QUEST on KQED Public Media.

I felt the need to do a post along with the video because…well they left something out. Not just because they filmed on the Friday bake and I work the Wednesday bake, but because they focused only on the loaves of bread, which is what most people think of when something is described as naturally leavened or, especially, sourdough. But natural leavening, that is the ecology of yeast and bacteria we call a sourdough starter, can really be used to leaven any bready baked good, and does not have to be sour. Check out the strawberry scones I make for the Thursday and Saturday Berkeley Farmer’s Markets:

The dough is basically like a biscuit recipe with starter added. I roll out 4 lbs at a time, spread out the fruit (which changed seasonally of course), fold it up and slice out triangles and then toss each in flour. Then they sit by the brick oven and rise for about five hours.

We make another scone that is really a cookie recipe with starter added and then we make it super hearty with fresh coarse ground grains, spices, and raisins. I’ve been wanting to try at home to just make five hour proofed cookies.

The scones are very special, but I think my favorite is our bagels. I don’t know of any other naturally leavened bagel. These are shaped into tight rounds ( like the bread in the video) and then proofed for an hour at room temp an then another four hours in the fridge. (It would take less time if they were proofed only a room temp, we do the fridge proof so they can be made after all the bread is shaped). After they proof I boil them in water with a dollop of barley malt syrup for about 30 sec. each side, dip the tops in a bowl of seeds, and then bake. They are chewy and fantastic with a very slight tang. The power of sour goes way beyond the loaf!

                          

Over the past few months I’ve changed my relationship with these sourdough beasties I’ve befriended to leaven and flavor my baked goods. I’ve both expanded the amount and variety of goods that I can make with them and I’ve let the little things be warm and active for longer periods. That is to say by keeping my sourdough active I’ve been forced to bake more with it and have thus figured out new and varied breads that can be made as sourdough.

The whole point, for me, of baking with sourdough is to use a biologically diverse population of microbes to populate the dough I make to allow a slower rise through fermentation. This process is active and alive and breaks down the stuff in wheat that is hard on human digestion (gluten) or makes other things (like minerals) inaccessible through human digestion (phytic acid)

Percentage of Phytic Acid

Time (hours)
—- Yeast Fermentation
___ Sourdough Fermentation

For more than you probably want to know about phytic acid and the extra measures you could go to to eliminate your intake of it go here.

The fact that phytic acid is in all foods that are originally seeds (grains, nut, legumes) and that it binds to certain minerals and nutrients in the body and essentially flushes them out, doing the body little good, is a fact that is not debated. What the impact is of the amount eaten on the body’s overall health is not agreed upon. But just think of how many seeds we eat: wheat, corn, soy, nuts. Since these foods are present in practically every meal, I like to error on the side of caution and avoid the anti-nutrients as much as possible. Here is a nice outline of why a sourdough ferment of grains is good for health (In fact that blog, just linked to, is one I’ve just discovered, and it full of great sourdough recipes. I haven’t tried any yet, but plan to…check it out!)

So that’s the motivation in trying to replace as many baked-goods as possible with their (I think more delicious) sourdough versions. Once you get beyond artisan crusty bread loafs from a good bakery it is hard to find an array of true sourdough items. Even if you find something that is “sourdough” that doesn’t necessarily mean that all the flour has gone through a minimum four hour ferment, a lot of sourdough is added as flavor.

As usual the best control over health, quality, and taste is just to make it at home, not to mention the saved plastic packaging and inexpensive ingredients which may make the cost of the homemade lower (though it depends on what you were buying). Below are some of the snacks I’ve put through the sourdough process. And I should mention that the recipes for these lovely eats all come from the same book, Wild Bread by Lisa Rayner. For the most part I like her recipes, but she is vegan so she often suggests Earth Balance over butter which to me is a very unwise substitution. It just boggles me that one can be so into natural and whole foods but prefer a product that requires a laboratory to make and comes in plastic over one that can be made and eaten out in a field.

