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The last two months…

…have been pretty hectic and haven’t offered me much time to bake, let alone blog about it. A week before Halloween, we embarked on a close-to-4-week-long post-retirement jaunt which took us from Amsterdam to Paris via a circuitous route (we hit Geneva, Cannes, Marseille and the Ardèche on the way) and allowed us to visit with family and friends as we never could when we were both working. We started with my in-laws and worked our way down and back up, meeting new friends, discovering along the way cousins whom we didn’t even know we had a few months back and tightening up lifelong ties with former neighbors as well as with childhood schoolmates. What a unique and joyful experience!
When we finally flew back a week before Thanksgiving, we didn’t go home but straight to the Pacific Northwest where we’ll be relocating early next year and where we spent the last three weeks trying to put together a budget and a timeline for renovating the house we just bought. We are staying with one of our sons and his family and even though my friends at Tree-Top Baking kindly brought me some of their levain and my daughter-in-law couldn’t be more gracious about sharing her kitchen and her oven, the truth of the matter is that it isn’t really possible to make artisan bread regularly when you are out and about all the time.
All this goes to explain why this blog has been mute since early October. I’ll do my best to catch up but more upheavals are in the works: while we are flying back East tomorrow, we’ll be hitting the road next week (weather-permitting) to go and spend the holidays in the Midwest with yet another one of our kids and his family. So bread-baking opportunities will alas remain few and far-between for the foreseeable future.
In October though, before we left the US, I met with a most interesting and talented young baker whom I’ll be blogging about as soon as I can put the story together and in France, I spent 24 hours with a jam-maker extraordinaire who, using the pear and chestnuts from her farm, showed me how to make a delicate “confit’ that would be a delicious addition to any holiday table, especially in the company of a buttery brioche. So please stay tuned!

Tartine’s Basic Country Bread (baked two ways)


Baking started in a cold oven

Baking started in a hot oven

We’ll be moving to the Pacific Northwest next year, probably sometime in the spring. Considering how costly such a move is bound to be, we have started divesting ourselves of whatever we can bear to part with. Almost first to go, I am sorry to say, have been stacks and stacks of books, some of which had traveled with us from Europe thirty years ago. But it would probably cost more to ship them that to buy them again (although some of them are no longer in print and cannot be replaced)…

Our local library was accepting book donations last Sunday and you should have seen the elderly volunteer’s eyes light up when we pulled over with our carload. He hurried away to get a cart and couldn’t stack the boxes on it fast enough. I guess he didn’t want to give us a chance to change our minds. I felt a twinge of sadness abandoning these old companions but the Man said: “It’s okay. There’ll be new books…” and I felt some degree of comfort in that thought. Plus I like the idea of our books being adopted by book lovers.

I know there are new books in our future and I do look forward to discovering them. Most of them will probably be stored on our Kindles however as we won’t have as much shelf space in our new home and many will actually be old since the Web offers a huge selection of books that have passed out of copyright, books I might never have access to otherwise and that I enjoy tremendously.

