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Seven Stars Bakery’s Pumpkin Seed Bread

Sometimes I dream we are back in Providence, RI, and we go and have lunch at one of Seven Stars Bakery‘s three locations… In the two days we were there in November (I was attending a BBGA class with Richard Miscovich at Johnson’s & Wales beautiful campus), we managed to hit all three. I can’t say I have a favorite. We liked them all. All three feature the same seductive breads, pastries and cookies (everything is made in a nearby central location that Jim Williams, the owner, was kind enough to take us visit) and in all three, the atmosphere was relaxed and appealing: friends of all ages chatting over coffee or tea, dads reading books to toddlers before heading home from grocery shopping, students crouched over laptop screens or texting without a pause in their conversations, tourists – like us- rejoicing in the variety and quality of the offerings.
Everybody – friends, dads, students, tourists – had a tempting treat on the table in front of them and we had a (very) hard time limiting ourselves to what the two of us could reasonably sample. And that’s coming from a woman who really doesn’t like sweet things but who can resist Seven Stars’ chocolate almond croissant? Not me… Although, true to form, I enjoyed the vegetarian sandwich even more.
In the evening, Jim and Lynn Williams were the gracious hosts for BBGA’s Guildhall Gathering, which gave us the opportunity to taste even more breads and that’s how I “discovered” and fell in love with their Pumpkin Seed Bread.
Seven Stars Bakery’s Pumpkin Bread as sold at the bakery
I asked Jim if he wouldn’t mind sharing the formula and, generous to a tee as are most bakers I know, he said he’d send it to me. So here we go… But before we proceed, you may want to take a closer look at the bakery’s website, and more specifically at its baking process page which you’ll find a most informative description of the work going on in a serious artisan bakery.
Back to the pumpkin bread. I had meant to bake it for Thanksgiving but we got back shortly before the holiday and it took an inordinate amount of time for me to rekindle my levain‘s enthusiasm for baking. Then we hit a cold spell and it was just freezing in the house (at least it felt like it) and when I did get to the bread, canned pumpkin had disappeared from the stores. Apparently it is a seasonal product in Washington State. Once Thanksgiving is over, it is as if it never existed. That’s new to me as one of the rare things I could be sure to find year-round where I come from in the Northeast is canned pumpkin. But never mind that, we did manage to find a can after hitting a number of grocery stores and I just now baked the bread for our Christmas brunch (hence the wreath shape).
I love the flavor (nutty with a faint sweet note to which the tang of the rye levain offers a delicate counterpoint), the texture (mellow and chewy/crunchy at the same time) and the golden color. It takes its own sweet time to rise but you can make it over two days: I mixed the dough in the morning of the first day around 10, gave it three folds and let it rise slowly for about 4 hours. Then I put it in the garage (where the temperature was about 44°F/7°C) and I let it rest until morning. In the morning (around 8:00 AM), I set it to warm up at 77°F/25°C. It took a while: when I shaped the dough around 1:00 PM, its internal temperature was 66°F/19°C. But by then the room was really warm and the shaped loaves proofed happily in the baskets. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had waited a little more but I had to go out, so by 2:00 PM, they went into the oven. Jim does it a bit differently: his final dough get a 2-hour bulk fermentation, then it proofs for 4 hours and gets baked. He warned me that at home, the process would be somewhat longer and he was right.
All in all, I am happy with the result. The crumb isn’t as holey as Seven Stars’ but the taste is right, the texture very appealing and I love the color. Thank you for sharing, Jim! Of course I can only encourage those of you who live in New England or have a chance to go visit to check out the bakery and have a taste for yourself. Maybe you’ll even meet my friend Lumi who is now a baking instructor at Johnson &Wales and a huge fan of Seven Stars!


