STIR THE POTS

Photo du jour, Venison Terrine

 

Cold winter baking

Just today a  friend was asking me how I get such full-blown loaves in the dead of frigid winter. My  response is... long cool rise, some folds, longer rise and bake. It seems my friend's bread was catching a cold and didn't want to move....Here is what I do.

My levain is made before work from stock levain that's fed at least once a week. Before heading for work, I feed the levain in the morning. The dough is mixed in the evening  after I come home from work 14 hours later. Here's a typical schedule for a winter bake.

1. Mixed dough 11:00 P.M. on mixer to a shaggy dough, minus salt, autolyse 20-60 minutes.
2. Added salt and finished kneading dough with famed Bertinet method.
3. Bulk fermented about 2-3 hours gave a couple turns...with a bit of shut-eye in-between.
4. Pre-shaped dough, let rest about 20 30 minutes... browsed the web till I felt exhausted.
5. Gave the dough a final shaping, batard...proofed for another 2-4 hours till about 4:30. Woke up and noticed a nice even rise with just a bit of resistance.
6. Pre-heated creuset pot in a 485 F oven
7. Baked 20 minutes with lid and 15 minutes without.

Moral of this story? Even a lazy baker has to pay attention to details. In addition, winter provides cooler temps. Unless you're living in an unusually hot apartment, use this method of using the winter chill to slow down the fermentation, as opposed to using a fridge which is often too chilly.

So if it's the dead of winter and your dough just isn't moving, don't use the fridge. Quite often it's a sub-arctic station, too cold. Even if you're like me working a chaotic schedule, you just want a nice loaf. Not a blown-out mess. Use intuition and check your variables list, air, water flour temp. Most of all,take mental notes, don't watch your clock on the wall, and don't use the fridge.

Plat du jour

Berkshire pork chop, gnocchi,Brussel sprouts with prosciutto, pork jus and mixed spices.

 

 

Ten Grain & Sunflower Seed Bread

January and Sunday means football for me, and this week was the NFL playoffs. With my home town team the Jets one game away from the Superbowl, I decided to enjoy it while attempting my own challenge, baking a ten grain bread. I was using a mix from a New York micro mill called Wild Hive Farm, and which is sold at Eataly. Composed of millet, rye, winter soft wheat, oats, barley, spelt, corn grits, and flax seed, it also has two lesser known varieties. The first is tritiale, which is a hybrid of wheat and rye. The second grain variety is known as vetch. It may sound like the Yiddish word kvetch, but Sunday the mix gave me less cause to complain than the defensive play of the Jets. 

For the recipe, I used an old production list for a nine grain bread dug up in a drawer (sorry, can't attribute it because the list had no name). Anyway, the list was for a yeasted pre-fermented bread.  I adapted it for sourdough, and tossed in some sunflower seeds for taste. The come-from-behind game of the Jets left me with my own running in and out between plays and folds. Not something I recommend! Well, given that the Jets lost, it really was the bread that shined through for my on my football Sunday.

 

 

10 Grain and sunflower seed bread

 

 

I converted my 100% hydrated levain to 70% as it was what the original formula was set up for.

Download 10grainsunflowerseed

 

M.Wells Diner - from Quebec to Queens

For those unfamiliar with it, Long Island City is a section in Queens, which is one of New York’s five boroughs and where I make my home. Long Island City has a nice view of Manhattan, some great industrial architecture, and some surprising art spaces. Now it has a surprisingly good diner.

 

Most diners are known for being open seven days a week, dawn to dusk, and for serving affordable, similar and basic American comfort food; meat loaf, burgers, with Spinach pie about the most exotic thing on the menu. M. Wells serves foie gras for breakfast and the brunch special included “brains.” 

 

M. Wells Diner is French Canadian. And it's only open from 10 a.m to 4 p.m., and is closed Monday. And now, it's become fashionably trendy. I got there on a freezing weekend morning for brunch, and found a line out of the door. Despite the long cold walk to get there, believe me, it was worth it.

The management has created a restaurant that is cheerful, inventive and inviting. I managed to get a seat at the counter, right in front of the grill. Watching the short order cooks in the midst of action, with their Francophilia linguistics back and forth, I was in heaven.

 

 

The coffee was wonderfully hot, and I had a biscuit to start, served with some sort of strawberry butter, delicious and surprisingly light. I didn't go for the breakfast foie gras or the brains (maybe next time), settling for  pork and potato studded hash, along with poached eggs served with brown butter and hollandaise sauce. As they say in France, "so good, with no guilt, just a bit," which may sound better if you actually heard it rather than read it in French, but here goes; "se si bon, sans culpabilité, juste un peu peut-être."

After finishing my main course, I briefly considered trying their “tourtiere,” a meat pie with pork and veal. But given the crowd at the entrance was two to three bodies deep, I decided to do a quick dessert. Maple pie... fine, a little warm and not at all sickenly sweet. Very good and très Canadien!