In addition to getting a new book that expanded my sense of what I could do with my sourdough, I also starting using it (the starter) a bit differently. First of all I started a whole wheat starter from my white one, so now I have two (The whole wheat is local from Massa Organics!) I keep the whole wheat one dryer (or stiffer, or to get technical, at a lower hydration- 75% which would be 3/4c water to 1c flour. 100% is an even one to one.) I also stopped putting the starter in the fridge after use. I keep some in the fridge for back up, but I keep the active one warm and fed…that way, when I want to bake I don’t have to back track the time it takes a cold starter to get going. If you keep your refrigerated tarter fed consistently you can get it going in 8hrs but it’s hard for me to remember to do so if I don’t see it. (Ofen it would be a two day process just to be able to use the thing…) Rather than get the out-of-sight-out-of-mind problem, I leave them out, which reminds me to feed them, which gets me to bake.

Crunchy whole wheat crackers:

There are fewer and fewer aisles in the grocery store I even go down at all and the cracker/cookie aisle is one of them. Even if natural or organic it’s still just plan old cooked wheat (or popped rice) and it just doesn’t do me much good. But crackers are great! For homemade hummus, tuna salad, or a sharp raw cheddar. If you already have made your own pizza dough, crackers are just as easy.

These are a 100% whole grain cracker  The recipe uses only 6oz of starter plus 8oz of any combination of tasty flours you might have such as rye, spelt, kamut. (I’ve used various mixes of wheat, rye, spelt as that’s what I tend to have on hand. The majority of the dough has been wheat though). (Also added is 2 Tbs olive oil, 1/2 tsp salt, and just under a half cup of water.)

After the dough is mixed and kneaded into a stiff ball it can sit for a few hours. (Lisa Rayner says you can let it sit for as little as 20 minutes, but that time frame doesn’t really do the fermenting job. I just let it go until I notice it being bigger…about four hours.) The dough is rolled as thin as you can manage onto a floured board and/or on parchment paper without going beyond the point that you can lift the strips onto your baking sheet. I had tried baking just the rolled out dough, figuring I could just break it into crackers after it cooked…but it ended up too uneven, not crunchy in the middle and burnt on the edges, so it is worth it to cut and cook strips…they can be a very rough cut.

This is a good opportunity to train your nose to when something is done. The crackers should be checked after five minutes and rotated and shaken around. They should get all the way to a nice caramel brown…but the tipping point to burnt is quick…so keep a careful eye (and nose!) I added Celtic sea salt and sesame seeds to the top before cutting the dough…lots of possibilities with toppings.

Everyone has these nostalgic foods from childhood that they just can’t help feeling great when they eat them. I am all for having good emotional memory with food…but often the actual substance from the past isn’t really all that great (in taste or health). I grew up in a very whole foods lacto/ovo/fish vegetarian household that didn’t include really any junk food. I could be easily motivated to do something if it involved some sort of illicit food…like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin (though we still got it without the bacon/sausage). So, I’ve taken this childhood reward and made it the kind of thing I still want to eat.

The dough is the standard “artisan dough” in the Wild Bread book with a whopping 20 oz of starter, just about 7 oz of starter under 3 oz of water and 1.5 tsp of salt. This mixture rises in a bowl, then gets rolled out and cut to rise again as muffins.

Then the fun part! The muffins like fat pancake on a lightly buttered griddle. I ended up cooking them longer that this photo shows. In order to get them cooked through they should have a decent amount of color on both sides.

Then I cooked up an egg. This trick above doesn’t really work all that well, maybe if the ring was oiled better. The other option might be to make bigger muffins. I break the yoke after it cooks for a bit so it isn’t too drippy for the sandwich. Add some raw jack cheese, oblong fried potato cake not included and I certainly earned it!

Below shows the basic loaf bread I’ve been making on a weekly basis (give or take). It’s the same dough as the English muffin. I use a mix of my whole wheat and white starter and use either fresh ground wheat berries (also from Massa Organics), or fresh ground spelt, or just Massa’s flour which is ground fresher than anything else you can buy. This is a pretty similar recipe as the Nourishing Traditions loaf made in this post, but you can see how it’s lightened up a bit. This has to do with an even wetter dough and also a double proof, once in a bowl and once in the buttered loaf pan.

