Sunday, February 05, 2006

Philosophy and Bread

There is a story that one of the saints prayed for patience, adding that he would like it right now. That makes perfect sense, of course -- who else would have to pray for it but someone who did not have it? -- and it is something that I dearly understand, of late, as I have tried to expand my bread baking skills.

The recipes that I normally use take somewhere in the neighborhood of five hours to accomplish, of which time the vast majority is rising time. They have the bread rise twice, and then, into the oven. The recipes that I have been trying have a third rising, and they use a pre-ferment, as well. The third rising adds about one to two hours to the process, while the pre-ferment takes about ten minutes to make, but requires two to eight hours to do its fermentation trick-- longer if you put it into the refrigerator overnight, because you need to let it warm up the next day.

What all of this reduces down to is this: if I don't start the bread way early in the morning, or way late at night, there is no way it's going to be ready in time to have with dinner. And if I decide along the way that the dough isn't any good -- as I did just a few minutes ago with the poolish that I made yesterday -- then thats it; no more breadbaking today.

This patience thing is wearing me out!

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