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My all time favourite..Pandoro!!! Merry Xmas….

This has to be my favourite of favourites if that makes sense.

Of course, I was very greedy and made this mid year when I was on my xmas bread mid winter binge…

But fear not, I will be making again next week, i just wanted to share now:)

Golden and gorgeous!!

ha ha many, many things!! BUT nothing is as luscious as the PANDORO…..

From the Veneto region, it is the regions equivalent of the Panattone.

I had some mini ones from the supermarket in Lucca and Venice but I knew they would not be like a homemade one.

The Italian supermarkets, sell huge boxes which have Pandoro in them but I still think, can’t beat homemade……

So without further ado………………….

What are we aiming for?????

Pandoro……….

I did not have a Pandoro tin though, so I used a brioche mould and a panettone mould.

I think they looked great but it was the crumb and crust that blew me away!!

See this is a deceptive bread, as it looks pretty plain………..

Ahhhh but there in lies the beauty of it.

Pandoro Kiwi style

Be warned, this does take a while, it’s an all day process.

Not an all day standing round but you start in the morning, and it will be ready at night…

Lets get yeasty beasty!!

I am VERY EXCITED about this one!!

Wait till you taste it!!

What do you need?

Patience, my friends, patience……………….

This is done in 3 stages.

Stage 1 : Pre-ferment

5 teaspoons of dried yeast

1/2 cup of warm water

1 large egg

2 tbsp sugar

3/4 cup of Strong bread flour.

pre ferment Pandoro

Mix yeast into warm water along with sugar and mix until dissolved.

Sit until creamy and frothy, about 10 minutes.

Add in egg and flour and mix till smooth.

Cover tightly with gladwrap and sit for 30 minutes .

First dough stage

Stage 2: 1st Dough stage:

3 cups of strong bakers flour

3 cups of cake flour

1 tsp dried yeast

1 tbsp warm water

1/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

60g butter

First stage dough after rising

Mix the yeast into the warm water and allow to sit for 10 minutes until creamy.

Mix flours together and put aside 2 and 1/2 cups of the flour for this dough.

Add yeast, flour, sugar and eggs into the pre ferment, combining well.

Add the butter and make sure this is blended in well.

Cover with gladwrap again and allow to rise for 45-60 minutes.

2nd dough, ready to rise

Stage 3: Second dough:

4 large eggs

2 egg yolks

1 cup sugar

flour left from prior (3 and 1/2 cups)

1 tsp salt

2 tsps Vanilla

1 tbsp lemon zest

1/2 cup od candied citron

300g butter at RT

extra half cup flour

After 2nd rise

Add the eggs, yolks, sugar, lemon zest, vanilla and flour to the first dough and mix well.

Gradually add the butter, 25g at a time, blending well.

Toss the candied citron in flour and put in the dough, combine well.

Change to the dough hook and mix for 8 minutes on low-speed, gradually adding in extra flour in needed.

Dough, will be soft, very buttery and sticky.

Place dough in lightly oiled bowl and wrap with a towel.

Allow to rise until doubled, usually about 2-4 hours, dependant on the temperature.

After 2nd rising and shaping…

Turn out dough on lightly floured area with your hands well floured.

Lightly shape dough into a ball and place in moulds.

NB: Moulds must be very very well oiled!!

Dough should take up 2/3rds of mould.

Place moulds on a tray and cover with a tea towel and rise until almost at the top of the mould, usually 2-4 hours again.

30 minutes before this is ready, preheat oven to 200 celsius.

Ready for baking…

Place pandoro in the oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Turn down the heat to 170 celsius and bake for a further 20-25 minutes.

Allow to cool and then remove carefully from moulds.

Fabulousness…………

Pandoro in the panettone mould:)

When this is cool, slice a wedge, and ENJOY, ENJOY, ENJOY!!

Absolutely divine!!

It is so light, yet rich but not overly…………

It is less buttery in taste than brioche but tastier………..

It is just heavenly!!

I like this better than Panettone

I can only dream of how gorgeous it would be at Xmas with rum flavoured mascarpone in between slices, like a xmas tree!!

LOVE IT!!!

Well worth the effort involved and it makes 3 good sized pandoro.

Look at the crumb!!

Gorgeousness, in all its glory!!

