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I visited the bakery in SF but never really tasted
the Tartine Basic Country Bread which so impressed
Michael Pollan (See his book "Cooked") at a party.
I read Chad Robertson's first Tartine book a couple
of years ago and even baked sourdough once
(not following his recipe, though). But after that,
I went on to condemn all carbs and the white flour
especially.
Recently, however, things started to change. I
realized that I need carbs to stay away from low
blood sugar. Even in the past two years, we ate
artisan whole wheat bread all the time. With
awareness and discipline, wheat and especially
whole wheat flour could be my ally. With these
thoughts, I returned to bread baking.
I milled some wheat berries, mixed a small amount
of flour and water last Monday. By Thursday, my starter
was wildly alive and I began to feed it every morning.
(After the first couple of days, I stopped dumping
the 80% of the mixure at feeding time but instead
turned it into the flat bread we have in northern China.)
I made the leaven Saturday night and, the next
day, went through the stages of dough-development
in the recipe. I made a lot of mistakes and some
were ridiculous, e.g., I used a fork instead of a
spoon to scoop out some leaven for the float test.
A fork would poke the big air bubbles and the
thing would never float! This delayed the bulk
fermentation (BF) by three or four hours and I had
to put the dough into the fridge overnight to retard
the final rise. But that was a fortunate mistake.
Not only did I recover in three hours, I started
to regard the dough as a living thing and keeping
the air in it a goal while doing the shaping and folding.
To say that I didn't follow the recipe verbatim
would be an understatement. First, I halved every
ingredient in the recipe to bake only one loaf. I
used a deep Lodge dutch oven instead of the
combo-cooker. I turned the dough only once
during the BF. The room and water temperatures
prescribed were mostly ignored, neccesarily or
not. After all, bakers customized the recipe in
wildly different ways and got great results, the
book says.
To paraphrase Leonard Cohen (who died/graduated
recently) in "Hallelujah," even though it all went
wrong, I stood before the oven Monday morning,
dough in hand, and was ready to bake. The loaf was
heavier than I'd like but overall it looked very
decent. The crust was dark and crisp, the crumb
had a nice slight sour taste to it, and the cross
section showed a large amount of bubbles. It's not
bad but I'd still like a little more oven spring.
Mine looked like three quarters of the amateur
baker Marie's shown in the book. Another direction
is to go whole wheat with ingredients such as
walnuts, olives, etc.
I still don't eat much bread, preferring quinoa and gimbap.
Making kimchi has been fun and I've been enjoying it for almost a decade. It also looks great and therefore makes nice gifts to friends and colleagues.
Was going to suggest whole wheat but so glad to see you mentioned at the end.
Keep such great writing and who knows someday you could become another Ha Jin...
Commercial yeast is mono-culture made of one species of yeast. It's reliable and uniform and helps business. On the other hand, artisan breads like the SF sourdough use a natural source (the starer that attracts local yeasts and bacteria) which consists of multiple yeasts and gives the bread flavor.
I seldom bake, and the most successful thing I baked is banana bread out of a small oven (no fermentation). Just curious, why not just use regular yeast (but leaven, looks like more steps. Might be more than just yeast)? I made pumpkin buns (lots of pumpkin mixed with white flour) last night, using the yeast from Costco, and it is good as usual, except the dough took longer yesterday to rise. Thanks for sharing.