It’s a pretty nice, go-to whole grain loaf for toast and snacks. But I am pretty excited about trying this one from the recently discovered Wild Yeast Blog. I think something even lighter would do us better for sandwiches (the bread below is pretty limited to open-faced, which are delicious. Two pieces at once would be a mouthful)

This bread is a sourdough “quick bread” in that it is made from a batter and is not kneaded. But no, it isn’t quick.

A few words on the time it takes to make these baked goods: This point is related to one of Michael Pollan’s new food rules that you can eat junk food, just make it yourself. When you cook at home you can control ingredients and you don’t have access to the kind of processing or additives that happens on an industrial scale. You also find that “junk foods” take a long time to make and are energy intensive, versus simple whole foods. As I write this post I am actually taking a week without dairy, sugar, or grains. This is just a just an opportunity to eat really simply and avoid foods that can be harder on digestion than others.

I think taking a break from anything you eat a lot of is probably a good idea…seasonal variation does this with fruits and veggies and even some meats and certainly pastured eggs, but the constants can be…well just that. Really milk and grains would be more seasonal in a more locally-based food system.

I don’t know if I would go as far as saying the foods that you do the least to are the foods we should be eating. That essentially would be advocating a raw diet. I do think human digestion needs some careful processing to break down cellulose and other compounds we don’t have the stomachs for. But it is true that many of the foods you can eat “whole” are good for you and the more “whole” you eat a food the faster it is to eat it. An apple can be picked and eaten right at the same moment. Meat- well a life is made and raise and then killed, but after that it’s pretty much eaten as is. Bread on the other hand, even good, whole grain, naturally leavened bread goes through a number of steps. This isn’t a hard and fast rule by any means but the point is if we limited our baked-good intake to sourdough bread we made at home, we would probably eat a lot less bread and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.

So, I’m happy to have created a system with bread that is rather self-limiting and happy to be taking a bit of a break…but also really happy to get back to baking soon. This bread below could be adapted into any number of quick bread loaf pan recipes like banana bread. I’ve just done this cinnamon raisin version and it’s lovely, moist, sour and delicious. I am pretty sure it could also be adapted into muffins, which is an experiment I am excited about and will certainly share. I’ve never seem to come across a true sourdough (that is, fully fermented) muffin recipe. I think it might involve some baking soda…but well see. Stay tuned.

                          

I had fun showing off my artisan multi-grain sourdough bread but it took three days of my visit to prepare and was gone in a few hours. Wanting mama and all to have the most nutritious bread I decided to try a more quick and dirty recipe.

I prepared a quart of my starter and then mixed it with about 6 cups of spelt flour, the recipe (from Nourishing Traditions) said to rise from 4 to 12 hours depending on the temperature. I let it go overnight, which was probably too long as it got a bit deflated. I didn’t have loaf pans, so they were kind of batard style loaves. The shap of the slice wasn’t ideal but the flavor was wonderful and went great with the raw cream cheese spread I made.

As soon as I got home I started on another batch. This time I started with spelt berries and ground the flour myself. It sounds like a job for a toiling little red hen, but it’s just an electric gadget and doesn’t take any effort, but yields the freshest flour you can get, ensuring no rancidity. Spelt is a nice grain for home grinding because its gluten level perform like an all-purpose flour, which is actually a mix of soft and hard wheat. So, unless you want to grind two different grains, spelt is a lot simpler.

In my first go at grain grinding I just followed the directions and ground the whole berries on the finest setting, which gave me two distinct layers of flour, a fibery hull and a fine powdering flour. I used it as it came for the bread, which turned out delicious and hearty. After some expert advice, on the next batch I first ground the berries on a coarse setting and then ran it through again on the smallest setting which gave me a much more even flour and more flour per cup of berries (which seems to be about 2.5 c. of flour to 1 c. berries, but it depends on your grind- I am still working out that ratio)

The recipe called for the dough to be soft and easy to work with. To knead Sally says to stretch and fold, a different kneading process that I usually use.