Ingredients (for one wreath and one oval loaf):

  • 700 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 106 g whole wheat (I used Fairhaven‘s white whole wheat berries which I milled for the recipe)
  • 42 g cornmeal
  • 665 g water (I used 645 g but then it depends on how thirsty your flour is), at required temperature to ultimately get a dough temperature of about 76°F/24°C
  • 170 g canned pumpkin
  • 102 g sesame seeds, toasted
  • 170 g pumpkin seeds, toasted (I actually used 50 g pumpkin and 120 g sunflower seeds as it was all I had)
  • 85 g mature wheat levain (at 65% hydration) (mine was my regular levain which calls for 33% whole-grains including wheat, spelt and rye)
  • 51 g mature rye levain (at 100% hydration)
  • 20 g salt

Method: (I mixed the dough by hand)

  1. Mix the two levains and set aside, covered, at warm room temperature
  2. Mix the flours and the polenta and most of the water until well incorporated. Cover and let autolyse for about 30 minutes, at warm room temperature
  3. Incorporate the levains, then the pumpkin (at same warm room temperature), then add the salt
  4. Add the rest of the water as necessary (I was left with about 20g of the original water amount)
  5. Mix in the seeds until well distributed in the dough
  6. Dough temperature was 75° when set to proof at warm room temperature in an oil-sprayed covered container.
  7. Give it three folds 30 minutes apart and let it rise afterwards for about 4 hours (the length of time necessary to almost double).
  8. Set it in the fridge (or in a cold spot like a garage) until the next morning
  9. The day after, set it to warm up at room temperature and shape it in two loaves (scaled at 1000g)
  10. Bake in prey-heated 470°F/243°C oven (with steam the first few minutes) for 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes (without opening the door) at 450°F/232°C, then turn the loaves around and bake another 15 minutes (for a total baking time of 35 minutes).
  11. Turn the oven off and let the loaves rest inside with oven door ajar for another 5 minutes
  12. Set to cool on a rack.
  13. When completely cool, slice a loaf open, top a piece with some extra-sharp Cheddar cheese, set a glass of hard cider at your elbow, close your eyes, take a bite and find yourself magically transported to a crisp fall day in Providence, RI. Enjoy!

    Printable recipe

Seven Stars Bakery’s Pumpkin Seed Bread will be going to Susan for Yeastspotting, her weekly roundup of breads and other baked goodies.

Whole Wheat & Hazelnut Breadsticks

My hand is still (a bit) sore and my levains are still asleep, so I am not back in baking mode yet but I have been meaning to share my hazelnut version of Martha Rose Shulman’s whole wheat and walnut breadstick recipe for a while. Now is as good a time as any, especially since it is hazelnut season and maybe you are lucky enough to have hazelnut trees in your garden.
I have tried it with levain instead of yeast (not as crisp) or with rye and spelt replacing some of the whole wheat (too assertive). I have also made it with walnuts as originally intended but as long as we have hazelnuts on hand, I always came back to this one which is our favorite.
I like to make it before traveling as the sticks’ elongated shape makes them ideal for the side pockets of our backpacks and with some cheese (even plain cheese sticks) and an apple or a handful of dried apricots, they make a wholesome snack on the go.
They are very good both with regular whole wheat and with white whole wheat.
Ingredients (for 24 breadsticks):

  • 425 g whole wheat flour (white or regular) (I use freshly milled)
  • 200 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 52 g finely ground hazelnuts (or hazelnut meal) (if using whole hazelnuts, roast them for 10 minutes in a 350°F/177°C oven, let them cool down a bit, then rub them in a kitchen towel to remove as much of the skins as possible before grinding)
  • 50 g hazelnut oil (a mild olive oil can be used instead)
  • 13 g sea salt
  • 3 g instant dry yeast
  • 314 g lukewarm water
  • 5 g honey or maple syrup (optional)
Method:
Please refer to the original recipe as I have followed it to the letter with excellent results.
These Whole Wheat & Hazelnut Breadsticks are going to Susan’s Wild Yeast for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

Blender Bread

I never thought I would make bread in a blender. Yet that’s exactly what I did yesterday and I can explain why in two words: extensor tenosynovitis (ET). Unless you are a physician or have had ET yourself, chances are you don’t know what I am talking about. Until day before yesterday I didn’t either and believe me, I wish I never learned. It is diabolically painful (and this, from someone who is known for having an abnormally high threshold for pain).

