A local baker recently inspired me to up my sourdough game. This person’s sourdough is 40 percent whole wheat — a percentage I’ve never even come close to reaching. I mean, I suppose I’ve made breads with similar whole wheat amounts but, for me, any bread with a substantial amount of whole wheat always seems to turn leaden and, if it’s sourdough, too tangy-sour. Of course then no one wants to actually eat a hunk of dense yuck, which ends up defeating the whole purpose of making bread in the first place.

Not good.

But this new-to-me method has yielded the best whole wheat sourdough that I’ve ever made. In fact, when we did a side-by-side taste test of both my regular white sourdough and the new whole wheat sourdough, five out of six people voted in favor of the whole wheat.

!!!!!!!!

Need I say more?

Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do! Because you, naturally, would like to make it, too, am I right, am I right?

I can’t share the exact recipe — the details are under wraps — but I have been graciously permitted to share both approximate percentages and techniques. Hopefully it will be enough to get you started down a delicious new path of whole wheaty-ness.

The main difference between this bread and my regular white sourdough is that, besides using lots of whole wheat flour, the dough is super wet — it uses a lot more water. Proportions are 40 percent whole wheat to 60 percent white bread flour, but when adding up the total weight, water makes up approximately 40 percent, the flours 50 percent, the starter 7 percent (much less than I’m accustomed to using), and the salt 1 percent. Or thereabouts. Good luck with that.

A note about the ingredients. This winter, I purchased some NuEast hard red winter wheat that’s been grown in Virginia; I grind it myself (says the little red hen). My high-gluten white flour usually comes from Costco. My starter is made with all white flour, approximately a 50% hydration. I use Morton’s coarse kosher salt. Warm tap water.

Now, for the method.

First, mix the flours and warm water together and autolyze for 15 minutes.

Then add the starter, salt, and a wee bit more water and mix on low for a good five minutes.

Then, and this is the different part, the dough gets poured (yes, poured — it’s wet) into an ungreased pan (I used a 9×13 pyrex pan) and rests for about five hours.

The dough’s supposed to be about 80 degrees the whole time, so I use my oven’s proof setting to warm it up and then, if it’s a cool day, I keep it in the oven the whole time. I find that once the dough’s warm, it holds its temperature fairly well.

Every hour or so, I gently lift and fold the dough (need a visual? click here). It’s impossibly wet and sticky, but by the end of the five hours, it will have thickened somewhat and be easier to handle.

Plus, it will have increased in bulk by about 30 percent.

Which is soooo cool!!!!

Now the dough is ready to be pinched in half and gently shaped and rested on the counter for thirty minutes.

Confession: I don’t do the thirty minute rest anymore. My dough is always too wet and ends up creeping across the counter most naughtily. But if your dough holds its shape, do it.

Place the shaped loaves — I just scoop them up and gently lift/plop the dough, smooth side down — into cloth-lined (and floured!) round pyrex bowls.

Cover the bowls with shower caps and let them sit at room temperature for two hours or so before transferring to the fridge for the night.

In the morning, bake! The loaves go directly from the fridge to the oven.

Place two Dutch ovens in the oven and preheat it to 500 degrees. Once the oven’s hot, remove the loaves from the fridge, gently invert them onto pieces of parchment paper, and flour the top of the loaves.

Score them deeply — I go over my cuts several times. (My husband got me this lame for my birthday. I love it.)

Remove one Dutch oven from the stove, gently lower the loaf into the pan, parchment paper and all. Tuck 4-6 ice cubes between the paper and pan — careful: the steam will burn you — clap on the lid and slip into the oven.

Repeat the process with the second loaf. Reduce the oven to 450 degrees and bake for 20 minutes.

Remove the lids — this is the best part because you get to see how much the dough has risen! — and reduce the heat to 400 degrees and bake another 20 minutes.

Transfer loaves to a baking rack to cool.

The final bread is both tender and chewy, only slightly sour, and deliciously full-flavored. It’s addictive and satisfying and wonderful no matter how you serve it: fresh with loads of butter, toasted, in sandwiches, French toast, etc, etc, etc. Truly, it’s a marvel.

P.S. For my regular white sourdough, I’ve taken to using this scoring and baking method. The loaves get consistently fabulously high.

Next time I do a round of baking, I want to mess with my ratios of flour and water for the white sourdough — how will the bread’s texture change if my dough is wetter, like the whole wheat bread? Ooh-la-la, such excitement!

This same time, years previous: making space, beginner’s bread, the quotidian (4.11.16), millet muffins, the greening, the quotidian (4.9.12), this slow, wet day, asparagus with lemon and butter.

Younger son: Hey Mom, should I put all my church clothes in the attic since I’m not going to wear them?

The news gives me whiplash. One day it’s dire and the next there’s all these positive signs and then — hang on a sec, things don’t look so good after all.

Whatever. I’ve decided we’re in this for the long haul, so that’s that.

