Farine

Of bread and bridges: a baking weekend in San Antonio

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 23 May 2013 14:39:00 +0000

The Bread Bakers Guild of America (BBGA) held another of its outstanding regional events this past weekend in San Antonio, Texas, and I was lucky enough to be able to attend it. The topic was "All About Ciabatta." I already knew the instructor, Didier Rosada, for having taken a couple of memorable classes with him at the San Francisco Baking Institute, a few years back.
I had seen how simple mixtures of flour, salt, yeast and water morph under his care into voluptuously silky and bubbling organisms that almost appear to purr as they spring to life. I knew him for a natural born teacher whose knowledge of dough chemistry and physics and all things bread is encyclopedic. I fondly remembered his sunny Southwestern-France accent and his easy laughter, not to mention his gift for languages (Didier switches effortlessly from English to French to Spanish and back) and I knew the class was going to be a unique experience. I wasn't disappointed.
We did indeed learn all about ciabatta and made several different ones, using various preferments and methods. My two favorites were probably the poolish-based one with double hydration (the first one I will try to make when I get back home) and the power ciabatta (loaded with "good for you" nutrients) which we loosely shaped and baked into twists. I am usually not a huge fan of commercial yeast: I like the taste of levain, especially when it is both mild and complex but the class convinced that with proper pre-fermentation one can indeed make wondrously tasty breads using instant yeast. The Man's pick was the breakfast ciabatta, also poolish-based and studded with dark chocolate chunks and pieces of candied orange peel. The formula includes eggs and butter, everything he loves and is supposed to eat only exceptionally. Luckily his birthday is right around the corner...

We had arrived one day early to take in the sights, mostly the Alamo, the cathedral, the Mexican market and the River Walk. Coming from 58°F and overcast skies in Seattle however, the 97°F Texas weather was a bit of a shock. We baked in more way than one all weekend and didn't get to see or do all we had planned but we still fell under the spell of the city, its winding river and its many bridges.

Although we took back with us the best ciabattas of our lives, I am under no illusion that I will be able to emulate Didier's talent anytime soon, if ever. But I'll certainly do my best to apply what he taught us and share it on this blog. I just need to find out first how much time and energy I will have for baking and blogging once my treatment for breast cancer starts in earnest (we are still waiting for some test results), and get organized.

Didier's next BBGA event is scheduled for this fall at the International Baking Industry Exposition in Las Vegas. It will be a lecture on Las Buenas Practicas de Panificación (The Best Practices of Bread Baking) and he will deliver it in Spanish, together with Juan Manuel Martinez, a talented and passionate artisan baker from Bogotá, Colombia, who taught a popular class at WheatStalk last year. Considering the growing number of Spanish-speakers employed in artisan bakeries across America, I suspect the event will be mobbed.
Didier and Juan Manuel have co-authored Pan, Sabor y Tradición, a bread book which will hopefully be soon translated into English and made available in this country, and together with Miguel Galdós, another master baker (or "bread boy" as they like to call themselves), he has founded El Club del Pan (The Bread Club). I especially like El Club del Pan's videos. Such is the power of images that even non-Spanish speakers might find them instructive. Check them out and some of the magic may rub off onto your baking hands. I certainly hope it will onto mine!

May 14th, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:44:00 +0000

Thirty years ago today, I married the man I live with. Five months ago today, we lost our grandson Noah in a mass murder in Sandy Hook, CT. We like to think of Time in terms of growth and change and growing older together offers daily opportunities for both. But when Time is brutally interrupted, as it was on December 14th, 2012, it comes to a painful standstill. I look at my other six-year old grandson - six weeks younger than Noah and now, of course, older than his cousin - and I grieve for the little boy who wasn't allowed to become what he was meant to be.
I grieve for him and I grieve for our family. As if it were not tragic enough that Noah was murdered, five months later, parts of our family are being ripped asunder by brutal internal forces which compound the pain and suffering by destroying the bonds that would make mourning a little less unbearable. Sadly, post-traumatic shock syndrome has become our reality.
But the ties that the Man and I forged on May 14, 1983 are stronger and more alive than ever. There is immense comfort in finding the same partner by your side, day in and day out, in sickness and in health, in sadness and in joy, in having your hand fit into another's hand whose warmth and touch are as familiar as your own, more maybe, in knowing that, every day, you have the unique power to make someone's world a little brighter that it would otherwise be and that he has the same power in return. Time, interrupted, will never be repaired but there is much to be said for enduring love. My wish for the future is that it will one day be allowed to prevail again.

Mother's Day 2013

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 12 May 2013 16:23:00 +0000

Mother's Day is hard on all the families who ever lost a child, especially the twenty-six Sandy Hook families. No words can express their sorrow and the huge gaps in their lives where theirs kids should be.
As I have so many times over the years, today I am turning to my mother for comfort. She passed away in early 2010 and I like to think of her alive in another world fussing over Noah. She never met him in real life (they lived an ocean apart and he was only three when she died) but she had been plied with pictures of him and his siblings since the day they were born and she was very familiar with their faces and antics.
We had bought her a digital photo frame and she had put it on a chest of drawers near her TV set. It was always on, even at night. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether she was watching a show or watching her family although pictures of her great-grandchildren always made her eyes shine in a way TV never did. I am pretty sure she has never let Noah out of her sight since he joined her in this other life I like to dream about.
There is some degree of solace in imagining both of them together. But nothing will ever change the fact that Noah should still be with his family and looking forward to a long life on this Earth as should all the little kids who were murdered on December 14th. This Mother's Day is indeed very hard but then, we already know that all the ones that follow will be just as painful. Wherever she is, I know my mother knows it too and grieves for all of us especially, as I do, for my daughter Veronique, Noah's mom.

My dad took the top picture in 1948: my mom was 34. I took the bottom one in the summer of 2009: she was 95. In between the two, a lifetime of love. On this very difficult Mother's Day, I draw my strength from my mother's continuing and loving presence in my heart. Merci, maman!

Meet the Baker: Mark Stambler

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 20:19:00 +0000

Serious home bakers, meet your new hero! Mark Stambler is the LA resident and fellow artisan whose passion for bread baking and sense of fair play led the California Legislature to adopt the California Homemade Food Act in 2012. Thanks to his relentless statewide efforts, California "cottage food operators" no longer need a commercial license to sell what they make at home. There are constraints, of course. For instance Mark cannot use the beautiful wood-fired oven he built in his backyard in Los Feliz to bake any bread he sells through a store or a CSA. He must use the stove in his home kitchen.

But he still uses his outdoor oven when he bakes for family and friends, and I was lucky enough to see him operate it on the day I visited. Whether baked in the backyard or in the kitchen, Mark's bread is made with the same simple ingredients: organic white flour, organic grains which he mills himself into whole-grain flour, sea salt and distilled water. He currently bakes about twenty loaves a week: miche, levain and rye. The miches are 70% fresh whole grains (hard red winter wheat, hard red spring wheat, spelt and rye), the levain 30%. The rye is 40% whole rye and 60% wheat. All are leavened with natural starters, all gorgeously rustic, healthful and flavorful. Just the kind of bread I can never get enough of!

I followed Mark with my notebook and pen as he unwrapped tray after tray of proofed loaves and carried them outside to his oven. He was in a bit of a rush because the oven had reached the perfect temperature (550°F/288°C near the dome, closer to 500°F/260°C near the sole) and the bread was clearly ready to bake. But I walk fast and scribble even faster, and he didn't appear to mind my shadowing him back and forth.
As seems to be the case with so many people I have met in the bread world since I began this series, Mark didn't start out to be a baker. He actually still makes his living as a consultant for non-profit organizations. He attributes his lifelong love affair with bread to the fact that he became a vegetarian when he was still in high school. His mom supported his decision as long as it didn't entail her cooking two sets of meals a day, one for him and one for the rest of the family. So he ate whatever he could and soon became bored with his diet. Once in college, he decided to start cooking for himself, using The Vegetarian Epicure, by Anna Thomas. The book offered a recipe for French bread.

Mark decided to give baking bread a try. The rest is history. The Vegetarian Epicure was followed by Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking whose chapter on baking provided him with years of inspiration and learning. He even built himself the simulated baker's oven Julia advocates for serious home bakers. From there he moved on to Carol Fields' The Italian Baker and finally decided to focus on traditional French country bread. He started grinding his own flour, took a class with Jeffrey Hamelman, discovered Gérard Rubaud (through this blog, I am delighted to say) and now relies on his own levain à la Gérard. Along the way he also built an Alan Scott oven in his backyard with the help of a friend (it took them four months, working on weekends, figuring out each step of the way)...

...won a couple of blue ribbons for his bread (LA County Fair, 2005; California State Fair, 2006)...

