La Panetteria: making bread

First of all, I apologize for the lack of organization on this blog. While the former posts were written awhile back, I've only just uploaded them today. And instead of filling you in on what has occurred before and since those posts, I would rather like to tell you about my latest endeavor.

I am now in my third week at Villa Pignano, near Volterra in Tuscany. Week 1 saw me in the organic farm, harvesting, staking tomatoes, weeding. Week 2 saw me (or rather us, as I was working with the awesome Zsolt from Hungary) picking blacberries at the crack of dawn (6 am -that's right!) and then making jam after the siesta which follows lunch. Week 3: I'm in the kitchen for half the day and an apprentice to Zak Stern (formerly of Miami, FL), the resident baker.

Interestingly, most of Zak's bread is not Tuscan, which is known to be rock-hard and is not famous despite the "Tuscan wheat" produced here. Instead, most of his bread is sourdough.

Today I learned about the basic process of sourdough bread making:

To make bread:

1. Make the dough. Ingredients are simple. You need: mother, flour, water, and salt. Basta! That's it.

2. Let it ferment.

3. Shape it.

4. Bake it.

You say: What is mother?

I say: Mother is old dough, dough from last time.

You say: But how did you make the mother?

I say: You make with mother with mother, flour, and water.

You say: Well where do you get the mother from if that's what you're trying to make!?

I say: Let us first examine the case of the chicken and the egg.

Basically, when you make sourdough, you never use all the dough for the bread, as you must always save some to inoculate the next batch of dough with the bacteria and yeast from the original dough. Therefore, Zak's mother doughs contains descendants of yeast and bacterial organisms which he brought over from Israel when he moved to Italy.

Sourdough is unique for three reasons. First of all it is a dry dough, 65% water compared to 75% for the baguettes or other breads. (This 10% makes a big difference actually when working with it.) Second, sourdough gets its yeast from the mother instead of from a package you buy in a store. Thus, it contains many strains of yeasts. (not only a single strain like you would find in the wet or dry-dormant yeast - packages you get from the grocery store) . Finally, sourdough bread is SOUR. Why? The mother is infested not only with yeast but also with various bacteria. This is inevitable and not at all bad. These bacteria, though, make it sour. For example, Lactobacillus (a bacterium) produces lactic acid when it is fed sugars (found in the flour). Acids are sour to our taste.