Farine

Crazy for Bread

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Apple-Blueberry Spelt Bread with Chia Seeds

Blueberry season is upon us and we have been picking and freezing, picking and freezing… The good thing about blueberries is that they grow on thornless bushes which means you can take kids along and they don’t complain. They just pick and eat, pick and eat. Some berries even make it to their baskets.
One of my five-year old grandsons picked three pounds the other day without even noticing that his small basket – the very wooden basket my grandfather made for me ages ago so that I could go foraging with him in the fields and woods near their home – was getting seriously heavy. He said that he needed to pick a lot to have enough for the winter (he eats them frozen) and in the same breath, he confided that winter was his favorite season because it rained a lot and it got dark really early and he could stay inside and play videogames and watch movies. The blueberries were clearly meant to be part of the good time to come. Good for him!

As for me my thoughts naturally turned to bread and since I had tasty memories of an apple-blueberry bread I once posted to my now-retired French blog, I decided to bake a blueberry bread for breakfast. I thought I was being creative with that recipe, relying on spelt to provide a hint of a honey flavor, adding unsweetened applesauce as a counterpoint to the berries and chia seeds for crunch and improved nutrition. But just to be on the safe side, I searched Farine to see what blueberry recipes I might have already posted over the years and that’s when I discovered two things about myself, one bad, one good.

Bad news first: I had made (and posted) a very similar bread (Blueberry Bread with Spelt Starter) three summers ago and didn’t have the slightest recollection of having done so… A very senior moment which is probably a sign of incipient mental degeneration. Oh well! 
As for the good news, it is that I am pretty consistent. That 2009 blueberry bread was already levain, spelt- and applesauce-based! There is some degree of comfort in knowing that if one’s mind is starting to go, at least it is going in one piece and one direction…
This recipe is better than the old one: it foregoes the almond oil and instant yeast, uses levain as the only leavening agent and relies on baker’s dry milk for tenderness and improved conservation (spelt tends to dry out faster than wheat).
I love the taste (there is something in the apple-blueberry combination that I find particularly enticing) and the texture is surprisingly smooth and mellow (I credit the baker’s milk). It keeps very well indeed (after six days of sitting on the kitchen counter in a brown paper bag, the test loaf was still fresh, which is a first in my experience for a bread that is 100% spelt).
We now have a gazillion blueberries in the freezer. Does this mean I will be making this bread year-round? No, it doesn’t. I don’t believe the dough would take kindly to the addition of frozen anything and folding in soggy thawed berries doesn’t seem appealing. This is and shall remain a bread of summer.
If you do try to make it at home, make sure you taste your berries first. You want them sweet and ripe. If the only berries available to you are on the sour side, the bread may not turn out as well. You could try sweetening the dough a bit though. Honey comes to mind as it pairs very well with spelt (it also helps with the shelf life).
Because our berries are so sweet however, I prefer honey in a jar on the breakfast table. My garden is full of lavender right now. So, naturally, I would go for lavender honey. Blackberry honey would work too. Both honeys are produced in our neighborhood.

As a Parisian (born and raised) whose parents maintained a keen interest and deep love throughout their lives for the regional food which had shaped their own childhoods (both were born and raised in Southern France, my Mom in the Southeast and my Dad in the Southwest), I witnessed first-hand the strength of the bonds which tie us to the land and the structuring role of what we call terroir (the term used to apply only to wine but is more widely used now).
Were they still alive and with us today, my parents – who were earth wanderers at heart – would tirelessly explore the tastes of this new world and seek to weave them into our everyday lives.  With this bread – made of all things Washington: spelt, apples, berries, water and even the levain whose wild yeast cells were originally captured by my friend Teresa in the San Juan Islands – I know I am following in their footsteps, an ocean and a continent away, and doing something that mattered enormously to them: setting up roots where we live without forgetting where we came from, thus helping the younger generations develop and maintain a sense of continuity and belonging.
Of course since I am not (yet) completely delusional, I  know that in itself, a loaf or two won’t make much of a difference in anybody’s life. Still baking the landscape and sharing it with family and friends is a step towards making it truly our own. At the very least it provides me with a strong feeling of connectedness both to those who came before me and to those who are coming after. Never mind the fact that right now, the young generation prefers its berries frozen and its landscapes in 3-D…


