World Day of Bread 2008!

Today is the World Day of Bread – and truthfully, is there a better way to unite hundreds of countries than to celebrate a staple.  This staple is evident in all ethnicities and religions.  Oftentimes in celebrations.  Thank you to Zorra for putting on this blog event to celebrate! “Let’s break bread together”…

Its story is rooted in our history.  I was just reading Jeffrey Hamelman’s book “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes“. In the ingredients chapter he talks about rye and his surprise that true pumpernickel bread hasn’t enjoyed nearly the popularity that it maintains in Europe, despite the large numbers of European emigrants that we’ve seen in the last century.  It had never occurred to me to think of bread as crossing boundaries in that way; as would religion, or other family heirlooms.  But why wouldn’t bread? We’re raised on it. We celebrate with it.  Not long ago some people may have survived on it.  At the expense of sounding mellow dramatic, think of all the memories we’ve created while bread has been at the table.

Besides the pure basics of food – fruits, vegetables, grains, and water, what do we eat most frequently? Whether its that English muffin or bagel at breakfast, or our sandwich bread or flour tortilla at lunch, or our dinner roll or pizza crust at dinner – bread is intertwined into every day.  Whether you’re vegan, or Celiac, bread of some kind is on the menu (okay, well, except for Atkins, but those folks wouldn’t read a baking blog anyway!) It seems almost impossible that 4 totally unrelated ingredients managed to find their way together in almost every culture.  Water, salt, flour and yeast.  Each one so simple and yet so integral.  Its really something to be marveled. I’m grateful our ancestors were able to figure it out – I’m not sure that I could have.

So on this bread day, I’m going to focus on what unites us as brothers and sisters of the same planet.  That where there is some warm bread and a smile we might find comfort where we might otherwise find confrontation.  Food blogging has shown me in such an acute way that when we’re not talking politics or wars or drug trafficking – but instead focus on something that unites us all and propagates passion we can find that we’re really not all that different; but in fact want to feed our family and children well, and want to have a creative outlet with which we can make friends from all corners of this beautiful earth.

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For World Day of Bread, I made Jeffrey Hamelman’s “Rustic Bread” and was extremely pleased with the results.  The bread has a really great taste with some light sour notes from having a pre-ferment that sits out for 12-16 hours before the final dough is formed.

**oh, and the best part for me with this bread was that this was the first I kneaded totally by hand!!** Not too shabby!

Rustic Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman

Pre-Ferment

16 oz (3 5/8C) bread flour
9.6oz (1.25C) water
.3oz (.5T) salt
1/8t instant yeast

-Disperse yeast in water, add flour and slowly mix until it comes together. It will be very stiff and floury, but keep gently mixing until it forms a dry dough. Let sit, covered, for 12-16 hours until ripe.

Final Dough

9.6oz (2.25C) bread flour
3.2oz (7/8C) whole-rye flour
3.2oz (7/8C) whole-wheat flour
12.5oz(1.5C) water
.3oz (.5T) salt
.5t instant yeast
25oz preferment (all of it)

1) Add all ingredients to mixing bowl except pre-ferment. Mix until dough comes together, then mix on first speed for 3 minutes, adding chunks of preferment as it mixes. Turn to second speed and mix for another 3 minutes. The dough should be pretty wet, but still have some nice gluten development.

2) Bulk ferment for 2.5 hours, folding at the 50-minutes and 100-minutes

3) After fermentation, divide into 1.5lb loaves, preshape, and cover for 10-20 minutes). Shape as desired, and cover (preferably boules or oval loaves).

4) Final rise is 1-1.5 hours

5) Preheat to 450*and slash loaves. Steam oven to your preference.  (I throw ice cubes into cast iron pan, then mist oven before bread goes in, then mist bread and oven again about 2 minutes after baking has started). Bake loaves for about 35-38 mins.

6) Let cool as long as you can stand it – the flavor will really devolop after the first day (IMO).

ps – Susan, if you’re doing a yeastspotting this week, I’d love to partake!