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Vermont Feather Beds

The recipe is to be found here, on John’s beautiful blog, The Lost World of Drfugawe. I am only posting the weight of the ingredients in grams, so that I don’t have to figure it out again next time I bake these little rolls.

To make 12 of them, you need:
244 g milk, scalded
36 g butter (I used almond oil)
25 g sugar (which is less than the original amount)
3 g salt
1 egg, well beaten
70 g, mature white starter
450 g unbleached all-purpose flour

They looked very appealing and they were quite tasty. Next time I’ll try to bake them free-form instead of using muffin cups… Thanks for the recipe, John!

Sweet Potato Bread

The countdown has begun and I am feverishly getting my act together. As most of you probably know first hand, it isn’t that easy to plan a turkey meal for 14 while working full-time. But it is what it is. The trips to the supermarket have been taken care of, I have started on the stuffing and tomorrow I plan to get up early to sneak in the roasting of a few root vegetables before I have to settle down to real (as in “money-making”) work (it helps that I work from home).
But today was bread day! I baked three loaves of sweet potato bread (there is only two on the picture because the third one is half-way gone already) and I still have to bake my banana feather bread. As some of the family members coming for the celebration are from Latin America and love their sweet rolls for breakfast, I also mixed the dough for John’s Vermont Feather Beds (what’s with Thanksgiving and feathers? The turkey effect?).
That particular dough is supposed to rest on the counter overnight, which makes me a bit nervous since it contains a raw egg… But the temperature in my house at night being very close to that of a refrigerator, I am not too worried. Besides all these bacterias will be baked out of their mean little minds, right?
So today was Sweet Potato Bread Day. I borrowed the recipe from my beloved Breads from the La Brea Bakery by Nancy Silverton (Nancy calls it Pumpkin Bread even though there isn’t any pumpkin in it!) and surprisingly I didn’t change anything to the recipe, except (ha!ha!) that I didn’t roast the sweet potatoes in the oven to later mash them to a pulp… No, no way I could do that within the time-frame I had. I used Trader Joe’s canned organic sweet potato puree and didn’t look back! Not once! And the breads still came out tasting great. What more does the people want?

This bread is made over two days.
Ingredients
280 g sweet potato puree (either homemade or store-bought)
198 g shelled raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
339 g cold water (55ºF/13ºC)
227 g mature white starter
34 g raw wheat germ
1.5 g ground cumin (I am not a die-hard cumin fan but in this recipe, it does a good job of showcasing the taste of the sweet potato)
511 g unbleached all-purpose flour
198 g whole wheat flour (I used white whole wheat because we like it much better)
18 g sea salt

Method

  1. Preheat the oven to 350ºF/177ºC. Place the pumpkin seeds on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven until puffed and very lightly browned (about 15 minutes), shaking the sheet once during baking
  2. Remove from the oven and let cool at room temperature
  3. Place water, white starter, wheat germ, cumin, yam puree and flours in the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix on low speed for 4 minutes, scraping the dough from the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as necessary. The dough should be wet and sticky
  4. Add salt and mix on medium speed for 7 minutes. Add the toasted pumpkin seeds and mix on low speed until incorporated
  5. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl, place it on a lightly floured work surface and knead it for a few minutes by hand
  6. Put dough in oiled bowl tightly covered with plastic wrap and let it ferment in the refrigerator 6 to 10 hours
  7. On the second day, remove the dough from the refrigerator. It should feel moist and should have grown half its original size. If it hasn’t, cover it with a cloth and leave it at room temperature for about an hour
  8. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured work surface, cut it in 3 equal pieces, tuck under the edges of each piece, cover with a cloth and let rest for 15 minutes
  9. Uncover the dough and roll each piece first into a boule then into a batard (football-shaped loaf)
  10. Place the loaves onto a cloth-covered board, seam side up. Pinch the cloth so that they are kept separate the ovals from each other
  11. Slide the board into a big plastic bag and close the bag securely
  12. Place in the refrigerator again and let the dough proof another 6 to 10 hours (with the Thanksgiving food shopping in the fridge, there was no way I could fit the board in. So I took it down to the basement – which stays at 55ºF/13ºC pretty much all year round – and left it there for 4 hours
  13. Preheat the oven to 500ºF/260ºC at least one hour before baking, making sure the baking stone is in (if you have one) and placing an empty cast-iron baking dish on the lower shelf or on the sole of the oven
  14. When the dough’s temperature reaches 60 to 62ºF/16 to 17ºC, lightly dust the loaves with flour, invert them well apart on a baking sheet covered with semolina-dusted parchment paper and holding a single-edged razor blade perpendicular to the first loaf, slash an elongated X across the top of the dough, 1/2 inch deep, keeping the ends of the cuts 3/4 inch from the ends of the dough
  15. Then make one long, straight cut in the center of the V created at each end of the X (keeping 1/4 inch away from the intersection of each V and 1/4 inch away from the end of the dough
  16. Open the oven door, pour 1 cup of water in the cast-iron baking dish (watch out for the burning steam) and slide the loaves onto the baking stone (still on the parchment paper)
  17. Spritz the oven heavily with water from a spray bottle and quickly close the door
  18. Reduce oven temperature to 450ºF/232ºC, spritz the oven two more times during the next five minutes, then bake without opening the oven door for the next 20 minutes
  19. After 20 minutes, rotate the loaves if necessary to ensure even baking. Continue baking for 10 more minutes, for a total of 35 minutes
  20. Remove the loaves to a cooling rack. The crust should have a burnished brown color and the interior should have an even texture (not the open, airy structure of a country bread).

