Ale and Yeast Poolish, and a short introduction
Greetings from Finland!
After years of reading your posts (and drooling over your tasty and beautiful loaves) for inspiration, I thought I'd start my own blog here too. During the days I'm a stay-at-home dad exploring life with my two boys (ages 4.6 and 2 :)). The rest of my time, mostly when my family is asleep, I try to split between baking, writing and some other creative experiments. And browsing The Fresh Loaf.
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In the past summer, I managed to spoil my starter by not refreshing it during the summer vacation as we were traveling around Finland. Ever since, I have been making breads with yeast, procrastinating with the idea of training a new starter. The Ale and Yeast Poolish recipe from Richard Bertinet's Crust has become my current favorite bread.
Today, once again, I made a batch: I usually follow the recipe as printed, except that for baking, I use a cast-iron frying pan covered with a clay pot for the first twenty minutes -- my cheap version of a dutch oven. To fit the breads in the pan, I divide the dough in four pieces instead of the two instructed in the book, and shape the dough into boules instead of batards.
Here's how it looked this time:
Comments
Beautiful bread, jakkolaine! Bravo!
Thank you, eliabel!
Hello jarkkolaine,
Great oven spring in your bread
Best wishes
Andy
Thanks for the warm welcome!
Welcome to the posting side of the site jarkkoaine. I'm always glad when someone new starts posting that has been reading for a while. Great bit of creative adaptation in your bread here. Very nice! I'll be looking forward to seeing your work here.
Eric
Thanks for the kind words! Feels good to be posting here after all this time :)
Jarkko
Nice crumb, beautifully slashed! Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
In Cookwise, Shirley Corriher features a recipe for Finnish Nisu, a yeasted bread with coffee in it. I've always been curious about it, are you familiar with it?
Thanks, FlourChild!
It's funny but I had to google the word "nisu" to make sure I got this right ;)
Nisu is the old Finnish word for wheat, and sometimes used to refer to what we nowadays usually call "pulla". This probably comes from the fact that in the old days, bread in Finland was almost always made of rye and therefore bread made out of wheat was a special treat -- special enough to be known as the "wheat bread".
Pulla (or nisu) is a yeasted, sweet (but not overly so) bread usually shaped as rolls or braids. Often we also shape it into cinnamon rolls which we call "korvapuusti" ("slap on the ear"). My mom makes amazing pulla and I have been practicing a lot, so this could be an interesting recipe to share... It's also a fun bread to make with kids, as they love to eat the dough and it doesn't take too long. So, I'm getting excited about baking some now ;)
jarkkolaine, thanks for the information on Finnish wheat breads- very interesting! I'll bet my Finnish grandmother is smiling down on me now :)
Every Finnish grandmother loves pulla :)
I'm actually baking some right now, thanks to your inspiration. Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll post the recipe tonight
And great looking bread. -Varda
Thank you, Varda!
Hi Jarkko,
Nice to see your new blog here :)
I have never made the ale and yeast poolish from that book. Made a lot of the other formula's though ...
What do your kids like on a slice of that great looking bread?
Cheers,
Phil
Thanks, Phil!
My kids love butter... In fact the younger one often just eats the butter and then asks for more without even touching the bread. So, most of the time, we go with very simple toppings: butter, and sometimes cheese.
Jarkko