Dry(ish) Dough Success

I made a version of Wild Yeast's Norwich More Sour Sourdough again. I was determined to get it right this time. So I only added 35 grams of water extra. I mixed it together with the normal head on the Kitchen Aid instead of the dough hook and saved the dough hook for kneading process. However, the Kitchen Aid seemed to be having a lot of trouble kneading the dough so I added another 50g of water and it seemed to work out much better.

Loaf One

I've noticed I have an impossible time walking away from the Kitchen Aid while it's mixing or kneading. I like that it doesn't make a mess, but I just feel like I can't leave the baking process. I guess old habits are hard to break.

Loafs Two and Three

The bread turned out beautifully. Really stunning. My only complaint is that it tastes a little more like store-bought bread than my usually fare. Obviously it's much fresher than it would be in a store and no commercial yeast and a little added whole wheat for flavor, but it doesn't have the same depth of flavor that for example the Tartine Loaf has or even that of my own easy sourdough.

Loaf and Mini Loaf

I also made a couple of the mini loaves (see above and below). They were silly but really cute.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone. I've been a bit MIA recently because preparing for the Holiday dinner is quite a large task. Servius messed up his rotator-cuff pretty badly and so he has not been able to help as much as usual. We've had some other unforseen setbacks too. But despite all of this, the house is decorated and almost cleaned and we are going to sit by the fire and eat the apple tarts I made for breakfast.

I woke up early this morning to start baking the loaves (five loaves of bread just in case something goes wrong). The first loaf is beautiful so its been a lovely Chirstmas morning so far. Merry Christmas, everyone.

P.S. I heard a story about a dear friend who said she would move back to this city to come to our Christmas dinners. I wanted to let her know that we would be happy to have her anytime she comes back to this coast!

Wine Snob: L'insolite Malbec

L'Insolite

I had an absolutely fabulous Malbec recently I wanted a glass of wine with the wonderful mushroom we had about a week ago. It was the night Cerinthus flew into town. I have mostly tried Argentinian Malbecs but this one is French and it was wonderful.

The L'insolite was the color of the Japanese plumbs outside my window-- a beautiful purple color. The scent was of musty cherries and antique book leather. It was wonderful. The flavor changed over time. I decanted it for about 30 minutes as recommended, but I also drank it slowly with the food an it evolved over time. At first there was a raspberry flavor with a slightly sour bite. There was also a warm note-- a little like wood) with the slightest hint of wood. There was also a pinch of unrefined cacao. The flavor lingered in the mouth as though it was stuck to the tongue or the roof of the mouth. Delicious.

Broken Philosophy?

The title of this blogpost is in response to my previous post: "The Philosophy of Baking." I've been using the kitchen aid a lot, mostly because it makes baking significantly less messy than baking my hand because everything is contained in a single bowl. This is especially helpful when I am making bread because usually kneading the bread is a rather messy process. However, it is a learning process.

I decided to make Wild Yeast's More Sour Sourdough with my Kitchen Aid, as the recipe calls for a mixer. However, I didn't account for the requirements of the mixer at all. I made a dough that I amped up to 77% hydration, because this is a reasonable hydration to knead by hand. At this point, the dough hook hardly seemed to work at all. I also did not properly account for the temperature correctly; the bread ended up having its bulk fermentation cut short and it produced loaves where not all the water cooked out of the bread.

Next time I will know better. Perhaps even the dryer dough will work better with the Kitchen Aid.

Holiday Cheer

It's really beginning to feel like the holidays. We're sending a bunch of stuff off to the post office today so that our relatives get their gifts on time. It's been a couple of days that I might describe with one of Sallust's favorite words...asperae dies...but things are looking up.

• We now have a live Christmas tree (and yes, I mean live, as in still-living. We plant them in our yard, although this one is small enough that we can probably re-pot it and prune it for next year before it retires to the yard).
• Cerinthus is coming tonight
• There is some lovely sourdough in the refrigerator so that I can bake it right before Cerinthus gets in and the house will smell like fresh bread
• My room is (almost) clean
• We've brought some decorations up from the garage.

Happy holidays, everyone.

