Barry’s Artisan Bread Baking

Here in New Jersey, the weather is just about what it usually is in July, hot and sticky.  I bake a bit, but it’s a real challenge to bake bread without getting agonizing looks from the air conditioner.  Lots of people eat outside during the summer, either on a picnic or a backyard cook out, and these events need bread.  What to do?

Ahhh.  Try pita and naan.  Both cook very quickly so the kitchen won’t heat up too much, and they are both just wonderful with picnic fare or barbeque.  And I just happen to have good recipes for both with picures of me making them.  (Isn’t that a coincidence?)

Pita recipe with pictures

Naan recipe with pictures.

Not only are they good breads, but the pita is a good recipe for children to make, they love rolling them out and watching them puff up in the oven.

I spotted this recipe on the back of a bag of King Arthur Bread flour and decided it would probably make a good sandwich bread.  I’ve found that food company recipes are usually very good, since it’s in the best interests of a company like King Arthur to have the recipes turn out well.  This bread proves the point.

It’s a very easy, quick recipe that turns out a very nice bread.  I made two loaves, and added raisins to one of them, althoughthe recipe says you can use currants, too.  I recomment this loaf for just about anyone.  It’s light, tasty and makes great sandwiches and toast.  It’s so easy that beginners and children should be able to make this easily.

http://www.artisanbreadbaking.com/oatmeal/oatmeal.htm 

Way to go, King Arthur!

The Attorney General of New York State has convinced several large internet service providers (ISPs) to discontinue many Unenet Newsgroups and to limit the ones they will continue to provide to the so-called Big 8.  These are

comp.

humanities.

misc.

news.

rec.

sci.

soc.

talk.

If you read the alt.bread.recipes newsgroup, there is a good chance that in the near future you will not be able to access the newsgroup using your existing ISP.  There are several things you can do:

1.  Pout, rant, rave.  This will make you feel good, but won’t help.

2.  Find a different way to access the alt.* groups.  This will mean using a pay-for-service company like giganews, aioe, easynews, supernews, newsfeeds, etc.

3.  Login to the Google bread baking group.  The Google bread baking group is http://groups.google.com/group/bread-baking and it’s free.  All you have to do is access it.  If you want to post, you must sign up, but that’s also free. 

The group at alt.bread.recipes is discussing what the coming (or current, to some) ban on alt.* groups means for the group and how best to deal with it.  The Google Groups solution may or may not be where we end up, but it’s one answer and it’s available.  Please join the discussion at alt.bread.recipes and help decide what we do.

Once again, no bread in the house and all sorts of opinions about what I should make.  Argghh!

Everyone loves a sweet bread (no, not sweetbreads).  The question is, which one?  Taking a look through some bread books, I decided to adapt the basic sweet dough recipe from J.A. Wihlfahrt’s “A Treatise on Baking,” a comprehensive baking manual from 1928.

For those keeping score, it’s Formula 55 on page 328.  He has two sizes, huge and Don’t Ask.  I cut the huge down a bit and wound up with a little over 5 pounds of dough, enough to make two very large of what I was planning, which were stuffed braids.  I also made a little over a pound of filling.

I divided the dough into six pieces and rolled out three of them into very long ribbons.  I then put a stuffing made of poppy butter, chopped walnuts, honey and a little vanilla down the center of each ribbon and sealed it carefully.  I braided the three strands into a loaf and formed it into a circle, let rise 45 minutes, baked at 350F for 35 minutes and viola!  Here it is.

I’ll make it again in a few weeks and post the whole process.

	Here are the two loaves on the cooling racks. They are really quite large, a lot larger than I thought they would be.
	Another shot of the two loaves.
	Here’s a shot of the inside after cutting it open.
	Here’s a shot of a piece of bread cut open in slightly different lighting. This shows the surprise inside very well.

Here it was Monday and no bread it the house.  What to do?  Then The Word came down that any bread I made had better be whole wheat and, better yet, good for sandwiches.

Step one, get out the “to do” file and see if anything fits.  I found a recipe that I had cut from a magazine years ago for Lady Redesdale’s Bread, a mostly-whole wheat bread that looked to be very quick.

So here it is, 2 1/2 hours later, Lady Redesdale’s bread.  And it’s good, to boot!  This recipe is really easy and turns out a nice pair of loaves.  If you need good bread in a hurry, this just might fill the bill.

It won’t keep for a long time, but the loaves are fairly small and the bread so good that keeping shouldn’t be a worry.

Here’s the finished loaf

	The finished loaf.
	The finished loaf, the crumb.

Here’s the link for Lady Redesdale’s Bread

I’ve been under some heavy pressure in the casa to make a beer bread.  I’d looked and looked and hadn’t found a recipe that looked like it had a chance of working, not that there are that many of them out there.

Then a few fays ago I was sorting through some stuff and found yet another beer bread recipe.  This one was from Weight Watchers Magazine from  the Dark Ages, 1994.  But the more I looked at it, the more interested I was. 

A little background.  I’ve been reading Daniel Leader’s “Local Breads,” and have fallen in love with it.  It’s a great book!  But the interesting thing is that several of the more interesting recipes call for all-purpose flour, not high-gluten flour, not even bread flour, just plain old all purpose.  Well, this fits my own research bias, since I’ve been working with all purpose more and more lately.  End of background.

