Mid-July is a good time to do what I enjoy most — conceive, create, and consume great meals. It’s a time when fresh vegetables are in season and plentiful at local farm stands; it’s a period when I have the time to select and gather superb ingredients; and it’s a month when I have the time to devote to making homemade sourdough bread and homemade pastas. I’d like to share with you the highlights.

Bread

A month ago I had made one of the tastiest breads in my 14 years of bread baking. It was an 80/20 sourdough blend (80% white bread flour and 20% whole grain flours). This time I decided to make one small tweak to the ingredients, reducing the white bread flour by only 20 grams and replacing it with the equivalent amount of Type 85 flour. Thus, the final mix was 78/22:

• 780 g white bread four
• 100 g freshly-milled spelt flour
• 50 g freshly-milled rye flour
• 50 g freshly-milled sprouted red wheat flour
• 20 g Type 85 flour

Making sourdough begins the night before, when I add fresh flour and water to 50 grams of my bread starter to prepare the Levain. During the six hours the next day for developing the dough the next day, everything seemed to be going smoothly — until I got to the bread shaping steps.

The dough refused to hold together, with tears in the structure, causing minor panic. After 1/2 hour of bench rest for the two loaves, I followed instructions for remedial work, and I repeated the shaping and bench rest steps. I didn’t get restored confidence, but the loaves seemed to hold together well enough that I got them into their bannetons and into the refrigerator for 4.5 hours to proof slowly before baking. I made one boule and one batard. The loaves did not have the oven spring I had hoped for and the shapes were a little weird. Fortunately, when I cut a slice of the still-warm loaf and buttered it lightly, I was very happy with the taste and texture.

To celebrate I opened a 2017 bottle of Chinon, a delightful Loire Valley red wine of 100% Cabernet Franc. It was definitely up to the task.

A few days later I took a trip into Cambridge for fish and came home with two salmon fillets. My wife turned those into Gravlax three days later, and we had another excellent use for the sourdough.

Other Notable Meals

One other time-consuming dish was a repeat (see blog of 6/16/23) of homemade spinach tagliatelle. This involved taking a package of freshly-picked baby spinach (8 oz. including the stems, 6 oz. after the stems were removed), washing the leaves and puréeing them in a food processor. The process then is to mix a blend of pasta flours (“00”, Majorca, and Semolina) and one large egg plus salt until the dough is stiff enough to roll out for pasta. Normally I make a small batch with about 100 grams of flour or a big batch with 200 g and 2 eggs. To my amazement the spinach purée contained so much water that I needed about 400 g of the flour blend to make the pasta. The final dish included fresh leek and green beans, lemon zest and grated Pecorino cheese. All’s well that ends well.

One day recently I had to defrost a block of frozen squid. This led to a delicious discovery of a recipe for calamari with potatoes and Piment d’Esplette, accompanied by a Sardinian Vermentino.

A few leftover beets went supremely well with slice red onion, Feta cheese, and Balsamic Vinegar.

To feed us comfortably during the extremely hot and humid days this July, my wife mastered the art of making cold soups — Gazpacho, with watermelon and tomatoes.