European Peasant Bread

August 8, 2010 at 9:06 am (Baking, Books/Publications, Bread)

A fresh loaf of peasant bread

A fresh loaf of peasant bread

Last week we woke up to temperatures in the 40s, seemed a good reason to bake a loaf of hearty bread. This earthy bread is a snap to make using the recipe from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois. Once you’ve mixed up the dough (in about five minutes), you’ll have enough dough for four loaves; it keeps in the refrigerator for two weeks.

Here is the recipe from the book, along with my “tweaks:”

European Peasant Bread

  •  3 cups lukewarm water
  • 1 ½ tablespoons granulated yeast
  • 1 ½ tablespoons salt
  • ½ cup rye flour
  • ½ cup wheat flour (I use 1 cup)
  • 5 ½ cups unbleached all-purpose or bread flour (I use 5 cups because I used more wheat)
  • Cornmeal for the pizza peel (when you bake)
  1. Mix the yeast and salt with the water in a 5-quart bowl, I use my stand mixer bowl. Mix in the remaining ingredients (not the cornmeal) without kneading either by hand or in a heavy-duty mixer with a dough hook (which is what I use). Mix until all the flour is incorporated into the dough but do not knead the dough.
  2. Cover dough and allow to rise at room temperature until it rises and collapses, about 2 hours (I let mine go about 2 ½ hours at this elevation). The dough can be used immediately after rising, but it will be very wet; it’s easier to handle after being chilled overnight. Refrigerate in a lidded (but not airtight) container and use over the next two weeks. I use a 5-quart ice-cream pail and leave the lid cracked.
  3. On baking day, dust the surface of the dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound piece (about the size of a grapefruit). Dust with more flour and shape into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn each time. Allow to rest on a cornmeal-covered pizza peel for 40 minutes (I have left mine for an hour at it’s still great).
  4. Twenty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450 degrees with a baking stone placed on the middle rack. Place an empty broiler tray (a metal cake pan works just as well) on any other shelf that won’t be in the bread’s way. Sprinkle the loaf with flour and using a serrated knife, slash lines, a cross, or a tic-tac-toe pattern on the top of the bread. Leave the flour in place for baking, but you can tap it off before eating.
  5. Slide the loaf directly onto the hot stone. Pour 1 cup of hot tap water into the into the broiler tray/cake pan and quickly close the oven door. Bake for about 35 minutes or until the top is deeply brown and very firm. It’s better to go longer on time than shorter since this is a fairly wet dough; it’s easy to underbake but very hard to overbake. Allow to cool before slicing.

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Fresh Brioche Cinnamon Bread

December 28, 2009 at 10:44 pm (Baking, Bread)

A fresh loaf of brioche cinnamon bread

I made this loaf of cinnamon bread with leftover brioche dough, which I had used to make my Christmas-morning sweet rolls.  It makes fantastic toast!

Brioche is a sweet French bread made with butter and eggs, and makes good sweet rolls and French toast. This recipe comes out of the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book; it will keep in the refrigerator for up to five days.

Brioche

1 ½ cups lukewarm water

1 ½ tablespoons granulated yeast

1 ½ tablespoons salt

8 eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup honey

1 ½ cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

7 ½ cups unbleached flour

Mix the yeast, salt, eggs, honey and melted butter with the water in a 5-quart bowl or a lidded (not airtight) food container.

Mix the flour without kneading using a spoon or a large capacity mixer or food processor with a dough hook. If you’re not using a machine, you may need to use wet hands in work in the last bit of flour. The dough will be loose but will firm up when chilled; don’t try to work with it before chilling.

Cover (not airtight) and allow to rest at room temperature for about 2 hours, until dough rises and collapses on top.

The dough can be used as soon as it’s chilled after the initial rise. Refrigerate in a lidded (not airtight) container and use over the next 5 days. Beyond 5 days, freeze the dough in 1-pound portions for up to 4 weeks. When using frozen dough, thaw in refrigerator for 24 hours before using, then allow usual rest and rise times.

