Long Pause Explained

The hiatus is over and I did a first try at bread #99 yesterday. It was a fun journey of anxiety, like any new bread venture.

So why the long pause? In a nutshell, overwhelming work that took up all of my creative energy, and expressing myself in painting instead of taking time to think about and search out new doughs to make and bake. But mostly the long pause was prompted by a death.

A couple of years ago, a friend of ours took ill, seriously ill, and spent his last months in a major hospital. We saw his improvement, giving hope to a life outside, followed by a slow decline and his passing. This was not a sweet 95 year old who had lived a full life. This was a man who left children who were not quite even beginning their own independent lives.

To respect a person who is no longer here to speak for himself, I will not rehash the terrible details of misdeeds of one who has passed away.  This death shook my faith in human nature, in the mercy of the universe, and in the idea of a higher power.

Behind the curtain

It was as if I had learned the terrible secret of life, that there is no justice, no guarantees, perhaps no kindly force protecting us.

Maybe it is all luck and careening toward the abyss, whatever we do.

So I baked as if on autopilot. I grew my starter; I baked whole wheat and rye breads, mostly. I did go through a rosemary phase when I mashed up rosemary springs into almost every dough. It is a sublime addition, but only if it is freshly grown. Dry rosemary from a little store-bought spice jar brings nothing to the table.

Up to My Limit at the Peter Principle

And work seemed to be like a hamster wheel with an ever-increasing rate of speed. What do you know, but it worked, at least according to some conventional standard of success in which one gets promoted, is rewarded with a raise, and is confronted with many congratulations. Really?

I liked my work until I was promoted. Now I am a juggling performer with tons of balls in the air, nice administrative balls of proposals, contracts, funders to satisfy, and TIME in the form of deadlines looming larger and larger as they approach. As the deadlines get ever closer, my dreams and ambitions appear further away.

To be resolved when I give myself time to ponder and courage to move in whatever direction, perhaps on some unpaved path.

Bread for fun

I made a challah for the Super Bowl. Makes me respect those amazing artists who bake and decorate in the Great British Baking Show. I am not quite addicted to the show, but I do enjoy it. For me, bread is decidedly not about looks, but the accomplishments of that show's bakers are mesmerizing indeed.

To brag about this meagre accomplishment, there were actual humans who recognized that this was indeed a challah football. Even those who did not make the visual connection - mostly those who never watch football - enjoyed the bread.

Next up: Bread #99, but after I try it one more time, this time with less anxiety and a little fresh rosemary.

Pre-Passover Pause and Spring Cleaning

I will be baking bread, just taking a break from the 108 Bread project. Tradition stands in the way, though only for a few weeks. My personal ritual is to start cleaning the minute that the Jewish holiday of Purim is over, which is now, which means angst, planning, scrubbing, and dusting until the holiday of Passover begins. Oh and shopping for items we only eat during Passover or which are bread related, such as mayonnaise, and, in my house, require a crappy mass-produced kosher supermarket replacement that often gets tossed after the holiday.

Not enough time for maintaining a chametz-related - Hebrew word meaning leavened - blog.

Zero bread - but just for a week

Now the central culinary aspect of the week-long festival is the absence of bread, any bread-like product, and, for many Jews, a whole list of other foods. I won't go into details; otherwise this post would become a PhD thesis. All leavened products and crumbs - hence the spring cleaning - are out, unless I have banished them to a sealed closet or cabinet. 

As bread #89 will be a matzo and I do not eat matzo between Purim and the start of Passover, I will delay this next venture. I want the first taste of matzo during the first Passover seder to taste special; it's not law, it's mishegas (a Yiddish word for a kind pf personal craziness). Also, I would like to use my very chametz-related baking stone, which would render the home-baked matzo so unkosher for Passover that even the dog would refuse to eat it on the holiday and cause him to scream out about a complete sacrilege being committed. He would probably scream with a Yiddish accent, a la any older Brooklyn person or Bernie Sanders. 

