Farine

Crazy for Bread

Hungry Ghost Bread

A friend from West Hartford, Connecticut, took me the other day to this enchanted bakery located in Northampton, Massachusetts. I say enchanted because it looks like a bakery from a fairy tale. It occupies a quaint little brick house in front of a grassy patch and when you step in, you travel back in time. The bakers are at work right in front of you, you could extend your arm and check the consistency of the dough. Some are cleaning baskets, others are shaping boules, another yet is stoking the fire in the great brick oven. The smell is heavenly. This is how bread has been made and sold for centuries.

I had tried to contact the owners a few days before to see if I could meet with them but my email came back as undeliverable. The day we went being a Saturday, I didn’t pursue the interview idea as I could see things were in full swing at the bakery and all hands were needed. So if you’d like more details about how the bakery came to be and what philosophy is behind it, check out the website, including the Boston Globe article, as it contains a wealth of information.
As for me, I can tell you the breads we bought and tasted were astonishing. All made with starter, some of them tasted like nothing I ever had before as the flavor combinations were uniquely delicious. My friend bought a spelt loaf which unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of. She gave me half of it though and it was exquisite. Chamomille flowers had been mixed in the dough, giving the spelt a deep honey flavor.

We didn’t get to try the double wheat boule pictured above but it took a lot of self-control on my part (and the memory of my full freezer and of the dough rising at home in the refrigerator) not to purchase it on the spot. Another time…

We did buy this beet bear paw, which tastes like vegetable soup baked into rye and wheat. Although not for the faint of heart, it was extremely good-looking and very good (albeit a bit salty).

As for this handsome semolina-fennel loaf, it looked and tasted exactly as it should with an airy crumb and a delicate licorice aftertaste. We had it for breakfast with honey the day after and it was a big hit with the family.
Stay tuned for more breads on another visit. Meanwhile if you already know the bakery or if you have a chance to go and check it out yourself, please let me know which breads you tasted and which ones you liked best. I will make room in our freezer and go back for more!

Double Fennel Loaf

I love fennel in all its guises. I love it in nature with its lacey yellow flowers, the elegance of its long stems, its fragrance which reminds me of wild childhood summers spent camping in Corsica, and I love it in the kitchen, roasted, boiled in a soup, steamed for an aïoli, slowly cooked into a confit, etc. And now I love it in bread!
I had seen a recipe for a triple fennel bread in a French baking book. The recipe called for commercial yeast. It also called for something I didn’t have and have never seen in the stores, fennel pollen.
So I opted for double fennel instead of triple and for liquid starter instead of commercial yeast. We loved the result. The bread was moist and fragrant, a great accompaniment to soup but lovely also for breakfast (at least for palates like mine which favor savory breads).
For a delicious picnic, I plan to add to the dough tiny bits of fennel sausage, slowly sauteed in a pan until almost crisp. (In case you are interested, there is a great recipe for fennel sausage in David Tanis’ A Platter of Figs).

Ingredients:

  • 325 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 140 g rye flour
  • 30 g water
  • 250 ml milk
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 150 g liquid starter (100% hydration)
  • 2 fennel bulbs
  • 2 tsp fennel seeds
  • 10 g salt

Method:

  1. Crush the fennel seeds either in a mortar with a pestle or with an electric grinder. Do not overprocess as the seeds should just burst open, not be ground into a powder
  2. Pour the milk in a little saucepan and heat it up
  3. When it starts boiling, remove from the heat and add the fennel seeds
  4. Let steep for 2 hours
  5. Turn on the oven (350 F/177 C)
  6. Clean and dice the fennel, put it in an oven dish and drizzle olive oil over it. Add salt and pepper and mix well
  7. Cover with foil and roast for about 45 minutes or until the fennel turns golden and tender
  8. Remove from the oven and let cool on a plate covered with a kitchen towel
  9. When the fennel-infused milk is ready, strain it through a mesh colander to remove all seeds or fragments of and pour it into the pan of the breadmachine (if using. If not using the breadmachine, use a mixer as this very wet dough may be difficult to mix by hand)
  10. Add all the other ingredients, except for the fennel pieces, in the order prescribed by the manufacturer (in my case, all liquid ingredients must go first)
  11. Start the dough program but stick around as you will need to check the consistency of the dough to make sure it isn’t too wet
  12. When the machine beeps, add the fennel and check the consistency again (I had to add some flour as the dough had become very wet)
  13. When the programme ends, remove the dough from the bread machine, put it on a lightly floured counter and mix it by hand for a few minutes. It will be very sticky
  14. Put it in an oiled dough bucket (or a big bowl), cover and let rise until doubled in size, doing two folds (one every 45 minutes). For a video on how to fold a wet dough, check out this page of Susan’s blog, Wild Yeast)
  15. When the dough is ready (when the imprint of your finger springs back really slowly), take it out of the bucket and put it on the lightly floured counter
  16. Pre-shape it into a boule (ball) and let rest about 20 minutes under a damp cloth
  17. Shape into a boule and place in a well-floured banneton (or basket). Put the banneton inside a large clear plastic bag, blow once into the bag and tie the end tightly
  18. Let rise 1 hour and a half to two hours at room temperature
  19. When the dough is ready (when the imprint of your finger springs back really slowly), take it out of the banneton, turn it over (so that the bottom is up) on a well-floured parchment paper (as the dough had somewhat stuck to the banneton, it wasn’t easy to take it out. Maybe next time I will just let it ferment on the paper like a ciabatta) and score it
  20. Using the parchment paper as a sling, transfer to a Dutch-oven (cast iron or pyrex), close the Dutch oven tightly and put in the cold oven
  21. Turn on the oven to 470 F/243 C and bake for 45 minutes
  22. Remove the Dutch oven from the oven and the bread from the Dutch oven (using the paper as a sling). Lower the temperature of the oven to 450 F/232 C and put the bread back in the oven for 10 minutes, directly on the baking stone if using one. If necessary, tent foil over the bread to prevent scorching
  23. Turn off the oven and let the bread dry for about 10 minutes in the oven with the oven door ajar
  24. Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack.

This bread will be submitted to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastspotting.

Lovebird Loaf

There is a bread to be made for every occasion and this one would do nicely for an anniversary brunch or an engagement buffet. But it would also do fine for everyday as it can be scored in myriads of ways. Under its fancy collar, it is just a regular miche. For the stencil, I used an old ornament given to me by one of my friends, scoring around it.
I used rye in it and some of the marvelous high-extraction organic flour that Steve, from Bread cetera, brought me a few weeks ago. This flour is difficult to get (you may have to go through a restaurant that bakes its own bread or a restaurant supply store) and may be replaced by sifted whole wheat bread (although I can’t vouch for that since I have not tried it yet).
The dough was mixed directly in the bread machine but I hovered over it when the mixing started as I am not very familiar with this flour and wasn’t sure how it would absorb water. I actually had to add some all-purpose unbleached flour (about 100 g) as the dough was too wet and sticky at the start to even start holding together. If using other flour, you may not need to adjust that much.
The recipe is loosely based on the miche formula which was given to me this winter during the second workshop I attended at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
This bread is made over three days. It cooled overnight in the kitchen as I baked it late in the evening and I was afraid the design on it would crack from the cold but it only did on the edges. Winter is really over! It is definitely time for the birds to come out…

Ingredients: 

For the first feeding:

  • 53 g high-extraction flour 
  • 64 g water
  • 5,3 g mother starter
  • 0.42 g salt

For the levain: 

  • 247 g high-extraction flour
  • 297 g water
  • 123 g first feeding
  • 1,5 g salt

For the final dough:

  • 175 g all-purpose unbleached flour (+ more as needed – see above)
  • 58 g high-extraction flour
  • 58 g dark rye flour
  • 29 g water
  • 11 g salt
  • 670 g levain

Method:

  1. On the first day, prepare the first feeding and let rest overnight at room temperature
  2. On the second day, prepare the levain using all of the first feeding and let rest up to 12 hours at room temperature
  3. At the end of that day, mix the final dough either by hand or using a standing mixer or in the bread machine, watching closely to see whether or not more flour is needed (it definitely was in my case)
  4. Transfer the dough to an oiled bowl or bucket and let it ferment through the night in the refrigerator
  5. On the third day, in the morning, take the dough out of the fridge and let it come back to life at room temperature. It may take quite a while. When mine came out of the refrigerator, it had barely moved since the night before. It rose slowly throughout the day
  6. When the dough has doubled in volume and the imprint of your finger doesn’t bounce back right away, take it out of the bowl or bucket and pre-shape it loosely into a boule (ball)
  7. Let it rest 20 minutes under the inverted bucket or bowl
  8. Shape into a ball and place on a prepared parchment paper (sprinkled with all-purpose or semolina flour)
  9. Stick into a clear plastic bag, blow in the bag and tie securely
  10. Let rise for about an hour and a half
  11. Take the dough out and score (and/or stencil it)
  12. Then transfer it to a Dutch oven using the paper as a sling and taking care not to deflate the dough
  13. Put the lid on the Dutch oven and place in the oven
  14. Turn the oven on (470 F/243 C) and bake for 45 minutes
  15. Take the loaf out of the Dutch oven and place in the oven again on the baking stone (if using) or on a cookie sheet. If you can’t remove the parchment paper without damaging the bread, leave it under the bread
  16. Lower the temperature to 440 and bake another 15 minutes (tent some foil over the top of the bread if needed to avoid overbrowning)
  17. Take the bread out of the oven. Its internal temperature (as measured on an instant thermometer) should be over 205 F/96 C. If it hasn’t reached that, bake a few more minutes
  18. Let cool on a rack before slicing

This bread will be submitted to Susan, from Wild Yeast, for Yeastspotting.

Artisan I workshop at the San Francisco Baking Institute

Steve Mitchell, one of my co-students at SFBI this winter, just sent me these pictures, wonderful memories of a week spent scaling, mixing, shaping, baking and tasting. Thank you, Steve!


Frank demonstrates the shaping of a baguette


A great way to score a rye loaf

The lab

A busy day
 
Yours truly, engrossed in the task at hand


Lunch break: there’s wine on the table, so it was the last day


Clean-up time – here is Frank, a born teacher


Michel Suas, President of SFBI, the man who made it all possible

100% whole grain multigrain baguettes

If you are already a reader of Bombance, my other blog (the one in French), you may have noticed that our family is quite keen on whole grain, or rather, the grown-ups are. The kids do not care one bit about the nutritional benefits and they are harder to convince.
So I am always on the lookout for breads that everybody will like and that will still be 100% wholesome.
Since we all love baguettes, kids included, I decided to try making whole grain ones to see whether or not they would do the trick and I looked in Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor for an idea.
I like Reinhart’s indomitable energy and endless quest. Being one of the best-known bakers/bread book writers in the US, he could rest on his laurels and just develops new recipes but he doesn’t. He’s always on the lookout for new methods, patrolling the border between baking and bread science. I love it!
As Michel Suas, President and co-founder of the San Francisco Baking Institute) put it in his phone interview with Jeremy from Stir the Pots , bread baking is like a treasure hunt. You spend a lot of time looking but it is all made worth while when you make a find.
Well, the Bombance/Farine family surely enjoyed this particular treasure. The baguettes are delicious. They are no stand-ins for the traditional Parisian baguettes made with a poolish, levain, a sponge or any other fermented dough. They are a different animal altogether, a breed in themselves. Good, crusty with a delicately nutty taste.
We found that they go very well with cheese (we didn’t have any Brie but I bet they would be amazing with a runny cheese) as well as with orange marmalade or honey at breakfast. My son-in-law loved them with his avocado-lime salad.
Reinhart’s secret is that he uses two pre-ferments, a soaker which stays at room temperature for 24 hours and a stiff levain (a biga can also be used and Reinhart provides the instructions for that as well) which spends some time in the fridge.
The time the levain spends in the fridge stimulates enzymatic activity and the development of taste without exhausting the yeast or the sugars (present in the flour). The addition of instant yeast at the end makes for a shorter second rise without compromising the taste (since the taste has already been maximized by the preferments).
The book contains many recipes. I picked the Multigrain Hearth Bread partly because I had some cooked kamut grain which I wanted to use but mostly because I just love the combination of tastes and textures.
I could have made two loaves or bâtards but, as mentioned above, I chose to make baguettes to trick the kids into eating a 100% whole grain bread and it worked! Thank you, Peter Reinhart!

