People love the idea of backyard gardens and urban fruit trees, but I have to say, as someone who professionally deals with people’s yards, most backyard fruit goes to squirrels, rats, and worms. Which isn’t the worst thing, but it just goes to show how much work it is to take responsibility for your own food.

Our backyard apple tree is basically the reason we ended up renting this place. A few years back we spent months looking for a new place to live when we moved to Berkeley, it was December when we found this apartment, 1/3 of an old house on a busy street on the Oakland/Berkeley border. My (then to be) husband went into the mess of a backyard (then to be garden), picked the last apple off the bare tree, took a bite, and he was sold. For our first fall here the apple crop was overwhelming for us fruit tree newbies and a lot of the apples went to waste (ie garden rats and compost). The second year (last year), heavy Spring rain knocked off almost all the blossoms and we hardly got any fruit at all. This year, the blossoms were incredible. The picture above was actually from trying to capture one of the hundreds of bees buzzing up in the pink and blue. The tree has gotten more love this year, more water and compost and good intentions, and we made out with a decent crop, this time with intentions to use our bounty.

Luckily they don’t all fall at once and we’ve managed to keep up with ripe apples by getting in five very full apple pies in the last month. A pie a week seems like a good run right? Well before October I had never actually made a real deal apple pie. My go to apple gallette has now been replaced with something far more substantial as it uses far more apples (which is the goal after all). This has been a great reminder of how to get a particular dish right- make it once a week for a couple months. Now the idea of throwing together a stellar apple pie for dinner guests coming in two hours doesn’t seem the least bit daunting (and yes, we have been sharing all this pie action with others). Through repetition you learn what you like and what proportions get you there, the steps become second hand and before you know if you’ve mastered a dish and can make it with confidence and ease.

I am pretty set on having a flaky crust, but I wanted to avoid the temptation of a white flour pie. (my mother in-law makes the best tasting pie crust from white flour and crisco…and while I enjoy it, at a pie per week, it kind of crosses the line from indulgence to dietary staple and so I have to make it something more nourishing) I learned “white” and “flaky” don’t necessarily go hand in hand. The heavy whole wheat crusts I’ve humored over the years at hippie pot lucks largely have their fat (or lack of it) to blame. The more shortening the better, but that being said you don’t want a high protein whole wheat.  In the nutrition facts on a sack of flour (if you are buying pre-ground, from a store) will give you the protein content, which for a flaky pie you want to be low and for chewier things like bread you want a higher protein. Whole wheat pastry flour is low protein and really makes a great crust- provided that you have enough good fat.

For pie, butter or lard are the best. I haven’t made a pie crust with lard yet (the ranch I get my grass fed meat from has been out…pie making time they say), but I hear that once you try it, you won’t be able to go back. I also haven’t made pie crust from flour ground at home. I did make a crust from sprouted spelt flour and was really pleased with the results. It is very rare from me to eat grains that have not undergone one of the three S’s (sprouting, soaking, sourdough) but I just wanted to make a “normal” pie. Again, as it it now officially pie season I just couldn’t justify the exception (my tummy and skin agreed). I don’t quite understand why spelt works well because it contradicts the statement above about protein levels- it is high in protein, but I have to assume that there is something different with regular wheat protein and spelt protein- since some people can’t digest the former but are fine on the latter. The sprouted performed well and tastes great, largely to do with how fresh it is. Check out what the Whole Grains Council, a pretty mainstream group nutrition-wise, says about sprouted grains…so good for you.

The lessons of cooking can be learned quickly when you work with a dish consistently. Our first pie ended up shallow which led to my first lesson in apple pie: cut the apples into big chunks and pile them very high. Out of habit from the gallette I am used to I sliced them, which makes for a very shallow pie (and also takes longer). The apples are peeled, which I did hesitantly, but I think it makes a difference for getting the right texture. I should try going un-peeled and see for sure.

The cross cuts are so classic and just make me feel…wholesome. The way the steam comes pouring out into the cool air seems like it will lure neighbors, cartoon-like to our house, floating with their noses on the scent.

