The best 40 minutes I've spent all week! Carolina is darling. Makes me wonder if we lived this way, how little time we'd have to make trouble in the world.
to what artisan, the term that gets dickered over occasionally here on TFL, really is. Thrashing their own wheat, no scales, no spiral mixers, no proofing boxes or retarders, no oven thermostat.
I grew up knowing that the great flavor of the wine grapes was enhanced by the grape stompers, but never realized that the local bread's flavor was influenced by horses' feet! Carolina's skill at shaping those heavy loaves is amazing to watch. She hand kneads over 50 lbs of dough. The most I have done is 36 lbs. After mixing well, I divided it into halves, kneaded 15 minutes each half, put the halves together, and kneaded more until blended. I felt I had a good "upper body workout" that day. Carolina does all her kneading and says she is not tired. Only 20 grams of salt for the entire batch. Olive oil for the bread, olive wood for your fire….Bella Sicilia! Thanks DBM. embth
That kneading technique is quite old - its the way it was done in the UK (and I suspect more places until mechanisation took over) over 100 years back - big wooden troughs with one or more people basically pounding at it... Although the dough was probably a bit wetter. There's a few videos out there now with that old technique - and that shaping method. Nothing too fancy here, but the dough is quite stiff.
It reminds me of Altamura bread - made with durum wheat/semolina and a natural levian.
Bertinet has a "Normandy Bread" in his "Crust" book that's a relatively low hydration dough - and the kneading method there is to bash it with a rolling pin! So there's obviously places where relatively low hydration mixes have been like that for a long time.
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The best 40 minutes I've spent all week! Carolina is darling. Makes me wonder if we lived this way, how little time we'd have to make trouble in the world.
Thank you for finding and posting this!
Cathy
to what artisan, the term that gets dickered over occasionally here on TFL, really is. Thrashing their own wheat, no scales, no spiral mixers, no proofing boxes or retarders, no oven thermostat.
I grew up knowing that the great flavor of the wine grapes was enhanced by the grape stompers, but never realized that the local bread's flavor was influenced by horses' feet! Carolina's skill at shaping those heavy loaves is amazing to watch. She hand kneads over 50 lbs of dough. The most I have done is 36 lbs. After mixing well, I divided it into halves, kneaded 15 minutes each half, put the halves together, and kneaded more until blended. I felt I had a good "upper body workout" that day. Carolina does all her kneading and says she is not tired. Only 20 grams of salt for the entire batch. Olive oil for the bread, olive wood for your fire….Bella Sicilia! Thanks DBM. embth
That kneading technique is quite old - its the way it was done in the UK (and I suspect more places until mechanisation took over) over 100 years back - big wooden troughs with one or more people basically pounding at it... Although the dough was probably a bit wetter. There's a few videos out there now with that old technique - and that shaping method. Nothing too fancy here, but the dough is quite stiff.
It reminds me of Altamura bread - made with durum wheat/semolina and a natural levian.
Bertinet has a "Normandy Bread" in his "Crust" book that's a relatively low hydration dough - and the kneading method there is to bash it with a rolling pin! So there's obviously places where relatively low hydration mixes have been like that for a long time.
Cheers,
-Gordon