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Keith Giusto’s power bread (with sprouted grain)

This bread is one of Keith Giusto’s favorites and a big seller in his bakery, Full Circle Baking Company in Petaluma. Made with sprouted wheat, it requires some serious advance planning since you have to soak the grain for 48 hours and wash it carefully before milling and using it.
Why use sprouted wheat? Because sprouting “liberates” the sweet flavor of the kernel and, more importantly still, because it triggers the breakdown of the nutrients it contains, transforming large molecules in smaller ones more easily absorbed by the body.


Before (top) and after (bottom) sprouting

Two considerations come into play when selecting wheat for sprouting: first, it is essential to purchase clean wheat from a reliable source because dirty wheat may contain insects, mouse droppings, or worse and may also contain little stones which might find their way into the bread and from there into someone’s mouth and break a tooth (it could also seriously damage the milling machine); secondly, it is very important to purchase gluten-rich wheat (hard white winter wheat or dark Northern spring wheat) since, once sprouted and milled, it will replace a good proportion of the flour in the dough.
When getting ready to sprout (48 hours before mixing the dough), put the kernels of wheat in a big bucket or bowl (depending on how much you are sprouting) and use 180% water for 100% wheat. Agitate the seeds vigorously to make sure every kernel is in contact with water. Repeat 3 or 4 times a day. In warm weather, change the water everyday.
After 48 hours, if you press on a kernel, white matter (the endosperm) will come out. The wheat is ready. If you see even the beginning of the germ, then it is too late and the wheat cannot replace part of the flour in the dough. So watch it carefully on the second day.

The next step – washing the wheat – is extremely important. The soaking water is yellowish (or reddish) and murky and it stinks (a sign that fermentation has started). It needs to be completely rinsed out. Place the seeds in a colander (at SFBI, we used a perforated bucket) and wash. The wheat is clean when the rinsing water comes out clear and bubble-free).

Once clean and drained (at this point, you can taste it and discover its deliciously nutty flavor), the wheat is milled. A meat grinder can be used if you have one. If using a food-processor, be sure to make really small batches as the sprouted wheat is quite dense and the machine might conk out.

If not used immediately, the milled wheat needs to be kept in the refrigerator where it’ll stay good for a couple of days. Since the sprouting and milling process is rather cumbersome, it might be a good idea to make a big batch (for instance, four times the amount you need) and freeze the milled grain in 1-lb or 1-kg bags. When ready to use, be sure to thaw it well though as the mass becomes very stiff and would break the hook of the mixer if not completely thawed.
The milled grain is added to the liquid ingredients (water, levain, fruit juice if using) and the dough is mixed on 1st speed until incorporated, then the dry ingredients go in (flour, yeast, gluten if using), etc. It is particularly important not to add all of the water indicated in the formula as the milled grain retains a lot of it and the dough might be too wet.

I will not post the actual recipe today as I would need to recalculate the weight of all the ingredients for home use (at SFBI, we made 25 kg of power bread dough). But I will post it when I make the bread at home.
The loaf can be scored as follows…

 

…and come out like this…

 

Or it can be shaped and scored as Lumi, one of our classmates, prefers it…

 

We used stiff levain, sprouted grain, bread flour, dry yeast, salt, raisins juice, raisins and toaste walnuts and almonds in the dough.

 

The bread is delicious and keeps very well. At home I may try to reproduce it without the raisins (I love their sweetness but hate the calories they add to each slice) and halve the amount of nuts.
The big question though isn’t the ingredients I’ll use. As I don’t have a meat grinder, it is really whether or not I’ll be able to mill the grain in my food-processor. There is only one way to find out… Stay tuned!

Seedy Quick Bread

A friend from France is visiting for a few weeks and I am taking her to some of my favorite haunts. Right now we are in Southwest Florida where we haven’t been back since Hurricane Charley devastated it in 2004. Charley changed the landscape radically. It also wreaked havoc with many lives as some of the residents have packed up and gone, leaving behind boarded-up storefronts and empty houses. One can only wonder at their whereabouts and hope that they were able to start over somewhere else.
This sorry state of affairs and the slow pace of the tourists’ return haven’t helped expand the choices in the bread aisle at the local supermarket. Even the so-called whole wheat bread looks suspiciously pillowy and the list of ingredients is none too encouraging. What’s a determined baker to do? Bake of course! And since time was of the essence (breakfast was looming), I decided to make a healthful quick bread.
With the few ziploc bags of seeds I had brought from home as well as the flours and foil pans that could be found at the supermarket, I was all set to go. This seedy loaf was indeed very quickly made. Sourdough, it ain’t but, as quick breads go, it is excellent. If more convenient (for instance if no foil pan is to be obtained), it could be made into muffins or scones. With the ingredients listed below, I made one regular pan loaf plus a small round loaf which was the equivalent of four big muffins. We were pretty hungry and, as you can see, breakfast took precedence over picture-taking…

