Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

Panmarino

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

For a while I have had Carol Field’s ‘The Italian baker’ standing in my bookcase without it seeing any much use at all. There are two primary reasons for this. First, the breads from Jeffrey Hamelman’s ‘Bread’ are simply so good it’s hard to motivate myself to bake from another book, and secondly, the recipes in Field’s book are simply annoying in their measurements. Who in their right mind measures ‘a cup of olive oil less a tablespoon’?

Like most people, I have a tendency to get stuck in just making the same few recipes over and over and over and… again, and I must admit that the pain rustique and french bread recipes are superb. However, it does nicely to experiment with what you eat once in a while. So, I forced myself to put Hamelman’s book back on the shelf and take a look at some breads from Field’s book, diligently trying to convert the measurements to metric weights before starting on them.

My first try was panmarino, or rosemary bread, where finely chopped rosemary is mixed into the dough.

Distinctive to this bread is the way that it is scored, namely in the shape of an asterisk, and the incisions are then lightly drizzled with coarse flakes of sea salt, but I only had fine flakes so they had to make do. After a good long bake the crust turns out lovely crisp.

When I think italian bread my foremost thought is usually a solid crust and a crumb with lots of holes, but this bread is nothing like that. On the contrary, it has a fairly dense, soft crumb, but with the rosemary aroma in the bread it goes very nicely with lamb.

Ciao!

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Rabbit stew

Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

There are a number of dishes that you do not get to try out terribly often in this region, and while some might get you to wrinkle your nose in trepidation, like brain or snake, others may intrigue you as to their taste. So, it was with great anticipation that we prepared a rabbit stew. After digging around for a recipe for a while, we found one that marinated the rabbit in red wine overnight and cooked it in the oven for a good long while.

With a bit too much flash due to the late-night lighting conditions, this is the outcome of quite a few hours of cooking. Served with oven baked potatoes and ratatouille.

As to the taste, I will probably not return to rabbit in the near future. In my opinion, it tastes much like chicken without any overly distinguishing qualities.

Retarded filone bread

Sunday, October 5th, 2008 | Cooking | 2 Comments

While the filone bread is a description of the shape of a traditional bread from Toscana (Tuscany) where it is made without salt due to an old salt feud, filone has come to mean a special kind of white, rustic bread here in Denmark, made slightly different from the ciabatta (another shape description for the saltless Toscana bread). In the Danish bakeries the filone is a rustic bread, with salt, that is slightly elongated, typically with pointy ends (which makes it fairly impractical to cut in regular slices, but nevermind that).

Now, most recipe books in Denmark are written by enthusiasts rather than professionals, and there is a tendency to an extreme overuse of fresh yeast (this is available in any store, really, whereas instant and dry yeast is slightly more rare). Thus, it was with ill-hid enthusiasm I threw myself at a recipe released from one of our bakery chains for retarded filone bread—it has been released as part of a yearly event that some people and stores are having in the fall break called The Great Baking Day, which is a moment for the busy families to pause and bake, father, mother, and children. It has been launched by a reknowned Danish chef and a child psychologist and seems to be a wild success (although the companies backing it seem to exploit it a tad by insinuating that you should use special brand flour for the optimal product, etc.).

Irrespective of it not being fall break just yet and that Hannah isn’t nearly old enough to participate, I wanted to give the retarded filone bread a try. The recipe calls for a 24 hour retarding, but I only gave it about 18 hours, fearing that it would have a too acidic taste otherwise. Shaping the cold dough is a whole lot easier than trying to shape some of the equal wet poolish-based doughs I usually make.

The shaped loaves are rolled in durum flour, and after proofing and a somewhat lengthy bake—almost 40 minutes—the breads have gained a lovely golden and rustic look.

Unlike the breads I usually bake, this method of making the breads yielded a somewhat denser crumb (which is consistent with the filone breads from most bakeries around these parts).

