Since I figured I’d have some spare time, I brought my copy of the Bread Baker’s Apprentice with me while visiting my parents over Christmas. On the drive up to Oregon from LA, a stop in Corning at the Olive Pit inspired my third bread from BBA. (That and the memory of Nicole’s focaccia.) The Olive Pit’s Roasted Garlic Rosemary Dipping Oil was just perfect for the herbed oil called for in the recipe.
When I hit up the local grocery store (Market of Choice) to get some bread flour, I discovered something I’d never seen before. In the bulk section, they had a machine full of wheat berries that would be freshly ground into flour. Pretty much exactly like the more common fresh peanut butter machines, just for flour. So I got a bag and set into filling it with around 4 pounds of freshly ground hard red wheat flour.
This was another two day bread, that started with making a poolish. The poolish is a starter that you allow to ferment ahead of time to get nice start on long strands of gluten. Because I was using whole wheat flour, without any of the normal bread flour additions, I gave my poolish a little more time than normal. It also probably could have used a little more water for the yeast to work with. Nonetheless, the bread ended up turning out pretty good. It might have been a little denser then it would have been if I had used bread flour, but it was a big hit with the family.
just out of the oven
cut and ready to eat
