Sunday is Bake Bread Day.
The little bakery in Joshua Tree was the only place around to get fresh...
Sunday is Bake Bread Day.
The little bakery in Joshua Tree was the only place around to get fresh baked bread. It closed down about a year and a half ago, and that's when I had to learn to bake it myself. This is the basic rustic boule, adapted from the Sullivan Street Bakery/Mark Bittman method and made with organic whole wheat flour (and a little unbleached all purpose flour), sea salt, water and a little yeast from the small bag of Fleischmann's that has been in the fridge since late 2010.
The Great River Organic Milling Company flour comes every three months from Amazon Prime, about $25 per delivery. Other than the $30 Lodge cast-iron dutch oven I got on sale and now use for all campfire cooking and many other things, it costs around a hundred bucks a year to have a big fresh rustic loaf of bread every week — after Sunday dinner and school lunches and general toasting duties, it is usually gone by Wednesday morning.
People do not generally think of early 1990s Eastern Europe as a place to have food revelations, but living in post-revolutionary Prague was the first time I had cheap and plentiful fresh baked chléb. Every corner potraviny had baskets of rustic whole wheat loaves. With a pocketful of coins you could come home with enough bread and cheese and beer to last the week — and then you brought the beer bottles back to the same shop, and exchanged them for more coins, to buy more bread and beer. It was a kind of magic, meaning "subsidized food staples and mindful re-use of bottles." And it was excellent bread, delicious with anything, hearty and filling.
Anyway, now I have fresh crusty bread that's also full of protein and minerals and fiber and flavor, for about 27 cents a week plus the 20 minutes of enjoyable labor spread over two days: a few minutes to mix the dough, a few minutes the next day to set up the rising, pre-heating with the dutch oven inside, etc. Baking and eating a rustic bouleevery week is guaranteed to make you happy and satisfied every time.