...and finally realized that he might as well bake to sell since he now had an excellent and roomy oven. By then it was 2008, and Mark had already acquired quite a reputation in his neighborhood as a homebaker. He didn't have to go far to find outlets for his bread: the cheese stores in nearby Silver Lake and Echo Park were only too happy to carry it. The word spread. Food bloggers found out. More people asked for his bread. He started selling to a CSA. Soon he was baking fifty to sixty loaves a week and working non-stop mixing, proofing, shaping and baking Thursdays through Sundays. "Informal apprentices" came every week to watch and learn.
Alerted by the online buzz, the Los Angeles Times expressed an interest. Mark explained to the reporter that the stores which carried his bread were not authorized to sell homemade food products; he didn’t want to get the owners in trouble. If the reporter went ahead with the article, she couldn't say where his bread was to be found. A week before the story ran, she called saying they had to let the people know where to get his bread: “We’ve done this before. Don’t worry!”
The story was featured in the June 2, 2011 print edition of the paper. The next day, inspectors from the LA County Health Department descended on the stores. As it happened, Mark's bread was already sold out in both places and the inspectors didn't find any. But at one store they made the owners throw away cheeses which were kept at room temperature for ripening and at the other, they started going methodically through the inventory. Seething, one owner started a huge battle with the Health Department. Whatever the outcome, Mark knew he could no longer sell his bread.

Crushed for a couple of days, Mark quickly realized it was in his best interest to make friends with the Health Department. So he called them up, innocently asking about baking bread at home and whether it was legal to sell homemade food in California. There was a long pause on the phone... and then the answer came: "Is this Mark Stambler? What were you thinking?!", the Health Department inspector asked. He then said that while it was illegal for Mark to sell bread he baked at home, it would probably be fine for him to sell wholesale bread he baked at a certified bakery or catering kitchen. Mark started asking local caterers and bakeries if he could use their ovens, and when two said "yes", he double-checked with the Department to make sure it would indeed be okay. The retail side of the Department said "yes" but the wholesale side said "no". It took a year to get the issue sorted out: it turned out that in LA County, a bakery couldn't legally do both wholesale and retail in the same location. Mark called bakeries all over California to find out if other counties had the same restrictions. They didn't. All over the place, bakeries were happily mixing wholesale and retail sales.
What about the bagel stores in LA? Mark drove to the Brooklyn Bagel Bakery. The owner said they had always been selling wholesale and retail and got inspected by the LA County Health Department every year. Mark informed the Health Department who was speechless with surprise at the news. Through sheer single-mindedness, he managed to get through to the upper échelons and, in 2011, the policy was changed. It became legal in LA County to do retail and wholesale in the same bakery.
But people still couldn’t bake bread, pies, cookies, etc. at home and sell them wholesale. It was legal in eighteen states (some states had had such laws for twenty years) but not in California. Mark googled "selling California homemade food"and learned of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), a group of Northern California young lawyers looking to fight whatever regulation was stifling community-building in the state. Mark explained the situation, SELC agreed that a law needed to be written and Mark started looking at how to write laws. Then, late in the summer of 2011, just when it became clear to Mark that he hadn't a clue how to write and pass a state law, Mike Gatto, his representative in the California state legislature, called out of the blue and asked what he could do to help.
Mark worked with Gatto’s staff and SELC through the rest of 2011 on drafting the text of the law. Then he spent the best part of 2012 lobbying for it in Sacramento and visiting scores of assembly members and state senators (he says he now has a lot of respect for what legislators do). Working with SELC, he started an online petition, got thousands of signatures and managed to generate a lot of publicity and public interest. The Assembly and the Senate approved the bill towards the end of summer and Governor Brown signed it into law on September 21, 2012. It became effective on January 1, 2013. A couple of days later, Mark became the first person in LA County (and possibly in all of California) to be able to sell homemade food legally. The stores and the CSA started carrying his bread again.

Mark sees the legislation as a stepping stone: it gives people who are starting out a way to try their hand at the business. If successful, they can expand and go commercial. Mark himself is thinking of opening a bakery with a wood-fired oven one day. When he does, I hope he'll invite me to come back down and visit. Bakeries have got to be my favorite stores. There is no headier fragrance that the smell wafting out of freshly baked naturally leavened loaves and few more comforting sounds than the crackling song of cooling bread. Photos and words are sadly inadequate in that respect...

You might think Mark had been busy enough over the past few years, working at his full-time job during the week, baking all weekend, lobbying legislators in Sacramento, gathering signatures and so forth that he had time for nothing else but collapse in bed when he had a chance but you would be wrong! In 2011, together with two friends and fellow bakers who attributed the scarcity of good bread in the LA area to the absence of a baking community in Southern California, he decided to even the playing field by creating the Los Angeles Bread Bakers. By early 2012, the group counted more than 600 members throughout LA County, as well as elsewhere in California.
The members were lamenting the lack of local access to good organic flour and grain: Mark contacted Keith and Nicky Giusto from Central Milling, drove up to Petaluma and filled the trunk of his Honda Civic. Back in LA, he split his bounty with his fellow bakers.
Today LABB members order a couple of pallets at a time a few times a year (thus greatly reducing delivery charges), bulk-order baking equipment such as baskets, lames, whisks, etc., offer classes (oven-building, bread-making, soba-noodle making, tortilla-making, etc.) and lectures and, listen to this, grow grain themselves!
Yes, you read that right, LABB is trying its collective hand at raising different varieties of wheat and spelt in Los Angeles: of course it helps that one of the members has acreage in Agoura Hills and is letting the group farm some of it. I was supposed to go and see the fields on the day of my visit but we were in LA with our oldest granddaughter for her spring break and somehow I didn't get the feeling that a nineteen-year old college student's preferred activity for her last day in the city (she was flying back that night) would be a long drive to the hills to watch wheat grow. So we skipped the tour.
Fortunately LABB keeps a blog and I have been following its farming adventures closely, especially the encounters with sheep and friendly pigs and the contest with the ground squirrels who apparently love good grain as passionately as bakers do. Mark visits the fields regularly and was warned by a local farmer against the large, aggressive rattlesnakes who patrol the area on the lookout for human intruders. As he put it in a recent email, "who knew that baking bread could be so hazardous?"

Who indeed? If one excepts the break-in by a big raccoon one night as loaves were cooling in the screened porch at our little cabin by the River, my only baking encounters with wildlife have been with the yeasts which leaven my bread: they may have a mind of their own but they are not threatening.

Mark kindly sent me home with three loaves of bread, the first "real" bread we had had in the week since we had left home. What a treat! With Danielle gone, we couldn't possibly eat it all, so we took it with us when we drove to Escondido the next day to visit my friend Mimi whose family owns and operates an avocado ranch (which is so beautiful that I'll share a few photos in another post). Mimi was delighted with the bread (from what she said, I got the feeling that good bread isn't easy to come by where she lives) and as we were hungry, she set out to create a simple snack.

She sliced some of Mark's bread, cut open and sliced an avocado, added a few drops of Meyer lemon juice (she had picked the lemon as we visited the ranch), ground some salt and pepper over the whole thing and voilà, she was done. Silence reigned around the table as we chewed, mindful of the harmony in our mouths. I never knew the taste of levain could make an avocado sing... Bravo, Mark, and merci!

Four months ago today...

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 07:45:00 +0000

... Noah lost his life and we lost him. There will never be any glossing over that. And it will never get easier. That much I know.

But he came back to me in a dream ten days ago: I was playing tag with his twin sister Arielle around a very long oblong table in a nondescript apartment I had never seen before. However hard I tried I couldn't catch up with her and she was laughing and laughing, her long hair swishing around her face as she ran.

Then she stopped and turned. The long hair vanished and I realized it wasn't Arielle I had been chasing all along but Noah.

He was laughing and his eyes were full of light. He looked straight at me and he said: "You can't catch me!" I could see he was poised to start running again if I tried. So I just looked into his shiny eyes and stood there, my heart beating fast.

Then I woke up.

My first reaction was sheer joy: wherever he was. Noah was as active as ever and he was having fun.

Then I thought about what he said. We had just met with the medical team at the hospital regarding my breast cancer and came home with a prognosis and decisions to make. We learned both that there were many reasons to be optimistic and that there were no guarantees.

Noah had come to tell me that I wouldn't be joining him any time soon. He had come to me with the gift of hope.

Willy, my father-in-law...

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 18:00:00 +0000

...passed away last Friday. He was 90 and had been unwell for months. We loved him dearly and we will greatly miss the phone conversations that shrank the thousands of miles between our two households on an almost daily basis.
He was quite a character, never at a loss for a joke and always willing to offer a helping hand to whomever was in need. He didn't like to dwell on what he felt powerless to change, looked for the silver lining to every storm cloud and usually found it. He was our last surviving parent and the last person on earth who still saw us as kids.
I like to imagine him up in heaven, joking around with like-minded saints and angels, and romping with Noah. Willy and Noah never met in the physical world but they shared the same joie de vivre (zest for life) and the same rambunctiousness. They'll hit it off for sure. That's the only silver lining I can find...

Oops!