Curiously enough, this respite also allows me to procrastinate a bit more for the last 18 breads of the 108 bread project, the challah quest. I promise to complete this and get onto other possibilities, like selling bread, or teaching bread baking, or writing a book about bread baking from the perspective of someone who lives a normal life, fantasizes about bakeries, but really is not fit for the uber-organized requirements of the baker life, such as getting up before 7 a.m.

Waking up and smelling the freshly-milled flour

A quick post to say I think I am back. After months of hardly making bread and not making any new breads to qualify for my 108, I recently baked two new breads, which will be numbers 79 and 80. Preview: They are both combinations of freshly-milled barley and whole wheat flours.

What happened? Vacation, unexpected business trips, and my friend's son's death. The summer was supposed to be a relaxing, happy time. Turned out that new work projects turned my never-travel job into a suddenly lots-of-travel job, which is good, but traveling messes with bread making and other home endeavors. The travels, personal and business, were wonderful, though I returned home each time with a need for R&R more than anything else.

The death really stopped me in my tracks. None of us controls the world and the sudden, needless death of a sweet, promising young man sent that message home big time. To see my friend, her husband and their surviving son have to suffer this loss is truly awful. For a long while, this news sapped my energy to work, make bread, or think about anything remotely frivolous. I did not know this boy well because I met him when our children entered high school. Unlike the pre-school and elementary school friends, the high school peers do not enter the parental universe unless they become our children's close friends.

But I knew this boy through every conversation over the years with his mother and our hearts and our time are still with his family. 

And the bread? It has waited. I am finally getting pleasure from the new flour mill, finally pondering what and when on the Jewish holiday challahs as the holidays quickly approach, and finally considering breads and other baking as life returns to a nice normal.

Kitchen Work + Cleaning = Baking Pause

The bowls, whisks, la cloches, and other accoutrements of bread making are sitting neatly on tables and floors around the house while some renovation gets done. Not a gut renovation, which sounds like a ton of fun, though extremely expensive, but enough of a project that most cabinets and drawers had to be emptied. 

I'd like to say I am taking the time to peruse recipes and plan out the next bunch of breads, but I am focused on cleaning my office/art studio/study/small walk-in closet. When that essential space gets beyond a certain clutter level, I find it impossible to do anything other than clean, though usually my cleaning stops at tidying up. This time, full blast review of books, stuff waiting to be put elsewhere, jewelry I never wear, scarves, shoes, and children's artwork over a decade old that has been sitting under my dresser (awaiting decision of whether to be put in the "special box," now actually three large plastic containers with paintings, drawings, awards, and assorted written work from before pre-school through college).

Now that my art projects have expanded beyond a notebook kept of collages with calligraphy and drawings, to actual paintings, and, perhaps, an installation of old tiles, I need the space to reorganize the art supplies and neatly store the language notebooks. The neatening is very satisfying. I can see the pretty green paper on my dresser and the shelves are no longer jammed with stuff.

Now I can ponder the next stage of making bread.

On bread
The bread requires something I have not previously committed to: an organized schedule throughout the week when bread-related decisions are made, grocery lists added to, checking is done that needed ingredients are on the premises, and dough - or some preliminary stage of it - is started at the proper time. Avoiding starting too late, whereupon I am sleepy and lazy, is a key concern. The one task I have attended to is feeding the starter on time. 

Something else to incorporate into the schedule, though it only takes a few minutes and a lovely piece of equipment, is grinding my own flour. This goes toward starting before laziness sets in, toward deciding on the next bread by Thursday evening, taking out the starter on Friday evening or Saturday morning, and generally beginning the next dough on Saturday afternoon or evening.

Ritual and practice
Like religion, study, exercise, or anything to be taken seriously in life, bread requires presence in the moment and rituals - even homespun, just-for-me rituals - to support a practice. It is a Sabbath unto itself in the pause and preparation called for. Rushing, multi-tasking, and fitting something in when one can least take a breath and pay attention will not do. Bread now asks more of my time, particularly in the timing and quality of that time. 

How important is bread anyway?
Dust does not go well with bread. It just doesn't. I do not want to even start a dough with the fine layer of construction debris everywhere. So, there it was on the cusp of July Fourth and there was no bread for the guests, no sour cream in the house to mix the coffee cake batter. But soon we will have new cabinets and countertops and a chalkboard pantry door.

