The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Bakery Tours, Oat Porridge, Pizza, and Whiskey

Maine18's picture
Maine18

Bakery Tours, Oat Porridge, Pizza, and Whiskey

In between World Cup games, I thought I’d catch up on a couple of recent bread experiments and bakery visits.  I’ve been traveling for work quite a bit this Spring/early Summer, and two recent trips afforded me the chance to stop by the bakeries of two favorite bread book authors, Chad Robertson (Bar Tartine) and Ken Forkish (Ken’s Artisan Bakery).

Tartine was, as always, pretty phenomenal.  His style bread was, 8 or 9 years ago, what initially got me hooked on levain bread baking.  We had brunch at Bar Tartine, and took that opportunity to order a couple of their loaves to go – the classic Country Loaf, as well as an Oat Porridge boule.

I was amazed by the size of the Country Loaf – at least twice the size of the batards I produce at home.  Rather than cut into it at the restaurant, we ended up hauling this one back on the plane to Seattle and immediately froze it, to enjoy later.  Later ended up being about 2 weeks, when we had steamed clams with a large group of friends that cried out for crusty loaf of sourdough.  Brushed with some EVOO, grilled, it was amazing.

 

The Oat Porridge bread was a first for me at Tartine, and we cracked into almost immediately, eating as we walked around the city.  It has a really lovely, custardy crumb and dense, dark crust.  My wife, in particular, love it and asked me to try it soon at home.

 

Flash forward to just last night and I gave the Oat Porridge a go at home.  I’m pretty happy with the results.  Nice oven spring and soft crumb – borderline gummy, which I assume if from the porridge portion (I ended up using Bob’s Red Mill 5 grain cereal). I didn’t get the crust to be quite as dark as I had hoped, despite leaving the loaf in for an extra 8 minutes – would love any tips/thoughts on how I might do this next time around?

 

Also, I monkeyed with the final proofing time, as to adjust to our weekend schedule.  After a 1 hour autolyse and then 3.5 hr bulk fermentation, the dough looked read to retard, so I put it in the fridge for what ended up being 6.5 hours (instead of a full “overnight”), pulling it out just before bed for an additional hour at room temp while the oven pre-heated.  Everything seems to have come through OK, and I will definitely be playing with this recipe some more, as I’m lately fascinated with flavor and texture of porridge breads

 

In between levain breads,  I made a quick pizza dough (instant yeast + Cuisinart recipe), retarded in the fridge for 3 days, baked on a baking steel for just over 5 minutes.  The quality of home pizza on the steel continues to amaze me, almost regardless of the dough recipe I try.  I really can’t imagine ever going back to a regular stone at this point, as the quick bake and char from the steel is pretty darn close to an authentic New York-style pie.

 

And finally, for giggles, I am making a batch of banana-infused Irish Whiskey a friend at work raves about.  Easy to make -- simply cut up 3 bananas and combine with a bottle of Jameson in a sealable jar.  Let it sit for 3 or 4 days, and then drain out the bananas through a fine mesh sieve, and pour the whiskey back into the bottle.  Drink on the rocks with a large ice cube.

 

Cheers,

Drew

 

 

 

Comments

mini_maggie's picture
mini_maggie

The bread looks fantastic and banana whiskey looks interesting!

Maine18's picture
Maine18

...and I'm looking forward to the whiskey in a couple more days :)

bbegley's picture
bbegley

What was Ken's like?  You go for pizza or bread?

Maine18's picture
Maine18

I got the "Country Brown" -- pretty darn good (though if I had to pick, I"m still partial to Tartine...thankfully I don't have to pick :)

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

looks great.  For a darker crust you might add a bit of white and red malt and bake it at a higher temperature, maybe 25 F higher and don't bake it in DO?.  I get much darker crusts in the oven with mega steam.   So how did your bread taste compared to Chad's?

Happy baking

Maine18's picture
Maine18

I've never experimented with adding malts, I'll have to give that a whirl sometime soon, thanks for the tip.  I will certainly keep experimenting with oven temps and DO - I tend to really like both the oven spring and simplicity (e.g. no messy steaming) of using a DO, so that's my preferred method, but I also really like a good, dark bake, so worth trying new techniques.

The bread was delicious, though I wouldn't call it on par with Tartine -- and candidly, I have such an idealized perception of that place, I doubt I ever would :) -- it more of an aspiration/idea than anything else.  I did notice this tim that Chad's breads seem to have a slightly sweeter, less tangy flavor, which I'm guessing is from using a younger/more recently refreshed starter/levain than I work with, so I'm going to see if I can mess with my starter feeding schedule to get something similar.

bikeprof's picture
bikeprof

Main18 - great examples of 3 of my very favorite things: bread, pizza, and whisky...

Really, really beautiful loaves.

I have a bunch of Bob's multigrain hot cereal mix around - will have to try them out for porridge bread - did you use 2-1 water/grain for porridge?

I have had  prob's getting a dark bake with my oven if can't keep myself from opening the door and checking out the bread - my conventional oven has a hard time recovering it's temperature. I have to sit on my hands on let it go...

Maine18's picture
Maine18

Yup, I used a 2 to 1 ratio for the cereal mix -- seemed to work well, though I have to ensure I broke up the porridge mixture a bit before I folded it into the dough, as it clumped some as it cooled.  Good luck!

hazimtug's picture
hazimtug

Hi Maine18- great looking loaves and pizza. I share your sentiments on porridge breads and Tartine! Definitely loaves to aspire for... I just pulled out two porridge loaves myself out of the oven about an hour ago, which have fermented steel-cut oat porridge with currants and cardamom, a favorite for us especially with almond butter :)

Seeing that you have a nice coat of flakes on your loaf, I wanted to ask you how you apply the flakes or seeds for that matter on the shaped wet dough, especially those that push the hydration...

Thanks!

Hazim