But have you tried reading a cookbook on a Kindle, or rather cooking from one? I have and I found it challenging to say the least. So just as I drew the line at giving away any of my cookbooks (I did last time we moved and ended buying some of them again), I still find myself buying bread-books when they catch my attention with their siren-song, which is what happened with Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread. Once I had it in my hands, Chad’s conversational tone and the pull of Eric Wolfinger’s photographs were too much for me and I bought it even though it will now have to be schlepped cross-country! I just couldn’t resist the urge to read it (our library doesn’t carry it yet).
Chad advises the home baker to bake Tartine’s basic country bread in a dutch oven combo such as this one in order to gain “the two main characteristics of a professional brick oven: a sealed moist chamber and strong radiant heat”.
Now I have been baking round loaves in my dutch oven for years and truly love the way the bread comes out. But I was intrigued by the fact that Chad recommends pre-heating both the oven and the dutch oven so that the dough can be turned out into a hot pot. I have had excellent results with cold bakes (setting the dough in a cold dutch oven and putting said dutch oven in a cold oven). I find it much less dangerous to my health to handle a cold cast iron pot than to grapple with a hot one (I confess I am pretty clumsy and I have the scars to prove it).
So I decided to experiment. I made a batch of Chad’s basic country dough and I baked one loaf cold and the other one hot. The results are a little bit skewed by the fact that I forgot to put the second loaf in the fridge while the first one was cooking, so that it ended up proofing about one hour longer. The kitchen was cool (65 ° F) however, so it may not have made much of a difference but still, the experiment would have been more meaningful if I could have baked both loaves at the same time in two different ovens, one pre-heated with a dutch oven inside and one stone-cold. Alas, I have but one oven…
As it is, I did get different results: cold-baking gave a higher loaf (3.25 inches vs. 3 inches with hot-baking) and a slightly more open crumb. Of course when you mix enough dough for two loaves, unless you have access to two ovens and two dutch ovens, you will always be in a situation where you’ll have to do at least one hot bake. 😉 But why not bake the first one cold? In my experience the dough loves this very slow rise in temperature in a highly humid environment (because of the water present in the dough, there is a lot of steam inside the dutch oven).
Ingredients (for 2 loaves)

  • 700 g + 50 g water @ 80°F/27°C
  • 200 g mature levain (100% hydration) (fed with 50% all-purpose unbleached flour and 50% La Milanaise‘s sifted flour which is high-extraction and contains some bran. Regular whole-wheat can be substituted maybe with a pinch of dark rye for flavor)
  • 900 g all-purpose unbleached flour
  • 100 g whole-wheat flour (I used freshly milled)
  • 22 g salt (Chad uses 20 g but I adjusted for the flour in the levain)
Method

Note that you can choose to make this dough over two days as a matter of convenience or to get a different flavor if you set the loaves to rise in the fridge overnight or for up to 12 hours.

The dough is hand-mixed in a large bowl but mixing time is kept to a minimum. I won’t go into great details as the process is pretty straight-forward but here is what I did.
  1. As recommended by Chad, I started by mixing the levain with 700 g of water (reserving the extra 50 g), then I added the flours and mixed until all the flour was thoroughly hydrated
  2. I let the mixture rest for 40 minutes (autolyse)
  3. Then I added the salt and the reserved water and I did as many folds as necessary (still in the bowl) until the dough was cohesive and reasonably smooth
  4. I transfered it to a lidded plastic container and set it to ferment at 80°F/27°C, using the proofing box the Man put together for me a couple of years ago on the model of this one
  5. I gave it three folds (inside the container) at roughly one-hour intervals and stopped the fermentation after 4 hours
  6. I divided the dough in half, pre-shaped each half in a round, let them relax 10 minutes and shaped them as boules which I set to proof in baskets
  7. Proofing (in a large clear plastic bag) lasted 2 hours and fifty minutes (at room temp but under the kitchen lamp which does provide some heat)
  8. I dusted the top of one loaf with semolina flour and covered it with a sheet of parchment paper. I quickly inverted the basket over the paper and using the sheet of paper as a sling, transferred the boule to my cold dutch oven
  9. I dusted the loaf with flour and scored it in an x pattern, set the lid on the dutch oven and put the whole thing in the cold oven
  10. I set the oven temperature to 470°F/243°C and pressed the start button
  11. I let the loaf bake covered for 45 minutes, then I took it out of the dutch oven (using heavy oven mitts) and, removing the parchment paper, set it directly on the heated baking stone (this stone is a permanent fixture in my oven) and let it bake another 20 minutes at 455°F/235°C, then I took it out of the oven and set it to cool on a rack where it promptly started making wonderful crackling music
  12. Following Chad’s instructions, I then pre-heated the oven to 500°F/260°C after putting the by-now barely warm dutch oven inside with the lid on
  13. I then transferred the second loaf to a piece of parchment paper after dusting the top (which quickly became the bottom) with semolina flour and with some trepidation (and heavy oven mitts) removed the now boiling-hot dutch oven from the oven. Again using the paper as a sling I set the loaf inside the pot, dusted it with flour, scored it in a square pattern, closed the lid and set the whole contraption back in the oven
  14. I immediately reduced the oven temperature to 450°F/232°C and let the loaf bake, covered, for 20 minutes. I then removed the lid and let it finish baking in the open dutch oven for 25 minutes. I set it to cool next to the other loaf and it too started to make music pretty soon.
Note that immeditately after, both loaves were registering an internal temperature of 215°F/102°C which indicated that they were fully baked.
Baking started in a cold oven
Baking started in a hot oven
We haven’t sliced open the second loaf (which is intended for our daughter’s family) but I doubt there will be much of a difference between the two, taste-wise. I do like the taste and texture of Tartine’s basic country bread but bread is like love (and as the old French saying goes, love is like Spanish inns: in the old days at least you only found in them what you brought to them. My apologies to Farine‘s Spanish readers. I have no clue as to whether or not French inns were truly any better than Spanish ones in those days and I certainly don’t mean to be insulting. What I do mean to say is that the better the ingredients, the better the bread.
I love the taste of the levain when it isn’t entirely white and failing access to La Milanaise‘s sifted flour you may want to use a bit of rye to give your starter a more interesting flavor. Likewise, for whole wheat flour, I use red hard winter wheat I bought last summer in Vermont from Jack Lazor at Butterworks Farms and I mill it just before mixing. I love its fragrance and its taste. Not everybody has the time or the desire to mill grain before baking but what is true of the grain is true of the flours: some are more flavorful than others. It is a good idea to shop around and try different ones to determine which one brings out the best flavors in your bread. I know for a fact that my bread became much better when I started looking for tastier alternatives to supermarket flours (I still use big brand flours for all-purpose though). So hats off to Chad and his basic country loaf: it does showcase the flavor of the grain and it is pretty easy to make (provided one exercises caution when handling the hot dutch oven). But do start the first loaf in a cold oven. It saves energy and it yields excellent results.
Tartine’s basic country bread goes to Susan from Wild Yeast for this week’s Yeastspotting.

