Some days I am  lucky enough to get home early from work and cook some dinner for my wife. (thank god for sous chefs!) One  recent evening our menu was simple enough with a Greek salad,bratwurst and potatoes. And my advantage of a simple meal gave me time to  even manage to bake a bread; a play on  one of my recent successful try’s at 3 stage levain builds, but with a minor change in my starter…There was this jar of backferment experiment that lay dormant for nearly a month in my fridge that would be  used as the agent to rise. Surprisingly It was still showing a signs of life.  So I added equal amounts of flour and water I whipped out my recent Swingley calculator sheet from which I had made  a levain bread recently with much success. While earlier perusing the web I had decided to use MC’s famed Gerard Ribauds mix of flours, 60/30/10 of wheat, spelt and rye, in that order, to my dough and was even going to follow her Polka patterned boule. All good I thought, that is until I had just put my loaf in the oven,check! And my dinner of Greek salad in the bowl,check! Bratwurst with caramelized onions braised in beer were just simmering away, check and….that’s when my wife dropped my recently honed 10 ” chef’s knife on the floor and cut her big toe. Eeeegad, the blood was flowing on the floor while the menacing blade lay next to her, ! My army training set in, I wrapped some paper towels on her toes and applied pressure. Then I shut off the stove top and quickly searched for bandages and hydroperoxide, we had nothing in to speak of for first aid! My thoughts took me back to basic training when we would shout, “help medic!” My bread still in the oven was needing more time and I quickly played Florence Nightengale to my wounded princess, all the while I juggled my dinner and bake. I decide to lower my oven to 300 F while  rushing out to  get bandages and antiseptics at the pharmacy. Of course I was concerned about my wife’s wound  but my bread, I just left my loaf unattended and it was showing such promising signs of both color and activity.  I didn’t want to leave it alone. So I quickly ran to the store, got the bandages and rushed back in time to pull out the golden specimen from it’s precarious state and this eventful evenings side show.

Pain de mie

Dinner was great, bread fantastic, oh my wife? She’s okay, she’ll survive…the bread, fabulous, and full of flavor. It’s all in a daze bake!

This post will be sent to Susan for yeastspotting on www.wildyeastblog.com