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 04 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0000

Ooops, oops, oops! I totally apologize. I never meant to post on Farine about my MRI!! The post was meant for a private blog I have set up to communicate with family and close friends. I did mean to let Farine readers know that I have been diagnosed with breast cancer but not until we knew exactly what we were dealing with and what the prognosis might tentatively look like. Which should happen in the coming days.
Also I would never have joked about the size of my breasts on an open blog! For me that's the equivalent of a wardrobe malfunction on network television. I am so mortified! If I had been less in a hurry to get the post out last night before rushing to the kids' house for 19-month old Lily's bath time, I would have paid more attention to which blog I was posting to. Meanwhile I can't help feeling that it is a bit funny! Like being on your way to work and realizing in the subway that you are wearing your old slippers...
Anyway the cat is out of the bag and there is nothing I can do about it now. I have removed the post (which really doesn't belong on Farine). But I'll keep you updated, I promise, and meanwhile I am deeply grateful for the messages of love and support you have already sent our way. Thank you!

Of Time and the garden

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 16:42:00 +0000

We went back to the Japanese Garden last week. The sky was grey, an iridescent grey only a painter could think up. Or a poet. The kind of sky that can often be seen glistening over the roofs of Paris, my hometown. We walked the moss-lined paths, taking it all in: the carousing camelias, the budding bushes, the greening grass.

On our last visit summer was ending. Turtles were lined up on narrow reefs, soaking up the weakening sun. Kois were swarming the shores of the pond, gaping mouths held above water, begging for treats before winter's long slumber. Leaves were turning. Our family was whole.

I wish time could be dialed back. When I was ten or eleven, my older brother -who was reading philosophy at school- explained to me one day that Time didn't actually exist, that it was a human construct. I was appalled and indignant and to this day, even though I understand the concept intellectually (I read philosophy too when my turn came), I still don't find it relevant or helpful. For me, life is ALL about Time.

Winter is waning and color slowly infusing the garden again. Time is marching on... If it were reversible, I could accept the idea that we invented it. But it isn't and transience rules. I didn't always know that. I remember thinking when I was very young (maybe three or four) that parents were parents and kids were kids and would remain so forever. I was actually happy to belong to the kid category because, for some reason, I knew that it was the parents' job to pay the bills and that it was sometimes tough. But I learned otherwise soon after: my next Time-related memory is figuring out how long I would have to wait to turn eighteen (that's how old my mom had said I had to be to start wearing lipstick). Time was slow then.

The garden cycles through the seasons. Our family is held in a wrinkle of Time. Both ineluctably moving forward and irresistibly held back. Grief is our connection to Noah. To the family that once was. There is no going back but there is no letting go either.
We are woven of strands of Time and held together by the ties that bind us. When a knot comes loose, we unravel. My mother grieved for seventy-two years for a baby she carried for nine months and knew for thirty-six hours. He was her first-born. Her last thought was of him.
However much I rebel against the irreversibility of Time, Noah won't be coming back to my daughter's arms and I know she will grieve for him till she draws her last breath. Hers is a sorrow that will never abate.

The garden remains. A light breeze carries the effluves of spring. In the pond, the turtles are still sluggish but they hold their heads above water like tiny periscopes. The kois swim aimlessly. They can't start eating until the water warms up and their digestive systems kick into action again. Eating now would kill them and they know it. But fasting is clearly not as much fun as feasting. They look bored. I guess Time can be slow for a fish too.
We circle the pond and wander the paths of the garden. Time marches on. There is no going back to what was. But the sky is suitably grey and the grass stubbornly green. Serenity washes over us like high tide over bruised shores. It comes and goes, forever elusive but still a comfort. Like a mirage in a desert.

(The photos above have been taken on three separate visits, one in April last year, some at the end of August, others last week.)

Three months ago today...

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 16:34:00 +0000

... an ebullient six-year old named Noah and nineteen other little kids lost their lives in their classrooms at the hands of a young man wielding a deadly weapon. The same young man also killed six grown-ups who worked at the school. Noah was our grandson.
One empty chair standing in for twenty-six... Twenty-six families staring at an empty chair everyday of their lives. Parents, siblings, grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins grieving and mourning. Twenty-six names forever linked around a gaping void. Frayed lives hanging loose.
I don't think any of us will ever come to terms with what happened on that day. It was about 6:30 AM Seattle-time. I had just made coffee and was reading the paper when my daughter called, frantic, with the news that there was a shooter at the school and that she was driving there from work. The only thing I remember of the rest of the morning is our watching a live video on our computer screens and waiting, phones in hand. With hearts sinking into disbelief and despair.
Because of the time difference between the two coasts I had barely awakened when a dark car with black-tinted windows (never mind its real color: in my mind it was cloaked in darkness) and an even darker soul at the wheel started creeping up the school driveway. I had been to the school less than a month before when I flew back to Connecticut for Noah and Arielle's twin birthdays and I well remembered the long driveway leading to the large parking lot.
Inside the school it was probably life as usual. Some kids might not have settled down yet, several might have been still laughing and talking, teachers might have been trying to get everyone's attention, late comers might have just hung their jackets in the corridor, some might have been singing, others already reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, and it may well be that nobody noticed the dark shadow now looming at the door.
I was reading the paper and drinking coffee when the dark car brought death to my grandson on the other side of the country. Noah's parents were at work. None of us had any business to be at the school and none of us was there. Yet I can't help feeling that we failed him. We were not there for him when he needed us most. He had no one to turn to in the last seconds of his life. The thought is haunting.
It breaks my heart that we can't tell him that it was just a movie and a sick one at that, one that should never have been made, way too violent for anyone to watch, and that he should never have disobeyed and switched channels but that now it was over and he was safe.
We can't tell that to Noah or to his little classmates. We can't even say it to his sisters Arielle and Sophia who are now fully cognizant of the fact that the world as they know it may come to an end in a matter of seconds in an deafening and terrifying cacophony of bangs and screams.
When I was a kid growing up in Paris, my mom wore nylon stockings. Nylons were expensive in France (my dad - who traveled constantly for work - brought them back for her in the US). When they ripped, she didn't throw them away. She washed them carefully (by hand of course), dried them on a towel rack over the bathtub and, when dry, folded them in a little bag. When she had half-a-dozen or so in need of attention, she took them to a darner. She also brought her our socks when they wore out.
I usually went with her. I remember the darner. She worked for a glove shop which doubled as a notions store but instead of working inside the store itself as the other employees, she had her own tiny booth in the shopwindow and everybody could see her darning socks and stockings all day long over a wooden egg. We didn't have to actually walk into the store to hand her the stockings. We would just stop on the sidewalk in front of her, knock on the glass and she would open her half-window and take in the work. I can't remember if we paid her directly or if we had to go inside to the cash register. But I remember vividly the pattern of criss-crossing threads her needle wove over the hole in the sock or the ladder in the stocking. Up and down, over and under, her needle went, recreating fabric. So thin and delicate the repair could barely be seen but smooth and flexible and stronger than before the rip. I loved watching the darner work and marveled at her skill and patience.
The fabric of our lives has been violently ripped on December 14th, 2012. I have often thought of the darner since. For the younger members of our family, I wish a needle would secure the frayed threads and weave a patch so that they can look towards the future, secure in the love they shared with Noah. Never forgetting but never without hope either and maybe stronger for the grief and trauma.
But for us grown-ups, I know the hole will remain gaping where Noah ought to be. He was robbed of his future and violently taken from his family. There is no darning that over.

Learning Loaf (with old dough)

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:05:00 +0000

So many of you have written to say you wanted to try your hand at bread but didn't know where to start that I thought I should post a fairly simple (but still tasty) recipe. There are faster recipes galore, both in books and online, but frankly I am not crazy about them. In my experience (and that of many other bakers) and except in the case of breads that rely on baking soda or powder for leavening, the faster the bread the blander the taste and the shorter the shelf life.
Most simple breads (those who don't rely for flavor on a bunch of ingredients beyond flour, water, salt, and yeast) turn out tastier, rise better and have a better crumb if they are made over two days instead of being mixed and baked in the space of a few short hours in one single day.
These breads call for a two-step process: a mix of flour, water and yeast (and sometimes salt, as in this recipe) is left to ferment overnight acquiring both depth of flavor and increased leavening power. The day after, this first dough (or preferment) is incorporated into the final dough to which it imparts a distinctive taste and structure depending on its hydration (percentage of water relative to flour), the temperature at which it was kept, the length of its fermentation, the amount of yeast involved, etc.
There are several types of preferments. In this recipe, we will be using what's commonly called "old dough". Some bakers prefer to call it by its French name, pâte fermentée (fermented dough) but "old dough" does the trick for me. It is easier to explain to kids and it reminds me of the hours our grandchildren have spent at our kitchen table playing with salt dough. They cut and folded and shaped and had all manners of fun. I used to put a bit of vegetable oil in their salt dough, so that it remained pliable and whatever was left over could be kept in the fridge from one weekend to the next. If I were teaching them to bake bread now, I would explain the difference between salt dough (which is dead) and bread dough which is alive because it contains yeast and therefore requires a bit more tender loving care.
To get your hands on a piece of old dough, either you use some dough left over from another baking session (which almost never happens in my house as I nearly always forget to set dough aside for the next batch), or if you have baked no bread in the past 48 hours (old dough tends to become more acidic and to lose its leavening power if it sits for too long), you simply mix flour, water, salt and a pinch of yeast until the dough starts to develop, put it in a bowl, cover it, let it ferment slowly overnight at cool room temperature and voilà, you have your old dough!
This loaf is the perfect weekend baking project: you mix the old dough on Friday night, mix and bake the final dough on Saturday and enjoy fresh bread from Saturday night on (which is why the amounts are generous enough to yield two loaves). You may not succeed right away: we ate our share of doorstops over the years but learning is always a process, isn't it? So don't despair if it doesn't turn out exactly the way you want the first time. Plus unless your bread is hopelessly burnt or you forgot the yeast and it baked into a flat stone or you forgot the flour (which happened to me once when I was a child and made a French almond cake for my family. It tasted awfully of canned mushroom - I still can't figure out why - and my doting father is the only one who got a second helping and said it was really good in an interesting way - although decades later he still laughed like a hyena when he told the story) and there was no dough to bake, it will always be appreciably better than supermarket bread...