Pain campagnard (Country Bread)

Pain campagnard-country bread

I don’t know about you but I have a hard time following a recipe or, for that matter, reading it properly before starting baking from it. Having none of my bread books with me here in the Northwest, I had checked The Bread Bible by Beth Hensperger out of the local public library and settled on Beth’s Pain campagnard which she describes as “a superb bread similar to the earthly wheat-rye loaves once made at harvest time in the French countryside”. It called for a yeast-based sponge but I planned to use levain. It also called for all-purpose flour and dark rye flour, both of which I had. So no problem!
I just hadn’t noticed that it also called for wheat berries (which I didn’t have) and that these wheat berries would have to be soaked… So I made the sponge 24 hours ahead of time as instructed. It smelled delicious when I uncovered it on Day 2 and I was looking forward to mixing the dough when I read : “Cover the wheat berries with boiling water. Cover with plastic wrap and let soak 4 hours at room temperature”.
My spirit sank until I remembered that I had some farro berries* (a variety of spelt). So I soaked these instead but meanwhile the sponge which had looked quite ready when I first started was truly asking to be put to work and I had to let it sit until the berries were plump enough and, believe me, it took more than 4 hours for them not to be al dente.
Since farro is way more tender than wheat, it would take even longer with the wheat berries and I would seriously advise boiling them instead of just soaking them. But that’s besides the point which is to read a recipe attentively before starting. How many times have I read/heard that? And do you think I ever changed my ways? No. I am a speedy reader and have always been. Not that I took a class like Woody Allen who did learn speed reading, read War and Peace in 20 minutes and when asked about it, said: “It involved Russia”.
I do enjoy what I read and I recall it vividly but as far as recipes are concerned, I tend to zoom in on some words, start thinking of different techniques which could be put to use and consistently overlook some of the ingredients.
The bread still came out pretty tasty and pleasantly chewy thanks to the farro but more sour than I would have liked. Is it due to the fact that the sponge was levain-based instead of yeast-based? Probably in part. But the sponge was definitely more sour when the soaker was finally ready that it had been when I initially uncovered it.
On the other hand as I was mixing the dough and looking for some indication of how much water to use, I couldn’t believe my eyes and had to read the list of ingredients closely three times to ascertain that there had been an editing mistake and that water had indeed been omitted from the final dough. If you have the book and want to try the recipe, make sure to add it back in!