ET is a repetitive stress injury and I got it from watching Grey’s Anatomy on my handheld device. Which is why I should sue both ABC and the manufacturers of the device. Although maybe not ABC if they let me pick my doctor from the show…
See, what happened was that I was trying to get ready for Season 8 (which just started) by watching all seven previous seasons (which I had never seen before). That’s 148 episodes and by episode 140, I guess my left hand grew tired of holding the thing up so that I could better see MerDer drill holes in people’s skulls. It gave up without prior notice, leaving me unable to tie my shoe laces, cut veggies, feed my levains (which had to be forcibly dehydrated, poor babies), mix bread and, worse, hold my youngest (one-month old) granddaughter in my arms.

However since:

  • I own one of the powerful blenders you can see demonstrated at big warehouse stores
  • I got a grain attachment for it (for these seeds or beans which might damage my regular mill)
  • This grain attachment came with a booklet of recipes
  • Two of these recipes looked interesting: one for sourdough bread, one for hearty multi-grain yeasted bread
  • I had levain galore (as usual)

I decided to combine these recipes by just replacing the yeast by liquid starter.

The blender was going to do the work, so I didn’t have to worry about anything, right? Well, almost true. But let me tell you, I still found it exhausting to make bread that way. Too many ingredients. Weighing 5 g of this and 7 g of that countless times to get just one loaf in a 8.5 x 4.5 pan! Call me lazy but I don’t think it’s worth it.
The original multi-grain loaf recipe makes no mention of salt (did they just forget it or is it deliberate?) and eschewes bulk fermentation. The dough goes straight from the blender to the oiled pan. It is supposed to rise in 30 minutes, go into a 350°F oven for 30 to 35 minutes and voilà, bread done.
Well, it didn’t quite happen that way. The blender did a good job of milling the minute quantities of millet, buckwheat, flax seeds, wheat, spelt, rye, barley, sunflower seeds, etc. It did mix the dough reasonably well (but I had never had a dough come out at 87°F before and that, even though I used really cold water). I added salt (which is listed as optional in the sourdough recipe). I did upend the blender over the pan to let the dough drop gently into it. But I waited almost 5 hours for it to rise enough to go into the oven (and it had been in a warm place all that time). In all fairness I must say the recipe for the sourdough bread indicates that it might take anywhere between 30 minutes and 8 hours, depending upon the temperature of the room.
The result is as can be seen above. Not pretty but better than just edible. Will I make it again? No. Will we eat it? Yes. At least I will. It actually tastes very healthful. I am hoping it’s good for extensor tenosynovitis.

Made in Quebec: from wheat to bread

Fragment of a mural on the outerwall of Première Moisson
in the Mont-Royal area of Montreal
Just came back from a few days in Montreal with lots of good memories (including of a mad dash through rain-peltered streets to the sheltered terrace of a café on Place Jacques-Cartier where we sat next to a cheerful bilingual beer-guzzling street entertainer in a black kilt and dreadlocks), half-a-shelf worth of used books (as if I needed the extra weight for the flight home next week but where to get novels by Michel Tremblay or Félix Leclerc in the Pacific Northwest?) and a bagful of bread – well, just four loaves really – as well as two “chocolatines aux amandes” (almond chocolate croissants) which were to die for.

