STIR THE POTS

Smokey Freekeh

Ever since I first saw a bag of a Middle Eastern grain called "freekeh" in a Lebanese food store I was curious. So I picked up a bag and, on first try, cooked it to a porridge consistency. But on further exploration, I found that this unique green wheat once roasted (sometimes whole or cracked), is delicate. It can be used in all sorts of dishes. It also can be prepared in many ways like rice.

I decided to use it for a pilaf salad. My mom had some garden Japanese eggplant, so we married it with some lamb. The results are below.

You don't see the freekeh, but grains are down there. It's got this wonderful taste. I am working on incorporating it into a bread on my next try!

 

Prune & Hazelnut Levain

Since first tasting hazelnut and prune bread at Montreal's Olive et Gourmando, I've wondered about the secrets of the formula. Connecting recently with Marc Andre Cyr, "the baker on the go", he told me they actually aren't making it anymore. 

It seems that the cafe's amazing baker's oven is gone. With the oven gone, no more for their wonderful prune and hazelnut bread. I'm sure the recipe is in residence, but it's a secret. It is so good that I hope it'll come back. There are still some amazing breads from Marc Andre, and amazing food from his chef and girlfriend Vanessa. But honestly, I loved it so much that even with the crazy heat, I was determined to improvise a batch. 

In the past, I'd tried a hazelnut prune formula from Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread, as well as another one from the French Culinary Institute, where I went to school. They're all good but not the same as that created at Olive et Gourmando. So I adapted a version from the blog The Fresh Loaf, specifically from an awesome blogger/baker named TX Farmer. While her bread was calling for blueberries, and I wanted to change up the fruit choices using dry prunes rather then bluet!

In some ways, the results resembled the Olive et Gourmando bread. But with the heat and humidity these days, it lacked the former's magic crunch that delighted in biting into its crust. Still it had impressive color from the pureed prune, and flecks of hazelnut made for a nice mosaic of goodies on which to snack. Perhaps if I had retarded the dough, it would have had different character, but alas I was out of bread at home. And  I couldn't see waiting for a slice for breakfast with cheese for breakfast.

 

Sun bread

 

As a sourdough purist, sometimes I find myself without levain to bake. At such moments, you're tempted to replace it was Saccharomyces cerevisiae, otherwise known as "bakers yeast." Honestly, it happens often. A refridgerated levain is not ready to bake, sitting there active but dormant, not ready to transform into fulfilling my vision of great bread. That said, I'm still an idealist, even in this recent heat wave. 

This weekend, I found myself with a lifeless looking rye levain, unfed with hootch on top with the temperture just above 100 hundred degrees, I decided to feed it and try leaving it out in the sun for about four hours. Returning to it, low and behold, I found it bubbles forming, with humidity condensation on the jar, but with a sweet smell of rye. Apparently bacterial magic had been charmed by the scorching day.

Here's a recipe for Sun Bread, leveraging the method I'll call "viva la heatwave." 

Requirements: Dormant rye levain, baker, very hot sun and infernal temperatures.

 

100% flour

53%  water

31% levain

.02% salt

101F heatwave

Mix, bulk, fold, pre-shape, final shape, rise, retard, bake....voila!

 

Oven spring, retarding, and bake all done. Taste? amazing notes, of multi grain flours, wheat, rye, spelt, low acidity. Delicious golden crust, with a nice honecomb crumb, even from a low hydration in overall dough of 53% total. Not that I am advocating global warming conditions, but this was a sunny loaf.

Just wanna bake bread.

The life of a baker: a race against time and temperatures, or make friends.

 

 

Wild yeast pizza

Despite the recent heat wave, I decided to bake an all-wild yeast pizza dough. The results were great. Here's how I did it. Last Friday before leaving work, I gave the bubbly batch of sourdough a feed overnight. The next day, I made some dough, gave it four hours of bulk fermentation, then scaled and shaped a 200 gram weight, placed it in a covered pan to ferment for the rest of the weekend. Monday morning, checking the dough I gave it a poke. It was as responsive as a happy baby. And shaping it, the dough was extendible but still had the resistance that allows easy shape. 

 

 

 

 

  

 

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere...

Quite often people tell me they don't "get" my enjoyment of baking sourdough bread.

"I don't like sourdough" they'll tell me, then admit the truth. Their fear that "it's kind of complicated, all the steps." 

But that's just it; letting the natural forces of the starter grow, then harnessing the power of basic steps to make, shape and bake the final loaf, all settling in to a golden crackling crust. How hard is that?

Okay, maybe it does take time to get it perfect. After more then a decade of baking at home, starting from books, and even taking classes, I can make a mistake or misjudge a step. But it really isn't that difficult. And once the bug has bitten, you're likely to want to improve and grow more - just like sourdough which, when fed and nurtured, is as good as you can get. 

 

 

 

 

Rüebli torte

While juicing some carrots for a "raw" carrot soup, I realized my  juicer was creating a sort of carrot-compost, leaving finely milled shredded carrot. My breakfast cook looked at me knowingly, then remarked in half question, half suggestion, "dessert?"

