Bread Baker's Apprentice: Poilane-Style Miche

Above is my attempt at Peter Reinhart's recipe for the oft-cited and oft-copied Poilane Miche. Mine doesn't have the characteristic scoring pattern, because I made it in the clay BreadPot. The loaf is almost entirely whole wheat flour, although I did cheat and throw in about 3/4 of a cup of white flour to lighten the taste. In retrospect, the only thing I would change would have been to proof a little longer, for a more open crumb. It's a dense bread by nature though, and the other night it earned its place in kitchen history by participating in the creation of what may be Matt's favorite sandwich of all time, a sandwich so extraordinary he was throwing around Fight Club language with abandon, a no-holds-barred bacon and cheddar grilled cheese that pushed that chewy, strong bread to its highest purpose. The bacon, which came in a chunk from The Meat Hook in Williamsburg, was a salty Tennessee Mountain wonder, whose like we rarely see. Maybe not a life-changer, but definitely a game changer. And this bread got to participate.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: New York Deli Style Rye

John Thorne, writing about one of Reinhart's earlier books, Brother Juniper's Bread Book, noted that Reinhart particularly shines when it comes to specialty breads. After my seriously mediocre experience with his Basic Sourdough, I'm inclined to agree. This Deli Style Rye more than made up for any sourdough disappointments. It was a rye sourdough starter, into which was stirred that staple of Ashkenazi cooking, fried onions. That sat on the counter getting wet and grey for a few hours, then went into the refrigerator for 24 more. At the end of all that, I mixed it in with some more rye flour, some bread flour, and some buttermilk, sugar, caraway, yeast and oil. The resulting dough was hard to knead, heavy and somewhat unpleasant, but it baked beautifully, both in and out of the pot, and tastes perfect. The crumb is a good sandwich size, fine without being dense., and the taste is just made for deli meats (the dairy in it could be a sticking point for some, but not me). This might even beat out my former favorite, Rose Levy Berenbaum's Jewish Rye, which is a little lighter and softer. The onions, while they added their indefinable essence, were undetectable in the finished loaf.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Basic Sourdough

I make sourdough nearly weekly at home, and ten to fifteen loaves of it at the bakery, so you'd think I could do a good job with it. And usually I do, but this time around my starter seems to have been a bit sluggish, or I didn't wait for it long enough. This little pot-loaf looks lovely and crusty on the outside, but it was dense and wet, with a few large tunnels but a largely sticky crumb. 

 

In fact, it looks a lot like some of the early loaves I made at the bakery, which didn't rise or spring properly for whatever reason. In this case, I'd put the blame on sluggish sourdough, and possibly too short a proof. It's edible, but could have been much better.

This one was baked for about 20 minutes at 450 in the pot, and then another 10 minutes with lid off. Probably would have benefited from a slightly longer bake, but it wouldn't have done much for the crumb. Amazing how the baker can make even lame bread look so good, though, isn't it? This one had flaxseeds and sesame seeds in it as well. Hopefully now that I've woken up the home starter a little bit things will get back on track. I have a 25-lb bag of wholesale flour to get on with.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Poolish Baguettes and Pugliese

I'm jumping a little in and out of order here, but humor me. It's a challenge, not a contest...
Last week's contributions to the challenge were pane Pugliese, a ciabatta-like wet dough with semolina, and poolish baguettes, made with a long, wet, sponge. I did a terrible job of shaping both breads, and they split all over the place, and they were very good, the baguettes with goat cheese and the Pugliese with everything, including bread pudding. Jill tells me they're a vast improvement over two or three years ago's bread.

The poolish baguettes are so called because they are made with a poolish, which is a wet pre-fermented sponge of flour, water and yeast, made the day before and ripened overnight. This is then added to the final dough and helps with taste, keeping time, and gluten development. Almost all of the breads I make have some form of pre-ferment, whether it is a poolish (loose, wet), a biga (stiff, Italian), pate fermentee (old dough, French, somewhere between the last two), or a sourdough starter. I use most of these methods interchangeably.

The Pugiliese were part of my clay baker experiment, one in the pot and one out. This time, the open oven won, but the pot had a severe handicap in the form of a large piece of parchment stuck to the loaf, which had to be baked with it and took a long time to release. I didn't knead the wet dough at all, just mixed it hard and then gave it several folds over the next few hours.

Sourdough up next, although there are more straight-dough breads in the future as well. I'm thinking of adding Reinhart's Pane Siciliano to the lineup at Lily & Fig, which last week was a grand production of Oatmeal Sunflower, Brooklyn Sourdough, Challah, Teddy Bears, and lumpy Genzanese all in one wild morning. I don't have semolina, but I think even with AP flour, the fun shape and the sesame garnish would please people.