With the sprouted flour this pie is a dessert (or snack, or part of breakfast) that stays out of “exception food” territory. Made with at least eight apples, only two tablespoons of unrefined palm sugar, lots of healthy butter fat and a bit of arrowroot powder for thickening its something I’m thrilled to eat week after week all season.

                          

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.

                          

In Nourishing Traditions, there is one instance that Sally Fallon gives a thumbs up to the increased globalization (and industrialization) of food and that is to the availability of a wide variety of fruits and vegetables year round, which insures that people will eat enough variety of plants. (I’m not sure if she still holds this feeling as so much of her work involves supporting small farmers to provide ecologically grown local food.) Nina Planck also admits that she goes beyond the farmer’s market in winter to have a fresh green salad every day, for her it’s worth it. Ultimately I would probably make the same choice if I didn’t live in a place where lettuce is bright and happy all year, but I wonder if we are “supposed” to eat the kinds of food we are able to find in a given season. Not just to ecological or economic reasons, but because of what our bodies need at a given time.

I’ve tried to explore an intuition that the foods in season are just the foods our bodies need in a given season. That is, could it be that collard greens, broccoli, brussell sprouts and butternut squash, carrots, and yams are all available right now and such timing matches up with my body’s particular nutritional needs in the winter?

It isn’t really an easy thing to answer since people live in such different climates (around the world and different from their ancestry). Apparently, in Traditional Chinese Medicine “the foods that are natural to a particular season carry strong messages of Qi balancing and tonifying for that season.” (more on that here) From my limited understanding of this body of knowledge it seems that winter is yin, and balance is created by consuming yang foods. Yang foods are warming and include crops that take a long time to grow and those that are eaten cooked. This means that the food needed for balance in winter are just those foods that are available in winter, which would make sense

In western medicine terms winter means cold and flu season and SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Both of these issue can be valiantly battled through food, but it isn’t clear to me that the foods available in winter are uniquely rich in immune supporting qualities (for cold and flu) and omega 3’s, Vitamin D, and antioxidants (for SAD). They all have all these things, but not, it doesn’t seem, in special winter abundance.

So, there is some discrepancy on whether foods really appear during the season in which they are best for your body. But even if nature might not be writing me a seasonal prescription I still hold that eating in season is the best way to get the fullest variety of foods over the course of a year. Even though you might be getting less variety in a given season, you get more greens for your green because in-season food is cheaper and over the course of the year the variety is great because you are not just sticking to the veggies and fruits you are comfortable with, but are challenged to try favorite dishes with seasonal alternatives. Sally Fallon may be right that some people wouldn’t eat fruits and veggies at all in the winter if all they had only brassicas and roots to choose from, but maybe that’s only because they’ve never been challenged to go without. (I have to admit that I am still stuck in the naive assumption that fruits and vegetables are the only things that change with the seasons (besides getting venison at hunting season from family, crab for the first (only) time in the year around Christmas, and a limited supply of pastured eggs at the farmer’s market during winter). For a more complete understanding of the seasonality of food, I recommend reading this article from Mother Earth News by Joel Salatin the famous grass farmer.)

There is also the argument that seasonal veggies and fruits are more nutritional because the food is fresher; that is, you eat it closer to the time it was harvested and it was harvested ripe, which is when a plant is also most nutritious to those animals who eat it…clever plants.

In addition to my New Years resolution to eat more greens I am trying not to get too deep into the details of the nutritional profile for a given whole food. Basically, the  clearest way to talk about food in this culture is to use the terms and taxonomy of western science (The Chinese Medicine example above is a refreshing alternative, but unfortunately doesn’t translate as easily). But this view of food I think has obscured our understanding of what we eat, rather than expanded it. Michael Pollan dealt with this issue in his In Defense of Food, basing a discussion of the rejection of Nutritionism with a whole book about nutrition.  Ultimately a healthy relationship with real food will come from people not relying on lab work with fruit flies to tell them what feels good in their bodies. It seems that best place for this research is a kitchen counter or a table with loved ones. That all said though, if you are interested in knowing the nutritional profile (and much more) of a given food  I highly recommend this site (though their data on cholesterol is limited, like most healthy food sites). See what my orange and green winter meals are providing us here and here (respectively).

