This was supposed to be a do over of bread #74, but the do over crossed the line of what could conceivably be considered the same recipe. First, I ran out of spelt and did not think to replace it, instead buying other whole grain flours this week. Second, I warmed the beer before mixing it with the flour, which, by itself, would come within a do over. Third, I did not even think to add the flaxseed meal again. Then, I added an autolyse phase. Though my lines are without fixed standards and therefore arbitrary, even I had to think of this as a different bread. Still would like to go back and redo bread #74, but that will wait for at least another trip to the grocery store and probably a while until I want to make another beer bread.
Snail's pace kind of slow
The problem I have experienced with the beer breads has been incredibly long bulk fermentation periods with amazingly slow expansion of the doughs. Two possibilities came to mind: (1) The beer's cold temperature slowed down the first rise by several hours, perhaps inhibiting the reaching of a peak rise state, and (2) maybe it wasn't the beer - maybe my starter had gotten a bit lackluster in energy.
I fed my starter last night and by this morning it seemed happy and lively. This leads me to the tentative conclusion that the problem was not with my starter.
This time around, I warmed the beer. I took the frigid cold, full bottle of beer - Stella Artois, by the way - and put it in a pot of very warm water (did not measure the temperature, but not hot). Within a few minutes, the beer bottle was no longer cold. The bulk fermentation was still slow, possibly also due to the relatively small amount of starter I added, given the room temperatures of cool (but not cold) nights. However, the slowness of the dough expansion was not extreme this time. There was nice expansion within 24 hours, quite the contrast from the snail's pace rising of the previous beer breads.
What I put in this time
330g beer (one bottle of Stella Artois)
70g starter (100 percent hydration)
200g whole wheat flour
200g bread flour
50g cornmeal (stoneground, white)
9g salt
Autolyse before mixing dough
I combined the beer, the flours, and the cornmeal - okay, everything but the starter and the salt - and let sit for 30 minutes. I then added the starter and the salt. I added twice as much starter as in the last bread due to the spring temperatures of warm days and cool nights. No heat yet and no humidity. Still, only 70 grams of starter is not too much for nights with temperatures in the 50s, which stops dough from rising, and days reaching maybe 70 indoors, even with sunlight and heat.
After thoroughly mixing the dough (and, of course, covering it), I did three stretch and folds, each 15 minutes apart. I was cautiously optimistic because the dough had a nice feel and strengthened over the course of the three stretch and folds. By the way, I did them only 15 minutes apart because it was late.
I let the dough rise for 21.5 hours, overnight in a very cool kitchen and then, over the course of the next day, in whatever rooms were warmest at different times, being my closet (small, walk-in, with its own heat source) and the kitchen. Frankly, I would have allowed the dough to rise for a few more hours, but it was evening already and I suspected I would not get to baking if I waited any longer. Also the spouse said he would rather eat a crappy one of my breads than anything from Au Bon Pain. You would know what he meant if you have ever eaten one of their bagels.
My luck, thus far, being mediocre with the beer breads, I said what the heck and prepared for baking.
Baking preparation
I did a stretch and fold and let the dough rest on a well-floured cutting board for 15 minutes, covered, of course. Putting more flour on the board, I quickly shaped the dough into a boule and placed it on a well-floured kitchen towel that was lining a small wicker basket. That's a good thing to make ready during the 15-minute window.
Preheat the oven to 475 degrees so that the oven has at least an hour to heat up. Inside the oven to also preheat were the baking stone and the top of the la cloche, with its two hairline cracks up the sides.
I did a dent test of the dough at one hour and it popped back way too quickly. At 1.25 hours, it seemed ready, or, at the least, readier.
In the oven
Total baking time was 42 minutes, though I looked in at 35 and took the bread's temperature at 41. Nice golden and dark brown color. Nice oven spring.
I was pleasantly surprised because I wondered whether prioritizing my personal timing needs - such as going to bed early on a Sunday evening and having time, post bread making, to read - had made for a mediocre bread. But no, my laziness was rewarded with a really good result. Very nice taste and not nearly as sour as last week's beer bread. I cannot say I actually taste the beer, though there is a different flavor that lingers at the end of a chewing a bite. That could be my imagination.
