a sour culture

Sourdoughs have long mystified this novice bread baker.  Snatching yeast from air and trapping it in the folds of a loose dough, like fireflies in a jar, is to me, magic.   Thankfully, there are people like my baking instructor, Paul, who can teach even the incompetent tease logic into this baking mystery, and learn to culture sours.  On the first day of our french bread course, Paul handed out two mother starters- a levain and a rye chef.  Both began as seed cultures that were transformed into a mother culture- the base of the sourdough that is fed and aerated and prodded along until you finally pull off a portion for your bread starter.  Paul had been maintaining his cultures for a number of weeks, and when he opened the jars to share them with us, the tangy, yeasty perfumes were strong enough to intoxicate.

When the class ended, I took my starters home and obediently fed them daily for a week, until I had a quart of bubbling festuous culture.  I decided to try my hand at a rye loaf first, and took to Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads for advice.  Peter explains that rye hearth breads are made with varying proportions of rye and wheat flours, and suggests beginning with a meteil- containing 45% rye.  I followed Peter's advice, and created a soaker with whole wheat flour, which I rested in the refrigerator for a day.  The rye chef was given a large dinner of rye flour and filtered water, and then put to bed for 24 hours at room temperature, until it had doubled in size and smelled strongly of fruit and yeast and vinegar.  Once the starter was ready, a portion was weighed out and combined with the soaker to form the final dough.  The result was a tacky gray ball that resembled the homemade playdoughs and mudpies I concocted in my younger days.  I thought about tossing the whole mess out, but decided instead, to try a little patience. 

The final dough rested for an hour, and in the mean time, I fed what remained of the rye chef (rye flour, water, and a nice stir) and popped it back into the refrigerator.   Once the dough had doubled in size,  I divided and formed it into three batards, which had their final proof in a make-shift couche, before being scored and baked off.  When the loaves were browned and crusty, I pulled them from the oven, waited until they were just cool enough to barehand, and dove in: dense; subtly sour, with flavors that fold and unfold from front of tongue to back and bring to mind sweeping wheat fields and freshly turned earth.  After finishing an entire loaf and a half pound of cheese, Joe and I decided that the meteil was nice, certainly edible, enjoyable even, but a bit of a laxative it you know what I mean.   


I must sheepishly admit that since my bread course has finished, and Tallahassee has hovered in the nineties for a month or more, my oven has gone on extended vacation.  It is bound to return to me soon, to spark and rumble and inspire me to make something lovely.  Just you wait.

lessons from the hearth

As a present for my birthday, my sweet sweet man bought me my very first baking lessons- a three-week course in classic french breads.  My affair with baking began with the sweets, owing to my father's notorious sweet tooth, and his habit of ending all of my childhood activities with a visit to the bakery.  My interest in breads started much later, when I landed the job of a pizza baker at my college's wood-fired brick oven.  Bread baking has since turned into an unfettered obsession filled with burnt loaves, deflated dough, and, occasionally, baguettes that make me swoon.  Although my life as a pretend baker began with the sweets, my education as a real-life baker is beginning with bread.  Oh yeah!

This past week, our baking class covered a french sourdough bread called a Pain au Levain.  Levain is a pretty word for a bread starter- a wild-yeasted dough that acts as a leavening agent and replaces commercial yeast.  A bread made with a levain starter is, essentially, a sourdough- tangy and complex, due to the wild yeast and bacteria culture.  We prepared the dough for the Pain au Levain by mixing the levain starter with flour, water, and salt.  I took my dough home to shape and proof in a banneton- a wicker basket that is floured and used both to rise and to shape a loaf-leaving a distinctive floured spiral on the surface of the bread (Thanks Jeanne!). 

To bake off the Pain au Levain, I turned the oven up as high as it could go (about 500 deg.), placed an up-turned sheet pan on the lower rack, to act as a baking stone, and fitted the top-most rack with a cast-iron skillet.  When the bread was ready to bake, I scored the top and slid it into the oven.  For a last measure, I poured a cup of water into the hot skillet and quickly shut the oven door.  As the water burned off into steam, it helped to create a crisp and shiny crust.  The result was beautiful.  I sliced the loaf, and marinated a topping of red onions, garlic and tomatoes, and a rich balsamic vinaigrette.  We filled our bottles with homemade raspberry Italian sodas, threw our things in the car, and took off for Asheville for our college graduation.   A fresh bread bruschetta and a drive through the pecan groves of southern Georgian... bliss. 

 

a foreword

My mother once gave me a unicorn diary with a silver lock and key.  At the time, I was in the habit of turning down all sound advice, so I left the pages empty.  If I could keep my secrets there now, I would.  But then, who could watch this private disaster unfold?

An introduction is in order for the birth of this new monster.  Hello.  My name is L.v.  I am an average twenty-something: a college graduate with a thick layer of debt, a stack of unused textbooks, and a pile of reservations about my career track.  I also carry this notion that life slips more slowly through your fingers if you love, entirely, what you do. 

And so, with this fantastic idea, I am about to make the most idiotic decision of my life.  I am quitting my job, tossing aside my expensive undergraduate degree, and endeavoring to find success with the thing that makes me happiest: baking. 

Here is where this public diary comes into play.  I have no formal training in the pastry arts and only a sliver of experience.  But, I have a cache of reputable recipes and a family whose support for my high-flung fancies is unfailing.  To keep myself honest, I am opening this confessional as a place to document the successes and failures of my culinary home-schooling and to track, hopefully, the opening of a bakery from the very very beginning.  Here goes nothing!