STIR THE POTS

Panettone

Panettone is that sort of in-between holiday's  sweet bread you find almost everywhere nowaday. At it's best, it means lovely pillows of yellow dough,studded with fruity goodness permeated with orangey essences, like fior di Sicilia for example.

I've had my share of commercially mass produced panettone, often overly perfumed and sickenly sweet. To be fair to panettone, which is a bread, I would just  rather make it myself, which I have with a modicum of success, but mostly failure. Probably it's just timing along with finding a just right formula, making it once or twice, then adapting once I've learned the basics.

Reading TX Farmers blog on The fresh loaf, I found a recipe for panettone from Italian chef Francesco Elmi.

Without molds, I monkey-rigged the recipe (it kind of looks like a pirate hung from the yard arm, no? Arrrgh!). 

Actually, in the end my panettone looked more like scamorza hanging upside down in a salumeria rather then a delicate sweet bread. Mind you, I veered from traditional in all respects and bastardized this panettone, without any candied fruit or fior di Sicilia. And instead of all butter I added olive oil. So far as flavorings, I used cherries, almonds and grated orange zest and cardomon.

I molded it in a square bain marie, with the help of parchment paper. It rose up square shaped rather then the familiar usual round. I hung it using butchers twine. 

In the end, it was delicious.

Recipe via Madrid in Spain, Flour from Cayuga, Upstate New York

Agustín Oliet (or Gusete) is a man who loves his bread - or "pan" as they call it on the Spanish baking board where he posts, Madrid tiene Miga. His post was on a bread called "pan imposible." I found it intriguing and decided to give it a try. 

Using a Google translation and my own bastardized Spanish, I realized it's actually close to Jeffrey Hamelman's Norwich sourdough. Augustin is simply expressing the pleasure of making bread the old fashioned way, with sourdough, and that it isn't impossible to make delicious bread, simply and with age old techniques.

I had good luck using my latest flours, made from grain locally grown in upstate and purchased through Farmer ground flour. But that's another post. Anyway, thanks Augustin for leading me to a good bake.  

Guess who came over for Thanksgiving!

Najat Kaanache Amghiraf

Don't toss your tops

The other day in a market, I heard a woman ask a grocer to have the tops from some radishes taken off.I couldn't help remarking to her, "you can saute them." When buying beets at my local market, I always keep the tops. Theyr'e meant to be eaten! Sauteed, braised, mixed in pasta dough, go for it! Tonight I made a risotto with beet juice, stems and the tops folded in at the final minutes of cooking. We served it with a broiled chicken breast, marinated with a hint of ginger and lemongrass...fabulous! So if you see some tops, cook'em!

Fig Newtons

Fig Newtons. A healthy fig puree under a less healthy but also delicious soft wheaty dough. A classic cookie, for which I have loads of recipes conducted by Dieter Schorner from a fellow student at French Culinary Institute. 

Closely related in the cookie world, Mahmoul,(date stuffed confection), or even cucidati from Italy closely resemble this American icon. This is so simple a recipe, and I basically followed it straight through, save for changing up the white flour with some white whole wheat and whole wheat for a guiltless health reasoning. The filling is just figs, water, sugar and lemon, juice and zest. I changed up the acid, adding fig balsamic along with the zest.

Careful, once you had one you won't stop.

250g Butter
150 sugar
1egg
1yolk
pinch salt
440 A.P. Flour
Cream butter sugar, add eggs
add flour and salt.

Filling
450 dried figs
100 sugar
200 water
1 lemon, juice and zest

Cover figs, sugar, lemon zest and juice with water. Bring to boil, simmer covered, cook till soft, you may need to add more water. Puree, and cool.

Pre-heat oven to 375 F

9x14 inch sheet pan with silpat or parchment.

Roll out into a rectangle, say 9"x 14" or half sheet pan size leaving dough about a 1/4 inch thick. then divide into three bands equal width, say 21/2". spread the filling down the middle of each band, fold over so edges meet. Turn over onto silpat or parchment lined sheet pan or cookie pan. Cut Newtons into inch and a half or two inch cookies. Bake at 375 F for about 25 minutes till just golden brown.

Cool and serve.

Panini, manini, ciriole

 

There's the sandwich bread known as panini. Then there's the manini, which translates into "hand bread." They are basical olive oil-enriched bread made in Italy and the south of France. A spongy white bread, similar to Norman-style pain Brié, it uses low hydration dough that is enriched with butter.

The photos capture my efforts at some, using ciriole formula that I adapted. I adjusted it to what's called a "pasta madre" (or livieto naturale) where the levain and water are equal, and the flour is doubled making this a lower hydrated levain. It's very vigorous and makes yeast unecessary.

Ciriole can be shaped like tubular rolls, but I used a rolling pin and flattened out the dough and rolled it up like a croissant. Like baguettes, these breads don't have a long shelf life, but are a perfect pillow for mortadella. While not riddled with holes, this bread is made for filling and dousing with some oil and vinegar to make a pain bagna perhaps?

Circle bread

The bread below was inspired by the series, Baking and Pastry  book from The Ferrandi baking school. The books have a young looking Eric Kayser as one of the bakers making all sorts of breads, ranging from Europe to North Africa. 

I tried one of the book's German breads, described as "Pain de Rainure," or circle bread. Probably the name comes from the familiar circlular pattern made from the reed bannetons used in Germany and Austria known as Brotform.

This bread is multigrained, using wheat, rye and farine bise (white whole wheat flour). I used a stiffer levain, specifically a pasta madre. The formula called for a pre-ferment or "old" dough which could mean from a previous batch of dough. In any case, this simple bread is complex in flavor and shaped round. It's then rolled flat and marked with flour. In my version, I pressed it into my Brot form and let it rise, then baked it till quite dark and crusty.

Do you know the muffin man?

I recently won dinner to Le Bernardin (courtesy of a Twitter contest). But then I learned pastry chef Michael Laiskonis was leaving in January 2012, before the date of my awarded reservation. Bummer! I love this guy. 

Anyway, this past Sunday I decided to put some time into Chef Laiskonis's English Muffin formula, using straight sourdough. Michael's English Muffins have a bit of milk powder, which I didn't have, so I split the liquids into half milk and water in the final dough, using 30 percent levain. Michael uses yeast and scrap bits from a previous batch to add into the muffin recipe like "old dough." The shape he proposes is more in line of a small ciabatta. His formula is perfect, so here's the link!

 

 

 

Photo's: Cookies

Couronne Auvergnate

My bread buddy Judd, who lives and bakes bread in France, goes by the name "Captain Batard." His new blog is called The Weekend Loafer. Recently I thought I'd follow some of his creations, and try a version of "Couronne Auvergnate," only I'd shape it according to Christian Vabret's  method in his book.

Auvergne is the heart of France, and is known for rolling hills along with dormant volcanos. When I look at this loaf baking and its shape, it's almost the shape of the countryside in a loaf.