Chocolatine aux amandes
The chocolatines (which we first sampled when visiting Première Moisson Bakery at Atwater market) were so good that I knew I had to go back and buy some bread, especially because I was curious about the bakery anyway. I had first heard of it in August 2010 when I went to the Montérégie area of Quebec, west of Montreal, to meet with Robert Beauchemin, owner of La Meunerie Milanaise.
Photo © La Milanaise, used with R. Beauchemin’s permission
Beauchemin, who with his wife Lily Vallières has been producing organic cereal grain on his farm since the late 70’s, had a mill built on his property in 1982 because no mills were available to him which would stone-grind his grain and he felt stone-milling was a trade which was slowly disappearing. He was determined to reverse the trend. He soon discovered that there was much more to milling than knowing how to keep the stones sharp and that the milling process itself had a tremendous impact on the finished product. With the help and support of Agriculture Canada, he was able to hire research staff at the end of the 90’s to analyze this process. Initially scheduled to last two months, the study actually lasted two years as the team discovered more and more layers of complexity, once all of the physical characteristics of a given variety of wheat were taken into account. (For more on the history of La Milanaise, check out this page of its website).
Beauchemin also told me that La Milanaise only mills organic grain and that he had joined hands in 2007 with the owners of Première Moisson Bakery (literal translation: First Harvest) to found another mill, Les Moulins de Soulanges with the goal to develop specialty flours tailor-made to the needs of Quebec artisan bakers. These flours wouldn’t be organic but they would be made without any chemical additions or manipulations.
He recounted how, as late as in 1999, La Milanaise was still buying 85% of its wheat from the Canadian West as it was widely believed that no quality wheat could be grown in Quebec. A variety of wheat was considered good for baking purposes when its flour readily absorbed water and produced a bread with hardly any crust and a finely honey-combed crumb, in other words the perfect sandwich bread. The wide plains of Western Canada produced 100% spring wheat which yielded the ideal flour for such bread.
But towards the end of the 90’s, the move towards artisanal bread was starting to take hold in Quebec. Scores of bakers were arriving from France and having a excruciatingly hard time producing French breads with the strong flours (14% protein) which were the only ones then available to them. A demand thus emerged for a type of wheat that was of no interest to the Western farmers. Time had come to revisit the principles of wheat production in Quebec. Beauchemin who is a mechanical engineer and holds a Master’s Degree in mathematics, was convinced that science was the answer: the influence of genetics and climate needed to be thoroughly analyzed and tested. With strong government support, he hired two full-time agronomists whose job it was (and still is) to establish a concordance between what could be observed at the mill and at the bakery and what was going on in the fields.
Thanks to these efforts and others and to forward-looking government subventions, Quebec is now producing more and more winter wheat whose aromas are much more complex than those of spring wheat: “After a few years of researches, we have now identified certain varieties of wheat grown in Québec that have interesting potential for speciality flours and bakery. Moreover, we observed that some characteristics of wheat grown in Québec make them even more interesting than other varieties grown in the Canadian West.” (quotation from La Milanaise website)
Les Moulins de Soulanges is currently working with six to eight varieties of wheat, some selected for their strength, some for the flexibility they bring to the dough and others for the characteristics of the bread they yield – color, aroma, crust texture (a full-time baker is also on staff). All the flours it produces result from a blend of grains in varying proportions according to the desired results. All agricultural machinery used by the farmers who work with Les Moulins is equipped with a chip that constantly analyzes data during sowing, hoeing, fertilizing and harvesting. That chip makes it possibly to determine the quality of the protein in each part of each field so that overfertilizing is never an issue. Every element is measured and controlled at every stage. The origin of each grain delivery can be pinpointed not only to the individual farm but almost to the individual furrow. Blends are made on the basis of the percentage of gluten (which is not necessarily the same as the percentage of protein) and the aptitude of the flour to produce the desired dough characteristics.
What’s more, by managing changes in wheat characteristics, it is now possible to develop a wide range of aromas from floral to coffee. The baker can choose the ones that will become his or signature once he/she applies to the flour his or her knowledge of the fermentation process by varying acidity and temperatures levels. He/she can pick different blends for different breads. I don’t know about you but I find the concept of picking aromas à la carte totally mind-blowing. Like a dream come true…
Quebec doesn’t yet produce enough organic wheat to satisfy demand. But with the support of the Canadian government, it has implemented a successful sustainable agriculture program which makes it possible for a big artisan bakery such as Première Moisson to use exclusively wheat grown in Quebec without the use of pesticides.
A rustic setting for Les Moulins
Knowing all this and having the good fortune of spending three days in Montreal earlier this week, I was curious to see Première Moisson. A family store, it was founded in 1992 and now has multiple locations in the Montreal and Quebec City areas. I only saw three of them, the above-mentioned bakery at Atwater market, the one at the Jean-Talon Market and the one in the Mont-Royal area of Montreal (where I photographed the mural). But in all of them the displayed motto was the same: “L’art du vrai !”, translated by Première Moisson as “Truly authentic!”
First off, the wheat-colored stores are bright, airy and spacious. Then there is bread (or pictures of bread) literally everywhere (I am only focusing on bread but the bakery offers much more including various pastries and a “charcuterie” section supervised by an artisan master charcutier from France who uses meat from animals raised in Quebec under a “clean label”). The pictures I took in the store are not very good. But they’ll give you an idea of the atmosphere of the place and the kind of bread to be found there.

