A Tale of Two Breads, Part I
In addition to the ice cream maker, the other fabulous food related gift I received for Christmas is the book CookWise by Shirley O. Corriher.
Shirley is that adorable food scientist who shows up in cameos in Alton Brown's kitchen on Good Eats. The book is not just a cookbook. It is a book about the hows and whys of cooking. The very first chapter contains 96 pages of the gloriously geeky chemistry and physics of bread - right up my alley! I read voraciously about different flours, gluten development, sourdough starters, kneading, rising, punching and sponges. And then I settled on my first recipe from the book - Crusty French-Type Bread. Shirley says it is not quite classic French bread, but is very similar.
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