Stuart's Soliloquy to the void

New bread knife

Sunday, June 5th, 2011 | Cooking | 1 Comment

I have recently acquired a new bread knife from Yaxell, a Ran knife, made from 69 layers of Damascus steel. It is a thing of beauty and it carves bread like a wooden knife cuts through soft butter, mmmm.

I normally score my breads using the bread knife and our old bread knife just wasn’t sufficiently sharp to create interesting patterns, but here and now this changes. Now with even more fancy patterns:

It carves beautifully and the crumb isn’t mashed together like our old knife had a tendency to do. Most of my previous crumb photos took several slices before I got to a slice where the crumb was sufficiently nice to look at.

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Yaxell in any way. I just love my new knives.

Tags: baking, bread

Sausage rolls

Sunday, November 14th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

The typical sausage roll is made from puff pastry, wrapped around sausage meat, brushed with egg and baked. I simply cannot stand these!

When I think sausage roll, I think some nice bread rolled around a real, actual sausage, not just ‘sausage meat’ (whatever that is). So, I take some nice basic french dough bread recipe and let it preferment for about 3–4 hours, then when we get to shaping, I roll out the dough (very much like making croissants, really, just with a single layer of dough and no fats), place a sausage at the fat end of a slice of dough and roll it up into the typical croissant shape (translated literally, we call these ‘sausage horns’ in Danish).

This is left to proof as normal, i.e. 1½–2 hours, and then baked at around 240°C for 10 minutes, then the oven is vented to let out steam, and finally they finish baking in another 10 or so minutes at 220°C.

And unlike my typical bread, these may be eaten hot. The taste of the sausage is typically a lot stronger than the flavour of the bread, so the added taste of actually letting the bread cool off completely isn’t really worth outlasting the temptation of eating them. And once you start eating them, you are hooked. I have yet to meet anyone who prefers the puff pastry versions to these. Bon appétit.

Tags: baking, bread

Just plain bread

Sunday, October 24th, 2010 | Cooking | No Comments

Once in a while I find myself in the rather annoying situation of waking up and realising that we are out of bread, there’s no real good alternative for lunch, there is no poolish ready for use, and the stand mixer is in the dishwasher and not at all ready for use. At that point, I could, of course, do a bunch of kneading myself, but that gets rather gooey and unwieldy with the highly hydrated doughs I prefer to make, so, enter the no-knead process…

The basic process is this: mix everything and incorporate the ingredients, then walk away from it for a while. You could just leave it like this for a good 16–18 hours and the dough will magically have kneaded itself, but from waking up until lunch, 16 hours seems a bit unrealistic. Instead, you can gradually strengthen the gluten strands by folding the bread, say, every 30–40 minutes or so for 2–3 hours. After that, we can shape the bread, let the loaf proof for about five quarters of an hour, then stuff it into the oven at a good 240°C for 30–35 minutes, and finally let it cool completely before slicing the bread. That last part is usually the most difficult part of them all, but like a good roast, you will not get a full, rich flavour unless you let it rest (unfortunately bread usually takes more than 20 minutes to rest, it’s more like 40–60 minutes).

That is what 500 g flour, 10 g salt, 14 g fresh yeast, and 360 g of water will give you when folded every 30 minutes for 2½ hours, and otherwise following the procedure above.

A lovely creamy crumb, and a wafer-thin, flaky crust. In a professional bakery, the ovens are able to take in water and turn into steam in certain intervals inside the oven, which keeps the bread moist and prevents the crust from forming prematurely—home bakers are, typically, not as fortunate, so we have to make do with alternative methods of getting those thin crusts. A lot has been written on the topic: people throw in ice cubes when they load the loaves, they put in wet towels that give off steam, they put a pan of cold water below the plate with the breads on, etc., etc.; In my opinion, this is all much too much work (plus the ice cube thing might damage the oven, crack the glass in the oven front and whatnot, plus it interferes with the bottom heat for my baking stone). Instead, I take some cold water from the tap, and place it in the cup of my hand and slowly drizzle it across the unbaked loaves between my fingers, then bake it just like that. This, of course, keeps me from doing fancy flour-patterns on top of the bread, but I didn’t really plan on doing those in the first place.

At any rate, for a fairly quick bread (yes, my quick breads take in the vicinity of 6 hours), it has a nice taste, but not as pronounced a taste of wheat as the 12+ hour breads do. But, at least, there was bread for lunch.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Highly hydrated doughs

Saturday, April 17th, 2010 | Cooking | 2 Comments

Since the time I started baking I have read copious amounts of information on baking, primarily perusing titles from master bakers here and there, and some successful owners of bakeries in Denmark, Sweden and the United States. Some give good advice, others not so good, but the main thing I’ve taken away from having read all this is… it’s food, experiment and find something you like (though do be accurate about what you do so you can recreate it).

