Farine

Crazy for Bread

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.

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?

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.