perfidy

For the last two years or so, I have been carefully feeding and nurturing a collection of wild yeasts and bacteria that I call "Herman" and that other people can more comfortably call my sourdough starter. Kept in the refrigerator and taken out for occasional feedings, he's strong, hard-working and makes delicious bread. And writing about Herman in this way suddenly makes me feel like a bit of a creep.

Anyway. Any manservantish strangeness aside, I have developed a recipe for whole-wheat sourdough that I'm very fond of, and that's well suited for people who are new to working with sourdough cultures and the stickier doughs they create.

Johno's Miche

This large loaf is deeply flavored and rich with sweet, grainy and sour notes, and keeps for about a week at room temperature. It is modeled on French country loaves of past centuries, which would of course have been made with a nearly whole-grain flour and natural leavening. If you have trouble wrangling a 4-lb loaf, you can divide into two or three smaller loaves (reducing the baking time accordingly).

The recipe is based loosely on the famous pain Poilane of Lionel Poilane as adapted by baker Peter Reinhardt. Enjoy!!

Firm starter:

7 oz. well-fed and active barm (loose sourdough starter)
4.5 oz bread flour
4.5 oz whole-wheat flour OR 2.5 oz whole-wheat flour plus 2 oz medium rye flour
4 oz water, room temperature

Mix together and knead 2 to 3 minutes until all ingredients are well incorporated. Let rise about 4 hours at room temperature in bowl covered with plastic wrap and then put in refrigerator for up to 24 hours. This time in the fridge has two effects - to let enzymes in the flour go to work breaking out complex sugars from the starches, which gives immense depths of flavor, and to promote the growth of acetic-acid producing bacteria in the starter, which will tend to give a sharper sour flavor to the finished loaf. A full discussion of sourdough cultures and how to manipulate them will have to wait for another time - for now just do as I say and everything will be juuuuust fine.

Main dough:
16 oz bread flour
16 oz whole-wheat flour OR 12 oz whole-wheat flour and 4 oz medium rye flour
3 1/4 tsp (.8) oz salt
about 2 1/2 cups water (20-22 oz), lukewarm (about 90 degrees)

Cut the starter into about 10 chunks and let come to room temperature covered with oiled plastic wrap, about 1 hour. Combine flours and salt in a large bowl and combine thoroughly. Add starter chunks one by one and coat with the flour mix. Add 20 oz of water. Mix well in the bowl, then turn out onto a counter and knead for about 15 minutes until dough is tacky and supple and more or less passes the windowpane test*. This is not a sticky dough, but it at first should be decidedly clingy; adjust water and flour if necessary to achieve the desired texture. Your target dough temperature is 77-81 degrees.

If you have a large and powerful stand mixer at home, you can also use this to mix the dough. Begin with the paddle attachment, and switch to the dough hook just as all the ingredients come together roughly. I say again -a large and powerful stand mixer: one of six quart capacity and a big engine that won't burn up under the strain. I have a KitchenAid Professional 600, and it's up to the task though not without some thrilling engine noises.

Transfer dough to a lightly oiled large bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise 3-4 hours or until about 1.5 times its original size. Wild yeasts work much more slowly than commercial yeast, but the extra time results in much more flavor in the finished product.

When dough is fully risen, remove to a lightly floured counter, press down lightly on it with your flattened hands to de-gas it a bit, and shape it into a large boule (round loaf). This is a great time to work on your shaping skills, with a loaf that is large but forgiving.

Line a large mixing bowl with linen or flour-sack towel. Sprinkle liberally with flour. Place the boule in this bowl, bottom side up. Cover bowl with plastic wrap or another bowl and let rise for 2-3 hours or until nearly doubled.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees for at least 45 minutes. For a gas oven, put one rack in the lower half of the oven, and place a pizza stone on it. Remove the other rack; it'll be in the way. For an electric oven, place the racks on the two lowest levels, placing the pizza stone on the upper rack. Heat an old cast iron skillet or cake pan you never plan to use again on the floor of the oven, or on the lowest rack if using an electric oven.

When dough is ready, turn out carefully onto a full sized half-sheet pan (measuring about 18x13 inches, not a little cookie sheet) lined with parchment paper or a silicone liner. Let stand 5 minutes as you heat 1 1/4 cups water on the stove. Slash the dough in any pattern you want; the traditional way is a box cut - four slashes in a square, almost at the edges of the loaf. (Use a sharp knife, and make confident cuts that go about 1/4 inch deep into the dough - no more.)

When the water is boiling, transfer to a pyrex or plastic measuring cup and don your oven mitt.

Place the sheet pan on the stone, and pour the boiling water into the waiting pan. Be careful! - steam burns are bad news. The steam this produces will keep the starches in the crust from gelatinizing (hardening) while the loaf rises in the intense heat of the oven. If you are afraid of pouring water into your oven, you can use a few ice cubes instead, placing them in the pan when the loaf goes in, though this does rob the oven of heat. You can also use a spray bottle to mist the dough with water prior to going in the oven, and then spray the oven walls quickly with water at two-minute intervals for the first eight minutes or so of baking. This method also leads to great heat loss, so tack a few more minutes of baking time on the end.

Close the oven door and immediately reduce heat to 450, unless using the spray-bottle technique, in which you turn the oven down immediately after the last spraying. Start a 25-minute timer when the bread goes in the oven.

After 25 minutes, rotate the loaf 180 degrees. Reduce heat to 425 and bake another 30-40 minutes. If the bottom is browning too much, put an upside-down sheet pan underneath. If the top is getting too brown, tent some aluminum foil over top.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack. Do not cut for three hours.

This bread is phenomenal. The crumb is a bit dense and chewy, and full of subtle flavors that change in the mouth and linger for a good half hour after eating. Better yet, the flavor changes day by day, so week-old miche, which will still be fresh if stored properly at room temperature (NEVER refrigerated), will taste discernibly different from its first-day counterpart.

* The windowpane test: with relatively clean hands, cut off a walnut-sized chunk of dough from the main mass, and form it into a disc with your fingers. Then, holding the edges of the disc, pull it apart so that the center becomes thinner and thinner as the surface area increases. If you can achieve an unbroken membrane that's translucent all the way across, your dough passes the windowpane test, and for most recipes can be considered sufficiently kneaded. For this recipe, you'll have trouble getting a perfect windowpane. This is because the bran in the whole wheat flour and the optional rye flour tends to cut the strands of gluten that hold the dough together, sabotaging your nice windowpane. Don't worry about it - close to a windowpane is perfectly sufficient. This a rough, ugly country loaf, not a refined effete persnickety bourgeois baguette dough we're making here!