52 Loaves (37 page)

“Listen, it’s singing!” I cried, delighted, echoing Lindsay’s words at Bobolink Dairy.

“Is that a good thing?” Katie asked.

“Oh, yes. That’s a very good thing.”

There was one other “very good thing,” also a very big surprise. My backyard wheat, so low in gluten that it appeared to be soft wheat to the technicians at Bay State Milling who’d analyzed it, made fine bread, especially the half I’d stone-ground, whether in the clay oven or the electric. So much so that Anne, whose memory was apparently growing even shorter than mine, asked if I was going to grow wheat again this year!

“Only if you buy me a combine for Christmas,” I answered.

After the bread had cooled, I opened a bottle of wine (French, of course) and proposed a toast, which came out sounding more like a benediction than I’d intended. “To our ancestors, and their ancestors, and their ancestors before them, who for six thousand years survived on this bread that we’re about to eat.”

As I sliced the loaf, I was acutely aware that across the Atlantic Ocean, the monks at Saint-Wandrille were also just sitting down to break bread for their evening meal—it was Sunday, so they’d have butter—and I added a silent toast to Bruno. While we ate bread and drank wine, a ritual nearly as old as civilization itself, Anne asked, “So, dear, what have you learned over the past year?”

Let’s see . . .

Bread in a healthy diet doesn’t make you fat.

Too much bread, washed down with wine, does.

The only thing more unsettling than having your faith shaken is having your lack of faith shaken.

Use a
levain.

Do not undertake any project that promises it can be completed “in a weekend.”

Do not drink the water in Morocco. Or the tea, or the coffee.
In fact, you might think about skipping Morocco altogether. I hear Barbados is nice this time of year.

Trust strangers. Well, some. Only those that you can trust.

Choose one thing you care about and resolve to do it well. Whether you succeed or not, you will be the better for the effort.

Bread is life.

——————————————

I should’ve added, “Monks use e-mail.” Just before Christmas I’d received a note from Bruno:

I do not know how to thank you for your kindness! I had not received a Christmas present since entering the monastery. I found a bit of the joy of my childhood! I do not know how to say thank you, I have nothing else to offer you except my friendship and my prayers.

His first Christmas present since entering the monastery . . . I’d read those words over and over again. Poor soul. Poor blessed, fortunate soul. He had, by the way, used the
tu
form.

I was even less prepared for Katie’s question. “So, Dad, are you going to bake bread next week?”

What
was
I going to do next week? And the week after that, and the week after that? The year that had started so slowly had gone by so quickly. So much seemed unanswered, undone. I had only scratched the crust of bread, only begun to understand the possibilities in bread and in the baker. It didn’t feel like the
end
of anything. It felt like a middle, or maybe even a beginning.

On the other hand, I was greatly looking forward to some freedom on weekends, to not having to plan a Saturday or Sunday around a five-hour fermentation and a two-hour rise, followed
by a one-hour bake, to being able to work in the garden, or go to the market, or, yes, even have afternoon sex without scheduling it around the anaerobic respiration of a one-celled organism. I was ready to have my old aerobic life back.

“Dad?”

“Gee, I don’t know, Katie,” I finally answered. “I guess I’ll see how I feel.”

She and Anne both tried to hide their disappointment, but my answer had left the kitchen as defl ated, dense, and cheerless as one of my early loaves.

“But I was wondering,” I continued. “Do you think you might like some croissants?”

A Note about the Recipes

The recipes that follow specify measurements in grams. If you have to ask why, you skipped week 14 (“Metric Madness”). Go ahead, read it now; I’ll wait . . . I suppose I could buckle under to convention and provide (shudder) imperial volume equivalents, but trust me, you’re far better off investing in a twenty-five-dollar digital kitchen scale. While you’re at it, pick up a pizza stone, and you’ll be ready to make the best bread you’ve ever tasted.
Bon appétit!

Building a
Levain

To paraphrase the baker and author Daniel Leader: if I could convince you of one thing, it’s to bake with a
levain.
Further-more, if you want to use any of the following recipes, you’ll have no choice. Here’s how I made mine. Other methods can be found in several of the bread cookbooks listed in the bibliography.

Prepare the apple water:

1. Let 1 quart of tap water sit out overnight to remove any chlorine.

2. Look for a hazy apple, preferably from a farm stand (the haze is wild yeast). Cut the apple into 1-inch chunks and
place, along with the peel of a second apple, into a container with 1 cup of the water. (Cover and reserve the remaining water for later.)

3. Let the apple and water sit covered, at room temperature, for 3 days, stirring daily. The mixture should be foaming a bit and should smell somewhat like cider by the third day.

Build the
levain:

DAY 1

4. Combine 50 grams of whole wheat flour with 350 grams un-bleached all-purpose or bread flour (the additional protein in bread flour may be beneficial for the early starter).

5. Measure out 150 grams of the apple water through a fine strainer and add 150 grams of the flour mixture (you’ll use the rest of the flour later). Whip vigorously with a whisk, scrape down the sides, and cover with a screen (a frying pan spatter screen is ideal) or cheesecloth.

6. Leave the
levain
at room temperature, whipping every few hours to incorporate air. It is important to keep the starter aerated during the first few days.

DAY 2

Add 75 grams of the reserved tap water and 75 grams of the flour mixture, whip, and leave at room temperature, covered as before, for another 24 hours, again whisking occasionally. You should see bubbles starting to form and the mixture increasing in bulk.

DAY 3

7. Transfer the
levain
to a clean 2-quart container. Avoid transferring any of the dried bits from the sides of the old container.

