Cinnamon-Raisin Bread for a Rainy Friday

Last Friday was one of those misforecasted days that seem to occur with disconcerting regularity.  My non-rainy day plans were shot and I didn’t really have a backup plan.  Fuck, even the library was closed.

What then to do with a 3 1/2-year-old with our 3-month-old in tow?

Nate just began pre-school last week and one of their first daily activities is to bake something like muffins or a quick bread.  Whatever bread they baked on Thursday I knew he didn’t like, so I felt inspired to make him some good bread and started flipping through my Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  I thought about ciabatta, but it takes two days and we didn’t have enough bread flour.  A few pages later I stumbled across the solution.

It’s been a while since I’ve baked anything new from Reinhardt’s Bread Bakers Apprentice, despite my stated mission from nearly two years ago to attempt every recipe in it (I may still get there one day).

Since I’m not a fan of nuts in bread I left the walnuts out of the recipe, other than that I followed it exactly.  This is a good one for kids because it only takes one day.  Nate helped me mix all the ingredients and while he was napping I was able to shape the loaves, proof them and then bake them so that when he woke up the house smelled quite lovely.  The next time I make this (which will probably be somewhat soon) I plan on doing the cinnamon swirl.

Who knows, with it looking like a rainy week there might be another bread baking day in the near future.

Seed culture – day 6

Once again there’s no point in a photograph.  I thought maybe another 24 hours would have done the trick – yesterday afternoon there was slightly more bubbling.  But alas, the starter is looking like a pet I’ll have to put down.

I’ll try again next week when I have the time and I’ll focus more attention on percentage of rise versus duration of fermentation.  It’s a bummer because I was really looking forward to making some sourdough bread, not to mention I feel like a bit of a failure for not being able to get a starter going.  Oh well.

Seed culture – day 5

There’s no point in even taking a photograph of the starter today, seeing as it looks pretty identical to yesterday.  I stuck it in our screen-in-porch  yesterday afternoon in the hopes that a warmer temperature help out the yeast.  I left it there over night and while that seems to have helped some, it’s not worthy of the effort of photographing and uploading it.

The starter is starting to bubble a bit more at the moment, so I’m going to let it sit to see if I can get it to rise by 50-100% in the next 24 hours.  If not I’m just going to throw it out.

After some thought I think I’ve discovered where it all went wrong – somewhere between days 2 and 3.  I think I allowed the yeast to over-ferment and it just hasn’t recovered since.  Part of the problem was going strictly by the recipe which accounts for days and not necessarily the amount of rise (at least not until the end).

If I end up throwing it out I’ll start again next week and pay more attention to the rise and less attention to the amount of time.  At least I’ve learned something (I think).

Seed culture – day 4

What the fuck?  My starter has done the exact opposite of what it should have done.  It’s like having a sick pet.

Now I’ve had no rise, when I should have had the most.  There are signs of life though – this morning there were a few bubbles and the yeasty/beer aroma is still there, but no rise.  I’ll keep feeding it until it rises by at least 50%, which will hopefully be sooner than later.

Seed culture – day 3

As predicted there was a substantial amount of rise after I added flour to the starter yesterday.  Every hour or so we had to degas the starter so that it wouldn’t overflow the bowl - you can see in this photo just how much it had risen:

Reinhart predicts about a 50% rise on day 2, but as  you can see I got at least a 300% rise (perhaps more if we didn’t keep degassing).  This morning though the rise action seemed to have slowed down; I’m guessing because the yeast were running out of food and we had the air on overnight which cooled things down.

Today I added more flour and water and discarded half of the starter from yesterday.  Theoretically I’m just a couple of days away from baking my first loaf of sourdough bread.

Seed culture – day 2

I have no idea what happened, but when I woke up today and looked at my starter I was amazed.  Reinhart states that “the dough should not have risen much, if at all, during this time.”  In one day I got a nearly 200% rise.

What to do?  I have no idea, so I’ll just continue on with the recipe for the next 3 days.

In anticipation of the culture oozing all over my counter overnight, I moved it to a different container after I was done adding bread flour and water to it.  I also used cooler water to hopefully slow down the growth a little.

The smell is fine too, yeasty in a beer sort of way.  With that much growth I was expecting maybe an off smell to it, assuming that maybe it got contaminated in some way, but nope, apparently the flour I bought just had shit tons of airborne yeast hanging around.

Seed culture – day 1

Seed culture - day 1

I mixed together some water and rye flour this morning to create a seed culture which will become the foundation for sourdough breads I’ll be making from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice.

The process of creating a seed culture (depending on a few factors) could take as little as four days.  Obviously the dough won’t have risen very much by tomorrow, but by day 3 I’m hoping.  Now that it’s full on summertime temperatures here in Durham the house is should be a cozy environment for some wild yeast strains.

I’ll update daily with pictures and commentary.

A better French bread

I made some French bread last week and made some modifications to Reinhart’s recipe, both out of necessity (I didn’t have any AP flour and didn’t feel like going to the store) and in the spirit of experimentation, to see if I could improve on what I’d made before (while it was a decent enough bread to make at home, it fell short of my expecations of what a baguette should be).

Of course the process now takes 3 days, but by spreading out the work there’s really not much to do on any given day.  Here’s what I came up with:

Day 1

Make the pâte fermentée by combining 2 1/4 cups bread flour, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp instant yeast and 3/4 cup (plus possibly a tbsp or two) of room temperature water.

