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Crazy for Bread

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Egg-in-a-cradle

I had some leftover pâte fermentée (old dough) from the Chestnut Flour Bread and I didn’t feel like freezing it. So instead I baked 4 little rolls and I made myself this comfort food (I was by myself for dinner). Now that I have tried it, I’ll have to do it again… and again. It is just delicious (and very simple to make. If you don’t have pâte fermentée or don’t feel like baking, just cut up a fat baguette or smallish batard into as many mini-logs as you need, remove some of the crumb and you are in business).
I had shaped and scored the rolls in different ways as I didn’t know which one would be easier to turn into an eggcup.


The fan shape?
The purse?

The tulip?

The tulip (i.e. the one with an X-shaped score) turned out to be the most convenient to open up and hollow out.

What you need is this:
bread + fresh eggs + crème fraîche (now that I have attended a cheesemaking class, I make my own and quite frankly you don’t need to take the class to know how. You just need the culture which you can get here and a way to keep the cream and the culture warm and snug for 12 hours) + some chives (from the garden or the window sill) + some grated Parmesan cheese.

You hollow out the bread, pour in two spoonfuls of crème fraîche, add some salt and freshly ground pepper, cisel some chives over it, break in the egg (if the egg is too large, the white will overflow. Just wipe out the surplus), top with grated Parmesan cheese and bake at 400ºF for about 10 minutes (if necessary, turn on the broiler for a minute or two to brown the top). (I overcooked mine by 1 minute but it was still very very yummy!). Enjoy!

This Egg-in-a-cradle goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Chestnut Flour Bread

This chestnut bread is the first recipe I make from the book Crust by Richard Bertinet. I have had the book for close to a year, I have looked at the gorgeous photos quite a few times but I have never watched the DVD that comes with it and never baked from the recipes.
What turned me off, I think, is that the bread that “talked” to me the most was the one he made with Cabernet grape flour. I was longing for this incredible purple crumb and imagining the taste but, first of all, when I checked, the flour was out of stock and then, when it was back in stock, it was so expensive (and shipping was extra) that it just wasn’t worth it. I must have been sulking because I didn’t open the book anymore.
But last time I was in Paris visiting my mother (she lives 5 minutes away from a fantastic health food store), I bought some organic chestnut flour and I remembered it when I saw Trader Joe’s vacuum-packed steamed chestnuts the other day. I don’t know about you but if there is one thing I won’t do is cook and peel a large number of chestnuts.
In my youth, whenever my mom made her signature chestnut milk soup – so delicious! – we had to prepare everything from scratch and I figure I have enough hours of chestnut peeling behind me to last me a lifetime (the white skin inside is the worst!). No more, thank you! So Trader Joe’s to the rescue, as usual!
Armed with chestnut flour and steamed chestnuts, I started looking through my books for a recipe and Crust practically jumped at me from the shelf. I guess time-out was over, I was done sulking and ready for something new. So here it is. Bertinet’s chestnut flour bread! One dough, four shapes and a lot of fun!

Here are the four shapes that Bertinet suggests. His loaves are beautiful but I wanted something a bit more holiday-ish (I won’t have much time to bake before Xmas as I’ll be barely be back from visiting my mom), so I tried different things. The “chestnut” one was “de rigueur” to go with tiny tots (we have plenty of those) and Santa (which we have too as one of our menfolk is always called upon to put on the costume, the beard and the hat and to ring the doorbell, whereupon the tiny tots usually start running for cover, unless this year they finally figure out that Santa sounds strangely familiar, even if they can’t see his face too well behind all this white hair).

Anyway I also wanted to make a loaf that looked like a chestnut. I don’t think I really succeeded. First of all, the scoring opened up much more than I thought it would, then the shape isn’t quite right but who will notice? (I used molasses to get the glazed look in case you are wondering. My family loves molasses, so I won’t get any complaints but if you want to make the bread and don’t like molasses, you may want to start thinking of alternative glaze).

I made the hedgehog shape because I find irresistible! I’ve always loved hedgehogs and not only because of Beatrix Potter…

And finally I made a Christmas carol loaf. I had cut out paper stars which I stuck on the loaf before dusting the whole thing with flour but they disappeared during the baking, swallowed up by the huge chiasms that opened up wherever I had scored.
Since it was my first time ever baking chestnut bread, besides playing with the shapes, I pretty much followed the recipe (except that I used my mixer and Bertinet does it by hand). The only real thing I changed is that I made the pâte fermentée (basically “old dough”) with liquid starter instead of commercial yeast. That’s it.
Everything else is the same, down to the last gram of water. I wasn’t really too sure what to expect, water-wise, since I don’t know whether or not the recipes in the book sold in the US had been re-tested with American flours (somehow I doubt it) and I know nothing about British flours. So I reserved a fair amount of the water (more like 15% than my usual 10%) but I ended up putting it all back in. The chestnut flour sold here (I know Whole Foods carries one from Italy) may absorb more or less water than the one I brought back from France. So exercise caution with the water amount. It is always a good idea anyway.

