springtide bread

ok, hands down, this bread wins the award for 'best tasting'. i wanted to name this post 'holy crap!' however, that seemed gauche. but man alive and holy crap! was this bread delicious. not only that, but the crumb was the most tender that i have ever baked up.

you know that spring has pounced upon us, yeah, so you should be seeing lots of 'green garlic', or young garlic, at the farmer's market. what is it? well, it's actually young garlic before the cloves form. it looks a lot like a large scallion or a small leek. the flavor is fresh and spicy. not as hot as mature garlic, more peppery, perhaps zesty is a good word to describe it.

i am so glad that we are moving into the warm seasons. i usually grumble some because i'm a bit of a fog and cold weather girl. slate gray skies make me feel at home. but this year i feel restless. i feel like i want some sort of change, hence the blog name change, and i have a few other irons in the fire too. my life has lost some luster of late. its become ordinary, and i need to spice things up. speaking of spice, this week's bread has a little spice too.

springtide bread: a farro boule with green garlic, lucques olives, aleppo pepper & thyme

the aleppo pepper was a last minute inspiration, mostly because i love to say that word, aleppo, and it happened to be right there when i opened the cupboard the morning i was set to mix up the dough. it's also just really good. aleppo is all the fruity flavor of the pepper, with very little heat. in fact, for those of you who are sensitive to heat, you will not get scalded at all with this loaf. i promise. and i suggest that you try your best to seek it out, wherever you are, because it really makes this bread unique, so unique, in fact, that i was going to call it a night with a good french film but decided instead to share this post.

i wanted to do something interesting and fun, flour-wise, so i chose farro as the dominant flour here. i got some of these lovely berries from the peeps over at mendocino grain project. it's a cooperative, right, so you have to buy a grain share (there are some small markets up that way that sell mendocino's grains, but they are fiercely local, so don't expect to ever see their stuff at whole foods l.a., or s.f., or anywhere beyond a stone's throw from their region). the farro milled up so loverlee, and the flavor contribution (it weighs in as 40% of the total flour) made me want to work with it again right away. i paired it with 30% heartland mills 80% high extraction flour and 30% bread flour, in goes the sweated green garlic, a few lucques olives, a glug of olive oil, a sprinkling of both aleppo (aleppo....) pepper and thyme, and my friend christina and i both agreed that it was one of those 'yeah, let's do this one again, and soon' breads. i learned my lesson and baked up two loaves this time so we each got one to enjoy over the next few days.

the crust was soft and lovely with just a hint of brittleness, and i cannot begin to aptly describe the tenderness of the crumb. the knife sliced through it with the ease of slicing through butter. just lovely. the flavor of the farro was nutty and fresh. because we sweat the green garlic first, it tames its wild bite and finds harmony with the grain. the aleppo pepper adds an earthy and somewhat fruity element to the loaf, the thyme is a back note, and i must mention the olive oil. i used california olive ranch's 'arbequina' olive oil. an incredible extra virgin, peppery, fruity with distinct minerality, this oil is usually reserved for dressing salads or pesto. i have a few bottles of each of their oils, and i have to say, once you try it, you will never waste your time on cheaper olive oils. just a side note, california olive ranch uses only sustainably (obviously california) grown olives to produce their oils, and they are bottled within hours after picking. seriously, once you have their olive oil you will never bother with anything else.

springtide bread, with california olive ranch's 'arbequina' olive oil

aside from sharing bread with you guys today, i wanted to let you know how much i appreciate all of the lovely emails and comments i have been getting from you since i changed the blog name and address. thank you all for following me on this path. thank you for applauding my effort and bravery to wear my own boots (you emailers know who you are). it was a hard decision to set out on my own, but i feel that what i am doing deserves its own identity, and i am so glad that you think so too.

now, without further hubbub, here is your springtide bread. may it mark the unfolding of a beautiful new path for us all, one filled with lots of fabulous experiments and findings. may it be a symbol of many lovely things to come.