I have now made three batches of the bread and the best results actually came from making the dough in my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the dough hook. The pictures below are from the batch made by hand, and it turns out beautifully, but the mixer does allow a wetter dough since you dont have to add more flour to be able to handle it. This was my fist time making dough with a machine and it left me standing there watching it, sort of wondering what I should do while it worked. It was strange to not be able to feel the dough change. So, I am still a bit conflicted about the thing. I was also hesitant to do sourdoughs in metal, but apparently it makes no difference.

Cooked in a loaf pan, this bread makes a great homemade substitute for sliced sandwich bread. Not the handsomest, but probably the freshest, healthy bread you can get in your mouth.

                          

Notes on the first step: getting the starter working. Depending on its level of activity, or the last time you fed it, it can take a couple days to get going. Start with just a scant 1/4 of a cup, because you don’t need much for the bread. You will add an 1/8 cup of water and an 1/8 cup of (white) flour. You will then have a total of a 1/2 cup and your next feeding will continue this ratio of equal parts water to flour, doubling the amount of starter. So you can see how much you can make very quickly. If your starter is particularly dormant then you will need to feed it for longer, thus making more starter. You can dump some out and keep the level down…but! If you don’t want to do this you can plan a very delicious waffle breakfast after starting your bread. See this post for recipes. Using the starter means the phytic acid in the wheat is neutralized so its not blocking the nutrients in the other good stuff on the waffle. I used all white just to go full on pastry texture, but you could mix in whole wheat or other the night before.

Whole Milk Nancy's yogurt (which is pretty much like ice cream), Almond Butter, Grade B Maple Syrup, Raw Butter, and Late Spring Strawberries

Okay, back to the bread. So the first step is basically making a bowl of whole wheat starter and letting it sit, covered (plastic bag works well) for 12 hours. Breadtopia suggests this be the “evening of day one” but my schedule is weird and time to make bread varies so sometimes I use different 12hr periods, depending.

12 hrs from mixing together the starter and WW flour, you add the rest of the flours (spelt, rye, white, more WW) more water and salt. As much attention as the no-knead bread has gotten, I think that the kneading step is not just fun for the sake of bread making, but useful for getting a good sense of how the dough is doing. I once made the no-knead and couldn’t tell that is hadn’t risen (too long a proof and not very strong starter) until it was out of the oven, because you aren’t touching it and seeing how it feels. So this step of kneading for ten minutes is useful, and good exercise. I look at the clock to make sure I do a full ten (otherwise I’m too lazy).

The kneaded dough then goes in a bowl, covered with the same plastic bag, in the refrigerator to 24 hrs. This stage is where you can be more flexible about the timing. The first time I made the the end of the 24hrs ended up being at 8am, which was before work, but! it needs to sit and get warm and comfy for another 5hrs before going in the oven. I ended up coming home during lunch and baking it. This is a totally avoidable situation. If you find that the timing doesn’t line up for taking it out of the fridge and then baking 5hrs later, you can punch down the dough in the fridge before its fully rise (that is before the first 24hrs) and let it go another 24 or so. Ex: First step at 8pm Monday, second (mixing dough, kneading) at 8 am Tuesday, 24hrs later is 8am Wednesday but I don’t have time to deal with it then- so at 5pm on Tuesday I punch it down. Now, I am set to take it out at 5pm Wednesday and bake at 10pm (which works for me).

This is a lot for bread, I realize. And I think in the last post on this I admitted that it is probably too much and gives a good argument for specialization. But its interesting and delicious, very nourishing and getting easier. Plus, it turns out well even when not perfect.

