Today, I baked Hamelman's "Normandy Apple Bread" for the first time. This bread is a pain au levain spiked with instant yeast. It uses a firm starter and bread flour and whole wheat in the final dough. The apple flavor comes from chopped dried apples and apple cider.
Background:
Having a number of high school friends living in Montreal, I have had the opportunity to visit this city quite a few times over the years. I have always enjoyed its cosmopolitan charm and the French influences that have permeated its history and culture especially in the area of gastronomy.
It's been awhile since my last blog (late spring this year) so I promised Floyd - during his fund raising campaign - that I'd be back with another blog soon.
These were made with the San Francisco Sourdough starter from sourdo.com.
Vermont Sourdough on the left. San Francisco Sourdough on the right.
While out running errands this morning I stopped at St. Honoré Boulangerie in NW Portland. I took a bunch of photos but it was dark and crowded. These are the only two shots that came out.
The croissant, pain au chocolat, and pain au raisin we split were all good. Nice treats on a rainy day.
Okay, I admit this post has nothing to do with strumpets, but I couldn't resist the ridiculous rhyme!
This year I hope to make Pain de Campagne shaped as pain de epi for the Thanksgiving table. I did a run-through to practice the cuts....
The one in the middle fit on my baking stone, the other did not- so I cut that one in two. Next time I will make skinnier baguettes before cutting and will probably make 3. Little individual epi rolls would be cute too.
I've become somewhat obsessed lately with Durum flour. It adds such a sweet, buttery flavor to the bread, which is good- because then I don't add butter when I have slice after slice of this bread!
With the completion of the laminated dough final, the next section begins. And it was a section that I had been anticipating for a very long time. It was the artisan bread section! Finally I would receive formal instruction on something I've been self-teaching myself (with many wonderful resources like TFL of course) for years.
We made baguette dough, poolish, and a 40% whole wheat dough in the course of 5 hours. The baguette dough would undergo retarded yeast fermentation in the refrigerator for 2 days, but the whole wheat dough we ended up baking off.
The first day driving kids to school since I got back from Taiwan last weekend was the first day of listening to Emma Ayres on a fine classical radio show, ABC Classic FM, the familiarity of which filled me with delight which was quite uncharacteristic of me. That day I counted the flowering trees that I had missed by the road side while I was away. The flame trees were alight with their chilly red color flowers, the Chinese favorite color. The vivid colors were like endorphins to me, sending me into fanciful thought of the depth of my memories.
