Salt and Bread
So I was recently thinking of ways to spice up bread recipes. I wanted to stick with the traditional flour, water, salt, yeast, but I wanted to find a way to give it a little extra uumph, if you know what I mean. Then it hit me: artisan salts. I had recently received a selection of artisinal salts for christmas from a company called The Meadow (www.atthemeadow.com [1]), so I put them to use. For most loaves, I used the salt in the dough as you normally would, but I also sprinkled some on top of the dough as a garnish just before loading them into the oven. I can't remember the names of all of them I used, but I particularly like this one salt that was a grayish color and was shaped like a pyramid believe it or not. They all gave a nice crunch on top of the loaf, though there wasn't much difference to the taste of the crumb. One thing I would suggest is decreasing the overall amount of salt in the dough to make up for the extra salt on top. It's a little more costly than regular salt, but it's nice every once in a while.