She could feel her friend’s eyes boring into her back. “Oh God,” said Alice. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
Esme nodded, as she negotiated the next flight of stairs. “I think you will find that we are having little Cosmo to stay next weekend.”
“I give up,” Alice said behind her in disgust. “I seriously give up.” But before she could say anything else, they were distracted by a loud and very nearly tuneless singing coming from somewhere below them.
As they approached the ground floor they came upon Rory, sitting on the front doorstep pulling on his Wellingtons and rasping in a decidedly Celtic tone.
“If we want his body,” Alice echoed him, “and we think he’s sexy?” She turned to look at her friend. “It’s the body of a small boy,” she said in astonishment.
“But the voice of an old Scottish woman?” suggested Esme. “Now do you believe me?”
“Now,” Alice answered, “I believe anything.”
Sourdough Bread
1/3 cup rye flour
33/4 cups strong white flour
3/4 cup starter
1 T salt
11/2 cups + 1 T water
Mix all ingredients except the salt in a large ceramic or glass bowl, by hand, for five minutes.
The mixture will be quite wet but if you are having trouble mixing it (if most of it is ending up on your fingers or around the bowl), try using just 11/2 cups of water. Rest for five minutes, then add salt. Mix for another 5 to 10 minutes on a countertop, without adding any extra flour, until mixture is smooth and elastic, then put into a slightly oiled container (this can be the same bowl) and leave for 3 to 4 hours loosely covered, so air can still get in.
Knock back or punch down with a gentle fold, then leave for another hour.
Tip the dough out and gently premold the loaf by folding it in on itself and turning it over; let sit for 10 minutes. Then give it a final mold, dip it in flour and put it in a basket (approximately 10 inches diameter) lined with a heavily floured linen dishtowel. Rub the flour well into the dishtowel and don’t wash it in between uses. If it’s not floured enough, the dough will stick when you try to upend it for baking.
At this stage you can leave the dough for half an hour, put it in the fridge overnight, then bring it out and let it sit for an hour before baking.
Or:
Leave for 3 hours in the basket, then tip out, preferably onto a preheated pizza stone. With a very sharp knife or razorblade, cut some quick slashes in the top of the bread so the gases can escape and bake at 500°F for 20 minutes, and then 425°F for 10 minutes, remembering to steam the oven when you put the loaf in. (Do this by spraying the sides of the oven with one of those squirty waterbottles and quickly shutting the door.) This makes the crust crunchier.
When the loaf is baked it should be a nutty-brown color and should sound hollow when you tap the base.
Note: The bread Esme bakes is based on the recipe used at the famous Poilâne bakery in Paris, however this one was given to me by baker and sourdough aficionado Dean Brettschneider. Of all the recipes I have tried, it is by far the most consistent.
* * *
Sourdough Starter
Day one: Juice three fresh organic apples, strain and leave the liquid in a partly covered jar or jug.
Days seven to ten: When the juice is obviously bubbly and fermented, add it, in a glass or ceramic bowl or plastic container, to 11/2 cups flour and 3/4 cup water and leave, covered with Saran wrap poked with holes or in a loosely tied supermarket plastic bag.
Day eleven: Add another 11/2 cups flour and 3/4 cup water and leave.
Day twelve: Discard half the mixture and add another 11/2 cups flour and 3/4 cup water.
Day thirteen: Repeat the above, and do so every day until you know your starter is alive and kicking because it will rise up the sides of the bowl or container in between feeds and will be bubbly and smell sharp and cidery. If you want to get your starter going more quickly, feed it twice a day.
When you think it is active enough, try the recipe for a deliciously delectable loaf of homemade pain au levain. As the starter strengthens, the bread will rise more, gorgeous shiny holes will appear in the flesh and the crust will take on a tart, almost cheesy flavor.
The starter will keep in the fridge unfed for up to 2 weeks but you will need to bring it out, get it to room temperature and feed it for a couple of days before you use it. The starter is best used in the bread dough 8 to 12 hours after its last feed.
Another Note: The active ingredients in your starter are the natural bugs in the air where you live so some will get going more quickly than others. Don’t let your starter get too hot or too cold and make sure it isn’t in a draft. Most of all, remember to feed it and persevere. My starter took more than two months to get going after a lot of trial and error. And flour and water. The end result is worth it, though.
Sarah-Kate Lynch lives in New Zealand in a lakeside alpine town that, it turns out, has very dry, clean air not particularly conducive to getting a sourdough starter going. In the early stages of researching this book, she had eight different bowls of festering flour and water littering her kitchen counter and her clothes were permanently splattered in paste. Perseverance, however, paid off and now she bakes a mean pain au levain which on occasion she even shares with her husband.
Acknowledgments
I’ve always liked eating bread—well, I need something for the cheese to go on—but before starting this book I was far from an expert at baking it.
And without the help of baking aficionado Dean Brettschneider I would still be rubbing floury hands through my hair going, “Why won’t it work?” Dean has done everything from lending me reference books to taking panicked late-night phone calls from Provence to spending an afternoon actually teaching me, step by step, to make sourdough. He is a man who cares about ingredients and methods and the beauty of pain au levain and I simply cannot thank him enough.
Similarly, Joan Richardson at the famous Poilâne bakery in Paris was instrumental in transforming my understanding of the traditional French bakery. At a moment’s notice she made it possible for me to camp out in the Rue du Cherche-Midi bakery and her generosity was overwhelming. And Felix, the baker, deserves a medal for putting up with my schoolgirl French. He’s probably still wondering what I meant when I said the flour is on the bicycle. Just a few months after I warmed those ancient stone steps watching Felix at work, Lionel Poilâne lost his life in a helicopter accident and I can only imagine the devastation his dedicated team must have felt. May his memory live on in his pain au levain, the best you are ever likely to taste, still baked just the way it always has been with his daughter Apollonia now at the helm of the company.
And for those who think I am terribly clever for inventing the House in the Clouds, I am not. It exists pretty much as described in the village of Thorpeness on the Suffolk coast, although in real life the kitchen is, rather sensibly, on the ground floor. It is a truly eccentric and wonderful place and I couldn’t have made it up if I tried.
To Jamie Raab and everybody at Warner Books, a big hurrah for your patience, and to Stephanie Cabot, Ginger Barber and Tracy Fisher at William Morris, heartfelt thanks.
Much appreciation also, for help along the way, to Lauraine Jacobs, Rachel Scott and, for reasons of an entirely different nature, Simon Barclay, without whom none of this might have been possible.
As those close to me know, writing this book has been something of a mission with more than the usual number of obstacles littering the path and I want to thank my friends and family for helping me every step of the way. To my mum, my sisters and my brothers, I love you all and am lucky to have you. And to my husband, Mark, well, words truly, madly, deeply aren’t enough.
Sarah-Kate Lynch, By Bread Alone
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