The bread chronicles, part II

I have a friend who has been spending a good part of the summer perfecting his bread technique.  Every couple of days, I get an email detailing his progress.  Here's an example from a recent email:

This refrigerated dough thing is definitely great, it's going to be my go-to bread for white loaves.  I might have two different doughs in the fridge at once, maybe one with up to 10% rye, and another with some (but not too much) whole wheat flour in it.  I'm also going to keep making the 30% oat flour bread with raisins and pecan ... in the standard no knead method.  And I'm going to start working on a sourdough starter and then will try to figure out how to incorporate it into my process...

It's been funny to receive what is basically his bread diary.  And, while I care about how it's going, I really wasn't relating to the whole bread thing.  Because, you know, I wasn't a baker. Until Monday.  When we left off a couple of days ago, my bread was in the oven and I was waiting for it to finish. 

It came out!  It was a little funny looking and scrawny (length of a dollar bill, as you can see), but totally delicious.  You can see from this picture that it was small and kind of dense because I handled it poorly.  But whatever.  I.  Made.  Bread.

"It's stupid how happy this loaf of bread has made me," I wrote to him that night while noshing on my creation.

Since then, I made another loaf that came out way better than the first.  ("What hydration was this?  I'm guessing based on the large holes that it was 80%, right?" asked the bread guru.)  I have to say that I can finally see what all you bread people have been going on and on about lately.  It's really satisfying and delicious.  I work at home, and in a more random moment today I thought that I could make bread for my neighbors and charge them to have hot bread ready when they got home.  That went by the wayside when I reminded myself that I have a real job, and cannot give it up to be a baker after only two loaves.

Comments

[jen's mom]

“If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens.” --Robert Browning

[cookiecrumb]

Well done! It actually looks lovely.
(Who's your bread friend? Is it the monkey wrangler?)

[Jenn]

I happen to know a neighbor of yours that would LOVE to buy your bread! It could be a new job!

[Amanda Louden]

good for you! I would love to make bread. I look at the recipes though and get scared.