Brioche-la-la!

Stop the presses!  I just realized that bread was slaved over and enjoyed, and yet the blog was not updated!  Clearly someone was asleep at the wheel.

This little slice of heaven is my first attempt at brioche.  I LOVE brioche, in all its many variations.  This brioche had the right taste, but it was, like so many of my loaves lately, too dense.  The flavor was milky and bland, kind of reminiscent of store-bought challah, and would have been delicious if the bread had just been a little bit softer and moister.  Because the dough seemed moist enough, I'm going to chalk this one up to not enough time rising and a little too much time baking.  I made both the brioche and the fougasse pictured below after work on a Monday night, and multitasking in the kitchen isn't exactly one of my strengths.  I seem to remember running short on time and just wanting to be finished by the time I was prepping the brioche for the oven.  I think that the next time I make this bread I will be sure to let it more than double in size, and maybe allow it multiple rising periods.  I will definitely use this recipe, from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, again.  The flavor is there, now only the texture needs to catch up.

Luckily, my other loaf of the evening rose like a charm.  While my fougasse has been inconsistent in the past, I have recently had great success by applying the River Cottage techniques and by giving the dough more time to rise.  This fougasse with olives and herbs was chewy and soft and delicious.  I ate nearly half the loaf with pesto for dinner, then served the rest as an appetizer to friends the following night.  I consider myself very lucky to have friends who will rave over an "appetizer" that is clearly a half-eaten loaf of bread pulled out of a ziploc bag, by the way.

Back to Basics

It's been a while since I stuck my nose in The River Cottage Bread Handbook and came out with something delicious and satisfying.  Overall, I've had good luck with the recipes in that book, although I'm skeptical of their flour to water ratios.  I first attempted to make their basic loaf back in early July, and I decided to take another crack at it today. 

The recipe calls for 8 cups of flour, 1 tablespoon yeast, 4 teaspoons salt, and 2 1/2 cups of liquid.  That's it.  I first taught myself to make bread using recipes spiced up with herbs, olives, olive oil, and other add-ons that gave the loaves zip.  For a long time, I was so pleased with the flavor added by these additional ingredients that I neglected the flavor of the underlying loaves.  I love that River Cottage's recipes are so simple that they force me to focus on how kneading the dough for longer or letting it rise three times rather than two affects the flavor.  The other great thing about these recipes is that within the simple formula there is room for experimentation.  When the River Cottage Bread Handbook says flour, what it means is that I am free to choose between white, whole wheat, rye, spelt, etc., or any combination of the above.  When it says liquid, I can choose water, milk, beer, buttermilk, or any other liquid I think might taste good.  In addition, it gives helpful guidelines about when and how to add the add-ons that bring that little extra zest to the bread.

Today I mixed 3 cups of white bread flour, 3 cups of all purpose white/whole wheat mixed flour, and one cup of whole wheat flour.  Although this only added up to 7 cups of flour, I knew from past experience that I still might need to add more water, especially since the whole wheat flour seems to absorb more water than the white flour.  I added 1 tablespoon of yeast, 4 teaspoons of salt, two handfuls of rolled oats, and two generous pinches of ground flax seed.  Then I added 2 1/2 cups of warm water with about a tablespoon of honey mixed in it.  The dough was so dry and rough that I ended up adding about another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of water.  Even then, the dough was torture to knead, but I worried that if I added more water the dough wouldn't rise properly.  After I'd kneaded the dough for about seven minutes, it began to take on a more uniform, less gritty texture. 

I let the dough rise twice in the slightly warm oven - I usually set the oven on its lowest setting for about 5 minutes, then shut it off while I knead the dough and clean the bowl.  That way the oven is warm and snug for the dough - rather than cold and drafty like my kitchen, even in August - but not hot enough to cook the outside layer.  Between the two rising periods, I turned the dough out onto my work surface and deflated it by poking it all over with my fingers.  I have been kind of religious about the techniques I learned from River Cottage, and will continue at least until I learn why they work so well.  After the second rising period, I formed the dough into two large, somewhat loose batards, and wrapped them in a damp towel to rise one last time.  I learned the last time I made the basic loaf that baking the dough in small boules made very dense bread unless I had all the time in the world to wait for the tight little boules to double in size.  I think that the two rising periods, combined with the shape of the loaves, helped me create much lighter, more manageable bread this time.