To make this recipe,

You will need

A large bowl and two medium-size bowls as well as lids or plastic film to keep them covered
A spatula to scrape the bowls
A scale (preferably electronic, so that you can switch easily from ounces to grams)
A dough cutter (or a knife with a wide blade) to divide the dough prior to shaping it
A clear plastic bag large enough to house the proofing shaped loaf without touching it
A razor blade or a serrated knife (to slash the loaf before baking)
An oven
A pelle or rimless baking sheet to slide the loaves into the oven and get them out when they are baked
Parchment paper

You might find it convenient to have as well

(Please note that the links are meant to give you an idea of what the equipment looks like and that I am recommending no specific brand or seller)

A instant-read thermometer
A plastic proofing container with a lid
A round proofing basket (or else a round colander lined with a flour sack or other non-stick towel)
A board and a linen (or other non-stick fabric) towel to proof your shaped loaves (the ones which don't proof in a basket)
A baking stone (before I had one, I used a rimless metal sheet pan which always stayed in the oven and got preheated when I turned the oven on)
Some kind of steaming device (I use an old metal dripping pan filled with smooth lava stones which I always leave on the oven bottom shelf)

My oven setup

Bread Tips

Time can also do a big share of the work for you. My hands and wrists are giving me all kinds of trouble but even though I own two different types of mixers and unless I am baking for a big crowd, I still prefer to mix my doughs by hand. My favorite method is to just incorporate the ingredients (making sure all the flour is hydrated) and then leave the (still very shaggy) dough to rest, covered, for 10 minutes. When I come back, lo and behold, the gluten has developed appreciably. I give the dough a few gentle stretches and folds inside the bowl (the in-bowl mixing method is helpfully illustrated here by Khalid on The Fresh Loaf ), cover it again, and come back again 10 minutes later to do the same. After four or five times, the dough is usually ready for bulk fermentation.
Temperature matters. Most bakeries are much warmer inside than the average home, at least at our latitudes during the cold months of the year. Depending on the season, the same exact dough may give you different results. The taste may vary (the bacteria which develop in cooler temperature are not identical to those which develop at warmer temperature) and so may the bread structure (in my experience, it is often easier to get a more open crumb with a yeast-leavened dough that has fermented in a warmer environment).
There are ways to keep your dough snug (setting it to rise in the oven with a light or the pilot light on or near a source of heat such as a fireplace or using a makeshift proofer made of a seedling mat and an inverted plastic box, etc.). I have a folding bread proofer but I haven't used it for this recipe as I wanted to reproduce as closely as possible the conditions which might exist in your home if, like me, you have to reckon with the tail end of winter in the Northern United States.
Everything being otherwise equal, I find that an indoor temperature of about 76°/24° is about ideal. But good luck on getting that temperature consistently throughout the year! The little laundry room where I do my mixing and baking is hot in the summer (85-90°F/29°-32°C) and cool in the winter (59-62°F/15-16°C). On very warm days, I set the dough to ferment -well covered- on the floor of the garage and on very cold ones, on the countertop next to the washer on the side opposite to the window, where temperature is a couple of degrees warmer. I have learned to enjoy the slow fermentations of winter (which give me a lot of time to do other things) as well as the bouncy eagerness of summer doughs (which sometimes require to be tempered in the fridge as a quickly risen dough seldom yields satisfactory results).
Of course when a dough needs to be slowly fermented over a long period of time (as is often the case for doughs leavened with a natural starter instead of commercial yeast), it can only be kept at cozy room temperature if the process is strictly controlled and watched over (as it is for instance by Gérard Rubaud in his Vermont bakery). For the home baker who enjoys sleeping through the night, the only solution is often to find a really cool place (sometimes the fridge) to let the dough rise slowly overnight.
It is considered optimal for a dough to have an internal temperature of about 76-78°/24°-26°C at the end of the mixing. One way to achieve this is to modulate the temperature of the water you add to the flour at the time of the mixing, using warmer water when the room and the ingredients are cold and colder water when they are warm. For this loaf, I used warmish water from the tap. I didn't measure the temperature but made sure it was one step above lukewarm. Never use hot water as it would kill the yeast. For a very helpful and detailed description of the way to obtain a specific desired dough temperature (DDT), please refer to this page of Susan's Wild Yeast blog (a blog I most fervently recommend to anyone who is interested in becoming a serious home baker);
The amount of water you use makes a big difference in the type of bread you end up with and it is nearly impossible for any recipe to give you an exact indication of the hydration rate. There are too many variables, the first of which is the flour you are using which is most probably not from the same brand and the same batch as the ones used to make the featured recipe. Even if you are used to working with one specific brand and one type of flour, you will find that you may need to increase or decrease water with each new batch. Which means that you need to develop a feel for the dough consistency that gives you the best results. That may be the toughest part of learning to be a baker but it is also the most rewarding because one day you'll just know and you will never forget (a bit like riding a bike).
A good rule of thumb is to reserve at the start about 10% to 15% of the total water amount indicated in the recipe in order to add it later on in the mixing process as/if needed. You may end up not using it or you may have to add even more. It will be for you to determine but once you know, it is useful to make a note of it for the following time. I often find I have to use more water than indicated in a recipe;
Which brings me to this: keep a log book. If you intend to start baking regularly, for each bread you make, write down which recipe you used, what was the room temperature, how much water you ended up using, how long you preheated the oven, how long you baked the loaf and at what temperature(s), how open or dense the crumb was, whether or not you liked the bread, how was the flavor, what you would like to change if anything, etc. Take pictures of the bread and of its crumb and save them. Your log book will quickly become a reference tool which will save you time and effort down the road.

Ingredients (for one boule and one curlicue)

Old dough

210 g all-purpose flour, unbleached
137 g water
4 g salt
A scant pinch of instant yeast

OR:

A 350 g piece of dough saved from a previous mix

Final dough

631 g all-purpose flour, unbleached
70 g wholegrain rye flour (also called dark rye flour) (I use rye because I like the flavor and the slightly darker color it imparts to the bread. I also like the tiny specks of rye bran in the crumb)
484 g water
14 g salt
A pinch of instant yeast
All of the old dough (about 350 g)

Method

Old dough (to be made the evening before)

Whisk all the dry ingredients together in the medium size bowl, add water and mix by hand until the flour is well hydrated and incorporated
Let rest 10 minutes, covered
Leaving the dough in the bowl, pull it on one side and fold it towards the center, turn the bowl slightly and repeat, repeat until you are back where you started. Cover the bowl again and let the dough rest
Repeat four or five times
Let ferment, tightly covered (I use plastic film) until morning at room temperature (if room temperature is cool). If room temperature is warm, let it ferment about four hours, then put it in the fridge overnight. In the morning, take it out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature for one or two hours before mixing

Old dough in the evening

Old dough the following morning

Final dough (to be mixed on the day of the bake)

The old dough should have inflated a bit and smell slightly fermented
Divide it in several little chunks for easier incorporation with the other ingredients
Pour most of the water (set aside 10 to 15%) into the large bowl
Whisk together the flours, yeast and salt in a medium-sized bowl and add them to the large bowl
Add the chunks of old dough

Mix until incorporated. You shouldn't see any dry flour. If you do, add some of the reserved water. If you still do afterwards, add more water from the tap by very small increments (matching the temperature of the water you previously used)
The dough will be shaggy but pliable. Cover it and let it rest 10 minutes

Leaving the dough in the bowl, pull it on one side until it is stretched and fold it towards the center, turn the bowl slightly and repeat, repeat until you are back where you started. Cover the bowl again and let rest

Repeat four or five times at 10 minutes interval. Each time you come back to the dough, it should have changed, become smoother, shinier and easier to handle

