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It's always interesting to speak with James Lahey,protagonist of "no knead" bread and owner of New York's pizza restaurant, Sullivan Street Bakery. Recently, James and I connected on Facebook and he invited me down to watch him making some pizza at his Chelsea-based bakery. James is an encyclopedia of all sorts of information. We talked while he tossed dough, sharing his knowledge while he topped the pies. Here are some photos of the evening.
Bagels with high extraction flour? Why not? If you have extra sourdough just sitting around, and you are out of bagels, it takes a simple mix and a few hours to whip up a nice batch of wild yeasted bagels. I was guided by Jeffrey Hamelman's BBGA 2013 class formulas, but opted not to use yeast and upped the sourdough a bit. Just for whimsy, I also used high extraction and a bit of rye. The results were decent bagels, although I changed my method of hand rolling by poking the balled dough, I'll go back to the old method of wrapping the cylindrical dough next time for a nicer look. That said, they were chewy and tasty!
Making croissants are a feat any time of the year, but an all-sourdough version is even more daunting. But it's harder in the heat of summer, so I decided to put our recent frost-bitten temperatures to use and give them a try. With the butter chilled, my sourdough fed and primed, I gave my detrempe a five hour ferment , then chilled it again for laminating the dough.
Generally a 3x3 fold is typical, but hoping for more layers, I pushed it to four in total. The final dough stayed overnight in the fridge. The next step was cutting and rolling the dough. I decided to chance an overnight cold ambient kitchen temperature rise for the final proof. Voila, poof, crispy, and layered croissants, magic!
Craving merguez sausage for sometime now, and mindful of ever avoiding waste, I used a butchering opportunity at work to put together of a batch of these Morroccan treats. Not having casing, they ended up looking a bit like burgers. I used the fatty meat between lamb racks, as well as the tail end of a beef filet to make a 50/50 mix. To the meat, I added traditional merguez spices, fresh coriander, and harissa (made of ancho and other chilies. It led to a deliciously fragrant and moist mix. With no pita (or even tahini dressing), I opted to eat as a sandwhich with a grilled baguette, onion, tomato and some salad. Topped with olive oil, it was delicious comfort food.
With little time to hangout and just bake before work, I still found time this last week to start a sourdough pizza dough. I decided to leave it roughly mixed in autolyse, then eight hours later, found a very bubbly bit of dough! I finished mixing and added my salt to it, letting it sit about another hour, it was very active so I stored it in the fridge. The next day I cut it, and divided the dough into two hundred gram pizza balls. I found a lacey network of fermentation throughout the dough, suggesting it was all very promising. Back into the fridge for a long cold retard till I can make some pizza. Below are some shots of batches from last time.
Carasau (or Carta di musica) is a Sardinian flat bread, something between pita and a crisp cracker. Usually made with semola rimacinata, they are baked into a puffy balloon (slightly resembling pita) then split and rebaked to make crisp. I first tried these at Union Square Cafe but had seen them in various books with interesting possibilites in serving with food or condiments. Below are what I made at home.
While posting some bread photos on Instagram, a follower asked if I knew how to make trammezzino bread. First, I had to Google trammezzino. I found out it's a name coined by Gabriele D'Annunzino for sandwich made famous at Turin's Caffe' Mulassano.Trammezzino bread is basically a white pullman loaf whose crusts have been stripped, the goal to resemble an English tea time sandwich. It's often filled with tuna, eggs, or charcuterie.
Intrigued, I had some sourdough ready to adapt this milk-bread formula for my translation. I also substituted olive oil for butter or lard,(strutto). The dough was given a two hour bulk ferment, giving me time to go watch a televised football game. I then hand mixed it, and after a few folds, it felt silky. I shaped it into my pullman loaf pans and let it rise, then fell asleep giving it five hours to proof. In the end, it had a wonderful texture and taste. Filled with some nice proscuitto, mortadella and cheese it was fantastic!
A while ago I made a Eritico Pugliese bread with kamut. Recently I decided to morph that bread with Alessandro Lusardi's formula, using just a tiny bit of wheat in the levain. Why? Because I was running out of flour, including semola, rye, or whole wheat. It's barely summer, and already kind of hot to bake in my apartment, nevermind store flour. Flat breads will soon be the order of business. In the mean time, here's my heritic bread!
Jewish corn rye is one of the old school breads of the Jewish diaspora deli culture. There's a mythic history that goes with these loaves. At their best, they sport a caraway-seed crust typified by a leather-like sheen, and a tight crumb infused with onion along with nuances of sour rye. After purchasing George Greenstein's "Secrets of a Jewish baker, I attempted to bake one using his formulas.
Note, these corn ryes are a generational bread that most bakers simply don't know about them. It's a lost art, as are most Jewish breads that were part of the Jewish deli culture. So when my attempts to recreate the bread from Greenstein's book resulted in failure, I went digging for help. My source? The Fresh loaf, specifically to David Snyder's thread on the subject, where you can find tips from a retired baker named Norman, someone with 25 years of experience baking Jewish breads.
Norman offers a plethora of information on the steps in making these Jewish ryes, which are very different from their non-denominational brethren. Translating some of Norman's tips, I fed my starter with some onion, that added enzyme and enhanced the flavor. And where both Greenstein and Norman both used commercial yeast, I opted for natural sour dough. Usually they brush the dough with a water-and-starch mixture to get that beautiful shine on the crust, I used a creuset method in which the humidity from the bread, itself, creates its lovely outside luster.
Another note worth consideration. The dough is fermented in a very wet environment. And unlike French-style breads that are given several fermentations, this bread gets only one, after which it is shaped and then goes straight into the oven. It has its own demands. Oy vey! Anyway, after finishing all that, like a good Jewish (or half-Jewish) baker, I crossed myself, gave a hail Mary, and hoped for the best. One hour later a shiny caraway crust emerged, and after an overnight to cool, a fragrantly familiar Jewish rye crumb appeared when sliced, taste was great and I started hankering for some pastrami or herring!
Using the wonderful Community Grains Hard Winter Wheat Flour for an adapted Chad Robertson formula from his first bread book, I got this beautiful specimen. A five hour autolyse, a three hour bulk ferment with folds, and a cold retard for 12 hours. The crust chewy, the crumb moist and full of "live" wheat throughout;what a difference from store bought whole wheat!
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