

Then we squeezed the dough with our hands -- the dough still being too wet for the usual fold 'n' push kind of kneading. And when it began to form long lanky strands of gluten, we cleaned our hands, wet them, and added yet more water. The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book suggests a texture near to "runny," and we didn't stint with the water, not at all. I think we added another cup, gradually working it in until the dough was slippery, quivery, tender, and tendoned with gluten.
We let it rise, then, and ate a pleasant lunch and read our books. The rising process for a very wet dough is not quite like the usual one where your ball gets larger and larger. Rather, the rising process is one of intense bubbling. The mass rose, yes -- after maybe two hours or so it doubled. Then we stirred it back down -- usually an unremarkable process. The dough, however, did not fall back quickly, but took several minutes of stirring before reluctantly settling back down to its original size. Its bubbles were strong and well distributed.
It rose again, this time more quickly, and again we stirred it down. Then we generously floured two large rimless baking sheets. We cut egg-sized lumps from the dough, shaped them into floppy rounds, and placed them on the baking sheets. They were too wet to cover -- a cloth, unless well-floured, would have stuck. We had fifteen rounds when we were done.
We left them to rise and found a long enough gap in the rain for a nice walk up the dark drippy stairs on Potrero Hill.


We split it immediately and discovered a beautiful array of holes, which we filled with butter and devoured. We were perhaps a little giddy with our success.

4 comments:
Beautiful! I bet they tasted wonderful.
Oh, and the picture of the bed circled by windows? I'm JEALOUS!
An award (kind of) is waiting for you over at my blog...
An exquisite narrative of our day! I'm going to try again today--I'll let you know how it goes!
Hooray! Thanks, Mama JJ! That made my day.
We may not have green pastures outside them, but we do have some mighty fine windows. Eight feet tall and ten feet wide, oh yes.
Cait--Do tell me how they come out, especially if you try the tuna-cans! I'm making some bread today that's pretty much going to be loaves of English muffin, if all goes well.
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