Can you handle it???

Recipe adapted from the wonderful Carol Field’s ” Italian Baker”, 2 Ed, 2011.

How long ago was it?...

Oh, yes, I remember. I remember it well. Three months ago I happened upon Khalid's (mebake) multigrain struan on TFL---a bread loaf heavily enriched with grains and seeds, topped with a luscious field of poppy seeds. Tantalized by the thought of crafting such a fine loaf myself, I dove ahead, not knowing that I'd fail despite using the best ingredients that I could afford, despite my patience and greatest effort.

The crust, pale and feeble. The crumb, dense and damp. And the flavour, vile rancidity.

Deeply disheartened by my failed attempt, self-doubt plundered my body of motivation throughout the course of a week, bringing me to the brink of cease and desist. In other words, I wanted to quit baking. 

So, why didn't I quit baking? Well, on that bleak day, my heart became enlivened, resuscitated by a bolt of insight. My failed loaf incited so much distraught because of one reason: I was passionate about bread.

During the subsequent months, I progressively honed my bread baking skills by experimenting with sourdough starters, higher hydration dough, kneading, folding and shaping techniques, as well as steaming and baking methods---all learnt to one day confront and slay the recipe that nearly slaughtered my baking spirit.

With great honour, I now present to you my second attempt at Peter Reinhart's whole wheat multigrain struan. 

My second attempt deviated from the first attempt in many ways. Most notably, I substituted the biga with a whole wheat sourdough starter, retarded the bulk fermentation via refrigeration, and implemented the "Dutch oven method". Technically speaking, it was thick metal pot, not a Dutch oven.

In equal parts, this particular struan was packed---really packed---with pearl barley, buckwheat, quinoa, flax seeds, white sesame seeds, and sunflower seeds. 

See? I wasn't kidding---it's packed! I admit, this wasn't intentional. In all likelihood, my darn-ol'-wonky mechanical kitchen scale displayed false readings. But hey, no harm done. As they say: more grain, less plain. (Okay, I just made up that phrase on spot.) 

The flavour: Cooled for nearly twenty hours, the tender yet firm crumb bursted with nuttiness in my mouth, followed by subtle notes of butteriness and bitterness (likely caused by the uncooked quinoa and buckwheat), finishing with a progressively sharp but mild tang. Approximately nine hours later, just after work, the flavours of the struan coalesced into a smooth symphony of taste notes. It was truly wonderful, minus my immediate craving for butter. 

Final comments:

Thank you Khalid for inspiring me to bake whole wheat / whole grain breads. Thank you Karin for helping me troubleshoot my failed struan. Thank you Mini Oven for your posts on how to create and maintain a sourdough starter. And lastly, thank you to the members of TFL who've taken their time to share their knowledge, wisdom, and passion with us. It is immensly appreciated.

:) Have a happy baking,

Zita 

P.S. Please feel free to critique my loaf. It will only lead to improvement---and who doesn't want that?

Sending this toYeastspotting.
Click here for my blog index.

Holiday season is pumpkin season. Pumpkin in dishes, in pies, in cakes, in breads, and in croissants!

Pumpkin Croissant with Sourdough Starter
Note: for details and tips on making croissants, please see this post & this post.
Note: this recipe makes about 12 large danishes.

-levain
starter (100%), 35g
water, 59g
bread flour, 105g

1. mix and leave at room temp for 12 hours.

-final dough
bread flour, 422g
sugar, 68g
salt, 10g
instant yeast, 7g
butter, 21g, softened
pumpkin puree, 200g
water, 120g
levain, all
roll-in butter, 287g

1. Mix everything but the rolling butter, knead until medium gluten developement. Then follow the steps here.

Tried out two fillings. The ones at bottom were filled with dark chocolate, a safe bet that never disappoints; the top ones had a caramelized cranberry walnut filling, how very seasonal! Chocolate ones were easier to roll than the soft/mushy cranberry filling, that's why the bottom ones had more turns and appeared to be fuller/taller.

Both had pretty open crumb though. Love the golden hue.

Makes great holiday gifts

A couple months ago I was using my KA Pro 6 of a dozen or so years of age when it finally stripped a gear. I ordered parts and repaired it, but as I thought about it I realized that it no longer suited my needs. I expect it will last another decade or more, but it will be reserved for light loads.

