Auvergne-style sourdough crown

I've been meaning to bake this bread for a while.  It's a relatively straightforward french sourdough, unique by virtue of its rustic shape.  (As has been pointed out to me, this particular specimen more closely resembles a toilet seat than a crown.  How's that for rustic?)  The formula from Leader's Local Breads calls for a dry, stiff levain at 50% hydration, as used in traditional French baking, which I replaced with my usual ~100% hydration starter.  I thought about mixing my starter with some flour but just went ahead with the wet starter and figured I would make adjustments if needed.  Once the levain is ready to go it's a pretty straightforward process.

Ingredients:

500g flour (3.25 cups) (type 55 would be used in France - I used a blend of all-purpose and bread flour)

340g water (1.5 cups)

125g levain starter (.5 cup)

10g salt (1.5 tsp)

1. Mix flour and water to form a rough dough and leave to hydrate for 20 min.  

2.  Add Levain and salt and knead for about 10 minutes by machine, or a little longer by hand.  

3. The initial rise is 3-4 hours, and I gave the dough a couple of turns during that time because it was a little slack, a result of the higher hydration from my starter.  

4. Once the dough is inflated and springy, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and roll it into a thick rope about 18 inches long.  

5. After I connected the ends of the rope I arranged mine on a floured peel where it sat covered for another 1.5-2 hours to proof.  

6. Before going into the oven the crown is scored all the way around on the outer edge.  Mine is a bit oblong because it stuck on the peel - more flour next time.  It baked for about 35-40 min at 400.

The result is a wheaty, sweet, only slightly sour bread with a nice crisp crust and tender crumb.  There are some bigger holes scattered around, but the shot below gives a pretty good idea of the crumb structure.  Fit for a king.

Blood Orange Sorbet and Candied Orange Peel

I picked up a brand new Cuisinart ice cream at a thrift store a couple months back.  So when I saw a pile of beautiful blood oranges a few weeks ago, I immediately thought sorbet.

After a quick search, I settled on a recipe from David Lebovitz which consists of two ingredients: fresh blood orange juice and sugar.  I also added a splash of sake.  A little alcohol helps soften homemade sorbet/ice cream since it doesn't freeze.  Here's the finished sorbet:

Not as deep red as his, but what can you do?

Following his advice, I also saved the peels and candied them.  They taste like less bitter, more sweet orange peel.  Go figure.

Sourdough Chocolate Chip Pancakes and Grilled Cheese

A good bagel and lox is the best breakfast/brunch there is.  But when I'm in the mood for another kind of decadence, chocolate chip pancakes and grilled cheese can't be topped.

In this example, the grilled cheese was made with homemade sourdough bread and the pancake batter was made with a base of extra sourdough starter.  Sourdough starter is great for making pancakes, crepes, muffins, banana bread and probably all kinds of other things.

"Pierre Nury's" Light Rye Sourdough

I've now made this bread four times, although one of those times was a failure because the sourdough starter wasn't active enough to make the dough rise properly.  Also from Leader's Local Breads.  It's not the prettiest loaf - call it rustic - but it tastes great and is really versatile.  With almost 10% rye and that sourdough punch, it's got plenty of flavor to eat on its own and its great with butter or jam.  I've also used it for sandwiches and it tastes really good with cheese.  The crust is awesome and the crumb is chewy and open.  I pretty much have the recipe memorized:

125 g firm sourdough starter (though I've used a wetter starter with slightly more mass to good effect)

400 g water

450 g bread flour (high gluten recommended - I've done a blend with as little as 20% high gluten)

50 g rye flour

15 g salt (1.5 tsp)

The most recent batch was made with my new kitchenaid 6 qt stand mixer, pictured mixing the water and flour below.

It's actually a pretty easy bread to make by hand too, even though the dough is very wet.  You mix the rye and bread flour with the water till it forms a rough dough.

After allowing the flour to absorb all the water and the gluten to develop on its own for 20 minutes, add the starter and the salt and mix for 15-18 minutes.  I've done this with a wooden spoon, and it's easier than kneading.  You want the gluten to be well-developed but I didn't actually subject the dough to a window-pane test each time and it turned out fine.

