making workshop but something about this book made me want to bake bread. Maybe it was the glorious photos, maybe it was the recipes for what to make with the bread if you got tired of just eating bread for breads sake…difficult to imagine but anyway, the recipes looked delicious. It took a while, it was not a slam dunk straight away by any means. I started growing the starter, watched it, fed it, tried to figure if it was ready. Finally when I deemed it ‘ready’ I made a sponge which is what you need to actually make a loaf (or 2) of bread. The bread did not look right, I was crest fallen. I tried again…same thing…I was disappointed. Finally I tried a third time as I was not going to let this get the better of me. Those who know me know that that is not an option for me. Bingo…hooray…it worked and man was it worth the perseverance.
It is crusty, airy but with a good amount (but not too much) of heft. It is a sourdough but not too sour. It smells so good while it is baking and afterwards while it is still warm. It ‘sings’ when it comes out of the oven. You never know quite how it is going to look, will it have ‘ears’ where the razor blade cuts pop up in the heat or will they stay flat-ish?
People ask me how I get the crust? Do I have a commercial oven? The answer is no I just have a regular old domestic oven. I do however, bake it in 5 qt Lodge Dutch ovens which creates an oven within an oven which simulates some of the properties of a commercial oven and enables the crust to become how it does. This is as described in Tartine and also in Jim Lahey’s book. People also ask me if it is no-knead? I guess it is, largely. The wild yeasts in the sponge and time do the work and I am thankful for that as they do it infinitely better than I would.