I've no mind right now for organizing and schedules. Family needs attending to, the dog is growing old, and a dear friend's son was just killed in an accident. How's that for making bread seem small and unimportant?

Death intrudes
A lovely, promising boy - okay, young man - of 24 was ripped from this world in the most arbitrary, but expected way. He was killed in a car accident. I say expected because there are so many thousands of these accidents that they are completely foreseeable, not each in particular, but that they will occur. One moment, he was there, and the next not. A dividing line forever for his parents and his brother, and the truck driver as well who was on the other side of the crash.

I know what it is like to lose someone in an instant. A punch to the gut that lingers on. An unwelcome shadow who lurks beside us for months or years. And so much more so for my friend, who lost a child.

And the kitchen
Soon we will not feel like our sweet contractor is living with us. The shelf and drawer liners will be in; pots, pans, dishes, glasses and all else will again be in place. But, honestly, I don't know where I will be. This is a time for doubt and I am avoiding the making of bread.

Alcohol, Grain and Going to Crazy Land

Last weekend I toured the local, one could say artisanal, One Eight Distilling, makers of gin and vodka, in Washington, DC's Ivy City. Hearing that their flour grinder is not in use very much, I asked about the possibility of grinding actual flour (not flour for alcohol making) there with their local, organic whole grains. The owner gave me that look, the one that says, no and maybe you should consider a psychiatric medication. This reignites the quest for local whole grains and now I know they actually exist, albeit in the form of animal-feed quality, whatever that means. I will have to ask the new, just-opened, bakery up the street about their flour situation. Of course, I could trek again over to that downtown farmers market, the only one that carries freshly ground flours.

There is also now on the table a birthday offer of a grinder to make flour. Not sure, but very tempted. Would be great to have local, organic grains to do this. Worth a return to that market now that it's spring. The farmer who sells whole grain flours also carries wheat and rye berries.


Health at stake
Really my health is at stake. Every website I look at practically screams with dire warnings if I do not home grind. Apparently, all of the whole flours I have been baking with have already lost all of their nutritional value by the time I get them home, let alone by the time I put them into a dough. I might as well have been eating straight white flour and potato chips, well, organic potato chips. 


On top of reading website materials with alarming health warnings, I have visited the truly crazytown sites that discuss storing grain for years, something that survivalists do when contemplating the end of civilization as we know it. For them, the week-long loss of power 10 years ago was likely the small earthquake that augurs the big one that will result in the permanent cessation of electricity unless you were smart enough to invest in solar or your own personal wind farm out in the middle of the desert (assuming a water source). These are the people I will be making common cause with when I bring those first wheat or rye berries into the house. [Photo of an azalea bush down the block.]

To use different logic, if Bernie Sanders, a Brooklyn boy, can move to Vermont and - decades later - run for President, I can do the Vermont-y thing of milling my own flour without totally leaping off the edge. Not quite sure there's a working analogy there.

Danger signs
Please do not let me start growing and threshing wheat in the backyard. I do not know my way around farming implements. It's that Brooklyn upbringing. And if I start storing a year's worth of canned goods, act quickly, slap my face, and shout very loudly "snap out of it." Knowing me, I will have the tons of cans, but forget the can opener.

Starter Lively Again, but No Baking

My starter came back to life just fine at the end of Passover, but I have been away and busy at work, so no breads just yet. Indeed, this morning was the first time in weeks that I even glanced at my bread notebook. I am contemplating a rye bread. Did not attempt the matzo or injera yet. And almost out of whole wheat flour.

Really just have to figure out the next bread and figure that April was not meant to be a baking month. 

Passover: The Un-Bread Holiday

Passover in four parts: What it is, why it is, and what it means to me, followed by questions that have started to haunt (plague?) me since beginning the bread quest, which coincides almost exactly with a significant interest in religious language and studies.