 Below a shot of Maine shrimp with mayo, Oh Canada!

 

 

Hollandaise on the fly....whisk, whisk!

M. Wells was a kick. Watching chef Hugue Dufour orchestrate his team out of the cacophony of weekend traffic was especially fun. Wearing a shirt with the title “Sous Chef” (from his days at Montreal’s Au Pied De Cochon), he stood front and center, barking out his orders but always composed. His diner was a real inspiration for me; the food, the smells, their ability to make a Hollandaise sauce to order, and most of all, their inviting and professional attitude. I am going back, cold or snow. And if you experience M. Wells, my bet is you’ll do the same. Go, try it, eh!

 I found a hockey rink for the chef, just a few blocks away!

Inspirations

Lately I have people asking questions about sourdough, specifically maintaining methods, flours, hydrations etc. But my own experience in baking success or failure is about the starter. It's both sort of simple and sort of complicated. Beyond that, let's say that I'm not great at explaining all the finer points of what the hell gets me through the bake, but I can pass on advice through those who have inspired me.

Take Mick Hartley of Bethesda baking fame, one of my former partners on Dan Lepard's forum. Mick's advice really helped my own baking efforts, and even school wasn't as clear as his way to explain things, especially to a lazy baker like me. Well, Mick just sent me his new book. It's terrific, a great source containing simple methods for budding bakers. Check it out, as it will be your gain!

Susan of Wild Yeast has always made great bread and is a wealth of information on her blog. She's helped me a lot. I even had the opportunity once to co-blog on a challenging bread from another great source, Wolfgang Süpke. Once in a while I will pass out proven formulas, hoping anyone reading this blog, whether professional or novice, can make sense of my spreadsheets and percentages I spew from this screen. Anyway, thinking of Mick and Susan and Wolfgang and Dan today... led me to one thought... Go bake bread!

 

Dish of the day!

Agustín Oliet (Gusete)

 

Agustín Oliet

I first heard about  Agustín Oliet through his collaboration with Javier Marca and Ibán Yarza. I wanted to know more about this quiet team member of the Spanish bread blog, Madrid Tiene Miga. From what I could tell, he's a home-baker with passion. His moniker is Gusete. Recently I had an opportunity to interview him. He speaks with wisdom and brought real pleasure to be able to find new friends in this exciting baking revival happening in Spain.

 Jeremy: How did you get interested in baking bread? 

 Agustín: Since I was a little boy, I have enjoyed seeing stuff growing in the oven. I use to think that it’s better than a 1950’s sci-fi movie. Discovering bread baking, so simple apparently and however so difficult, it was almost a personal need. 

Jeremy: What does bread mean for you?

Agustín: Peace. Patience. Home.

Jeremy: If you could change your career would you become a baker?

Agustín: For sure!

Jeremy: Is there bread you most prefer to make?

Agustín: The newest discovered recipe is always the one I am dying to try, but I also repeat many breads because of my vanity. I love the applause of my family and friends.

Jeremy:  Thinking of bread, what’s your favorite sandwich?

Agustín:  Two thick slices of rustic white bread rubbed with tomato, olive oil and Iberian ham.

Jeremy: Is there a typical bread you like in your region?

Agustín:  I grew up in Madrid where there is no longer a bread culture. The market is dominated by large companies of mass production of precooked bread. It’s almost impossible to find good bread. However, in the south of Spain (Andalusia) where I have spent most of my holidays there are some good types of breads. The Mollete de Antequera, an Arabic influenced bread, is one of them. Recently I got a very acceptable version, which I published in Madrid Tiene Miga.

Jeremy:   How did you get involved with Madrid tiene miga?

Agustín:  By chance! Some of us met after making a common online order of bannetons and the idea of having a blog came out. That was 3 years ago and we are still together!

Jeremy:  Can you describe the rise of home baking in Spain?

Agustín:  It is curious and beautiful thing. Home bakers in Spain have different ages, different backgrounds and different reasons for baking bread, but the common passion is intense ending up with us together in an spontaneous, osmotic way. In a common bread recipe published by Javier Marca and I in MTM, we talked about how exciting is to put the bread in the oven and many people commented that they also loved this moment. At the end, I think that what is happening is that we simply miss the real bread.

Jeremy: Who influences you in the baking forums, books, bakers?

Agustín: All of them. The work of Dan Lepard, Iban Yarza and Javier Marca is important, as without them I could not call me artisan baker. But many of my knowledge comes from American books (Reinhart, Hamelman, Buehler), or hours and hours reading stuff in The Fresh Loaf, Wild Yeast, Ye olde bread blogger, Au Levain ...

Jeremy: When choosing formulas where do you find your sources of information primarily?

