Baked today, a simple sourdough loaf made with four ingredients...Canadian organic Marquis wheat flour (fresh milled and sifted), water, salt and starter. Having this for dinner tonight with visitors from across the border, friends sharing a meal, breaking bread together.
An accumulation of small amounts of various leftover grains motivated this bake, a cracked grain sourdough bread. I had some rye berries, hard red wheat, spelt, barley and whole oats, 175 g total - coarse cracked and then soaked in 70 g hot water for two hours. The bread was made with 200g fresh milled whole wheat, sifted flour, 800g all purpose flour, 20g sea salt, 220g starter and 750g water.
This year's CSA organic grain share has arrived and it was a good harvest despite pandemic and incredible summer heat and wildfire challenges. I received several bags of organic rye, a bag of Canadian Marquis heirloom wheat and a bag of Manitoba wheat, a cultivar of Marquis. Marquis was first developed as a cross between Red Fife, Canada's oldest wheat variety and a variety from India called Hard Red Calcutta; it combines the best traits of both parent lines and by the early 1900's was grown on over 20 million acres, about 85%of the wheat acreage in North America.
This is a variation on Chad Robertson's Oat Porridge Bread in his book Tartine 3. It is essentially the same bread but with slightly less oat porridge and the addition of some cooked whole oat berries. It is one of my favourite breads.
Ingredients
Well, it's been almost 6 months since my last post...this pandemic thing has been occupying lots of time and energy, so much so there's little left at the end of the day for even simple, everyday things like baking bread. I am trying to stay optimistic as things continue to unfold but admit to being more discouraged than encouraged these past few days what with the growing social unrest, ongoing disruption of the way things used to be, ever increasing pressure on front line/first responders and economic/financial hardships all around.
This is a strange and turbulent time...a viral pandemic upon us, the world in an ongoing struggle to survive and the best and worst of humanity on display every day. There is little comfort to be found anywhere as the debates, misinformation, disuptes and yes, death and suffering as a result of covid-19 fill our days.
My last blog entry was back in November 2019...right at the end of the world as we knew it. This new way, this surreal reality with it's need for self-isolation, self-distancing, economic and social shut down under the ravages of a global pandemic is our present and our future until the hope of a vaccine/treatment is realized. Everything is different, we struggle to adapt to the new world order and way of doing things in order to survive, fear and anxiety are the underlying emotions of the day, hope is the what keeps us going.
