Kelsey's Rustic Italian Bread...ish

Well, a doubly exciting bread blogging week this time around! Earlier in the week I was sent, through the mail, a modest quantity of stone-milled (red spring and white spring) wheat flour - and from northern Maine, no less! So, I've been trying to think of a good recipe to use that flour for, when I realized I'd been holding onto this "Rustic Italian Bread" recipe for a few weeks now. Well, "rustic..." that sounds like something you should use stone-milled flour for, no? Unfortunately, the recipe called for lots of things I didn't have (baking stones, parchment paper, etc.), so I had to modify the recipe a fair amount. But still, it was the inspiration behind this week's loaf.

So, to start out, combine 1 1/2 teaspoons of yeast, 1 1/3 cups of room temperature water, 1 cup of bread flour, and 2 1/2 cups of red spring wheat flour. Stir until it forms a shaggy sort of dough, and then let rest for 20 minutes. After which, pour in about 1 cup of starter (you have been feeding the dragon, right?), 1 tablespoon of oil, and 2 teaspoons of salt. Stir and then knead in (and this will be a tough one to work, so watch out) another 3 full cups of the red spring wheat flour. When the dough has reached a slightly stickier-than-normal but still fairly elastic consistency, put it in a greased bowl, cover, and let stand for the


First rising (2 hours and 30 minutes)
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I've recently added new source of random variety in my life, thanks to a friend who has kindly let me borrow a television for the summer. Even though I don't particularly watch much TV, this was a rather welcome addition to my apartment, which already had a TV stand and a combination DVD/VCR player (the former made for a fine bookshelf, but the latter was especially awkward to have without a TV to plug it into). Anyway, the TV can't pick up any channels, but I enjoy watching movies every now and then, and fortunately my local library (all of three blocks away from my apartment) has a decent selection of DVDs that I can check out. Unfortunately, I hate picking out movies, and I very quickly made it through my list of movies that I had heard of, I wanted to see, and the library had. So, how to choose the videos for when the urge to watch struck?

Well, here was my brilliant solution. You see, the DVD section is very heavily used, so there is always a cart of DVDs near the stacks that have been checked back in but that the staff haven't had a chance to reshelve. So, I simply walk up to the cart and, without looking (or, avoiding looking as much as I can), pick up a random block of three consecutive DVDs (on the theory that in the span of a few days I might want to see two movies, and that roughly a third of the library's collection to so scratched as to be unwatchable). You might think that this strategy horribly skews what I check out towards a very "popular movie/summer blockbuster" sort of spectrum, but so far the results have been quite surprising and much more nuanced than that. For instance, it appears that the citizens of central Illinois check out much (a) more 80's sci-fi than I would have guessed, (b) many fewer comedies (especially relative to the amount of shelf space dedicated to them) than expected, and (c) a grossly disproportionate number of travelogues about Montana. Although admittedly, all this might just be the result of having such a small sample size (the last, especially!). But anyway, so far this little experiment has been an amusing success.
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Punch the dough down, and divide it in two. Shape into loaves and put in greased 9x5 and 8x4 bread pans. (The original recipe called for it to be baked free-form, but I rather wanted some sandwich bread after such a long break from standard-shaped loaves.) Cover and let rise again.


Second rising (1 hour and 20 minutes)
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As some of you may know, I have a mildly Taoist-influenced theory of the mutual rooting and mutual transformation between klutziness and grace (not totally an accurate choice of word, but at the moment I can't think of a better opposite of clumsiness). Namely, the idea that, like so many dualities, as one progressively grows ever more klutzy the seeds of grace start to creep in. Now, clearly this isn't the actual case, but it's what I tell myself. Because I find that, ever more frequently, I'm always tripping and stumbling my way across uneven ground or up stairs or (most embarrassingly) even on perfectly flat surfaces. However, I've got reasonably good reflexes and thanks, to my pair of left feet always tripping me up, plenty of practice with catching myself, and so despite tripping all the time, I manage to fall down only very rarely. Hence the theory that I've gotten so clumsy it's beginning to be a graceful sort of clumsiness.

So it was, I think, that I thus managed this week to fall off of my bike not once but twice, yet still walk away with just a skinned knee, a small bruise on my left thumb, and a slightly larger bruise to my pride. In my defense, the first crash could have happened to anyone, clumsy or not; the chain slipped off the gears while I was just coasting (not quite sure how that happened, though), and so I was caught by surprise by the fact that I could no longer pedal. And also by the curb that, even though I was applying the brakes, still managed to stop me fast enough to send me tumbling over the handlebars. The second time was a bit less defensible, though...let's just say that, veering away from a small bush, I managed to run (fortunately at a rather low speed) into the wall of a Domino's pizza. Again, that one was slow enough that it barely knocked me off my bike, but still, for future reference if faced between crashing into shrubbery or into a building, I think I might recommend the plant life.
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Set the oven for 450 degrees and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 375 and bake for another 27 minutes.

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Tasting notes: To be honest, I have some mixed feelings about these loaves. On the one hand, they have maybe the best texture of any of the breads I've made so far: a dense, good crumb, a nice chewy crust on top with a slightly crispier crust on bottom, and all that. However, the taste is rather bizarre. I spent a little while trying to figure out what it tasted like, but I think I've decided that it tastes eerily like the Bavarian Rye from way back. (And, rereading that post, I realize that the "Tasting verdict" is rather misleading...while fresh out of the oven that bread tasted good, the next day it was not nearly as good, and within another day it was almost inedible, becoming my least favorite bread of the last half year). However, all that aside, I will say that this afternoon this bread made for a truly superior PB+J sandwich.

Most-amusing-question-posed-to-me of the week: Today (just after dinnertime) I was playing soccer with a group of other grad students, mostly internationals, and after about 30 minutes one of the guys I had never seen before (and who, until this moment, had not said anything to me) shouted across the field to me, much to the amusement of just about everyone on the pitch at the moment, "Are you Iranian?" This was apparently prompted solely by the fact that I apparently play soccer "too technical" to be an American. None of us were really sure what that meant.