Ingredients (pour 4 baguettes): 

For the soaker: 

  • 25 g whole wheat flour (organic and stone-ground if possible)
  • 170 g of a mix of cooked and raw grains (the large grains such as wheat, kamut or spelt must be cooked, smaller ones like millet, quinoa, amaranth, etc. can go in raw but Reinhart prefers to cook them) (for this interpretation of his recipe, I used: 70 g cooked kamut, 43 g raw sunflower seeds, 37 g uncooked 10-grain cereal and 20 g kamut flakes straight out of the bag)
  • 4 g salt
  • 170 g water

For the final dough:

  • 398 g stiff whole wheat starter (hydration rate: 75%) (this starter had spent 12 hours in the fridge. I took it out 2 hours before I mixed the dough)
  • 401 g soaker (in other words, the whole thing)
  • 565 g whole wheat flour
  • 5 g salt
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • 14 g oil (I used extra-virgin olive oil)
  • additional whole wheat flour as needed

Method:

  1. Mix all the ingredients of the soaker with the water and let stand at room temperature for 24 hours
  2. One day later, divide the soaker and the stiff levain into a dozen small pieces with a metal dough cutter. Sprinkle whole wheat flour on these 24 pieces to avoid their sticking together
  3. Put them in a large bowl with all the other ingredients (except for the additional flour) and mix vigorously with wet hands until incorporated. The dough should be slack and sticky (add flour or water as needed)
  4. Sprinkle flour on the counter. Put the dough on it and roll it in the flour. Knead for 3 or 4 minutes, adding just enough flour so that it doesn’t stick any more
  5. Shape into a rough boule (ball) and let rest 5 minutes. During that time, spray oil into a bowl or dough bucket
  6. Knead again for one minute or until the dough is developed enough to pass the windowpane test (for more info on the windowpane test, see this page of Susan’s blog, Wild Yeast) (I had to knead for quite a few minutes to reach that stage, maybe because I only used 20 g of additional flour. I always find it very difficult to determine how much is too much when an author tells you to add flour without giving you an idea of how much and I often err on the side of not quite enough)
  7. Place the dough (shaped as a boule) in the bowl or bucket, cover and let ferment at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes (this is Reinhart’s recommendation. Since I had to go out, I set the dough to rise in a cold room – not the refrigerator though – for about 3 hours and since it wasn’t very developed, I gave it a fold after 40 minutes before leaving the house. Ideally I should have given it another fold but I wasn’t around to do it. For more info on folding dough, please refer to Susan’s blog again)
  8. Take the dough out of the bowl or bucket and place it on the counter (lightly sprinkled with flour). Divide it in 4 pieces
  9. Form each of the pieces into a rough cylinder. Let rest 20 minutes under a damp towel
  10. Shape 4 baguettes trying not to deflate the dough
  11. Put the baguettes either on a floured couche or in a floured baguette pan. Place in a large clear plastic bag. Blow into the bag once and close it tightly
  12. Let rise at room temperature for about 45 minutes
  13. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F/260 C twenty minutes before baking time after putting in it a baking stone and an empty metal pan
  14. When the second rise is over, take the baguettes out of the bag, sprinkle them with whole wheat flour and score them (make three parallel cuts length-wise at a 45-degree angle taking care not to cut diagonally)
  15. Pour one cup of cold water into the empty metal pan (taking care to avert your face and to protect your hands as the steam will be very hot) and place the baguettes directly on the baking stone (if using a couche. If using a baguette pan, set the pan on the stone)
  16. Spray water in the oven (taking care not to aim at the lamp). Spray again heavily two minutes later
  17. Lower the oven temperature do 450 F/232 C. Do not open the oven door for the next 20 minutes
  18. After 20 minutes, rotate the baguettes (if using a pan, take the baguettes out of it and set them on the stone). Bake another 15 minutes
  19. Take the baguettes out of the oven and set them to cool on a rack before eating.

We had just started dinner when the baguettes came out of the oven, so we only waited 20 minutes before slicing open the first one. As our house isn’t very warm in this season and the baguettes are rather skinny, it had cooled down enough.