My tradition of Christmas bread baking began by accident back in 1975, when, considerably younger and poorer, I discovered a recipe for cheese bread in Joy of Cooking that yielded a pretty tasty product. So I decided that Christmas that family and friends would receive a loaf, something I could afford and that was personal.
One downside to working as a baker is that it doesn't allow me time to bake during the week. So now everything gets crammed into weekends. And frankly, sometimes after a week at the bakery, I really don't feel like spending a day off baking more. And yet, inevitably I find my two starters staring at me ruefully, and so on a beautiful Fall day when the temperatures felt more like September than mid-November, I decided to do a series of bakes.
Anyone who's followed my blogs knows that I'm constantly whinging about my gas oven and it's tendency to vent steam as quickly as I can create it.
But it's true: my relationship with my oven is probably like that of Ike and Monty in WWII - hated one another but needed each other.
My last rye[url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19306/variations-breads-hamelman-and-macguire] experiment [/url]involved a variation on Hamelman's 66% rye sourdough found in Bread. The variation was the inclusion of a boiling rye soaker (brühstück) and toasted sunflower seeds. I was pleased with the result, especially the sweetness imparted by the soaker.
This past weekend I decided to revisit a favorite bread of mine - Polish Country Bread. Although I don't have Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" I've scrounged together a recipe from web searches that seems quite similar so far as I can tell. It's a 15% rye, where the entirety of the rye is in the starter. The hydration is 71% which I believe may be slightly lower than Leader's.
Now that we've had a brief respite from oppressive heat here in the Washington, DC area I've turned my oven on again to take advantage of this fleeting opportunity. It's been awhile since I've baked some ryes, so this seemed a good time to get my hands sticky again.
I love English muffins, not only for breakfast but as a sometime lunch mate (ok, so I like tuna melts). But they pose a quandary for me: my usual recipe is easy to work with and handle, but produces muffins with a rather tight crumb. And let's face it, English muffins are all about nooks and crannies, so this won't do.