Since even a determined baker doesn’t travel with her kitchen scales, I am listing the ingredients by volume instead of weight as I usually do. Sorry about that…
Ingredients:

  • 1 cup unbleached all-purpose
  • 1 cup whole-wheat flour
  • 1 tbsp aluminum-free baking powder
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • 1 1/2 cup of milk
  • 1 tbsp olive oil (a more neutral oil might be better but I only had olive oil)
  • 2/3 of a tsp of salt
  • 1/4 cup poppy seeds
  • 1/4 cup rolled oats
  • 1/4 cup raw sunflower seeds
  • 2 tbsp roasted unsalted pumpkin seeds (for topping)

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 425 F/218 C
  2. Mix all the dry ingredients (except for the pumpkin seeds)
  3. In another bowl, mix the milk, the oil and the egg
  4. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the liquid ones
  5. Stir until the dry ingredients are just incorporated
  6. Spoon into an oiled foil bread pan (since I had too much dough for the pan and the dough was stiff enough to hold by itself, I shape the leftover into a round loaf which I flattened lightly and scored in an X pattern. I placed it in a square foil pan to bake along the loaf)
  7. Top with pumpkin seeds
  8. Bake for 30 minutes
  9. Remove from the pan as soon as possible and set to cool on a rack.

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!

Spring cleaning bread

Spring is officially on even though right now it is snowing lightly where I live. But I am in the mood for warmer breezes and daffodils and in the hope of accelerating the arrival of the new season, I decided to do some cleaning. I started with the cupboard where I keep my stock of dry fruit, which is how I discovered that some of my figs had a decidedly dryer look than when I first bought them.
It so happened that I had just seen a recipe which called for soaking some figs, currants, apricots and prunes in Home Baking, by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid, a book I bought long ago on e-bay but never baked from before. As you may have guessed, my spring cleaning stopped right there for the day!
The recipe is called “fruit & nut powerpack” but I changed it to spring cleaning because I need energy and motivation to go on with the process of ridding the house of the last remnants of winter and what better way to get motivated than to remind myself that I didn’t bake all these calories into a loaf just to sit at my computer and eat.
It should also be said that the recipe makes for 2 loaves and that I gave one of them to my daughter whose kids tore it apart and devoured it with even more determination than usual.
My 4-year old granddaughter declared it very yummy with peanut butter when she had her midday meal/afternoon snack on the way back from the aquarium and the 2-year twins kept up an extremely lively bad monster game before they went to sleep last night, which means the energy part works!
Maybe my daughter is sorry I didn’t take up wonderbread baking instead of artisan baking as I heard the twins laugh and chatter in their cribs for quite a while last night (I was over for dinner) while I was helping their 15-year old sister with the formatting of her research paper. Why did Microsoft change the layout of all the commands in Word 2007 is truly beyond me. We had to poke our way through the various menus to find what we needed. Indenting is easier than before but we never found the way to skip page numbering on the first page. Oh, well! The bread did help though because between the two of us, we found all the other answers.
Anyway this is a bread that almost wasn’t because I made a serious mistake while mixing the dough. The recipe calls for active dry yeast and that’s what I had used when mixing the sponge the day before. However, on the day of the baking, I was listening to Will in the World, a truly fascinating account by Stephen Greenblatt of how Shakespeare became Shakespeare. I have borrowed the book on cds from my local library and was totally engrossed in the narrative.
I should know better than multitask while baking and also, true to what I learned at the San Francisco Baking Institute, I should have scaled all the ingredients before starting with the mixing instead of doing it on the go. Anyway what I did was to reach for the instant yeast instead of the active dry one and I weighed it straight into the sponge!
I realized my mistake as soon as it happened but it was too late. I had no idea of how the bread would come out because a) I used the same quantity of instant yeast as I would have of active dry yeast when you are supposed to use way less; b) since it was already late, I had planned for a long fermentation overnight in the fridge which requires less yeast, not more, if you want the micro-organisms to still have something to feast upon in the morning when you put the bread in the oven.
Oh, well! It was too late to do anything about it. Let me tell you though that I never saw a dough grow as fast or as plump as this one on the first rise. It was trying to fly out of the dough bucket like a hot air balloon. Fortunately the lid held fast and it didn’t happen. Since I had barely developed the dough to the point where I could get a gluten window, I did two folds during the first fermentation which lasted about 2 1/2 hours.
Then I did the pre-shaping and the shaping and stuck the whole thing in the fridge. I was half expecting to find two exhausted looking deflated loaves in the morning but that’s not what happened. Which shows that when bakers make mistakes, they should remain hopeful…