On baking day, grease a 9x4x3 loaf pan. Dust the surface of the refrigerated dough with flour and cut off a 1-pound (grapefruit sized) piece. Dust the piece with more flour and quickly shape into a ball by stretching the surface of the dough around to the bottom on all four sides, rotating the ball a quarter-turn as you go.

Elongate into an oval and place in prepared pan. Allow to rest for 1 hour and 20 minutes. If making cinnamon bread, roll dough out into an oval or rectangle about ¼ inch thick. Brush top of dough with melted butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and then roll into a log. You may have to cut of the ends to get it to fit into the loaf pan (that’s what those funny little buns are in my photo). Since I had rolled it out, I allowed it to rest and rise for at least 1 ½ hours.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush top of crust with an egg wash if you wish.

Place bread near the center of the oven and bake fore 35 – 40 minutes or until a medium golden brown. Allow to cool before slicing.

 Because I made my loaf with more than a 1-pound piece, mine was probably 1 ½ pounds (cantaloupe sized), I baked it for an hour at 350 degrees. This makes fantastic toast!

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Pies and Wine

November 26, 2009 at 12:20 pm (Baking, Thanksgiving)

Pies made with local ingredients and domestic wine for Thanksgiving

We made pies tonight for our Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow, left to right: rhubarb, pumpkin (2) and apple. The wines are from California, Missouri and Washington. Wishing everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving.

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Dakota Maid Flour

August 7, 2009 at 3:27 am (Baking, Bread, Flour)

Dakota Maid Bread Flour

Dakota Maid Bread Flour

For most people who bake, finding local flour is problematic. Where flour mills once sprinkled the country, they are now few and far between. The most local flour available is Dakota Maid Flour, milled in Grand Forks, North Dakota. While Grand Forks isn’t exactly next door, at least it’s in the next state. The flour is also widely distributed in this region, making it easy to find as well as semi-local.

I go back and forth between the all-purpose flour and bread flour. If I’m going to bake a significant number of cookies, I’ll pick up the all-purpose, which still makes fine bread. The bread flour makes exceptional yeast bread and works well for quick breads like scones and biscuits. Both are unbleached and unbromated, a must since I refuse to buy bleached flour.

For my whole grains, I tend to stick with Bob’s Red Mill. No, it’s not local, but most of the products are organic. If I can’t get local rye flour or oatmeal (and I can’t) then going organic seems to be a reasonable compromise. Plus, the quality is exceptional.

I do possess a hand-crank grain mill as well as five quarts of hard, spring wheat with intention to grind. However, I’ve been procrastinating cleaning the wheat, so it stays whole for the time being. This is wheat from my friend, so not only is it local, it’s also chemical-free. I’m sure it will make delicious bread when the time comes.

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Sourdough starter looks good

July 25, 2009 at 9:48 pm (Baking, Sourdough)

Sorry I’ve been slowing in posting! It’s been a hectic week with taking my daughter to camp, brining her back, picking up a cat, etc. The cat fancies herself a typist, too. :)

This starter looks good; it developed that bubbly foam at the top and smells quite yeasty, kind of like beer. I haven’t set the sponge yet to try it, but plan to do so soon.

It looks like adding a little yeast to the starter can make a huge difference. I added about a teaspoon when I first mixed the starter; then I alternated between adding yeast and not adding it when I fed it over the next four days. On the days when I added it, I just sprinkled a tiny amount in with the flour and water I was mixing.

But the proof will be in the pudding, or bread rather.

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Giving sourdough another try

July 20, 2009 at 10:30 pm (Baking, Sourdough)

After my first attempt at sourdough fizzled, I’m giving it another shot. This is an ancient skill; evidence of sourdough has been discovered amongst the artifacts of ancient Egypt. One source indicated that sourdough has been around for 5,000 years; it was the original leavened bread. So if people dating back to 3,000 B.C.E. could do do this, I feel I owe it to them to give it one more try.

Now Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results, so I’ve tweaked the starter with a teaspoon of yeast. This batch is more bubbly and already smells fermented, even though this is only the morning of day three. I’m also stirring it more often; one starter recipe I found online suggested stirring the starter several times per day. Basically it’s the same starter recipe as before, but with yeast and extra stirring. I’ll keep you posted.