I preheated the paving stone while the batards were rising, then sprayed the batards and the entire oven with water to create steam.  After baking the batards at my oven's highest setting for 10 minutes, I turned the heat down to 325 degrees for the next 35 minutes or so.  Although the crust came out a little browner than I had planned, for the first time I got the contrast between crunchy exterior and soft interior that I have been searching for.  Some factors which I'm sure contributed to the difference: the two rising periods; I didn't crush all of the air out of the dough after rising; batards rather than boules; less whole wheat flour may have made it less dense; I sprayed the interior of the oven twice.  I think that my next experiment will be with three or four rising periods.  I'm theorizing that, if rising is stretching the glutens in the flour and allowing the yeast to develop, then it must have an impact on the flavor as well.  So the more dough is allowed to rise, the lighter, chewier, and more flavorful it will be.  Maybe. 

Regardless, this bread is delicious, has a decent texture, and even is fairly good for me.  I'll consider this a basic loaf win.

The Land of Flour and Butter

For the past two weeks I have been tasting the fruits of others' labors rather than laboring myself.  My mother took me on a trip to France to celebrate my graduation from law school, and we worshiped at the altar of all things bread and wine related.  We ate baguette with all kinds of goat's and sheep's milk cheeses, croissants, pains chocolats, quiches, and those wonderful french pastries with yellow custard and mini chocolate chips in them.  Every single piece of bread I put in my mouth in France (especially in rural France) inspired me to become a better baker.  I want to improve my crust, make lighter, airier baguettes, and make more flavorful bread without loading it with herbs and salt.  I suspect this may entail reassessing my flour options, which I've been meaning to do for a while anyway.

It also inspired me to exercise some small degree of moderation in my baking and bread eating life.  I believe in enjoying the good things in life when they come my way, but even for me the amount of butter consumed in the past two weeks was appalling. Mostly in a good way.

Cooking again!

Dude.  It has been a rough couple of weeks.  During the last crunch up to the bar exam, I lost my will to cook (or really to do anything other than flip flashcards and watch Friends reruns).  Even after the last day of the test on Wednesday, I was too busy drinking, and feeling relieved, and buying myself possibly undeserved (and definitely not affordable) presents, to do much of anything.  But, there is good news.  My will to bake finally came back, and I made some decent baguettes using a recipe out of Confessions of a French Baker by Peter Mayle for a party I threw on Saturday night.  Then, because we ate them all on Saturday, and I was desperately hungry, I made another set on Sunday.  They taste excellent with pesto, or goat cheese, or really anything.

But, they still don't have the earthy flavor I'm hankering for.  I'm going to keep trying different recipes until I find it, because I know it's out there.  For now I"m content to sit on my patio, sipping cheap Pinot Grigio and eating baguette and cheese.  Life could get a heck of a lot worse . . .

Sourdough Boules

Last night I decided to make a second attempt at sourdough loaves.  My sourdough starter has been growing and fermenting for over a week, and I thought that it was time to try again.  This batch started off promisingly - the sponge grew quite a lot between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon when I started to work on the bread.  For the sponge (a mixture of starter, flour, and water that ferments and rises overnight), I used white bread flour, rather than all purpose flour.  For the dough, I used mostly all purpose flour, substituting about a half cup of rye flour and some ground flax seed for added fiber.  The loaves are delicious, but still not as airy as I want them to be.  The dough didn't rise as much as I had hoped it would during the initial rising periods.  Then, after I shaped it into loaves and wrapped it in towels to rise again, the dough expanded a lot on the sides but didn't rise up.  I think that next time I need to place the loaves in small bowls for the final rising period so that they are less likely to spread outward.

Don't get me wrong, the sourdough is DELICIOUS.  It is heaven slathered in butter (or in white bean spread for the vegans out there).  But I'm just not satisfied with the loaves.  They are too crispy outside and too spongy inside.  Oh well, better luck next time! 

Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanks to my wonderful friends - and to the Avett Brothers - for a fantastic birthday yesterday.  And a special thank you shout out to my roommate Brooke for making these delicious cupcakes.

Sourdelicious!

Even though I just created my sourdough starter on Saturday, and my recipe says that it won't be ready to use for bread for at least a week, I threw caution to the wind and started working on my first sourdough loaves yesterday.  From start to finish I failed to follow the recipe accurately and was generally acting like an enthusiastic incompetent, rather than the organized, disciplined person I'd like to become someday. 

I started by making the sponge from a ladle-full of sourdough starter and a whole bunch of flour on Tuesday morning.  If I had read the recipe accurately, I would have realized that I was supposed to let the sponge grow overnight, so I really should have started it on Tuesday night.  As it was, I didn't get around to working on the sourdough loaves until about 2pm on Wednesday.  During that time, my sponge had grown until it spilled out the sides of the bowl it was rising in, and then deflated a bit, and I have no idea how this has affected my bread. 

However, this has been a learning experience, if only about the amount of time and planning it takes to make a sourdough loaf, and I'm glad that I did this over the past two days, so I have an idea of how to budget my time in the future.  This afternoon, I made the dough and kneaded it by hand until it was smooth and stretchy and basically passed the windowpane test.  After ten minutes of kneading, the dough failed the windowpane test twice.  So when it mostly passed the test after about twelve minutes of kneading I decided to give up, for fear of overkneading the dough.  I theorized that it may have failed the test because the starter was so young and not enough yeast had grown yet, but I'm still not sure exactly how the amount of yeast affects the gluten in the dough.

After kneading, I shaped the dough into a round and let it rise for an hour.  My recipe - from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, more or less, since I subbed different types of flour - suggested letting the dough rise for four one-hour periods, reshaping the round between rising periods.  I did that, and the dough seemed to rise significantly during that time.

However, by the time I had shaped the dough into baguettes in anticipation of one final rising period before baking, it was seven at night and I was starving.  (I'm currently studying for the Oregon Bar Exam, and so I don't get out of the house much, especially not to buy food.)  That's when I realized that my recipe said to let the dough double in size, which could take anywhere from one to four hours!

I ended up cooking the first baguette after about one hour of rising, which was not enough to make it as light and airy as I wanted it to be.

I baked this loaf on my new baking stone (actually a paving stone purchased at Home Depot for $7.87, as opposed to $40 at a cooking supply store) in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then at 400 degrees for another 20 or so minutes, then at 350 degrees for a few more minutes.  I loved the golden brown crust, but the consensus (between me and my excellent roommate, Brooke) was that the crust was too hard after the bread had cooled.  The inside of the loaf also seemed a bit undercooked.

After I removed the first loaf from the oven, the other two loaves had been rising for nearly two hours, and had grown substantially (although I'm not sure they had doubled, exactly).  I decided to pop them in the oven while the stone was still hot, and hope for the best!  For this batch, I baked them at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, then reduced the heat to 350 for about 20 minutes.  After that, I reduced the heat to 300 degrees to prevent the crust from getting as hard as the previous loaf, and baked for a few more minutes.  Brooke and I both knocked on the loaves to test whether they sounded "hollow".  She said that they definitely sounded hollow, while I wasn't sure I liked what I was hearing.  We decided to take them out of the oven after about 35 minutes of total bake time.  They looked lovely.

This batch definitely didn't have as hard a crust as the first, and the inside was fluffier, but it still didn't seem cooked enough inside.  The loaves were also a little bit too salty.  I think that what I've learned from this is that: 1) I need to wait until my starter grows more wild yeast; 2) I need to let my dough rise until it is truly doubled in size, no matter how long it takes; 3) I need to use less salt than the recipe calls for; and 4) I need to follow my new temperature guidelines rather than those provided in the recipe.  I think that the main reason that my loaves don't seem well enough cooked is that they are too dense.  If I let them rise longer (and if the yeast is more active), I think that they will cook more thoroughly.  They'll also probably make a better "hollow" sound!

Finally, even though the loaves weren't perfect, Brooke and I were able to eat a fabulous (if bizarre) dinner of sourdough baguette, cheese, pepperoni (for her), artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and sliced melon.  And now that we've eaten all the food in the house, I think I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.