The River is Rising, and so should my bread

Well, here in Cochrane, in early March, the river is rising. Quite frightening too. Ice has jammed up our river causing very high levels of ice. It makes for some great photos.

 

This is down under the bridge. The town has shut down the river pathways until the ice goes down.

 

This road typically goes down to the boat launch, but as you can see, that’s all under water and ice right now.

 

I can’t go on the paths right now as they’re all under water. Probably for the best.

 

There are markers on the bridge that show how high the waters are. I believe it said that it was at 4 meters. Wow, that’s something else. Our river is controlled by Ghost Dam about 15 km upstream, and generally that doesn’t fluctuate the river too much. Usually it’s low in the morning, and higher in the evening, but this is like nothing else. Reminds me of being back in Peace River during our floods there.

 

So in an effort to maintain my New Year’s resolution to bake one artisan loaf of bread per month, I have kept up with that as best as possible. February’s entry was a Ciabatta loaf and March’s was an Enriched White Bread. All recipes were courtesy of Peter Reinhart’s Breadbaker’s Apprentice book. A great read and must for artisan baking.

 

Like most of the Artisan Breads in the book, they start with a starter, which ferments overnight to add flavour. This is a poolosh, quite runny and spongy once done.

 

The next day, you mix all the ingredients and do rising and proofing of the loaf. The ingredients are simple, so I think there’s more to the technique in the bread making.

 

Home-made proofing bowl. To keep the heat in and let it rise.

 

After some time, I ended up with these. Like I said, I think more of the art is in the technique and shaping, but these turned out pretty good. One went to our neighbours for sampling (they were delighted). It still needs a bit of work, but it’s coming along.

 

I’m attempting to make a sourdough (acutally, a Pain a Poilane). Sourdough needs starter, also known as barm. Barm needs seed culture, whatever that is. So this is an attempt at seed culture, which takes about 6 days. It’s rye flour and pineapple juice, fed daily until it ferments. I think it relies on yeast in the air, which may or may not work. Regardless, this should lead to my sourdough loaf in a week or so.

 

The day after the Ciabatta, I went straight into a one-day bread to play with shaping. In the book, there is a recipe for enriched white bread. Enrichement (butter, egg, milk) being the source of flavour in the bread, these breads take only a few hours to make start to finish. A great way to play with shaping. This picture is the dough ready to rise. It says to rise it a room temp, but I cheated and used a warm oven to speed things up.

 

After rising. This is a very sticky dough and it’s best to handle it as little as possible.

 

For shaping, I chose to make 2 Boules (balls, monsieur Francais, oui oui!). Again, one would be going to our neighbours for sampling.

 

The book didn’t call for slash marks or flour dusting, but I wanted to play with it, so I did. X and O shaping.

 

Post baking. These turned out really well and tasted great! Enriched bread can sometimes have a chemical taste (in my opinion), but these were tasty. Quite sweet and delicious. I gave the X slashed dough to my neighbours, who were again delighted! The little man of our house also enjoyed some bread too (Nom nom Yummmmmm).

 

I will continue to play with shaping and baking breads. I need to iron out some technique, but this is definitely something I am really enjoying. Lucky I have people to help eat these batches of bread and provide comments and feedback. I am quite sure that everyone who gets a hot loaf of bread at 10pm is happy, but you never know. Maybe I will purposely make a really gross loaf to see if they are good sources of feedback.

Next blog is about my new bike. Oh yeah, did I mention I got a new bike (for dirt cheap too!).

I would like to blog more than once per month…

So yeah, looking at my blog that comes up as my homepage on my internet browser, I realize that I haven’t blogged in a while. Every time I see it, I go “I know I know” I need to write a new one. So here I am, writing a new one. Let’s take a look at what has happened recently.

I did a winter run on Ghost Lake a little while ago. GPS data can be found here. This is the drive out there. Wintery indeed.

Last time I was out at Ghost, it was not frozen. But now it is. Figures… Good thing I didn’t bring a canoe.

I have a picture similar to this one that I took while kayaking this past summer. It can be found here. I love how we have seasons here. It’s so cool (and cold!).

I got out to the little island on Ghost lake and had some fun flying through the air. I am a nerd, that’s for sure!

I managed to get this one. I think it worked well.

Temperatures were close to –30 while I was running, which makes exercise and breathing difficult. It’s great for maximizing lung capacity though. I don’t know how, but after running in the cold, running in normal temperatures seems so much easier. Maybe it’s just in my head. Anyway, the plan with the run was to go circle the island and come back, but I ended up losing my car key somewhere along the run. So I spent a whack of time sifting through the snow and couldn’t find it. Bummer. Luckily, I got back to the car and had left the door unlocked. I got in the car, called for help and waited for 1/2 an hour before rescue came. Ooops. Luckily, friends were in town and able to help, or I would have had to hitch-hike back home.

I have also held true to one of my resolutions to try making an Artisan loaf of bread each month. This month’s (well, January’s) was a French Loaf from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice book. The book is fantastic. I read almost 100 pages of bread theory. I ended up with this.

A sad attempt at a French Loaf. I think the main problem is that I accidentally shut off the oven during baking.

It sure looked good, and tasted great, but the oven-shutting-off incident caused a thick, chewy and rather hard-to-eat crust. At least the bread tasted really good.

The payoff though? Well my wife got some great photos . I learned that turning off the oven while baking generally produces poor results. But the key thing I learned is that a 2 day pre-ferment makes absolutely deliciously flavoured bread! I will definitely try this again.

Lastly, I have officially signed up for the Powderface42 FULL marathon. Yeah yeah! For the longest time, their website was down, then all of a sudden it was up and the race was 80% sold out! I immediately signed up and made it in! Yeah yeah! So January 31st marked the beginning of my training. It’s basically a 3 day on 1 day off training schedule. I’ve adopted Crossfit Endurance to help out with that. So far, it works great, although I am only in day 2 of it, lol! But one problem I found last year during the Powderface21 was that I ran out of fuel. So I am experimenting with fuelling while running without having to buy energy gels. I found a recipe for Pinole, a roasted corn endurance food. I learned about it in Born to Run (I know, I know…) so I figured I would give it a go.

Basically, you take cornmeal or corn flour, roast it till it browns (parches), mix it with some honey (I used brown rice syrup, about 1tsp per cup of corn), cinnamon (or ginger for flavour) and water to make little cookies. I baked it at 400 till it hardened and voila, instant energy! I made 3 variations, one with corn flour, one with cornmeal and the third with a mix of both.

I ran a 90minute Time Trial this morning at the track and took one of these cookies every 15 minutes with water. I cannot believe how well it worked. I even tried skipping one meal at the 45 minute mark and noticed a decline in performance. So yeah, I just have to tweak the size of these things (big, dry cookies are hard to eat when you’re thirsty) and they should go well. It’s amazing how well fuelling works! I will keep this up as I continue my training!

That’s all from me!