Curtain Up!
Curtain up on this space! Or maybe we’ll call this a friends-and-family dress rehearsal?
And what better way to kick things off than with today’s loaf of bread.
(Maybe this is the official start of my bread posts. Let’s give it a series name… how about Butter for the Bread? Sure. Butter for the Bread #000.)
This is Rose Levy Berenbaum’s Heart of Wheat loaf from The Bread Bible. It’s a pretty nice loaf with a deceptive name: the wheat comes mainly from a bit of wheat germ. Otherwise, this is bread flour through and through.
I’ve just started messing with this recipe a bit. Here, I’ve kept the formula pretty much as written except I’ve used a tiny bit of KA Whole Wheat flour in the sponge, and added ~ 2 tbsp herbes de provence to the remaining dry mix. I also baked this loaf in a closed cast iron dutch oven (whereas RLB prefers ice cubes in the bottom of the open).
After having a slice:
- Probably should have dialed back the herbes just a bit, maybe try 1.5 tbsp on the next loaf.
- I’ve struggled getting the proofing time right on this formula, and the crumb was a bit tight near the top. I think it’s a matter of underproofing — so don’t rush it.
- I almost always take the lid off the dutch oven for about 5 minutes at the end. I forgot to do that here and am surprised at how much of a difference that made — much softer crust, even though it looks crisp!
But this was still a tasty loaf, and for some reason this formula always yields a really luxurious crumb texture, almost a bit melty — is it the wheat germ?
When I said this is a dress rehearsal, I meant it. I’m messing around a lot with Eleventy themes and debating whether to stick with a starter or try and build my own. So the site is likely to change, often dramatically, for at least a few weeks to come. Or in the parlance of the 90s: the website is definitely under construction. (Now all I need is a hit counter…)