2018-10-27

Welcome to a Bread Baking Bootcamp Edition of Food Porn, brought to you by The Burrow - Ania taught some friends of ours how to bake bread today - She started by prepping three batches of her fragrantly mature starter (which has been perking for many years) into slurry the night before, and then, very early in the morning, creating a sponge with two, saving the other one until lit was time to make the first sponge into a lump - this occurred a few hours later. When she made the first batch into loaves, the second sponge became a lump, and a third batch became sponge - Nicole and Jessica came over about the time that the first batch went into the oven, and they began to learn the art of sourdough by making the sponge on the third into lump, and making the lump on the second into loaves. While the rise on these was happening, Ania talked them through beginning a basic buttermilk white bread - the kind of bread that you can make in just a couple hours, from scratch, so that you can have hot, fresh, tasty bread almost any day of the week. The first batch of sourdough was a whole wheat variety, crunchy, nutty and light, with the signature chewiness that only properly prepared sourdough possesses - we devoured the second loaf hot, with some butter, because there is no reason to make bread if you can't have it steaming right out of the oven! The second batch was a rosemary sourdough, adding an earthy flavor and aroma to the tart and fragrant sourdough base. The third was a dark, luxurious, and heady rye sourdough with caraway, and the last batch was the buttermilk white, perfect for everything from toast to a dunk in some soup on a cold winter day. Nicole and Jessica were so excited to learn the bread making process, right after working all night, without sleep - what a couple of troopers! And now for a well deserved nap.