The recipe called for 2 1/4 cups of all purpose and, get this, 1 3/4 cups of cake flour.  When I read this, I checked my yeast supply, since I thought I’d need about a quarter of a cup of yeast just to make this thing behave.  Here’s the recipe, see for yourself.

1 packge yeast (I used 2 1/4 teaspoons, it’s the same.)  12 ml or 7 grams.

1/4 cup warm water.  57ml.

1 teaspoon sugar.  5 ml.

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour (I converted this to 10 ounces.)  285 grams.

1 3/4 cups cake flour (I converted this to 8 ounces.)  227 grams.

1 1/4 cups warm light beer (And a swig left over for the hard-working baker.)  285 ml.

2 teaspoons salt.  10ml.

I took a few shortcuts with the wording for the method.

• Put all the ingredients in the bowl of a large mixer and mix for a minute.
• Cover the dough and let it rest for 20 minutes to get all the flour wet. (Autolyse, better than a manual lyse)
• Knead for 6 minutes on a notch above slow.
• Put the dough in a very lightly oiled bowl and let it ferment for 1 hour.
• Prepare a banneton or other basket by either flouring the basket heavily or putting heavily floured parchment paper in it.  Any kind of wicker basket will work, a regular banneton, a small basket you have sitting around . . . this dough is very dsoft, so you’ll need some sort of form or pan.
• Pour the dough onto the counter and round it up into a ball.  Spread a handful of flour on the counter and roll the dough in the flour.
• Place the dough in the basket and sprinkle the rest of the flour on the top of the dough.  Cover the basket with a towel and let it rise for 30-40 minutes.  It should just about double.
• Heat the oven to 450F / 232F.  Have a baking stone, tiles or a baking sheet in the oven.
• Put parchment paper on a peel or the back of a cookie sheet.  Place the parchment paper and the peel/sheet over the basket and gently flip the dough over.  You should feel or hear a sensation like the dough has left the basket.  If you don’t, juggle the basket a bit.
• Cut an X in the dough and slide it into the oven.
• Bake for 20 minutes, turn the heat to 400F / 205C and bake another 10 minutes. 
• Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack.

So what is this bread?  It’s a straight dough, 67% hydration bread with 44% cake flour and 55% all purpose flour.  And it rose nicely, expanded in the oven and had a nice, tight crumb.   The crust was properly crunchy and chewy.  We had turkey sandwiches made with it and they were wonderful.  What a pleasant surprise!  Here are pictures of the loaf and the crumb.

	The finished loaf. Look at that oven spring! from All Purpose and Cake flour!
	The crumb. The streak isn’t evident in the loaf in person.

I made 24 bagels the other day, a double batch of the recipe from Peter Reinhart’s “Bread Baker’s Apprentice.”  I’ve made this recipe once before, but my normal bagel recipe is from Julia Child.  I’ve been a little dissatisfied with both of them, so I wondered if there was a way to use bits and pieces of each recipe to get a superior bagel.

Pictures of the first effort are at www.artisanbreadbaking.com/breads/bagels/bagels.htm.

The main differences in the two recipes are

1.  Peter forms the bagels first and then refrigerates the formed bagels on trays over night.  Julia ferments the entire dough as one entity and forms the bagels cold the next day.  I think Peter’s handling leads to a slightly airier bagel, one with more holes. 

2.  Peter’s baking time is wildly inaccurate.  He says to bake for 5 minutes, then shift the bagels and bake for another five minutes, until the bagels are a golden color.  Julia says to bake for 20-25 minutes, then leave the bagels in the oven with the power off for five minutes, then to open the door and leave the bagels in for five more minutes.  Julia’s method leads to a darker, thicker crust.  I’m probably biased, because I like dark,thick crusts, but I think Julia’s method may yield a better bagel.  That’s the subject of the next trial.

I like Peter’s ingredients; they seem to be closer to the old fashioned bagels.  I think Julia’s handling of the dough is better, it will probably lead to a denser bagel.  I also like her baking instructions.

The pictures represent the results of using Peter’s ingredients and dough handling, and both Peter’s and Julia’s baking.  The taste, texture and chewiness were all outstanding.  The goal now is to move from outstanding to perfection.  Stay tuned, this promises to be good.  I’ll make one or two more trials and publish the full series on the web site.

Carol Field has a recipe in her book “The Italian Baker” for Pane di Como Antico o Pane Frencese, Como Bread of the Past, Known Today as French Bread.  I’m not sure if this is an adaptation of French bread developed by the Italians in the Lake Como region or an attempt by the Italian bakers to take credit for French bread.  

No matter where the truth lies, this is an interesting bread.   It is a 67% bread, which is borderline sticky, but the dough isn’t difficult to handle.  It uses a 65% biga and no additional yeast.  In fact, it’s a very simple bread to make.  It forms two short logs that bake up into very nice small loaves.

Pane di Como Antico

I just posted the recipe for and pictures of me making Pain sur Poolish from Joe Ortiz’s “The Village Baker.”

This is a very nice French-style loaf that’s actually fairly simple to make.

Pain sur Poolish

I just posted a recipe for naan and pictures of me making it.  Naan go well with cookouts and picnics as well as Indian dinners.

Naan is an Indian flatbread that is usually baked in a tandoor, an Indian ceramic oven.  Since I don’t have a tandoor, I had to use my regular gas oven.  I turned the heat up as high as it would go, used tiles on the rack and baked the naan.  They turned out pretty well.

Take a look, you might decide to try it.

Naan Indian flatbread