Today… I make bread.
Forgive me if it sounds somewhat
momentous. As written before I’ve made bread twice a week for over three years
but this time is different. Today I revisit the sourdough. What makes it such a
big deal is that it was the last thing I ate before getting sick five weeks
ago. The memory of both the bread and the illness is not pleasant. I did
attempt two commercial yeast breads during this time but they just didn’t
please the palate. And, while I have hopes this revisiting will be a success
there is also something else lurking in my barely concealed subconscious: maybe
I don’t want to like it anymore.
Day One: Scoop out 2/3 cup of the refrigerated starter and
knead in 2 ⅓ cups flour and 1 cup water. Set aside under a plastic/towel wrap for
about 8 hours. Knead the remainder of the starter, cover tightly and put back
in the fridge.
I have a long, somewhat complicated
relationship with food. I have been on and off diets from my mid teens, done
cleanses, been gluten, dairy and sugar free and vegan, tried eating everything
I wanted and, alternatively, severely limited my desires, counted calories and
how many steps I need to walk before burning off the last cookie, and created
rules that said when and where I could eat. I’ve done therapy on this issue and
read a lot of books, even attended an OA meeting a few times. All this and the
most I have been is twenty pounds over my natural weight and a few pounds
under. As you can see it wasn’t a physical
health problem.
After almost forty years of this,
including fifteen of in-depth reflection, I feel most of the dark corners of my
food issues have had the mold scoured from them. I know they have little to do
with the actual victuals, but rather a childhood of poor boundaries and
wavering self esteem. I’ve worked hard at bringing these inner conflicts to
light and also in creating a healthy vision of who I am today. Still, I know
there are a few more shadows in the pantry to be revealed. Hence, my question
above: to like or not to like the bread.
Exploring one’s shadows is a bit
like unveiling the hidden processes that occur in bread making. In my last
blog, I talked about how amylase breaks down the starch in flour to produce the
sugars needed to feed the yeast spores. This enzyme begins to work whenever
flour and water come together and is also the reason why French bread tastes so
good. If you look at the ingredients of a typical French loaf, for example, you
will note just three: white
flour, water and salt. What gives this bread its lovely taste is not so much
what goes in but the extra long leavening time. Starch tastes bland; sugar
tastes good. The more starch breaks down the more sugar is available and the
better the bread will taste. However, there are limits to this formula. Break
it down too much and there will be nothing left to hold up your bread. Flat
bread is great but not when you are looking for a puffy loaf.
Day One Continued: There are several ways to
create the extra leavening time with bread and hence a better taste. Today,
just after I prepare the starter, I blend the following into a small roughly
shaped ball:
About 2 cups flour
Up to 1 cup corn meal
Up to 1 cup millet
½
tbsp sea salt (slows down the fermentation process)
Just enough water
Place in a bowl, lightly wrap and
set aside for 8 - 12 hours on your shelf or 48 within the fridge.
Adventuring into one’s shadows also
takes time and, like bread, the more time you take the healthier (sweeter?) you
become. However, once again, like bread, if you spend too long in the shadows
without breaks or gratitude for all that is bright in your life, you start to
lose your foundation and the fortitude to keep going. The cliché is true:
balance is good.
Day Two: The starter
has nicely risen to twice its volume while the flour ball sits there, as expected,
with bland expression. Just you wait, I say, your time is coming. I play like
an amateur chopsticker with two knives and separate my flour ball into small
pieces.
Blend in: 1 tbsp olive oil; 1 tbsp molasses; 1 tbsp flax seed; ½ tbsp
sea salt; ½ -1 cup toasted sesame and pumpkin seeds
Add: Starter mix
Knead: Add in water
and flour as needed until I have a lovely silken larva.
Rise: Cover loosely
in a greased bowl with a plastic/towel wrap and set aside 2-3 hours until about almost double in size.
Sometimes I create the extra
leavening time by letting the first rise be by an open window on a cool night
or even in the fridge. Similarly, that is the method I recently used for my
food issues. Up until about two or three years ago, I was active in my quest
into why food and body image have such an interesting hold on me. Then I
stopped. I put the issue in the fridge, so to speak, to ferment behind doors
and take its own sweet time in coming to light. And once again the parallels
are apt. Too long in the fridge, over 30 hours, and the bread won’t rise as
well; too long without a good session of self reflection and heck, you stagnate
too. It took this virus/hormonal shift I wrote about last week, a loss of ten
pounds due to lingering nausea, and a disinterest in baking to propel the issue
back out of the fridge. Enough leavening time for me, I guess.
Second rise:
Remove from bowl, cut in half, and shape into loaves by flattening and then
rolling into a loaf. Slightly dampen the flattened dough before rolling so it
sticks together better. Sit in a warmish, draft free place for 2-3 hours.
Preheat oven to 425° with a pan of
water to make it all steamy.
Bake: Reduce heat
and bake at 350° (depends on your oven) for 15 minutes. Take out the pan of
water and continue for another 10. Take loafs out of pans and bake for another
5 or so until they sound hollow when tapped on their bottoms.
Eat: Wait an hour
or so before slicing.
And now you are all hopefully
curious as to which wish was fulfilled? Did I like or not like the bread? Were
my shadows exposed or was there more mold to clean out? Was I refrigerated long
enough or did I need more leavening time? Will Nancy ever find who stole her
client list and gave it to the Hardy Boys?
To be continued…
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