Keys to Beautiful Bread

Ferment!

So I've started a phase of bread baking experimentation lately.  I've made various breads before, but now I'm exploring the world of wild yeast starters.  This basically means you mix some flour and water together and let it sit out so that little yeast guys floating in the air and bacteria in the flour inoculate your flour sludge, until it starts to bubble and smell a bit sour.  After a week or so of tending to it, you can start to bake with it.   This stuff becomes what you use to leaven your dough, instead of the dried yeast cultures you can buy. This process is fascinating and fussy and so far has produced two delicious loafs. 

I'm learning that bread baking is very much an art as well as a science.  In addition to measuring everything fairly precisely, you need to learn what the dough feels like and looks like and smells like in its various stages to get the timing right.  Given the cool temperatures in SF, which can affect the rate of rising, I'm finding I have to really get to learn to listen to and respond to the dough. 

So what is all this stuff doing on a training blog?  Wait for it.  (Deep, semi-profound, hardly-insightful analogy coming, I swear.)  Last night I started my leaven for another loaf of bread.   This morning, I mixed the leaven with more flour and water and salt.  Then I left for my morning run (a ha, training!) with the team down at Ocean Beach.  It was a gloriously beautiful day today, albeit extremely cold.  Probably about 39 when we started.   My lungs do not do well in cold, especially when I'm still recovering from a cold.  The run was only 5 miles, but I really struggled.  It was painful and I stopped a lot to walk.    And I had force myself to run even slower than I normally do, which is the only way I can run when my asthma is flaring up.  I was the VERY LAST runner out there, which is always a fear of mine. I don't mind being slow, but I hate being last.   I did manage, however, to put my ego aside and remind myself to listen and respond to my body.  I slowed it down a lot, and finished the run, thoroughly discouraged.

Bench resting.  The dough is chillaxin'

The team went out to brunch afterwards, but I declined since I had to tend to my bread back at home.  The recipe calls for a 3-4 hour fermentation at this stage.  By the time I finished showering and eating, I was at the 4.5 hour mark.  Still feeling dense and heavy -- not right.  I let another hour go.  Still not quite right.  Now I was feeling little discouraged thinking perhaps I had screwed up this batch.  But low and behold at hour 6, it finally came together.

The next phase is to shape the bread and let it rest.  When I started all of this, I was doubtful that the resting would do much, but in the short 20 minutes it chills out on the board, the glutens relax and the dough transforms into this supple and wonderful thing.  Just to finish off the process, you shape it again and let it rise again for 4 more hours or so before baking.

Ok, so here's today's realization learned from the dough.

1)  Things don't always go as planned or how you would like to go.  Today's run falls squarely into the disaster category. But I shouldn't feel so discouraged about it because I listened to my body.  I didn't allow the pressures of the other runners or the bread recipe dictate what I should do.  I responded to the slow rise of the dough, adapted, and waited patiently for things to come together.

Final Product!

2)  Rest can make all the difference in the world.  I tend to beat myself up when I don't work out according to the schedule.  But sometimes I just need to rest.  So I'm done feeling bad for missing workouts.  Rest can transform me.  Listen to your body.

3)  In the final step of this dough, you invert it into a hot pan.  I totally screwed this up as it stuck to the towel.  My lovingly risen dough was all twisted and a mess.  But I forged ahead and look what I produced!  So yes, even screw ups and bad days of training can produce something beautiful.

I'm still in bread training, and think it will be a long adventure, much like triathlon training.  Still enjoying the journey.

PS.  I'm still in fundraising training too.  $1400 from my goal.  Can you help me cure blood cancers?  I'll share some of my bread with you, if you'd like :-)

PPS.  Check out Tartine's bread baking book if you want to learn more about the process.