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled proofing container and cover tightly
After 20 minutes, fold the dough inside the bowl (see this useful video by Amy at 0:26 to 0:46 min. Amy from Amy's Bread is a wonderful New York City baker whom I had the pleasure to meet last year at WheatStalk. Her Italian dough is much wetter and softer than our Learning Loaf dough but the folding method is still the same )
Repeat twice at 20 minute-intervals
Let rise as long as needed for the dough to show a dent that doesn't bounce back right away when you palpate it with your fingertips
Transfer the dough to a floured tabletop and pat it gently into a rectangle
Using the dough cutter or a knife with a wide blade, cut the dough in two pieces, roughly two-thirds, one third (you could weigh each piece of dough and make it scientific but you don't really need to). (Alternatively if you'd like to make two identical boules, cut the dough in half instead)

Loosely pre-shape the big chunk of dough into a boule and let it rest, covered, on the floured counter
Do the same with the smaller piece, except that you flatten it a bit, then roll it loosely into a sausage. Let it rest next to the boule
After 10 minutes or so, the dough will probably have relaxed enough for you to proceed with the shaping: please refer to Amy's video at 2:45 min to learn how to shape a boule, at 3:28 min to learn how to shape a batard (elongated bread) you can curve into a curlicue if desired or leave as is
Place the shaped boule inside a floured proofing basket such as this one or a round colander lined with a flour sack towel (I suppose a towel-lined bowl might do in a pinch but from what I read it is better for the dough to be able to breathe on all sides as it rises) or just set it on a flour-dusted parchment paper-lined board (if not contained the loaf might expand a bit laterally and don't give you as much of a rise: it will still taste fine though)

Place the shaped curlicue on the same board (about 4 or 5 inches away from the free-rising boule if not using the basket) and slip the whole thing inside a large clear plastic bag
Tie the bag closed making sure to trap enough air in it for the plastic not to touch the dough
Let the boule and the curlicue proof until doubled in size (at cool room temperature it may take 45 minutes to one hour)
Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 475°F/246°C with both the baking stone (or rimless metal half-sheet pan) and the metal pan inside, the stone or sheet pan on the middle shelf and the dripping pan (for steaming) on the bottom one
When the loaves have doubled in size, take them out of the plastic bag, gently invert the boule on a parchment paper-lined rimless sheet pan, dust it with flour (I use a fine mesh shaker) and holding the razor blade or the serrated knife at a slight angle, slash it a few times on top (for this boule, I slashed the dough four times in a fan pattern)
(If you have room enough for the curlicue to bake in the oven at the same time as the boule, transfer it to the sheet pan, dust it with flour as well and slash it a few times. If your oven isn't large enough (mine isn't), tie the bag closed again with the curlicue inside and set it to wait in a cool place
Quickly transfer the boule into the oven by sliding it off the sheet pan and onto the preheated stone (it stays on the parchment paper)
Pour one cupful of warm water onto the lava stones (watch out as a lot of steam will suddenly shoot up) and close the oven door quickly
After five minutes, turn the oven down to 450°F/232°C and let the bread bake for about 35 more minutes
When ready it will sound hollow when tapped on the bottom
Repeat with the curlicue (except that it will bake a bit quicker, maybe 30 to 35 minutes total)
I find it useful to turn the oven light on and check on the breads as they bake. If I see they are turning a bit dark, I tent them with aluminum foil (taking care that the foil doesn't touch the bread). You may also need at this point to slightly lower the temperature of your oven. Ovens are like flours: they are all different. My 450° may be you 430° or vice-versa.
Once the bread is baked, set it to cool on a wire rack and wait for it to have cooled completely to slice it open
Enjoy!

The Learning Loaf is going to Susan's for the next issue of Yeastspotting.

Back to Baking

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:04:00 +0000

Yesterday was my first real Back to Baking Day since mid-December. Two and a half months without living dough in my hands. Too long...
But I had a hard time getting in the mood: it took four weeks from the day we came home for me to feel the urge. Of course we had a bread-packed freezer to begin with; local baking friends kept us supplied with marvelous homemade loaves; our Pacific Northwest Trader Joe's carries bread that is quite good (you wouldn't think it likely when you wander the aisles of most Trader Joe's stores I know in the Northeast, where bread is of the barely acceptable variety but yes, grocery chains do adapt to their markets and apparently here in the urban Northwest people are serious about their bread); and finally I still find it difficult to focus. No matter how hard I try, my mind wanders. Combined, all these reasons were good enough for me not to dive into the flour bin right away.
What helped me get my baking groove back is probably the BBGA flatbread class I attended last weekend with a Canadian friend. It was taught by Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakery in Seattle. I'll write more about it in another post (as soon as I have made one of the flatbreads at home). For now I'll just say that it was excellent and a lot of fun to boot and that I simply love being around bakers. They are among my favorite people!
So the class helped. Plus the fact that I am trying to develop a simple learning loaf in response to the many requests I got from readers who happened on Farine because of Noah, had never visited a bread blog before, are now tempted to give bread-baking a shot and wonder where and how to start. I have been mulling the idea for a while and I decided yesterday was as good an opportunity as any to experiment with a basic -yet tasty- recipe (I'll post about that first learning loaf some time next week).
Finally we have a friend from France coming to stay with us for a while. She lives outside Paris in a dreamy yellow house with Van Gogh-blue shutters and when I go stay with her, we only have to walk three minutes to get our daily baguette from the little bakery around the corner. Since we can't do that here, I must have bread for her. A three-second walk to the freezer in the garage might be slightly less romantic but hey, to her it might be just as amazing. Her French freezer is so tiny it could fit in my American bread box!
So yesterday I baked three different kinds of bread: the two loaves in the foreground are chocolate and currant levain (my French friend will forgive me for revealing here that she is a huge chocolate fan); the big boule in the middle is the learning loaf (I don't know yet how else to call it); the curlicue on top was made with leftover dough from the learning loaf; and the four short batards (or rustic baguettes) on the sides are levain-based and partly wholegrain (wheat, spelt and rye).
For those of you who are new to baking and might be puzzled by the French word levain, let me say that it is usually translated by "sourdough". I don't like to use that word though because it puts too much emphasis on sourness. A levain (also called "starter", a word I like much better than "sourdough") is always characterized by some level of acidity (and, from what I understand, acidity is actually good because it helps make available to our body some of the nutrients otherwise locked in the grain) but the baker can control that acidity by playing with variables such as time and temperature and my personal preference goes to less sour. The learning loaf seen above is not made with levain (which wouldn't be readily available to most Farine readers) but with a pre-ferment calling for yeast commonly found in grocery stores across America (more on the subject next week).
Noah loved bread (all our grandchildren do) and he was very interested in the hand-mixing process. He listened attentively when I spoke of the interaction of flour, water, salt and starter (he especially loved the idea that invisible micro-organisms are present in the flour and ready to spring to life and make dough rise). I remember hoping that one day he and his sisters might be motivated enough to want to learn how to bake for themselves.
So I thought of him a lot yesterday. Of course nothing can replace a little boy sitting on the kitchen counter, banging his feet against the cabinet and devouring slice after slice of freshly baked bread but still it brought me some degree of comfort to know that at least in spirit and in my heart he was definitely present. And maybe, just maybe, he is the one who inspired me to taste the baguette dough before setting it to rise. Good thing I did: I had forgotten the salt!

Of bread and herons

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 00:12:00 +0000

I baked Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread the other day and it seems to have come out fine although it didn't rise as high as it normally does. But it might have been because I had digressed from my baking routine. As usual I had soaked the cracked rye overnight and done all the mise en place (gotten everything scaled and prepped and at room temperature) the night before. I had mixed the dough in the morning around 10 and transfered it to the oiled pan but - and that isn't something we normally do when I start on a bread - we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Ikea on an errand we had been postponing for a while. Ikea isn't exactly next door. What to do? I weighed the pros and cons and projecting that the dough would have risen nicely by the time we came back, I determined that everything should and would be fine.
But just as we were leaving, I got spooked. With my mind's eyes, I saw the neglected dough climb over the edge of the pan, slither under the clear plastic film, crawl down the door of the cabinet to pool on the floor in a puddle that would morph from gooey-sticky to rock-hard by the time we got back. So I put the pan in the garage (where the temperature must have been around 50°F/10°C). That probably scared the dough out of its wits because when we came back five or six hours later (we got stuck in traffic), it hadn't moved at all. Not even a shiver...
It must have been about 5 PM when I brought it inside where the temperature was 65°F/18°C. Five hours or six later it still hadn't moved. At all. It looked petrified. I went to bed with a heavy heart. For a first foray back into baking in more than two months, it didn't look encouraging and I wasn't sure overnight proofing would help since we keep the thermostate on low during the night.
But, lo and behold, in the morning the dough had changed color: no longer grayish, it seemed to glow with the bloom of life and it had started to dome a bit in the middle. This time I watched it like a hawk. And watched. And watched. It took its own sweet time. At about 4 PM, when it looked like it wouldn't rise much further than up to 3/4 inch from the top, I pre-heated the oven and waited some more. Talk about a balancing act between hoping for a higher rise and making sure it didn't overproof.
At the time of this writing, I haven't sliced it open yet (it is best to wait at least 24 hours and preferably 48 to 72 before slicing into a fresh loaf of whole grain bread). Whole grain breads need to settle: they taste better when they dry out a bit. It makes sense, right? Moisture evaporates and flavor concentrates. With a bit of luck, the crumb will be okay... I wish I had taken pictures all along but I wasn't planning to blog this bread and also what's so exciting about a dough that plays dead for hours on end?