Mix with the dough hook for about four minutes.  As Reinhart says, the dough should be “soft and pliable, tacky but not sticky”.  Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic film and ferment until it rises to 1 1/2 times its original size.

Remove the dough and knead slightly to degas it.  Return to the bowl and refrigerate.

Day 2

Remove the dough from the fridge and cut into 10 pieces, cover with plastic wrap and let sit for an hour at room temp.

To make the dough, combine the pâte fermentée, 2 1/2 cups bread flour, 3/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp instant yeast, 3/4 cup (and maybe a tbsp or two more) of room temperature water.  Mix together and then use the dough hook to mix for 6 minutes.  I always end up kneading by hand afterwards for a few minutes to adjust the flour and to also raise the temperature of the dough.

Place in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and let ferment for 2 hours (it should double in size during this time, if it doubles in size prior to the 2 hour mark, degas a little and let ferment for the full 2 hours).

Remove the dough and cut into thirds, shape into baguettes and place on sheet tray lined with parchment.  Place in the fridge.

Day 3

Remove the dough from the fridge and let sit at room temp for an hour or so.  Heat the oven to 500.  Place a pan with 1 cup of hot water on the bottom rack.  Slice the baguette with a razor blade or serrated knife five times diagonally.  Place in the oven.  After 30 seconds, mist the sides and bottom of the oven with water.  Repeat two more times.  Reduce the temperature to 450 and continue baking.  I ended up baking mine for about 15 minutes before reducing the temperature further to 350 and baking for additional 5-10 minutes (the internal temperature of the bread should be at least 205 degrees F).

Let cool before slicing.

By adding the third day to the process I got a considerably better crust on my bread than when I baked it on the second day after shaping it and letting it ferment at room temp.  I honestly don’t know why, but here’s what McGee has to say on the effects of retarding: 

“In addition to giving the baker greater flexibility, retarding has useful effects on the dough.  Long, slow fermentation allows both yeasts and bacteria more time to generate flavor compounds.  Cold dough is stiffer than warm dough, so it’s easier to handle without causing a loss of leavening gas.  And the cycle of cooling and rewarming redistributes the dough gases (from small bubbles into the water phase, then back out into larger bubbles), and encourages the development of a more open, irregular crumb structure.”

There’s nothing about what retardation (or cold fermentation) does to the crust, but the effects are evident based on 4 of my 5 senses.

I’ve got another recipe I plan on messing with that’s more straightforward (no pâte fermentée), and I’ll probably go back and tinker with this one by adding  the AP flour back in and reducing the amount of bread flour to see if that makes any noticeable difference.

Italian bread

Italian bread

I knew that we were having lasagna for dinner last night and really wanted garlic bread to go with it.  I briefly considered going to the grocery store to pick up some Italian bread, but quickly dismissed that thought and decided to bake some myself.  (I’ve really come to understand that baking some loaves of bread really isn’t that time consuming; nor is that mystical of a process).

So I pulled out my trusty copy of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (this is now the 9th bread I’ve made from Reinhart’s book) and made the biga starter on Sunday afternoon.  While it was rising for a couple of hours I was busy on my brick patio relaying some of the brick – yes, it’s very easy to multi-task while making bread.

I was wondering how something gets to be known as Italian bread, and in the write-up, Reinhart explains how there really isn’t one Italian bread, that this invention is something distinctly American.  Maybe Italian-style bread would be better?

Anyway, I pulled the biga out of the fridge an hour before I started to make the dough yesterday morning.  The only variation I made to the recipe was that I left out the diastatic barley malt powder (I can’t find any in stores and have yet to order any on-line).  The dough itself is pretty similar to French bread, although there sugar and olive oil are both in the Italian bread recipe.

I have to admit that my shaping skills continue to suck, so the batards came out looking pretty rustic, but who cares?  It’s not like I’m selling the stuff and it’s still just as delicious, plus it looks kind of cool.

As for the garlic bread, it came out fantastic:

Garlic bread

Yet another bread I’d recommend, and instead of French bread (which was serviceable but not outstanding, yet still better than what you can get at most grocery stores), this one  is better than anything you’ll get at probably any grocery store.

Dinner April 15, 2011 – Homemade French bread

Homemade French bread (baguette), country pate, blueberry mostarda, cornichons and mustard

 

After taking some time off from this blog and even baking/cooking for the past month or so, I made the above platter as a starter for dinner this past Friday (alright, so I didn’t make the cornichons or the mustard, but I did make everything else).

In making the pate, I learned that Nate loves it and has even added it to his vocabulary. 

As for the French bread, it’s not the best I’ve ever had but it’s above what I can purchase at a grocery store, and it really isn’t that hard.  Reinhart’s recipe is easy to follow.  The only problem I encountered is that I could only bake 2 loaves at a time, while the recipe calls for 3.  This meant that the 3rd loaf continued to proof while the first two baked, and proofed so much that it flattened a little in the oven.  Had I known this I probably would have slowed it down by placing it in the fridge.  It’s still tasty though.

For our main course I made Suzanne Goin’s recipe for Stuffed Chicken Leg ”Poule au Pot” from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything:  Bittman Takes on America’s Chefs.  This is really probably my very favorite thing in the world to eat, but I have to admit that making it in a home kitchen is a time consuming process as there’s a lot of components (first you have to debone chicken legs, then make stuffing, a compound butter, sage broth and the cornichon mix).

Stuffed Chicken Leg "Poule au Pot"

For dessert I made strawberry tartlets and yet again have failed to take a photograph of a dessert.  It was delicious though.