Others tell me that beer bread dough rises the same way and with the same timing as their other doughs. I must be living in the twilight zone then because each time I use beer, the bread takes three days to rise. Now even if the coldness of the beer slows down the process, the beer is certainly warm a couple of hours later.
This time the starter was lively, there was a nice mix of flours, the hydration percentage was 78, and yet the dough rising time was already at 38 hours when I left home this morning. What's another day?
I used 50 percent whole grains because I ran out of whole wheat and spelt flours. I also added about 40 grams of cornmeal. Plus, of course, the bottle of beer. Stella Artois. My husband thought it would be the right lightness to go well in a bread.
Two days later
Now, on baking day, the dough will have been in the fridge for 54 hours. Not much hope for this one. Already contemplating a re-do.
Results were not the disaster expected. Despite a dough that rose somewhat, but was flat, at the end of a long - patient on my part - bulk fermentation, there was respectable oven spring. Perhaps due to the extended four-day fermentation, with two days on the counter and two in the fridge, the bread had a decidedly sour taste. I liked it, but it did go overboard.
Definitely will do this one again this weekend. This time, I plan to let the beer get to room temperature before mixing it with the other dough ingredients. Hoping the spouse is willing to donate another beer to the effort. Otherwise I will be compelled to actually purchase some for the first time.
Recipe after the do over
I will write up the recipe after trying this one again. Starting to think that my kitchen is located in a no-beer-baking zone.
In other news, I am researching storage times for whole grain flours. Nothing much for storage except to keep the flours in dry, cool, places. I put mine in ziplock bags in the freezer. What I am curious about is whether there is data on average times that whole grain flours, whether in bulk or from small producers, sit on grocery store and supermarket shelves.
Update - the recipe
Because I ended up making a new bread instead of a do over of this bread, I wanted to add the recipe to this post.
330g beer
35g starter
100g whole wheat flour
100g spelt flour
200g bread flour
10g flaxseed meal
9g salt
Mixed, covered, and let sit for 38 hours. Refrigerated for 51 hours. So many hours = very sour taste. Baked at 475 degrees for 45 minutes with dutch oven. Boy that thing gets hot. Needed oven mitts AND pot holders.
A pre-Passover enjoyment of soon-to-be forbidden tastes of bread and beer, though just for the week of the holiday. Somehow correct that the making of this beer bread coincided with reading the fermentation section, indeed both the bread and beer chapters, of Cooked. Felt like Michael Pollan himself should have visited my kitchen, though he is definitely a creature of the West Coast and I am decidedly East Coast, if not more specifically the exiled New Yorker.
A four-day, ever so lethargic rise, that finally arrived at the stage of finishing a bulk fermentation. Not sure whether that was the beer or the relatively small amount of starter, taken right from the fridge and not exactly ripe. Still, I like a good sour taste and a slightly burnt crust, even if it was not to the liking of a significant other.
Day 1
Autolyse
350g beer - Snake Dog IPA
42g cornmeal
16g arrowroot flour
243g whole wheat flour
200g bread flour
Mixed well and covered. I let the autolyse sit for 35 minutes.
Dough
autolyse plus -
70g starter
10g salt
30g water
Mixed the autolyse and the other dough ingredients, including extra water for adequately hydrating the 60 percent whole grain dough.
I did three stretch and folds over the course of an hour and a half, the first at 20 minutes, the second 30 minutes later, and the third another 30 minutes later. Then I let the dough sit in various places due to temperature.
Evening of day 1 - day 4
I kept the dough in cool places for almost 24 hours. Overnight the dough was in the kitchen. During the entire workday, it sat in the basement. Back to the kitchen again, from day two to three, overnight. On day three, I decided that dough needed some warmth. I let it enjoy a full day in a warm kitchen, then at a proper boring bedtime of 9 p.m., I put it in the fridge. It was puffy, though not exuberant. There it was awakened on the morning of day four.
Day 4
Early in the morning, I took the dough out of the fridge and went into pre-baking mode. Since this dough had done so much time in cold environs, I decided it deserved a warm final rise. First a stretch and fold with a 15-minute rest afterward.
Preheated the oblong la cloche in the oven at a toasty 500 degrees.
I shaped the dough into an untrained oblong shape (the untrained entity being me, not the dough), shorter and fatter than a baguette, though nowhere approaching roundness. I let the dough sit, covered, for an hour. Due to fear of dreadful burns, I let the shaped dough sit on parchment paper and took the dough, on the parchment paper, directly into the now-burning hot oblong la cloche.
Maybe I got carried away with the timing
Immediately reduced oven temperature to 475 degrees and baked for about 48 minutes. (I tried to keep track, but I had to recalculate the timing due to a few minutes of forgetfulness.) The ends and the bottom were a bit burnt, but the bread had a proud, deep brown color, and a cragginess (not a word, really) that made it rustically attractive. And very respectable oven spring, indeed, especially for a dough that had never risen in an expected way.
Yummy! Loved it. Another opinion, however, was voiced in the household, so quite possible I will play around with ingredients and starter ripeness the next time I pour a bottle of beer into a dough bowl.
This cornmeal/white bread came out fine and if you are looking for something a little better than a homemade pure white bread for sandwiches, this is a good option. The bread is 26 percent cornmeal and 70 percent hydration (76 percent if you count the water plus the oil in the recipe).
This bread is essentially a redo of the cornmeal bread by Hamelman in Bread that I made in bread #59, which were blue cornmeal rolls. Lovely as the blue was, somehow I wanted to experience the bread with non-primary-colored cornmeal and I bought a whole grain white cornmeal this time.
A bread for picky eaters, perhaps
I have to say I was not wowed by this one, but it might be a good fit for families with picky eaters who need school lunch sandwiches. I actually started making sandwich bread in my bread machine days to replace the supermarket, disgusting, potato sandwich bread that my children liked. Turned out they liked homemade bread more. Check one for parental success.
Ingredients
Sponge
50g starter (at 60 to 70 percent hydration)
114g water
114g bread flour
Cover and leave out. Good for an all-day or overnight rest period.
Soaker
114g cornmeal
174g water
Mix and leave for 15 minutes.
Dough
176g bread flour
23g oil
8g salt
soaker
sponge
Sponge likes a warm kitchen
Mix, cover, and let rest for 12 to 16 hours, except for unusually warm kitchens. I was prepared for a 16-hour rest for the sponge due to a cold, winter kitchen that would essentially be almost like a fridge overnight, but this was yet another night when one of us (we are all bad on this) forgot to turn down the heat in the kitchen. The sponge did not mind and was discovered in a bubbly, exuberant state after nine hours. Smiling and ready, it demanded immediate progress toward full dough development.
One minute to mix the soaker and 15 minutes to rest in the bowl. The dough took a good bit of mixing. I added a little less flour than in the Hamelman recipe because of the low hydration percentage of my starter. Translation: My starter is on the thick side and not viscous at all.
Just two stretch and folds
I did just one stretch and fold at 45 minutes for a 90-minute rise. Then one more at the end of the rise.
Let rest and cover for 15 minutes. I shaped the dough and put it into a loaf pan. Then cover. Why a loaf pan? The dough did not seem to be holding its own, structure-wise, so the support of a loaf pan was in order to save this one.
Preheat and don't do the dent test
Preheat the oven for one hour to 500 degrees. I also preheat the top of the oblong la cloche, which will fit - though not well - over the loaf pan, and allow for a nice oven spring.
There is no dent test, though I tried. The dough was simply too sticky. No matter; this has happened before and a respectable bread resulted.
Upon putting the dough into the oven, reduce the temperature immediately to 460 degrees. The bread took 36 minutes with the loaf pan.
And?
Nice, nice oven spring. A good taste if you like white bread. Not overly impressed, but a decent bread.
