Farine

Crazy for Bread

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!

Wild Rice Bread

Here is my first time baking from Peter Reinhart’s latest book, Artisan Breads Every Day. I can’t really say very much about the book in general since I haven’t read it. I just zoomed in on this recipe and decided to give it a go as I had some firm starter to use and no time to bake.
The beauty of this recipe (the original recipe is called Pain au Levain in the book and doesn’t contain wild rice) is that you make the dough and stick it in the fridge where you can keep it for up to four days until you are ready to use it. That fit right into my schedule for this week. I suppose other recipes in the book feature the same approach (which has already been the subject of a few books in the last couple of years) but I can’t vouch for it.
I followed the method but adapted the formula somewhat, replacing some of the all-purpose flour by white whole wheat in the final dough and adding cooked wild rice for texture as well as some olive oil to improve the shelf life and to counterbalance the drying effect the wild rice might have on the crumb. I also baked the bread inside a Dutch oven to avoid having to preheat the oven.
Reinhart gives the option to add 7 g of commercial yeast to the dough but I chose not to go that way.
The crumb is a bit tighter than what I was expecting considering the soft consistency of the dough but that might be due to the weight of the rice and/or the addition of white whole wheat. The taste of the levain comes through very nicely and is actually complemented by the flavor of the wild rice.
Since wild rice is native to North America, I think this loaf would be quite at home on the Thanksgiving table. More authentic than frozen Parker dinner rolls anyhow… 🙂 Although, besides corn bread in one shape or another, I have no clue what kind of bread the pilgrims actually put on the table, do you?

Ingredients:
For the starter
71 g firm mother starter (65% hydration)
142 g unbleached all-purpose flour
85 g white whole wheat flour
151 g water at room temperature
For the final dough
All of the starter (458 g)
312 g water @ 95ºF/35ºC
304 g unbleached all-purpose flour
150 g white wholewheat flour
130 g wild rice, cooked, drained and cooled down
19 g olive oil
17 g salt

Method:
To make the starter

  1. Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl
  2. Using a large spoon, stir for about 2 minutes until well blended
  3. Transfer to lightly floured surface and knead for about 30 seconds
  4. Place in lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave at room temperature 6 to 8 hours or until about one and a half time its original size (Reinhart says that if you plan to use the starter the same day, you should let it increase to twice its original size but that if you plan to use it later, now would be a good time to put it in the fridge) (in my case, the starter was mixed between 8 and 9 AM, kept at room temperature and used to make the final dough around 5 PM)

To make the final dough

  1. Cut the starter in a dozen pieces and put it in the bowl of the mixer
  2. Add the water, mix until incorporated
  3. Add the flour and the salt (Reinhart doesn’t have us do an autolyse. I’ll do it next time though just to see what kind of a difference it makes in the final product)
  4. Mix at low speed for 3 minutes and let the dough rest 5 minutes
  5. Resume mixing for 3 minutes, adding water as necessary
  6. Add the wild rice and the olive oil
  7. Continue mixing at low speed until incorporated
  8. Put the dough on the counter and knead it by hand for a few seconds
  9. Form a ball and let it rest on the counter for 10 minutes uncovered, then do a stretch and fold, reaching under the front end of the dough, stretching it out, then folding it back onto the top of the dough. Do this from the back end, then from each side, then flip the dough over and tuck it into a ball
  10. Cover the dough and let it rest 10 minutes
  11. Repeat this entire folding process two more times, completing all repetitions within 30 minutes
  12. Immediately form the dough into a ball, place it in a clean, lightly oiled bowl large enough to contain it when doubled in size and cover the bowl tightly
  13. Let the dough sit at room temperature for 2 hours, then refrigerate it (the dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 4 days)

On baking day

  1. Remove dough from the refrigerator at least 4 hours before baking, shaping it after 2 hours
  2. Let it rest shaped and covered on a flour-dusted parchment paper inside a cold Dutch oven (cast iron or other oven-resistant material)
  3. When the dough is ready, dust it with flour and score it, then cover the Dutch oven again and place it inside the cold oven
  4. Turn on the oven to 470ºF/243ºC and bake for 45 minutes
  5. After 45 minutes, take the Dutch oven out of the oven and the loaf out of the Dutch oven and place it back in the oven on a hot baking stone (my stone always stays in the oven, so it is hot whenever the oven is on)
  6. Lower the oven temperature to 450 and bake another 10-15 minutes or until the bread’s internal temperature reaches 210ºF/99ºC
  7. Remove from the oven and let cool on a rack.

