My travels are over,  and I'm back....

Soft Cheese Bread from Peter Reinhart's - Artisan Breads Every Day

The Mill Loaf (Adapted)  - Baked last week,  with my 2 mths dormant sourdough

More details in this blog.

First I want to say hello to all of you again after being "away at my summer job".  I've missed you all, and have not even had much time to just lurk, let alone post.  I've purposely held back from posting knowing I could, at any time, be completely unable to follow up or hold up my end on a discussion.  The latest part of Spring and the main part of Summer are my very busiest times of the year, when weeks and even entire months can and do go by without a break.  I've had the liberty of rearranging my schedule some this year so I have had some daylight time off, as a trade for night time on, to get some things done around the house, where I work.  That's the only reason I've been able to continue baking at least, to keep my hand in and the store-bought bread out.

The juggling of my work and off time schedule comes at the price of sleep too often, but it has permitted me to accomplish some baking things I'm proud of.  The biggest one we celebrated just tonight, with:

First Fire!! Woohooo!  The WFO got lit for the first time tonight with a small drying fire.

Thanks to a herculean effort the last couple of weeks, and the blessing of a wonderful neighbor who pitched in and helped, my earth oven is nearing completion.  Whenever I've been able to steal or swap for a couple of hours of daylight off duty time I've been working on this, since back in March originally.  Finally the rains quit and I could make some progress, then my "summer job" started and it has been pretty slow going.  I had to get it finished enough to use this winter before the rains come again!  I'm there, and will probably get it insulated in the next couple of weeks.  It must finish drying out first though, and this was just a small drying fire for less than a half hour to speed things along some.  It got things warmed up really well though.

This has been the highlight of my summer, without a doubt.  I've done some baking, of which this (back to front, RLB Beer Bread, RLB Sweet Potatoe bread as dinner rolls, and some of "my" sourdough) is my most recent highlight,

and I continue to explore the world of bread.  This oven will expand my horizons and challenge me even more.  I look forward to it with excitement.

I've many pictures of the entire building process from footing to, yes, first fire, thanks to the diligence and skill of my wife/photographer.  I plan on posting them somewhere (Flicker, or ...?) one of these days when summer is completely behind me and I have time to write the story.  Till then, well, we'll just take it as it comes.  It is starting to come easier as the harvest season here in The Valley heads into the home stretch.

It's good to be back on "The Loaf".  Thank's for stopping by for a visit.

OldWoodenSpoon

Yes, this is one adaptable pastry dough: genesis - empanadas, second form -  apple pie,  fin - quiche. I have worked this modified version of Cafe Azul's Pastry Dough (see my apple pie blog for the recipe) into so many baked goods. Versatility is the key to a good recipe in my baking heart. It is no wonder that this pastry dough and I were just meant to be.

Since this is a high-yield dough (it is enough for two double crust pies or singles), you can freeze what you don't use. After making the apple pie, I froze two mounds of dough that were left over. The night before I was ready to make the quiche, I thawed the mounds in the fridge and in the morning was able to quickly roll them out for my tart pans with relative ease. I sing praises to thee, my dough of wonder!

As for the quiche, it is a fairly simple recipe. Here is my own adapted set of instructions for the filling, but you can make it your own according to what you have on hand. For example, you can include bacon or ham, drained and chopped cooked spinach, sauteed peppers or onions, etc. Don't get carried away, though. Less is more, in my book.

1) Saute a package of sliced mushrooms (I use baby portabellos)
2) Chop a handful of green onions (3 or so stalks) 
3) 1/2 cup of shredded cheese - use more or less depending upon your fondness for fromage (I use Gruyere) 

For the custard, I like to use Michael Ruhlman's ratio of 3 eggs, 1/2 cup of cream and 1 cup of milk per tart. In a mixing bowl, whisk these together until smooth, salt and pepper to taste, and add a small grating of nutmeg.

After you roll out your dough, arrange the dough in a shallow tart pan. Scatter onto the crust the green onions, cheese and half of the mushrooms. Pour in half the custard, and layer the last of the mushrooms and green onions on top. Then add the rest of the custard, filling the pan up to about 3/4. Then sprinkle on the rest of the cheese. Carefully, place the pan on a baking sheet, and bake in a preheated oven of 400°F for 45-60 minutes, depending on your oven's temperature. When I made my quiche I forgot to use my trusty baking stone, and so the bottom crust came out a bit soft. I recommend that if you've got a stone, place it under your tart pan and baking sheet to ensure a crispy bottom crust. A golden and puffy quiche means that it's finished baking.

Voila!

evth

At the risk of sneers from the lean dough purists, one of my fondest bread memories is of the Onion-Curry-Cheese Bread from The Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley.  When I was a gradual student in the late '70s, walking through what has since become known as "The Gourmet Ghetto" (Cheese Board, Chez Panisse, Pig-by-the-Tail charcuterie, Lenny's Butcher and a great fishmonger whose name escapes me, all within two blocks), I would know from a hundred yards away that this delectable savory bread had just come out of the oven.  And I would make a bee-line.  The warm loaf in the grease-spotted bag made a satisfying lunch for a hungry carbotarian.  

So when I came into possession of a glob of David's sourdough starter, and decided to try bread-baking, it didn't take me long to decide I had to find the recipe. It didn't hurt that my Cheese-loving East-Bay-native wife encouraged the quest.

So I searched the web for the recipe, and found that The Cheese Board has published a cookbook, which--by pure coincidence--my wife gave me for my birthday.  And, yes, the Onion-Curry-Cheese Bread is right there.  They say it's the first bread they ever made.

It's a yeast leavened bread with a very low hydration dough (to account for the moisture in the one full pound of cheese that goes into three smallish loaves). The whole process only takes about 4 hours from start to finish.

Here's a picture of the dough (fresh yellow onions, curry powder, salt, black pepper, bread flour, water, yeast and a mix of cheeses).

And formed (sorta) into boules.

And the finished product.

Now, I admit, this is not a "nice looking" bread, but it's inspirational if you are a vulcanologist.  Its chaotic explosiveness makes the perfect contrast to Brot Backer immaculately formed and perfectly baked challah, posted this evening (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/blog/brot-backer).  But the smell of the curry, onions and cheese as it bakes, and the moist spicy bread with gooey bits of melted cheese and crispy bits of carbonized cheese makes one close one's eyes in ecstasy anyway.  Warning: we do not recommend toasting this bread in a toaster.

This is the first non-sourdough I've tried, and it successfully captured the remembered flavor and texture of happy days past.  One of the three loaves is pretty well gone already.

All I can say is "Cheeses loves us!"

Glenn

For my second bake from Richard Bertinet's 'Crust' I wanted to try something with ingredients I've never used before. The recipe that caught my eye was his Breton Bread as it calls for sel-gris and buckwheat flour, neither of which I've had any experience with. For anyone not familiar with sel-gris, it's an unrefined sea salt from Brittany that's very course and gray coloured. It's flavour is a little sharp at first, but leaves a subtle aftertaste of minerals that's quite pleasant. I think I'll be using it in my future baking quite a bit, particularly for rustic breads. For more info on this salt and others, here's a link to a guide of the various types of salt available for cooking and baking.
 
http://www.saltworks.us/salt_info/si_gourmet_reference.asp

Buckwheat pancakes are my only previous experience with this grain, having had them when I was a kid at Scout camp, but never using it professionally or at home for any baking. Some of the breads I've seen since joining TFL that use buckwheat, spelt, kamut etc. have intrigued me enough that I felt I needed to branch out more and discover some new territory. Our friend Khalid, in particular, has been a great inspiration to me with all the beautiful grain breads that he's made over the last few months.
 
Bertinet's formula for Breton Bread calls for using a pate fermentee as well as bakers yeast as it's leaveners but I thought I'd like to do it using a rye levain instead. Reason being, I had my rye sour going great guns, tripling in volume every 5-6 hours or so and thought it'd be a waste to not use it while it was so active. Late in the afternoon the day before mixing, I made the stiff levain but using rye starter as my base . By next morning the levain had doubled and domed so I went ahead and mixed all the other ingredients in the formula, adding the levain in chunks during the last part of the mix. Because the sel-gris is quite course, Bertinet advises dissolving it in a portion of the overall hydration, which is 69.8% (not counting the stiff levain).The dough was mixed on low speed for 8-9 minutes, then on 2nd for five. The dough came off the hook somewhat sticky but uniform and then was worked for about 5 minutes till it came clean off the counter. It rested for 1hr. at 73F, then stretched and folded and given another hour and another fold. After 30 minutes more of rest I molded it into a boule and put it into a heavily floured banneton, covered it with linen and put it in the fridge to rise. Four and half hours and 18 holes of golf later the loaf went into a 500F oven for 8 minutes with normal steam, then reduced to 440 for the remaining bake of 22 minutes. The loaf seems a bit over proofed to me but compared to the photos of it in the book it's quite a bit higher. It opened up much more along the slashes than I thought it would since it was a nice tight boule before going in the oven, so I'm wondering if this is perhaps a possible effect of the buckwheat flour content which was at 26%. I wouldn't call it a disaster by any means as the flavour of this bread more than compensates for any proofing or slashing errors on my part, but maybe next time I'll just give it a 9 hole proofing time. This is a really tasty bread, full of big flavours and aroma, the rye sour just adding another layer of flavour to it. My colleagues at the bake shop, who also serve as my tasting panel, all agreed that it was one of the more flavourful ones I've brought in for them to try. A few photos of it below. Please excuse the picture quality. My wife is visiting relatives back east and she decided to take the camera with her... for some reason, so I had to use my cell phone cam.

Franko

Hello to all you Loafers!

This is my first blog entry and I thought I'd start out with my second most recent endeavor (I made sourdough bagels but didn't take any pictures!). I'd like to give a little preempt by saying that I am only slightly Jewish by blood and an Atheist at heart. That being said, if you have any Jewish blood or get Anthropological hard-ons, purchase Maggie Glezer's A Blessing of Bread NOW! This book is filled to the brim with traditional but well tested/formulated recipes and all the stories, traditions and techniques that go with them.

As soon as I opened this book I would be baking a lot from it and the real challenge was to decide which recipe to try first, as you can see I choose one the the numerous Challah recipes and being a sourdough sucker I landed her My Sourdough Challah recipe.

This recipe is a winner! The one thing that a wild culture really adds to this recipe is the extra oven spring achieved that allows for this nice tears along the braids, it's one of the few loaves that have made my jaw drop. For the sake of full disclosure, I've been professionally trained as a baker and have made Challah before but those recipes were either too high hydration or fermented to quickly with too little oven spring in order to achieve those distinct braids.

I did make 1.5 adjustments to the recipe and they were to replace some of the whole eggs called for with yolks and half of the oil with olive oil. I did this for color, added richness and to avoid that eggy flavor that comes with the whites (just not my cup o' joe). The results were wonderfully yellow tinted crumb that was soft and just begged for a little of that naughty butter as well as making incredible toast.

The flavor was a perfect blend of rich and savory, using a natural levain really didn't add a tang so much as it amped up the flavor profile of the wheat to balance the eggs, sugar and oil. From beginning to end this dough was a pleasure to work with and I encourage you all to buy this book if you haven't!

I am submitting this to Yeastspotting

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/