Part 1 - A quick synopsis
Passover is the week-long holiday that we start with the annual retelling of the story and a celebration of the Ancient Israelites' quick liberation from Egypt and slavery. Pharoah finally sends them away at the last of the 10 plagues (the last so unimaginable that there was wailing throughout the land), a story with the famous, perhaps first, labor demand of Let My People Go! We ask the four questions, thank God, discuss ministering angels, sing songs, drink wine, eat matzo and bitter herbs, and enjoy an awesome meal with family gathered from far and near.

The whole point of a seder, the ritual and meal, is to tell the story and discuss it. There's two seders, one on each of the first two nights. 

The rest of the week we do not eat any bread, but ingest lots of only-on-Passover foods. For Eurpoean Jews (or descended from them), the custom extends to a ban on beans, corn, rice, foods that in some way expand. (Quinoa is, mysteriously, allowed, as are potatoes.) Do not question; this does not make sense. If you are lucky - meaning you like matzo - this is a great holiday from start to finish. It is a challenge for a vegetarian, I'll admit.

Part 2 - The meaning of the un-bread holiday
With its parallel universe of different dishes, foods, tablecloths, glassware and even ideology, Passover is at home in a Jewish tradition that reminds us of the fleeting nature of life, our vulnerability, and the thin veneer of culture. Like some other Jewish holidays and even the Sabbath itself, we forgo the everyday, carving out time to remind ourselves of God, ritual, and history and to consider ourselves links in that historical chain. 

With Passover, the themes of freedom from slavery and treating the stranger well are front and center. Whether one accepts God as the change agent or not in this drama is a different question. Telling the story of the exodus from Egypt is a commandment. And throughout our sacred texts, the obligation to the poor, the stranger, the widow and the orphan are always described as familiar - because we knew what it was like to be strangers in a land not our own, because we are always close to being without all of the protections and comforts of home.

Part 3 - Rituals I love
In millions of homes, on the seder nights, haggadahs (or, in Hebrew, haggadot) (the book, in many, many versions, read at a seder) are opened, children are singing the four questions, families discuss or or speed through the reading, and beloved foods are oohed and ahhed over before being eaten.

As a child, I would wake up to a kitchen transformed, cleaned of anything leavened or anything that co-existed with it throughout the year, with different dishes, glasses, and the Passover tablecloth. And with the morning before the ritual of the first of two Seders would begin the breadless week of matzo, which I love, and meals we would have only during those days or only on the most important holidays. Matzo brei, bubeleach, gefilte fish, and piece after piece of whole wheat matzo, always my favorite.  

After my children were born, I did the same for them, from the cleaning through the treks to family, to our beautiful seders. I enjoy the zen state of taking each book out of each bookcase, each kitchen item out of each cabinet, and culling through stored food, to ready the house. Each year at our seders, crossing lines of religious observance from atheist to nutcase (did I say that?), half of the family discusses the story, the interpretations, at length, and the other half begs to go faster so that we can get to the meal already.

Part 4 - Questions and bread
In the last couple of years I have begun to question. One question was pointed out to me: How can matzoh be both the bread of affliction during slavery and the bread of liberation? But other questions are my own: There were hours before the Israelites fled Egypt and they took many possessions, so why did they not bake some bread? 

In terms of bread, the Jews left Egypt with, among other things, such as animals, their kneading bowls, suggesting that they were already making bread, which, at the time, surely meant that they were either using old dough or a replenished sourdough culture, or both. The Egyptians created not only a great civilization - sans the slavery - but culture in both its artistic and culinary senses. They invented the fermented staples of beer and bread. Read Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History, one of my favorite books (warning: no recipes). 

The author, H.E. Jacob, posits that the holiness of the liberation from slavery rejects - for one week a year - bread as the centerpiece of that culture, though there is a theory that the bread-less celebration pre-dated the holiday. But this is just one way that Judaism harkens back in its cycle of holidays to our nomadic, pre-urban, civilization. Baking needs an oven; a dough needs to sit, undisturbed, to rise. These practices, happen with agriculture, with culture, in many senses of the word, and with being rooted in one place. 

18 minutes? And why did an 18-minute rule for making matzoh develop? That's 18 minutes from mixing flour and water through baking. Since the ancients lacked both kitchen timers and clocks, surely this is a somewhat modern development. And since any bread maker knows that a sourdough culture takes hours, at the very least, to begin fermentation, and far longer to actually raise a dough and make a respectable bread, why such a short time as 18 minutes? Clearly, the learned elders were not mixing dough and baking bread. 

What the 18-minute rule practically guarantees is commercial matzo production rather than home production. One child needing a moment of time, one pressing telephone call, and, zappo, you are over 18 minutes. (Don't even get me started on the craziness of what wheat is acceptable for Passover among people way more observant than me.)

And why did Jewish bakeries not take a week to begin making bread after Passover? Were bakers sustaining their leavening, their sourdough starters, during the holiday? Was this the origin of the practice of selling one's chametz (the crumbs or other leavened products passed over in one's cleaning)? Selling the chametz is a legal fiction, where one sells and buys back, the food. Did this legal fiction allow the starters to survive over Passover? 

Getting rid of all leavened foods, except ...
This year, I will be hiding my starter in the back of the fridge, in a dormant state, and feeling guilty. Maybe I should bury it in the backyard, but that seems silly. I thought of asking my neighbor to keep it in the back of her fridge, but legal fictions bother me, even if I do sell my own chametz. So, technically, at least, I will not own my starter during Passover.

If you are curious, my mother made Passover egg rolls in our kosher-for-Passover house, so we had a bread-like food and sandwiches. I have a religious aversion to kosher-for-Passover cereals when we already have the best possible option. Nothing really is better than crumbled matzo with milk for breakfast. I'm a woman of simple tastes and I love my matzo.

Oven Porn (only naked loaves)

Professional staring is tax deductible?
As an accountant's daughter, I am thinking that any staring done on a professional level is both proper and tax deductible. In addition to a love for bakeries, I also have a thing for ovens. Before I start reporting on any, I offer background on my less than rational delight in the equipment that transforms a dough into a majestic bread.

Oven envy
I am jealous of all of those people with brick or adobe ovens in the backyard. When I see a brick or adobe oven at a bakery or pizza place I ogle and sometimes take a picture and share it with others who might appreciate a hot, attractive oven. I do not personally know anyone with an oven in the backyard and I emphatically do not want to build my own (how could I ever move?), but I fantasize nonetheless (also nightmares of burning down the house; hence the hesitation).

Before regularly reading and participating on the fresh loaf forum, before getting deep into fermentation, starters, and dough development, my baking porn was limited to the King Arthur Flour catalogue: designed to wet appetites and prompt gifts for the holidays. No ovens. 

Now, I fantasize  whenever I see a beautiful oven. I want to sneak in and bake one of my breads, just to know what it would look and taste like. The fantasy does not include waking at 3 a.m. to work early mornings in a bakery, however. Work before 9 has no place in any fantasy.

Some ovens worthy of a stare. Beware of developing oven envy.

Staring at ovens isn't polite, but ...
I saw an oven at a farmers market in DC that was hitched to a pickup truck. A big adobe oven making the cold market a little warmer. It was so mobile and I thought of stealing it, but I was on foot and I could not have carried or rolled a 4x6 foot oven into the subway. Pizzas were being baked on the spot. Nice thin crusts with bubbles in them. Lots of baking longing.

I read about a couple in Vermont who ran a small bread business out of their outdoor oven. Why is it always Vermont? They seemed like such a sweet, happy couple, too. Except for the cold, I would be tempted to go up there, or out to Oregon or New Mexico, buy some Birkenstocks, and build an oven. Maybe it's only my imagination, but I think of Vermont and Oregon, and similar places as filled with lots of friendly, DIY, contented liberals who make their own breads, sweaters and pickles. 

I've seen beautiful adobe ovens right outside of modest houses in New Mexico, and was tempted to request a try at one myself.

Are these bakers happy because they have big, outdoor ovens all fired up and lovely long- (hard, dare I say) handled baking peels? I assume they are happy; how could you not be with such a spectacular oven? Their sourdough starters are bubbly and growing, their breads are beautiful with brown, snappish crusts, and their organic butter likely melts into the soft interior of the bread. [Photo: Massive oven at Pitzze in Bethesda, Md.]