Because of the pâte fermentée, this bread is made over two days.

Ingredients (for 4 small loaves)

For the prefermented dough

  • 175 g mature white starter
  • 494 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 258 g water
  • 26 g raw wheat germ
  • 12 g salt 

For the final dough

  • 750 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 400 g chestnut flour
  • 700 g water
  • 450 g fermented white dough (for a possible use of the surplus fermented dough, click here)
  • 5 g instant dry yeast (Bertinet uses 15 g fresh yeast but I didn’t have any)
  • 25 g salt
  • 200 g whole, peeled vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts, crumbled into chunks 

Method

For the fermented dough

  1. Mix flour, water and white starter until the flour is well hydrated, cover with a cloth and let rest 20 minutes
  2. Add salt and mix until you get a gluten window (when you stretch some of the dough really thin, you see strands of gluten and almost-see through spots)
  3. Put in an oiled bowl and cover tightly
  4. Let rise at room temperature for about two hours, then put in the fridge for up to 48 hours
  5. Remove from the fridge at least two hours before using

For the final dough

  1. Combine the flours in the bowl of the mixer, add the water and mix well. Cover with a cloth and let rest for 30 minutes
  2. Add the fermented dough and yeast and mix until the dough is smooth and elastic
  3. Sprinkle the salt over it and mix some more (the dough is really supernice to work with and very fragrant)
  4. Very lightly flour your work surface. Place your dough on it, rough-side up, and flatten it out with your fingers
  5. Spread the chestnut pieces over the top and press them well into the dough
  6. Fold a few times so that all the chestnuts are incorporated into the dough
  7. Form the dough into a ball, put it into an oiled bowl, cover with a cloth and let it rest for 40 minutes
  8. Lightly flour your work surface again, and turn the dough out on it
  9. Fold the dough (on all four sides), then put back into your bowl, cover with baking cloth and let it rest for another 20 minutes
  10. Lightly flour your work surface again, turn out the dough and divide it into 4×630 g pieces
  11. Shape as desired (I made two boules and two batards)
  12. Place on a semolina dusted parchment paper over a sheetpan
  13. Let rise, covered with baking cloths, for 1 ½ hour or until just doubled in volume (mine didn’t quite double) (my oven is too small to bake 4 loaves at a time, so I let 2 of them proof in the basement where it is much cooler, so that I could stagger the baking)
  14. Meanwhile turn on the oven to 500ºF/250ºC with a baking stone in it and an empty cast iron (or metal) pan on the bottom shelf
  15. When ready to bake, score the breads the way you like, pour 1 cup of water in the cast iron (or metal) pan and slide the breads (still on their parchment paper) onto the baking stone, spray some water into the oven and close the door quickly
  16. After 5 minutes, turn the oven down to 440ºF/220ºC and bake for another 20 minutes
  17. Check to see if the loaves need to be turned around or if they need to switch places, then bake for another 10 minutes as needed
  18. Let cool on a rack.

Bertinet doesn’t provide a picture of his crumb, so I can’t compare. Here is the crumb I got, not that great but not too bad either, considering that the bread contains a high percentage of chestnut flour. The taste is unusual and very delicate. I like it a lot…

These Chestnut Flour Breads go to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Doesn’t this take the cake?

Click on the picture to see the whole collection. Doesn’t your jaw drop when you look at the prices (especially when you remember it is given in British pounds)? So that a pair of slippers would actually set you back $103 at today’s exchange rate and, listen to this, most of them are sold out!!!!!!!!! Well, no, you can still get the brown ones or else the tiny ones for your tots. Those are a bargain at $36.
My Mom taught me to always look at the positive. So, here it is: I just found a lucrative outlet for my surplus starter! 🙂

And since we are talking wearable bread, I might as well let you sneak a look at the new line of jewelry my youngest granddaughter (she just turned three) is now promoting to the immense satisfaction and admiration of her twin brother and her four-year old sister.

The Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past: Leftovers

After a leftover lunch -always a treat- on Friday, everything (and by that, I mean everything but the cranberry sauce and the cranberry relish) went into the making of one big meatloaf (which has been frozen and will go to my daughter’s family of seven) and 12 small ones (which we already tucked into and which were delicious with cranberry sauce), plus one huge pot of soup.
Half of the leftover turkey was put into the food processor together with the roasted sweet potatoes, the roasted garlic cloves and the roasted onions, the cornbread-cranberry stuffing and three slices of raw smoked bacon that we also had left over (I had draped some over a pork tenderloin the night before Thanksgiving).
Once finely chopped, it was mixed with two beaten eggs, transferred to one big bread pan and a sheet of twelve small silicone ones, and baked at 350ºF for about one hour. I didn’t add salt as everything, but the eggs, was already seasoned.
Any turkey leftover can be baked that way as long as you use at least some dark meat (more flavorful and less dry) and some kind of moistener (here I used the left over sweet potatoes but in case you have none left, some applesauce would do the trick as long as you have some starch -here cornbread cranberry stuffing but rehydrated crumbs would work too- to hold the thing together with the help of the eggs).

The other half of the turkey was cut into small pieces (except for the carcass and the bones which will be used for stock) and went into a big pot together with fresh butternut squash, peeled and cut, all the other leftover roasted vegetables (parsnips, turnips and white potatoes), some of the leftover asparagus, mushroom broth (I had rehydrated dry mushrooms to make gravy two days before), all of the lemon barley stuffing, all of the leftover drippings (except for the fat which had been removed) and lots of water -broth would have been be better but I didn’t have any- with salt, pepper, bay leaves, star anise and two inches of fresh ginger (peeled). It boiled for a while. I let it cool overnight.
This morning, I skimmed the surface to remove the thin layer of fat as well as all the hazelnut bits (from the barley stuffing) which had floated to the surface and will be put to another use. We had a bowl for lunch (with fresh baby spinach leaves just dropped into the hot soup) and the rest has been frozen by portions.

Anything can go into the making of this hearty soup. If you don’t have leftover barley, throw some pearled barley (or a cooked grain) into the pot or put some cubed slices of sourdough bread in the bowls and pour the soup over it when ready. Use whatever herb or spices you have on hand, add some other stuff from the refrigerator.
One of the best soups I ever made is one I will never be able to reproduce as I can’t remember what went into it, except the whole (rather meager) contents of my fridge that night (save for the baking soda, the mustard and the milk!) and that included leftover stew and pain d’épices (gingerbread). Needless to say, that soup has acquired a fame of legendary proportions in my kids’ minds with the passing years and they still long for it…

A Miche is Born…

A link to this video has been posted on The Fresh Loaf a couple of times but I only saw it today. I thought it was too neat not to post it on Farine as well. For a quick recap of who Max Poilâne is, click here.
Since my mother now lives close to a Poilâne bakery in the 15h arrondissement of Paris (do click on the link if you have time, it’ll take you to a virtual bakery that looks exactly like the one I know), I have had plenty of opportunities over the past few years to sample its miche, currant rye, walnut rye and other baked goods (which, dare I confess it? I find okay but not as overwhelmingly delicious as the Poilâne reputation would lead one to believe) but I have yet to taste a Max Poilâne loaf. I’ll put that on my (evergrowing) list of Things to Do in Paris When Visiting My Mom and report back.
The Max Poilâne website is under construction but if you go check it out, you’ll see a nostalgic rendition of an itinerant baker walking towards a mill alongside his donkey (is it a mule?). The bag on the donkey/mule’s back is probably the one where he keeps his firm levain, deeply buried in flour.
The picture sent me back to a little look I found at a book fair a couple of years ago, Confessions of a French baker by Peter Mayle and Gerard Auzet. Baker Auzet reminisces about his great-grandfather: “He was a traveling baker, making his way along the backcountry roads from farm to farm and village to village throughout the Luberon with his mule and his cart. By his side was a large jug filled with eau de vie to ward off the chill of the winter mistral, and a generous supply of precious and all-important levain. […] With his levain and his skill, Great-grandfather Auzet would stop at each farm on his route, and turn the farmer’s flour into a batch of bread before moving on to his next call. In villages, he would use the communal oven. Wherever he went, he brought un peu de bonheur, leaving behind him a trail of warm and aromatic kitchens. Not surprisingly, he was a wecome visitor”.
“Eau de vie” is moonshine and “un peu de bonheur”, a little bit of happiness. The jug of moonshine isn’t apparent on the Max Poilâne picture but the baker does look happy and, hey, what’s not to like when your job is to wander through Provence creating fragrant loaves whereever you go, especially if you are lucky enough to have a donkey or a mule to lug the heavy stuff?