In some peoples’ opinion (and mine too for that matter), you should try to master the plain bread before you start adding all sorts of extra things to it. In a basic bread there are four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast (or sourdough). That is it. No seeds, no additives, no lard, no herbs. Just four plain ingredients. I use organic flour and Maldon sea salt, mainly because I do not fancy eating flour with all kinds of remnants of artificial fertilisers, and Maldon sea salt because I like their salt taste the best (but do try a bunch of different salts and find the one you like best).

The amount of flour you put into this thing mainly controls how much bread you will have once the process is done (this is an over-simplification, each ingredient influences the final outcome in a lot of surprising and complex ways, so take the following with a grain of salt), the amount of salt will control the taste (and to some degree how well the gluten strands develop), and the yeast will control how quickly the fermentation process will happen (more yeast, faster bread and less taste, less yeast, slower bread and more taste), and finally there is the water. This is usually the ingredient you turn up and down to control the handling characteristics of the bread. The lower water rate, the more manageable the dough is, the higher it is, the more you will feel like you’re battling some sticky monster from hell as you try to shape everything up into loaves of bread.

So for a while I have been giving the breads very low amounts of yeast (around 1–5 grams), rather long time to ferment (from 5 to 18 hours depending on how busy our daily schedule is), and very high amounts of water (around 90% the weight of the flour) a try. This has given me a very open and creamy crumb with a soft crust the first few hours after baking, which hardens into a denser crust after 6–12 hours and a superb taste. In order for such a wet dough to stick together, it is necessary for the gluten to be able to keep it all together, which is what the long fermentation will help you achieve. For a brief few illustrations I have taken some photos of a 5 hour fermentation followed by 10 hours retardation (placing the dough in the fridge).

The lighting is a tad shoddy. It is surprisingly difficult to pour dough, handle a camera and get the lighting just right around 7 am after having stumbled out of bed. There is some nice gluten strands here, but without the retardation they are typically longer and tougher. You can tell how strong they are by how long they can get before they snap if you pull at the dough.

Next, there are more fun ways to influence the result of your bread: how you bake it. With steam? without steam? at what temperature? for how long? I usually pour a bit of water over the loaves just before I put them in the oven, which will create enough steam to keep the crust from setting too quickly. Since the dough is highly hydrated, the loaves need to bake for a good while (usually around 40 minutes in my oven), and I start out at the high end of the temperature range at 250°C for 15 minutes, then I vent the oven (open the hatch for a few seconds to let out the steam), then I finish baking over the next 25 minutes, slowly reducing the heat once in a while to keep the crust from scorching.

After baking, you will have a nice, creamy, open crumb and a wafer thin crust that flakes like it does with plain bread from a good bakery. Flour, water, salt, and yeast. That is it.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Slow durum bread

Saturday, November 14th, 2009 | Cooking | No Comments

If one has better time, it is, of course, preferable to give the bread a slow rise, which brings out more flavour nuances in the bread. There isn’t that much difference in consistency to the quick durum bread, but it does have better flavour.

The ingredients are:

• 700 g wheat flour
• 300 g durum flour
• 10 g fresh yeast
• 20 g sea salt
• 700 g water

The ingredients are mixed together for 3 minutes at first speed to incorporate the ingredients, and then continuing on first speed for another 7–8 minutes to develop the gluten.

The dough ferments for 3 and a half hours with folds every 50 minutes and then the dough is shaped into pretty loaves.

After 1½–2 hours of proofing, the loaves are slashed and baked. Looking closely after the slashing we can see the bubbly activity inside the bread.

After baking they have a lovely golden durum crust.

And after cooling, the bread is ready for serving, perhaps with a nice variety of seafood.

Bon appetit!

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Quick durum bread

Friday, October 23rd, 2009 | Cooking | 2 Comments

Ever since our daughter has started in a nursery, we have more or less been incapacitated with illness, one overtaking the next, so time and energy for baking has been rather scarce. I did, however, succeed in baking a quick bread this past weekend, before I succumbed to another illness (the joy).

I found myself without bread on saturday, and a lacklustre enthusiasm of having to eat the local bakery’s cardboard bread once again. Lunch was few hours away, and the only straight dough recipes that I really like takes at least six hours from start to finish. So what to do, what to do… let us try something crazy and just go with the flow. Let’s try to mix some of the techniques from the slower breads, and the theory of bread baking I’ve been reading up on, with the traditional way for Danish home bakers to bake: quickly and with lots of yeast.

