I figured that I would finally come out of my hive and talk about the sourdough bread I spent a week working on while I was snowed in before Christmas. As you may have inferred from other posts here, I’m basically cooking my way through The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which I think has to be about the best book around if you want to learn how to bake professional quality artisan bread at home. I apologize if my photos aren’t as good as Tiger’s usual ones — these were taken before we started using better lighting.

Because I’m cooking from a book, I don’t think I can reproduce the recipe in this blog without a copyright violation, so you’ll have to bear with me until I can come up with a few of my own recipes before you’ll see many ingredient lists. With that said, I love this cook book, and think it’s a necessity for any home baker’s bookshelf.

The Barm (also known as a starter)

One of the best starters that Tiger remembers from pastry school is started with organic grapes (which are covered in wild yeast). When we couldn’t find the particular recipe, we turned to the internet and found a good set of instructions. I got myself a pound of grapes from Whole Foods (they have to be organic and unwashed/treated — the non-organic ones don’t have enough wild yeast still living on them). Continue reading →