Alright, folks, this week I take a bit of advice from Michael Pollan and *gasp* add a LITTLE BIT of commercially-bought yeast to my dough. Hey, even he says it's a good "insurance policy" that your lovely loaf rises sufficiently, due to the weight and sharp edges of the whole grain flour that tends to both add gravity and pierce those hard-won bubbles of gas in your bread. So I'm not sweating it. Also, an added bit of scientific variability for the first time since March, the temp outdoors has dropped to 10 C, bringing my house to a frigid 23 C (72 F) this morning. Usually it's a cozy Floridian ~26 C (78 F). I am wearing yoga pants instead of practically nothing. Autumn has begun.
9:30 pm Friday
After a perfectly relaxing and mild evening of sampling local beers (I sense a yeasty theme here) at the Hernando Untapped fest, I mixed together the Michael Pollan leaven recipe (from his awesome book Cooked) :
100 g whole grain flour
100 g unbleached all-purpose flour
200 g warm water
35 g starter
7:30 am Saturday
This morning (OMG SO COLD) it was fluffy and perfect. Pollan then suggests adding extra yeast to the leaven before measuring it out into the mixing bowl, so I weighed out ~4 g (1 1/8 tsp) active dry yeast plus a few tablespoons warm water in a small cup, let it sit a few minutes, then dumped it into the leaven and stirred. Then I measured out the following:
250 g leaven
850 unbleached all-purpose flour
150 whole grain flour
700 g warm water
Mix on lowest setting with dough hook a few minutes, then cover with plastic wrap and sit for 30 minutes to autolyze.
8:30 am
Add 20 g salt. Mix on low for a few minutes. Now begins the half-hour stretch and fold routine for the next four hours woohoo!
9:30 am
I decided to toss in a tablespoon of fresh minced rosemary from my garden. Because, why not?
12:30 pm
BULK FERMENTATION IS RIGHT. Commercial yeast is bread 'roids.
1:00 pm
That went much faster than usual, so this sucker is ready for splitting and shaping!
3:30 pm
These babies are ready for baking!
4:15 pm
First loaf out of the oven!