Yes, indeed. Compost to dessert, and a special treat, too. Carrot cake, but with a Swiss feel, reminding me of my days as a pastry cook as well as visits to Switzerland for stays with an excellent baker, my sister.  Anyway, I ended up with a carrot cake you could find in any Swiss "backerei" (bakery).

Named Rüebli torte, it's a cake whose orchestration of yolks and whites deliver richness and airy goodness along with the sublime mixture of flavors found from carrots, almonds, and various spices. 

I love the simplicity in Swiss confections. They are simply cakes but they have a particular finesse that seems to reflect urban Viennese swank with farm house basic succullence. There is a frugality, but rich and hearty feel to lots of the pastry I tried, kind of naughty kid desserts with crowns for a Sunday treat!

 

A simple glaze of powdered sugar, vanilla and lemon topped with flaked almonds, I didn't have the usual marzipan carrots, nice old touch, next time!

 

Rüebli Torte makes 1 cake

4 eggs seperated

200g sugar

200g carrots grated fine

50g corn starch

200g almond flour

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp mace

1/2 tsp ginger

5g Baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

zest of one lemon

Lemon glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

2tsp lemon juice

1/2 tblsp water

1/4 tsp vanilla

1 Buttered and floured,10 inch spring form pan

Bake 50 to 60 minutes at 350 degrees.

Beat yolks with 3/4 of the sugar to ribbon stage. Add grated carrots, almond flour, and zest. Mix till incorporated. Whip egg whites adding sugar once they've developed some light peaks, finish with sugar until egg whites just become stiff. Combine dry ingredients and add to yolk mixture, fold in half whites, then the remaining till mixed. Fill cake pan and bake, check doneness with a toothpick, there should be no batter showing. Cool on cooling rack.

Glaze:

Combine all the ingredients and mix, pour over the top of cake and spread with a spatula evenly and allow to flow down the sides. Optional toppings, marzipan carrots , toasted almond flakes or chopped almonds around the sides of the torte.

Schinkenbrot (a broken loaf)

When I got these rye chops at Eataly, I forgot them. Getting an itch to bake, they miraculously showed up in the cupboard. Great find. My friend Nils had a formula worth trying, something we shared on our first aquaintance and meeting on Dan Lepards forum, Schinkenbrot.

It's a bread from the Westphalian region where Nils resides in Aachen, not far from Luxembourg. Regretably rye is still not as appreciated here. It's been my dream to bring it up to where wheat breads are in the market here.

 

Nil's first translated a formula I had from a German baking book. 

 

Failing my first attempt at a loaf, I found one of Nils' adaption. All was looking really good, as initially I even got some rise before sending it to the oven. Nils has suggested leaving out some of the water, but in anticipation, I failed to read that, and the loaf being pretty wet, went to a loaf pan. It's a mistake.

I didn't prep this pan with oil or even rye. In the end, the loaf refused to budge from the pan and split horribly in two. But I could see from inside the crumb would of been a nice earthy aroma and crumb surely would of set. I'll be back!

 

 

No worries, this sad loaf is going to compost!

Pizza with morels

Yes, another pizza. Sure, it's tedious and always a struggle to whip up some inovative topping, but someone has got to do it. Let it be me!

I've been working out how to mix, retard and work out a hybrid pizza dough with various hydrations. The pizzas below were my best so far, leaving and airy dough, crisp and chewy.

100% AP flour

65% Water

21% levain

2% salt

Trace amount of yeast is ok, if your levain or old dough is a bit weak and needs a boost!

Bulk ferment 4 hours, ball to size you like your pizza, mine 200-250g. Retard overnight, here I sometimes remove my dough and let sit 30 minutes to warm up, then form, top and bake.

 

It's closest to a Napoletano style, which I like best. I am a crust man, but not a fat dough. I like edges puffy, slightly brusciato,(burnt or charred), with a thin dough between that holds all the topping. Not to heavy either, just enough to cover but not weigh down either.

 

 

Sure a margherita with basil, pommodori, and mozz is king...but use your imagination.

 

 

Clafouti de bluet

Clafouti. From bluets (blueberries). They're in season. And this is a lovely desert. I first tried it while making my way as a budding cook at the Museum of Modern Art, where our chef had it on the menu. It's usually made with cherries, but get out of the norm and throw in some kiwi, or peaches and bluets. It creates magic from a crustless tart and yet custardy sort of dessert, hot or cold.

 

It's addictive infectuous, and comes from the heartland, Limousin, a comfort French dessert.

 

Here's a formula I got from Chef Jean-Michel Bergounoux, it's from Auvergne!

Clafoutis Auvergnat:

500g Bluet, cherries, kiwi or peach..your call

100g flour

2 whole eggs

200ml milk

100g powdered sugar

pinch of salt

30g butter

20g butter for mold.

Pre-heated 385 degree oven

9-10 inch flan mold or cake pan with sides

Butter the mold and set aside. Stem the cherries and wash well, then put them into pre-buttered pan.

sift sugar and flour into bowl, beat eggs and add in small circular motions into the flour sugar mix, start from the center and gradually incoporate the flour from the outside of the bowl. Pour in the milk until your mixture is homogeneous, finally adding the melted butter.

Bake in pre-heated oven for 25-30 minutes till nicely browned and risen, cool and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Serve warm or cold.