Years ago, my wife picked up a copy of an outstanding book that explains practically everything you need to now about baking bread, Bread Alone by Dan Leader. From this book, I’ve been able to bake wheat, rye, pumpernickle and flat bread.
Last year, I wanted to tackle the task of sour dough bread but ran into a small glitch. The starting process in the sour dough recipe is creating a “Starter” batch of poolish (a fairly wet batch of yeast, sugar, water and white flour which is allowed to activate before the final amount of ingredients complete the batch of dough) that is characteristic of this particular bread. Unlike other poolishs, sour dough requires that its poolish be activated under a 70 degree environment. This is usually difficult for me to maintain this temperature in my kitchen, so I had to look for assistance from Huron Mountain Bread Company!!
Along with this bread, I mixed my horseradish sauce for a condiment to finish off the combination of fresh spinach, provolone cheese and smoked turkey. Mmmm…..Delicious!
That’s lunch with On the Job with Dennis for Monday!!!
PS – In 1995, my wife and I went to up state New York for my brother Steve’s graduation from West Point Military Academy. Lake Katrine, home office and first of three bakeries, is a short drive north of the academy so we stopped in for a visit, a bread buying spree and we left our copy of “Bread Alone” to be signed by Daniel himself.
