Table of Contents

Bread making

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.06, 6:00pm

Location: Apartment kitchen in Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 1

I browsed many bread recipes, looking for a set of ingredients and process that seemed closer to the appropriate time period than my usual no-knead dutch oven bread. Much of what I found was akin to something called “horse bread” that called for ingredients I did not have on hand or might have been difficult to procure without a good bulk items section in a grocery store. I also looked at “peasant bread,” which is typically not sourdough (my yeast is also dead now, I think) or called for bread flour, and I don’t have bread flour on hand right now. I’m unconvinced AP flour is the way to go but figured I’d at least get moving with the bread and then replace.

I settled on a sourdough bread recipe that looked like a variant of my go-to, with more interaction with the bread than my usual no-knead recipe and a different rising period, the major difference I think being bread pulls. I typically don’t do pulls for bread but have been implementing them for a sourdough pizza recipe and so was familiar with the process. I began putting the bread together around 6 pm on Thursday, anticipating a rest and the pulling process, but this was probably too early. My starter seemed slightly less active than it did earlier in the afternoon when I checked on it.

Although I watched the Vassar video in which the autolyse seemed to be a step before adding the starter, the recipe I followed called for a mixing of the starter and water and then mixing with the flour. This is typically a step I do with a spoon but decided to use my hands to combine. Sometimes when I am making pie crusts I give up on the food processor and combine myself, because I don’t trust the food processor not to overwork the dough—it’s hard to tell because it goes so fast. So mixing the bread by hand was reminiscent of pie crusts but is much more wet. However, this dough itself was not as wet as some of the no-knead bread recipes I have tried before.

After combining I began a resting process though almost forgot to add salt to rest on top of the autolyse. I let it rest for an hour and did three bread pulls. The pulls were every half hour, at 8, 8:30, and 9. I kept an eye on the clock but it is hard to remember the timing, so much so that I think I did the entire process too early because it had too long to rise overnight, but I had been watching tv over the internet with a friend and telling her that I had to pause to pull helped to keep me on track. I suspect bread also a somewhat social activity, depending on where it fits into domestic life.

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.07, 7:30am

Location: Apartment kitchen, Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 1

At about 7:30 on Friday morning I tried shaping the bread, first spreading it out and pressing into it kind of like focaccia, as per recipe instructions. It was a little too dry to form a smooth, tight ball, initially, and I wound up working it more than I’d have liked in order to make it a little sticky and malleable again—perhaps even too sticky. After a call ended around 11 am I preheated the dutch oven at 475 F and then dropped to 450 for the first 20 min (covered). Then 435 uncovered for 25 min. The slits burst and it is a handsome loaf. It was hard to wait 2 hours to cut into it. A good effort—the crumb will be more accommodating than anticipated.

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.15, 9:00pm

Location: Apartment kitchen, Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 2

I went with another sourdough recipe I found that has the same ingredients but with a bit of oil once it is more formed. I made the dough later so that it won’t have such a long rise, and I’ll try to do at least 2 folds. I used a non- sea salt for this one because I forgot until I added the salt. The dough is much more wet than the previous dough, not sure what this will mean for the product. I incorporated the flour with my hands again. Unsure if early modern folks had stirring implements (probably?) but am thinking they probably made more loaves at a time than my one-off here. I like mixing with my hands—it’s nice to get a feel for texture, ratios of dry ingredients to wet, etc, though I have cleaned so much flour and dough out of my sink this last week. The sourdough starter was possibly not ready—lately it seems to be rising quickly and then deflating a little. It seems to like the bread flour more than AP non-bread flour. But I want to get another test loaf out and I can bake a second on Monday if need be.

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.16, 7:00am

Location: Apartment kitchen, Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 2

I looked at it again at about 7 am the following morning and quickly folded it into a rectangular shape, transferring it to a lightly oiled loaf pan. I made the mistake of thinking it might need a while longer to rise to the edges of the pan, but by 11 am it was overflowing. Baked it asap, details about time and temp to follow.

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.16, 9:00pm

Location: Apartment kitchen, Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 3

For the final loaf, I noticed that my starter had deflated again after a promising start in the afternoon. I’ve been feeding it with white bread flour from King Arthur and so I think it is slightly less chunky than with the stone ground whole wheat bread flour I have been using. I found another recipe for bread flour specifically (these all seem to be variants on the same ingredients: flour, (sea) salt, water, starter. I did not do the autolyse this time as per instructions. I started around 9 again and completed two pulls. The bread dough definitely started to hold its shape more with each pull despite starting out rather wet.

Name: M. Whitman

Date and Time: 

2021.05.17, 6:15am, 11:30 am

Location: Apartment kitchen, Manhattan

Subject: Bread, round 3

The dough seemed like it was proving correctly when I looked in on it again around 6:15 the following morning, so I left it until 7:30 when I did an additional set of larger pulls, ultimately placing the dough into a parchment paper-lined bowl. I placed it in the fridge (for structure, apparently?) and returned to it at about 11:30. I let the dutch oven preheat in a 500 F oven for almost an hour, until I was relatively convinced it was hot enough—this analog oven has zero indication that the temp has been reached. I scored the loaf and placed it in the dutch oven, which I covered. I turned the temp down to 450—this kitchen does not really seem built for high heats and everything gets very hot. The bread baked at 450 F covered for 28 minutes and then I uncovered it for an additional 15 minutes, removing it when it looked appropriately golden brown.