These Sweet Potato Breads go to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Featherlight Banana Bread

Feathers must be the latest fad. Last week while John from The Lost World of Drfugawe was making scrumptious-looking Vermont feather beds, I was busy turning rather sorry-looking bananas into a Banana Feather Loaf, a bread which Rose Levy Beranbaum (in whose Bread Bible I found the recipe) describes as the lightest of all her breads.
Needless to say, I was intrigued by this assertion, so I gave it a shot. And she’s telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I am not a huge fan of bananas in general and banana bread in particular, but this one, oh! this one is different. Yes, it does have a slight banana aftertaste (which Rose says intensify when you toast it) but it mostly tastes intriguingly sweet and the delicate crumb structure has a pleasant way of melting in your mouth.
Rose says she eats it with lemon curd and also with peanut butter. I like it just as it is, especially when it’s freshly baked but I bet it would make a most delicious French toast.
I will try a sourdough version to see the difference and also because I always have so much ripe levain on hand that I feel I am constantly swimming upstream as fast as possible to avoid being carried down the wild yeast rapids. But this yeasted version will make a regular appearance on our breakfast table from now on, especially around the holidays where some family members like an alternative to sourdough.
This bread is best when made over 24 hours to give the sponge time to develop enough aromas.

Ingredients (for one loaf):

For the sponge (for the big loaf on the picture, I doubled the amounts)
80 g unbleached all-purpose flour
103 g water @ 70 to 90º F/21 to 32ºC
20 g honey
0.8 g instant yeast
For the final dough
207 g unbleached all-purpose flour
2.3 g instant yeast
20 g dry milk (preferably non-fat)
18.5 g almond oil (not roasted) (Rose actually uses softened unsalted butter but some of us need to watch their butter intake, so I usually do not use any)
1 very ripe medium banana, lightly mashed
6.6 g salt

Method: (can be mixed by hand or with a mixer. I tried both and thought the mixer came out ahead)
For the sponge

  1. In a large bowl, combine flour, water, honey and yeast
  2. Whisk until very smooth to incorporate air, about 2 minutes. The sponge will have the consistency of a thick batter
  3. Scrape down the sides of the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let rest at room temperature at least one hour and 24 hours maximum (I went for the 24-hour option which has)