Now put the dough in a lightly oil container or mist it with cooking spray.  Allow the dough to rise for an hour, it won't rise much.  Pour the dough out onto a floured surface and turn it once; that is, pull one end of the dough over onto the center, then repeat for the other end.  After this is done, return the dough to it's container.  After another hour, it will have risen a bit more - repeat the turning operation and return the dough to the container.  Let it rise for up to about 2 hours.  It should double, but it didn't really the last time I did the recipe and it ultimately rose properly, so I guess it depends on how active the starter.

After this, retard the dough in a refrigerator for 12-24 hours.  Take it back out about 2 hours before baking.

It bakes at 450 degrees for about 35 minutes.  Make sure to steam up the oven at the beginning and of course a stone is highly preferable.

Here's a good batch - they kind of take the shape they want, although I am also constrained by the size of my baking stone which can lead to some extra contortion.

An earlier batch - guess which was made with the mixer.

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Sweet Rustic Bread, "Flute Ganachaud" and etc

Here's that sweet rustic bread from pizza night.  It's one of my favorites so far.  Moist, flavorful crumb with a pretty tender crust.  It's made with a poolish starter (from the same batch as the pizza).  In fact, Reinhart's recipe makes so much poolish that I did another round of rustic bread this week with extra that I had frozen last week.  Even after that I still had enough for the Ganachaud-style baguettes from Leader's book, which I think is the only recipe he gives that uses a poolish pre-ferment.

In addition to being delicious, the rustic bread requires essentially no kneading, which is awesome when you don't have a mixer.  The recipe calls for a couple tablespoons of olive oil and five tablespoons of sugar.  It's enough fat and sweet to make it a rich bread, but it is still very much bread and not pastry despite the fact that Reinhart pitches it as an alternative to croissants and calls for a powdered sugar topping.  It's great for jam, but really it would work for a lot of things.

After mixing the 2 cups of poolish (16 oz) with 4.5 cups of bread flour (20.25 oz), 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tsp salt, 5 tbsp sugar, 1 cup water and 1/2 tsp instant yeast (or 3/4 tsp dry yeast), the dough rises for about 3 hours.  At this point it is kneaded with some flour for a few seconds before another rise of about an hour.  After the second rise, Reinhart has you pat the dough into a 6-inch diameter disk and cut 6-8 wedges.  The wedges then proof for a couple hours before going into the fridge for the night.

I took a lot of liberties with the recipe, adding a bit of water to make mixing easier and leaving the whole mixture together as a giant loaf rather than doing disks.  The timing was also a bit improvised and the final proof lasted a long time while focus was on the pizza.  The dough turned out great though.  Very bubbly.

So bubbly in fact that it ballooned in the oven.  Here it is doing double time with some pizza.

While the overall spring was really good, that extra puff was actually a giant air pocket that covered the entire top of the loaf.  I think that contributed to the beautiful color on this loaf.

Yum.  The crust is actually tender once it cools, so it wasn't like having a cracker on top of the loaf.

In addition to the pizza and the rustic loaf, I also made a big batch of sour dough and french baguettes using the same pate fermente technique.

Here's a sourdough boule ready to score and pop in the oven.

Group shot.  The rolls are evenly split between sourdough and french.

Now, with the extra poolish I had sitting in the freezer from the pizza, I made another batch of the sweet rustic bread and tried a new bread, which is Leader's interpretation of the signature baguette of a famous French baker named Bernard Ganachaud: la flute gana.

The baker's percentage is 9% corn flour, which I subbed with some really finely ground non-instant polenta I had.  I imagine it's the same thing more or less.  The baguettes turned out well, but I went out for drinks and overproofed them by probably 2 hours.  By the time I got back they were a bit saggy.  I also need to learn how to use my couche (linen cloth to hold dough) which I used to proof them.  I didn't even attempt the signature score which is a long slash that goes the length of the baguette.  All things considered they still came out pretty well if misshapen.  I'll have to try again.

As I mentioned, I also made a second batch of the rustic bread, which turned out quite well.  I did one smaller loaf and 4 disk-like rolls or what have you.

Valentine's Day Pizza

It's been a long time since I've made pizza and I really wanted to try out some new bread techniques.  This dough recipe used a poolish starter, which is a highly liquid sponge starter made by making a batter of flour and water with a small amount of commercial yeast.  You let this get bubbly and ferment for 5 hours or more. It can be kept in the fridge for a couple days before using, and Reinhart actually prefers to ferment it overnight.  I didn't have time for this, so after the poolish was out for about 7 hours, I made the dough, which is made with bread flour, yeast, cool water, olive oil, honey and salt.  After mixing it until smooth, it rises for about 3 hours then goes in the fridge overnight.  The next day, the dough is divided up for individual pies.  I made seven.