Also new this new year I started taking Cod Liver Oil (fermented actually). This is the only supplement I take and the reason is for the difficulty in finding food sources of vitamin D. From another Mother Earth News piece (about SAD actually):

Eat D-licious foods. Only a few foods contain much vitamin D. Sources of vitamin D include cod liver oil (1,360 IU per tablespoon); oily fish such as salmon, sardines and mackerel (about 350 IU per 3.5 ounces); eggs (about 20 IU per yolk); and fortified milk, soy milk and orange juice (98 IU per 8-ounce serving).

                          

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.

                          

The best and worst part of the trip was eating. Walking meant we wanted and even deserved more food than ever, yet we had the constraints of what we could carry, what would keep well in packs, could be prepared easily on our one burner and two pans, and what we could afford. On top of that we still wanted to have food that was produced with fairness and health in mind for all involved. Believe me, that narrows it down and we made plenty of compromises.

The best meals were lunches. I think because they were the most nutrient dense. Foods that are ready to eat, which also has a lot to offer your body and tastebuds, are heavier than foods that take some preparation, mainly hydration and heat. Breads, meats, cheeses, snacks. So, we sacrificed some extra weight for really good and quick lunch food. Sardines in a can, a loaf of sourdough bread, a salami, aged jack cheese. Days just coming out of a town meant more fresh foods like avocado or other fruit.

We ate oatmeal every single morning (we opted to forgo soaking, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be possible) . I would be sure to put the raisins or other dried fruit (A Sunkist medley was a particular treat) into the cold water along with sea salt to make sure it was tender and plump. Once the oatmeal was ready I would add a thick pad of cultured butter, raw honey, and sometimes peanut butter for a really dense start to the day. Instead of getting sick of this same meal, it was the one consistency in our life on the trail and I looked forward to it every morning. We would take our time to fill our bellies and drink a cup of tea before starting out.

Walking and sleeping on the ground and spending a month outside connected us to the natural world in a way we hadn’t experienced before. But we still carried civilization and modern life on our backs.  The experience of nature was closer than ever but it was still more of a shelter around us than our true environment. Everything we really needed we brought in from elsewhere. We drank water from the creeks, but always filtered. We picked out good flat spots to sleep, but always with a pad. We ate outside and cooked in the sand, but never ate food from the spot we settled. We had a few breakfasts with picked blackberries, some wild mint tea, snacked on salal berries while walking,  and we could have added wild nettles to our meals, but I was too uncertain.

Trail conversations often covered what we would eat if we hadn’t bought four days worth of food at the last town and hadn’t had full bellies from a roadside diner. Some backpackers who are out for weeks or months will use small game traps to eat fresh wild meat on the trail. I would be up for this approach and I am very excited to learn more about pack goats. Apparently a very pleasing companion, a good pack goat can carry some weight and provide fresh milk! Go out long enough and you could even have some fresh cheese. Willow-Witt Ranch knows all about it, learn more here.

We made do with what we know how to do, which is to buy the best food we can find for the money we have and make something good with it. A stay at Gospel Flat Farm in Bolinas provided us with garlic until we got to Port Orford Oregon and got more garden garlic from friends as well as some carrots for a fancier rice and beans. (Minute Brown Rice was a major winner in our book, not organic, and no Massa, but it met a need)

We had a little burner that used denatured alcohol to make a nice hot flame, but we would use a wood fire as much as we could, or sometimes as necessary when fuel got low. Every evening we would scope out a flat spot to cook, with as little wind as possible and plenty of little surfaces on which to set food and the cooking kit, and of course a rock or log on which to sit. Going up the coast meant a lot of beach camping and keeping stuff our of the sand was a big priority.

The best spots were campsites away from cars and roads that still had a nice set up for easier living, meaning really just a picnic table, and fire pit with a place for pots and a decent composting toilet. With the basics there, life on the trail was an absolute joy.

                          

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.

                          

I sliced them up, dipped the small slices in milk then patted them in half flour half corn meal with salt and pepper mixed in. Fried in olive oil, took maybe a minute.

They were so good there was no chance to photograph the result. This is to encourage you to try these for yourself.

                          

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.