Four days after the bake

Not the prettiest crumb ever (see the lower part of the loaf which looks a bit dense and gummy) but not the worst either.
Moral of the story #1: rye dough can and will trick you. This one looked as lifeless as the mummified heron our two-year old golden retriever dragged in from the marshes and dropped proudly at my feet one winter, the very same day she fell through the ice and we thought she was a goner. It was her first visit to our little camp by the St-Lawrence River. We had adopted her a week earlier. She fought her way back onto the ice, shook herself and was as good as new, white teeth flashing in a wide smile and dripping tail wagging. The heron got flung back into the marshes when she wasn't looking.
The dough was so inert that I almost chucked it out too. The only thing that stopped me is the thought that waiting till morning would save me having to wash the pan before going to bed. Also that I really, really craved some naturally leavened whole rye bread. And finally that I knew we would soon be seeing our Danish cousins who live in Vancouver, BC, and that I wanted to bring them a little taste of home, however elusive the similarity of this bread with their native rugbrød.
Moral of the story # 2: any resemblance of unproofed rye dough to a wizened heron is entirely fortuitous and best taken with a grain of salt.

Gun legislation in Washington State: let's speak up!

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 19:41:00 +0000

I read a couple of days ago in the Seattle Times that a gun-rights group is currently negotiating with lawmakers on background checks in Washington State. While the article gave me some measure of hope that we are indeed moving forward on the issue of curbing gun violence, it also brought in stark relief the necessity for all of us Washingtonians to act now. Twenty kids were killed in a hail of gunfire in Newtown, CT, on December 14, including our grandson Noah. If it happened in peaceful Newtown, it can happen anywhere and we must do everything we can to try and prevent such tragedies from occurring again.
Our kids have the right to stay alive! No right is more fundamental than this one. Universal background checks may not be the full answer, but if they help save even one single life, if they spare one single family the terrible pain of losing a child to gun violence, they are worth implementing.
Our kids trust us to have their backs. What we can do, as constituents, is encourage our senators to stand up to their caucus. The legislators who need to hear from us are:

Sen. Andy Hill (45th Legislative District)- Kirkland/Woodinville,
Sen. Rodney Tom (48th District, Clyde Hill/Medina/Bellevue), and
Sen. Steve Litzow (41st District), Mercer Island/Newcastle.

If you live in any of these districts, please call the universal 800 number and leave a short message for your senator. The operator will get it to him. The number to call is 1-800-562-6000. (If you don't live in any of these districts but know people who do, you can still make a difference by encouraging them to call.)
In this message you will need to say:

Who you are and where you live
That you support common sense gun legislation
That you are glad the Senator signed on to sponsor the universal background check bill
That you are counting on him to remain steadfast and stand up to his critics.

We also need to call and encourage Rep. Mike Hope (44th Dist.) who is getting lambasted by the NRA. His office number is 360-786-7892. He needs to hear we are behind him.

Vice-President Biden said yesterday: "There is a moral price to pay for inaction." That is certainly true at the national or State level. But at the family level, believe me, the price is first and foremost exacted in blood and tears. I, for one, hope never to see a murdered child's name on a memorial poster again... I am sure you don't either.
Your kids and ours and everyone else's must be put first. They deserve a vote. Let's pick up our phones to make sure they get it.

Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 20:43:00 +0000

While I am not yet back in full baking mode, bread is slowly making its way back into my life (of course not baking was and still is made easier by the fact that our freezer was literally bursting at the seams when tragedy struck mid-December: we had been expecting our two teenage grandkids for their winter breaks and I had been baking up a storm).
This time around the first bread on the agenda is likely to be Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread. There is something profoundly honest and straightforward about this bread. It isn't fancy and some may not consider it elegant (although I would argue the point.) But it does deliver in terms of taste, consistency, shelf life and versatility. Besides I find it deeply comforting as it brings back memories of light-filled summers spent in Denmark with beloved family members.
I have made it several times already, sometimes with my own rye starter, sometimes with the rye yogurt starter indicated in the book. I like both versions. For most people the yogurt starter is probably the easier way to go as you don't have to have a pre-existing starter on hand to try the bread (see below for the starter recipe).

You will find the real rye bread recipe on page 133 of Hanne Risgaard's gorgeous book, Home Baked: Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry. You will also find it a beautiful rendition of it online (with a list of ingredients and detailed instructions) at My Italian Smörgåsbord.
The ingredients listed make for a huge loaf (or two smaller ones). I don't find it to be a problem: it is a lovely bread to share, it freezes beautifully and, thinly sliced and dried out, either in a dehydrator or in an oven set at a low temperature, it makes lovely crisps which keep for months in an airtight container. Those crisps are the perfect foil for sardines, smoked salmon, pungent cheeses, etc. They are also handy and healthful in case of a snack attack!
Once I knew we both liked the bread and I was going to make it over and over, I started looking for a gallon-size pan (that's where the elegance comes in: I just love the sleek look of the loaf Hanne chose to illustrate her recipe). Thanks to my friend Larry Lowary who is an invaluable source of tips and advice, I found here a pan almost identical to the ones used in Denmark (except that the sides are not straight but slightly slanted). The price was right (I didn't get the lid which I didn't need) and I bought it. I have had no reason to regret it (my only advice would be to slightly grease the pan before placing the dough in it. The first couple of times the bread slid out like a breeze but with each later use the pan became a little bit more reluctant to let go).
Hanne says to leave the dough to ferment at room temperature for 24 hours before baking. I don't know how cold it is in Denmark where she bakes but here in the Pacific Northwest where the temperature inside our house usually hovers around 65°F/18°C, I have found six to ten hours to be enough. I tried letting it go twenty-four hours once just to see what happened and it was not a success. Which reminded me of the golden rule: rye doesn't like to wait!

So instead of following Hanne's proofing time suggestions, I heed her practical advice: bake the loaf when the dough almost reaches the top of the pan.

As I said, I love the book as a whole: I have already made the Pear and Sourdough Bread (p. 142) (I skipped the yeast though)...

...and the Pumpkin Seed Bread with Buttermilk (p. 136) (so tasty and fragrant, especially with the suggested addition of fennel seeds that it is close rival to the Real Rye one in our affections)...

...and there are plenty of other appealing breads that I plan to try and make. My only reservations would be that several of the non-rye levain-based recipes call for yeast (I don't see the point of adding yeast to levain except in a production environment with a tight schedule) and that it would be useful to see more crumb shots.
The photography is gorgeous however and guaranteed to make you want to start baking on the spot (which is maybe the reason why Hanne's real rye bread may be the one to finally pull me out of my baking funk).

The rye yogurt starter is fairly simple to make.

Ingredients (for 400 g mature starter, total)
Starter

150 g water
150 g organic plain yogurt
200 g whole rye flour

Feeding

150 g water
200 g whole rye flour

Method

To start: mix all starter ingredients thoroughly and keep, tightly covered, in a warm place for 24 hours (Hanne recommends 86°F/30°C)
Feeding: After 24 hours, add water and flour, mix thoroughly and keep, tightly covered, in a warm place for another 24 hours

Hanne's recipe uses all of the starter (and replaces it with 400 g of dough which she keeps in a fridge, slightly salted, for her next batch). She says that, when it has been refrigerated, it will need to spend 24 hours at room temperature to be ready for use again.

Hanne Risgaard's Real Rye Bread is going to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Two months ago today in Newtown, CT

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 16:29:00 +0000

Two months already? Or two months only? I can't tell. Time stretches and compresses without warning. My only certitude is that, two months after the tragedy, it remains impossible to come to terms with what happened.
But today is Valentine's Day and I want to tell you a story: a few weeks ago, one of my little granddaughters came to me as I was sitting at the computer. She asked: "Maminou, what's your talent?" I was taken aback at first, then I remembered that the girls had just watched (and watched and watched) The Secret of the Wings, a Disney fairy movie where everyone has a talent waiting to be discovered. I thought for a minute, then recalling that when we meet after a long separation the first thing she asks is always "Did you bring us bread?", I said: "Bread!" She nodded, satisfied.
Then I asked: "And what's your talent?" She was quiet for a while, then she replied with a shy smile: "Loving! I think my talent is for loving..." I held her close. She didn't say anything for a while, then she looked directly into my eyes: "Do I have to love the bad guy who came into the school?" I told her she didn't and she looked relieved, as if something tight had just unwound inside her.
Love as a talent. I never thought of it that way but it makes sense. A gift that lies dormant at birth and needs to be awakened and nurtured.
Love as a choice. Some of us place themselves deliberately outside the circles. They cannot be trusted with love. Maybe because their talent was never discovered. Maybe because they never had it in the first place. I don't know. But I like it that my little granddaughter is already working on setting boundaries for herself.
Two months ago today in Newtown, CT, a shooter chose to rob twenty-six innocents of their lives and to tear them away from their loved ones. These flowers are for the victims and for the survivors. For all of us who choose love. For all of us who understand, like my granddaughter, that not loving doesn't mean hating. That there is another way...