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

Hazelnut Cake with Pears & Ginger

I think I need help. I truly do. I mean, my life is being taken over by the things I make. Just look at the wild yeast starter for instance. It requires to be fed twice a day. Each time I feed it, I can only keep a small portion of it and the rest, well, the rest has to be either thrown out or used, right? And if I decide to use it, it’s now or never. The wee beasties won’t wait. Not even one hour. When they are ready, they are ready. Either you put them to work or they kamikaze into oblivion, turning embittered and nasty along the way.
So I have no choice. And it’s eating me. I don’t have either the time (I am back out of retirement working full-time until mid-December) or enough hungry mouths to feed (even though I do have a fair number of those, counting immediate family, friends and neighbors), to bake every single day. But I hate to throw food away. I just hate it.
So the other day I made the sourdough chocolate cake from the King Arthur website. It came out voluptuously plump (I didn’t even have time to frost it, it went out to my daughter’s house in its birthday suit, demurely cloaked in confectioner’s sugar, and pff! it was gone, no picture, sorry!). It had been so quickly put together that yesterday I decided I might as well make another cake. See how easy thrift entraps you in its twisted logic!
However, since I was being virtuous (making a cake we didn’t need to save wild yeasts we didn’t need either), I decided to take stock and look around. What else did I have to use in a hurry before it turned on me? Three pears which were definitely starting to look like they were ready to go over the hill, some fresh ginger which was shriveling under my eyes and a pint of creamy homemade yogurt (which was perfectly fresh as I had just made it the day before but which I also had to find a use for, right?).
I also had a big jar of hazelnut butter that a friend brought me from France a few months ago and I looove the taste of pears with hazelnuts and ginger. So here is what I came up with! Totally haphazard (hey, I even forgot to put eggs in) but it worked! It’s going out tonight to some friends. Maybe I’ll be able to sneak a slice back home. My starter is back on timeout in the fridge, so I won’t be baking tomorrow. Too bad…

Ingredients (for one 9×9 square cake and 11 hazelnut-ginger babycakes):
(if you are making just the cake, use half of all the ingredients except the first four)
15g butter, melted
25g light brown sugar
3 Bartlett pears, peeled, cored and sliced
50g candied ginger, sliced or chopped

240g mature sourdough starter (hydration: 100%)
12 g ground ginger
2 inches of fresh ginger, peeled and grated
12g baking soda
260g wholemilk yogurt
130g hazelnut butter, smooth (can be replaced by another roasted nut butter)
100g agave syrup
225g all-purpose flour
225g low-fat powdered milk, reconstituted
1 pinch of salt
pieces of candied ginger to top the babycakes (optional)

Method:

  1. Heat the oven to 375F/191C making sure the lower rack is in
  2. Put melted butter in the cake pan and rotate to spread evenly
  3. Dust with brown sugar
  4. Arrange the sliced pears on top
  5. Put the pan in the oven, bake for 20 minutes and take out of the oven
  6. Chop or slice candied ginger on top of the pears, pushing it with a teaspoon into the pear syrup at the bottom
  7. Meanwhile, gently fold all the other ingredients into the starter and mix well
  8. Pour the starter mixture into the pan until three quarter full
  9. Pour the rest (if using) into muffin pan paper liners, sticking a piece of candied ginger on top of each babycakes
  10. Bake at 375F/191C for 40 minutes (checking during the last 10 minutes that the cake or babycakes are not browning too fast. If this is the case, tent some foil over them. The cake and babycakes are done when a tester comes out clean.
  11. Let the cake cool for a few minutes in the pan on a rack
  12. Then, before the juices at the bottom have time to set and stick, turn the cake upside down on a plate.
  13. Let it cool completely before eating.

Enjoy!

All these babies are going to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastpotting. Thanks, Susan! I love Yeastspotting. It’s a wonderful way to bring us bakers together…

Ricotta Gnocchi

Having recently attended a cheese-making workshop with Ricki Carroll a.k.a. the Cheese Queen (whom Barbara Kingsolver mentions in the most elogious terms in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a book about her and her family’s experience of growing and/or making most of their food themselves for one year I read with passionate interest ), I now have a fridge which seems to bloom everyday with a new luscious dairy product.
The first one I tried my hand at is ricotta. It is not hard to make: you heat up milk to a specific temperature, cool it down a bit, mix some citric acid into it (some use lemon juice but I haven’t tried that yet) and let it set for a while. A few minutes later, you are spooning warm ricotta into a very fine cheesecloth which you then hang over a large bowl (to catch the whey). Whey the ricotta is dry enough for your taste, you refrigerate it.
I made it rather dry because I intended to use it to reproduce the gnocchi I knew growing up and had never tasted since. We lived in Paris, close to Avenue Victor Hugo and on the avenue, there was an Italian grocery store (I forgot the name and it no longer exists anyway). It was not inexpensive and my parents only shopped there on special occasions. What I remember most is their gnocchi. Round-shaped and covered with grated Parmesan cheese with a tiny pat of butter on top, they melted in the mouth like fluffy clouds. They were just delicious.
Imagine my dismay when I tried gnocchi in this country and found them gummy and mealy. Not the stuff of childhood memories by any stretch of the imagination. So for years and years we lived in a gnocchi-free household, which was fine really. I mean, compared to what goes on everyday in the world, what’s thirty gnocchi-less years?
But I had an epiphany the other day when I stumbled upon this recipe. The gnocchi I had tried and not liked were most certainly potato-gnocchi and I hadn’t known there was another kind. Apparently in Florence (don’t you love that city?), they make gnocchi with ricotta. That explains the divine featheriness of my childhood gnocchi. The grocer must have hailed from the city of the Medici or at least from the Tuscan hills which surround it!
So I made gnocchi with my homemade ricotta (I pretty much followed the recipe, except that I use half white whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour) and they were very good. Quickly put together too. The longest part was actually making the ricotta (or rather waiting for the scalded milk to cool down so that I could stir in the citric acid). With store-bought ricotta, it’d be done in a flash.
I didn’t serve any sauce with it, just freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, a petal of butter and some black pepper.
Next time I’ll try the Food Network recipe which doesn’t include flour. The gnocchi will probably come out even closer to what I remember and I am looking forward to that. Unlike Proust to whom the madeleine came unbidden giving breath and life to a forgotten world, I seem to have to work for my memories. But, hey, they are worth it!