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I nearly always bring bread when I’m invited to dinner. I figure it’s sort of a prepayment for whatever idiotic thing I’ll say during the meal. If I get in the hosts’ good graces in advance, perhaps they’ll be less offended later when I inadvertently mention something inflammatory about politics or religion or fashion or education or (hold on!) SUVs.

I think friends don’t have to agree on all these issues. I don’t want all my friends to think just like me. I’d be happy if they’d vote like me, but otherwise I’m content to let them keep their irrational fantasies about, say, politics or religion or fashion or education or (hold on!) SUVs, so long as I still get to come over for dinner.

Anyway, two consecutive nights of dinner invitations meant four consecutive days of baking.

Wednesday I began feeding one of my sourdoughs, a levain made with the technique described in Artisan Baking. Next I made a batch of pâte fermentée, which is a simple French bread recipe intended not as a bread itself but to bring some maturity and complexity of flavor to a younger dough.

Thursday I warmed up the pâte fermentée, which had overnighted in the cooler, and mixed it into a large recipe of pane siciliano, an Italian semolina bread dough, using a recipe from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Pictured is the dough after its bulk rise, ready for shaping.

I’ve made this bread numerous times before, although not from this recipe. My usual recipe is the pre-publication version of this one, provided by Peter Reinhart in a baking class several years ago. I was surprised to see the book’s version call for more yeast and less salt. I guess the test-kitchen folks had some undersized loaves. The stink of yeast was overpowering. Next time I’ll revert to the original recipe, unperverted by media-conglomerate recipe testers who don’t know how to make bread. Phew!

To shape these loaves, roll out to baguette length, then form into S shapes. The shaped loaves go back into the cooler, slowing down the yeast to make time for enzymes to break down the starch molecules in the flour. (Time is the most important ingredient in good bread.)

Finally, I mixed up a “soaker” of assorted whole grains for the sourdough. This spent the night on the bench next to the fermenting starter.

Friday I combined the soaker and the starter into a double batch of my “house bread,” a multigrain sourdough conglomeration. While I wasn’t looking, this sticky dough crawled out of the mixer and enveloped the motor assembly. The thermal overload switch tripped, stopping the motor. Baking tip for the day: don’t leave your mixer unattended!

The sourdough got a 5-hour bulk ferment (an hour too much), after which I shaped two boules and put them into bannetons to rise.

Meanwhile, the pane siciliano was unexpectedly under-risen. I put the dough into a warm (80°) oven to come up to size. Finally it was ready — too late for us to make it to dinner on time. I phoned in our apologies as the bread was going into the oven. We’d be late, but the bread would be fresh.

I usually bake these on a stone, but following the revised recipe, I cooked them on a sheet pan and suffered an oven mishap: uneven browning. I was happy to have five loaves, so I could pick the two best to bring to dinner. They were decent, but not spectacular; the crumb was too tight, and I should have pushed the bake a bit harder to retain some crispness in the crust.

Saturday, the sourdough loaves came out of the cooler for another few hours of rise time. I couldn’t tell if they were under-risen, or undersized due to the fact that a big handful of dough had had to be tossed (motor grease is not generally considered an accepted dough enrichment). Finally I scored the loaves and baked them on a stone. The white powder in the picture is rice flour, essential for keeping the dough from sticking to the baskets.

I got a nice oven spring, surprising given the length of fermenting. I brought the nicer of the two to dinner, where it garnered numerous nice comments for the modest baker. But it ended up on the table right in front of me, so I think I ate about half of it.

So now I have five (more) pounds of sliced bread in the freezer. I’ve spent about 12 hours over the past few days in the kitchen, endlessly mixing and measuring and stirring and washing and wiping and waiting. I am so sick of baking, I can’t even tell you.

Which means it will be about two weeks before I do it again.