Ingredients:

  • 375 to 500 g all-purpose unbleached flour
  • 240 g whole wheat flour
  • 60 g buckwheat flour
  • 474 g lukewarm water
  • 237 g very hot water
    5 g active-dry yeast (as explained above, by mistake I used 1 g of active-dry and 4 g of instant yeast)
  • 15 g of salt (the authors actually call for 12 grams but I like to use about 2% of the total flour weight)
  • 75 g chopped figs
  • 72 g chopped currants
  • 65 g coarsely chopped dried apricots
  • 66 g coarsely chopped pitted prunes
  • 67 g hazelnuts
  • 20 g liquid honey (about half of what the authors use, which is 42 g)

Method:

  1. Eight to 24 hours before you wish to bake, place the lukewarm water in a bowl and stir in 1 g (1/4 of a teaspoon) of active dry yeast then add the whole wheat flour, always stirring in the same direction until a smooth batter forms. Set aside, covered with plastic wrap to ferment overnight or as long as 24 hours (the authors recommend placing the bowl in the fridge if you have to leave the sponge to ferment for longer than 24 hours and not to go beyond 36 hours)
  2. Meanwhile place the figs, currants, apricots and prunes in a bowl and pour over the hot water. Stir well, cover and soak overnight (or at least 5 hours at room temperature)
  3. Before making the dough, toast the hazelnuts. To do that, I put them in a 375 F/191 C oven (a toaster oven would be better if you have one) in a foil pan for about 10 minutes (or until fragrant). Then I transfer them to a kitchen towel which I fold over and rub between my hand to get the skins off (it is okay if some stays on).
  4. Chop by hand or in a food processor. Set aside
  5. Drain the fruit in a sieve over a bowl, using a wooden spoon to press on the fruit to push out all the liquid. Reserve the soaking liquid. Place the fruit in a large bowl and stir in the hazelnuts
  6. Add the reserved soaking liquid to the sponge. Sprinkle on the remaining 4 grams of yeast and stir in (that’s what I made the non-fatal mistake referred to above)
  7. Add 62 g of the all-purpose flour and stir in
  8. Pour in the honey and sprinke on the salt. Stir again
  9. Add the buckwheat flour and stir
  10. Then add 185 to 250 g of the all-purpose flour, 60 g at a time, turning and stirring to mix
  11. Turn the dough out on a work surface floured with another 62 to 125 g of the all-purpose flour (don’t forget to do that as the dough is extremely sticky at this point)
  12. Knead well, incorporating more of the flour as needed. When I stopped kneading, I had a faint gluten window
  13. Let rest for 20 minutes on the counter, covered with plastic
  14. Transfer the dough to a clean bowl. Mix 62 g of the all-purpose flour into the drained fruit and nuts, then add the whole mixture to the dough. Knead in the bowl or on the work surface for 5 minutes or more to incorporate the fruit mixture. If the dough is very sticky, add a little more flour (I had to add 20 g altogether)
  15. Place the dough in a clean bowl (I put it in my dough bucket) and let rise for 3 hours or almost doubled in volume (I actually let it rise for less as indicated above and did 2 folds during the first fermentation. )
  16. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and cut it half
  17. Pre-shape each loaf into a boule and let stand, loosely covered for about 20 minutes
  18. Meanwhile prepare a baking sheet which you will cover with parchment paper. Sprinkle the paper with semolina
  19. Shape the dough into boules, tucking the edges all around to make a smooth mound
  20. Place seam down on the baking sheet, put the baking sheet into a large clear plastic bag, blow in the bag once and close it tightly
  21. At this point, I stuck the loaves in the fridge to slow-rise overnight. If time is not an issue, you can also let them rise on the counter for 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours (or until pressing your finger into the dough leaves an indent which doesn’t disappear right away)
  22. I took the loaves out of the oven and left them at room temperature for about 1 1/2 hour, at which point they appeared ready
  23. Turn on the oven on 400 F/204 C one hour into the second rise (having placed a baking stone in it with an empty metal pan on the shelf located directly under it)
  24. With scissors, cut the paper between the loaves so that each had its own little paper and they can be put further apart in the oven than if they still shared a piece of paper
  25. Sprinkle flour on the loaves and score them, then pour 1 cup of cold water in the hot metal pan (taking care to avert your face and to protect your hands) and put in the loaves in the oven one at a time
  26. Spray more water into the oven (taking care to aim away from the lamp) and close the oven door
  27. Lower the oven temperature to 375 F/191 C and open the oven after two minutes to spray water generously once more
  28. Then bake for about 50 minutes (check the color of the crust after 40 minutes and if necessary, tent the loaves with foil to continue the baking)
  29. The loaves should sound hollow when tapped at the bottom and their internal temperature (taken with an instant thermometer) should be above 204 F/96 C
  30. Let cool completely on a rack before slicing.