Agustín: Usually I bake in the weekends, and I can remember a recipe that caught my attention on a visit to a blog or a forum during the week, but sometimes the bread dough is just formed in my head, and then I go to ground books to find confirmation for that idea, or to tweak the hydration...

Jeremy: Sourdough or commercial yeast, which do you prefer?

Agustín:  I think it should not be any debate about yeast or sourdough, because we talk about two entirely different things. It seems that the home baker should be a purist, and only use sourdough because yeast is a professional sin, but I think this is near-sightedness. I recently listened to Dan Lepard summarize very well this idea, saying something like, "When I was younger I was so arrogant that I thought that only sourdogh bread was good, and I've learned with age to use sourdough or yeast depending on the bread that I became interested in each time "

Jeremy:  Do you buy bread in bakeries or do you prefer making it yourself?

Agustín:  Sometimes I buy things that are sold in bakeries under the name of bread, but I'm trying to quit ...

Jeremy: Is baking addictive?

Agustín: Just behind sex.

Jeremy: Does your family understand why you bake bread?

Agustín: Yes, in essence. Perhaps not the more intimate reasons, these ones that make baking a need, but nor do I.

Jeremy: …And do they like tasting your bread?

Agustín:  Daily!

THE END

 -----------------------------------------------

Below is a translation of the interview in Spanish.

Agustín Oliet

Me enteré de Agustín Oliet a través de su colaboración con Javier Marca y Yarza Iban ... yo quería saber quién era este miembro del equipo de la tranquilidad de la tríada español por detrás de Madrid TIENE Miga. Él es un panadero en casa con la pasión, el hombre tranquilo detrás del blog, su apodo es Gusete, comprobar hacia fuera, él habla mucho de la sabiduría y se está llenando el círculo de mis nuevos amigos que se encuentran en el renacimiento español para hornear!

Jeremy:¿Cómo te interesaste en hacer pan?

Agustín:Desde que era pequeño me encanta ver cosas creciendo en el horno, es más intrigante que una vieja película de CF de serie B de los años 50. Descubrir el pan, su aparente simplicidad y, sin embargo, su dificultad, era casi una necesidad.

Jeremy ¿Qué significa para usted el pan?

Agustín:Sosiego. Paciencia. Hogar.

Jeremy: Si pudieras cambiar tu carrera te conviertirías en panadero?

Agustín: Indudablemente.

Jeremy: ¿Hay una receta de pan que prefieres hacer?

Agustín: La nueva receta recien descubierta siempre es la que más me apetece, aunque muchos los repito por vanidad (quiero decir, por recibir los aplausos de la familia o los amigos)

Jeremy: ¿Cual es tu bocadillo favorito?

Agustín:Pan de payés con tomate, aceite de olive y jamón ibérico.

Jeremy: ¿Hay algún pan típico de tu región que te guste?

Agustín: He crecido en Madrid, donde la cultura del pan se ha perdido. El mercado está dominado por las grandes empresas de producción masiva de pan precocido, es difícil encontrar buen pan… Sin embargo, en el sur (Andalucía) donde he pasado la mayoría de mis vacaciones, hay algunos buenos panes. El Mollete de Antequera, un pan de clara influencia árabe,  es uno de ellos (hace poco conseguí una versión bastante aceptable, que publiqué en Madrid Tiene Miga).

Jeremy: ¿Cómo te involucraste con Madrid Tiene Miga?

Agustín: De casualidad! De un encargo de bannetons por internet que hicimos entre varios surgió la idea, y ya llevamos casi tres años juntos!

Jeremy: ¿Puedes describir el auge de la panadería casera en España?

Agustín:Es una cosa curiosa y bonita. Los panaderos caseros en España tienen distintas edades, distintos orígenes, distintas razones para hacer pan, pero la pasión común es igual de intensa, y eso ha hecho que acabemos por reunirnos de forma casi espontánea. En un pan que publicamos en común Javier Marca y yo en MTM bromeamos sobre el momento en que metes el pan en el horno, sobre compartirlo abrazados y emocionados… Mucha gente comentó “A mi también me encanta”. Creo que lo que pasa es, simplemente, que echamos de menos el pan auténtico.

Jeremy:¿Quién te influye más a la hora de hacer pan, los foros, los libros, los panaderos?

Agustín:Todos ellos. El trabajo de Dan Lepard, Iban Yarza y Javier Marca es importantísimo, tanto que creo que sin ellos no podría decir que se hacer pan. Pero muchos de mis conocimientos provienen de libros americanos  (Reinhart, Hamelman, Buehler), o de horas y horas leyendo cosas en The Fresh Loaf, Wild Yeast, Ye olde bread blogge, Au Levain…

Jeremy: Al elegir las fórmulas, ¿Cuáles son tus fuentes de información más frecuentes?