Ingredients (This bread is made over 2 days)
For the sponge
50 g firm levain (40% whole-grain)
225 g water
180 g whole grain mix, freshly milled (45% wheat, 45% spelt, 10% rye) (Beth uses whole-wheat)
For the soaker
50 g farro, spelt or wheat berries, whole
boiling water to cover
For the final dough
6 g instant dry yeast
50 g dark rye flour
320 g all-purpose flour, unbleached
16 g salt
66 g water (from soaking the berries) + enough to get medium soft dough consistency

Method

  1. On Day 1, mix levain, water and flour until a smooth batter is formed. It will be very sticky. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand at room temperature until doubled in bulk, 12 to 24 hours
  2. Also on Day 1, pour boiling water over the farro (or spelt or wheat) berries to cover, cover tightly and let stand for 4 hours (or more) at room temperature (Beth has you doing this on baking day but I think the soaker needs a bit more time)
  3. On Day 2, stir down the sponge with a wooden sponge
  4. Mix the flours with the yeast
  5. Drain the berries and add the water, the combined flours, the berries and the salt to the sponge (an other option is to add the salt after an initial mix and a 20-minute resting period and to add the berries after the dough has been completely mixed. That’s what I’ll do next time as it makes more sense)
  6. Mix until well combined (I mixed by hand using a series of stretches and folds)
  7. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and do another series of stretches and folds, dipping your hands in water if necessary to keep the dough moist
  8. Place the dough in a large oiled bowl and let it rise at room temperature until doubled in bulks (2 to 3 hours), giving the dough three folds over the first 90 minutes
  9. When the dough is ready, turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and gently deflate it. Divide into two equal portions using a metal dough scraper
  10. Pre-shape each of them as a ball and let rest, covered for 10 to 15 minutes
  11. Shape the two loaves into balls and place seam-side down on a half-sheet covered with a semolina-dusted piece of parchment paper (or place seam-side up in well-floured proofind baskets). Since I didn’t have any baskets on hand, I just placed the loaves on parchment paper)
  12. Cover loosely and let proof (rise) at room temperature until doubled in bulk (1 to 1 1/2 hour)
  13. Thirty minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 450° F/232° C after placing in it a baking stone (on middle shelf) and a metal oven dish (on the lowest shelf)
  14. Turn the loaves onto a peel, seam-side down, dust them with flour (an optional step) and score as desired
  15. Place in the oven and immediately pour a cup of water into the preheated metal pan
  16. Bake for 20 minutes, rotate the loaves and bake another twenty minutes
  17. After 40 minutes, turn off the oven and leaving the loaves inside, open the door slightly
  18. Ten minutes later, take the loaves out and place them on a rack to cool.
Align Center

The Pain campagnard goes to Susan’s Wild Yeast for Yeastspotting.

* A reader kindly corrected me on this. I am posting his comment below:

‘The Italian language does not distinguish spelt (lat. triticum spelta), emmer (lat. triticum dicoccum) and einkorn (lat. triticum monococcum), and all of these are called farro. Thus when you buy farro, it can be any of these. The word farro originates from far which meant whatever grain was local, much like the word corn in our time. South of the Alps it meant wheat, and North of the Alps it meant barley. In Italian, the word far became farina for flour and farro for any ancient wheat. In French it became farine, and in Spanish it became harina. In English, the word bar became barleycorn and then barley. All these words go back to the archaic word far which was a loanword from the middle East.’

(Thank you, Benjamin!)

