Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

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Roasted Garlic Bread

This is a bread I’ve had on my list for a while, and now I’m wondering what took me so long. Besides looking pretty, it’s heaven on earth for garlic lovers. That would be me, and this summer I’ve been lucky to have a virtually unlimited supply of garlic from my brother-in-law’s prolific garden. I’m happy to share this loaf for the World Bread Day event hosted by Zorra (1x umrühren bitte).

The recipe comes (with a few adaptations) from one of my favorite baking books, Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking. Whether you are a beginning baker or an old hand, I think you’ll love the meeting the farmers, millers, and bakers profiled therein who share a wealth of baking knowledge, skill, and recipes. This bread is from Della Fattoria, a small northern California bakery featured in the book. We don’t get their bread in my immediate neighborhood, but I can tell you that on the occasions when I have picked up one of their loaves at the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market in San Francisco, I have not been disappointed.

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A Good Rye

I spent the first few decades of my life believing I did not care for rye bread. Clearly I had a bad experience somewhere in my childhood, and those early associations are nothing if not tenacious. It’s a bread that’s fairly easy to avoid in this country, if one is so inclined, and I was.

The breakthrough came when we made a version of this lovely simple rye bread in my first class at SFBI. At the end-of-the day tasting, not wanting to eschew it completely and risk exposing myself as a bread wimp, I opted for the smallest piece on the cutting board. Happily, I found myself won over by its rich, earthy flavor and chewy texture, and kicking myself for all those wasted years of rye abstinence.

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Lemon Barley Loaf

Does “lemon bread” conjure for you an image of sugary, cake-like, bright yellow slabs that make a fine dessert but a lousy ham sandwich? This lemon barley bread, adapted from the Lemon Barley Cob recipe in Dan Lepard’s The Handmade Loaf, is nothing like that. This is real bread, with a strong lemon flavor that goes well with anything from a drizzle of honey to slices of tomato with a basil leaf or two.*

The Handmade Loaf is a book well worth owning. It showcases dozens of unique breads and bakers from across Europe, as well as Lepard’s minimalist mixing method. This generally consists of 20–30 minutes of doing nothing more than allowing the dough to rest and collect itself, punctuated by two or three short bursts of hand kneading.

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Saltless Tuscan Bread

Salt is generally considered to be one of the four basic ingredients in bread (along with flour, water, and yeast). It contributes to flavor, of course, but also reinforces the gluten structure, controls (by slowing) the rate of fermentation, inhibits the oxidation that breaks down color- and flavor-enhancing pigments, and enhances the keeping quality of the bread. A dough without salt is likely to be sticky, slack, and hard to work with, and the resulting bread lacking in flavor and shelf life.

That said, there is one bread that is typically made without salt: Tuscan bread. The reason for the saltlessness is unclear; some sources say tha centuries ago, the government levied a hefty tax on salt that the Tuscans didn’t want to pay. Whatever the reason, the strong flavors of Tuscan cuisine are well-suited to a less strongly-flavored bread. This type of bread, which stales quickly, is apparently traditional for panzanella (tomato-bread salad).

For my first attempt at saltless bread, I adapted the Tuscan Bread recipe in Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. This version was interesting to me because it employs a technique in which a portion of the flour is mixed with boiling water into a paste the night before baking. This gelatinizes the starches in the flour, Renhart explains, which brings out distinct flavors that enhance the bread’s unique quality. The Tuscan Bread recipe in The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz includes a similar paste, which Oriz refers to as the bouillie (mush).

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Whole Wheat – Polenta Sourdough

I’ve been a little accident-prone lately. Which is to say, careless. In the past five days I’ve managed to smash a tailbone, a toe, and a finger (I’m fine, really). Luckily, my latest accident involved no bodily injury and resulted in a very nice bread.

My intention was to use 400 grams of whole wheat sourdough starter in this whole-grain bread, but instead of weighing it out I blithely dumped in the whole lot of it, which I’m pretty sure was about 550 grams. By the time I realized the error of my ways, it was too late and there was nothing for it except forge ahead and see what developed.

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Sourdough Ciabatta Rolls

For sandwiches, sliced bread is great, soft rolls are wonderful. But sometimes nothing but a crusty roll will do to make you feel like you’re holding a meal in the palm of your hand. And sometimes it just needs to be a ciabatta roll, with those nice big holes to harbor whatever filling is your pleasure of the moment..

But I confess I had more than good eating on my mind when I made these particular rolls. The high-hydration (i.e., wet) doughs that produce those accommodating holes can be especially difficult to handle, and I’ve always relied on my trusty mixer to see me through. I was curious to see, here in this bare-bones kitchen where all the mixing is by hand (and all the yeast is wild), whether I could pull it off.

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