process | Stephenson and Duess

I baked another rye sourdough bread today. 300 g bread flour to 200 g rye, 12 g of salt and 200 g of active starter. It came out great, apart from the slashing I tried, which caused the crust to break in unexpected places.

Still, the flavour is there and I am finally beginning to be able to handle sticky rye dough without getting it stuck to myself and/or the entire mixer. I’ve made this bread now twice, sometimes three times a week, for some time. Every time I make it again I learn something new, but I am now pretty confident that the end result will be delicious.

There are other breads waiting for me, other recipes I am planning to explore. But they can continue to wait, for now. Part of this has to do with my wife declaring the rye her most favourite bread ever, but part has also to do with the journey of exploration. In baking, it matters whether you use 12 or 15 grams of salt. 10 ml of water make a difference to the feel and finish of a dough, something that rarely happens in cooking.

Which makes experimentation all that more interesting. Experimentation that changes things incrementally, maybe substituting whole grain for white bread flour, maybe exchanging rye for Fife. The results are always delicious, and always interesting. The aim is to, one day, find a formula that can’t be improved, that is the essence of a dark, delicious, sourdough rye.

I am looking forward to the journey.

Home made pizza is one of those things that I think is difficult to master. There’s the 500+ degree oven and the whole pizza stone thing. There’s also the question of the dough. I just perused a very interesting methodology for making pizza dough that dives deep into all of the variables.

If one was quite serious about making the best possible pizza, one could play with all the variables – liquid, fat content, type of flour, salt, yeasts, tempurature, rising time, resting time etc – to come up with a formula that works well, not only for your tastes, but also for your setting (IE your kitchen, your oven.)

This is something that comes up again and again when Mr. Duess and I discuss cooking with friends. They often wonder about recipies. Our response is that you use the recipe as a starting point to figure out the principals and then the rest is about tailoring it to your tastes, your cooking style and your cooking context.

The article is full of really good information and a method that I think Mr. Duess and I often take for granted, which is to try something, take measurements, and then revise based on how it turned out. Cooking is like anything else in that respect. The important part is to consider how it could have been done differently. This is not only about considering the recipe, but also your ingredients, your tools and your style.

When trying something new, we often will come up with something that just does not work. (One of my favorite things that Mr. Duess will say to me is that he’s glad to take a risk when I’m around because if it doesn’t work, we’ll eat it anyways – unlike, perhaps, our wives or a dinner party guest) Many times we have taken a risk and fallen flat on our faces. Its always, without fail, better the next time – even if by a little bit.

I found this article fascinating in that it discusses playing with all the vairables to come up with the best recipe to suit your own very specific situation. Its a method that will allow you to come up with your own version of things. This will bring you and yours a great deal of pleasure.

Here’s the article.

The source is a bit unlikely and not at all our thing (its some kind of management/personal actualization consultancy – funny place to find good info about cooking pizzas), but the information and method are great.

Tag Archive: process

Wax on, wax off, or the importance of repetition

Cooking Methodology – Making it your own