Alpha Bakers -- Whole Wheat Walnut Loaf

Bread is so wonderful. My birthday breakfast this year was a large loaf of Zaro's raisin challah, eaten with coffee one day and dipped in milk the next (yes, it was a birthday weekend, nobody celebrates just one day). This week with the Alpha Bakers was 100% Whole Wheat Walnut bread, a cheese-friendly loaf that wasn't very pretty on the outside, but was lovely and simple inside. 

The bread begins with a small preferment, which rises under a blanket of the rest of the flour. The flour I used was Farmer Ground, from an organic cooperative from upstate NY that is sold for a very reasonable price at farmer's markets and my food coop. They have a whole wheat line, but all I could pick up yesterday was their all purpose, an 11% protein flour milled from 'Warthog' winter wheat. Warthog. This made my loaf a little lighter, and I'd like to try with the whole wheat, but the all-purpose is still much sturdier than your average store brand. Whole wheat flour is sometimes a little harder to bake bread with, so Rose's recipe includes a dash of vital wheat gluten, which increases gluten development and elasticity, contributing to a higher rise. 

My kitchen was very, very hot last night (I was making this in the middle of a heat wave) and I accidentally threw in a little too much yeast (must measure, weighing is too inaccurate at those small amounts), so my bread rose wildly and was a little more loose than I would have preferred. I did the first turn in the bowl instead of stretching it out on a counter, but I am pretty good at bowl turns after years of using the Tartine method, so I am confident in my choices. The looseness of the dough meant that the final loaf was a little sloppier looking and not as domed as I could have wished, but the interior was perfect. I'll be serving it for breakfast with jam and Comte, and then taking it to work. 

As for the pie I said it was too hot to make, I didn't make it. Blueberry pie is great but I have extreme difficulty holding on to blueberries long enough to get to that place. I've been skipping around a lot with the Alpha Baking lately but expect to be back on track for the rest of the summer (until I move, more on that later, cross your fingers...). The week before last I made some cookies but haven't blogged them yet because I went to the beach instead. In fact I took them to the beach. Behold the Kourambiethes in their fancy packaging. Buttery and nutty and buttery, we ate them on the beach and threw the crumbs everywhere. Everyone approved, and my friend's two and a half year old, who claimed to be too shy to interact with us, pronounced them 'nummy.' So.

 

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.

The Eagle Has Landed

The eagle has landed. My new pot of brick clay has finally ended its travels and landed in its permanent home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. It arrived in perfect condition and is doing just fine, thank you. Here it is with a loaf of wheat/rye bread with flaxseeds and wheatberries. Its flatter, wider shape also makes it a great breadbox. Thank you so, Judy. 

And don't think I'll be ignoring the original glazed pot. It's become one of my best rising vessels, and keeper for all sorts of things, and I still hope to bake beans in it someday soon. For those of you who have been asking me about the availability of these beautiful vessels, a new batch will hit the market shortly. Keep your eyes open at http://www.motzkin.com/.

Pane di Genzano in a Basket

I'm blogging on deadline here, or more specifically writing a paper on deadline, thus not supposed to be blogging, but I thought you might like to see some pictures of my first successful attempt at getting pretty ridges on my bread. This is Pane di Genzano from Local Breads, proofed in a breadbasket, or 'makeshift banneton.' I just dusted hell out of the basket with flour and hoped that its sharp ridges wouldn't become a problem. They didn't, and the result was rather lovely.
I also tried out the whole wheat version this time--it was very soft and wet but not unmanageable at all. I formed it into long, sort of shapeless loaves, like this one.
It baked very quickly, almost burning, and the taste was good, a little more complex than the white in the one side by side tasting I did.

Mark Bittman's Kasha Varnishkes

Or, I do whatever the NYtimes tells me to, part two. There have actually been several unsuccessful efforts between this post and the Chocolate Chip Cookies, but the Times has a surprisingly high hook rate, I tend to make at least one recipe of theirs a week, if not more. This week's breakaway winner was Mark Bittman's simple Kasha Varnishkes. I even had chicken fat leftover from last week's roast. I made it last night--this version is fast enough even for the likes of Rachel Ray, and I was making another recipe at the same time. I particularly liked learning Bittman's way of drying out the onions--he cooks them covered in a dry pan to sweat out some juice, and only adds fat after ten minutes when they've shrunk and started to brown. And it's so so delicious.

I inhaled half of it five seconds after it was done, added a bunch of sauteed mushrooms and repeated the process for breakfast today. It's that good. Sometimes color and fresh vegetables are just not everything. Sometimes you have to inhale greyish-brown, oniony food, cooked in chicken fat, and praise your ancestors for coming up with anything so good. (If anyone's counting, the mushrooms, and the kasha were farmer's market local, but I'm not kidding myself that that detail truly affected the dish.) Thanks, ancestors. You really did this one proud..