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

Kneadlessly Simple San Francisco Style Sourdough Bread

The recipe for this bread comes from Nancy Baggett’s Kneadlessly Simple, a book I rewieved here.

Ingredients:
496 g all-purpose unbleached flour (+ more as needed)
9 g salt (the bread wasn’t quite salty enough to my taste. Next time I’ll use 2% of the total amount of flour indicated in the recipe, including the flour in the starter, i.e. 13 g)
1/4 tsp instant yeast (I used SAF)
12 g corn oil, canola oil or other flavorless vegetable oil + more for coating dough and pan
368 g wild yeast sourdough starter (hydration 100%)
350 g ice water (water chilled to around 50 F/10 C by adding ice cubes)

Method:

  1. In a large bowl, thoroughly stir together the flour, salt and yeast
  2. In another bowl or measuring cup, whisk the oil and starter into the water
  3. Vigorously stir the mixture into the bowl with the flour, scraping down the sides until the ingredients are thoroughly blended. If too dry, stir in just enough ice water to be able to incorporate the flour but don’t overdo it as the dough should be very stiff (conversely, if necessary, add more flour)
  4. Brush or spray the dough with oil and cover the bowl with plastic wrap
  5. If desired, for best flavor or convenience, the dough can be refrigerated for 3 to 10 hours
  6. Then let rise at room temperature for 18 to 24 hours. If convenient, vigorously stir the dough once partway through the rise (I forgot to do that part)
  7. When ready for the second rise, vigorously stir the dough, adding more flour as needed to make it very stiff and hard to stir (as I couldn’t bring myself to do that, I more or less stopped following the author’s instructions at this point and proceeded my usual way. I still did steps 8 and 9 however)
  8. Then using a well-oiled rubber spatula, fold the dough in towards the center, working your way all around the bowl (which will help organize the gluten)
  9. Let the dough rest for 10 minutes
  10. Invert the dough on a lightly floured counter, sprinkle the dough with flour and pre-shape it into a boule (ball)
  11. Let it rest for 20 minutes under a damp cloth
  12. Shape it into a tighter boule and place this boule into a floured cloth-covered basket (probably because I hadn’t added flour as recommanded by the author, the dough wasn’t stiff enough to rise by itself on a baking sheet)
  13. Place the basket into a large clear plastic bag, blow in the bag and close it tightly. Let the dough rise at room temperature for 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours or 4 to 24 hours in the fridge (I chose to let it rise overnight in the fridge)
  14. On the day of the baking, take the loaf out of the fridge and invert it onto a semolina-covered parchment paper and then to a Dutch oven lined with parchment paper (I use a 5-quart Lodge cast-iron oven but Pyrex or any large enough other covered ovenproof dish would work too). Do not cut the paper to the diameter of the Dutch oven as you will need the extra paper to carry the loaf into and out of the Dutch oven as on a sling
  15. Sprinkle some flour on the loaf, then score it in a tick-tack-toe pattern
  16. Close the Dutch oven and place it into the cold oven (once again, this is not the author’s method, but mine) and turn the oven on to 470 F/243 C. Bake for 45 minutes
  17. Take the Dutch oven out of the oven, get the bread out of it (lifting it on both sides using the paper as a sling) and set it back in the oven, without the paper, directly on the baking stone (if using)
  18. Lower the oven temperature to 440 F/227 C and bake for another 15 minutes (tenting the top of the loaf with foil to avoid overbrowning if necessary)
  19. Take the loaf out of the oven and check its internal temperature with an instant thermometer. If it has reached 204 F/ 96 C, it is ready. If not, put it back in the oven for another few minutes (taking care to protect the top with foil)
  20. When the bread is done, take it out of the oven and set it to cool on a rack before slicing it.

This bread didnt taste like the one I had several times in San Francisco but I like it better that way as I am not a huge fan of the famous San Francisco sourdough bread, except when eaten with clam chowder.
But I like the fact that without being exceptionally good, this bread is really tasty (especially after a few hours or the next day as it truly improves with age), that the work involved is minimal and that, best of all, all I had to wash afterward was a couple of bowls and a wooden spoon…