springtide bread

makes two loaves, one for yourself, one to share

Two days before you plan to make your levain, throw your starter into overdrive by feeding it three times each day for two full days. On the third day, build your levain:

20g 100% dark rye, 100% hydration starter

150g h2o

150g freshly stone milled bluebird grain farms dark rye flour

Mix up the above to a slurry and ferment. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

DOUGH DAY

All of the levain

760g h2o

400g freshly stone milled farro flour, i milled mine from mendocino grain project's farro

300g heartland mills high-extraction flour

300g KA organic bread flour

30g california olive ranch's 'arbequina' olive oil

266g luques olives, relieved of their pits (to arrive at this amount, you will need approximately 450 olives weighed with the pits)

246g green garlic that you have sliced and sweated (to arrive at this amount, i needed about 10 bulbs)

1 tsp aleppo pepper

leaves from about 6 sprigs of thyme

24g kosher salt

When the levain is at its peak, mix it with the flours and h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. Autolyse for 1 hour 15 minutes.

During the autolyse, prepare the green garlic. Slice and rinse will. They are very sandy. Get into a cooking vessel with glug of good olive oil, and sweat the mass of them down over a medium fire. You only want them to go soft, avoiding any color.

They should retain a bit of bite when they are finished, and be vibrant green. Spread them out on a plate and pop in the freezer so they are cool enough to be added to the dough.

Now pit the olives by slicing the meat from the pit (an olive/cherry pitter does not work well with this olive). I find that using a bird beak knife works best for this task. Set them aside. Mince your thyme. Set aside. Now turn your attention back to your dough.

After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough so that it is thoroughly incorporated, then knead in the aleppo pepper, the thyme and olive oil. Keep kneading until you reach a smooth mass. Now fold in the green garlic and olives, trying to keep the bits within the dough as much as you can. It's fine if a few specks peek through, but by the end of the bulk, the majority of it should be encased in the dough or it will burn on bake day.

Now begin your 4-hour bulk fermentation (mine was actually 4 hours and 50 minutes because I got caught up in a French film, but yours can be 4 hours. It's fine). Here you will perform a series of turns until the dough really starts to expand and feel tight. You will intuitively know that this is the time to stop your turns. I only performed turns for 2 hours of the 4 hour and 50 minute bulk fermentation and let the dough ferment untouched for the remainder of the bulk. Room temp this time round, as it was evening and quite cool enough.

After the bulk fermentation, scrape the dough onto a worktable that you have dusted with brown rice flour, divide, and gather the two doughs into loose rounds. Let it rest for about 10 minutes.

After the bench, shape them into taut boules and pop into bannetons or bowls lined with a linens that have been first dusted with brown rice flour. Get it into the fridge and ferment. mine went for 18 hours 30 minutes.

BAKE DAY

One hour before you plan to bake the bread, preheat the oven to 500 degrees, installed with a baking stone and both halves of two combo cookers.

After the hour preheat and one at a time, remove the dough bowl from the fridge, place a piece of parchment over the mouth of it, then a pizza peel on top of this, now flip the whole thing over so that the dough ends up on top of the parchment and peel. Remove the linen (if you have over dusted, now is the time to brush away any loose flour with a pastry brush. I know, I have been the victim of some snowy loaves too. No harm. We live and learn).

Snip or score the dough, the slide it into the shallow end of the combo cooker. Cover with the fat end, slide into the oven. Repeat with the second boule.

Now steam the loaves at 500 degrees for 15 minutes. After 15, turn the oven down to 475 and bake for another 15. After the steam, remove the lids and bask in the glow of your perfectly steamed loaves.

Finally, bake till chestnut brown. Take the internal temp to 210 - 212 degrees.

Allow to cool for at least an hour, preferably two, before slicing. However, I sliced after an hour because I needed to snap some pics before it grew too dark, and the bread was fabulous!

to the staff of life!

this bread was shared with lovely susan at wild yeast blog.