Its taste is markedly acidic, and I think having let it retard for another six hours would’ve been too much. It’s a solid bread that is good for a varied amount of toppings, particularly considering that it’s very easy to make. It’s basically made just by mixing the dough on a stand mixer, stuffing it in the fridge, waiting 18 hours, shaping, proofing, slashing, and baking the loaves. I still prefer the breads that require all the folding and other work—the crumb is simply better in those loaves. Still, an altogether decent bread.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Butter poppy seed rolls

Saturday, October 4th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

These rolls go by a couple of different names in Danish: tebirkes, smørbirkes or Københavnerbirkes, and it seems that no one really agrees on how to make them. They also have no official translation to English, so this was the closest I could dream up. In the traditional bakeries near Copenhagen, most kinds are filled with remonce, but most bakeries will also have savoury kinds without the remonce. The recipe I’ve found is a typical home-baking recipe from Denmark using a full package of fresh baker’s yeast (50 grams), which means that it’s quickly done, has little flavour and mostly only taste good warm out of the oven. However, the rich butter dough (which I’ve replaced with margarine) does taste awesome fresh out of the oven. The day after, however, it is hard to stomach.

It’s a very easy thing to make: basically you just throw together some flour, butter, egg, salt and yeast and presto, you have the dough after some kneading. Brush with eggs, fold twice and brush with eggs again and add some poppy seeds and this is what you have. The lighting sucks in the photos, I’m afraid, as I made them late in the evening and our artificial lighting in the kitchen is fairly lacking.

After a relatively quick proofing and bake they turn out a tad more voluminous. In the professional bakery versions the layers are usually somewhat more visible and there’s even a hole showing through the sides of it. No such thing here.

Cutting it up it shows a very dense crumb, which is heavy with butter and egg. Very good warm, otherwise… not.

Tags: baking, pastry

Apple blackberry tart

Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

Starting as an experiment on creating whipped cream from an oat-based cream, the apple blackberry tart is a nice dessert, but since it is fairly dry it really needs whipped cream. The tart dough and fruits applied does look rather appetising.

The blackberries are fresh from our garden, so I think they deserve a closeup.

This is a closed tart receiving a lid of more shortcrust dough.

It is supposedly possible to whip the oat-based cream by adding some gelatine, but even after we threw it in the freezer for a while to strengthen the gelatine’s properties (they were not working without this step at all) the result was lumpy and disappointing, nowhere near the impressive tops and lightness of regular whipped cream. So we had to settle with a slightly thickened cream on the tart.

Darkness fell between the assembly of the tart and it finishing its bake, hence the bad lighting in the last photo.

Tags: baking, cake, dessert

Maize bread

Saturday, August 16th, 2008 | Cooking | 2 Comments

During the last month and some of writing my thesis I spent almost all my waking hours doing just that. No baking whatsoever. One of the last things I had time to bake before going into crunch mode was a maize bread, or corn bread as it is known in many places.

As evident in the photo, the yellow colour of the maize imparts on the dough rather starkly as opposed to the normal white wheat flour. Once baked the pale yellow colour turns to a more golden glow.

The crumb, however, is fairly tough, and a tad more dry than its wheat only counterparts. The maize flavour adds a nice taste, though.

Tags: baking, bread, maize bread

Rehabilitating from thesis writing

Thursday, August 14th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

There has been a lot of silence on this blog during the past two months. Too much silence, really. However, all has not been lost as I have now finished my master’s thesis and handed it in. Only the defense remains. However, after scarcely having had time to bake, let alone writing about it, there is only one solution for rehabilitation: bake a lot of bread and make some awesome food. So I did just that, or, rather, I provided the bread, my wife provided the awesome food.

What we did was take a bunch of very lovely and delicate chantarelle mushrooms…

and we throw them on a frying pan together with a few regular champignons, some thyme, a bit of parsley and some thinly sliced garlic. They make for a very lovely photo if I have to say so myself.

To this we add a bit of oat-based cream (since I am lactose intolerant) that the mushrooms absorb fairly quickly.

Now all we need is a bit of my freshly baked french bread…

and the fried mushrooms are placed on the bread…

et voilà. Delicious as an appetiser or a night snack.

Tags: appetisers, baking, bread, food, mushroom, white bread

Pain rustique

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 | Cooking | 1 Comment

While baking alone has a certain meditative quality, baking with others can be a lot of fun as you talk over the ingredients, help each other measure and fold and generally just have a good time creating food. So I took the chance when I had my sisters visiting to help my youngest sister try out one of the breads from Hamelman’s book, Pain Rustique. This bread, which requires a poolish, is very easy to make, and you do not have to wait 5 or 6 hours until it is completed (ignoring the activation time of the poolish, of course, which we left to sit overnight), but only require short 25 minute breaks, which is a lot nicer to have when you are focused on cooking. And lastly, it does not require any shaping, just like the ciabatta bread, making it very easy to handle for kids.

