Rustic bread made from natural leaven has redefined what bread can be for me. After tasting the breads made by my friend Louie Prager using the most traditional methods simply using high quality flour, natural leaven, salt, and water. The simple sourdough country loaf is just that, but that recipe can be altered to get a wide variety of flavors and textures by adding nuts, dried fruits, seeds, and changing the ratio of whole wheat flour or substituting other flours like rye or semolina. He taught me his process for baking and I have since adopted many methods used by Chad Robertson from his book Tartine, which is one of my favorite books at the moment. If you are at all interested in baking bread like this you need to get this book. The beauty of this bread is that you can make the process as simple or complex as you want, and you’ll still make quality bread that will blow away any bread you can find in any market. The processes used for the breads below is very specific and labor intensive because he wants a very particular crumb and crust.
The crumb is the inside of the bread, and the better you build a network of proteins the more airy your bread becomes with more consistent air pockets. The more whole wheat flour you have in the recipe, the tighter the crumb becomes with less air (as shown in the photos below). The crust is obviously the outside, but the way it rises in the oven and then darkens creates those beautiful ears that curl up. With all that said, it doesn’t have to be that complex! You can just do a no-kneed recipe that allows you to just mix the ingredients and bake a few hours later. Just look it up on YouTube. This will still be very high quality bread compared to what you can buy, but it won’t be as “technically perfect” as the breads below.