Ingredients: (for one boule and two bâtards)
  • 485 g white spelt flour
  • 323 g freshly milled whole spelt flour
  • 242 g mature wheat levain at 100% hydration (a spelt levain would be even better)
  • 565 g water (more as needed)
  • 80 g non-fat dry milk (I used Baker’s Special Dry Milk from King Arthur’s)
  • 242 g fresh blueberries at room temperature
  • 242 g smoothly pureed applesauce (no sugar added)
  • 80 g chia seeds, unsoaked
  • 18 g salt
Method: (this bread was hand-mixed and made over two days)
  1. Add the chia seeds and the dry milk to the flours. Whisk together
  2. Add levain and water and fold until the dry ingredients are well hydrated (adding more water as needed: I use a spray bottle which makes incremental hydration increases very easy)
  3. Let rest for 30 minutes, covered (mock autolyse)
  4. Add applesauce and blueberries and fold until incorporated
  5. Add salt and adjust hydration
  6. Fold a few times again
  7. Let rest for 30 minutes, covered
  8. Repeat step 6 three or four times, adding water again as needed to obtain medium soft consistency
  9. Refrigerate overnight or for up to 10-12 hours, covered (I put the dough in the little wine refrigerator that came with our house. Since we never use it, I removed a couple of shelves and set the bottom part to 50°F/10°C. The less cold the refrigerator, the less acidic the dough is likely to be)
  10. The next day, bring back to room temperature, divide as desired (I made one large bread and two smaller ones) and pre-shape. Let rest 15 minutes, covered
  11. Shape as desired (in my case, one boule and two bâtards) and set to proof, covered, in linen-lined and generously-floured baskets (I used a mixture of wheat and rice flour since the dough was rather wet and I was afraid it was going to stick)
  12. Pre-heat oven to 470°F/243°C
  13. When dough is ready (a gentle pressure with two fingers yields a small indentation that doesn’t bounce back) (with spelt fermentation happens rather fast so it is best to start checking after 40 minutes or so), gently invert on a parchment paper-lined, semolina-dusted half-sheet pan, stencil and score as desired and bake with steam for the first five minutes, decreasing oven temperature to 450°F/232°C after 5 minutes
  14. Rotate the loaves as needed after 20 minutes and continue baking for a total of 30-35 minutes for the smaller loaves, 40 minutes for the larger one or until the bread yields a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom
  15. Cool on a rack
  16. Enjoy!

The Apple-Blueberry Spelt Bread is going to Susan for Yeastpotting. Thank you, Susan!

Risotto Bread with Basil

Now this is what I call a lazy post! The only thing I need to do is post pictures: the recipe is already all written up (with many photographs) on my friend breadsong’s beautiful and creative blog. I didn’t change anything to her formula (which is based on Jan Hedh’s Risotto Bread from his book Artisan Breads), except adding a tad more water to the dough (it was a hot day and the flour was thirsty). Otherwise she made buns and I made a loaf although I did make the one bun, so that I could show you the crumb.
I froze the loaf for when our visitors from France arrive at the end of the month. Grilled or toasted, topped with roasted peppers and/or roasted tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella (and finished off with a balsamic reduction), it will make wonderful sandwiches. Whatever is left will be roasted as croûtons for a late summer gazpacho.

For the risotto, I used leftovers from Mark Bittman’s zucchini risotto recipe using both green and yellow zucchini (hence the green and yellow specks you see in the crumb). The rice was short-grain brown. The basil was freshly picked and combined with the yogurt and the parmesan cheese, it gave the dough a very enticing aroma. The beautiful golden durum flour was a present from… breadsong when she came and visited. This was my first time baking with it and what a pleasure it was!
Thank you for everything, breadsong! For the flour, for the adapted and illustrated recipe and for the marvelous idea of stenciling with basil leaves. I would never have thought of it! 




