I have immersed myself in Peter Reinhart’s books. Based on several new bread orders (multi-week prepayments!) I’ve got enough production and profit to buy some supplies to experiment and expand my menu.
Since baguettes have been hovering right on the horizon, I’ve decided to go for it, using Reinhart’s tantalizingly simple pain à l’ancienne recipe. Sourdough is also on the horizon but I can’t get involved in that world. Yet.
Second on this weeks’ experiment menu is struan, a multigrain phenomenon involving soakers and lots of new grains I haven’t used. I’m going to make two versions: whole grain and white mixed grain. I figure I should get a handle on how each one tastes and handles, so I can decide which to add to the menu.
Third is whole wheat sandwich. The heavenly wheat is delicious and standard fare, so I might not take it off, but I want to have whole wheat for home and for customers who want something more healthy. Hopefully it will be as tasty or better than the heavenly wheat.
Finally I got an order for rustic olive, so I get to try out my crock pot again and correct my mistakes from this weekend to produce a truly delicious rustic bread.
Just for tonight, my to-do list includes: poolish for olive bread, 2 struan soakers, and baguette dough. Tomorrow is the baking of olive, baguette, and both struans, plus the creation of 2 whole wheat soakers. Wednesday is cinnamon raisin and baking of the 2 whole wheat loaves. I really really want a bigger oven!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
I would like to order some bread. You tell me what kind!
Actually I was planning on send you a half loaf of each kind of struan so I could get some feedback on which one to include on the new menu. PM me your address and I'll send it off this week.
When are you going to quit mucking around with this bread stuff and get down to the real business of creating beauty and truth and the fire of life from simple grains: single malt whisky?Peter Reinhart, it turns out, has ALSO written a book on homemade pizzas including dough. I have maxed out our bread machine pizza dough capabilities and find myself turning to the good stuff. My goal: to become the psoutowood of homemade pizza.
Making your own whiskey sounds like a great way to stay home and get drunk in the name of research. I see nothing wrong with that.One of the great things about bread is that it involves yeast feeding on sugars. The by-product is alcohol and carbon dioxide, two things very helpful in beer production. Instead of flour, you can use other grains in a mostly-liquid mash to create beer. Hmmm…I should look into this.Apparently the pain a l'ancienne baguette recipe makes fantastic pizza dough. I'll let you know tomorrow how the bread turns out, but so far it's been one of the easiest doughs to make.
OMG ok!
I like the pizza dough idea. I think BH would too 🙂