At some point during the spring, Ben and I watched Cooked, Michael Pollan’s documentary on the history and evolution of food preparation. In each of the four episodes — Fire, Water, Air, Earth — Pollan explores various cooking techniques, tackling classic recipes along the way. After watching Air, an episode devoted mostly to bread that prominently features Richard Bourdon of Berkshire Mountain Bakery, I added “day-trip to the Berkshires” to our summer bucket list. And last Sunday, we checked that box, taking the scenic route home from my parents’ house in Guilford, CT, making a stop in Great Barrington, MA for bread. Having watched Cooked but also knowing Bourdon’s influence — Chad Robertson’s bread journey began at BMB — we had high hopes for the naturally leavened sourdough loaves made from flour milled on the premises. And while the bread more than lived up to its reputation, the trip turned out to be so much more than a check off a bucket list. No sooner had we walked through the bakery door than Bourdon himself appeared. Tools in hand, he was on his way to fix a floor, but we stopped him to say hello and to tell him how much we loved Cooked, which led to a discussion about grains, flour, digestion, fermentation, fire, water, time — I could have listened all day. We picked up two take-and-bake pizzas along with a potato-rosemary boule and two loaves of ciabatta, which we tore into on the way home and snacked on all week. For breakfast on Wednesday, remembering a recent comment on the roasted vegetables with tahini and za’atar post, I toasted a few slices of ciabatta, spread them with a yogurt-tahini sauce (leftover from a Swiss Chard Ottolenghi recipe), and topped it all with slices of salted cucumber. I loved it so much, I made it again for dinner, serving broiled slices of ciabatta aside a ribbony cucumber salad atop a smear of yogurt-tahini sauce. Apart from broiling the bread, this essentially is a no-cook meal, a refreshing salad to make good use of those cool summer cucs, which might just be arriving in droves.
Berkshire Mountain Bakery ciabatta:
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