I feel like I’ve adjusted, mostly. The panicky pain of my whole world constricting has faded. Now, I’m left with a shrunk world and, all things considered, it’s a good place to be: Family, health (fingers crossed it stays that way!), green grass, open space, good food, good books, good movies….

I like it that I’m in charge of three meals a day, no interruptions. I like knowing exactly how many people will be at the supper table: six. I like the seamlessness of our days, days largely devoid of transitions and transportation and scheduling hassles. I like waking up and knowing that we’re all here, together.

An unusually high level of sustained gratefulness dominates my thoughts. Some mornings I even wake up feeling like I could live like this for a long time.

Contentment, I think it’s called.

Which is not an emotion this restless, needy, often-bored mama is accustomed to at all.

You know what’s weird? Suddenly, for the first time in my life, my slow-paced, home-based lifestyle is mainstream. Watching as people make the adjustment to a lifestyle I’ve always known, listening to their observations and struggles, is akin to culture shock, but in reverse: my norm is now the norm and everyone is shocked.

It’s almost trippy, in an Alice-in-Wonderland sort of way.

I don’t know what to make of it.

From a quote I discovered in a book I’m reading:

“Barn’s burnt down / Now I can see the moon.”
—Mizuta Massahide, seventeenth-century Japanese poet

When I interviewed Kim, one of her pieces of advice for us was, “Try and wear a mask in grocery stores — to protect others.” I didn’t include her advice in my post, though. At the time, we were having a mask shortage (still are) and leadership was requesting that we save the masks for those who were ill, and for the medical professionals.

It felt weird though — dishonest, almost — to intentionally ignore the wisdom of people living on the front end of the pandemic, but what was there to do?

Now, nearly two months later, we’re finally catching up. Before, wearing a mask in public felt like a crime; now it feels irresponsible not to.

The other day, my cousin-down-the-road passed me several letters that I’d written to her when I was a teenager. At supper one evening, I read parts of them out loud to the family.

I got a kick out of showing the kids how much I wrote (and wrote and wrote and wrote) when I was their age. One of the letters was typed on an electric typewriter; that my 15-year-old self was so thrilled with that fact tickled my children to no end.

The things I wrote about — like, fixing up our new house which, to them, is the house their grandparents used to live it, and the oo-la-la dating news of the now-parents of their friends (“do you think anything will come of it?” I’d written) — had a weird circle-of-life feel to it.

But the best part was my matter-of-fact reporting on the subject of our family’s animals. Listen:

Pepper, our dog, got hit by a pick-up truck several Sundays ago. She yelped and yelped and would not stop. It sounded so like a human that I cried and cried. We all begged dad to shoot her, but he wouldn’t. Pepper is still alive. Her tail’s broken and she’s limping (her right, hind leg is really sore), but she killed a big groundhog the other day.  

Dad did shoot the cat, though. The cat had numerous diseases and was just plain sick. So we got two new male kittens — Tom and Jerry. 

Zachary’s crow died (we think it suffocated on a marshmallow that one of dad’s students fed it).  

We got a lamb that had pneumonia and it was getting better but now I think it’s regressing.  

So that’s an update on the beasts. 

By the end I was laughing so hard that I was honest-to-goodness weeping.

All this to say, if you need some dinnertime entertainment, consider digging that box of letters out of the attic. Chances are, you’ll find some gems.

I keep thinking about how, when my husband and I lived in Nicaragua, we went about batty with boredom. No NPR, no internet, no movies, (almost) no books, no English, no family, no stores, no car, no phone, no running water, no, no, no… Everything we did — all our play and work — we had to create ourselves. The mind-numbing exhaustion was intense.

Now, when I get grumpy and whiny and bored, I recall those years and immediately any tedium I’m feeling suddenly pales in comparison.

(I still get bored, though.)

Watching: Some Good News (we loved the second episode), Webber’s free shows on YouTube, You’ve Got Mail (the perfect family escape-from-reality movie), West Wing (a world in which national leaders are competent, imagine!), Self Made (so disappointing, and it had such potential, too).

Reading: Clock Dance by Anne Tyler and What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey to myself, and Dicken’s Great Expectations to the two younger kids.

Wishing: I could get out all the books I have on hold at the library.

Listening: Fresh Air’s Cooking During Covid-19, and, since my older son’s in the house, lots of his music. (Me, on repeat: TURN IT DOWN.)

Looking forward to: Hamilton at Home, this Friday at 7:00 pm!! (Update: it’s been canceled, wah!)

P.S. Friends just told us about the special free National Theatre Live shows: this week it’s One Man, Two Guvnors with James Corden.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (4.8.20), oh please, oatmeal raisin cookies, answers, daffodils and horses, cardamom orange buns, writing it out.

This same time, years previous: missing Alice, a trick for cooking pasta, scatteredness, the quotidian (4.6.15), the quotidian (4.7.14), the quotidian (4.6.13), yellow cake, he wore a dress.