I found this little book:
Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish a few weeks ago and found myself truly inspired to make something delicious after reading all of the background information and many of the recipes inside.
I chose to make my own 'levain' which is also called a 'mother' or a 'starter.' It took a week of feeding my levain every day at 7am... the timing is very precise in this book which I thought would be a hard thing for me to stick with, but it ended up being kind of a relaxing ritual to start my day.
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| My big tub specially purchased for bread making! |
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| Whole Wheat Flour |
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| And warm water... that's it. The levain gets it's yeast naturally from the air over time. |
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| A gray morning out my kitchen window. |
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| I was so glad to have step-by-step instructions and pictures of what each step should look like. It takes a lot of the second-guessing out of the process. When doing something completely new, this makes it much easier. |
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| The hand-mixed whole wheat flour and warm water. |
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| The bubbly levain at an almost mature state! I think this was day four. |
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| just look at those bubbles!!! |
On day 6, yesterday, you can begin to use your mature levain in actual recipes! Again, there was a lot of exactly timed mixing, folding, proofing, cooking... but it wasn't too much. One step at a time gets you all the way to your goal, ya know?!
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| My first dough, ready for proofing overnight! |
So here it is! My very first loaf of Pain de Campagne!
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| I'm so glad I rescued this dutch oven. It comes in handy all of the time! |
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| yay!!! |
A happy Sunday morning indeed!
That is beautiful bread! Bring a couple of loaves to the beach. You will be an expert by then! Amy
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh! What a fun thing to try. It looks like fun and looks so good to eat.Whole wheat flour--sounds like my kind of bread. You are amazing and do such interesting things. MaMaw
ReplyDeleteAshley, tell Bryan thank you for the birthday call. My cell phone went completly dead. I did not know it was in need of complete charghing. Sorry, I will pay attention to it closer. I have a land phone, but of course that would cost you to use that number. Thank you both anyway. MaMaw
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