Farine

Crazy for Bread

You are here: Home / blog

Carrot-Zucchini Bread with Candied Ginger

Here we are, back in the Pacific Northwest where the nights are blissfully cool and the days sweet and bright (for now at least). After more than a month in the food desert that is the little corner of upstate New York where we have been spending our summer vacations since forever, I was eager to bite into vegetables which didn’t look as if they had sprouted, plastic-clad, on a supermarket shelf, in other words, I couldn’t wait to go back to our little CSA.
I knew it was too early for tomatoes in our neck of the woods, so I wasn’t expecting any (I wasn’t disappointed!). I also knew zucchini season was on and I was ready with some recipes but  I wasn’t prepared for our basket to be almost completely taken over by the green and yellow stuff!

What you see on the picture above is just a sample of the crop. We had way more than that and I knew I had to go beyond sautéed garlic zucchini, zucchini risotto or courgettes farcies (stuffed zucchini). I needed to make something we could freeze and enjoy later, maybe when summer would be but a memory.

It so happened I had just put away a little bag of candied ginger I had bought in Vermont on my way back from Gérard Rubaud’s bakery (I have noticed that ginger helps me stay alert when I have to drive long-distance, maybe because it is so spicy) and I had been wondering what to use it for now that I was back home. 
So when I saw a recipe for a bread using zucchini, carrots and candied ginger in Janet Fletcher’s beautifully photographed book, Eating Local, The Cookbook Inspired by American Farmers, I knew I had found what I was looking for.
I adapted the recipe a bit: I replaced all of the all-purpose flour by white whole wheat flour and all of the canola oil (which I didn’t have) by extra-light olive oil; I more than halved the sugar (using 150 g instead of a whooping 390 g!) and I didn’t use any cinnamon (which I don’t much care for). It came out so tasty that even my eleven-month old granddaughter (already a miniature foodie) loved it (despite the heat of the ginger). Try it if you are swimming in zucchini. You won’t regret it… 

Ingredients: (for two quick breads)

  • 400 g freshly-milled white whole wheat flour (I had white wheat berries I needed to use but store-bought flour would work just fine)
  • 3 g ground ginger 
  • 5 g baking soda (1.5 tsp)
  • 1 (scant) g baking powder (1/4 tsp)
  • 4 g sea salt
  • 90 g chopped candied ginger
  • 3 large eggs
  • 200 g extra-light olive oil
  • 150 g sugar
  • 10 g vanilla extract
  • 110 g carrots, scrubbed and grated
  • 150 g zucchini, grated (unpeeled)

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/163°C and lightly oil two quick-bread pans (Fletcher says to use 8.5 x 4.5 pans but I only have the two I bought at Ikea and they are 10 x 4.5)
  2. Mix together flour, ginger, baking soda and baking powder, sifting if you like (I didn’t sift but I whisked). Add salt and candied ginger and whisk
  3. In large bowl, whisk eggs until foamy. Whisk in oil, sugar and vanilla. Add carrots and zucchini and whisk again
  4. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and stir with wooden spoon until roughly blended
  5. Divide the batter between the two pans
  6. Bake about one hour (do the toothpick test to judge doneness)
  7. Cool on a rack (but wait 10 minutes before taking the breads out of the pans)
  8. Enjoy!

There are many more glorious recipes in Fletcher’s book and even though it was recommended to me for the photography (which is by Sara Remington and truly stunning), I know I will refer to it over and over throughout the summer, the fall and into early winter just to figure out what to cook from the CSA or the market. It is organized by veggie or fruit and there are also a poultry, meat and eggs section at the end. It features ten different farms from across the country.
It is a lovely book to own if you have a garden or have access to a farm or farmer’s market. I got mine used online and it is stamped “No longer the property of the St. Louis Public Library” in bold red letters. It still bears its Dewey identification number: 641.5 EATING.  Since it was only published in 2010, your local library might also still own it.

