Baking and breaking bread, with thanks

Today I baked my first sourdough whole wheat bread. It came out tasty and looking good. I'm thankful for those results and that I have several really good sourdough baking resources, especially Artisan Sourdough Made Simple, which provided the basic recipe I started from today. Of course, we'll have to play some more and make it our own.

our artisan sourdough bread (not whole wheat)

Photo by J. Harrington

While thinking about whole wheat sourdough, I became obsessed (me?) with the idea of trying to bake some kernza sourdough artisan bread. Thus far I haven't yet found a local source for kernza four, but from what I have discovered, the search should be interesting and fund and, possible, tasty. We'll see. I'm thankful that some many in Minnesota are in the midst of bringing kernza and other aspects of "feeding the future" to scale and for MPR's coverage which, somehow, I had missed until today. Maybe some day we'll be brave enough to try Icelandic bread soup and we'd certainly be very thankful if we could write as well as Bill Holm.

Bread Soup: An Old Icelandic Recipe

By Bill Holm

Start with the square heavy loaf 

steamed a whole day in a hot spring 

until the coarse rye, sugar, yeast 

grow dense as a black hole of bread. 

Let it age and dry a little, 

then soak the old loaf for a day 

in warm water flavored 

with raisins and lemon slices. 

Boil it until it is thick as molasses. 

Pour it in a flat white bowl. 

Ladle a good dollop of whipped cream 

to melt in its brown belly. 

This soup is alive as any animal, 

and the yeast and cream and rye 

will sing inside you after eating 

for a long time.

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