Last loaf: I took it out of the fridge at 5pm and let it sit covered with plastic in the bowl until 10 (at 9:30 I pre-heated the oven, with the dutch oven inside). But, that isn’t whats supposed to happen. For some reason I completely forgot the step of taking it out of the bowl, forming a “boule” and putting it in on a floured towel, and then back in the bowl (covered, not with plastic, but more floured towel). I realized this as the action to put it in the smoking hot dutch oven felt different then before. But it was too late at that point and I just waited a half hour to see what happened.

Maybe not bakery-goods, but it was no fail.

I even think the crumb (the quality of holes in the interior, usually indicating moist, chewyness) turned out better than the last. The texture of the crust is different, but I woulnd’t even call it weird. That’s the thing with baking, often the variation is just that- not a mistake but a new way, a new texture, a new flavor. Punching down the dough and letting proof longer makes a more sour dough and really works the fermentation, that was a surprise and a delight (to avoid this acutally use more starter). Again, I don’t really know how useful it is for us all to be making our own bread, but I like to eat something and to know just how it got to be the way it is.

                          

Baking with sourdough really is the best example of how much time it takes to make the best food. In fact its really a lot to ask; to keep something in your fridge that is essentially another mouth to feed, to keep track of one more thing, and to use it in a bread that takes over a whole day, often three to make. The cost of the flour alone makes me wonder if its worth it just to buy the beautiful $8 levain breads from the farmer’s market or the notable local Acme bakery. So maybe its just for novelty that I keep making this three-day bread.

The last time I went through the process, with the concern that after the second day it wouldn’t rise and it would all be ruined; the ten-minute kneading; the planning (once having to come home from work to bake my bread so it wouldn’t proof for too long), I thought that maybe specialization is a good thing when it come to baking. I pictured the adept bakers with their hundreds of proofing loaves, their active starters that are fed every day, and thought when is it that consumer culture hinders healthy food and when does it help it? I think everyone should make most of their own meals, working with other people, using their minds, hands, and fresh, real food- but does everyone need to make their own bread all the time?  Well clearly no, even in my Utopian real-food world, where people don’t work too long for so many things they don’t really need, -things that make them neither happy nor healthy- and where they put time and care into food, there would still be specialization of some kind. There is a benefit to becoming an expert at something and sharing your products and having a clear purpose. The problem with our current approach is that in giving over most of our food preparation to specialized producers we have lost skills that keep our minds and bodies active and the the quality of our food has suffered.

So, until my real-food utopia I am going to keep developing these disappearing skills, if only for the fun of it.

The recipe for this one come from my stand-by Breadtopia, with the cheery and informative videos. What I really wish he had though, and what I am finding impossible to find, are other types of baked goods and breads (like muffins, scones, banana bread etc) that use sourdough for proofing and fermenting, not just for flavor.  I am going to try this pizza dough recipe with a longer, overnight, rise and see how it goes.

The other option for quick breads is to buy sprouted flour (okay, the real other option is to sprout the grains yourself, dry them, and grind them into your own flour). Nourishing Traditions’ recipes for quick breads call for freshly ground flour (not sprouted); this is because pre-ground flour (sprouted included) is often more rancid than we realize. And apparently bread from freshly ground flour is beyond in flavor. Grinding your own flour isn’t as laborious as it sounds, since its really a process of pushing a button on an electric grain grinder. After grinding the flour NS has you soak it in buttermilk, kefir, or yogurt overnight (or for 12 hours). This addition of acidity does that neutralizing work to the nutrient blocking acids in grains (read more about that here. While the recipes say you can also use whey or lemon juice, its pretty clear that the outcome is not as tasty with this alternative.

So, I have to admit, I haven’t yet tried this technique. This is primarily because of the extra expense of cups of high quality dairy. I came up with an alternative I will try and then share; Bob’s Red Mill makes a buttermilk powder, just dehydrated, so I can make the amount I need store the rest. The whole package  makes six quarts for ten dollars.

I have some muffins and biscuits planned using this strategy, so stay tuned.

Also! Not that there is a lot of eating out going on these days, but we did go for Ethiopian food recently and I was very pleased to realize that the bread, Injera, which makes up the bulk of the meal, is made with fermented teff grain flour. So you can eat out and still get with real, live food- this chance is of course higher when you seek out restaurants serving traditional foods.

