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.