Country Bread

This week’s Tuesday with Dorie recipe is Country Bread. I was worried that I wouldn’t get this recipe done on time, but thankfully we are posting on the second rather than the first Tuesday! Even with that change, this was almost one of those recipes that almost wasn’t, but in the end it turned out ok. I got it done! Make sure you visit the Tuesdays with Dorie site and check out the bread from the other bakers this week.

This bread uses whole wheat, rye and bread flours. It requires pretty simple ingredients. No eggs or butter, just yeast, flour, salt, and water. Just those ingredients and quite a bit of time. You make the starter one day, let it refrigerate overnight, and then bake it the next day. Well, I planned to bake the bread Sunday when we were doing chores around the house, but I didn’t bake it. I risked it and hoped the starter would last 2 days in the refrigerator. I wasn’t super hopeful, but I lucked out and it seemed to work just fine.

I planned to make stew and serve the bread with it, but I got the bread out of the refrigerator at about 4 and it didn’t get done with shaping, rising and baking until 9 o’clock! So obviously we didn’t have it with dinner, but it came out of the oven looking good. I don’t have a baking stone or pizza peel, and mine got a little misshapen when I transferred the risen loaf to the oven.  We tried the bread at basically bedtime, and it’s a very nice loaf. It rose wonderfully! I’m used to white bread and wheat bread and rye bread, but it is interesting mixing them all together. I think the bread will make nice sandwiches, but I’ll need to investigate that another day, another time! The best news of all though, is that our kitty, who loves her bread, loved this loaf. She's usually more fond of fluffy, store bought white bread! Here she is:

Recipe from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 136 and 137.