Cold Dough Rising

February is my favorite time of year. When the ground is still frozen and the light is coming back.

Cold dough rising.

The last few times I've baked bread I set up my previously refrigerated dough to rise as grapefruit-sized boules inside a cold oven, and then when it warmed to room temps (which is 50 degrees in my house), I turned on my electric oven to 450, rather than preheating. It worked! If you have a gas oven it might heat up too fast to do this method so try this: turn to 200 degrees place dough in oven for 20 minutes and then turn it up to 450.

The slow kill reminds me of my grandmother cooking lobster. She placed a live lobster in in a big pot of cold water and then turned on the gas flame below. As the water temps heated up the lobster became uncomfortable so he crawled out of the pot. You can't blame him! My grandmother, never having cooked a lobster before freaked out, she climbed onto her yellow dinette kitchen chair and stood there screaming in her Brighton Beach apartment until my grandfather rescued her. The fact that Jews are forbidden to eat lobster is another story.