Onion Caper Bread

The continuing saga of baking in the UK continues. This week’s episode includes trying once again to bake French-style loaves upon the pizza stone … with the result that the stone has been retired until such time as we have a better oven. Past experiments with the stone have included preheating the oven for an hour, to see if the stone would get hot enough. That didn’t work. This time I moved the stone up in the oven, and it still wouldn’t get hot enough to brown the bottom of the loaves. The next option would be to move the stone all the way up under the broiler, get it good and hot, and then somehow relocate the stone to a lower shelf.

We’re just going to have to learn to live without bread baked on a stone, because shifting a hot stone about just isn’t in the cards. My knuckles are already burned quite severely, just from trying to squeeze four loaves into such a tiny oven – I’m giving up the idea of moving that stone as a bad idea. (As to how severely, well, they blistered up & scabbed nicely, and I look like I’ve been brawling or something, which is enough to put me off the idea of getting them burned any further).

The loaves, as expected with a cool stone, didn’t have a crusty bottom, nor did they get much lift. So, we sliced them on the bias, and enjoyed them anyway … or, at least, we enjoyed a couple of them – one went to a fellow Bay Area native who’s also over here doing his Master’s degree, and another went to a professor.

As to what’s in them, they’re the standard bread recipe, basically, but with steamed whole oats, oat bran, flax seeds, a chopped onion, a couple tablespoons of capers (soaked to remove the salt), some yellow and brown mustard seeds, some cumin, and some sage. Because of adding the steamed oats you need to bump up the salt a little bit, but other than that it’s just a straightforward matter of “throwing stuff in.”

Once again, no problem at all with UK flour: if I can get bread to raise with an added 1/2 cup of oat bran in each loaf, plus all the other stuff, there’s certainly enough gluten in the flour!

Next up will be to finally get a sourdough starter going. I just read an article on the microbiology of yeast fermentation, talking specifically about getting wild yeasts going, and some of what was in there we’re going to try. The gist of this 17 page article was to the effect that the initial pH of the sourdough starter is not acid enough. They suggest adding 6 oz of pineapple juice to the starter on the first day, with that being enough of a jolt of acid to get the starter producing yeast on the first day. Otherwise you have to wait for some nasty bacteria to get going in there, and then to die, so that after three or four days you’ll have enough of an acid environment for the yeast to get going. The instructions can be found at Breadtopia, and the microbiologist’s name is Debra Wink – Breadtopia will send you the article if you’re interested.

Not having any pH strips handy we’re going to just wing it & see what happens. It may not take place immediately – we have to track down pineapple juice – but we’ll let you know when it does.

The other (less preferable) method would be to include apple juice for the first few days, which we could do … and we actually have the apple juice … but it’s nice, fresh-pressed Braeburn juice, and I like to drink the stuff. Sigh. The things we sacrifice for our art. Maybe. Just … maybe.

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