Agustín: Quizá recuerde alguna receta que me llamó la atención en alguna visita a un blog o un foro durante la semana, pero a veces la idea para el pan se forma en mi cabeza, y entonces suelo acudir a los libros a buscar confirmación a esa idea, o a retocar su hidratación…

Jeremy:Masa madre o levadura comercial, que te gusta más?

Agustín: No debería haber debate sobre esto, son dos cosas completamente distintas. Parece que el panadero casero debe ser purista, y usar solo Sourdough, porque la levadura es un pecado de profesionales, pero yo creo que esta es una visión corta. Hace poco escuché a Dan Lepard resumir muy bien esta idea, decía algo así como que “cuando era más joven era tan arrogante que pensaba que solo el pan de sourdogh era bueno, y con la edad he aprendido a usar sourdough o levadura dependiendo del pan que me interese en cada momento”

Jeremy: ¿Compras el pan en las panaderías o prefieres hacerlo tú?

Agustín:A veces compro lo que venden en las panaderías con el nombre de pan, pero estoy intentando dejarlo…

Jeremy:¿Es adictivo hornear pan?

Agustín:Yo diría que solo por detrás del sexo J

Jeremy: ¿Tu familia entiende por qué haces pan?

Agustín: En esencia, si. Quizá las razones más íntimas, las que lo convierten en una necesidad, no las entiendo ni yo mismo…

Jeremy:... Y se lo comen?

Agustín: A diario!

EL FIN

 

 

Bread...my life....my obsession!

 

 

Baker's Hours

Last weekend I returned to a routine of late night baking, something to be experienced at least once in any baker's life; the graveyard shift of weighing, mixing, and cutting dough, waiting for the rise, gently rounding the pre-shape, the final shaping and then ultimately guiding it into the oven for the bake. Sometimes it's a ballet, other times a battle - the little complexities of the process amplified by the evening's solitude.  It can sometimes leave you feeling like the last person standing, or just the last person awake. 

Like the act of eating bread, the graveyard-bake is something played around the world. And after working a regular job for eight or ten or even more hours, it can be slightly demanding on a person's body. And soul. Ah, the loneliness of the all-night baker.

My introduction to such baking came a few years ago, following a nine month weekend-course on European bread, which led me to a few informal baking internships. I started by working a few afternoons at Amy's Bread, then some nights of filling bags for delivery orders. By then I was developing the sense that this was no romantic endeavor, but potentially exhausting if not back breaking. But my real test came next, where I managed to get a few nights in working with the bakers at Bouley, becoming their official "stagiaire," a French term for kitchen apprentice.

Doing it weekends, I'd get off from my Friday night shift as head chef at a midtown club, then in the humid heat of August head down to Bouley. There, I started off with learning simple skills like being charged with using a dough cutter to whack off huge multi-kilo chunks of dough from the center of a very big mixing bowl. Success meant more than surviving the heat of a summer urban kitchen, but heaving chunk after chunk with an elegant swoop onto a scale. 

I worked under a baker named Marc. Having grown up with a French mom, I usually feel at home around the language. But Marc's accent, what an academic might describe as "midi-Pyrenee" (he had roots in Touluse) made Bouley's other French-speaking bakers (all from Ivory Coast and Senegal)  sound like Parisians. All to say I didn't always understand his pronunciations. That said, he managed to be clear as gin in sharing his judgements as well as his expertise.

I still remember Marc's face turning blue in exasperation watching me try to shape the breads, his anger visceral as he re-tightened the flaccid batards I had just been working on for way-too-long. Whether I understood every word he said, I knew what he felt. And usually what he wanted. Often quiet, he'd surprise you with a sudden verbal response of "stop the machine," pointing out (seemingly by pure instinct) that the dough was mixed enough. Or he would simply touch the dough, and quickly give a nod or dismissal on its temperature and hydration.

Marc wore a gold medallion around his neck, a mini map of France. I came to think of that medallion as an old-fashioned symbol of a prestigious guild. Marc was a bonnified journeyman, known in France as a "compagnon," a traveling craftsman who worked his way around his nation's bakeries to attain a master baker status amongst his countrymen.

Last weekend while waiting into the morning hours for the dough to respond to my touch, I thought of Marc, the memories keeping me company. Truth be told, I also ventured away from the virtual world of my imagination to the virtual world online. These days if you have digital access, you you always can find other night-baking owls via things like Twitter, which offers anyone sharing the passion (okay, obsession) tweeting results from the mix, shape and bake! Marc lacked Twitter, but he would have understood and appreciated the commitment. This goes out to all bakers, the Marcs of the millennium.

These lovely loaves were just rock solid and had magical crackling noises coming from within their crisp golden skins....Gods of fire and brimstone were with me.

 

70% Rye From Hans Joachim, who else?

 

Batard of pain au levain 68% hydration...School formula, thanks FCI!

 

 

Fancy shaping, don't know the name of this clover looking thing, anyone?