sour milk peasant bread

How To Make sour milk peasant bread

• 1

  In a bowl big enough to make your bread in, get the starter going by sprinkling the yeast over the sour milk & honey {or whatever sweet you use to feed the yeast beasties}. Set aside in a warm place, covered with a bit of plastic wrap & a towel until ready to finish the bread. This process doubles as proofing your yeast, but keeping yeast in your freezer makes it last almost indefinitely {Well, I had yeast in freezer for almost 10 years anyhow!}.
• 2

  Preheat the oven to 350-375°F {Glass, preheat to 350°F}. Grease 2 baking vessels well—again, I use lard as nothing works as well for bread as lard does.
• 3

  Add the remaining ingredients to your starter and work until you are happy with it. —Can leave it relatively wet & unkneaded {this is for those days where everything hurts & you wanna just cry; results in a more crumbly quick bread}. —Can do a full out workout kneading until nice, smooth & few crevasses in the bread {this holds up well for hearty sandwiches}. This is a great option for teaching new bread bakers how to knead bread; there is an art to it & poking it is — not — kneading it!!
• 4

  Divide your dough in 2 & place in greased vessels, turning once to coat dough so it will not dry out or stick. Cover dough ball with plastic wrap—not the vessel itself. Drape a towel over it all {plastic wrap keeps your towel from being incorporated into the dough & getting nasty}. Place in a warm area. Let rest & raise until doubled in size.
• 5

  Bake 25 minutes or until golden brown; longer if you want crust to be darker or crunchier.
• 6

  Remove from oven to cool. If you wish, you can brush a bit of melted lard on the top of the crust to soften it a bit. If you want hard crusty true peasant bread, leave the lard off the the crust.
• 7

  NOTES: —Glass needs to be cooked at a lower temperature because it conducts the heat so well. —I use lard for baking bread as there is no comparison in the end result. Lard is slowly creeping into everyday life for me, while shortening & margarine are becoming curse words in my household; & lard is probably better for you than butter too. Lard is being used in almost everything I make or bake these days. —If you are doing little to no kneading & therefore have a very wet dough, use meat serving forks {they are bigger than a normal eating or a carving fork & work very well for this} to divide dough & move to baking vessel. —I bake the majority of my breads these days in bowls. The bowls I use are 2 ½ quart Anchor Hocking bowls as they are a bit more straight sided and work better for sandwich making. Depending on the thickness you cut it, 1 slice, cut into 2 top to bottom, works for a hearty & filling sandwich. Pyrex bowls work too, but I got the Anchor Hocking bowls at the thrift store dirt cheap!! —If you want a more rustic round of bread, or if you have a well kneaded, smooth ball of dough, just bake on a flat pan lined with parchment paper with a bit of cornmeal thrown on it to keep from sticking.. —If you want a traditional sandwich loaf, by all means, bake in a normal bread pan.
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