This bread is made mostly with white bread flour, but one quarter of the flour has a surprisingly tasty variety of flavors. Arrowroot flour, barley flour and cornmeal contribute to a not-at-all boring white bread that is topped with oats and caraway seeds.
Lovely crumb and delicious.
Ingredients
Sponge
95g water
62g starter
52g arrowroot flour
47g bread flour
20g barley flour
Mix and leave out covered all day or overnight.
Soaker
18g cornmeal
200g water
Mix and let rest for 15 minutes.
Autolyse
10g cornmeal
277g bread flour
Either split the water between the soaker and the autolyse, to do both phases at the same time. Or do the soaker first and add it to the autolyse mixture.
Mix, cover and let rest for 20 minutes to a half hour.
Dough
Sponge
Soaker
Autolyse
10g salt
Add everything, plus the bit of salt called for, and mix thoroughly.
Sponge overnight - but check the heat in the kitchen
Combine the sponge ingredients and leave covered on the kitchen counter either all day or overnight. Good thing I woke up before dawn while on a winter-break from work because someone inadvertently left on the heat all night (no accusations or crying over spilled milk as the kitchen was deliciously warm). In the warm kitchen, the sponge took 10.3 hours to get to a nice bubbly ripe state. I had expected the sponge to be ready somewhere in the vicinity of 9 to 11 a.m., but a peek before 7 a.m. revealed a weirdly warm kitchen for a winter morning and a sponge that was practically shouting I am ready to become part of a wonderful dough. Hurry up already!
I stayed awake to make the dough - promising myself a nice nap as reward. Vacation time at home is a precious and enjoyable treat. So nice to sneak a nap into the middle of a winter day, especially a nap with the dog.
Soaker and autolyse at the same time
Tell the sponge to hold its horses and prepare the soaker and the autolyse, preferably so that they are resting at the same time. I did not do that.
The soaker will need to rest for 15 minutes and only takes a minute to prepare. No cover is necessary. The autolyse should sit for 20 to 30 minutes and will require a few minutes of mixing to fully blend the flour and water. I did the soaker first and added it to the autolyse mixture. My autolyse did not incorporate all of the flour; it was very dry, but it still had some nice gluten development. I resisted the urge to add more water because the eventual mixing into the sponge possibly would supply all needed moisture. Cover and let autolyse rest for 20 minutes.
Dough gathers everything
To make the dough, put together the sponge, autolyse and the soaker. Sprinkle the salt on top and then mix thoroughly. This will take some effort; get those hands - wet first - in the dough. Do three stretch and folds over the course of 60 to 90 minutes. I did mine at 30-minute intervals. The dough developed nice strength. I covered it and let rise on the counter for two and a half hours.
Went to the farmers market, ate breakfast, read, and needed to cash in on that nap. I looked at the dough and it looked at me. It had risen well. We decided it needed to be shaped and take a hiatus in the fridge. This would take all anxiety out of the nap. I floured a cutting board, gathered the corners of the dough, and shaped it into a boule. I took out my handy round small wicker basket and lined it with a well-floured kitchen towel. On the flour, I dumped a nice sprinkling (no measure taken) of caraway seeds and oats. I put the top of the dough onto the lined bottom of the basket, covered, and placed the dough basket in the fridge for an uncertain period.
I left the dough basket in the fridge for several hours later - 6.7 to be exact.
Oven and dough preparation
Preheat oven and top of la cloche for one hour at 470 degrees. After the hour preheat, I took the dough almost straight from the fridge to the oven. Just a set of slashes on top and putting the dough on some parchment paper that was waiting on a baking peel.
I removed the parchment paper after 30 minutes, but kept the bread covered with the top of the la cloche for the whole time. The bread only took 39 minutes, not much for a boule at 470 degrees.
Yummy
Beautiful, loud crinkly sounds emanated from the freshly baked bread. It was gorgeous as well with respectable oven spring. The bread made a delicious breakfast the next morning. Great, great taste. And though the bread looked all white, it had some decent whole grain participation.