The Philosophy of Baking

So yesterday our Kitchen Aid mixer came. Servia and I decided that would be our early Christmas present and we could use it for some holiday baking. We searched around for a while and found a refurbished one on the Kitchen Aid website. Excited to try it out, we made two batches of cookie dough last night.

The Kitchen Aid is shockingly efficient. In about 30 seconds it can cream butter and sugar to a consistency that it would take me at least 10 minutes to achieve. It was amazing.

Creamed Butter and Sugar

The one thing that bothers me is that with this machine baking is a streamlined process. Although I certainly sample the fruits of my baking, I started baking in order to relieve stress. Baking is very physical-- creaming butter or kneading bread requires strength and skill. Even though I have been remiss on hitting the gym (and I primarily do cardio when I have), I have little muscles in my arms from kneading bread dough. Without the physicality of baking, it turns the stress relief from stress baking to stress eating, which can be very dangerous. So is this appliance going to ruin how I bake?

No. In reality, the efficiency can be extremely helpful. I often have to make a dessert for my final class of a session, etc when I'm stressed and have other things to do. Furthermore, one of the batches of cookies I made last night are my dark chocolate shortbread cookies. These cookies are a big hit, but they are actually more frustrating to bake than I would like. The dough is extremely dry and very hard to combine to the correct consistency. The Kitchen Aid made them without the frustration and they were suddenly both simple and delicious.

Thus, I have (quickly) made peace with the mini-factory in the kitchen. I will still probably make almost all of my bread by hand (with the exception of trying this amazing loaf of deliciousness that I've been eying for ages). However, over the holidays when efficiency is paramount, I have a feeling the new Kitchen Aid and I will become fast friends.

Fixing the Chicken

Since I've been on vacation, I've been watching dinosaur specials. I know, it's really nerdy, but to compound it I've been doing this while making my Greek Principal Parts list.

So by now, I've run out of most of the various dinosaur specials that are around (sad!), and because all of my paleontology lectures from the "Prehistoric Creatures" series by National Geographic lectures on iTunes have stopped (do you hear that, National Geographic? Get your act together!), I've been seeking paleontology lectures elsewhere. I came across this TED Talk that totally cracked me up.

As it is, so far as we know, impossible to extract DNA from a dinosaur, Jack Horner talks about reconstructing a dinosaur from their closest living relatives, the birds (which are in fact classified as avian dinosaurs). He talks about reactivating genes in a chicken to create a living (non-avian) dinosaur. Pretty cool, and he's also quite funny.

Meditiations on a Cup of Coffee

 
One of the nice things about coffee is that even if it's bad, it makes you feel better at the end of a bad day. This is what I was thinking about Monday night when my finals finished. Having a warm cup of coffee in my hands just made me feel so much better.

My finals were...unfortunate. As I only had two days to study between my final projects and finals, I tried to target my studying to what seemed most likely to be on the exams. As it turned out, I could have moved one of my finals to a later date in order that I wouldn't have to take both finals in a row with almost no break, but I learned that too late (this is what comes from trying to learn the ropes of a new institution). So I target-studied, and this turned out to be a rather ineffective strategy.

What actually ameliorated my wounded pride ameliorated further the next morning. I realized that even if things went as poorly as I thought, I learned a lot. My Greek and Latin are better. I wrote another paper on Plato that utilizes ideas I could not bring into my thesis. And, I have a better idea how the system works. So, at the end of the next term, I'm going to clean up on my finals.

Apple Pielettes

Baby Pies

I had some left-over pie crust and a few extra apples the other day so I made pielettes in our little tartlette pan. They were delicious, even if the crust-apple ratio was a little ridiculous (I only had three apples so they were a bit skimpy.

Pielette

 I made these pies without the top crust for my thesis orals board and they were a bit hit.

Breakfast, anyone?

I used the same apple pie and pie crust recipes as usual.

Time and Temperature

Modified Tartine Country Loaf

This is a lesson on time and temperature in baking. It is one that I learned a few weekends ago. Here is the lesson: make sure you recalculate time based on temperature.

