Pain au Levain with Spelt, Fig Bread, and Broa
I love spelt but not too much of it. My high percentage spelt loaves have turned out fine, but somehow don't get eaten up, even by me. Today I made a Pain au Levain with added Spelt and kept the spelt to 21%. To my taste at least, this is ideal. The resulting loaf has that special nutty fresh taste that spelt in small enough quantities provides.
Using Janet's Cadco techniques plus my new steel plate, I got some good ovenspring. Perhaps too good.
I also wanted to come back to the fig anise bread. I baked the La Brea formula several times, and it was a big hit, but I felt vaguely uneasy, as it is very sweet and incredibly figgy. I decided to take it down a notch by leaving out the fig puree, reducing the sugar, adding some whole grains, and upping the hydration. The resulting loaf seems just as figgy even without the puree, still quite sweet, and somewhat more interesting with the added whole wheat. I accidentally added more water than I had intended, by a lot. Despite being somewhat perplexed by how wet and slippery the dough was, it still handled reasonably well, and behaved properly. If anything I would reduce the figs and sugar even more, and perhaps up the whole wheat. In any case, this version was more satisfying to me than the original. It almost seems that when you get a lot of figs in there it hardly matters what the underlying bread is made of as the figs conquer all.
Some time ago, my husband and I ate out at a Portuguese restaurant in East Cambridge. The bread was amazingly good. The dinner not so much. As this hardly ever happens (usually a good dinner is accompanied by just so-so bread) I needed to find out more. The owner told me that the bread was Broa - Portuguese cornbread. More questions didn't lead to more answers, as it turns out they don't bake it themselves.
I searched around, and didn't find much on Broa. Clayton had a quite unsatisfying version in his book. Then a comment on TFL led me back to my own bookshelf. Greenstein has a recipe in his Secrets of a Jewish Baker, not really the place I expected to find it. Greenstein uses volume measurements and it has been so long since I've baked using them that I felt all at sea. I weighed everything and took notes so I would be able to figure out what I had done. The dough was incredibly dry - almost like putty, and very salty - perhaps I misunderstood. To make matters worse I used Masa Harina, and that was just a mistake, as the bread ended up tasting like tortillas. When I went back and calculated percentages, not surprisingly the hydration was around 50%, and the salt was 2.6%! Furthermore, the method used was very fast - not even a bulk ferment - and so I thought the flavor was pretty dull excepting the lime treatment of the corn flour which was not a plus.
I went back to it, and decided to do things a bit differently. I used starter instead of a boatload of yeast, upped the hydration somewhat, used remilled cornmeal for the corn flour (Greenstein's suggestion) and started over. This was definitely an improvement, but I don't think I've come close to the delicious bread I had in that restaurant. Anyone know how to make this authentically?
Happy New Year everyone.
12/28/2013 | ||||
Pain au Levain with Spelt | ||||
Final | Starter | Total | BP | |
KAAP | 404 | 126 | 530 | 79% |
Spelt | 140 | 140 | 21% | |
Water | 381 | 84 | 465 | 69% |
Salt | 12.2 | 12.2 | 1.8% | |
Starter | 210 | 19% | ||
Total Flour | 670 | |||
Total Dough | 1147 | |||
Mix all and bulk ferment 3.5 hours in cold house | ||||
Cut and shape | ||||
Proof 1 hour until soft | ||||
Preheat oven to 500 - 45 minutes | ||||
Steam 1 minute | ||||
Slash, spray, and load | ||||
Steam 1 minute | ||||
Oven off 6 minutes | ||||
Bake at 425 for 10 minutes | ||||
400 for 10 minutes |
12/28/2013 | ||||
Fig Anise | ||||
Less sugar, no fig puree, higher hydration | ||||
KAAP | 130 | 62 | 192 | 66% |
WW | 85 | 85 | 29% | |
Cornmeal | 12 | 12 | 4% | |
Hot water | 142 | 142 | 49% | |
Water | 60 | 90 | 150 | 52% |
Figs | 115 | 115 | 40% | |
Sugar | 25 | 25 | 9% | |
Salt | 5.3 | 5.3 | 1.8% | |
Anise seed | 0.9 | 0.9 | 0.3% | |
145% Starter | 153 | |||
Total Flour | 289 | |||
Total Dough | 727 | |||
Pour boiling water over whole wheat flour | ||||
Stir and cover | ||||
Rest for 1/2 hour | ||||
Mix all but figs until strong | ||||
Cut dried figs in quarter and mix in | ||||
Refrigerate for 24 hours | ||||
Remove and shape | ||||
Proof for 1.5 hour until soft | ||||
Preheat hot oven to 500 | ||||
Steam 1 minute | ||||
Slash and load | ||||
Steam 1 minute | ||||
Oven off 8 minutes | ||||
Bake at 410 for 20 minutes |
12/24/2013 | |||
Broa | |||
Starter | |||
KAAP | 150 | 21% | |
Water | 100 | ||
Cornstarch mixture | |||
Cornstarch | 39 | 5.6% | |
Cold Water | 40 | ||
Boiled Water | 126 | ||
Final Dough | |||
Corn flour | 150 | 21% | |
KAAP | 320 | 46% | |
Water | 150 | ||
Salt | 11 | 1.6% | |
Starter | 250 | ||
Cornstarch mix | |||
Total Flour | 700 | ||
Total Water | 450 | 64% | |
Dissolve cornstarch in cold water | |||
Mix in to boiling water | |||
Bring back to boiling | |||
then remove from heat and cool | |||
Mix all | |||
Bulk Ferment 2 hours | |||
Shape into boule and sprinkle with flour | |||
Proof for 1 hour | |||
until flour on top cracks | |||
Preheat 500 | |||
Steam for 1 minute | |||
Load and steam for 1 minute | |||
Turn off for 5 minutes | |||
Bake at 440 around 30 minutes |