If you’re a regular at Urbana’s Market in the Square, you know that one of the reasons for hauling your ass out of bed on a Saturday morning, regardless of how dark, cold, or wet it is, is to get some of Stewart’s sourdough breads. Typically, I leave for the market before breakfast, dreaming about Stewart’s poppy seed bagels, dunked in a tub of Prairie Fruits Farm fresh chevre from the next stall down. As I type this, I’m noshing on a slice of his Chipotle-Artichoke-dried Tomato bread, slathered with butter made from Amish Jersey cream…

But I’m not writing to tell you how good his bread is. Plenty of people have done that already. (By the time our local newspaper features somebody, you know you’ve missed the boat even to go see them get jumped by a shark.)

I’m writing to tell you that his bread is gone – or just about. Sure, you’ll still find him at the indoor market at Lincoln Square Mall for another few weeks, but that’s it. Don’t look for him in the spring. He’s not planning to return.

The main reason is our Health Department’s decision this past spring to require that all breads sold at farmers’ markets be baked at a certified kitchen. This new interpretation of the rules meant that Stewart could no longer work at home over the three-day period that his sourdough breads take for their risings. Working out of the certified kitchen at Prairie Fruits Farm turned his part-time retirement job into a full-time job that he’s ready to quit.

Almost. He’s returning home, back to his small-scale beginnings, and he’s planning instead to deliver his bread to anyone in the area who orders enough (three dozen bagels or the equivalent). If you don’t want to order that much bread at one time, I’m planning to make Stewart’s bread available to TLP club members. The idea is that you can order his bread at the same time that you place an order with me, and then pick both up, at the same time and place.

OK, so I exaggerated. Stewart is not really gone; he’s just going underground. In this situation, who better to team up with than your local underground deli?

I may not be Jewish, but I am foodish, so enjoy this picture of the challah I made for a gathering of good friends at the lake.

This is a picture of the seven-pound super boule that came out of the oven today. (OK, it only weighs five pounds now, but it did weigh seven before all our guests showed up and we started cuttin’ on it.) I have made an über boule before, weighing almost ten pounds, but this time I experimented with a wetter dough that spreads a little more on the baking stone, so I didn’t want to risk it overflowing the edges.

Developing this recipe, over the last several years, has been a long lesson in the virtues of patience.

First of all, the sourdough starter that I ordered from King Arthur Flour is more than 250 years old, having been continuously renewed all this time. With a pedigree like that, I do my best to feed it once it awhile and not let it die on me. This is the only yeast I use.

The amount of starter that I keep in the fridge is only about a cup and a half, and I need six cups to make a super boule, so making this bread first involves 2 or 3 “builds” of the starter. First I take the starter I have, add a cup of distilled water (chlorinated tap water could kill some of the microflora in the starter) and two cups of flour. Half of this goes back in the fridge, the other half becomes the starter for my bread. After 12 hours or so, I’ll add another cup of water and two cups of flour and mix it all together. After another 12 hours, two cups of water and four cups of flour. Another 12 hours, or about two days so far, and you’re ready to make bread. (more…)

Far superior to any bread you’ll find at even the best bakeries in town.

Good bread is not complicated: yeast, water, salt, flour.  But good bread does take time.  For starters, literally, the sourdough starter I use has been centuries in the making, continuously renewed all that time.  Each loaf is at least three days in the making, slowly being built up, before the ten-pound super boule is ready to bake.

If you cut the crusts off your bread or like bread that you don’t have to chew, then this is not for you.  This is the anti-Wonder bread; it has a very dark, thick, chewy crust, and an open-textured interior where the rich flavor of the wheat really comes through, with just a little tang from the sourdough starter.  Because of the sourdough, it will keep for a week or more in the fridge.

Tell me how big a chunk you want, and when it comes out of the oven, come and get it.  Fresh out of the oven,  just slather it with some of the butter from the makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano that’s available at World Harvest.  While you’re there, pick up some Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, so that later in the week, you can enjoy the best grilled cheese sandwich ever.

Suggested donation $5 a pound