Our recipe · Living starter

Prairie Rye Sourdough

Yield 2 hearth loaves · Ferment 12 h · Bake 40 min

About the date. This loaf used to be called the "1923 Heirloom Prairie Sourdough," described as a century-old crock passed down. That crock is our invention — a piece of the game's fiction, listed as such on our sources page — and three other pages were stating it as family history. The date is gone; the bread is good.

Method

Feed an active wild-yeast starter with warm water and rye flour. Mix with stone-ground bread flour, autolyse 45 minutes, knead with sea salt, and give it four stretch-and-folds over three hours. Proof overnight in bannetons dusted with rice flour. Bake at 450 °F in a preheated covered cast-iron pot, lid on for 20 minutes and off for 20 more, until the crust is deep and blistered.

A masonry oven does this differently: after two to three hours of firing it holds falling heat for hours, so the bread goes in first and the slower dishes follow it down the curve. That is the sequence a pich was built for.