The breads we took home were actually quite tasty, except for the olive sourdough loaf which was rather bland, way blander as a matter of fact than an olive bread has the right to be in spite of the description in the in-store brochure which promised: “for a fleeting moment, you’ll be transported to the Italian countryside!”. The olives had no flavor and I couldn’t taste the olive oil. Oh, well! Maybe it was a bad day for olives. The crumb was beautiful though… The organic sprouted grains and the sourdough walnut were both very good.
Olive Sourdough
Organic Sprouted Grains
Walnut Sourdough

But the raisin, honey and hazelnut sourdough was spectacular, with perfectly roasted hazelnuts and a complex honey flavor.

Première Moisson’s raisin, honey & hazelnut sourdough bread

So will I go back to try and sample some more next time we go to Montreal? Sure. There is a lot more to explore at the bakery and I am looking forward to new discoveries. But then I may also want to talk to Josée Fiset who founded Première Moisson with her mother and her two brothers close to 20 years ago. She came out in 2006 with a book, Bread, which I couldn’t resist buying to learn more about the bakery’s bread philosophy (well, I actually bought the French version, Pain, but the contents are probably identical). In any case as I was reading through the introduction, I was shocked to discover that Fiset believed (and had confirmed by a baker colleague in France) that the possibility of making good artisan bread at home was an utopia as could only be made at home breads which required no steam, no levain and no kneading skills!
I personally know several professional bakers who would firmly disagree with her, including Anis Bouabsa who was recognized as Meilleur Ouvrier de France (Best Artisan Baker in France) in 2004 and whose baguette won the label of best baguette in Paris in 2008. Anis actually told me when I saw him at Europain in 2008 that he was very impressed by the work of home bakers and he certainly wasn’t above passionately discussing levain techniques with me. I can only think that Fiset is too busy running the bakery to keep up with the serious home baker movement. Hopefully the few links I am planning to send her will help convince her that things have changed!

Noah Elber’s Maple-Oatmeal Bread


Noah Elbers’s Maple-Oatmeal Bread (as sold at the bakery)

Since discovering Noah Elbers‘s Maple-Oatmeal Bread (and before I learned how to make it myself), I have bought maple-oatmeal breads from other bakeries, including in Vermont. I have yet to find one that can compare. I even remember being so put off by one of these other loaves that I cut it into small pieces, took it to the lake and fed it to the ducks (who, having no basis for comparison, seemed to like it way more than we did). It is hard to describe the flavor of Noah’s maple-oatmeal bread other than to say that it is barely sweet, supremely delicate and very, very addictive.


Noah Elbers’s maple-oatmeal bread (as sold at the bakery)

I watched the making of this bread from the mixing of the dough through the shaping but since it was going to be baked much later (after retarding) and we needed to drive back home, I didn’t see the baking. 
Here is Noah’s formula in baker’s percentages:
60% all-purpose flour
20% whole-wheat flour (+ 10% each in starter and in poolish) = 100%
20% cooked steel-cut oatmeal
44% water
2.2% salt
16% pure maple syrup
20% liquid starter
20% poolish (made with a pinch of instant yeast)
All liquids together = 75%
Pointers:
  • Starter and poolish: 12-hour fermentation at 75°F/24°C
  • Oatmeal: Scale equal weight of oats and water. Boil the water, pour it over the oats, stir, cover and bake in the oven at a temperature of about 410°F/210°C for 40 minutes. The oats absorb all the water and by the time they are mixed with the maple syrup, they form an “oat chunk” rather than oatmeal. The water used to cook the oats is not included in the total water percentage
  • Autolyse: 20 to 30 minutes
  • Desired dough temperature: 77 to 78°F/25 to 26°C
  • Bulk fermentation: 2.5 hours with 5 folds after 50 minutes and 5 folds again after 40 minutes
  • No pre-shaping
  • Scaling: at 24 ounces/680 g
  • Shaping: as a boule or as an oval
  • Proofing: 45 minutes on the floor (at least 1 hour at home where the temperature is probably lower) then 14 to 15 hours in the retarder with the cover on
  • Baking: at 400-415°F/204-213°C for 35-40 minutes with lots of steam at the beginning