Sourdough Breakfast:

                          

After 12 hours my Zarathustra Bread was done. It is actually very delicious with a really satisfying toothy and chewy texture with an occasional crunchy berry and surprisingly moist. It has a bit of sourness to it, and is more more like a hearty oat bar (or a Scottish oat cake) than bread exactly. I brought this for my lunch with tuna salad, made with homemade mayo, and some dates, feeling like I might have walked out of ancient Greece. You could make these smaller and serve with soup. If you make these and they still have a flavor of doughy-ness they can probably be in the warm oven longer.

I have been eating bites here and there with honey, cream cheese, or jam. Versatile, but not without a bit of an appreciation for the basic-ness and maybe slightly an acquired taste, though I think it’s pretty mild.

                          

The name of this bread tells of how ancient it is. Wheat berries (pre-ground wheat) soaked for 2 to 3 days, ground up with salt and dried underneath a hot sun.

I ground mine in a food processor and baked them in a warmed oven (150 degrees)

The appeal to this bread I guess is its basic-ness. It feels like pure sustenance, as old as dirt. I imagine the taste and texture to be less like bread and more like a chewy oat bar. I’ll let you know in 12 hours after their ready.

After soaking for three days (they were ready after two, but I could only get to them later) they had sprouted teeny white nubs and the water they sat in smelled sour. (A smell I am getting used to as productive, not off.) In the food processor with some salt and not completely drained of their soaking water they started to produce a wet dough and sticky, stringy gluten. Though the direction say to process until smooth, after a certain point there seemed to be no change and many of the berries, while smooshed, remained whole.

I formed them into small loaves and slid the pan into my oven set to warm. And waited half a day.

We’ll see next post how this Zarathustra Bread turns out.

                          

The author of this article (thanks to Sarah for sending) started off in the same dreamy situation I was when reading it- how to make the kind of bread I really like to eat, crusty out/chewy and bubbly in, in my own kitchen- is it even possible. Is artisan bread, just that- for experts with powerful ovens?

The answer lies in this “no-knead bread”- which I am deciding to call Perfect Dutch Oven Bread and here’s why. “No-knead” carries the same tone as “lite” or “no cook lasagna”. Like either too convenient to really work and be as good as the long version or it includes something gross and processed.

This no-knead title isn’t misleading, you don’t knead it…but is that really the inconvenient part of bread making? I think it’s the time involved with the rises- and no knead bread takes that to another level. 18 hr proofing followed by a 15 min rest and another 2 hrs of proofing. Luckily “proofing” just means sitting there, so it really is easy in that there aren’t a lot of steps but you have to plan it out so that when you have time to make your dough you also have time 12-18 hrs later to actually be making bread for 2 hrs. Again, not doing much but involved in the task. What’s special about this recipe isn’t that you don’t knead the dough, but that you cook it in its own tiny super-hot oven- the dutch oven you had all along!

But no, it isn’t a convenient recipe. The pay off is that the bread out of the dutch oven is fabulous and the results exceed the amount of actual work done. Not in a “your friends will never believe you made it from a box” or “your husbands family will never know you made them instant coffee” kind of way- but close. My grandparents got the first loaf and I got the full “where did you buy this…what?! you made it!?!” reaction. Which was totally gratifying.

So the Mother Earth News article was the inspiration and motivation, but I also had been wanting to make sourdough with my starter i got recently (thanks to Martha!). So I looked to combine both exciting bread endeavors. And I found the answer and great tutorial here:

http://www.breadtopia.com/sourdough-no-knead-method/

I can’t really say more, because I watched the video, did just what he told me- happy that he approaches the whole production with some flexibility- and I got this:

With sourdough the whole process is even less convenient. Getting the starter active a day before you make the dough, then you make the dough and let it sit for another day- then three days from when you started you have perfect bread. That’s just how it is. The first batch I made had bigger holes. I proofed this one for 18+ hrs and the other for only 12, but I think that dough was wetter. It’s a little different every time depending on the mood of my starter and I’m happy with the variation.

