Issue 6: Sour Cherry Walnut Sourdough + Bull Mountain

Sourdough with tart cherries and walnuts, plus a book about outlaws and longstanding bitterness

Mar 15, 2022

Welcome to Good Book/Good Bread! Every two weeks, I recommend a book I love, and bake a delicious bread that fits with an aspect of the story. This week: Bull Mountain by Brian Panowich and sour cherry and walnut sourdough. Haven’t subscribed yet? Sign up here!

Part 1: Good Book

Setting the tone

Listen to Bloodline by The Dan Adams Band here, a song written specifically for the book after author Brian Panowich sent the manuscript to Adams.

In a nutshell

Bull Mountain is a sweeping multi-generational work of fiction that tells the story of the Burroughs family, a clan of outlaws in Georgia who have spent decades running moonshine and drugs from their mountain home over state lines. Author Brian Panowich centers the story on Clayton Burroughs, who left the family business and ended up in law enforcement in a closeby town. He has two brothers—one murdered, and one overseeing the family business. Clayton has been trying to lead a straight life, despite the outsize infamy attached to his last name and his family’s continued illicit operations just up the road. When a federal agent shows up at Clayton’s office asking questions about his family, it throws his attempts to distance himself from his troubled family into disarray.

Three things I liked about Bull Mountain

1. Reader gets perspective on origins on violence

This book contains a fair amount of violent scenes, mostly centered around the Burroughs family attempting to protect themselves and their interests (in this way it reminds me a lot of Yellowstone, without the bunkhouse romance).

Because Panowich provides a lot of family backstory throughout the narrative, as a reader you develop an understanding for where this violence comes from. We get a glimpse into some chilling childhood experiences members of the Burroughs family had, allowing for some greater perspective on the violence they extend out towards others as adults.

2. Dialogue is really natural

Bull Mountain is a very dialogue-heavy book. Some sections have three pages of nearly straight dialogue, but it is done in a really natural way. Nothing is more distracting than reading stilted dialogue where characters are communicating with each other in a way that would never happen in real life. I’m thinking of examples like characters referring to each other by name at the start of almost every sentence. Panowich allows his characters’ dialogue to flow easily, while also developing distinct ways of speaking for each character that let me hear the voices I was seeing on the page. I felt like I was just moving my head back and forth watching two people having a conversation in front of me.

3. Shows us characters with serious flaws, but not bad characters

I think Panowich does a really good job of efficiently presenting characters with all of their flaws, and still convincing the reader to empathize with them to a certain degree. I don’t think there is one character we meet that is portrayed as solely good or bad. Even the more problematic characters are shown in a fulsome way, where even if their actions are jarring, we can see them as real products of their circumstances.

If you like Bull Mountain, read this:

Like Lions by Brian Panowich
Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby
A Tree Born Crooked by Steph Post

Part 2: Good Bread

Sourdough with sour cherries and walnuts

Why this bread for this book?

An undercurrent that drives the plot of Bull Mountain is longstanding resentment through generations. I thought incorporating both dried sour cherries and walnuts into sourdough connected well to the bitterness that surrounds the Burroughs clan and their home on Bull Mountain. I also gave this batch of sourdough a long autolyse to increase its sour flavour. Walnuts release their deep purple tannins into the dough as they bake, making me think of the darkness and violence the Burroughs family is both sustained by and cannot seem to escape.

Recipe and modifications:

I often use Tartine’s sourdough recipe, but I also really like a variation from The Kitchn, which you can view here. The biggest difference is that the The Kitchn’s recipe makes smaller loaves and the hydration is slightly lower. I added ⅔ cup walnuts and ⅔ cup dried sour cherries during the fourth fold. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to add them earlier so they had more time to become incorporated, as some of the walnuts ended up crowded in one part of the loaf. Regardless, this bread was delicious and has a really nice mix of textures, with the soft crumb of the bread, the chewy dried cherries and crunchy walnuts.

Works well:

With cream cheese
With jam or any kind of sweet preserve to counteract the sour cherries
With Nutella