For interested parties, I’ll present to you the ingredients here:

• 700 g wheat flour
• 300 g durum flour
• 28 g fresh yeast
• 24 g sea salt
• 650 g water

This is a bit high percentage of salt given my usual tastes, but the quick fermentation process will yield a rather non-tasty bread (i.e. without as much wheat flavour), so we compensate by adding salt (this is not necessarily a good way to compensate, but when in a rush and all that…).

The ingredients are all weighed into a mixing bowl and gets an improved mix (3 minutes at slow speed for incorporation, and 3 minutes at a higher speed for gluten development). In order to further improve the gluten structure (this was, perhaps, not really necessary as it wasn’t a terribly wet dough, all things considered), I decided to let it ferment 40 minutes, fold, ferment 40 minutes and then divide and shape into loaves.

After the first fermentation, the dough is slightly sticky, but it has a nice structure, a bit like a good Danish dough.

Folding it gives it a very nice, firm, and smooth texture.

And giving it another 40 minutes to divide the loaves and shaping them works nicely.

After this comes the proofing time, letting the loaves rise after you’ve removed a lot of the air when shaping the loaves. I let them proof for about an hour, enough to turn my oven up to 236°C. I let the loaves bake around 30 minutes, but they probably could’ve taken five minutes more.

We were rather in a rush, so waiting for the breads to cool entirely was not really an option either, so we dug into them a bit early, while the crumb was still a wee bit too moist (but that is, for some reason, what most people insist they prefer).

This bread will not win any taste rewards, but it’s a nice, quick(-ish) bread with a comfy feeling (kind of saturday morning, the rain is pouring down, you’ve got a cold and you just need a nice warm slice of bread with jam and a big cup of tea, your comfy chair and a good book and to whittle away the hours). It definitely beats the usual quick breads from the Danish bread cook books, if I have to say so myself. Also, the durum flour gives it that nice, rich yellow tint (although that may be a bit hard to pick up from the photos).

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Sonnenblumenbrot – sunflower seed bread

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009 | Cooking | No Comments

Since I have started working full-time on a new job and have a longer commute, and I like to spend the hours when I am at home with my daughter, I have neglected both this blog and baking for a while.

With a child in the house both my wife and I tend to make recipes we know so they do not require so much focus, but by doing that we risk getting set in our habits, only eating the same kinds of bread, the same kinds of things for dinner, for the next many, many years. So in order to break free of that, we have agreed to make something new each week – my wife will make a new recipe for dinner, and I will bake something I do not usually bake.

For last week I delved into the ‘not entirely white bread’ recipes in Jeffrey Hamelman’s book ‘Bread’ and found this German recipe for sunflower seed bread. I am, personally, a bit so-so with sunflower seeds, but my wife absolutely loves them, so I figured why not. We will need lots and lots of sunflower seeds.

We will also need a rye chop soaker and a pâte fermentée to add to the final dough.

The mixed dough is fairly reminiscent of the white doughs from Hamelman’s book, just a bit less ‘extremely sticky’.

Now, the recipe calls for a good long bake of 40 minutes at 240°C, which seems to be a bit too much, so I would suggest turning the heat about 10–20°C down after 20 minutes (when I look at the recipe again, Hamelman actually also suggests this).

Traditionally, the Sonnenblumenbrot is moistened on top and dipped into non-roasted sunflower seeds, however since I am not too keen on too many sunflower seeds, I opted to skip this part. It is still, all in all, a very wholesome bread with a beautiful crust, and a nice crumb with bite, due to the sunflower seeds, and a slight sweetness, due to the rather large, in my opinion, amount of malt syrup that goes into the dough as well.

Very excellent with jam.

Tags: baking, bread

Cinnamon loaves

Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | Cooking | 3 Comments

One of the glorious things from my childhood was the sunday trip to the bakery where we got to pick our Sunday morning treat. Normally this treat was to be a single item like a rum snail, a croissant, or the like, but just once in a while I managed to sweet-talk (read: emotionally bribe) my parents into buying a cinnamon loaf. For those unfortunate enough that they haven’t come across this wonderful bread before, it is a butter and egg enriched dough that is rolled around a cinnamon-enriched remonce cream (mix of butter and sugar). For quite a few years now, I have had to pass these things by in the bakery, along with most their other treats, since I’ve been ‘fortunate’ enough to pick up lactose intolerance on the course of my life. Furthermore, we have egg allergists in the family as well, so what else was there to do than replace the butter with milk-free shortening and replace the eggs with a mix of water, oil, flour and baking powder? (We have also prepared these loaves with the egg, but there is practically no difference between replacing the egg as well).

The first part is rolling the dough into a fairly thin square, however, I can never, ever, manage a square when rolling dough like that, so it gets to be square-ish. We smear the remonce over this and roll it up nicely.

For those of you who aren’t experienced remonce-smearers, this is what too much remonce looks like (you will see why in a bit).