It was so good that I did not take the time to shoot some photos of its lovely, truly impressive, crumb. I just wanted to keep eating.
A nice bread, a good bread, but not a wowsa experience. Still, a good bread for a breakfast with butter or jam and some tea or coffee. In my opinion, the barley flour perhaps muted the taste of the whole wheat. I'd be interested in any opinions about the addition of unusual flours and whole grain ingredients.
This bread was fashioned on Reinhart's multigrain hearth bread from his book Whole Grain Breads. I say fashioned because I got discombobulated (the Yiddish word fottottled is really more accurate) with all of his do-this-wait-five-minutes- and-do-that instructions. I literally took this dough into my own hands, and a nice bread resulted.
Instructions
Soaker
57g whole wheat flour
100g barley flour
70g cornmeal
171g water
5g salt
Biga
50g starter
197g whole wheat flour
150g water
In separate bowls, of course, mix up the soaker and the biga. Cover each and let each sit out on the kitchen counter all day or overnight. I let these sit for 14 hours as I am off from work all week - woo hoo! The biga had very little rise due to the cold kitchen, which is why I let it sit for extra hours after I turned on the heat in the morning.
Dough
16g whole wheat flour (because I ran out)
41g bread flour
5g salt
Add soaker and biga
Mix well. There was optional sugar - in the form of agave or honey - and fat - in the form of butter or oil - in the recipe, but I went plain. Truth be told, I think this bread would have been tastier with a wee bit of sugar substance. Another caution, if you will, is that the 86 percent of whole grains did not allow for the satisfying use of the windowpane test, which is a much better experience with a 70 percent-and-higher white flour dough.
After mixing, I kneaded for two minutes, rested for 10 (covered), and briefly kneaded again for one or two minutes.
Let rest covered for 30 minutes and did a stretch and fold, with three stretch and folds each 30 minutes apart. I then covered the dough and put it in the fridge. My daughter, home from school, wanted to shop and have lunch - with me. Ah.
Resting and dough preparation
Five hours in the fridge and I took out the dough and placed the cold bowl in a large bowl with very warm water. That heated up the cold bowl. I only left the bowls this way for 10 minutes or so, but I left the dough untouched for an hour.
I then did another stretch and fold, left the dough covered on a board for 15 minutes. I shaped the dough, put it on a well-floured kitchen towel, in a small wicker basket, and covered. I let the dough rest for an hour while the oven heated up for an hour.
A crack - oh no
At this point, I preheated the oven to 500 degrees for one hour with the top of the la cloche on the baking stone. I noticed a small crack in the top of the la cloche. More on that below. Reinhart advises a lower temperature, but I had already departed significantly from his process.
Just prior to placing in oven, I turned the dough onto an oven peel and did a cross slash on the top with a lame. A sharp knife will do. The lame is fancier, and not expensive, but I admit it was a gift from a dear friend; I did not run out to buy it.
At 30 minutes, I reduced the temperature to 460 degrees and removed the top of the la cloche. I let the bread bake for another 10 minutes. Total baking time of 40 minutes.
Result
Nice oven spring. Small loaf. Great crust. Good taste.
Post script
With my next bread, essentially a repeat of bread #35, but with cornmeal and whole wheat, the crack in the top of the la cloche went from hairline and about two inches long to about six inches long and a bit more than hairline at the bottom, where it started. I don't know what happened. I always preheat this clay object with the oven. I do remove it and I have never just let it cool down inside the oven. I'm a bit anxious to use it again, but also sad, honestly, because it is such a divine tool for making wonderful breads. I will have to seek out advice about whether it can be repaired.
Chuckling all the way through, I made purplish rolls with the blue cornmeal a certain family member purchased, adjusting a Hamelman Bread recipe for sourdough instead of commercial yeast and for a mid-day felafel run that necessitated using the fridge instead of continuing with the recipe that assumes one does not have a life and only exists in the kitchen (something the dog would like).