The Risotto Bread with Basil is going to Susan from Wild Yeast for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

Carrot-Zucchini Bread with Candied Ginger

Here we are, back in the Pacific Northwest where the nights are blissfully cool and the days sweet and bright (for now at least). After more than a month in the food desert that is the little corner of upstate New York where we have been spending our summer vacations since forever, I was eager to bite into vegetables which didn’t look as if they had sprouted, plastic-clad, on a supermarket shelf, in other words, I couldn’t wait to go back to our little CSA.
I knew it was too early for tomatoes in our neck of the woods, so I wasn’t expecting any (I wasn’t disappointed!). I also knew zucchini season was on and I was ready with some recipes but  I wasn’t prepared for our basket to be almost completely taken over by the green and yellow stuff!

What you see on the picture above is just a sample of the crop. We had way more than that and I knew I had to go beyond sautéed garlic zucchini, zucchini risotto or courgettes farcies (stuffed zucchini). I needed to make something we could freeze and enjoy later, maybe when summer would be but a memory.

It so happened I had just put away a little bag of candied ginger I had bought in Vermont on my way back from Gérard Rubaud’s bakery (I have noticed that ginger helps me stay alert when I have to drive long-distance, maybe because it is so spicy) and I had been wondering what to use it for now that I was back home. 
So when I saw a recipe for a bread using zucchini, carrots and candied ginger in Janet Fletcher’s beautifully photographed book, Eating Local, The Cookbook Inspired by American Farmers, I knew I had found what I was looking for.
I adapted the recipe a bit: I replaced all of the all-purpose flour by white whole wheat flour and all of the canola oil (which I didn’t have) by extra-light olive oil; I more than halved the sugar (using 150 g instead of a whooping 390 g!) and I didn’t use any cinnamon (which I don’t much care for). It came out so tasty that even my eleven-month old granddaughter (already a miniature foodie) loved it (despite the heat of the ginger). Try it if you are swimming in zucchini. You won’t regret it… 

Ingredients: (for two quick breads)

  • 400 g freshly-milled white whole wheat flour (I had white wheat berries I needed to use but store-bought flour would work just fine)
  • 3 g ground ginger 
  • 5 g baking soda (1.5 tsp)
  • 1 (scant) g baking powder (1/4 tsp)
  • 4 g sea salt
  • 90 g chopped candied ginger
  • 3 large eggs
  • 200 g extra-light olive oil
  • 150 g sugar
  • 10 g vanilla extract
  • 110 g carrots, scrubbed and grated
  • 150 g zucchini, grated (unpeeled)

Method:

  1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/163°C and lightly oil two quick-bread pans (Fletcher says to use 8.5 x 4.5 pans but I only have the two I bought at Ikea and they are 10 x 4.5)
  2. Mix together flour, ginger, baking soda and baking powder, sifting if you like (I didn’t sift but I whisked). Add salt and candied ginger and whisk
  3. In large bowl, whisk eggs until foamy. Whisk in oil, sugar and vanilla. Add carrots and zucchini and whisk again
  4. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and stir with wooden spoon until roughly blended
  5. Divide the batter between the two pans
  6. Bake about one hour (do the toothpick test to judge doneness)
  7. Cool on a rack (but wait 10 minutes before taking the breads out of the pans)
  8. Enjoy!

There are many more glorious recipes in Fletcher’s book and even though it was recommended to me for the photography (which is by Sara Remington and truly stunning), I know I will refer to it over and over throughout the summer, the fall and into early winter just to figure out what to cook from the CSA or the market. It is organized by veggie or fruit and there are also a poultry, meat and eggs section at the end. It features ten different farms from across the country.
It is a lovely book to own if you have a garden or have access to a farm or farmer’s market. I got mine used online and it is stamped “No longer the property of the St. Louis Public Library” in bold red letters. It still bears its Dewey identification number: 641.5 EATING.  Since it was only published in 2010, your local library might also still own it.

Teff Mash Bread

Now that I know how to bake with teff, I would buy truckloads of it and make teff bread on a regular basis if it were not so expensive: not only is it very nutritious but the taste is unique and marvelous. How best to describe it for those of you who are not familiar with it? Think deeply caramelized black walnuts with a hint of raw dark cocoa and maybe, maybe a tiny whiff of the soul-warming spices used in African cooking. Think exotic, seductive and subtly addictive. Think “Wow! I can get all that flavor from just 10% of flour?” and you’ll have an idea of what teff is like.