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Scones with fresh strawberry jam

July 8, 2009 at 6:31 am (Baking, Food skills, Jelly)

Freshly baked scones with jam

Freshly baked scones with jam

There’s something satisfying about baking from scratch, no bakery donuts can ever quite compare. For the past couple weeks, my young cousin (who is the same age as my daughter) has been visiting, so I’ve baked a variety of goods. He’s not accustomed to home baking, so splendidly ordinary for us is a special treat for him. Since today was his last day here, I baked cream scones this morning and cooked down a couple cups fresh strawberries into a fresh jam. Yum!

Cream Scones

2 cups unbleached flour

3 Tb sugar

1 Tb baking powder

½ tsp salt

6 Tb cold butter, cut into pieces

½ cup cream (or half-and-half, milk also works fine)

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

 

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease or line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

 

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl (I use my Kitchenaid stand mixer). If hand mixing, use a pastry blender to cut in the butter until it’s the size of peas. The mixer with the paddle attachment also works well, just pay attention to the size of the butter pieces.

 

Stir cream and eggs together and then add to flour/butter mixture. Mix just until the dough comes together – do not over-mix! Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and pat into a rectangle about ¾ inch thick. Using a biscuit cutter, cut into rounds and place on baking sheet.

 

Bake 16 to 20 minutes. Makes about 12 scones

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Sourdough a dud

July 4, 2009 at 8:49 am (Baking, Food skills, Sourdough)

The sponge didn’t proof, no froth, no foam, just a few random bubbles on the top. So I’ll dump it in the compost bin and start a new batch. This first attempt didn’t work out, but it was a learning process. Maybe I’ll get the next one right!

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Sourdough progress

July 3, 2009 at 9:34 pm (Baking, Food skills, Sourdough)

My sourdough sponge

My sourdough sponge

Time to see whether or not my sourdough starter is any good, the moment of truth. Well, more like hours of truth. This morning I started proofing the sponge, which can take 8+ hours.

To start the sponge, I pulled the jar of starter out of the fridge and poured the whole thing into a glass bowl. Then I added 1 cup of flour and 1 cup of warm water, stirred it all together and let it sit. According to my sourdough directions (see post about the starter), it should become foamy over the course of several hours. After it’s foamy, I can bake my bread.

I know I said I wanted to make sourdough flapjacks; however, I’m going with bread first to see if I got the starter right. Also, I don’t have a flapjack recipe yet. If this starter is a dud, I’ll start another one using a little bit of yeast, which some folks do in order to get their starter going. Grandpa did this, so I feel historically justified. :)

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Sourdough

June 28, 2009 at 9:34 pm (Baking, Food skills, Sourdough)

Sourdough starter

Sourdough starter

The past couple of years have been revelatory for me in baking bread. Up until two or three years ago, I was a quick-bread type of person; yeast terrified me. Part of that was intimidation — my mom is a terrific breadmaker. White, wheat, baguettes, marble rye, dinner rolls, etc., she makes them all. Eventually I realized I’d never get the technique down if I didn’t start trying. So I made some really bad loaves and some passable ones. Now they’re consistently decent to great (great bread seems to depend on weather patterns and possibly how happy the bread gods are). Having the technique down, I’ve decided to try my hand at sourdough.

My grandpa made sourdough, but usually not as bread. He made flapjacks, delicious flapjacks (don’t call them pancakes!). Sourdough was his specialty, along with campfire coffee. I don’t know exactly how he made his starter, so I’m using a basic starter recipe that I found online from a guy who is really into his sourdough, S. John Ross http://www.io.com/~sjohn/sour.htm. Starting the starter worked exactly like he said it would, and now I’ve moved the starter into the fridge to keep, feeding it once per week. He also has a bread recipe on the site, which I haven’t tried yet, but plan to before the week is out. As for Grandpa’s flapjacks, I need to get in touch with my cousin to see if she has the recipe. I’ll let you know how they turn out!

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