Update on Clive… (sent out as a email earlier today, 4-10-20)

Good news… and indeterminate news… well as of this typing I have to report some indeterminate news… I can only state that fake it is not:

 Part of Clive is dead
As he's been baked into bread
With which we've been fed

And the good news… the part whole wheat bread flour, white multipurpose flour, white bread flour, part Great Northern based yeast, part Great Northern based bacteria concoction.. like no other on earth with the surname and only name, Clive, bred and raised on the good ship Great Northern, makes for a pretty tasty loaf of sourdough bread. Wow what a process…

Make the starter and grow it for 6 days. On day seven, get a bowl, add 3 types of flour to it and the requisite purified water and set it aside to rest for an hour (autolyze phase). Prep a proofing area between 80-90 degrees… (my stove has a bread proofing setting so that works sort of… except the heat was too high… so I had to play that a bit. Stir in the starter, and proof for 30 minutes. Add salt, mix with hands and proof for another 30 minutes. Fold and then proof for 30 minutes… which is essentially dough yoga where you stretch out the forming gluten to make it stretchier and more nubile. Fold again with some more dough yoga and proof for another 45 minutes. Gently now… oh so gently, caressingly fold the dough in a manner to keep as much air as possible in the dough, and proof for 1.5 hours. Pre-shape the dough and rest for 30 minutes at room temp. Shape it and place it in a banneton… which I did not have so I put it in a well floured silicone bread mold. Refrigerate overnight. Preheat a Dutch oven in the oven at 515 degrees for 30 minutes. Pull the dough out of the frig and get it out of the banneton… er… silicone mold substitute. The dough stuck to the silicone. Damn. Persevere and insist. Really, what choice is there? Bake the dough at 515 degrees in the hot Dutch oven. Without burning yourself, remove the half baked dough from the Dutch oven at 17 minutes, and place directly on the oven wire shelf. Reduce oven to 400 degrees and baked the bread that for another 23 minutes. Take it out and place on a wire rack to cool for 45 minutes. Phew! (All the steps courtesy of the blog site: acouplecooks.com)

And finally… finally after 8 days of prep and waiting… I sliced into it and… it was wonderful…