The first time I made the bread, I miscalculated the amounts (not surprisingly, since I truly am mathematically challenged) and used way too much water. I tried to rescue the dough but to no avail. It spread so much on the parchment paper that I thought I had totally messed up and would for sure get another treat for the ducks. What I got instead was a weird looking but delicious maple-oatmeal ciabatta which we found particularly enjoyable at breakfast. Before we tasted it, I was so mad at having messed up that I didn’t take any pictures but I should have: the bread was rather too dark for a ciabatta and a bit flatter too but the crumb was perfect, delectable and open. I think I will actually make it again…
The second time was at my kids’ house in the Northwest. Having no access to baskets of any kind, I shaped the dough as a boule and proofed it directly on a couche. It rose beautifully in the oven and even though it again turned out darker than I would have liked (the oven was way too hot), the taste was almost spot on.
However since I didn’t want to end up with a ciabatta again and since I had no proofing baskets, I had reduced the amount of water to make sure the dough wouldn’t be too slack. The end result is that I got a tighter crumb than the one I was shooting for.
(By the way, I am sorry for the poor quality of these two pictures. It was very dark out and raining and nowhere in the house could I get enough of the natural light I would have liked to work with.)


Ingredients:
  • 447 g all-purpose unbleached flour
  • 151 g whole-wheat flour
  • 151 g steel-cut oatmeal, cooked as described above
  • 328 g water
  • 151 g liquid starter
  • 151 g poolish
  • 121 g pure maple syrup
  • 16 g salt
Method:
Note 1: The starter has to be fed and the poolish mixed the night before
Note 2: Poolish recipe: 100g flour + 1 pinch of instant yeast + 100g water. Mix well and leave to ferment overnight, preferably at warmish room temperature (above 70°F/21°C if possible)
Note 3: Noah retards this bread for 14 to 15 hours. I didn’t do it (there was no room in the refrigerator) and even though the bread still turned out quite tasty, next time I will retard it and see if the flavor becomes even more complex (it should). Also, since I had no access to a mixer, I mixed the dough by hand.
  1. I mixed all the ingredients except the salt in a big bowl and let the dough rest for 30minutes, covered
  2. I mixed everything again to medium soft consistency, covered the bowl (dough temperature by then was 75°F/24°C ) and applied the 5-folds regimen recommended by Noah (see pointers above). Total bulk fermentation time was three hours at room temperature (72°F/22°C)
  3. I skipped pre-shaping, shaped the whole dough as one single boule and let it proof for two hours covered, on cornmeal-dusted parchment paper (I had no semolina), again at room temperature
  4. I pre-heated the oven at 475°F/246°C half-an-hour prior to baking time, after placing an old metal pan at the bottom and a half-sheet on the middle rack (my kids have no baking stone in their oven)
  5. I slid the boule with the parchment paper underneath on the half-sheet, quickly poured one cup of water in the metal pan and closed the door
  6. I immediately lowered the oven temperature to 450°F/232°C and let the bread bake for 25 minutes without opening the door
  7. I then rotated the bread, lowered the oven temperature to 420°F/216°C and continued the baking for another 20 minutes.
As indicated above and obvious from the picture, I started with an oven which was way too hot and I didn’t lower the temperature enough afterwards. Oh, well, that’s how we learn, isn’t it? Noah bakes this bread at 415-425°F/213-218°C and, according to him, even at that lower temperature it colors quickly, much like it would in a hotter oven, maybe because of all the steam coming off the baking loaves or the materials his oven is made of or the heat or a combination of all these factors. Basically the home baker will have to find the temperature that works the best in his/her oven for this bread. But even if it comes out a bit too dark for your taste at first, I bet you will love it!

Noah Elber’s Maple-Oatmeal Bread goes to Susan’s Wild Yeast Blog for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.