Long ago and far away. And unforgettable. July 2005
New Photos
While I was away a friend gave me a copy of The Perfect Loaf, by Maurizio Leo, and very fortunately there was just about enough room in my suitcase to bring it home with me. Over at I wrote about baking his introductory Simple Sourdough, which proved to be an interesting exercise. Maurizio has an intent focus on temperature. He gives a desired dough temperature at every stage of every recipe, achieved by adjusting the temperature of water. If you do that, I am sure, then his timings also make sense and probably just work™. I tried, but as I noted in my write up, this place is just not suited to maintaining a decent temperature for the leaven or the bulk fermentation.
You can see that the dough was underproofed, probably during bulk fermentation.
In the end, I noted a few additional technical wrinkles and several really interesting recipes. When I come to make them, though, I will probably stick with my own workflow and timings, based on what is, in my belief, the most important maxim in bread-making:
Watch the dough, not the clock (or the thermometer).
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