On any other Sunday, it would be a perfect day for baking. The weather is overcast, dark grey clouds hanging low over the Hell Gate Bridge. We have a full complement of flour, butter, sugar, dried fruit and chocolate, and if I run out of eggs, I can buy more at the small-but-delightful health food store less than 50 feet from my apartment. We have the last of last weekend's minestrone at hand for lunch, so stopping mid-bake to run out to a lunch emporium is not necessary. I still have a shortlist of breads from the new Dan Lepard book to visit, as well as a shortlist of old favorites from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe to revisit. In short, if ever there were a day for getting off of the lumpy uncomfortable chair and standing facing the stove, today would be that day.
Today is not shaping up to be that day, however, thanks to last night's dinner. Not that I am complaining about that dinner by any means: it was a grand dinner, spent in the company of Lloyd, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law, held at this sweet little dreamboat restaurant, the sort of small, family-run French restaurant that used to be a fixture of the theatre district, and is now a vanishing breed. We had gone to dinner following a matinee of a show we had waited to see for ten long months, and we were giddy on the particular thrill that comes from watching a few dozen actors, singers and dancers do their job really well, and have a grand time doing it. We went to dinner, we shared two bottles of St. Emillion among five of us, I ate celeri remoulade as a starter, sweetbreads meunieres as an entree, cherries Jubilee over vanilla ice cream for dessert, and a tiny snifter of Mandarine Napoleon as a digestive. It was a beauty of a meal, but I knew that there would be a price to pay for eating high on the food chain. The good news is that I awoke headache-free; the bad news is that I could practically feel the saturation in my blood. It is hard to feel the pure thrill of creaming butter and sugar together, or of slowly incorporating whole-milk yogurt into yeasted bread dough, when both your vital organs and your conscience dictate a year-long diet of brown rice, black kale and industrial-strength kimchee.
I am meeting my conscience at the halfway point by eating plenty of pickles, particularly these pickles. Pickles might seem an odd thing with which to settle the stomach, but for me, they seem to cut right through the vague doughiness I'm feeling. They may not be a tonic for my blood, but they certainly are for my palate. Already I feel a bit snappier, thinking more clearly, making better plans for the rest of the day. I'm no longer moaning "sweetbreads and ice cream? what the hell were you thinking?" Instead, I'm thinking positively. It could have been worse. We could have ended the day with Krispy Kreme bread pudding.
(Well...no, we couldn't. I know there are people out there who love this dessert, and I hate to rag on something that people truly love, and I really hate to behave like a foodie snob in any way, but I never, ever, ever want to eat this. Now, I know there are at least three people who read this site, friends IRL, who love the idea of playing a prank on the fancy-pants culinary school graduate. Dear ones, I will play along with you on anything else, the scarier, the better. I will even eat cans of frosting for your amusement. But if you ever make this dish and try to pass it off as an heirloom family recipe, I will know. And then I will make pointed comments about what a lovely kitchen you have, and wouldn't be a shame if something were to happen to it? Seriously, if I even smell it, my heart will explode, and not with delight, either. Just don't, is all I'm saying.)
Of course, I talk a good game about austerity, and about resisting the call of the oven, but even as I drink my mess o'veggies from the industrial juicer at the health food store and contemplate a week of clear-broth lunches, even as I know that I have a full week of box factory toils and jam shipments (can I take a moment to mention that the reaction to Bakerina Kitchens has been surprising and gratifying?) and egg research and travel planning and sock-knitting (yes, the bug bit hard; thank you for not laughing), even then, the siren call of the stove is never far away. Sandwich bread, of course, is never far away; it's easy to put together, tastes better if it's been left to sit in the fridge for two days, and forms the backbone of at least half a dozen weeknight dinners, as well as breakfast and lunch. I'm also thinking it might be time to wake up the rye sourdough, after picking up a loaf of dark sour rye bread from a tiny Eastern European bakery in the East Village. It's the sort of bakery at which I love to shop, the sort that has been family-run for generations, that carries vanishing beauties like raisin pumpernickel bread, corn rye and poppyseed strudel, and that embed themselves into the neighborhood so deeply that to lose them is to lose something deep and sweet and powerful. Thus it was a hard thing for me to admit that the bread, while certainly a nice enough loaf of bread, was not all that dark, nor was it all that sour, and that it felt suspiciously fluffy for a rye bread. I know that not all sourdough-leavened loaves are supposed to taste sour; in fact, many French bakers consider an overly sour crumb to be the mark of a flawed loaf of bread. But I have studied breadbaking with a baker who cut his teeth in German bakeries, and there is a tradition of a sour crumb in certain rye loaves. And I also know that it's not uncommon to mix wheat and rye flours in rye bread: while rye flour does contain gluten-forming proteins, it also contains gums called pentosans, which inhibit the bonding of the gluten-forming proteins into the strong bubbly structure that we recognize in wheat breads. Rye dough is dense stuff, and not everyone appreciates the texture of whole rye. I don't consider it a crime to add wheat flour to rye bread, but when a rye loaf feels fluffy, I start to wonder.
Then again, maybe it's me. Maybe I ate it too close to when it came out of the oven. Rye bread needs time to settle, time for the interior to lose its gumminess, and for the flavors to mellow and meld. I put down the pickles and cut a slice, no butter this time. I can smell the rye scent radiating off the loaf, and I can taste it in the crumb, as well as a mere hint of sour. I can also taste sugar, of a kind not attributable to the caramelization of naturally-occurring sugars in the dough. And it is definitely soft, the sort of softness you would expect from a fat-enriched dough. But it does taste good. If I were trying to introduce lifelong Wonder Bread eaters to rye, I might start them on this one, to ease them gently into the inimitable flavor and texture of a good European rye. For myself, though, I crave a little more chew and a lot more bite. I will dig out my notes from bread camp in Vermont, and I will find exactly what I am looking for.