BBA Catch-Up

I'm having some trouble following directions, and I've been baking BBA breads out of order. To catch up a bit, here are some pictures. Reinhart's Pain de Campagne, Pane Siciliano, and Potato Rosemary Bread all use some form of pate fermentee or biga (Italian starter), which can easily be substituted for one another. Because the Pane Siciliano was the first thing I made from the book, and I've made it several times since, I skipped it this week, but here's the link to an earlier post.

With my batch of pate fermentee, I made a half recipe of Pain de Campagne, in the bread baker. It was very good, and surprisingly soft--used to my sourdough, I'd expected a sharp crust and a wide open crumb, but this formula made more of a sandwich bread.

Pizza Napolitana, also made a while ago, was good, though it hasn't become my go to pizza dough. I'm still looking for that.

I made a wonderful Sweet Potato Rosemary Bread, both in and out of the baker. Both loaves tasted wonderful, but the one in the baker was able to retain more of the beautiful sweet potato color. That's it for now, I'm skipping Panettone, and look out for Poolish Baguettes and a return to order shortly.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Pain a l'Ancienne in a Pot

With all the bread I've been working on, I've actually managed to neglect the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge, meandering off somewhere around Marbled Rye.  I still appreciate Peter Reinhart, but I've become besotted with Jeffrey Hamelman, and it was hard to wrench my attention back. Still, I think that it's worth while to continue through the book, and in order to make it happen, I'm combining the project with another one I'm working on, testing recipes and techniques in the clay bread baker made by Judy.

Judy now has several friends (including my mother, in her first blog appearance) market testing and reporting on variations of the bread bakers, and my plan is to prepare the upcoming Apprentice recipes as much as possible according to the book, and then shape for and bake in the pot, unless that would mutate the recipe entirely too far. This way, I can make the Reinhart recipes, and learn how they are, and at the same time see how a variety of techniques and formulae behave in the baker.

My first foray back was the Pain a l'Ancienne, a wet dough usually used for baguettes, the central feature of which is a long overnight retarding in the refrigerator. I nearly doubled the refrigerator time, to about 24 hours, but otherwise left the recipe alone except for cutting it in half. Like most of Reinhart's recipes, I found it under-hydrated, and added a little extra water, and still could probably have managed more. Once it had woken up out of the refrigerator, I shaped it into a boule and proofed it on a floured napkin, while preheating the oven and the pot to 450. Baked for 23 minutes with the lid on and another 20 or so with it off, the finished product was the best I've done in the baker, better shaped and more attractive than the no-knead variations I've been trying, with a surprisingly soft crumb given that there were no oils, and a very crisp crust with those little cracked patches bakers love so much.

Bread whispers and cracks a lot when it comes out of a hot oven, and this one was chatty.

BBA Update: Kaiser Rolls and Marble Rye

I've been holding off posting some recent Bread Bakers Apprentice breads that I've made, because I got a little out of order, but I decided that out of order is better than just sitting on the photos forever--and losing some. I made Reinhart's Kaiser Roll recipe over a month ago, and was really happy with the light, loose, flaky crumb of the final rolls. I somehow failed to save any pictures, though, so you'll have to imagine those until next time.

I did manage to get a few shots of my attempt at Marbled Rye Bread. Here it is, posing with my new toy, a left-handed slicer. I bought the slicer at a tag sale in Park Slope a few weeks ago, eliciting cheers from the crew running the tag sale. The slicer, they said, had been their long shot, almost a joke...i.e...''we'll know we're brilliant salesmen if someone buys that."Although I own a perfectly good serrated knife, I was tempted by the slicer's elegant wooden handle and by the giveaway price, and I bought it.

The rye bread was wonderful, and I'm looking forward to making it again next time I get my hands on some rye flour.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Focaccia

The BBA challenge crawls on. I may not be speedy but I'll be there in the end.

This is Reinhart's second variation on Focaccia, which starts with 3 cups of poolish (preferment). He suggests fermenting the poolish (about the 'consistancy of wet pancake batter') overnight in the refrigerator, but I just left it on the counter, Daniel Leader style.

Then, I mixed the dough this morning before work, stretched and fermented a it a few times, and then stuck it in the refrigerator at 10am. Coming home around 5, I pulled it out, let it warm up a bit, then gave it its final stretch and fold, then let it rise.

When I was ready for the final proofing, I dimpled it (possibly not enough, it still rose high), spread it with oregano/garlic herb oil, and covered it with cherry tomatoes, dried onions, and bits of shitake mushroom and turkey sausage leftover from another dinner.