Of course the teff flour I am baking with here might taste different from the one to be found here in America but I have no way of knowing until I go home to the Northwest and actually buy a bag (as far as I know, there is none to be had for love or money where I am now). The one I have was brought to me from Ethiopia by a kindly colleague a few years ago.

I kept it in the freezer while we still lived back East and when we moved to the Northwest, since I was trying not to move everything cross-country, I brought it here to the little camp by the St-Lawrence River where we have been spending our summer vacations for the past twenty-six years.
Together with all the other grains, nuts and flours, I put it in a sturdy insect-, rodent- and waterproof trunk which weathered the winter under the cabin, sitting directly on the bedrock. Nothing like permafrost to keep everything fresh as I am sure the Native Americans who used to live here discovered ages before me.
Some people don’t like teff and I suspect that is because they only ever had it in injera form at Ethiopian restaurants. Injera is traditionally made from a teff starter that is left to ferment until it is quite acidic and some cooks make it more sour than others. I love injera and Ethiopian cuisine and injera is actually what I planned to make with the teff my colleague brought me since I had never had much success with teff bread before.
I learned why at WheatStalk: teff flour has the annoying habit of first absorbing water like crazy and then of releasing it sneakily when one least wishes it to do so. The trick is therefore not to use it dry but to make a mash of it before incorporating it into a dough. Soaking it in hot water sets both the protein and the starch, making it much more stable. In the words of Frank Sally’s (my instructor for the Baking with Ancient Grains lab), “baking with teff is a nightmare otherwise.” Good to know!
To make a mash

  1. Bring 100% water to a roiling boil
  2. Pour it over 100% flour
  3. Make a paste (it will be full of soft lumps)
  4. Let cool
  5. Add to the dough as a soaker

The mash should be made the morning of the mix. According to my instructor at WheatStalk, if you’d rather do it the day before, you need to make it, let it cool and then add it to your levain build.

For this bread, I didn’t want to use a WheatStalk formula: there might be copyright issues (I need to check into that) and anyway I didn’t have the necessary ingredients. So I made up my own recipe with what I had on hand here at camp and as you’ll see, it is fairly minimalistic. If you have all-purpose flour, a mature starter and a bit of teff flour, you are all set to go.

Ingredients: (for four loaves)

  • 890 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 200 g teff mash (100 g teff flour + 100 g hot water)
  • 555 g more water at warmish room temperature (or more or less according to the flours you use. Even if they are the same brand, they will always be different from mine. The consistency of your dough will always be a better guide than the amount of water used by the author of any recipe)
  • 535 g liquid starter @ 100% hydration (mine is currently fed with 40% whole grain – wheat, spelt and rye – but a white one -or better yet, a teff one – would work fine)
  • 27 g salt
Method: (This bread is made over two days. The dough was hand-mixed.)

  1. Make the teff mash using the method described above
  2. Mix all the other ingredients* (I used only 450 g water to start with) until incorporated and add the teff mash when lukewarm (I have developed a method for adding water which is really no-hassle: I first put in as much as needed to hydrate the flour, then I pour the rest (in this case, 105 g) into a spray-bottle and I spray the dough as I go, making sure to spray after each fold just before covering the bowl. The dough acts like a sponge as it relaxes and absorbs the water with minimal work on my part. Not that I don’t love folding the dough over and over. I actually do but my wrists have apparently remained French-ier than the rest of me:  they tend to go on strike at the drop of a hat…)
  3. Fold resulting dough onto itself several times, cover and let rest for 30 minutes
  4. Repeat three times at 30-minute intervals (more if necessary, judging from the dough consistency)
  5. Let ferment, covered, for another hour 
  6. Then refrigerate for 12 to 16 hours (make sure your fridge isn’t set on super cold)
  7. The day after, bring back to room temperature
  8. Turn on the oven to 475°F/246°C, making sure your baking stone is in it as well as a metal dish for steaming
  9. Transfer to a flour-dusted worktable
  10. Divide @ about 500 g, trying to keep the pieces as square as possible
  11. Shape (no pre-shaping) by pulling each piece of dough upwards (from the upper long side) then folding it upon itself once and closing the seam
  12. Transfer seam-side down to a sheet pan lined with semolina-dusted parchment paper
  13. Proof for one hour
  14. Dust with flour if desired and score shallowly down the middle holding the lame at an angle
  15. Bake with steam for 5 minutes at 475°F/246°C, then turn the oven temperature down to 450°F/232°C and bake another 35 to 40 minutes (the oven is old and quirky in this little cabin and I always turn the loaves 180° for the last ten minutes of baking)
  16. Cool on a rack
  17. Enjoy!