100% Whole Grain Spelt & Kamut Pavés

Maybe because it is summer and I bake constantly to feed my family, I find I have become a minimalist when it comes to bread: I like doughs that require minimum intervention on my part (an autolyse and a few folds and they are on their way) and yield loaves that bring smiles to everyone’s face while providing good nutrition (the more whole grains the better). These pavés (pavé is French for cobblestone) satisfy on all counts.
The inspiration came from a facebook post by French SHB Thierry Delabre who created a half-kamut and half-spelt bread he called a “fanette”. Thierry used a firm levain, hydrated the dough at 75% and retarded it for 16 hours at 43° F/6° C. The result (which I wish I could show you but the pictures are on facebook, not on the web) was a beautifully golden rustic loaf.
I had freshly stoneground whole kamut flour which I had bought across the river in Ontario the day before and I had a bag of Quebec spelt grains I could mill but I was all out of mature firm levain and I couldn’t go beyond eight hours’ total fermentation time as we needed bread for dinner: there have been six of us here at camp in upstate New York for the past ten days and I don’t believe I have ever seen such bread eaters as these three little kids – one seven-year old and five-year old twins. I bake and bake and barely keep up. Whenever they are hungry, bread is the first thing they ask for, quite often with no adornment, not even butter, like true bread purists! It keeps me pretty busy but I love knowing that the taste of bread is being passed down to their generation.
Plus they see me mix dough everyday, usually when they are having breakfast. Maybe one day when they are all grown-up and crave honest bread, they’ll remember that all it takes is a big bowl and two hands and they’ll want to learn how to make their own. One can only hope, right?
I didn’t have a working firm levain but I had plenty of the liquid variety and it smelled so good I had to bake with it or I would be tempted to eat it with a spoon (just kidding!). To come back to the kids (and I promise I won’t mention them again in this post), another thing that goes straight to my baker’s heart is that they all three love the fragrance of levain and breathe it in with relish whenever they have a chance (they say it smells like bread!). Ok, so enough with the grand-kids and on to the dough.
I decided to borrow Thierry’s idea and go for a 100% whole-grain loaf that would be 50% spelt and 50% kamut but I would use liquid levain and I would up the hydration a bit. Like him, I would do one post-fermentation fold in lieu of pre-shaping and cut the folded dough into rectangles without further shaping (hence the pavé shape). Unlike Thierry – whose dough had a different consistency – I wouldn’t score.
The bread came out seductively “moëlleux” (a French word I always have trouble translating: it means “mellow”, “tender”, “cushy” and “smooth” at the same time -it can also mean “sweet” when applied to wine- and I don’t think there is an exact equivalent in English) and yet it is the word that comes irresistibly to my mind when I think about kamut. Spelt tends to be a bit drier in the mouth but it is sweet and fragrant in its own right and combined, the two grains conjure up the scent and taste of summer itself, sun-baked fields and all. These pavés may not be much to look at: I lack couches here at camp, so they spread a bit as they proofed, especially because both kamut and spelt are low in gluten, but they do pack a wallop in the mouth.

Ingredients: (all organic)

  • 493 g whole kamut flour
  • 493 g freshly-milled whole spelt flour
  • 749 g water
  • 295 g mature wheat levain at 100% hydration
  • 18 g salt

Method: (hand-mixed)

  1. Mix both flours with all the water until no dry flour remains and let rest, covered, 20 to 40 minutes
  2. Add the levain and mix until incorporated
  3. Add the salt
  4. Cover the dough and let it rest, doing as many folds as necessary to obtain medium soft consistency
  5. When the dough is ready (it took about seven hours at my house with folds every thirty minutes for the first two hours but then the outside temperature was otherworldly hot and we had the A/C on all day), transfer it out of the bowl on a floured surface and fold it once over itself length-wise forming a long rectangle (no overlapping)
  6. Pre-heat the oven to 470°
  7. Using a wet dough scraper, cut the dough into four even pieces
  8. Transfer the pieces to baking sheets lined with parchment paper (heavily dusted with semolina) (as mentioned before, I have no couches here, hence the paper, but if you can, it would be better to proof the pavés upside down on heavily floured couches, turning them right side up prior to baking)
  9. Cover and let rest for 30 to 45 minutes
  10. Bake with steam in pre-heated oven (470°F/243°C for 10 minutes then lower the oven temperature to 450°F/232°C and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes, turning the loaves half-way through to ensure even baking (again these temperatures are given solely as an indication. Here at camp, the oven is small, very old and rather weak and I have to crank it up to the max. I actually set it on 500°F+  for the initial 10 minutes and on 470°F for the remaining 20 minutes or so but, from past experience with my regular home oven, I would say 470° F and 450°F should do the trick. If your oven is very efficient however, these temperatures might need to be adjusted down)
  11. Cool on a rack
  12. Enjoy!
The Whole Spelt & Kamut Pavés go to Susan from Wild Yeast for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

Gérard Rubaud’s Apprentice Loaf

The Apprentice Loaf is Gérard Rubaud‘s teaching bread. He has developed the formula in collaboration with two of his former apprentices, Trenton and Justin, largely in response to customers’ request for more whole grains. It is still a work in progress (what isn’t with Gérard anyway?): his parting recommendation to me when I left was to adjust the hydration down.
The picture above is of one of the loaves I made at home based on the formula. Gérard wouldn’t have given it his quality control stamp as he doesn’t do grignes (the ears in the crust): his customers eat his bread mostly for breakfast and in sandwiches and grignes get in the way. Plus he himself doesn’t like the hard bite or the concentrated taste. So he always scores his bread shallowly and at a sharp angle. I am the opposite: I adore anything crusty: grignes, quignons (bread endings), etc. Since my only “customers” are family and friends, there is enough of both textures in any given loaf to satisfy everybody!
To my mortification, I forgot to take a picture of the loaves Justin kindly gave me for my grandchildren  (they were not to be sold and he had enough for himself and his friends). When I reached my daughter’s house, the kids -who are huge bread fans- were so happy to see my load of loaves (and hopefully me as well) that I forgot all about photography! When I remembered the day after, there was still a half-loaf left and I took this shot of the crumb.

Neither Justin nor Gérard were satisfied with this batch: the loaves were overhydrated and as you can see, they didn’t get enough of an oven rise. I used a tad less water and my crumb came out a bit tight (see shot below). 

I’ll keep working on it until I get it right. Meanwhile my little grandkids pronounced my loaves to be even better than the apprentice’s (Sorry, Justin! They are seven- and five year-old and a fiercely loyal bunch. I am sure that if they had met you, they would have said both our breads were equally good.). As it is, the seven-year old granddaughter said: “Wow! This is so good. The best bread ever. As good as an artichoke!”. Since artichokes are her favorite food in the world, I consider it a huge compliment.
And truly the bread is good. Spelt tastes endearingly sweet almost as if a dollop of fragrant honey had been added to the dough during the mixing, a practice which Gérard (who despises adding to bread dough anything but the -very- occasional walnut, olive or flax seed) definitely wouldn’t condone.
Gérard’s Apprentice Loaf Formula

  • 76% unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 24% freshly milled whole spelt
  • 82% water (to be adjusted as needed)
  • 2 to 2.6% salt (according to taste)
  • 17% levain at 58% hydration (percentage to be increased in the winter as needed)

My adaptation of the formula



Ingredients: (for four loaves scaled raw at 627 g) 

  • 1028 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 252 g whole spelt (I used freshly milled as does Gérard)
  • 972 g water (Gérard uses all of the water for the autolyse but I like to reserve about 50 g in order to adjust the hydration later as needed. So I used about 900 g+ for the autolyse and added the rest as I mixed. This may vary each time I make the bread as it depends on the flours, the weather, the temperature, etc.)
  • 31 g salt
  • 253 g mature levain at 58% hydration

Method: (this dough was mixed by hand)

  1. Mix both flours with the water until the flour is completely hydrated and let rest, covered, for about 40 minutes
  2. Add levain to the autolysed dough and hand mix until incorporated (Gérard recommends pulling long filaments off the levain instead of cutting off chunks as they incorporate much more easily. Not only did I follow his recommendation but I placed these long pieces of levain on top of the dough during the autolyse, so that everything would be exactly at the same temperature. It worked beautifully but I got a surprise: the dough actually swelled up as it usually never does in the absence of a leavening agent and I can only think that some of the wild yeasts from the levain transferred to it even without mixing. Which means that it wasn’t a real autolyse…)
  3. Add the salt
  4. Mix until incorporated and adjust the hydration as needed
  5. Cover and leave to ferment for 4 to 6 hours or more (depending on room temperature), giving the dough a few folds as needed
  6. Scale at 627 g and pre-shape as a boule
  7. Let rest, covered, for 20 to 30 minutes (again depending on room temperature)
  8. Shape as a batard
  9. Let proof about one hour or until the dough stops bouncing back under the gentle pressure of two fingers
  10. Bake with steam in pre-heated oven (470°F/243°C for 10 minutes then lower the oven temperature to 450°F/232°C and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes, turning the loaves half-way through to ensure even baking (again these temperatures are given solely as an indication. I am spending the summer in a little cabin where the oven is small, very old and rather weak and I have to crank it up to the max to get a rise out of my bread. I actually set it on 500°F+  for the initial 10 minutes and on 470°F for the remaining 20 minutes or so but, from past experience with my regular home oven, I would say 470° F and 450°F should do the trick. If your oven is very efficient however, these temperatures might need to be adjusted down).
  11. Cool on a rack.
  12. Enjoy!

Gérard Rubaud’s Apprentice Loaf is going to Susan from Wild Yeast for her weekly edition of Yeastspotting.

Related posts:

Meet the Apprentice: Justin Rosengarten

Justin Rosengarten, 24, who holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in visual arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, came to bread the same way as many other bakers I have had the pleasure of meeting since I started this blog: out of sheer passion.
He isn’t absolutely convinced yet that bread is his ultimate calling (he has given some thought to being a furniture designer, a children’s book designer or a pianist) and as he puts it, “I’ll continue to dance until I find” but he has a pretty good idea that it might be it.
Even before meeting Gérard and deciding to apply to the apprenticeship program, he started on his own to learn what he could about bread: “Frankly I thought there was nothing to it”.
He built an oven at one of his friends’ house in Vermont: “I wanted to have this oven on my résumé.”  But he needed more exposure to bakery work.
His Vermont friend called Erik Andrus, the local baker, and asked him whether he might be open to have Justin come and watch him make bread. Erik, who owns Good Companion Bakery near Vergennes in Northern Vermont, invited Justin to come over and actually hired him to sell bread at the farmer’s market.
On his free time, Justin decided to go visit other bakeries in Northern Vermont. He googled Vermont bakers, found Gérard Rubaud through this blog and the rest is history. When I met Justin, he was on the fourth day of his apprenticeship with Gérard. 
Having since left the program for personal reasons, he no longer works at Gérard’s. I wish him the best of luck. I am hoping he’ll appear again on this blog, this time in the Meet the Baker series…

Gérard Rubaud and the Three-Speed Levain


Gérard’s regular levain, fermented on second speed, initially (left) and six hours later (right)
What baker hasn’t wished his or her levain would ferment a little faster so that mixing can start? Gérard who runs a one-man show on a very tight schedule has devised a method that gives him more control on how fast or how slowly his levain will develop.
He doesn’t advocate using this method all the time as he isn’t sure of what actually happens within the levain when it ferments faster: does it develop undesirable acids or aromas? He hasn’t been able to tell just from tasting the resulting bread. Still he finds it a handy tool to have as it makes for more flexibility.
As for me, when we did the experience described below, since we didn’t bake with any of these three pieces of levain, I can’t vouch for the taste but I can tell you one thing: the levain fermented on third speed had aromas which were heady enough to make a grown woman swoon. Plus it ended up so round and fluffy I wished I could have used it that night as a pillow. Forget about cloud nine! I’ll take cloud three anytime…

Three-speed levain demo



Pictures taken before the start of the experiment
#3 may look a bit bigger than #2 to start with but it is an optical effect. 
All three levains weigh exactly the same.
  • Shortly before 8:00 AM, Gérard feeds his regular levain and scales off three 1,650 g pieces which he calls #1, #2 and #3 respectively. Please note that he keeps his levain at 57% hydration and always salts it
  • He rounds the three pieces gently
  • At 8:20 AM, he places #1 in a plastic box, loosely covered, and puts the box on its side (to make later comparisons easier) (this is first speed)
  • He places #2 next to #1 and loosely covers it with a sheet of clear plastic (this is second speed)
  • He places #3 next to #2 on a clear sheet of plastic which he loosely wraps around it (this is third speed). 
  • When wrapping the levain for third speed, it is important to leave it room to expand as its volume will triple
  • The three levains are then left to ferment side-by-side at room temperature (about 78°F) for about six hours
  • At 2:20 PM, Gérard uncovers the three levains simultaneously
  • Significant differences in sizes can be observed between them, ranging from #1 (the smallest) to #3 (the largest)


  • #3 has obviously reached a more advanced stage of fermentation (Gérard’s theory is that wild yeast cell counts shoot up when the levain is completely sheltered from ambient air)
  • #3’s fluffiness makes it much easier to incorporate into an autolysed dough: there is no risk that some pieces of it might remain firm and unincorporated
  • For the sake of the side-by-side photo comparisons, Gérard has made all three levains into boules today but when he actually uses the third speed in a production setting, he shapes the levain into a long sausage before wrapping it. The fermentation is even faster that way.
Gérard says he uses second speed routinely and third speed only when he really needs to rescue his production schedule. 

Other Gérard Rubaud stories may be found on this page.