My previous at attempts to use whole wheat flour to bake bread were not exciting. I may have had one or two successes with a recipe from James Beard’s bread book. Wednesday night I decided to give a new recipe a try. Following the recipe for whole wheat sourdough Miche from Daniel Leader’s Local Breads, I was very pleased. The bread had a chewy, nutty crust, tasting just shy of burnt in a few spots (like pizza crust baked in a wood-fired oven) and a rich flavor. Pretty good for flour, water, and salt.
Saturday morning I baked my second loaf of bread from the same recipe, but I doubled it:
my son holds up the second Miche
right out of the oven, note how close it is to the full width of the parchment.
Because I moved the formed loaf from the colander to the parchment a little too early, it had a chance to spread. Next time I will be sure to preheat much earlier.
I learned a good bit about timing with this recipe. Not about how timing effects the results – more how bad timing makes the baker’s life harder.
I fed the starter Thursday night. By Friday morning it had more than doubled in volume – and I didn’t have time to make the dough and let it ferment before heading to the office, so I put the levain in the fridge. This meant I wasn’t able to start until 7 PM.
When I got home from work, I took the levain out of the fridge, made dinner and read for a while. The dough was ready to sit for its second ferment by 10 PM.
Our kitchen was rather cool, so I decided to just go to bed, and let the dough rise for as long as 8 hours if need be – I just didn’t want to stay up until 1 AM (at the earliest) in order to bake.
I woke up at 3 AM, and didn’t feel like dozing was very likely. So I got out of bed, went to check on the dough, and was glad I did. It was slightly more than double in size. So I decided to bake.
I drank tea and read Shelly Powers’ Painting the Web while I waited for the oven (and the pizza stone) to get hot. By the time the bread was baked and on the cooling rack, it was close to 5 AM. I slept well for a few hours. At 8:30 AM, I was tasting the bread.
I wasn’t as happy with the crust on the second loaf, but my wife and son preferred it. A softer crust is a little more acceptable to them – I prefer a crisp and crackly crust. I had tried turning the oven down to a lower temperature after 15 minutes of baking at 470 degrees. I won’t do that the next time I bake this recipe.