*When mixing by hand here at camp, I often skip the autolyse. I  mix flour + salt + liquid levain + the bulk of the water until everything is hydrated, then I cover the bowl and let the dough rest anywhere from 20 minutes to half-an-hour before proceeding with the recipe from step 3 on. It is much easier on the wrists (less folding) and it yields excellent results. Of course it may have to do with the temperature and humidity which are both in the high range here in the summer. Back home in the cool Pacific Northwest, I’ll  probably need to hold the salt back until the end. I’ll still add in the levain with the water and the flour but I may experiment with much longer resting times (if you interested in fiddling with autolyse, you may want to read Teresa Greenway’s excellent posts on the subject: Experimenting with Autolyse #1 and Experimenting with Autolyse #2).

The Teff Mash Bread is going to Susan for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting. Thank you, Susan!

Barley Bread

For as long as I can remember, I have been a barley girl. Of course it helped that in France when I was a kid,  a sucre d’orge (literally candy made with barley sugar) was a treat. Tubular and fashionably skinny, always tightly wrapped, most often in cellophane but occasionally in shiny silver paper which gave no clue to the flavor inside, known for having soothed many of life’s minor woes and pains for generations of children, it held a mysterious appeal.
By contrast, the plump sucette (lollipop), always clad in revealing colors and coiffed with a bouffant paper twist, seemed resolutely modern. Probably thanks to its down-to-earth chubbiness, it was often a kid’s first choice at the boulangerie-confiserie (bakery-candy store) but not mine.
Since I spent a large part of my childhood reading and re-reading the books which had belonged to my dad and my uncle in their youth (they had won them at school for being top students), I kept solid footing in an enchanted other world (of which the black and white illustrations offered tantalizing glimpses) and, in my own, I looked for and cherished surviving signs of a vanishing past. Sucres d’orge (thus called because barley water -soon to be replaced by glucose- was the original sweetener) were therefore my favorites and I spent many a drizzly or blustery Sunday afternoon with my nose in one of the characteristic red books and a sucre d’orge in my pocket (my parents were not liberal with candy but since I never had a sweet tooth,  looking at it afforded me more pleasure than eating it and a single one went a long way).

Many years and a move across the ocean later, I discovered that orge (barley) could actually appear on the table in a soup or a barlotto (a risotto made with barley instead of rice) or simply as a grain and when I did, I fell in love all over again.  So when a Baking With Barley class was offered last year at Kneading Conference West, I knew I wanted to attend.
The class was taught jointly by Leslie Mackie (owner of Macrina Bakery in Seattle) and Andrew Ross, a cereal chemist at Oregon State University (OSU). Leslie has been experimenting with barley from the time she first started Macrina:  she liked using locally grown grain and, at the time, that meant mostly barley. She now puts it in monkey bread (for an added touch of sweetness), in Francese bread and in Pugliese bread (an exceptionally tasty miche for which she was in the process of developing a formula).
As for Andrew – who is not only a scientist but also a passionate baker – he has developed formulas for various barley breads within the framework of the barley project: he brought barley baguettes and barley miches to the class and demonstrated barley pitas and bretzels. I was hooked (especially when I discovered that my local mill made a beautiful whole grain barley flour).
I was hoping to be able to go and observe Andrew at work at OSU in Corvalis and to do a full Meet the Baker post on him afterwards. But it didn’t work out according to plan. He was unexpectedly swamped with work when we showed up at the agreed-upon date last month and there was no way he could fit baking into his schedule on that particular day. As for us, we were traveling through Corvalis on our way back home from the coast and we couldn’t possibly come back later in the week. He very kindly showed me his beautiful lab/bakery and answered the questions I had prepared but I made it quick as I knew he had to go back to work.  I would still love to see him bake and also to hear more about the relationship between the University and the local farmer though but it will have to wait. Maybe the stars will align better on another visit to Oregon!
Meanwhile Andrew gave me a few useful infos and pointers on baking with barley:

  • The preferred barley is a hulless variety, also called naked barley (the hull falls off when the grain is harvested): it has the best nutritional profile
  • Barley contains a soluble fiber called beta-glucan which has been shown to slow glucose absorption and is thought to help lower blood cholesterol
  • People with celiac disease or high sensitivity to gluten should not eat barley: it contains protases which are very close to gluten
  • A 100% barley starter yields a very acidic bread. Not pleasant
  • The higher the percentage of barley in relation to wheat, the less extensible the dough
  • For a better crumb, it is best to use barley flour in conjunction with high-gluten flour
  • Using a stiff starter also helps compensate for the lesser amount of gluten in the dough
  • To keep the dough from sticking, use more water or flour than you normally would 
  • Increase dough hydration by 5 to 10% if making a 50% barley-50% wheat bread
  • If using a high tpercentage of barley, it is best to underproof a little
  • A good rule of thumb for flavor, nutrition and extensibility is to use a total of 20 to 30% of barley in the  dough
  • Barley flat breads and tortillas are much easier to make than raised breads.
For this barley bread, I used the Whey Sourdough recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s How to Make Bread, a book I already blogged about here and here. At Emmanuel’s suggestion (when we talked on the phone back in April after I found an error in one of the recipes), I substituted half Greek yogurt and half milk for the whey (which I didn’t have) and, mindful of Andrew’s recommendation, I replaced 20% of the white flour by whole grain barley flour (hulless variety).  The resulting bread was delicate and flavorful with a slightly fermented taste (very different from regular sourdough) which I find utterly seductive. Not a memory-trigger like the old-fashioned sucre d’orge but definitely a keeper and maybe a memory-maker for the kids and grand-kids in our life! What could be sweeter than that?

Ingredients:

  • 160 g white sourdough starter
  • 150 g milk (I used 2% milkfat)
  • 150 g plain Greek yogurt (mine was 0% fat but regular fullfat Greek yogurt would work fine)
  • 200 g all-purpose unbleached flour (Hadjiandreou uses bread flour with a higher gluten percentage but I had none on hand. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had used that)
  • 120 g  all-purpose unbleached flour (again he uses bread flour)
  • 100 g barley flour
  • 10 g salt (Hadjiandreou uses 8 g)

Method: (adapted from the book)

  1. In a large mixing bowl, mix starter, yogurt and milk with a wooden spoon until well combined
  2. Add 200 g of all-purpose flour and mix well. Cover and let ferment overnight in a cool place (it should show tiny bubbles 12 hours later when ready)
  3. In a smaller bowl, mix 120 g of all-purpose flour, the barley flour and the salt
  4. Add to fermented mix and mix by hand until it comes together
  5. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes
  6. After 10 minutes, stretch and fold the dough inside the bowl by going twice around the bowl with four stretches and foldings at each 90° turn (8 stretches/foldings in all)
  7. Let rest 10 minutes again, covered. Repeat twice
  8. Complete a fourth stretch and fold cycle and let the dough rest one hour, covered
  9. Ligthly flour a work surgace and put the dough on it
  10. Shape into a smooth, rounded disc
  11. Dust a proofing basket with flour and lay the dough inside
  12. Let it rise until double the size (which will take between 3 and 6 hours)
  13. When ready, transfer dough to a non-preheated Dutch oven (using a large piece of parchment paper as a sling to carry the dough) and replace the lid on the Dutch oven
  14. Bake in non-preheated oven set at 475°F/246°C for 35 minutes
  15. Remove Dutch oven from oven and bread from Dutch oven (exercising caution as both will be very hot)
  16. Replace bread in oven, turn oven temperature down to 435°F/224°C and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the boule is golden and makes a satisfying hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
  17. Enjoy!

The Barley Bread can also be baked the usual way in a hot oven. I just find the unheated Dutch oven/oven method works wonders with boules and it saves having to preheat the oven for an extended length of time.

The Barley Bread is going to Susan for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.