Making bread means sacrifice, hot oven, sweat, time and... some freaking organic flour! Golden Buffalo from Heartland Mill in Kansas was my latest purchase, along with some medium rye and malted wheat flour. Where is a NYC-based baker going to get local high extraction flour? While a wonderful and resourceful baker told me to visit a certain downtown Manhattan yoga/health food center for my flour resources, I couldn't wait. I live in Queens, and that's too long a subway or bicycle ride, especially when I have a weekend urge to make a miche that my fellow bakers/bloggers Susan and MC have baked. So I stayed and shopped local and went for the flour from Kansas. Which only added more fermentation to the dream of opening my own bakery and buying the huge 50 pounders at least once a week!!!!
So what's my point here? A home baker needs good flour to make a decent rendition or facsimile of Jeffrey Hamelman's breads, let alone any other loaf from any source. So my challenge to all you bakers is this; tell the world we're not amateurs, we're connoisseurs. We're making good honest bread. We want a better source for better flour, not that supermarket stuff that by dint of necessity we end up buying. No, world - listen up, we want a home baker's share of commercial baking flour. After all, world, we're here to make good bread.
Okay, rant over. As to my first miche with this flour, it's the Pointe a' Caillere Miche
from Jeffrey
Hamelman's book. Hope your weekend is as bright and tasty as Kansas sunshine, not to mention flour.
Hey it's that rude language that I have just written. Sorry about that.
Posted by: Shiao-Ping | March 22, 2010 at 07:00 PM
Damn right you are that we are connoisseurs, not amateurs! A great post with a great looking miche!
Posted by: Shiao-Ping | March 22, 2010 at 06:59 PM