Resistance is Futile

Still Life With Red Napkins

I'm very annoyed right now. I found some video demonstrations of Nancy Silverton making olive bread on the PBS: Julia Child: Lessons with Master Chefs page and I can't get Windows Media Player to play the video of it. I can hear the audio but the video won't play and it's annoying me because it worked a few weeks ago when I watched Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid make flatbread for Julia. I just made this olive bread the other day and had I remembered that this video was available I might not have encountered some of the problems I did. Bleh, it’s so annoying that I can't watch the video right now. Ok, so it's not a crisis I know, but I hardly ever whine, can't I just this once?

I've used Nancy Silverton's book "Breads from the La Brea Bakery" quite a few times to make her Rosemary Olive Oil Bread and Country White Bread recipes, and have gotten some decent results although more practice is needed on my part. When I first started baking from her book I was a little taken aback by the tone of the book; it seemed to me that maybe Silverton was a little anal, her tone in the book came across as very strict, very precise and even a little rigid in her approach, everything was always precisely weighed, temperature was taken for everything including the temp in the room and internal temp of the dough, humidity levels were considered and her sourdough starter recipe seemed so long and involved... it all just seemed a little over the top to me and of course, since I knew next to nothing about bread and she was this super famous master baker naturally I cockily dismissed her, heh. Well I was wrong to judge so quickly, and from a book no less. Clearly I have a lot to learn and I have come around to the fact that Silverton has a lot to teach, I just need to be willing, so I am resisting her no more. In the coming weeks I hope to be able to make an attempt at her recipe for sourdough starter just so that I may compare it to the starter that I have, one that I started almost three years ago just a few months before I started this blog. I'm very proud of my starter, I mean, let's face it, I've kept it alive for almost three years that's longer than some plants I've had. Anyway, I'm very proud of my starter but I suspect that it might not be up to snuff when it comes to making good sourdough breads with airy texture and good crusts. repeat after me: I must, I must I must improve my crusts! Actually, I think I've got the crust part but the crumb is something I need work on. I'm hoping if I use Silverton's starter I might see some better results, if I do, then my starter will be demoted but still kept alive and used for pancake batter.

I need to stop putting my bread directly on the baking tiles. The heat doesn't seem to be distributing evenly and I ruined these 2 loaves by burning the bottoms. I tried to scrape off as much of the burnt bits that I could but the bread still had an unpleasant charred taste. Here's a funny side note. My husband is not a fan of olives (I know, I know, where did I find him) and so I was very surprised at how much he was enjoying the bread even with the burnt bottoms. I mentioned that he certainly liked his olives when they were in bread to which he replied "Oh. These are olives? I thought they were raisins!" I can't imagine how in the world he would have made that mistake but hey, it got him to eat olives right?

This is what the crumb looked like after slicing into the bread. As far as crumb texture goes, I suppose it wasn't bad but I would have liked to see more airy bubbles. I guess I should shut-up and be happy I even got this far, but I can't leave it, I need to keep trying...must get a better!

Written by Deb on February 21, 2005 01:20 AM