The final result seemed softer and taller than the picture in the book, but it was wonderfully tender due to all the oil the recipe required.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: English Muffins

With the addition of a little whole wheat flour, I played this one pretty straight. Earlier English muffin recipes that I've tried have used an overnight ferment, this one is just a straight dough, with a simple rise and proof.They make very good breakfast sandwiches, especially when I use the same ring to shape the muffins and the egg. I love breakfast sandwiches, man.
Also, these tomatoes? We grew them on the roof.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Corn Bread

In a brief break from yeast, (it won't be long, tomorrow Dorie brings you Brioche Plum Tart), Peter Reinhardt slips in some corn bread into the BBA lineup. This is northern corn bread, sweet and heavy, loaded with buttermilk and honey and wheat flour, and even a little butter, baked in a pan greased with a little hot turkey fat. I didn't use polenta, just coarse ground local corn meal, so I sped up Reinhardt's method somewhat and skipped the overnight soak, also the bacon.

It was moist, crumbly, and very good, dinner and dessert together.

Updates and Housekeeping: BBA, CSA, camera, and wedding updates

A few bits of housekeeping. I've been out of town and rushing around. Still cooking, from olive oil cake with mutant blackberries in Welfleet, to new potatoes and crunchy kohlrabi at home, all the way to Rose's chocolate butter cake with Smitten Kitchen's Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting and raspberries. Still cooking, but not really taking good pictures, because my camera batteries died and I have been too lazy to update. Still, be assured it was beautiful. We ate wonderfully on Cape Cod, from Matt's mother's excellent cooking, to fresh tart blueberries from the yard, to my mother's cheesy omelettes and linguica egg sandwiches at the Portuguese Bakery in Provincetown, one of the best places in the known world. At home, Jon picked up the CSA, which included another kohlrabi, greens, and a large bunch of cucumbers.

Along the way, the past few weeks' efforts have included BBA challenge bread #9, Cinnamon Raisin Walnut Bread (with pecans and craisins), twice. It was excellent, and not photogenic, no pics. Next up is corn bread, filled with honey, corn, buttermilk, and possibly bacon.

And, in wedding cake news, Stacey and I took a trip to New York Cake and Baking Supply on 22nd Street, and played with everything. We piled pans on top of one another in several different configurations, and finally decided on a tiered cake, using 10", 8", and 6" layers (Rose tells me that standard size is 12", 9", and 6", which serves 150 people. This wedding will be closer to 90 people, and they will also have access to a 'brownie tower,' so I think that the layering we've chosen will be perfect. I do wonder if having only a two-inch different between the layers will make the tiering look less pretty, as Rose leaves a three inch difference in most of her combinations, but when we stacked the pans the result looked pretty good. The rigging needed for stabilization might mean that there are some dowel/straw holes in somebody's piece of cake, but hey, it's a wedding. Also: super-secret possible fondant magic, from a mystery guest. After playing with all the pans in the store, I went right home and ordered them all online, from a much cheaper source. Details when my new toys arrive.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Cinnamon Buns

My version of Peter Reinhardt's Cinnamon Buns wouldn't win any bake sale prizes--whole wheat flour gives them a less-fluffy look, and the lack of white fondant icing (which I think is overkill on a good cinnamon bun) completes their rustic charm. They were, however, sweet, fluffy, and lemony, and while not the most decadent pastry I could imagine, certainly enough so for Matt to call them dessert.

I had a surprising amount of trouble with this basic recipe, trouble which I tentatively blame on the flour combination I used. I've mentioned that I find many of the BBA recipes to need a lot of extra hydration. This one went the other way. I ran out of white flour halfway through, and so the recipe was half whole wheat bread flour, with a splash of fine semolina. In my mind, this flour substitution, especially with the absorption breaks I kept giving it, should have meant the dough was dry, if anything. Instead, it was so wet that I couldn't knead it, and ended up gooshing it around more like the ciabatta dough, after adding a good deal more flour on my hands. I finally just got frustrated and set it to rise, figuring it would be what it would be. I then forgot about it and it got a 6-hour rise instead of the two it was meant to have, and it would have been longer except that I happened to stumble on the bowl on my counter while going to make something else. It had more than quadrupled in size, but luckily the yeast wasn't exhausted and they proofed just fine once I had gotten the cinnamon and sugar and pecans and raisins in, and cooked up ok, though whole wheat dough never bakes as pretty as all white in pastries like these.Speaking of pastries, I am really looking forward to getting out of the all butter all the time part of the book (seriously, where's the bread--I miss Daniel Leader, who doesn't mess around), and relegating the butter back to where it belongs--Tuesdays with Dorie. But I have no complaints about these cinnamon buns other than the abysmal time I had kneading them, the flavor is a good mix of lemony and sweet.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Ciabatta

Moving right along with the BBA challenge (my carb-hungry household needs bread), I made ciabatta the other night. I had made ciabatta at least once before, using Daniel Leader's method, with middling results. In the BBA book, there are two versions, poolish and biga. Both are pre-ferments, with different proportions and methods, but according to Reinhardt, create similar results. The poolish fermented for a few hours in the open air, then hung out in the refrigerator for a few days until I was ready to make dough.