These three rolls are then used to carefully braid the loaf (in most home-made versions of cinnamon loaves it is just rolled into a single roll, but that does not get the authentic bakery braid).

After some careful braining and a graceful finish at each end of the braid, you get this.

Now it just needs to be placed in a form and proofed until it’s nice and wiggly.

And after being baked for half an hour, this is the oozing goodness that meets the eye (ok, normally it doesn’t ooze quite that much, but we brought it upon ourselves by using a larger portion of remonce).

Or seen in a bit larger perspective.

Now comes the time to turn out the loaves from the forms.

This was also the time I suddenly realised that I was supposed to have greased the forms.

It’s not all bad, though, as it is still great to eat out of the form, but the loaf in the background, above, is collapsed a bit due to this.

Now we only need to add the final touch to complete the masterpiece: icing.

The best part is, you do not have to wait for these loaves to cool, you can eat them warm, oozing and savor their delectable creamy consistency that is punctuated by the sugary cinnamon and the crisp and sweet crust on the top of the loaf.

It’s still as good as I remember it from my childhood.

Tags: baking, bread, dessert, pastry, sweets

Pain rustique rolls

Monday, December 15th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

Pain rustique is a wonderful savory bread that not only tastes great, but is also relatively fast to make (including the poolish it only takes like 15–18 hours from start to baked loaf). They are prepared much like regular pain rustique, just divided into smaller amounts of dough. Here I have prepared what would usually be four small loaves and each of these I have divided in four to create rolls. So, one or two rolls should be plenty to fill your appetite for a meal.

Since the buns are somewhat smaller than the regular loaves they don’t require entirely as long in the oven.

They look just like small pain rustique loaves.

The crust is crisp, thin and lovely, but the crumb is a bit denser than the regular pain rustique, but that is most likely due to me shaping the rolls a wee bit tighter than I normally shape the loaves (pain rustique requires no shaping, much like ciabatta, but I never get rectangular slices of dough, so I tend to tug in the odds and ends to make it appear rectangular).

This is, of course, not where the story usually ends when I bake, but it is usually where I stop depicting the process. However, my wife got inspired by the rolls and prepared extremely delicious sandwiches using them. In their full glory, I present to you a cucumber, tomato, salmon and avocado sandwich. Lovely.

Tags: baking, bread, white bread

Potato garlic bread

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 | Cooking | No Comments

While I really love and adore the French and Italian white breads, I was brought up on Danish rye bread, which, usually, uses more or less 100% rye. Now, I’m not really ready to consume rye bread again after having sworn it off once I moved away from my parents, however, I’m usually coaxed into trying different kinds of breads with whole meat wheat, maize, or in this instance, potatoes and garlic.

We oven-roasted the potatoes as per Hamelman’s directions for optimum taste in his book Bread. Now, if you make the usual metric-based recipe from Hamelman’s book, you’d wind up with 27 loaves of about 600 grams each, and while it sounds tempting I neither have space enough in my oven, nor am I able to eat all that bread before it goes stale. Now, if you did create 27 loaves, you’d be needing about 30 grams of oven roasted garlic, but when you create what corresponds to 2 loaves of 600 grams each (in reality I made 4, each being about 300 grams), you would only need 3 grams of garlic, which is about a single clove. That is just overkill to ovenroast! So I fried it in a generous amount of oil instead.

Furthermore, Hamelman makes the suggestion not to remove the peel from the potatoes when you mash them to add some colour to the consistency of the bread. I am much too lazy to hand-mash potatoes, so I tossed them into my blender along with the 3 grams of garlic and let it run for a bit. It is an extremely efficient blender, really, as there was no hint of the roughness of the peel once it had mashed everything up for a bit.

The dough is somewhat denser than for instance ciabatta dough, which is due both to the wholemeal wheat used in it, but certainly also the potatoes that don’t release their moisture until later in the process. It is, at least, a lot easier to work with than the ciabatta dough that has a tendency to try to escape from my grasp at all times.

The potatoes add a nice bit of colouring to the bread and the crumb is somewhat denser than the loose, airy crumbs that I usually prefer, but I will have to agree with Hamelman, it’s got a nice, comfy taste, and the garlic adds a nice bit of ‘kick’ to it.

What has amazed me most about this bread is its keeping time. Normally the ciabatta becomes slightly stale after just two or three days, but the potato garlic bread is still good after 4 days. Sure, the crust is getting slightly chewy, but with some liver paté (in case you are wrinkling your nose at this, it’s a Danish tradition to eat it, and unlike the rye bread, I haven’t sworn this one off just yet), the bread still has a nice taste. Good for the times where you don’t have time to bake during the week.

Tags: baking, bread