Thursday, April 22, 2010

My Bread Year: Buckwheat Batards


I don't really take recommendations from people. Well, people often give me recommendations, which I disregard, but also file away in one of the darkest corners of my brain. Which is to say, that I don't welcome ideas from others. For me, things just have to happen organically.

For example, earlier this month, Smitten Kitchen featured Shakshuka. I thought it looked interesting, but didn't run to my kitchen to immediately make it. Then, I finally put in a cookbook order at Amazon.co.uk, and got the Ottolenghi cookbook. No, there's no skakshuka recipe in there, but days after I got the cookbook, I came across a video of him making it.

And there you go. Now I want to make it.

But wait, you ask- There's a picture of bread at the top of this post, not of some awesome red pepper and egg concoction. I know, I know. All I have to say is that this are the Buckwheat Batards from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. I picked up some buckwheat flour at the store after reading about it, and all of a sudden, it started appearing everywhere.

I remembered the recipe, noted that the measurements were inconsistent, and checked to see if there was a correction on the Errata PDF released by the man himself. There was.

Why no more pictures? The starter was really ugly and dark, almost like a ball of mush. The loaves themselves weren't much better off, and the dough just didn't behave. I'm starting to think I'm settling into a comfort zone of sorts with the German wheat flours.

It wasn't so much that I didn't like the bread, but that I was underwhelmed by it. I did give a loaf away, and it was reported that the people who tried it thought it was amazing. So maybe I'm just too hard on myself or maybe I'm just way too used to wheat breads.

Yes, I'll revisit this one. But maybe I'll wait until people start a critical mass for Buckwheat.

For some truly beautiful Buckwheat Batards check out this post on The Fresh Loaf.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks a lot for the link to the "Local Breads" corrections. I'll print them out tomorrow and put them in my copy of the book! I haven't baked with buckwheat flour yet, but picked some up a couple of months ago because I thought buckwheat bread sounded cool. You reminded me of that - I'm off now recipe hunting ;o). Have you changed your blog title? Somehow it looks unfamiliar to me... Was it aehrelich before instead of ährelich? Just wondering...

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  2. I need to bake something from Local Breads - after getting the book, I kept reading on the Fresh Loaf how there were many mistakes and inconsistencies, and that made me hesitant to go to work on it.

    I love the flavor of buckwheat, maybe I should give it a try...

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  3. I made this 2 months ago but never blogged it! How funny! I didn't find the errata helpful but rather some posts on the fresh loaf website. I am limited in computer time these days but would love to compare notes!

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