A Bread-Baking Journey

By Marie-Christine Perry

Over time I have been interested in bread making, starting with my days in San Francisco. Having been raised in a part of the world where the making of bread is best left to the professional boulangers, I was intrigued by the California hippy movement of getting back to simpler living, with whole-grain bread-making at the core. I experimented, but the availability of French sourdough baguettes from the café bakery of the Tassajara Zen Buddhist monks, my neighbors in Cole Valley, made the task unnecessary.

It was not until the Covid shutdown that I felt the need to get back to bread making, and I made a few attempts at sourdough. I bought as many bread-making books as I could find, ordered 25 pound-bags of bread flour from the King Arthur Baking Co. and nursed my le-vain or sourdough starter for days. The results were mixed. The fact that my partner was diagnosed with gluten intolerance put an end to these experiments!

A year ago, after my partner no longer needed to exclude gluten from her diet, I decided to give the Norfolk Ministry of Bread (and bread baking) a chance. The Ministry of Bread meets once a month in the Battell Chapel kitchen. This adventurous and high-spirited group, led by Felix Graham-Jones and Peter Crippen from the Icebox Café, usually meets on the second Thursday of the month.

Since I joined, the group made bagels, baguettes, panettone, pasta and other delights, including 180 cranberry loaves for the Norfolk Food Pantry’s Thanksgiving’s baskets this year. During these baking sessions, we have conversations about everything under the sun. Having shared with Peter my desire to master sourdough bread, and having experienced the wonderful boules from his cafe, I asked if he would share his levain with me. Making one’s own is time consuming and I could barely wait to start my journey!

I showed up at the café one morning and announced I had come to “help” Peter, because I learn best by watching and doing. He graciously led me through the motions, and I left that day with dough I made under his tutelage. After refrigerating it overnight, I baked my first two successful boules the next morning!

Since then, I regularly make two boules at a time, slicing them in half to freeze. We both enjoy homemade tartines with sweet butter and jam in the morning and various sandwiches for lunch. I am partial to sourdough grilled cheese sandwiches, as well as French onion soup capped with a slice of grilled sourdough and Comté cheese.

A few caveats: Don’t get discouraged by your first attempts. Bread making is a hobby that will lead you to purchase many beautiful things you don’t really need. Gummy loaves can be toasted, left-over bread can be turned into croutons and bread crumbs, and there are dozens of recipes for sourdough bread. I am sharing Peter’ s recipe (which assumes you have a starter) but for guidance on how to cultivate your own starter, as well as the techniques for working your dough, check out the wealth of resources online at the KingArthurBaking.com.

Note: In addition to a recipe for cultivating a sourdough starter and lots of useful information, King Arthur is an excellent source of starter. Traditionally in France, you would
get your starter from a family member or a friend. When I would visit my grandmother in her little village in the Quercy, the local baker would give levain to anyone who asked. We often made fougasse, a local flat bread similar to focaccia with his levain, for afternoon snack.

Peter Crippen’s Sourdough Boule

(makes two)

Ingredients

250 grams sourdough starter (levain) 700 grams water

1,100 grams flour

4 tsp. salt

Method

Mix levain and water until well combined. Add flour and salt, mix-ing with a fork to make a shaggy dough. Cover the bowl and let the mixture rest an hour. In the same bowl, stretch and fold the dough every 30 minutes, four times. Let the dough rest again for another six hours before refrigerating it over-night (roughly 12 hours). When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Divide the dough in two and shape each boule, scoring the dough. Place in a Dutch oven (a sling of parchment paper can help the process). Bake covered at 500 degrees for 25 minutes. Remove the lid, reduce the heat to 450 de-grees and bake for another 15 min-utes. Rest until cool. Then eat! And bon appétit!