Two of the loaves I had this weekend proved the point rather perfectly. The first loaf I made this weekend followed the time precisely even thought the temperature in the kitchen was much colder. Unfortunately, this meant that the final proofing was not as effective as it should have been. The bread, then, had lovely holes, but did not spring much in the oven and had a dense almost doughy texture on the inside. I dried out the bread and made it into croutons. The croutons were good, but they required a lot of drying in the toaster over before I brushed them with my olive-oil herb mixture.

Note Doughy crumb and lack of oven spring.

Loaf number two, however, had a happier time. I messed up my schedule on the bread so I was supposed to be doing a few stretch-and-fold proceedures during dinner. Instead, I let the bread sit in the cold air to extend the time between tending to it. So it rose over 6.5 hours instead of 4. The bread turned out beautifully...so beautifully that I didn't take a proper shot of the crumb before we ate much of it!

Loaf #2 Crust

Loaf #2 Crumb (for better picture see top)

Success

My talk yesterday was a success! I spoke too fast (not a surprise), but the discussion was good and I didn't go over anyone's heads. Yay!

Anyway, I have a Sallust paper to write. So I best get back to that.

Stage Fright

On Tuesday, I have to give my presentation to my research seminar. I'm really nervous. However, my nerves do not come from a lack of speaking skills (I was a nationally ranked debater) or a lack of preparation (my research is done, my talk will be done soon). So why the nerves? Well, it's the people.

When I gave parts of my thesis at conferences my senior year in college, I knew that some of the people in the audience would know my topic thoroughly, while others may have only had a passing acquaintance. In those circumstances, I tried to aim my talk directly at the middle; I included enough details to sound well-researched while providing enough background to make it interesting for everyone else. Here, I'm not so lucky. The audience is only about 15 people. They are all fellow students in various arenas of classics, but I have no idea what to expect in terms of their knowledge about Plato. If I assume too much knowledge, my Q&A will be embarrassingly silent. This is what happened when I gave a totally unrelated presentation in my Sallust class a few weeks ago [1]. Conversely, if I try to go to broad, my topic will look like a wild generalization rather than a careful and nuanced interpretation.

I'm just ranting, really. My topic is set...nothing I can do now except hope it goes well. And, at least, I get to run an interpretation of a couple of geometric art pieces past a couple of specialists (there are two girls who work on early Greek art in the seminar). And who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and someone will passionately disagree with my reading and we'll have a nice discussion.

I've got my fingers crossed...

Endnotes

1. I gave a presentation on an article by R. Sklenár called "La République des Signes: Caesar, Cato, and the Language of Sallustian Morality" (JSTOR). The people in my class had read the article, and I assumed they had a passing familiarity with Saussure (I didn't want to talk down to anyone). Anyway, most of the class had been confused by the article so even when I dissected it more thoroughly (after asking if people had understood the portion about Cato to which I got a resounding "no"), my discussion questions still elicited silence from almost everyone except my professor. As everyone in the class is intelligent, I worked really hard to come up with complex and interesting perspectives so that I would bring something interesting to the table, but I didn't consider my audiences' lack of sleep, etc and it backfired.

Thanksgiving Baking

For Thanksgiving dinner, I brought over some bread. I made a combination of Tartine Country bread and City Bread. They were both fantastic. Unfortunately, because I was rushing and bringing them places I only got pictures of three of the five loaves, and the crumb of only one. However, I hope you will believe me when I say that the crumb was fantastic. We had two loaves for dinner, two loaves in the freezer, and one loaf for eating.

Some Pictures

Thanksgiving Cocktail?

Last year, the group of people with whom I celebrate Thanksgiving started the tradition of having a trendy light cocktail before dinner. Not being particularly trendy myself, I do not know what to suggest. Anyone have any ideas?

The Smell of Bread in the Morning

Early-Morning Bread

I got up early to bake bread this morning, so Servia woke up to the smell of  a crust caramelizing on a (mostly) whole wheat loaf. I went back to sleep while the oven was heating, but after I put the bread in, I drank a cup of tea and went over my Greek flash cards.

Crust

The reason that I got up so early to bake bread was that I went to my morning step-aerobics class at the gym. It's been a couple weeks, as I had a cold, and so I was really out of shape. As tiring as it was, I came back to a wonderful loaf of healthy-ish bread that tasted heavenly and the crazy dance moves and hundred or so sit-ups didn't seem so bad.

Post-Workout Snack

I think this is the most open crumb of all of my attempts at the Tartine Whole Wheat Country loaf. It's not like the one posted by txfarmer,  but I think that is partially due to my shaping/scoring difficulties. Although I've been baking bread for almost two full years now, I'm still a neophyte.

On Nutrinos

About two months ago, I read an article in the New York Times that said scientists believed nutrinos may have surpassed the speed of light. I asked Cerinthus, as he is currently writing his physics thesis, and he remained skeptical. However, it would be pretty cool. So today I read that a second experiment confirmed the original findings. However, the article mentions that theorists are having some trouble figuring out the reason behind this strange experimental data.

Because of this, while I was cleaning my room I listened to the In Our Time podcast on Nutrinos. Although I don't entirely understand, this time (the second time I listed to it) it made more sense.

Wine Snob: My Favorite White Wine

Chardonnay

I know, this is going to sound cheesy, but I think this may have been the best white wine I have ever had. It was a lovely chardonnay. I am not generally a big fan of white wine, mostly because the white wines I have had are either too sour, too fruity, or too flowery. However, this wine was perfect; it was like a warm beam of winter sunlight warm and refreshing at the same time. The color was a lovely pale gold and a bouquet with a slight hint of flowers. The flavor was quite dry with notes of minerals, macadamia nuts, and a kiss of pine. It was wonderful.

Sweet Transitional Sourdough

My Most Aesthetic Bread Yet

I made some bread today for our Downton Abbey picnic. It was absolutely fantastic. I realized that by refreshing the wild yeast a few hours before using putting it into the starter in the bread recipe, it gives the bread that amazing sweet flavor with no sweeteners of any kind. It was far too tempting-- we ate the whole first loaf between the three of us tonight.

I wanted to put this up on Yeast Spotting so I decided to repost the recipe. It can also be found on my original post, A New Sourdough, and on my Recipe Page.

Ingredients: 
Starter

•  56.5g 100% hydration starter
• 227g Whole Wheat Flour
• 150g Water, room temperature

Dough

•  All of the starter
• 445g Water (warm)
• 567g Unbleached Bread Flour (I used a combination of bread flour and-- when I ran out of that-- a high-protein all-purpose flour-- King Arthur's)
• 18g Salt

Directions
Starter (Day 1)

• Mix the ingredients for the starter together about 8 hours befor you plan to use it.
• Make sure you mix it with a for or something that will help incorporate a little air.
• Cover the bowl or jar and leave it to mature overnight at room temperature. Otherwise, the starter can rest in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Final Dough (Day 2)

• The starter, by now, should be all bubbly and smell slightly sweet.
• Dissolve the starter in the water.
• Then add the unbleached flour and the salt and mix into tacky ball. Let the dough rest for five minutes.
• The knead the dough by hand for 3 minutes. Try to incorporate air.
• Then do the first Peter Reinhart stretch-and-fold. Do four total with 10 minutes in between each.
• Depending on how warm your kitchen is, let the dough rest out (covered) for 1.5-2 hours before placing in the refrigerator. It was about 75 degrees in my kitchen and I let the dough sit out for 2 hours. Place it in the refrigerator overnight.

Shaping and Baking (Day 3)

•  Take the bread out of the refrigerator 5-6 hours before baking. Let it rest on at room temperature for 2-3 hours, depending upon the room temperature. The bread was still very cold at 2 hours, so I waited the extra hour.
• Then turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide it. It can make two 1.5lb loaves or three 1lb loaves. Preshape.
• Let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes, and then do the final shaping. Cover the loaves and let them rise for 2.5-4 hours. My loaves needed three hours. The first loaf we baked after two hours and I think that it could have used a little extra rising time, while the second one we baked at three hours and it turned out better.
• 20 minutes before baking, heat up the your oven with your stone-and-broth-pot or dutch oven to 500 degrees F.
• Turn your dough onto a floured peel and score it right before you put it into the oven. Turn the oven down to 450 degrees F (425 convection). 
• Let the dough bake under steam for 30-35 minutes, making sure that the edges of your scoring marks have turned golden.
• Then bake it for 20-25 minutes without steam, ensuring that it has an internal temperature of 212 degrees. It should be fairly light in weight and dark brown in color.
• Wait at least 30 minutes before slicing.

It was absolutely fantastic. One or two notes:

First, I've been using parchment on the dough as I slide it into the oven. It take the parchment paper off the bottom when I take the bread out from under steam. The reason that I've been doing this is twofold. First, sometimes my breads stick to the peel a little and stretch as I slide them into the oven. This does not happen with the parchment paper. Second, it means there is less flour that burns in the oven that I have to clean up later.

Wine Snob: Clos du Calvaire

The other night with the Downton Abbey picnic, we tried a bottle of Clos du Calvaire 2009 Chateauneuf du Pape. It was a lovely wine. We decanted it for about two hours before we tasted it. The wine had a medium body. It had notes of cherry, raspberry, earth, wood, nuts, and a hint of sourness.

I would definitely try it again. It is lovely and it melded well with the bread and cheese spread.

City Bread, A Second Attempt

City Bread

As I mentioned, I made some more city bread this weekend. I did not make the same mistakes this time, but the crumb still wasn't perfect. I also let the bread sit for 2 hours before cutting into it. The flavor still did not mature as much as I would like until about 5 hours.

Spiral Scoring

I also probably should have left it to brown a little longer. However, the internal temperature was 212 degrees F and the crust sang beautifully when I removed it from the oven.

Yum!

I also increased the amount of whole wheat from the original recipe. It was 2:3 ratio whole wheat to bread flour.

The ears did not bloom enough, sadly

I doubled the recipe and made a second loaf. It was a batard-- sort of. I don't have a batard basket, so I line a loaf pan with a floured cloth. It came out reasonably well this time, but we have a lot of bread around so I am going to freeze it.

Batard

The bread is about 82% hydration which is an awful lot. I am not great at working with it, so the crumb is not perfect. However, it is soft and moist but still light.

Crumb

There was actually some better crumb on the inside, but I did not have a camera with me at the time.

We ate about 3/4 of the bread.

We decanted a bottle of wine for three hours before drinking it. it was lovely.

Girls in the Vinyard, Cabernet Sauvignon 2005

We set out a splendid picnic with one of the last cucumbers from the garden.

Picnic

Great episode of Downton Abbey. More next week.

Wine Snob: Servia Reviews a Wine from Down Under

Today I have something a little different. I did not get my act together to write a review of the last wine that we opened, so I asked Servia compile her notes and write one. I thought she wrote a lovely review and I posted it:

 

Our weekly tradition, a relaxing Sunday picnic supper and Downton Abbey, now includes a wee bit of wine tasting. Week Two's offering was Australian: a 2004 Yering Station Shiraz-Voignier (5%). Not well-versed in wine attribution, I must say the Australian wines I had encountered previously left me wishing for something less heavy-handed. This wine however, proved a different experience. The color was a soft maroon and it had damp, woodsy aroma. It offered a medium body, with notes of ripe blackberry, wild raspberry and smoky cedar with a touch of pepper near the end and long finish. I favor Shiraz from Washington these days and this Australian cousin seemed to have the Northwest style in mind. We all agreed it was too bold for this particular meal (a rustic spread of fresh sourdough, cheese, and seasonal fruits and vegetables) but I would happily try it again, perhaps decanting it longer.

Follow Up on Dolphin Comunication

In March, I posted a piece on a group of scientists who were trying to create a common language in order to communicate simply with dolphins. I thought it was pretty cool. Recently, the New York Times did a feature on the same topic so I thought I would post it.

Now time to study for my prose composition quiz.

I Take It All Back...

No-Knead Bread

I admit it. I didn't think it could be done. I thought the no-knead revolution was absolutely absurd. Unfortunately, my increasingly busy schedule has kept me from making some of my traditional breads. So I tried a no-knead bread from from The Fresh Loaf and it worked just as it did in the pictures. I could not believe my eyes.

Crust is crisp and thin.

The crust was thinner that I usually like but is crunched and shattered beautifully. Also, although all of my breads have sung recently, this one I could hear cracking all the way across the room. It was beautiful.