1.  Margherita: tomato, fresh mozz, basil, parmesan and olive oil.

Pretty good char.  The dough turned out well, but it didn't have the pillowy tenderness that I was hoping for.  It was crispy and buttery rather than chewy or tough, but it didn't achieve the balance of crispness and yielding chew that I'd really like to get to.  

2. Pear, gorgonzola, some caramelized red wine onions and greens.

 Shot of some dough getting spread on the parchment paper.

 3.  Fresh local Italian sausage, roasted red and yellow peppers, red wine onions, mozz, tomato and basil.

 4.  Pork rillettes, red wine onion, parmigiano and raddichio.

 5.  Crimini and portabello mushrooms, roasted peppers, onion, tomato, mozz and basil.

 Even more char

 6.  The rest of the mushrooms and onions and pepper.

 7.  Another margherita - good for breakfast or lunch.

Very unnecessary chocolate fondue to finish.  That's a "sweet rustic bread" coming out of the chocolate pot, which will feature in the next post.

Meal for a Blizzard

Pickle soup made with onion, carrot, celery, brine from homemade dills, minced dill pickles from the Polish grocery, some frozen pork stock I made a while back, water, dill and cream.  Garnished with more dill to serve.

Elk steaks generously crusted with coarse ground peppercorns and seared on the pan.

Pan sauce with cognac, cream, onions (no shallots around unfortunately), mustard and butter.

Garnished with chopped parsley and served with some old pickled oyster mushrooms originally picked in NY.  These steaks are a treat.

I baked the buckwheat batards and the other bread in the last post on the same day, and that was served with  this meal.

Bread Part Two

These breads are all from Daniel Leader's Local Breads, which has a ton of great anecdotes and really interesting breads which I can't wait to try.  I need to source some good rye flour.

The first bread I tried from the book was a basic pain au levain, what Leader calls the "quintessential French sourdough."  The recipe calls for 6% rye flour, 24% stone ground whole wheat and 70% bread flour.  I just did 70/30 bread flour and whole wheat flour in the absence of rye.  Leader doesn't call for retarding the dough in the fridge overnight (French sourdough has very little sourness, and longer fermentation causes more acid to be produced by the lactobacillus bacteria in the sourdough), but I did anyway, mostly because of timing issues.

I can thank Leader for the tip about wetting the lame before scoring.  Here it is:

And the batards, ready for the oven.  I think they could have proofed a bit longer, but it was already midnight.  Parchment paper is very convenient.

 In the oven:

 There's the oven spring.  You can see the batard on the left already rupturing.

 And the finished bread.

 Beautiful crust.

There are a bunch of awesome looking rye breads in the book, but I still don't have any rye flour.  In the meantime, buckwheat batards caught my eye.  The bread is based on an original loaf made by Eric Kayser at his Paris boulangerie called the Paline.  I don't think I had ever had buckwheat bread, though I really like soba and galettes - both of which I would like to try to make.  Also, if anyone wants to buy me some caviar, I'll bring the blini and creme fraiche.

The bread is made with a liquid levain - a very wet sourdough starter invented by Kayser - which I approximated by feeding my starter with extra water.  The dough is about 15% buckwheat, which gives it plenty of flavor.  For the remainder I used a mix of King Arthur high gluten and bread flour.

 Ready for the oven:

 Pretty good spring:

 This bread blew my mind.  It's not like any I've ever had before, and it's delicious.  The crumb is almost blue from the buckwheat.

The last loaf I baked, also out of Leader's book, was a whole wheat sourdough miche.  The dough is made with about 85% whole wheat flour and 15% bread flour.  It's a very wet dough, at 75% hydration, and it took a lot of kneading to get it to come together and pass the windowpane test.  But it was worth it.

 Fairly dense, but perfectly chewy crumb.

I also made a walnut bread loaf with about 1/3 of the dough.  It didn't rise as well, but I'm glad I tried it.

Not pictured is a spray bottle that I use to spray water all over the oven and loaves as they go in.  I think this method of generating steam has really helped with the oven spring.

What I still need is a stand mixer.  There are some amazing looking Italian breads in the book that are apparently too wet to even bother trying without a mixer.