talking about bread.

sourdough, dudes.
y'feel me?
i haven't been to the bakery in three months,
but i've been hip-deep in a sour flour-powered starter swamp
the whole entire time.
yeah.
you all already know i've been keeping it really real on the bread baking front,
but what you might not know is that i've actually got too much starter!
haha.
it grows up so fast.
now,
i eat a lot of bread, because i am not a baby,
and i am not about to squander any opportunites to devour a hot loaf
of luscious, crusty, bubbly, tanged-out terrific crumbs and sh!t.
no way.
so i bake a lot of bread.
the thing is-
i have more of the leaven that the pan can handle,
and i have fewer waiting mouths to feed than ever before.
also,
crabtree can't hang out with wheat.
he wants to.
heck, he'd eat a bag of flour if he could get to it.
but it makes him itchy,
and rashy,
and rotten to the core, which in turn launches out of his wrinkly butthole.
purebred problems are definitely NOT cool problems.
it's a hard style, and it doesn't help me one bit with my overabundance of breadmaking base.
-
i LIKE baking bread.
it's way different than baking treats, for sure,
but it's still got it's own sort of softer meditative methods.
kneading, and folding, and waiting while nature takes as long as she likes,
and as long as she has to,
to make the process a success.
it's never the same way twice,
because of variables in ambient temperature and humidity,
and fickleness of the starter from the start of each and every loaf.
that's real.
however,
it works,
and the results are so F*ing delicious,
i'll gladly deal with the overage of excellence.
check the teleport:

i get pretty happy about this sort of thing.
that's that crumb that drips the melty butterish everywhere,
which, while messy, is also the big action we crave as bakers.
it came from this loaf:

a long one.
weird. baked free in the oven, with a steam bath halfway through the baking time,
and convection initiated at that point.
a medium hyrdration dough, with added gluten, in a white on white base.
what's all that mean?
it means i was making the most regular loaf i could, and got better results than usual.
nice.
simultaneously, i also baked this beast:

ooooof.
higher hydration, and a bit more starter.
i think i may back off on the leaven, and let the hunger of a smaller innoculation
feast to a fuller extent on all that flour.
^^this A*-hole had big bubbly wet blops, from the bowl to the banneton,
sticking and oozing and generally being a blarp.
still,
despite a blowout on one side, it had all the qualities i wold expect.
guys,
4 cups of flour,
loosley 1 cup of starter,
a tablespoon of salt
and between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 cups of warmish water.
that's seriously all that's in there.
i get so psyched 100% of the time about that.
in fact,
look at these others:

oatmeal!

a higher-temp crusty jaun!!

a wet-as-heck boule!!!
bread, man.
that's what goes on in between all the other things.
good bread makes better people,
and i don't think i can say that enough times.
*
i'm welcoming october in with Tea 'N' Toast.
that's what i do.
i'm also saying hello to the rainswept chill that has settled in,
complete with dense fog and dark skies.
a little warmth,
a lot of cold,
and a whole mess of dark are what's poppin' in the woodsly goodness.
there are colors developing as sugars convert to dying breath in these leaves.
the grey background of this october world
only serves to illuminate that last light even more.
this is it.
from here on out,
the forest falls asleep, slowly, and stays that way for half the year;
never quiet, never soft.....