My favorite oven is at Frank Pepe's pizza place in New Haven. It's covered with old subway tiles. When opened, its almost-violent baking chamber can be glimpsed. Gruff, silent and capable - like an oven equivalent of a tall, laconic movie star. But the poor thing only makes pizza. My bread doughs could make that oven so much more ... satisfied. Worth the trip. You might stare at the oven, but have some pizza as well. Obscenely good.

One more confession: I read posts, lurk, actually, on the fresh loaf forum about brick and wood ovens just to peer at the beautiful ovens. Now that is the ultimate in oven porn, sometimes of the oven alone, unadorned, sometimes with gorgeous loaves, all baked, in these brick or adobe hearths.

Next on the horizon, perhaps lasting through spring and summer, local ovens and bakeries that, I hope, will delight my senses. If the need remains acute, I might have to travel to ovens and bakeries far and wide. I will keep baking as well, perched as I am at the two-thirds mark on the way to 108 breads.

On the Road

It's Passover cleaning season, the weeks before the holiday when I scour the backs of every bookshelf, cabinet, and corner of some closets (not adult children's areas, however; they are adults). I will most likely be making fewer doughs and baking less bread. So I decided to cover a somewhat different topic, or set of topics.

Before I give lots of details about where I'm going - maybe hinting at new quests: 108 bakeries or 108 ovens - I thought I should define what I consider the ideals. So, the next couple of posts will be thoughts on bakeries and ovens. I have some opinions, especially about bakeries. Ovens, nice, wood-fired and other unique ovens, I am rather in awe of.  

[Image from a Passover humor page. Who knew there were whole pages and lists of these?]

Current Fantasy: English Bread Making Classes

For professional reasons only, ha ha

Have you ever peeked at the courses page of the Real Bread Campaign website? Do you imagine combining a trip to England with lessons in sourdough and whole grain baking? I do - a lot of the time. 

I admit there was a while when I fooled myself that one of the week-long courses at the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI) would do, but without English accents, English countryside or cities, or farmhouses with sheep outside, or at least nearby, San Francisco does not pass muster. As for being in the US, SF has none of the convenience of the East Coast or the charm. (Sorry, I like the city, but I'm an East Coast woman. I don't quite get the SF hoopla.) SFBI doesn't have cute descriptions of organic oases or a fermentation paradise - again combined with the English accents.

Perhaps that British bake-off show is to blame, although in their endeavors beyond bread I just become convinced that my pinnacle would be amateur hour compared to the contestants. I'd be more likely to learn to sew and audition for Project Runway, one of my guilty pleasures, than making some kind of cake I've never heard of. No, the allure of Britain is a definitely a combination of accents and loveliness.

Seriously

I would love to take some bread classes and write about them here, especially because thus far I've been self-taught, with the aid of books and online bread forums. Might be nice to learn someone's technique in person. Might be nice to enjoy the camaraderie of a group lesson.

What's keeping me from booking the airline tickets and the classes? Apart, of course, from a full-time job, there are two reasons.

 Two 
1. Expensive trip. Yes, a trip somewhat journalistic in nature, but I don't think I could collect enough by crowdsourcing and I'm pretty sure such a trip would not qualify for a deduction on my taxes.

2. I will not drive in England. Even being a passenger in a car over there makes me anxious and becomes an exercise in utter confusion. I never get to the point where I know which lane one is supposed to be in or turn to. This could prevent a trip to one of those baking schools or bakeries on the edge of a sheep meadow.

Truly, though, I get pretty overwhelmed by the incredible array of bread classes over there. I should actually seriously peruse the list and make some decisions, then figure out a financing plan. These seem like obstacles that would not stop any plucky heroine.

Our heroine would burst out into song right about now, perhaps with a dance number. Did I mention I went to the same high school as Neil Sedaka, albeit years later? And Neil Diamond, by the way. It's the ocean air and the proximity of good pizza that contributes to the genius of the students.

On the cusp of 2015

A moment in time to appreciate 2014 and refrain from the urge to look critically - and criticize - my bread efforts in the last year. Good to appreciate rather than always examining everything for the doughnut holes.