Ciabatta is one of those breads that most cookbook writers advise making in a mixer, because it should be as wet as possible, and is hard to handle. My mixer can't even begin to handle bread dough, so that was out. Instead, I used a new method, suggested by Reinhardt, that involved using my hands as if they were a mixer--squeezing with one and rotating the bowl with the other. It was messy, and I feared for my ceramic bowl on my faux-marble countertop, but it was successful.The dough is then stretched and folded up, and left to rest for a while. After that, it is cut, folded again, and put to proof in an improvised couche.
At this point, I slipped the dough into the refrigerator and went to dinner. When I came back, I gave it a little time to warm up, then dimpled and stretched it as advised, and baked.
It came out beautiful, if a little wiggly, but I wasn't entirely satisfied with the inner crumb. Ciabatta is supposed to be almost non-existant inside, full of huge, glossy holes, and mine achieved more the texture of soft flatbread. I think this was due to all the temperature fluctuations, possibly also to my failure to stretch it out enough, and definitely to the lower hydration caused by using a cup of whole wheat flour (although I did add a lot of extra water to balance).

Has anyone else doing the BBA project noticed that they are routinely adding more water than Reinhardt suggests, even after compensating for flour substitutions? I wonder if I just have really dehydrated flour.

When I took this loaf out of the oven, Sophie said, 'Oh, it looks like Batman.'

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Challah

I've skipped ahead one week in the challenge. This week's bread is supposed to be Casatiello, a kind of Italian take on Brioche filled with sausage and cheese, but I couldn't bear to make another brioche variation too soon, and we needed something less rich around the house.
You know you're in trouble when 'something less rich' is a challah. Challah was one of the first breads that I learned how to make, in part because it is easy, and in part because it is, like the Artos, a celebration bread, therefore the baking specialty of one or another of my parents' group of friends. John's (large, fluffy, wheaty) and Nina's (long, braided, seeded) challahs made it obvious that challah making was possible and came with great rewards, and I've never looked back. For Rosh Hashanah, I have occasionally been known to make Martha Stewart's rich, rich yolky challah, but Reinhardt's recipe is a good one for more everyday wear (as is the recipe in The Silver Palate Cookbook, fyi). I subbed in 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour into 4 cups total, and the result was a heartier taste with no change in texture.

Since my one other wedding assignment this summer, in addition to the cupcakes and cake, is a celebratory challah, it's good to flex the challah muscles. Like a very few other recipes, challah always feels so close and familiar to make that it is less like an adult challenge and more like a childhood memory. I like it that way.
Sophie, who has come to live with us for a little while, also likes it, but likes it best when Matt french toasts it, which he did this past Sunday.

French toast is outstanding. I have no manners, and, as with pancakes, tend to think it is best eaten by hand right off the griddle, one by one. Matt is very tolerant and allows such behavior even though he was not raised by wolves. My mother always did express the forlorn hope that I would behave more conventionally outside the house. That's why I never go out for brunch.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Poor Man's Brioche

BBA challenge marches on. There's been some discussion about pacing on this challenge, whether to stick to the schedule, slow up, or just bake at a rapid pace. Some bakers in the group seem to have strong competitive streaks. I have one, but it doesn't really apply to things like this. As a member of several other groups with rigid deadlines, I like baking my BBA whenever I feel like it, or whenever we have no vehicles for peanut butter.
This brioche was one of three variations in the book--from richest to poorest. I went with the poorest, which still has plenty of butter and milk and egg, added some whole wheat flour, and got a soft, billowy, rich bread perfect for toast or eating with milk. Looking forward to some more robust breads, but not anytime too soon. Next up, challah.

Bread Baker's Apprentice: Bagels

The Bread Baker's Apprentice has its recipes organized alphabetically. So, after anthos, comes bagels. These bagels are similar to the recipe that I made last month, and I had the same easy time with them, and some of the same issues with the finished product. I think I made the dough too wet, as the final product was soft, perhaps leaning a little more into the pretzel camp. This can be better. It will take some perfecting, but I will definitely get there.
Brioche, coming up.

