cheater

Yes, it is true. Sometimes, I use the dried stuff. There she is, my starter all hungry and cold, needing attention and a bite to eat. My familiar hand reaches past for the small balls in the jar on the next shelf up. Cold I tell you. I can't help but feel as though I am cheating.

Fidelity toward the sourdough aside, sometimes I want to taste a flour without even a hint of sour. Sure, you can do quick, warm fermentations and other things to lessen the development of the tang. This was not enough. I wanted fluffy, unhealthy tasting sandwich bread. We've had some nice flour coming our way in our grain CSA and it was time to play with some barley flour. I got to thinking along the lines of a barley wonderbread loaf. Turns out buttermilk barley bread satisfies the craving. It was so good, we did a repeat of this bread the following week, noshed through another and managed to stash a loaf in the freezer.

We have grains to go though, with part of the focus being learning new things about more stuff. (Nice technical ring to that one.) Along came kamut. Do you know it? Have you met? Well, if not, let me tell you it is deliciously nutty. I'd made a few Kamut baguettes the week before and they turned out nice and crunchy. I contemplated doing more. I thought maybe having a guest help me out would be nice, but then remembered how a few years ago the last guest swiped the bread and took His sweet time to leave me with a pathetic note to explain. Screw the guest thing. I figured if I pair kamut with cornmeal it would be all the more sweet and earthy. This screamed pizza dough. Or maybe, the monkeys were rowdy, I screamed and made pizza dough. Once again, I cheated and used the dried stuff.

It was time to work on the toppings and caramelizing onions are a great place to start. Being the Fall, and apple pears are on the counter next to the onions.....no really, I did do this on purpose. Not to say it didn't help that the size and shape was correct. I've had pizza with pear on it before and just figured that caramelizing it before tossing it on the pie would be nice. Being an apple pear, not all squishy, I hoped it would hold up. These doing a slow, simmery, release the juices thingy, I went and pulled out more ingredients.

Next it was pesto time. Tonight, I could give a rat's ass about how local it was. Dammit I was having pine nuts and parmesan. Okay, so it's not entirely true as the basil, lemon and oil are from the market, but whatever. The pine nuts came from either Korea, Russia or Vietnam and the cheese was from, uh, let's see here.......Parma! Not even close to close on those last two but sometimes you just have to say f*%$ it.

Ahhhh, all the ingredients assembled. My favorite time in the pizza making process. I can pretend I didn't just spend three hours prepping everything while tending to the monkeys. I close my eyes and imagine I just came in and feel like making some pizza. Hey, sheeit look, fixings for a pizza pie! Crank on that oven and make sure to get the pizza tile nice and hot.....wait, what was that, you did already? Sheesh, how thoughtful! Well, since you have everything else taken care of, maybe I'll go pour us some beer.

Version 1.0 had a pesto foundation, caramelized onion/pear and fresh mozzarella, with sweet Italian sausage on half and sliced black olives on the other. Both monkeys were digging this one. Sweet, with meat. Go figure. There were no leftovers of this version. Luckily we prepped version 2.0 while this was in the oven or we probably would have just made the same thing. Next time.



Nope. Turns out our creativity was compromised by the last ingredients and we managed to make the same pizza, only with a tomato sauce as the base. Even with this simple difference, the taste was hugely different. I'd have to say I prefer the pesto combo considering the sweet onions and sausage involved. Maybe it was the nutty crust, but the flavors just seemed to work better together.

So, yes, loyal readers. It is sad but true, sometimes I cheat and use the dried stuff to lift my loaf. Please don't hate me.

windborne grains

Know of any California farms that use draft horses these days?

Or one that grows teff, amaranth, millet, or flax?

How about any who use a biodynamic approach to their land?

Well, if you are drawing a big blank, then consider yourself now informed. One such place that answers yes to these questions is Windborne Farms, located in Fort Jones, California.

This past Sunday we received our first delivery of grains from Windborne. It included a sack of millet, rye flour, hard red wheat flour (in the metal can, the bag was torn before the picture), pancake mix and a hot cereal mix. I am ecstatic! (Sorry for not opening the others and showing you, I didn't mean to tease.) Everything smelled so nice, but particularly the wheat flour. It smelled so sweet, almost like it had honey in it or something. Floral. I couldn't wait to try it out, so as soon as the grains came in the door I took the starter out of the fridge and fed it in anticipation of a fluffy loaf the next day.

I began with well over a cup of starter (probably closer to two) and then added a cup of warm water. After mixing these together well, the older monkey measured out two cups of whole wheat and then two of bread flour. Adding a little over a teaspoon of salt to finish it off, we got down to pounding and squishing. I let this rise in the oven with the pilot light heat for a few hours, then beat it down. I repeated this rise and beat procedure, then shaped my loaf for the final rise.

I didn't know the gluten content of the wheat, but having a name such as hard red wheat gave me a clue. I suspected it would be higher than the wheat from Full Belly I've been getting, and if not, it was at the very least a finer grind that gave me the confidence to start off with making a loaf with at least one third whole grain. I didn't have the patience to let the dough ferment for a full day, and I really wanted to taste the flour without too much sour taste. Okay, so maybe too sour is not really possible in my book. What I mean here is that I wanted to downplay the sour component of the bread's flavor and let the whole wheat component shine through.

I gave the loaf a spiral cut and doused it with plenty of water before putting into my oven, cranked to the max. Meaning: 550 degrees and on a preheated baking tile. After two minutes I sprayed water all over it again. After 7 minutes I rotated it 180 degrees. 15 minutes in and I turned the oven down to about 400, repositioned my lower rack to be on top of the baking tile and put the loaf on it. At 20 minutes I turned off the oven and let it sit in there for 3 more minutes. Finally done I transferred it to a cooling rack and put it near a drafty window, hearing it crackle while it cooled.

This was one hella-tastalicious loaf. We waited long enough to get to that still a touch warm where it tears a bit while cutting stage. We slathered in butter. We made lip smacking and moans of content sounds. We went through half the loaf before dinner. Then I ate another quarter of it while mopping up the rest of my favorite soup in the world, minestrone. This morning we finished the loaf as toast with fried eggs. I made sure to take a picture of it sliced open in order to properly "show you the love" as Biggles would say right about now. It's a good thing I make a lot of bread around here because it disappears quickly.

I was nice and surprised at how well the dough came together and held its shape during the rise and baking. Apparently this whole wheat has plenty of gluten and is ground fine enough to give you access to it. Next time I'll go ahead and attempt a loaf that is at least 1/2 whole wheat, I was that happy with the results. And thinking that this is only the first time I have used anything from this CSA "box," I look forward to receiving each new delivery of varied grains and trying my hand with some new recipes in the coming year, in what looks to be my own personal year of grain exploration. Mmmmmm, grains. Windborne grains.



If you act fast, you can still sign up for a CSA bag from Windborne Farms that will be filled with tasty grains that vary during the year. Write Jennifer Greene an email at: windborne3csa (at) yahoo (dot) com for more info. It is $325 for 10 deliveries during the year starting in March. Please sign up by February 20th if you are at all interested.