May 6, 2007 - 9:09pm
This evening
We had a lovely dinner over at some friends house this evening. The only downside was there was no bread or starch of any kind with the meal. Being the carbivore that I am, I was very pleased that I had some sourdough loaves waiting to be baked when I got home.
I haven't baked sourdough in three or four weeks. I was pleased to see my starter is still alive:
Not the best sourdough I've ever made, but not bad. It does seem to have been improved by the fact that we were out for 6 hours and it got an extra long final fermentation.
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Comments
Susan
Floyd, that bread looks very good to me. I really need to get more of a taste for just plain sourdough bread. I started out making all the variations so I'm not quite sure about what makes a good pain au levain. I mean, maybe it doesn't really matter because it all tastes so good to me.
Anyway, I just finished mixing up the levain for Hamelman's pain au levain using a stiff starter. I'm really looking forward to seeing how it comes out. Now if I could just learn to slash like some of you guys do I would be really happy. Nice grigne!
ZB - I googled this term but I'm still not quite sure what it means...could you elaborate?
Thanks,
Trish
This is how it is stated on page 18, of Maggie Glezer's book, Artisan Baking:
"...A little trivia: The inside portion of the cut, which is webbed and often paler than the rest of the crust, has a name -- grigne (green-YIH)..."
Here is what Peter Reinhart says in BBA on page 91:
"...As the loaf bakes, it will spring in the oven, releasing some of the trapped gas through the weakest points, the cut points, causing the loaf to open in what the French call la grigne, or "the grin", and we call the bloom..."
(Btw, I never heard the term "bloom" before on bread baking. hehe)