I would like this breadtopia guy to give some tips on storage since the crust looses it’s perfect crunch and it didn’t come in a bag…so what should I keep it in?

                          

I don’t have a good dedicated baking book (Baking Illustrated takes the cake (har har), and is on my list of cookbooks once I get an income again) so I started with Joy of Cooking, usually a pretty standard place to start. My jewel cookbook is The Art of Simple Cooking by the great Alice Waters. She has written an exceedingly helpful and comprehensive resource for just the type of cooking I want to be second nature; simple, fresh, versatile, and completely delicious. She limits her treatment of bread however. She explains that she is not a baker and has access to better baked good than she could produce- I can only imagine she means place like the Cheese Board, Acme, and Semi Freddy which, delightfully, I have access to a well (though only geographically anyway, not monetarily). She has a fine recipe for foccacia and pizza and other more quick breads and desserts.

So back to the Joy of Cooking it is. The most straightforward recipe is for “White Bread”, which doesn’t sound so appealing- but it’s what I had.

I have bulk yeast so I first had to figure out how much yeast is in a “packet”, since that’s so standard. 2- 1/4 teaspoons.

I also looked into flax meal, which I had on hand. I wanted to something to boost the texture, flavor, and all around wholesomeness, since I had only all purpose flour and some whole wheat pastry.

So I got to mixing the first ingredients, I added less sugar than called for (I added under 1 tbsp) and then stopped at salt- 1 tbsp!?!? That just seemed really excessive. I checked other bread recipes online with their ratio of salt to flour- and most used only 1-1/2 tsp, so I went with that.

I scalded 1c of milk. Here’s another place I stopped. We are lucky enough to be able to buy raw milk, and we love it. It’s the most expensive item in our grocery list, but so worth it. All that life helping my belly process stuff and the taste is unbeatable- we decided if we couldn’t afford to buy it raw, we won’t buy it at all. So, why use this special product in cooking- cooking it defeats the purpose of the extra expense. I did it anyway, but it’s something I need to think about. I’d like to just use buttermilk (keeps so well, and I love it) or water if possible.

With the wet yeast mixture I added about 5 cups of a all purpose/whole wheat pastry mixture and about 3/4 cup flax meal. Since it’s usually an egg or oil sub, I wasn’t really sure about the result of using it like another type of flour. I definitely added another cup or so of the WW pastry in the kneading process.

As I was mixing the dough I was worried it would end up too light, given the daintiness of my flours and the addition of the flax (homemade bread always seems like it should be dense and filling). But the dough took on a nice heaviness and elasticity in the kneading, so I decided not to worry.

(credit to mom on the handmade towel, and note the oven is off for the rising)

I misread the instructions a bit and let the whole thing rise to double twice and then put it into two loaves, at which point I wasn’t sure if I should let them double again or just bake them. So I left them in the slightly warmed oven (I had started to pre-heat and bake and then changed my mind) covered for about twenty minutes.

In skimming the different recipes out there, it seemed there was some debate about pre-heating. I decided I would take a chance, since I was now getting impatient, and just put the loaves in while the oven got hot and let them bake from there. I did follow the JoC instructions to cook at 450 for 10 mins, then lower to 350.

I put in a little pyrex dish of water to help the crust harden, but after more research, I think a bigger pan of hot water does a better job.

It seemed to work out okay and they were certainly dense. A little bland I guess but a nice, very homey texture.

(this is one of the two)

I’ll continue to try some different approaches, in fact I think next time I will try this one. I like the idea of having a ready to go starter to bake as needed, ensuring no waste and convenience for the next few batches (and apparently you can freeze yeast dough,which I have never been sure about). I used to listen to the Splendid Table program weekly before I moved (not sure when/if we get it here in Berkeley, and the recipes and discussion is worthwhile-though I am always a little put off by the sponsorship by Super-Target)

The bread joined this swordfish and chard/maitake dinner…and went on to many more.