How we bake our bread

Every loaf we serve at Lumbre starts the evening before, in a glass jar on the shelf above the oven. The starter in that jar is older than the kitchen itself: it came with Rosa, who baked for the village for thirty years, and it has been fed almost every day since. This is how a loaf goes from that jar to your table, and why we still do it the slow way.

Why we bake with a starter#

Bread made with commercial yeast is ready in three hours. Ours takes closer to thirty. The time is not nostalgia: it is what gives the crumb its open holes, the crust its colour and the loaf its slight sourness, the kind you notice with butter and forget with cheese.

Slow fermentation also does part of the digestion for you. The bacteria in the starter break down some of the flour's starches and gluten before the dough ever reaches the oven, which is why guests who avoid bread at home often take a second slice here.

A good loaf is mostly waiting. The baker's job is to know when to stop waiting.

Feeding it the night before#

Around nine in the evening, whoever closes the kitchen feeds the starter: equal weights of flour and water, stirred in with a wooden spoon. Then the jar goes back to its warm corner.

What a healthy starter looks like#

• By morning it has doubled and its top is domed, not sunken.

• It smells of yoghurt and green apples, never of nail varnish.

• A spoonful dropped in water floats.

If it fails any of the three, we feed it again and wait. Bread made from a tired starter is heavy, and no amount of oven heat will fix that.

Rye from the mill in Valderrobres goes in with the white flour.

Flour from the valley#

We mix a white bread flour with about fifteen per cent wholemeal rye from the mill in Valderrobres. The rye gives the starter something to chew on and the bread a darker, nuttier crumb. The mill grinds it once a week, so we never keep more than a fortnight's worth.

Mixing, folding and the long rest#

At seven the next morning the starter goes into a large bowl with flour, water and, an hour later, salt. There is no kneading. Instead, the dough is folded four times over two hours: a hand under one side, lifted and laid over the other, a quarter turn of the bowl, again.

1. First fold: the dough is shaggy and tears easily.

2. Second fold: it starts to hold together.

3. Third fold: it stretches without tearing.

4. Fourth fold: it is smooth, airy and jiggles when the bowl moves.

After the folds it rests, covered, until it has grown by about half. In summer that is three hours; in January it can be six.

Shaping#

The dough is turned out, divided by eye and shaped into rounds with as little flour as possible. Each round goes seam up into a basket lined with a linen cloth, and the baskets go into the cold room overnight.

Into the wood oven#

The oven is lit at six, with oak and a few olive prunings for a fast, clean heat. By eight the floor is white hot and the fire is pushed to the back. The loaves are turned out onto a peel, scored once with a razor and slid onto the stone.

For the first twenty minutes the door stays closed, so the steam from the dough keeps the crust soft long enough for the loaf to rise. Then the door opens, the steam leaves and the crust starts to colour. Forty minutes in all, give or take the weather.

Forty minutes on the stone, the door closed for the first twenty.

Bread at the table#

The loaves cool on a rack by the kitchen window until lunch. We cut them at the table, with this year's oil from the mill and a little salt, and what is left becomes breadcrumbs for the evening's stew. Nothing goes in the bin.

If you would like to bake it yourself, we run a sourdough workshop most months. You go home with a loaf, a jar of our starter and Rosa's notes, which are better than these.