Bereit sind, arbeiten Sie hart und Opfern Sie viel Auswuchs Sauerteigbrot

Yes this is the - Willing to work hard and sacrifice much sprouted sourdough bread.  This week Lucy and I have been talking about why things are the way they are in the universe and why that it is so important for success in all things....including bread making.

The rules and laws of the universe can be hand written down on a single page of paper.  Most of these are numbers as constants and equations like General Relativity. These few things  explain the standard model of the universe as we know it to be right now.  It is completely amazing to me that this tiny bit of information can describe the complex universe and everything in it.

Most all the things invented by man require pages and pages of rules to explain.  Have you seen the rules of golf or baseball?  What man does most always is to take the simple and small rules of the universe and complicate them to no end..... for everything we do - sometimes to the point that they can no longer be understood by any person alive.

After 21 hours of retard.

Just think of the millions of pages of rules and regulations of any government on this planet.  Who could possibly understand them all....or even a small portion of them?  The odd thing about rules is that no matter how many there are for any given thing..... none can predict the outcome of anything.

After boule pre-shape and belore 1 hour rest.

The rules of hockey can’t tell you what team will win any more than government laws can predict who will break them and go to prison, who will break them and get off Scott free and who will not break them but still go to prison for supposedly breaking them.   The outcomes are infinite no matter how many rules there are but, the rules are very specific and unyielding for good reason.

Final shape of the batard.

In basketball,the rules say that when a player scores a goal from the field from inside the 3 point line the team gets 2 points.  A free throw gets one point and from beyond the arc, 3 points.  The game would be much different if each time the ball went through the hoop the scoring could range between minus 25 and plus 50.....depending on what number turned up on the wheel that was spun after each goal.Very cool - score a 3 pointer and you get minus 22 points - hit a free throw and poof....you might get 45 points.

After final proof of 1 hour.

The rules of bread baking say that if you put flour, water ,salt and yeast together, develop the gluten, do a bulk ferment, shape and let the dough rise before putting it into the oven at 450 F, you should get out a loaf of bread...... after about 30 minutes or so.

Slashed and ready for the heat..

The rules can’t predict what you will get exactly but it should look something like a loaf of bread - if you aren’t Lucy.   You won’t and shouldn’t expect to get a mango and blueberry fruit smoothie at -10 F out of the not oven instead.

Mega Steam.

Oddly indeed, what makes this relevant to this week’s bake (in case you were wondering), is that the rules of the universe can change all the time based on what the science of today can prove or disprove about yesterday's science.    Current physics says that there is a chance that there are an infinite number of universes where all things,an infinite number of them,  are possible in one of them.  If it turns out to be true, there is a universe where you can put a loaf in the oven at 450 F and get a fruit smoothie at -10 F out of it and that weird basketball game really exists.

The paradox and real meaning of this for us simple bread bakers , even when it comes to bread making, isn’t apparent at all - but profound if true.  Well, Lucy got it but it certainly evaded my thought processes.  If true, than this universe is just one of an infinite number of them where every possibility is lived out and the one we live in one,  as our reality, is really predetermined.  The thought that we have free will to determine the outcome of our own fate is a myth - we really have no choice at all other than to live our lives as already predetermined for this particular universe..

We are doing nothing more than living out destiny as it was pre-determined., no matter how much we think our free will and personal choices determine our outcome – it is just the fate of this particular universe and nothing more – there is nothing special about it or us in any way since every possibility has a slightly different universe that governs everything that happens to everything, everywhere.

It is always good to start off bake day with a good breakfast. 

I, for one, hope that this idea of infinite universes turns out to be wrong so that Lucy can take credit for modifying David Snyder’s San Joaquin recipe to better fit our wants and needs and that my life has been completely determined by the choices I have made, the opportunities I grasped and the character attributes I chose to hold dear and the one I forswore.

If not, then it doesn’t matter what anyone thinks about anything.  So, to be safe, if I were you, I would work hard and be willing to sacrifice to become a better ans successful bread baker, if that is what you want.  Lucy says she hopes she is in the universe that allows one to move from one universe to another so that she can be the Empress of All the Universes!  Now it is on to this week’s bake.

Lucy decided to take David Snyder’s San Joaquin recipe and tweak it to make it be a bit healthier for us diabetics.  The changes are: Using a double levain that was combined on the 3rd feeding using the hard bit extraction for levain flour,  upping the whole grains to 40%, making half sprouted, changing the first 3 sets of 30 stretch and folds each to 30 slap and folds each instead and baking the bread with Mega Steam.  We turned the oven down to 460 F when the bread went in and then down to 435 F convection when the steam came out at 12 minutes.

Lucy kept the hydration the same since sprouted grain flour isn’t s thirsty even though there is more of it as whole grains in the mix.  To find out everything else you need to know go to San Joaquin Sourdough to see some of the very best bread one could ever hope to bake if one can actually control their break baking outcomes in this universe.

We had to mess with our usual schedule to accommodate the 21 hour retard instead of our usual 12 hour one which meant we had to move up the start of the bulk retard by 9 hours which moved everything that happened before it up 9 hours too.  The new schedule for sprouting grains on Monday still worked out for a Friday bake at 10 AM.

The other change we made was to do one 900 G batard proofed in a cloth lined basket and slashed it cross hatch.  The bread sprang, bloomed and browned beautifully under steam with some blistering.  18 minutes of dry heat finished it off nicely for a total bale tome of 30 minutes.  it smelled lovely when baking but we will have to see how it looks on the inside and how it tastes when we slice it for lunch.  This turned out to be one of the best looking and best tasting white breads we have ever made.  The crumb was open, soft and moist.   The crust stayed crunchy and we liked those ears.  The taste was as good as one could possibly expect.  The flavor of the sprouted grains with the whole grain mix really came through.  White bread never had it so good and neither have we:-)

Lucy says not to forget that salad