BBA: Anthos (Greek Celebration Bread)

Now they're coming thick and fast. The lack of rigid schedule for this BBA challenge is allowing my obsessions to get the better of me, and I'm baking at a too rapid pace. Still, I have guests this weekend, and they'd probably like some bread to eat while they're here.

They can eat Anadama bread. At least half of that loaf is still left, and I'm not sure that the puffy airy Anthos (Greek Celebration Bread), flavored with spices and almond and orange oil, will be lasting until they get here.

This bread is presented by Reinhart as a kind of base recipe for various kinds of Greek holiday breads, including the Easter loaf studded with red eggs, and the New Year's vassilopita. It is soft and sweet and rich, laden with eggs and milk and oil, as well as the aforementioned spices. It's also, thanks to the addition of commercial yeast and sourdough, perfectly light, and disappears very quickly. It's too rich for real every day bread use, but I can't imagine a better loaf for french toast or bread pudding or mushing up and eating with fresh slightly overgelled rhubarb jelly.

Bring on the Bread Baker's Apprentice--Anadama Bread

Apparently I'm a joiner.

I like assignments and groups. I like Tuesdays with Dorie, which I found myself describing to Matt's mother (with his help) as a kind of book club. Without constant occasions, my baking obsessions can seem purposeless, and while I'm trying to rein myself in, the truth is I may always be the kind of person who has a few too many pans of brownies or fruit tarts to sheepishly push on the neighbors. Having baking book clubs makes this tendency feel a little less aimless. I'm not just making some ridiculous dessert for no reason...oh no, I have an Assignment. As an added bonus, baking book clubs tend to increase my skills, get me to try new techniques, and are largely free of the annoyances of real book clubs (i.e. listening to other people's aimless or forced opinions on books), but with the full complement of interesting shared experience.

It's the modern sort of movement--loosely connected, purposeful, but without a lot of person to person contact. Mostly it's just me and my butter and sugar and flour. And then there are those moments when I have to explain to the rest of the world why I'm crazy and 'just happen' to have 'extra' brownies/ice cream sandwiches/lemon tarts around at all times. Admittedly, there's a part of me that kind of loves that too.

The only thing that's held me back from joining more and more of these groups is a nagging worry that they will take over my entire baking life, rendering this blog merely a chronicle of something that hundreds of other people are also doing, and someone has already put into a book. That would be boring. I've been flirting with Daring Bakers, but they're only once a month. Joining another weekly group is a big step, and it certainly couldn't involve more tart dough or buttercream. Even I have limits.
My resolve of originality was overcome, though, by a new group started by Nicole of Pinch My Salt. This group, somewhat more loosely organized than TWD, is baking its way in order through Peter Reinhardt's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. First, I already had the book. Second, it seemed like a good crash course back to the baked good that started this blog--Bread. Loyal longtime readers may have noticed that bread posts have taken a back seat lately. I still make bread, but not as often or as obsessively, and less frequently from my sourdough starter, which is looking a little weak in the back of the refrigerator these days. Also, it tends to look the same regardless of type, and I don't feel like my photographs are that exciting. It just looks like another picture of the same loaf. It's time to turn that around, take better pictures of the whole process, and try out some variations.
The BBA (as it shall henceforth be known), is kind of an odd book. It starts with an extensive section on technique, and only halfway through the book does it move on to 'formulas'. These vary extensively, and the order in which they appear doesn't always seem to follow a clear logic (the first two recipes are for Anadama bread and for Greek Celebration Bread, neither an obvious choice). I have some issues with the layout--recipes often span several pages, or can be difficult to follow even on one page, but Reinhardt is a master teacher and I am excited to learn from him.

The first week's 'assignment' was an old New England (yeah, New England! Go Celtics!) specialty, Anadama Bread. This bread has many variations, but is always made with some variation on cornmeal and molasses. Reinhardt's version starts with a day-long soaker of cornmeal (I used a coarse polenta) and water. This soaker is then added to a sponge, which is supposed to ferment for an hour. I forgot it and left the house, so it actually spent something closer to 8 hours on the counter. I added a bit more yeast to the final dough in case I'd exhausted it, but the results were very positive. I put the dough into the refrigerator to rise overnight, woke up at 5:30 to put it out on the counter, slept until 9:30, at which time it had nearly tripled. (Are you sensing a theme here?) I shaped it anyway, and stuck it in the loaf pan to proof, then baked it off.
It's not the best bread in the world--(we have Pane Genzanese for that), but it is a perfect sandwich bread, with a soft fluffy texture to rival Pepperidge Farm. I think it might have a future as French toast.