The photograph does not do justice to the purple-colored, cement-like appearance of the dough. Not quite the color of Bridget Jones' soup debacle, my dough was more a mixture of a Northwestern University t-shirt with white bread flour. This weekend I intend to go all out and make blueberry corn muffins with the blue cornmeal and plenty of butter. That batter will be absolutely purple, I'm sure.
The recipe was easy and it was no trouble to make the switch to sourdough. I also fell in love again with Hamelman's prose, his adorable acknowledgment of his wife's drawings for the book, and his reverence for bread making. Really, how can one not read prose by a man who makes bread and quotes Pablo Neruda? Incentive enough to read the book again, this time my own copy so I can basically highlight whole sections about ingredients, techniques and stages of dough development.
Just one thing to remember, which is that this dough begins with a pre-ferment sponge development of 12 to 16 hours, though mine took only nine hours because I put it in my tiny closet, the only place in my house that stays warm overnight during the winter. Despite a 5:15 a.m. wake up to check the pre-ferment - poolish in Hamelman lingo - and then stay conscious to complete the dough, no disasters ensued.
Ingredients
I noted all the ingredients in grams as I am totally out of the habit of referring to pounds or ounces.
Poolish
95g sourdough starter at 100 percent hydration
8g water
8g bread flour
Mix and cover. Leave to rest for 12 to 16 hours, or, in my case, with a mature starter comprising an overwhelming percentage of the poolish and resting in a warm spot, nine hours. I half considered letting the poolish go for another few hours, but it was looking at me with the equivalent of the imploring eyes of a sweet dog that needs to go outside right away.
When it is ready for the next step, the poolish should be nice and bubbly, exuberant in its look and smelling of the dough to come.
Okay, the reason for using so much starter to flour and water was that I had quite a bit of starter on hand and I wanted to get rid of some. In the middle of the summer, when the kitchen is hot even overnight, I would do just the opposite and put in maybe 10 grams of starter, 50 grams of bread flour and 50 grams of water. That way you will have enough time to sleep. Despite my 5 a.m. wake up on this and other doughs, I at least give lip service to avoiding sleep deprivation.
Must admit the middle of the night awakening was due to a concern that I work on the bread with enough time to accompany the spouse for a felafel lunch at the best place for felafel outside of the Middle East, in an innocuous strip mall at a divey-looking kosher eatery in Wheaton, Maryland, just north of Silver Spring and about 20 minutes from DC. The name is Max's.
Soaker
113g cornmeal
172g water
Just need to mix the cornmeal with water and allow the cornmeal to soak for 15 minutes. Obviously, do this in a different bowl than the poolish is resting in, but when the poolish seems ready to advance to the next phase of dough making.
Dough
poolish
cornmeal soaker
227g bread flour
8g salt
8g olive oil (yes, I feel weird here going outside of the flour, yeast, water, salt purity)
Mix all together, very well. I did this all by hand and it needed wet hands to really integrate the ingredients. I kneaded for about three or five minutes, then covered and set the dough to rest for 30 minutes. I did a stretch and fold at 30 minutes and another at one hour. That made for two stretch and folds during the 90 minute bulk fermentation.
Not auditioning yet
Because this looked like a dough on the small side, and because I had just watched the Great British Bake-Off bread episode the night before, I made rolls instead of a loaf. Also, the purple-colored dough seemed to demand something different than the usual treatment. However, the disparate sizes of my rolls, their unusual color, and my rather spontaneous approach to baking would definitely have gotten me escorted out of the bake-off tent prior to the judging. I can hear the gasps now.
I shaped the dough into four rolls, placed them each in a separate, very small well-floured bowl, covered all with my granola-equivalent to plastic wrap (the bee's wax cover) and put them in the refrigerator while I accompanied the spouse to his dental appointment, located conveniently near our favorite felafel place. The dentist, in my own defense, was not chosen for the location.
I left the dough in the fridge for six hours and took out the bowls for the dough to rise according to the directions for a 1.25 hour final rise. I preheated the oven to 460 degrees (but did not use the top of the la cloche due to a skepticism that the four rolls would be too tightly spaced).
Baking
Despite the bowls having been filled on the bottom with flour, they were the wrong materials - glass and porcelain - for rising dough. I should have used well-floured kitchen towels inside the bowls. No matter. A little bit of handling and reshaping caused no damage.
I used parchment paper on a baking peel to transfer the dough onto the baking stone and then quickly filled a casserole pan (not made of glass) with a cup of water for good oven steam. Due to the quicker baking time for rolls than for a loaf of bread, I removed the parchment paper at 10 minutes and kept a close eye after that. To prevent drying out, I kept the oven door ajar after the first 10 minutes as well. The rolls only needed 15 to 17 minutes total, the smaller ones being removed early.
The taste was very good and the purple rather lovely to those who noticed. Not quite the equivalent of a neon blue candied apple.
Never send another person to buy flour. Instead of cornmeal, which one visualizes in a Platonic way as yellow or golden, this wonderful non-baker shopper (whom I love and adore) sees "cornmeal" on the package and purchases blue cornmeal. Since I passed on the ditzy, perhaps inattentive, genes to this person, it is not proper for me to complain. And why not use blue cornmeal? People make blue or bright green candied apples after all, though that unnatural coating seems likes a poor analogy for an attempt to branch out to new grains in my bread making. Somehow the direction to purchase a small package of whole wheat flour for the upcoming whole wheat and buckwheat bread got translated, shall we say misinterpreted, into a large package of generic, store brand flour that I have doubts about. Again, why not try it once? Just because I have grown dissatisfied with the whole grain flours of a different large flour producer does not necessarily mean anything.
Had my mother sent me at the same adult age to the supermarket with a similar list I most likely would not have done better. The goal at that age is to be thanked, which happened before I looked at the purchases, reimbursed (check), but not appreciated sufficiently to be asked to regularly perform the task. Check on that as well. It's the Car Talk theory of domestic task avoidance: Do the task willingly, though not well. In this person's case discussed here, no such Machiavellian calculation occurred; just the airheadedness (probably not actually a word, let alone an adjective) that I myself passed on.
Next up
On my agenda are a cornmeal and white flour bread from Hammelman's Bread and that whole wheat and buckwheat from Breadtime. After a month of remaking the same two breads - numbers 57 and 58 - and rushing around so much that I resorted to old favorites I have practically memorized, I am finally moving forward with my resolution to branch out beyond wheat, spelt and rye sourdoughs, though those were all new not too long ago. Celebrate those small triumphs.
I wish my mom were here. She would be so proud of my humble blog, of my writing and bread making. She'd ask to sample everything and she would wholeheartedly and frankly offer her opinions. She would tell me "this will lead to something" as she did with my local - and this is a hyperbolic word to use - activism, which she ended up being correct about, though she passed away about six months before that happened. I still think she gave G-d or the powers that be in the universe her two cents and that was at least one of her requests. She probably had something to do with sweet AP, IB, and SAT scores (if you know the college application gamed in the US), college acceptances and perhaps one marriage. I know she would love the artwork I am doing and that she would comment that I've always had an artistic sensibility, though I'm not anyone else would agree and though she would never dream of advising me to give up the day job for anything so iffy financially as art. My dad, a quiet man, would have enjoyed the bread. It would have been just his thing. No sugar and something that would go with brisket or chicken. He would have introduced me as his daughter the bread maker, proudly, succinctly and without fanfare (after he mentioned, as he always did, that I am a lawyer - though not practicing, which he neglected ever to mention). I wish, as with some other avenues I have pursued since he passed away, that he could be here. I guess one never ceases to internalize parental pride, even long past the lives of the parents.
Color guessing
And now, in the next week, off to make blue bread (very Bridget Jones) and, cross my fingers, a nice whole wheat and buckwheat concoction. I love kasha, so very intrigued by the buckwheat recipe. I might visit the supermarket or the local food coop and purchase some "back up" flours in case doubt about the ones already sitting in my freezer overtake me. Curious nonetheless to see what colorful shade the blue cornmeal produces. I'm thinking a cloudy-day-at-the-beach, sort of blue-mixed-with-beige shade of blue.
