The Art of Eating Mag

I have not made the AoE recipe, which has gotten longer over several iterations in MacGuire's work for the magazine, but I've eaten it, and it's extraordinary. Really, really extraordinary.

And anyone who loves food (not restaurants, not recipes, food) in the States and isn't subscribing is missing something crucial. And a little bit humbling.

It was AoE that made me realize I should own several different teapots made from different materials, and why, and made me care why. (Alas, I do not.)
 
hmm. Thinking back, and each bread is a little ad hoc anyway, I can remember starting with my levain and doing a standard build as per my friend's instructions (roughly 4 tablespoons flour/1.5 tbls water). After that build of about 4-8 hours (or overnight sometimes) i picked up with the AoE method. I dissolved the whole levain into water as indicated and added the flour slowly. It formed a soup like mix that made me quite nervious. It seemed so wet i was worried, but i let it be, trusting the recipe. It said to fold over the flaps of the dough soup every hour or so for like 8 hrs, which i did. It solidified somewhat and the ferment was going strong but i was very wet still. I decided to take a risk and mix in some more flour, folding it in slowly. This worked well but at this point i had lost all sense of proportions and ratios and just went by feel. I let it do a final rise, in the bowl upside down as recommended in AoE then turned it out and formed it and baked it away. It came out great, if a bit heavy (likely due to my four addtion, but it was so wet it would have just been a soup). Since then i have used my friend's original method though i liked the disolving of the levain as in AoE, i think it created a more rigorous fermentation and a more textured bread.

By the way, i am no expert baker but i love making sourdough, each loft, like a natural wine, has its own character. I hope you can follow what i wrote up there, i recognise it might be a bit confusing.
 
Generally speaking, making the dough wetter will give you a more irregular, voluptuous crumb. The bread Matteo describes sounds a lot like Italian ciabatta, the dough for which is so loose you have to handle it with bread 'knives' instead of your hands. It makes wonderful chewy, crusty bread, and is hard to make - I can never do it right.

The method I usually follow is like Matteo's, in that you initially mix a very wet, soup-like dough, adding flour a cup at a time, and mixing vigorously with a wooden spoon between additions to develop gluten (about 100 strokes after each cup). However, I continue adding flour until the dough is about as stiff as you would normally expect, putting in the last two cups together with the salt after giving the dough a little rest to absorb the water. The last addition has to be kneaded in. Usually I use about eight cups total to make two large loafs and four to six teaspoons of salt.

The main thing is, though, that bread doughs, like children, are resilient, and precision is rarely of the essence (unless you are a commercial baker, when everything has to be just so). You can vary the bread in hundreds of ways by altering proportions of basic ingredients, forming differently shaped loaves, changing rise times and temperatures, using different flour ratios, and adding stuff. I used to make pecan-raisin bread that was heavenly as toast for breakfast. Or you can go healthy with sprouted wheat or pumpkin seeds. Recently, I experimented by adding beer to the dough (XX dark), which seems to lighten the crumb a bit and add another layer of flavor. We've also baked with cider, which sweetens the bread a bit if you are making a rye dough (normally sourdough requires no sweetener). The possibilities are endless. If you make some simple notes on what you do, it helps to link cause with effect.
 
There you've got me. I fell in love early with sourdough and haven't explored yeasted ones much. I would guess you'd want to adhere more closely to the printed recipes when making these breads. In my experience, also, a sourdough-leavened bread is relatively robust and chewy, and not an obvious vehicle for these bread types, which emphasize softness and delicacy. I would suppose you can add a flavor dimension by putting some starter into one of these, adjusting flour and liquids accordingly in the overall recipe.
 
It was AoE that made me realize I should own several different teapots made from different materials, and why, and made me care why. (Alas, I do not.)
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Sounds like an American consumerist magazine tradition. Even with the great articles.
 
originally posted by Jeff Grossman:
originally posted by MarkS:
Sounds like an American consumerist magazine tradition. Even with the great articles.
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I think you're taking it the wrong way.
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Might come across that way, but not intended as such. I've seen AOE and think it's a very good magazine, it was Thor's comment about needing to go run out and purchase several more teapots that made me think how much of our lives are consumed with needing the best this-or newest that-or most exclusive-most natural, whatever. And sometimes food-and-wine writing play right into that. Doesn't mean I don't fall prey to that line of reasoning as well. That's all.
 
i guess by defnition AOE is a magazine but i think of it more as a journal, or maybe newsletter. calling it a magazine seems to put it on a par with "food and wine" or the now defunct "gourmet", which just seems wrong to me.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Might come across that way, but not intended as such. I've seen AOE and think it's a very good magazine, it was Thor's comment about needing to go run out and purchase several more teapots that made me think how much of our lives are consumed with needing the best this-or newest that-or most exclusive-most natural, whatever. And sometimes food-and-wine writing play right into that. Doesn't mean I don't fall prey to that line of reasoning as well. That's all.
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Got it. (Reminds me of a quote, something about Americans being trained to want things because our society would not survive if we were all ascetics....)
 
originally posted by MarkS:
It was AoE that made me realize I should own several different teapots made from different materials, and why, and made me care why. (Alas, I do not.)
Click to expand...

Sounds like an American consumerist magazine tradition. Even with the great articles.
Click to expand...

Thor's notes usually make me realize that I should own more wines, and why, so he may be part of the same tradition.
 
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