Beautiful Crumb.

The crumb inside was fantastic. I had no idea it would turn out this well. The beginning stages did not look promising.

Yum!

The one thing this bread lacked was the lovely sweetness of the sourdough I like. It was nutty and flavorful, but neither sour nor sweet. This may have been the semolina.

It may be gone by morning.

Ingredients

• 30g Whole Wheat Starter
• 346g Water
• 300g Bread Flour
• 105g Semolina Flour
• 45g Whole Wheat Flour
• 9g Salt

Directions

• Mix water and starter and stir vigorously until starter is fully dissolved. Mix flour and salt to fully distribute salt. Put flour and salt together and use a dough scraper to work the flour into the water. Continue working around the bowl scraping dough from the side toward the center and pushing it down in the center, until you have a shaggy mass.
• Wait 5 minutes.
• Do a few stretch-and-folds.
• Place dough in covered bowl to rise at 75F for 4 hours.
• Place the dough in the refrigerator overnight. For about 16-30* hours.
• Take the dough out and let it sit for 2-3 hours or until it starts to warm to room temperature and bubble.
• Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and pre-shape.
• Let the dough bench rest for 30 minutes.
• Shape the dough and put it into a linen-lined bowl dusted with rice and wheat flour.
• Let it have a final rise for two hours.
• Turn it onto a peel, slash, and bake as follows.
• After a 30 minute preheat at 500 degrees F, bake the bread under steam at 450 degrees F for 30-35 minutes and then bake for 20 minutes or until 100 degrees C (212 degrees F) on the inside and chestnut brown and crispy on the outside.
• Wait for at least 1 hour before cutting.

I am a convert. I will try this bread again.

* - (Note 10/7/11) I tired this bread again and I did not let it bulk rise for long enough so the crumb was really lackluster and unfortunate.

I also made some bread the other day. I tried to make Frankie Olive's City Bread, but I made every possible mistake so it came out misshapen. It still tasted fantastic. I will try again.

Crust: A little thin, but good.

 We ate it last night and this morning.

Irregular holes, but a little dense in spots. Still good.

Now I need to go study Sallust and Latin meter (not at the same time, obviously).

Math Games

Back when I was in sixth grade, we had a warm up everyday on the whiteboard when we came into class. For a few months in the middle of the year, our project was the "Four 4s," where we had to make every number from 1 to 100 with the combination of four 4s in any mathematical sequence. I had a dream last night which involved switching math games with a friend. I eventually suggested the "Four 4s." I got stumped at 13; I am a lot better at math when awake. I wrote a few down and added a couple of alternatives.

 At the doctor's office today I started working on them while I was waiting and I am now stumped at 31.

Over the Past Weeks

I have been incredibly busy starting school and returning to teaching after a few weeks of break. I thought I would catch everyone up on some general updates.

School: I am only taking three classes at the moment, but it is a full course load in terms of units. I am taking Sallust's Bellum Catelinae, Greek Prose Composition, and a seminar on classical research. It is a reasonable amount of work, although the vast amount of work in prose composition makes up the majority of my load. I am also planning on reading little bits of Homer with Properitus II once we finish the Crito. I also am going to attempt to work on my thesis revisions and start on my term paper for my classical research seminar.

Teaching: I am teaching a new class. It is an interesting group because I teaching in a different geographical area than usual (near school rather than near home).

Bread: I made another loaf of my newest sourdough recently. It was also fantastic, but I forgot to take photos. I am going to try to make Francis Olive's City Bread this weekend because it looks fantastic and I should have a little bit of time.

Wine Snob: Another Argentinian Malbec

Malbec

This wine, the Gascon 2010 Malbec from the Medoza Region of Argentina, was really lovely. I tend to like Argentinian Malbec and this one was recommended to us by the person who sold us the lovely shelves that now hold the majority of our wine. We didn't decide to have the wine until about 20 minutes before dinner so it tasted a little, I don't know, condensed at first. I am not sure what the proper term is, but basically the flavors were less discernible but became increasingly differentiated the longer the wine sat out.

