The Starter

As requested, here's some info on the starter.

You'll need a small clear plastic container--probably one that's about 8-12 ounces would be ideal. You'll also need water and flour. The book suggests a wide range of flour options: bread flour, all purpose flour, white/wheat flour blends... All should work well enough for developing the initial culture. I used the half and half mix of white all purpose flour and whole wheat flour.

If you have a scale, maintaining the starter is a little easier. For the most part, you'll be adding equal weights of water and flour. For the initial mixing, I started with about 3 oz each of the flour blend and the water. Mix this in a container until it's the consistency of a THICK batter. (I did it wrong the first time and ended up with something way too watery for the first few days--even so, it was easy enough to recover.) You can mix with either a spoon or your hand. Hands are suggested for the first mixing, so that the starter can take advantage of the wild yeasts that are naturally on the surface of the flour and the baker...

You'll want to cover the container with a clean kitchen towel or a washcloth, and put it somewhere dark and fairly cool. I used a closet. Weird but effective. Check it after about 2 days. It should start looking fairly active by then--if not, give it another day. This is what mine looked like after 48 hours:


Note: it smelled far from pleasant after the first few days. It was beginning to overpower the apartment, which was not ideal--I was worried my home would smell like that eternally, but after a few feeding cycles it stopped being noticeable.

The starter needs to be fed about once every 24 hours. For me, the process was something like this:

1. Using a spoon, lift off the top layer and discard. Then discard more of the starter until you're left with about 20-25% of the original volume.
2. Add equal parts flour (whatever flour option you originally used) and water--I ended up doing about 1.5 oz of each for the feeding.
3. Stir until it resembles a thick batter again. Cover, and replace in a cool dark spot.

Start to learn what it smells like before and after the feeding, and make notes of its appearance, too. It took about 2 weeks for mine to start smelling recognizably like bread, and for the culture to behave the same way every day. Once that's happened, it's usable.

Now that I want to be making bread regularly, I'll need to keep up the daily starter maintenance. The idea that these cultures can become many years old is both creepy and totally awesome.

I just wrote a fair amount about the starter, but it's only a fraction of the material they present about the starter in the book--for all the facts, you may want to get your information directly from the source!

Bread!

As promised, a progress report on my bread resolution. I've been tending my starter for a few weeks now. Once it started to "behave predictably", I decided to give the actual baking a try. I'll say upfront that this turned into a full day ordeal. I was determined to follow the instructions to the letter, so I decided to do this on a day that I could devote pretty much fully to the project. That day was yesterday.

Without going into much detail, a portion of the starter is incorporated into a leaven. I let the leaven develop overnight--the book said it would be ready when it passed "the float test". So here is photographic evidence that my goo did indeed float:


Now I'll leave out all the middle stuff--basically you mix the dough and then let it sit at various stages for long periods of time--I took a lot of pictures, but they all looked like... dough. So I'll spare you. This develops structure and flavor. I didn't have to do much hands-on work during these phases; just a lot of waiting to let the bread become magical. Or so I hoped. In the end, the rising and dividing and shaping and baking ended pretty well:




It has the texture of *actual* bakery bread! And a flavor that's like a mild sourdough, with more pronounced wheat--deliciousness. For a first try, I have to admit that I'm thrilled with the results. Now that I've done it once I won't be so terrified about screwing up the process in future. Knowing that bread like this can actually come out of my oven means I'll probably stop buying bread elsewhere, and that's extra exciting! And the recipe made enough for two, so here's my bonus loaf (the two had their final rises in different containers, hence the different surface patterns--quite pretty!):

Bread?

I don't ordinarily make too many resolutions, because I tend to drop them very quickly. Because I spend a good 40% of my time thinking about food, however, I figured some kind of kitchen-skill-improvement would stand a fighting chance of lasting past February. We'll see if I'm singing a different tune once another semester is underway...

I love bread. Possibly more than any other food. I can make a passable loaf of bread. When Blake visited in the fall, we made this:


We were quite pleased with ourselves, because it was delicious, and because we could make these with it:


We had to make three because we had three kinds of cheeses...


Hungry yet?

Anyway. I can make bread, but when I see an artisan loaf at the store, it calls to me. I would LOVE to be able to make them on my own. I know it will be tricky with a conventional oven, and with an apartment that has crazy temperature fluctuations. But, I'm going to try. And to make myself accountable, I'll post progress reports here.

I've got a lovely new book to guide me, and a rather obscene amount of flour stashed in my cabinet, so I think I'm ready to go. Also, I've got the beginning of a starter hanging out in my hall closet (weird place, I know, but it's the most temperature-stable...)--more on that in a few days; right now it's just a bowl of unimpressive goo. Should be fun!

Cardamom Bread

Back again, with two months of posts! I'm starting with this, because it was one of my favorites. Last Christmas our neighbors brought us a large loaf of cardamom bread, sprinkled with red and green sugar--it was beautiful, and we enjoyed it for days. We had never tried cardamom bread before that, but all of us loved it. I did a little researching and found out that it was fairly common to put cardamom in sweet breads in Scandinavian countries. When I found a recipe for "Swedish Coffee Bread" (from King Arthur Flour, as usual) that called for cardamom, I hoped it would produce something like the loaf we had last winter.

The dough didn't rise as much as most yeast doughs--I was a little worried that I had ruined it somehow--but in the end, it made a perfect loaf. I managed to devour it in about two days (which is why I don't usually let myself bake bread alone...)--plain slices, toast with butter, toast with apple butter... I plan on making it again over the holidays, hopefully when I'll have help eating it?


Cardamom Bread
-1/2 c. lukewarm milk
-1 package active dry yeast
-2 1/2 c. flour
-1 egg
-1/4 c. sugar
-3 T. softened butter
-3/4 t. slat
-1 t. crushed or ground cardamom
-melted butter
-cinnamon & sugar

1. Combine the milk, yeast, and 1/2 c. flour in a large bowl, and let stand for about 15 minutes, until bubbling and expanded.
2. Beat in egg, sugar, butter, salt, and cardamom.
3. Gradually add the remaining flour until the dough forms and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl.
4. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and knead for 3-4 minutes. Allow it to rest while greasing a large bowl, and then knead for another 3-4 minutes. Once the dough is smooth and elastic, return it to the greased bowl and turn it over several times to coat it with oil. Cover and let rise from 1.5 to 2 hours.
5. Punch down the dough, turn it out again onto a floured surface, and knead briefly.
6. Divide the dough into three equal parts, and shape each into a long rope. Braid the ropes together.
7. Place the braid into a greased loaf pan (4.5"x8.5"), brush the top with melted butter, and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar mixture. Cover the pan and let it rise again for 1 hour.
8. Bake the loaf at 350* for 30 minutes. Turn the loaf out and cool completely on a rack.