I received the latest Cook’s Illustrated in the mail. And I just had to try out the new bread recipe. While not a true “no-knead” recipe (you do it about 10 to 15 times), it is pretty close. But that was not what was interesting about this recipe. The first unique thing was cooking it in a preheated dutch oven. This created a nice and steamy sauna for the bread to cook in. The other thing was using lager beer (Moosehead in this instance) and white vinegar to simulate sourdough starters.

When I went to turn on the oven to 500, I noticed this sourdough chip laying in the dripping pan. My last batch of sourdough starter was overly expansionistic and I forgot about its escapees. Millions of them gave their lives to become this chip.