25/01/2016
Artisinal bread
When you Google "what is artisinal bread" you get lots of different answers and there re are two variants which I like.
The first is bread made by an artisan, (someone skilled in making something or responsible for training others) especially be hand. The second is bread made using essentially 4 ingredients: yeast water; flour and salt. This one eliminates many of the supermarket type loaves which make use of pre-mixes containting enzymes and all sorts of shelf life extenders.
We are Yeast Coast Cafe make no claim to be artisans - we are more students than artisans. We are however producing some loaves that fall into the second category.
We are producing from Friday to Sunday a range of loaves that do not include the additaives etc. Though you may be in luck during the week when we may have produced something. What this means is that these loaves are often best eaten fresh though many of them are quite good the second day and often make a lovely toast.
We are at present making a Rustic round loaf on using the recipe of Jim Lahey of Sullivan St bakery in the States. We are also making a Ciabatta; and 2 sour doughs. The first is a plain one and the second is a rosemary and garlic one.
While we are always aiming for consistency, the variables with artisanal bread are a bit more difficult to control - the outdoor temperature makes a difference to how quickly the loaf proves and can also influence the "eagerness" of the wild yeast used in sourdoughs. So while loaves from one batch will look similar, between batches there will be differences.
Anyway enough rambling on.
Here is a photo of one of the ciabatta's showing a "crumb shot" of another loaf. The size of the bubbles will vary from batch to batch.