Of walking and Walmart

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 17:59:00 +0000

Among the many things I love about living in the Northwest is how colorful the landscape remain throughout the winter, not only because of the everpresent evergreens but also because of the yellow, orange or red bark on so many trees and bushes. The hour-long walk around Green Lake in Seattle is color-therapy at its seasonal best. Plus it offers as good an opportunity for people-watching as an outdoor terrace in a Parisian café (one of my favorite pastimes when we visit family and friends there.) The crowd is strikingly different though: mothers dashing forward behind racing strollers, others dragged by eager pooches, muscled men in skimpy tank tops, Gore-Texed gents leaning on heavy canes, leashed dogs everywhere, mostly well behaved, old couples and odd couples, talking walkers and walking talkers, cyclists, roller-bladers, everyone in-lane, everyone oh so Seattle. Peaceful...
So we walk. We talk some. Mostly we watch. Sometimes we notice more than once the same people walking in the opposite direction. When it happens, I always regret not having paid more attention in school to problems featuring two trains leaving at different hours from different cities and going at different speeds: where and when would they pass each other? Are we seeing this elderly couple twice because they actually walk faster than us? It seems unlikely but then why are we meeting them again before our own walk around the lake is over?
My mathematically bent husband remains unfazed: he quickly processes the facts (where we first pass the couple, where we are now) and comes up with the answer. I like it that some problems can be easily solved.
As we walk I feel a burden lift then fall again then lift again: grief like an invisible cloak fluttering in the breeze. And I look at the faces, animated or stoney, smooth or wrinkled, dour or smiling, and I wonder at the stories that live and breathe behind each of them...
Back home, the peace Green Lake has brought is shattered as I listen to Walmart and the AR-15, a Feb.6 podcast from the Leonard Lopate Show. From there I go to How Walmart Helped Make the Newtown Shooter's AR-15 the Most Popular Assault Weapon in America, the original article by George Zornick in The Nation. I had thought Walmart had pulled the weapon so that it could no longer be bought online. It turns out that it could never be bought online and that Walmart only pulled it from its online catalog but continued to carry it in its stores. I didn't know that gun sales was what helped the company pull out of a slump. I also didn't know that Walmart was now "the biggest seller of firearms and ammunition in America."
There is indeed a story behind everyone and everything, isn't there? Many of them never see the light of day but when they are exposed, when we clearly see that from coast to coast thousands of us are either already impacted or threatened by the plot, don't we have not only the right but the obligation to look for ways to bring about a different ending? I regret that Walmart declined to be interviewed for the article. I am still hoping it can be convinced to change its policies (or at least to make sure each and everyone of its stores abides by its stated policies). Meanwhile, let's vote with our feet and walk away both from Walmart Stores and from Sam's Club which it owns and operates.

Back home

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 17:29:00 +0000

A week after Noah died, my baker friend Sam Fromartz baked this beautiful crown to honor his life and memory. Here is what he wrote: "When I made it, I was thinking about the Buddhist concept of Mandala, the circle of life, as all life begins and ends, but ultimately is connected. I also thought about the Mandala when I made the grigne, like a series of never-ending waves. The way the flour unexpectedly dusted one half the loaf but not the other also symbolized lightness and dark. For all these reasons I think this loaf works and hope it is worthy of a Crown for Noah."
I was deeply touched. I know Noah would have loved the crown (he had a passion for crusty artisan bread). I also know the first thing he would have done is stick his arm through the hole in the middle and parade around the room wearing it like a gigantic bracelet and his sisters would have run after him: "My turn! My turn!" and the grown-ups would have been trying to retrieve the loaf ("Kids! We don't play with food!") and there would have been a lot of giggling and bustling about. The scene is so vivid that it is almost a memory... Thank you, Sam!
I told Sam that, with his permission, I would post the picture of the crown and his comments when I was back home and on the verge of resuming baking: today seems as good a day as any as we are indeed back home near Seattle and there is no more palpable reality in our day-to-day existence than the spinning of the circle of life and the play of light and darkness.
Going home was weird. First of all, those among you who believe in signs will probably love it that the first three letters of my confirmation number for the flight were NOA... Seriously, what are the odds? I know the code is computer-generated and meaningless but still it felt like a butterfly kiss before the trip back and it brought me joy.
Then our home was a time warp: I had forgotten that we had been in the process of decorating it for Christmas when we left precipitously on December 14th. There were boxes of ornaments left and right. The stepladder was still up. A red and white bead garland hung loose from one side of the doorframe. The tree stood unlit and petrified in a corner of the living area, like a stalagmite from the plant world incongruously decorated for the saddest of holidays. The star was pinned on the 13th on the naïve advent calendar I made for my kids out of a pillowcase back in 1974, a calendar their own kids love to see come out every year.

I turned on my computer only to find the browser stuck on the post I wrote before leaving. After seven weeks, it was like being rocketed back to a time before time we could barely recollect. So much had happened since.
We took the calendar down, untrimmed the tree, collected the window candles (we have little star ones from Ikea which need to be turned on manually, one-by-one, a task our grandkids love to take on) and removed their batteries, unhook the hanging garland and started packing Christmas away. Truth be told, I don't know at this point that I'll ever feel like getting the house ready for the holidays again. But then "ever" is a very short word for a very long time and things may change. Also there are the grandkids to think of...
Friends from the baking community came by over the weekend: one walked in carrying two containers of levain (wheat and rye) (For those of you who are not bakers, levain is the French word for sourdough starter). I hugged her on the spot: inexplicably both my levains had died while we were gone. Feeding the new starters felt good. Although I am not quite up to baking yet (still too distracted), it was a first step, a promise to myself.
She also brought gorgeous breads, crackers and cookies, including a marvelously potent beer bread we had with turkey chili on SuperBowl Sunday (not that we watched the game this year but still...). Others brought a sumptuous chocolate cake (we had a milestone birthday to celebrate) and a lovely Pithiviers. We sat around the kitchen table in the kids' house. We chatted, caught up on everyone's story. Life, interrupted, seeping back. Circles of love, still woven tight...

Marching Against Gun Violence

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:27:00 +0000

My husband and I were in Washington yesterday marching against gun violence with our sister-in-law who lives in the DC area. The air was cold, the sky white. Signs abounded, many bearing the name of victims of the December 14th massacre in Newtown. We hadn't thought of bringing our own, so we carried one that was handed to us. It had already had several bearers. We carried it a few blocks and passed it on to waiting hands. Behind the security fences that lined Constitution Avenue, men and women stood silently holding small placards which read: "I was shot" and displayed a name and a face: those of victims of gun violence whose murders never made the headlines...
The march was silent but some cars honked in sympathy and since traffic moved along slowly, we seemed to be walking in a tenuous tunnel of sound.
I looked at the faces around me, grave and resolute. I thought of the upcoming fight about gun control, of the seemingly gaping divide between gun enthusiasts and gun control advocates. Do we have to pick sides? Couldn't we agree on the simple fact that as responsible citizens, we are all against gun violence, especially when it targets innocents? I remember reading that some of the Newtown victim families were and remain pro-gun. Whatever gun ownership means for these family members in practical terms, it is safe to assume that they are bleeding internally from the violence which took their kid, parent, spouse or sibling away. They too want to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Newtown didn't choose to make headlines but now that it has, now that the whole country is grieving with the town, let's find a common ground and build on it. Let's make sure we move forward together, one step at a time.

Noah Pozner: a call to action

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 19 Jan 2013 13:14:00 +0000

With this lovely picture of my grandson taken by one of his aunts last April, I will say goodbye for a while to all of you who have been following my blog mostly for my Noah posts. I am not going anywhere (except back home soon) but I have reached a stage where I can't continue sharing. Grieving is truly a journey. A long and painful one. Right now I find I cannot grieve and write.
What I would like to say though is that you are truly amazing. I have drawn great comfort from the support and companionship you have offered to all of us along the way and still do. I know you are on standby to do more and for this, I am deeply grateful. I wish there was a way to thank each and everyone of you personally but at this point it is all I can do to take care of my family. There is simply not enough time or energy in a single day to do much more.
But you are all in my heart and I will read your messages if you feel like writing to me personally from time to time. I can't promise I will write back but if I can, I will.
Meanwhile please keep Noah and all the other victims in your hearts and minds. President Obama said the other day that nine hundred people had died from guns in our country since the Newtown massacre of December 14, 2012. As I write, the tally has come to one thousand and nineteen (click here for updated info).
If there is one thing you can do in Noah's memory for our family today, tomorrow and forever, it is to reflect on these numbers and come up with ways to bring them down. Take your ideas to your elected officials, ask them what their positions are and what they are doing to curb gun violence in your state and in the country. Keep them focused. Make them accountable.
I know that there are no simple solutions and that, at the national level, we need to look for and find measures that stand a chance in a divided Congress. As a family we have put together an initial set of proposals that the Task Force has promised to consider. Other victim families may have done the same. You can do the same.
Whatever our positions on guns, there is one thing we probably all agree on as responsible adults: gun violence must be curbed. Let us all speak up and demand change. If we succeed, however modestly, Noah, his classmates and his teachers will not have died in vain.