8. Add 75 grams each of the reserved flour and tap water, whip, and cover as before.

9. If at any point in this process the
levain
starts to smell a bit funky, discard half, replace with equal parts (by weight) flour and water, and whip more frequently. If the
levain
seems limpid (not rising and bubbling), increase the frequency of feedings.

DAY 4

10. Feed the
levian
once again with the remaining 100 grams of flour and 100 grams water and let it sit at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, and your
levain
should be ready for use, although it will continue to develop flavor over the next few weeks. Follow the care and feeding directions below.

Care and feeding of your
levain:

11. Store the
levain
in a covered container in the refrigerator.

12. For the first few weeks, feed twice a week as described in the next step; afterward a weekly feeding is sufficient.

13. To feed, stir thoroughly and discard about 250 grams of
le-vain.
Replace with 125 grams water (straight from the tap is fine if your water isn’t too chlorinated) and 125 grams flour (either unbleached bread or all-purpose) and stir well. Leave the lid ajar (so gases can escape) at room temperature for 2 to 4 hours before tightly covering the
levain
and returning it to the refrigerator.

14. If you bake regularly, feeding is simply part of preparing the
levain
for the bread, and no other feeding is necessary. You should always feed the
levain
several hours or the night before making bread, so replenish with the amount of
levain
the recipe calls for and you will maintain a constant supply of fresh
levain
with no effort.

15. Occasionally clean out your container with hot water (never soap) to remove the crud that forms on the sides.

16. If you want a stronger
levain,
leave it out overnight once in a while and feed with smaller “meals.”

17. You may see a puddle of liquid forming on top, a product of fermentation. It can simply be stirred back in, but when it accumulates too much, I like to pour it off. Weigh your
levain
beforehand and replace the discarded liquid with the same amount of water and flour (in a ratio of about 3 parts water to 1 part flour). Then feed as usual.

Peasant Bread
(
Pain de Campagne
)

1. At least 2 hours before beginning (you can do this the night before), feed the
levain
as follows: Remove from the refrigerator and add equal parts flour and room-temperature water (I use about 130 grams each, which replenishes what I’ll be using in the bread). Stir well, incorporating oxygen, and leave on the countertop with the cover slightly ajar. The starter should be bubbling and lively when you begin your bread.

2. Place a large mixing bowl on a kitchen scale and add each ingredient in turn, using the Tare button to zero out the scale between additions. Mix thoroughly with a wet hand until the dough is homogenous. Cover and leave the dough to
autolyse
for about 25 minutes.

3. Remove the dough to an unfloured countertop and knead by hand for 7 to 9 minutes (or if you insist, you can use a stand mixer with a dough hook for 2 to 3 minutes) until the dough is elastic and smooth. During the first minutes of kneading, a metal bench scraper is useful to scoop up the wet dough that clings to the countertop.

4. Clean out the bowl (no soap, please), mist with oil spray, and replace the dough, topping with a piece of oiled plastic wrap. Ferment at room temperature (68–72°F is ideal) for 4 to 5 hours.

5. Remove the dough, which should have risen by about half, to a lightly floured countertop and gently press into a disk about 1 inch high. Form a
boule
by gathering the sides into the center, creating surface tension, then place seam side up in a colander covered with a well-floured linen napkin. Return the plastic wrap atop the dough and set aside to proof. Meanwhile, place a pizza stone in the lower third of the oven and an old cast iron skillet or pan on the bottom shelf. Preheat the oven to at least 500°F.

6. After 1½ to 2 hours, carefully turn the loaf onto a baker’s peel that has been liberally sprinkled with rice flour or cornmeal. Sprinkle the top of the loaf with rye or rice flour (not white flour, which turns brown) to get that country “dusted” look.

7. Make several symmetrical slashes (
grignes
) with your
lame
or a single-edged razor.

8. Immediately slide the loaf onto the stone and add 1 cup water to the skillet (wear an oven mitt), minimizing the time the oven door is open. Reduce oven temperature to 480°F.

9. After 20 to 25 minutes, or when the loaf has turned dark brown, reduce oven temperature to 425°F.

10. Continue baking until the loaf registers 210°F in the center (about 50 to 60 minutes total) with an instant-read thermometer, or until a rap on the bottom of the loaf produces a hollow, drumlike sound. Return the bread to the oven, with the oven off, for about 15 minutes. Allow the bread to cool on a rack at least 2 hours before serving.

Pain au Levain Miche

This is a large (about three-pound)
miche
leavened only with the wild yeast
levain
that makes for a nice, yeasty loaf with plenty of character and chew.

Follow the recipe for Peasant Bread (pages 330–332) with the following differences:

1. Don’t be alarmed when this wet (70% hydration) dough flattens out on the peel; that’s the classic
miche
shape we want for this bread.

2. This is a very forgiving loaf. I usually use a 4-hour fermentation followed by a 2-hour proof, but when it fits my schedule better, a 2-hour fermentation followed by a 4-hour proof (or 3 and 3) seems to works equally well.

3. Follow steps 5–10 of the Peasant Bread instructions for baking, except extend the cooking time to 60 minutes or more, until the center of the loaf registers 210°F.

Baguette à l’Ancienne

In France, this bread would be known as a
baguette à l’ancienne,
a designation that refers loosely to an artisan baguette, oft en made with
levain
and/or a delayed fermentation, although less scrupulous bakers (yes, they are still around) have been known to dust a little flour on ordinary baguettes and pass them off as
à l’ancienne
. The recipe calls for fermenting the dough overnight in the refrigerator, but I’ve made these the same day using a four-hour refrigerated fermentation with little difference.

Makes 4 minibaguettes