It was a medium bodied wine with a slight tannic bite and the taste of black cherry with a pinch of pink pepper. Instead of finishing, it seemed to vanish at the end of the taste. I really enjoyed it though I think I would let it breathe a little longer next time.

Like One of those High School Movies

So I had my orientation today. It was like one of those horrible high school movies where the geeky girl does everything wrong and the day is a complete disaster. I took my placement exams for Greek and Latin at 8am this morning. Greek was a mess. It was a piece from Lucian and I just completely missed the vocabulary and it was a disaster.  The Latin was better, it was some 4th century AD historian and I actually knew a significant portion of the vocabulary.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it. Due to a mix-up, I ended up really early for the luncheon. Worse, afterward the professor who was grading my Greek exam ran up to talk to me. I felt so completely embarrassed. Luckily he hadn't graded it yet, but that actually made me feel worse because he was so nice and he was going to soon look at such a complete disaster.

Going to see a production of the Trojan Women tomorrow. I will write a review.

A New Sourdough

Boule

I mentioned in my blogpost yesterday how much I loved this bread. It's really fantastically sweet-- which may be a combination of the flour mixture and that I managed to use the starter right at the peak of it's feeding when it smells slightly sweet. I am including the recipe here so anyone can try it. It is a modified version of Peter Reinhart's San Francisco Sourdough Bread from Artisan Breads Every Day. This bread spends an incredible amount of time rising, but it does not require a significant amount of interference.

Ear-- finally able to use the lame properly

 This bread is 76% hydration. However, I used a lot of all-purpose instead of bread flour this last time so I might up the hydration to 77% to compensate. I also need to incorporate a bit more air when I am kneading as my last two breads have not had quite the open crumb that I desire.

Not perfect crumb, but still quite good

Ingredients: 
Starter

•  56.5g 100% hydration starter
• 227g Whole Wheat Flour
• 150g Water, room temperature

Dough

•  All of the starter
• 445g Water (warm)
• 567g Unbleached Bread Flour (I used a combination of bread flour and-- when I ran out of that-- a high-protein all-purpose flour-- King Arthur's)
• 18g Salt

Directions
Starter (Day 1)

• Mix the ingredients for the starter together about 8 hours befor you plan to use it.
• Make sure you mix it with a for or something that will help incorporate a little air.
• Cover the bowl or jar and leave it to mature overnight at room temperature. Otherwise, the starter can rest in the refrigerator for up to three days.

Final Dough (Day 2)

• The starter, by now, should be all bubbly and smell slightly sweet.
• Dissolve the starter in the water.
• Then add the unbleached flour and the salt and mix into tacky ball. Let the dough rest for five minutes.
• The knead the dough by hand for 3 minutes. Try to incorporate air.
• Then do the first Peter Reinhart stretch-and-fold. Do four total with 10 minutes in between each.
• Depending on how warm your kitchen is, let the dough rest out (covered) for 1.5-2 hours before placing in the refrigerator. It was about 75 degrees in my kitchen and I let the dough sit out for 2 hours. Place it in the refrigerator overnight.

Shaping and Baking (Day 3)

•  Take the bread out of the refrigerator 5-6 hours before baking. Let it rest on at room temperature for 2-3 hours, depending upon the room temperature. The bread was still very cold at 2 hours, so I waited the extra hour.
• Then turn the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide it. It can make two 1.5lb loaves or three 1lb loaves. Preshape.
• Let the dough rest for 20-30 minutes, and then do the final shaping. Cover the loaves and let them rise for 2-3 hours. My loaves needed three hours. The first loaf we baked after two hours and I think that it could have used a little extra rising time, while the second one we baked at three hours and it turned out better.
• 20 minutes before baking, heat up the your oven with your stone-and-broth-pot or dutch oven to 500 degrees F.
• Turn your dough onto a floured peel and score it right before you put it into the oven. Turn the oven down to 450 degrees F (425 convection). 
• Let the dough bake under steam for 30-35 minutes, making sure that the edges of your scoring marks have turned golden.
• Then bake it for 20-25 minutes without steam, ensuring that it has an internal temperature of 212 degrees. It should be fairly light in weight and dark brown in color.
• Wait at least 30 minutes before slicing.

 Enjoy!