Noah Pozner: Veronique, his mom, has dreams of her little boy and advocates measures for change

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 21:50:00 +0000

Once again I am referring you to an article, an interview my daughter gave to the Associated Press:

Veronique Pozner, Newtown Mom, Dreams About Son, Urges Gun Law Reform

Noah Pozner: our granddaughter recalls her little brother

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 12:47:00 +0000

Noah Pozner: keeping our kids alive

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:18:00 +0000

Today marks the one-month anniversary of the murder of twenty first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. A month ago today we lost our little Noah to mindless and ugly violence. Already his twin sister Arielle is saying sadly that sometimes she can't remember how he talked: she had never been separated from him, they were best friends. A big chunk of her, of her sister Sophia, of Noah's teenage siblings, of my daughter Veronique, of all of us has been amputated without anesthesia. It is the worst pain we have ever experienced. Frankly I don't think we'll ever recover: the kids will continue to grow, the teenagers will become adults, we will do our best to adjust. But nothing will be the same. Ever. Not for us, maybe not for the nation. The Sandy Hook massacre was too horrific for life ever to resume as before.
People often comment on our strength as a family. We never knew we were strong. We were just a regular family with its ups and downs, ordinary joys and ordinary sorrows. Nothing special. Since Noah was torn away from us though, we have discovered that, in the face of evil, being ordinary isn't enough. We have discovered the power of outrage. Noah was an amazing little fighter who loved karate and Ninja moves. He wouldn't want us to fade into the background and meekly accept that his fate is the price to pay to live in this country.
So we have been talking among us about the best way to bring about changes and keep our kids alive. We have been looking for measures that would be both effective and uncontroversial so that the country doesn't get bogged down in fruitless debate and we have come up with proposals.
For a summary of the initial steps we suggest, please read the following article, published today in the Hartford Courant:

Family Of Noah Pozner Calls For New Laws To Avert School Violence, Hold Gun Owners Accountable

Alternatively you may want to read the full-text of our memo to the White House Task Force on Gun Violence.

I know you share the outrage. Now time has come to share the strength. Speak up, bring your own ideas to the table, write to your representatives, march, do whatever needs to be done to help make sure the Newtown killing marks a new beginning for our nation. In the words of our President, "These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change. We will be told that the causes of such violence are complex, and that is true. No single law -- no set of laws can eliminate evil from the world, or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society. But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely, we can do better than this. If there is even one step we can take to save another child, or another parent, or another town, from the grief that has visited Tucson, and Aurora, and Oak Creek, and Newtown, and communities from Columbine to Blacksburg before that -- then surely we have an obligation to try."

Noah Pozner: war and peace

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:47:00 +0000

My father survived World War II. He died peacefully in a veterans' hospital in 2005. He was 92. His great-grandson Noah didn't survive first grade. He died in a hail of gunfire in his classroom in 2012. He was 6.
These facts are indisputable. Yet my mind can't seem to hold them together in coherent thought. We are taught those who went to war fought so that we could live free. I wasn't born in this country and have only been a citizen for twenty-five years. That may be the reason why I have a hard time understanding that, to some Americans, freedom means having the right to procure, own and learn to use weapons that can obliterate classes full of children in seconds.
I have heard the old canard that guns don't kill, people do. That is certainly true. Guns cannot walk themselves into a school, a movie theater or a shopping mall and pull their own triggers. At least they can't yet. Who knows about tomorrow? If we can fly drones, is it far-fetched to imagine a world where affordable robots could be armed and programmed to go and kill?
Thousands cannot have died or nearly starved to death in prisoner camps -as my father did- to protect the right of gun enthusiasts to own and use weapons that were not even invented in their lifetimes. They died or starved to protect the lives and freedom of their families and fellow citizens, including the right of little children to get an education without being afraid of "bad men" blasting their way into their schools and the rights of parents everywhere to see their children peacefully grow into responsible adults.
Gun people may be entrenched in their conviction that their right to any deadly weapon under the sun is God-given and shouldn't be tampered with. Because of the powerful interests that stand behind them and skillfully manipulate at least some of them, they are very vocal and their voices carry far and wide.
Many of them are parents though. Because of our shared humanity, I know that in private these fathers and mothers are thinking: "What if it had been my kid? Would I still feel that the right to own semi-automatic weapons is more sacred than the right of my child to his or her life?"
To them I say, take my grandson, take all twenty of Newtown slaughtered children, take all the kids who die from gunshots every year in our country and make them your own. They were real boys and girls, just like your sons and daughters. Before raising your voice to be heard, in Washington or elsewhere, please listen for theirs in your heart and think of your own kids. Make it personal. Believe me, there is nothing more personal than grieving for a murdered child.

Noah Pozner: missing it all for the greater good?

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:27:00 +0000

Beyond the loss of Noah and the void he leaves, one of the most painful thoughts to contemplate is that he has been deprived of all his days to come: he will never know what it means to be a teenager and do things he'd rather hide from his parents, never fall in love, never hold a job, never raise a family. He and his nineteen classmates have been robbed of their future and we, as their families, now see gaping holes where their lives should continue to be intertwined with ours. I look at our own family, see our kids, their spouses, their own children and marvel at the strength of the net they weave. Noah was part of that net. Four grandkids were born to us in the space of six months in 2006-7: two boys and two girls. They would have grown together, have wild cousin meets, establish indestructible bonds. Now only three remain.
Veronique always said of her twins that they were so close to each other they would derive great strength from their bond throughout their lives. I had imagined them going out on double dates, having kids that would in turn be best friends. All this is now gone because a complete stranger who was obviously not right in his mind (if he was and still did what he did, then I don't know that he qualified as human) decided to assuage his own demons by taking as many lives as he could before taking his own and chose to do so in an elementary school where he knew nobody would be able to stop him.
I haven't spoken of this deranged boy before and won't now. I know nothing about him and I can't even bring myself to say or write his name as it would be making him too much of a person and I might be tempted to start hating. I don't want to be stuck in a place of darkness, so the only way I can deal with his actions is to blot him out, to remain numb to who he was.
I do hope however that we will find out what drove him to do what he did, if only to help prevent the recurrence of such mass murders. I fully agree that gun control is only one aspect of the tragedy and that, given the number of rampage weapons present in this country, both legal and illegal, it is probably too little, too late (although I fully support any legislation that would put a stop to the proliferation). But there is much more: there are mental health and societal issues, there may be drug or medication issues, there is the urgent need to protect our schools at least as well as we protect our banks (and allocate money to this purpose in our budgets), there are moral issues (what can we do to make our nation less violent?), etc.
Yes, much is to be done and if our country becomes safer because of the loss of twenty little kids and six of their educators on December 14, 2012, then it might be possible to think that Noah and the others didn't die in vain, that their lives were interrupted and stolen from them for the greater good.
We are not there yet. My job as Noah's grandmother is to help keep him alive in our collective mind so that he can make a difference. His loss and ours won't be less painful but they may not remain meaningless. As for the deranged boy who blotted out his future, if we ever understand what drove him to this horrific act and this new awareness helps prevent future tragedies, I might find it in my heart to use his name and maybe, maybe, one day, to try and forgive him.

Noah Pozner: the way he died

noreply@blogger.com (MC) — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 13:49:00 +0000

Noah Pozner’s Mom Describes Newtown Victim’s Body, And Why We Should All Listen

Today I am sending you to an article I just read (thank you, S, for posting the above link in your comments). I didn't know my daughter Veronique had shared the details of Noah's death with Naomi Zeveloff, the journalist who came to interview the family two days after the tragedy. I am glad she found the strength to do it: for reasons we may never know, Noah was shot repeatedly. It haunts all of us.
These twenty kids died witnessing the horrific violence that was being done to their classmates and to their teachers. The least we can do as parents and grandparents, as a nation, as the community-at-large, is to keep the details of their deaths at the forefront of our minds together with the pictures of their sweet faces that have been circulated everywhere.
Twenty mangled little bodies are the price we paid on that day for the freedom to own high-power weapons that can be used in rampage killings. These six- and seven-year olds never had the opportunity to make a decision on gun control, they never got to elect the person who could best represent them in Congress on that issue, they had no say at all. They were born to a culture where violence is omnipresent and revered. They probably all knew about guns from movies and video games but never in their scariest nightmare could they have imagined that one day one of these guns would move off the screen and be turned against them. As a nation we armed their killer. Let's take a long look at what he did with the weapon and never forget it.
Another country said "enough is enough" and changed its laws (see Australians Urge U.S. To Look At Their Gun Laws.) Why not us? Do we care less than Australia does? Do we like our deadly toys more than we love our young?
Although I am focusing on the little ones in this post, I am certainly not forgetting the grown-ups who were tasked with educating them and died as a result. Our family knew and loved several of them and we grieve for them everyday. They too deserve that we act on their behalf.