For the final dough

  1. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour (reserve about 60 g if mixing by hand), yeast and dry milk.
  2. Sprinkle this on top of the sponge and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Allow to ferment 1 to 4 hours at room temperature (during this time, the sponge will bubble through the flour blanket, which is actually pretty cool to watch)
  3. Add oil (or butter), mashed banana and salt to the bowl and stir (with wooden spoon or with your hand) until all the flour is moistened
  4. Knead the dough in the bowl until it comes together, then scrape it onto a lightly floured counter
  5. Knead for 5 minutes, adding as little of the reserved flour as possible to keep it from sticking
  6. Use a bench scraper to scrape the dough and gather it together as you knead it. It will be very sticky
  7. Cover with the inverted bowl and allow to rest for 20 minutes
  8. Knead for another 5 minutes until very smooth and elastic. It should be still tacky enough to cling slightly to your fingers. It still too sticky, add some of the remaining reserve flour, or a little extra
  9. Using a dough scraper, transfer the dough to a slightly greased bowl, push it down and lightly oil the top. Cover with lid or plastic wrap
  10. Allow to rise, ideally @ 75 to 80ºF/24 to 27ºC (which is pretty hard to achieve in the cold season, so the best way might be to place the bowl in the cold oven with the oven light on), until doubled (for 1 ½ to 2 hours)
  11. Using a dough scraper, scrape the dough onto a floured counter and press down on it gently to form a rectangle. Try to maintain as many air bubbles as possible
  12. Fold the dough from all sides into a tight package (or give it 2 business letter turns) and set it back in the container
  13. Let rise again until doubled (1 or 2 hours)
  14. Turn the dough onto a lightly floured counter and shape it into a loaf. Place it into a greased 8½ by 4½ inch-loaf pan, seam-side down, cover it with a large container or cover it lightly with oiled plastic wrap and allow to rise until the center is about one inch above the sides of the pan, (1½ to 2 hours) or until it keeps the indentation of your finger when pressed (I baked the bread in a pan the first time around but didn’t like the way it looked, so this time I free-shaped it. To make a feather, you first make a batard, then you elongate and curve the ends)
  15. Preheat the oven (make sure the dough isn’t in it!) to 475ºF/246ºC one hour before baking, placing a baking stone or baking sheet on the lowest-level shelf with a cast-iron skillet or a baking sheet on the floor of the oven
  16. Quickly but gently sit the pan on the baking stone, pour one cup of water (Rose uses 1/2 cup of ice cubes but I always use cold water) into the skillet and immediately shut the door
  17. Turn the heat down to 450ºF/231ºC and bake for 15 minutes (Rose bakes this bread at a lower temperature but in my oven at least, this wasn’t a good idea. So this time, I adjusted the temperatures back to what I usually use. You may want to check the loaf after 20 minutes or so to make sure it isn’t browning too fast (if it is, lower the temperature slightly and tent foil over the loaf)
  18. Turn the heat down to 430ºF/221ºC and continue baking for another 15 minutes or so, until the bread is medium golden brown and an instant-read thermometer reads about 190ºF/88ºC inside the loaf. Halfway through the baking turn the pan around to ensure even baking
  19. Remove the bread from the oven and set it on a wire rack. If a glaze is desired, brush with melted butter
  20. Un-mold (if using the pan) and let cool for about one hour on a wire rack.

Sorry, no crumb shot today as I am saving the loaf for breakfast tomorrow. I’ll try to remember to take a picture then. I am curious to see how it came out…

This Banana Feather Bread goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting.

Soup & Bread: A simple feast

When I was a child, on Sunday evenings in the fall and winter, my grandmother would usually serve us a soup made of broth and vegetables, sometimes meat, which she would pour into our bowls over thick slices of stale country bread. The soup was excellent but by the time everybody was served (no way anyone could start before that, it just wasn’t done), the bread was mushy. I would have preferred it on the side to dunk as we went, but that wasn’t considered proper either.

So for this recipe, I cut up some slices of stale sourdough bread, gently dry them out in the oven (these humble croutons may be prepared a few days ahead of time and can probably be done in a toaster oven on the lowest setting if you only need one or two slices) and then serve them as an accompaniment to a butternut squash and leek soup.
I buy the squash already cut up, rinse it out, cut it in smaller pieces as needed, clean and slice a few leeks, put both vegetables together in a pot, cover them with water (broth would be nice but the ready-made cubes work too) and let the whole thing boil for a (very short) while (the squash and the leek turn tender very fast, don’t let them overcook!), pour into individual bowls and… serve the croutons on the side.
Sometimes it’s good to be all grown up! But I still don’t dunk… I float the croutons one by one over the broth which they slowly, very slowly, imbibe without losing the crunchiness of their crust, so that when you bite into them, the tastes of the levain and of the vegetables bloom together in the mouth like a magnificent firework of fall flavors. Divine…and, oh, so proper!