Thom Leonard’s Olive Bread

The original recipe, to be found in Maggie Glezer’s marvelous Artisan Baking Across America, actually calls for Kalamata olives, and not any Kalamatas but very ripe, black purple ones which are only available from specific sources, either wholesale or in bulk. Maggie warns against buying regular Kalamatas at the grocery store as they would never taste the same. I’d love to try these delicious olives one day but for this loaf, I went with what I had, a jar of pitted oil-cured Moroccan olives (which I happen to like better than Kalamatas but that may be because I never tasted the ones that Thom Leonard uses). (Clicking on Thom’s name will take you to a page offering three videos where he explains how to make your own starter at home, why it is important to use plenty of water and how to best use your oven for breadmaking.)
Maggie says this olive bread is the best she has ever tasted. I have to say that even with the “wrong” kind of olives, it truly is spectacular. Having sampled recently a couple of store-bought olive loaves, I think back to it longingly. My kids who used to live in the Bay Area have just moved to the Pacific Northwest and in the semi-rural community where they live, it isn’t easy to come by a good loaf of artisan bread. I am sure we will eventually ferret out a bakery we’ll fall in love with but we are still at the prospecting stage and I shudder when I remember the chemical rosemary-ish taste of the olive bread I bought at the grocery store last week on the first day of my visit. It was packed in a brown paper bag and looked artisanal enough. But even in breads, looks can be deceiving…
Whereas Thom’s loaf is as honest a loaf as you can hope for. It calls for a levain-based poolish (fermented levain) and a mix of flours including rye. Throw in water, salt and olives and that’s the list of ingredients for you. No frills, no pinch of this or that, no hint of commercial yeast. A truly minimalist bread but, oh, so delicious…

Ingredients: (for 2 loaves)
For the poolish
25 g fermented firm levain refreshed 8 hours before
115 g water, lukewarm
115 g unbleached bread flour

For the final dough
320 g water, lukewarm
all of the fermented levain
250 g unbleached bread flour
250 g unbleached all-purpose flour
30 g whole-rye flour (I used freshly milled)
14 g salt
185 g Moroccan oil-cured pitted olives (Thom uses 285 g Kalamata olives, 225 g pitted)

Method: (Thom offers two methods, mixing by hand or using a stand mixer. I chose the first one)

  1. Add the water to the fermented levain to loosen it from the container.
  2. Combine the flours in a large bowl. Pour in the watered fermented levain and stir with your hand or a wooden spoon just until a rough dough forms
  3. Turn the dough onto an unfloured work surface and knead, using a dough scraper to help, until the dough is very smooth and shiny, about 10 minutes
  4. Sprinkle on the salt and continue to knead until the salt has fully dissolved
  5. Gently knead the pitted olives into the dough until evenly distributed. You want the bread marbled with purple, rather than completely purple.
  6. At this stage, the dough should be soft, sticky and very extensible. Place it in a container at least 3 times its size and cover it tightly with plastic wrap. Let it ferment, preferably at 75°F/24°C, until it is airy and well fermented but not yet doubled in bulk, about 3 hours
  7. Fold the dough 3 times at 20-minute intervals, that is, after 20, 40, and 60 minutes of fermenting, then leave the dough undisturbed for the remaining time
  8. Flour the surface of the dough and your work surface and turn the dough out. Cut the dough in half; each piece should weigh 680 g. Gently round them with more flour (I shaped them as ovals instead since I was going to use oblong baskets), cover them loosely with plastic wrap, and let them rest until well relaxed, 15 to 20 minutes
  9. Shape the dough into even and tight round loaves (I shaped them as fat batards) without deflating them. Place the dough topside down in linen-lined baskets, lightly sprinkle with flour, and cover well with plastic wrap. Proof until well expanded, about 3 hours (I only proofed 2 hours as the loaves were clearly ready by then)
  10. At least 45 minutes before the dough is fully proofed, arrange a rack on the oven’s second-to-top shelf and place a baking stone on it. Clear away all racks above the one being used. Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C
  11. Turn the breads out onto a sheet of parchment paper or a floured peel and slash an off-center line across the top
  12. If desired, just before baking the bread, fill the oven with steam. Spray the breads lightly with water, then slide them, still on the paper, onto the hot stone. Bake the breads until dark and evenly browned all around, 40 to 45 minutes, rotating them halfway into the bake. Let the breads cool on a rack.

This Olive Bread goes to Susan’s Wild Yeast for Yeastspotting.