by Kelly Pickerill
When I went home for Thanksgiving my dad told me he’d been trying his hand at bread baking. His loaves, a sort of sourdough born of the book Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart, came out golden, with a crunchy crust and a crumb that was both chewy and fluffy. In other words, he had done what many have tried and failed to do: make a consistently good bread by hand. It looked easy.
So I got back to Jackson anticipating coming in to Lemuria to get a copy of it myself, only to have my eyes caught by another of Reinhart’s: Whole Grain Breads. Hey, if my dad can bake a white bread with minimal practice, why can’t I go just one tiny step further and bake, with maybe one or two deflated loaves, a whole wheat challah?
Reinhart begins his cookbook with a command to read his introductory material before delving in, which I’m okay with, because I love reading cookbooks. As I read the first chapter, though, where Reinhart relates the germ of his idea to write the cookbook, followed by a lengthy description of the bread seminars he went to, the multiple testers he had working on his recipes, the amount of times he failed to get his loaves just right, I started to get nervous. Just exactly what is a biga? I have a better idea now that I’ve read through his intro and his chapter on equipment and starters, mashes, and soakers, on the history of the wheat kernel, and on the basics of enzyme activity during bread baking.
I never realized, to use Reinhart’s term, how much “drama” goes on inside bread dough. He says, “As we connect the dots of the intricate patterns and roles these ingredients play, we can see how their various aspects and properties participate in the great dance of bread baking.”
I’ve done my reading, but I haven’t baked a loaf yet. I’m going to start with a sandwich loaf, a recipe Reinhart says is relatively simple, and my starter is getting ready as I write this. I’ll let you know how it goes.
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