The bagel formula I have been using is from Jeff Hamelman and I like it quite a lot. This time I decided to try the BBA, or at least a somewhat modified version. That makes a bakers dozen, which would have been too much for the KA since I use HG flour. Fortunately, I have a new Bosch Universal! I decided to double the recipe and see how the new machine worked.

I want to say right now that this post is not about a KA vs. whatever. The KA is a fine machine for many purposes, but it was never intended to make 26 large bagels worth of high gluten dough at once. Consequently any comparison between the two is irrelevant. Use what you have within its limits and if you move beyond it do so and remember the good things you've made rather than bemoan what you could not do. My 2 cents. 

Onward!

I followed the BBA formula as I've said, creating the sponge in the mixing bowl. Once it sufficiently proofed I added part of the flour to collapse the sponge. I've read that getting dough into the center column could be a problem so I incorporated the ingredients in two batches, mixing half the flour in for a few moments then in with the rest. In doing so I had no problems later.

One concern was that I wasn't sure just how long I should mix the ingredients. This was an untried formula in an unfamiliar machine. I decided that I would let it knead for 5 minutes and try to windowpane test it every minute thereafter. I found that 8 minutes provided sufficient time. I could have gone a little longer, but I don't like to over-oxidize. 

Please forgive the low quality cell phone pics. 

Here's the Beast with its first "victim" 

This may not look like much, but it's roughly 7 lbs of high gluten bagel dough which ultimately made 26 bagels of about 4&1/4 ounces each. That would have been impossible before, but the Bosch acted like it didn't care at all. 

I went back and forth on Hamelman or Reinhart and ultimately the latter won simply because I wanted to try it. That said I didn't depart entirely from my old ways and  follow everything to the letter. 

What follows is my standard work practice for bagels. 

I use an apartment sized fridge for retarding dough and I pre-cut sheets of parchment to fit the shelves. I then spray them lightly with Pam and rub it into the paper. I then  cut the number of portions from the dough ball which will fit onto the sheet and roll them into ropes and form the bagel. Onto the sheet they go and into the fridge after covering with plastic wrap. Once that's all done I let them sit for about 15 hours until the next morning.

I preset the oven to go off an hour before I woke set to 500F. The bottom two racks have rectangular stones and the top one has a large aluminum flat sheet. 

When I get up I take another set of parchment sheets sized to fit the stone and spray as before to avoid sticking.  I don a pair of surgical gloves and add three teaspoonfuls of lye to three quarts of cold water in a stainless pan. Note cold water. The reason the reason for that is lye will react strongly with water, and if the water is hot it could go everywhere, including yourself. Cold is definately the safe way to go.

There's a thread explaining the use of lye with bagels. Coincidentally it turns out the fellow who does this shares my profession and we both grew up in Philly. Small world, eh?

Once the water gets up to a boil I put 4 bagels in and flip them over at about 30 seconds for a total of a minute them remove them. One side of the bagel is flatter than the other and what I do is put whatever topping I want on the more curved surface and have that side down on the parchment. I then carefully take the hot sheet out of the oven and quickly slide parchment and all onto it. The reason being is that I want both sides to bake a bit, but not completely set. The hot sheet holds enough heat to start the process without burning the toppings and the flat side being exposed to the open oven has a chance to rise and round itself. I then use tongs and slide the parchment and bagels onto another flat sheet, close the oven and quickly flip them over. Back into the oven onto one of the stones. I'll repeat the process of boiling and topping on another parchment paper and repeat, then put that onto the other stone. Total baking time is about 22 minutes at 500F. With the oven opening and closing I doubt the oven stays quite that hot for the second batch so I may give another minute or two if needed. 26 bagels required three batches on the size stones I have and here's the results, minus several. 

I took some with me to work that morning and they were well received. They were nice and chewey with a light crunch when bitten into. I will have to try Hamelman again with the Bosch to compare the results between it and the Pro 6. There was better development of gluten this time, but there are too many variables to know why.

As far as the machine itself, I'm thrilled with it. I would have to do this in three or four batches and the time involved would have been prohibitive. I believe I could have done perhaps three dozen, but this is about the perfect quantity.