Common Hours

Letting the loaf cool before supper

The hardest step in the whole recipe is the last one: an hour on the counter, uncut, while the kitchen smells of it.

A scored round sourdough loaf cooling on a marble kitchen counter beside a bread board and a butter dish.

A loaf cut too early is gummy in the middle. Everyone knows this, and every week the knife comes out twenty minutes too soon anyway.

The ritual

TakesOne hour of not cutting it
NeedsA cooling rack or a cold counter, some restraint
WhenSix until seven

How it goes

  1. Turn the loaf out onto the marble as soon as it leaves the oven.
  2. Set a timer for an hour and leave the kitchen.
  3. Cut it at supper, from the middle outwards.

Leaving the kitchen is the trick. Supper is cooked around the bread, not beside it.

Kept with: ,