I continue to suck at sourdough. I’ve made two attempts both have been total bricks. Frankly all my baking has been poor this week. The last two loaves of whole wheat have not been the crusty deliciousness I had been turning out for the last few weeks. I’m to be away from oven for a while so I will have to settle for reading bread books and watching video to diagnose what is going wrong.
A sample of my latest pie. For sauce I used an organic marinara from trader joes with some oregano mixed in. Cheese is a fajita mix from costco. Flour is just all purpose. After a day of shoveling I’m doing it easy using machinery to kneed and mix it. Faster than delivery given the state of the roads. Beer is Otter Creek Spring Ale. Otter Creek is in Middlebury VT where I studied Arabic and drank gallons of the stuff. Middlebury is also home of Segue LMS.
This week in baking, I’m exploring French bread. I started with this recipe as a baseline but added a tsp of sugar to go with my bread machine yeast. I let a pan of water steam in the oven for 30 minutes at 450 before putting the loaves in. Also I covered the loaves in a warm wet bath towel for the final rise and brushed some egg white on the surface before I put them in. The results were pretty good.
