Wild Yeast

Manuela of Baking History is our gracious host for BreadBakingDay #04. When she announced that the theme for this month would be “Bread with Spice(s),” I immediately thought of a bread that I’ve had in mind to try for a while now: saffron challah.

I love saffron, I love challah, and I love to shape dough, so I was in my own little heaven with this one. Challah is the most amazing dough –– it starts out so stiff you think the only thing you’re going to be able to produce with it is some sort of weapon… but then darned if it doesn’t ferment its beautiful golden self into the most supple, silky, workable stuff you’ve ever had the pleasure of holding in your hands.

Challah lends itself spectacularly well to a multitude of braided and other shapes. I decided to go with three braids that look intricate but are simple to do. One has two strands, the other two have six strands each. Notes on the shaping follow the recipe.

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Cast of characters:

• Me
• Me

Act I, Scene 1

Hey, this month’s Daring Bakers challenge is bread, woohoo! Tanna has chosen Tender Potato Bread from Home Baking by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid. And she’s authorized us to make the recipe our own by seasoning and/or shaping it as we please. I’ve always wanted to make a fougasse. Now’s the perfect time! Let’s get started.

Hold on! Look, you’re used to working with ingredients by weight, and these measurements are given by volume. And, you’re used to using water to adjust the dough consistency, and the directions here say to do it with flour. You know you’re morally obligated as a Daring Baker to follow the directions, except where the host explicitly says you can use your creativity. Plus, you’ve never made bread with potatoes before, sweet potatoes don’t count. You don’t know how this dough will behave. Maybe the first time through you should just follow the original recipe and bake it in loaf pans, or as focaccia. Wasn’t it you who said you don’t tweak a recipe the first time you make it?

I changed my mind. I want to be creative! I want to be daring! How hard can it be? Bring it on!

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This is the bread I will be serving at Thanksgiving dinner this year. It is the same bread I made last year, and just about every year since I learned how to turn on the oven. It is the same bread you will see here next year if this blog is still around. It’s cranberry-nut bread, the recipe clipped from the back of a long-ago Ocean Spray bag.

The rest of the menu will be similarly well-worn: roast turkey with the same chestnut stuffing we’ve had since my husband and I shared our first Thanksgiving, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes with gravy, sweet potatoes, squash, creamed onions, apple pie, pumpkin pie.

I may vary the sweet potato treatment a bit from year to year. I add a brussels sprout or two if I the urge strikes me. I like to try new pumpkin pie recipes from time to time. But by and large, the menu is eminently simple and predictable.

This is not because I’m not an adventurous cook (although I’m the first to admit I’m not). It is because Thanksgiving dinner is not about the Cuisine, it’s about the Food. It’s about the familiar, abundant dishes you know will always be on your plate, year after year, dishes that come together to create what my husband calls “the perfect mouthful.” These are things that would be sorely missed if they weren’t on the table. This is food that tastes good without having to fuss with it. It’s food you know you can count on.

Now that I think about it, Thanksgiving dinner is a feast that’s a lot like the family I’ll be sharing it (whether physically or in spirit) with.

So no recipes today. The bread recipe is still on the back of the cranberry bag if you need it, but I suspect you don’t. Just make what you made last year.

Have a beautiful Thanksgiving, everyone!

Is anyone up for a game of “Connect the Facts”?

• Fact One: For reasons that are not altogether clear to me, I seem to have acquired an extra copy of Peter Reinhart’s latest book, Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor.
• Fact Two: Next week, most of us in the U.S. will be sitting down to our most important and most lavish feast of the year, but many people here and around the world will not have enough to eat.

In this game, everyone wins, even if you don’t win.

The rules are simple. All you have to do is make a donation, in any amount, to the hunger-fighting organization of your choice between now and November 30. Leave a comment here indicating what your organization is (you don’t have to say how much you donated), and you will be entered into a random drawing to win the book.

That’s all there is to it. Of course, I have no way of knowing whether you actually made a donation, so we’re on the honor/karma system here.

Here are some organizations you might consider to receive your donation (but feel free to choose a different one):

• The Hunger Project: About | Donate
• The Heifer Project: About | Donate
• America’s Second Harvest: About | Donate
  
• Action Against Hunger USA: About | Donate

How about making an online donation right now, so you don’t forget? Please be as generous as you can!

Thank you.

There a many things I like about this Finnish Rye. It’s dense but moist, chewy and a bit crunchy, rich in whole grain flavor but a little sweet as well. It’s very good, although not what I’d want to eat every day.

The thing I love about this bread is how an incredibly simple technique – rolling the underside of the dough in coarse flour during the last turns of the shaping, and baking with that flour-dredged underside on top – produces such a striking crackled crust. If I were ever to open a bakery (which I never will), this bread would definitely be one of the ones front and center in the window.

The combination of the dark-colored dough and light-colored flour here makes for an especially beautiful contrast, but the same technique could be used with just about any boule-shapeable dough and any coarse topping such as semolina, cornmeal, bran, or even small seeds.

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When it comes to baking, I would make a terrific Boy Scout. I just do not like to be caught unprepared. 50-pound bag of flour? Check. At least 10 pounds of high-extraction flour in the refrigerator at all times? Of course. Five-year supply of panettone molds? Just got those in.

In other words, I stock up.

This is not about buying in bulk to save money, although that’s always nice. This is more like, I’m notoriously bad at planning ahead, so I plan way ahead. If that makes any sense at all.

How uncharacteristic of me, then, to allow my supply of dried currants to run low. But how truly characteristic of me to discover this right when it is time to add them to the dough. Let’s just say that mise en place is a concept that is not fully en place in this kitchen.

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