We did not get to take a lot of photos as we were making the poolish and folding the bread (there’s too much sticky dough everywhere when you’re two about baking the same bread), we did take some photos before loading the breads into the oven and after they were completely baked.

And once these beauties have finished baking, we get some nice, lovely breads.

The general consensus between my sisters, my wife and I: mmmmmmmmmmm.

The bread has a lovely, subtle taste without any overpowering sensations. It’s a good bread to be used as the basis for any food, and it is about as good as my straight dough French bread (the first poolish bread that has really succeeded for me). If you do not have the time to wait the seven or so hours for the French bread, this is a good choice. I will most likely be utilising this more heavily once we have a child.

Photography and great taste, courtesy of my youngest sister (with a bit of aid).

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Feeling peckish

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 | Cooking | 2 Comments

I have so far gotten the hang of creating bread for our daily consumption by baking four .5 kg loaves once a week, freezing two of the loaves and taking them out of the freezer as needed. It’s a nice, relaxing routine to bake Hamelman’s straight dough French breads, and they have such a lovely taste. So as part of the celebrations of my oldest sister’s rite of confirmation, I offered to bake some bread and cakes to remove some of the stress from my parents as they were having the house filled with guests.

Being a fairly small family, I just had to bake for about 16 people, but then it started to nag at me… what if there isn’t enough food? So I cleaned out the kitchen tables and got ready to bake some cake.

The recipe I chose for the cakes was Fudgy Brownies from the most awesome chocolate book Crave by Maureen McKeon. This is the book for chocolate lovers. As I have remarked before I really do not like underbaked cake, so I usually give the cake a wee bit more in the oven than is given in the recipes (enough so that there is no batter left on a fork when I put it all the way through the cake and lift it up again). To liven it up a bit, I went to a specialty store and got candied violet leaves to decorate the cake.

I made a quadruple portion of the cakes, you know, just for good measure. Over a kg of sugar, over a kg of chocolate and lots and lots and lots of oat-based cream to avoid any fun moments with us lactose intolerant people. This is one heavy cake. The candied violet leaves worked wonders.

Of course, this was the easy part. The fun part was to bake ten .4 kg loaves so no one would leave the party hungry. Not taking any chances I went with my tried and tested straight dough French bread from Hamelman’s Bread.

Is it just me or does this make you want to go ‘Ferment, my babies, ferment!’ in a good, classical cheap television production Frankenstein voice too?

Baking the French bread involves a lot of times where you need to fold the bread, it needs to be divided, shaped, scored, and baked, and the bread better not overproof or everything might be ruined! Three doughs meant that I had run out of alarm clocks to signal when I needed to do what! Fortunately, salvation was only 60 lines of Python away, and my laptop sat happily on the kitchen table, reminding me to do all the things in the correct order, at the correct intervals, and fortunately I timed everything so that none of the foldings, shapings or bakings got in the way of each other. I would feel daunted by trying to run a bakery and having to interleave not only three doughs, but thirty or fourty doughs!

So, feeling peckish?

Tags: baking, cake, chocolate, white bread

French bread with pâte fermentée

Sunday, May 4th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

After having read through several bread baking books and websites there is one common thing I keep hearing, namely that breads baked with sourdough is the epiphany of breads, giving it a delectable, nutty taste. I must admit I have tried a bit of this and that, be it a poolish or a biga, and this time I have tried the pâte fermentée sourdough.

The pâte ferments for about 12 to 16 hours before it needs to be used in the ‘actual’ dough. And while the bread that comes out of this dough is good, I still think the taste of my french bread has it beat with some margin. The bread is still airy, though, but a slight bit more dense than the straight dough french bread.

I guess I will just have to keep experimenting with the preferment breads until I come up with those delectable breads everyone is talking about, but until then, I will most likely keep making the straight dough french bread as my daily bread. Yummy.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread