The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Celebrating the fuller moon the next night?

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Celebrating the fuller moon the next night?

I was taking shots of the moon cakes for this post and was late collecting my son from his sport; when I arrived, he said to me, "Mum, do you love me?"  Seeing my stunned face, he added, with a grin, "I was the last to be picked up!"

Somehow I felt that another post about the full moon was in order ... because of that remark about the Chinese excellence in astrology, or not!  The Chinese lunar calendar was formalized thousands years ago.  Recently I have learned a big word from my husband - to recalibrate.  Something that is as old as the Chinese lunar calendar may be in need of some sort of recalibration!  In recent years a few friends of mine and I have found that the moon is fuller the next day after the Moon Festival.  I know nothing about astrology.  What I have just said may well be taken as an excuse to eat more moon cakes!

I came to my favourite Taiwanese grocery store in "Little Taipei" in Brisbane looking for good moon cakes to buy.  I was chatting with a lady there and I found out that she is the boss's wife.  I asked her which are the good ones to buy.  She asked me, "Are they for you, or for giving away as a present?" - the latter means moon cakes with good looking packaging and wrapping but may not be of the best quality, while the former means good quality and good tasting moon cakes for own consumption.  She pointed at those she got for herself.  I could not pass by a lead like that.

 

                                    

Assorted moon cakes from "Little Taipei" in Brisbane - lotus paste on the top left, red bean paste (very dark brown color) in the centre, and savory ham & nuts to the top right

And below are the "moons" - salted duck egg yolks. 

                              

            

These have been the traditional flavours since I was a little kid.  In recent times there have been new flavours being developed because of the affluence in consumers and the popular new flavours have been chocolate and other tastes under the Western influences.  Because I was in no mood for the troubles in making the moon cakes, I decided I would try incorporating a very traditional moon cake ingredient - red beans - into my sourdough.  This is a can of the cooked red beans that I used (made in Japan):

                                                               

In addition to the Red Bean Sourdough, I made Cocoa Cranberry Sourdough Rolls.  So, here below is the goodies I made for the Moon Festival for my kids and myself, quite a Western concoction:

 

           

 

My formula for the Red Bean Sourdough

  • 240 g starter @ 75% hydration
  • 240 g bread flour
  • 157 g water
  • 170 g cooked red beans from the can above (45% of total flour) * see step 5 below
  • 7 g salt
  • Extra rice flour for dusting

Total dough weight 810 grams and total dough hydration (approx.) 69% 

  1. Mix all ingredients by hand
  2. Autolyse 40 minutes
  3. Mix in the red beans by way of stretch & folds (this serves as the 1st set of S & F's; I did close to 100 strokes)
  4. After 30 minutes, perform the 2nd set of S & F's
  5. After another 30 minutes, perform the 3rd set of S & F's (* At this point my dough still felt very extensible, no strength whatsoever.  I decided something was wrong - I went and checked the can of red beans for its composition and found that its sugar was 38%!  This meant the sugar level in my dough was 17% flour.  When sugar is more than 12 - 15% of flour, it is best to add it in stages or starter may have difficulty performing.  It's too late now so I proceeded as normal.)
  6. After another 30 minutes, do the 4th set of S & F's
  7. After another 30 minutes, pre-shape the dough to a tight ball (I had to use a lot of flour on the work bench as the dough was extremely slack and sticky.)
  8. Rest 15 minutes and shape it to a boule and place it in rice flour dusted basket
  9. Proof for one hour in room temperature then place it in the refrigerator for overnight retarding (I did 10 hours.) Note: By the tiime I put the dough into the fridge, it had hardly risen.  Fortunately, after 10 hours of retardation, the dough had risen nicely, more than doubled.
  10. Next morning, just before baking, stencil any way you like, score, then bake with steam at 230 C for 35 minutes

 

  

                            

                                                   

It is strange that for that much sugar this sourdough actually does not taste sweet.  It tastes quite sour (I would say, slightly less than medium strength sourness), and therefore I felt no guilt at all to have a slice of this with a handsome topping of extra red beans from the can!  Yum (to a Chinese).

 

                                                            

 

My formula for Cocoa Cranberry Sourdough Rolls

  • 350 g starter @ 75% hydration
  • 350 g bread flour
  • 60 g cocoa powder
  • 240 g water
  • 30 ml or 2 tbsp oil
  • For cranberries: 80 g dried cranberries + 60 g Kirsch + 20 g sugar, soak for as long as you can, up to a couple of weeks, in the refrigerator
  • 12 g salt

Total dough weight 1.2 kg (to be divided into 8 pieces of 150 grams each) and total dough hydration (approx. ) 75%

 

   

      

 

  1. Bulk fermentation 3 hours with 4 sets of stretch & folds
  2. Proofing one hour
  3. Retardation 10 hours
  4. Bake with steam @ 220 C for 25 minutes (I baked 4 pieces at a time while the other 4 resting in the refrigerator)

 

                                                        

              

 

This Cocoa Cranberry Sourdough Roll is really lovely to have.  So far I have found the cocoa powder (and for that matter, chocolate) very easy to work into a sourdough.  The crust is very crispy.  

I asked my daughter if people would find so many pictures in one post nauseating. She said without hesitation, "No, people would just think you are a lunatic."  My daughter is one who cannot tell a lie (what you see is what you get).

There had been a big patch of dark cloud hanging over the north-eastern side of the sky, determinant not to let me see the moon tonight.  As I was signing off this post, I went to my balcony to have one last look, and there it was - brighter and fuller than last night!  And here it is - the last photo of this post: 

 

                                                  

Shiao-Ping              

Comments

chouette22's picture
chouette22

What fabulous breads you made! I especially like the Cocoa Cranberry Sourdough rolls - I am sure to try them at some point.

And all those moon cakes - I have never seen (knowingly) nor tasted any of them. I'll change that in the future if I have an opportunity.

As far as the many pictures are concerned - on this forum they are without any doubt very much appreciated!

What a great bake for the Moon Festival!

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Hi chouete22

If you come across them, try getting those from Hong Kong, not Mainland China, and try more expensive ones rather than the very cheap ones because they often contain preservatives and you really don't want to eat poor quality stuff.

And thanks for  the encouragement on the photos.  I love seeing photos myself.

Floydm's picture
Floydm

So how much red bean flavor did the sourdough have? 

Both breads are beautiful.  The moon cakes too.

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Hi Floyd

I had a couple of slices of the red bean sourdough this morning and you know what - there was no red bean flavour on them at all, what a bummer! (pardon my language).

There was not even sweetness!  All I got from the toasts this morning was the normal sourdough sourness!  (There wasn't much sweetness either yesterday that I could remember when it was fresh from the oven.)

This is really strange, considering there was 17% sugar.  The can says for every 100 g of the cooked red beans, there is 38.2 g of sugar.  So, for 170 grams of this paste, there was 65 g of sugar!   38.2% sugar level for the red bean paste is not out of line at all.  I've seen as high as 60%; the sugar is there as preservatives as much as sweet taste.  And, to counter the very sweet taste, the red beans paste normally has salt added too.

There was also quite a strong alcoholic sort of sour taste (much like when you use white wine to make a-sauce-or-stock-for-a-sea-food-pasta-sort-of sour taste before you add cream and seasoning).   Would it be possible that the wild yeasts and bacteria etc had turned the sugar into alcohol?  What about the calories?  Does it then mean that there was no longer the same amount of calories when the sugar had been used up?

 

inlovewbread's picture
inlovewbread

Wow, your breads are fantastic. I love the photography too. With breads like that (especially ones that I want to try) you can never have too many pictures!

Question: What is Kirsch?  I would like to try the Cocoa Cranberry Sourdough Rolls. 

Also, did you bake the rolls straight from the fridge?

Thanks! 

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Kirsch is cherry liqueur.  You can subsitute Boronia or other fruit flavoured liqueur; or even red wine will work fine too. 

I now bake all my doughs straight from the fridge for better result in scoring, and better oven spring. 

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

Gorgeous breads!  I love the crumb shots!  They look so delicious!  I once read a book where they talked about eating the moon cakes.  Now I know how they look, lovely!

Sylvia

SallyBR's picture
SallyBR

Loved this post, pictures and all...

Tell me, the ideogram on the bread, is that "hua"  written in traditional?

does it go by the meaning of blossom, or in this case would it mean something else?

 

 

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Yes, it is blossom in traditional Chinese.  For the Moon Festival sourdough, I wanted to do a stencil of 花好月圓.  It was meant to be kind of a joke because these four characters (blossom-beautiful-moon-full) are normally written for newly wed couple on their wedding night.  I started to cut out the character 月 (moon), but it was difficult to use as a stencil when the middle part was gutted out, and this was the same case with the word 圓 (full) as well. 

Anyway, I ended up using only one character; it is just meant to be a decoration, apart from "blossom," it doesn't mean anything else.

SallyBR's picture
SallyBR

Thanks!  Indeed it would be almost impossible to carve those ideograms 

 

I love the "hua" ideogram, not sure why, I just found it very beautiful from the first time I saw it.

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Many years ago I saw foreigners in Taiwan wearing T-shirt with 4 big Chinese characters - 物美價廉, they must have found those characters beautiful to look at (because the meaning of it is not real flash).

Yippee's picture
Yippee

LOL

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

love your new photo!

小蘋

SallyBR's picture
SallyBR

My husband insists that it looks like I have a bird's nest on top of my head  OH, well

 

cannot please everyone, right?   :-)

ericjs's picture
ericjs

Those breads look great. Beautiful crumb! Nice composition to the photos too.

I haven't had moon cakes in ages...I must make a trip to one of the bakeries in Boston's Chinatown soon.

How did you make the circle and character on the large loaf?

Eric

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

Hi Eric

I wrote the Chinese character on an A4 paper, drew a thick circle aournd the character, cut around the lines of the character and also the circle.  I then used the piece of paper as a stencil.   Just before I was about to bake, I placed the stencil on top of the dough, sifted flour over it, then scored it.

For a new member at TFL, you have been very productive!

 

ericjs's picture
ericjs

Ah a stencil, very clever! I may use your idea sometime. A happy birthday loaf for someone perhaps. It seems rather like it has the some potential similar to cake decorating. :^)

Yes, sometimes when I get interested in a new hobby it becomes almost an obsession. There is so much to learn here, and so many things to try!

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

When I was attending the Artisan courses back in August at the San Francisco Baking Institute, Frank, our instructor, told me that he was invited to go to Taiwan to give a lecture.  Taiwan won silver medal at last years'  Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris and there are a bunch of very enthusiastic bakers out there.  Frank asked me to write a big Chinese character  謝 meaning "thank you" so he could use it as a stencil for his sourdough to bring to Taiwan as a demo and thank-you gesture for the opportunity to teach there.  So, yeah, I find stencils very versatile as decorations on breads.

SallyBR's picture
SallyBR

Oh, my..... xie is such a complicated one!   :-)

 

I hope he did not have to write it twice...   Did he? Can you use just one and the meaning will also be thank you?

Shiao-Ping's picture
Shiao-Ping

the is a killer!  And yes, in Frank's case, he only needed to do one character and people would get the idea, but in most other writing and talking, you'll have to say it twice.  It's like 桌子 and   椅子 - the  子 is there for easier speaking.