Successes in 2014

• I mostly resisted the urge to get up before or at 5 a.m. to tend to any preferments or doughs.
• I started experimenting with challahs and new grains. Okay, not much, but started.
• I made a bunch of breads again and again, developing a repertoire of breads I feel comfortable making.
• I broke down and purchased a dutch oven, which is already proving a nice addition.
• My jar collection continues to grow. These are used for sourdough starters, the permanently maintained mother culture and the ones I grow for particular breads. I like to change jars even for the mother every few weeks.  

And for 2015?
Really, who knows? There are hopes for more grains, for buying more of that farmers market freshly-milled flour, and definitely for the elusive sourdough challah - as wonderful and reliable as the one I make in the bread machine. No nuts, fruits, or cake-like breads. If I want something sweet, I make a mean cookie and a crazy cake to blow anything out of the water. Now there's some confidence. Seriously, my chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies are not fancy, but mighty fine. My sour cream coffee cake (especially if made with blueberries or raspberries) is as fine as any taste in this world. My sweets repertoire is not broad.

Back to bread
At somewhere between halfway to two-thirds to 108 breads, I want to make a lot of breads in 2015. I want to learn the bread lessons I sought to learn in making 108 breads. That's the bread resolution.
   

So Many Kinds of Flours to Try

So may flours to try, so many breads to make, so many stores and websites to investigate to determine what is available. I am overwhelmed with the burden of possibility.

After the sense of dread comes on, my response to the demons of limitless choice is to make a list, a table of all of the flours and flour-like ingredients I am interested in and what local stores they can be found at, and whether they are packaged or are available in bulk. 

To do list
I have so far discovered locally: Amaranth, millet, buckwheat, bulgur, barley, faro, flax seed, oats, quinoa, cornmeal. (Confession: I bought some a year ago and never used it. I put it in the compost.) That doesn't even cover most of the bean and rice flours from Bob's Red Mill. The ones I have not found yet are teff, einkorn, kamut, and triticale. Unfortunately, the endless possibilities require research, decisions, and planning. Take this last weekend for example. I bought spelt flour from the bulk aisle at the food coop, which only had a scale with pounds and ounces, not grams. One more bit of planning to add into the mix - weight conversions when writing down the shopping list. But I'm learning to plan because I love this journey of experimenting and the wonderful breakfasts of fresh bread and hot water (I liked my tea so weak, I just stopped using the tea bags). A little butter or some home made jam from a friend to go with it. A book or favorite website to read.

So proud of my table of flours and grains 
Please note that some of these entries are for beans or rice or other food materials that must be cooked, soaked or otherwise smashed before incorporating into a dough. Spreadsheet is not quite complete. Some of the entries are for foods I know I can find easily, so I did not bother to jot down where I can find those. I also have not yet gone to Whole Foods and written down exactly what is available in packages in the baking aisle.

FLOUR/GRAIN	PREPARATION	WHOLE FOODS		FOOD COOP
	SOAK	BULK	PACKAGED	BULK	PACKAGED
Amaranth
Arrowroot					X
Barley	whole grain	X		X
Bulgar (freekah)		X		X
Buckwheat
Chickpea	of course				X
Corn
Einkorn
Faro		X		X
Flaxseed
Flaxseed meal					X
Kamut
Oat		X		X
Millet
Polenta					X
Quinoa		X		X
Rice	of course
Rye				X
Spelt				X	X
Triticale
Notes	not for rising
Barley	Flour or cooked		Adds sweetness
Buckwheat	Flour or cooked		Love the taste of kasha
Corn	Whole or cornmeal		Should be sweet
Rice	Flour or cooked
Triticale	Rye/wheat grain

 

Work in progress
I've identified two breads to make, one using corn and the other buckwheat. Will proceed from there and perhaps update and alter the table as well.

I now need a spreadsheet for my life, though currently other projects are proceeding well (the biblical Hebrew project, the artwork, the art and Hebrew project, and the local grain and milling exchange project, still in the fantasy stage, which it might ever remain in, but who knows).