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Link: start: Home Link: prev: December 2009 Link: next: February 2010 Chews Wise * Home * About * Samuel Fromartz * Bread Baking << December 2009 | Main | February 2010 >> Posts from January 2010 January 27, 2010 Seven Tips for a Home Baker Open_crumb Seeded sourdough loaf with white, whole wheat and rye Baker Dan Lepard writes a rare baking column in the Guardian newspaper in the UK, has an active web presence, and has written an engaging baking book, but here he visits with a serious home baker, Jack Lang, who lays out seven principles of baking. This quote caught my eye, because it's really true. Everyone thinks baking with sourdough is hard but it's actually more forgiving than instant yeast. "...naturally leavened breads are very easy to manage, especially for the home baker, as the dough matures more slowly and the point when the loaf finally gets to the oven is less critical. I am convinced that naturally leavened breads, like sourdough, are great for the home baker and less problematic that other quicker yeasted breads." Now onto the seven principles (with my comments in italics). 1. Use a naturally-leavened starter. "Using a sourdough starter is easy," says Jack. "You keep it in the fridge from one month until the next, and simply refresh a small amount when you need to use it." (If you refrigerate it, refresh it at least two times before using it). 2. Keep practicing your `baking routine' until you find a method that suits you. "It was the constant baking that improved my breads", says Jack. (Really true, it's like music. The more you practice the better you get, especially because the craft is tactile). 3. "For many of the breads I bake", says Jack, "I make the dough the night before and leave it overnight in the refrigerator". This is a great help in managing your time when baking at home, when there are always other things to do. (I do this too. It improves the flavor of the bread and works with your schedule, so if you mix a dough Friday evening you can bake 8-24 hours later -- whatever works by your schedule). 4. Do keep a record of the temperatures of your flour, water, dough and room when you bake. "Temperature control is very important when you bake", says Jack, "but don't go overboard with it". (Yes, and use a bit more sourdough in the winter and less in the summer, as higher temperatures speed fermentation -- the ideal though is 76-78 F). 5. "Food processors are great for mixing bread, just remember to use the steel blade", says Jack. My co-author on "Baking with Passion", Richard Whittington, swears by the food processor and finds it much easier to use than the upright mixer. (I've used a food processor quite successfully to make dough, but I don't use it regularly.) 6. Remember that when you bake brown, mixed wheat, rye or wholemeal loaves, you will not get the same volume in the finished loaf as you will achieve with white flour, nor as open a texture to the crumb. Just remember this and be content. (True to a point, see picture above. If you make a very moist dough with whole grains you can achieve a less dense crumb but moist doughs are hard to work with -- go back to point 2). 7. And finally, "Bake the dough from cold", says Jack, who lets his dough prove overnight in the refrigerator at 4-oC (39F). This, he feels, gives a better result. (Sugars develop in a long slow rise, so the bread flavor will improve. The sour acidity in a dough also increases with lower temperature, so if you want higher sour notes by all means refrigerate for 12-24 hours. Depending on the degree of fermentation, though, you may need to let the rise continue at room temperature). LepardAddendum: I just got Lepard's book, The Art of Handmade Bread: Contemporary European Recipes for the Home Baker, and am happily reading through it. Many of the recipes are unusual, from Scandinavia, Scotland, Russia, Germany and the Ukraine, incorporating age-old methods (such as soaking grains in wine, using ale, making your own malt). It reminds me a bit of Elizabeth David's approach in her classic, English Bread and Yeast Cookery , since she too paid serious attention to traditional home made breads. I'm excited to try these methods soon. January 27, 2010 in Bread | Permalink | Comments (11) Reblog (0) | IFrame: favbutton-6a00d8341cc84e53ef0128771a8be8970c | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | January 25, 2010 What to Do When Alice Waters Calls, Seeking Bread By Samuel Fromartz I was leaving the gym when I checked my messages. Alice Waters' office at Chez Panisse was calling -- yeah, right. Who was this really? When I called back, it turned out Waters was calling and looking for a baker for her charity dinner in Washington, to replace one who had dropped out. Barton Seaver, a friend and chef at Blue Ridge, suggested me. "We hear you make the best baguette in DC," said Sarah Weiner, Waters' assistant. "Well, yeah, I won a contest," I stammered, "but I just bake at home. The most I've baked was for Thanksgiving dinner." They needed to feed 40 -- at a $500 a plate dinner at Bob Woodward's house. Could it be done in my home ovens? I said I'd call back. I went home to figure out how much bread I needed to bake and realized I could probably do it -- 5 big loaves and several baguettes. I then called Peter Reinhart -- the renowned baker and author I've known for a couple of years -- to see what he thought. "That's not a lot of bread," he said, and he encouraged me to give it a whirl. So began my first gig as a professional baker -- at an Alice Waters' dinner. I quickly settled on breads I made time and again and eat at home -- a pain au levain made with sourdough and a mix of white, whole wheat and rye flours; a pane casareccio di Genzano, an airy white big loaf crusted with wheat bran that I picked up from Dan Leader's Local Breads; and of course, my baguettes. Levain I've never baked this much bread before, so I worked out a timeline -- and good thing too, since I would need to begin Friday to have the breads ready on Sunday. I started by feeding 50 grams (about a quarter-cup) of sourdough starter Friday morning, building it to 150 grams. On Friday night, I fed it again to take it up to 450 grams. Saturday morning, I refreshed it a third time. By Saturday evening, when I needed the ripe starter to make my doughs, I had over 1500 grams (3.3 pounds) of the stuff. With that steady feeding every 8-12 hours, the starter was bubbling, itching to impregnate the dough. It's pictured at left, and below, in the big bin on the right. Levain and flour I measured out the flours and began mixing the dough. I don't really knead or use a mixer. Rather, I combine the ingredients by hand until they come together. Then I let the shaggy mass rest so the flour slowly soaks in the water, then fold it over every hour or so to develop the gluten. By the end of the process, the dough glistens with moisture. If you pull away a small piece and stretch it, you should be almost able to see through it -- the so-called windowpane test that shows when a dough is done. This folding technique is a cousin to the no-knead method, since you just fold over the dough and let time do its work. It works beautifully, especially since my home mixer couldn't handle the volume of dough I made. Now the magic began -- the first rise, the source of all flavor -- and luckily it was a chilly night. Why was that important? Because I let my sourdoughs rise in an unheated basement storage room that is about 55F. That's the perfect temperature for a languid fermentation, when the sugars in the bread develop. Bakers buy proofing cabinets that cost thousands of dollars to get this temperature with refrigeration. My solution was less precise, but it worked fine. The genzano and baguette doughs rose in the refrigerator, since they contained instant yeast as well as sourdough and I wanted a slower fermentation. At 7 the next morning, I took the pain au levain dough out and let it warm up for about an hour. I then shaped three boules, letting them rise for 2-1/2 hours. In the meantime, I heated up the baking stones in my double-oven. Then I repeated this with the Genzano loaf, about an hour later, and then the baguette. The rise went well, full of oven spring. I attribute that to the levain, which you'll recall had built over a 52-hour period with successive refreshments, including the last one in the dough. (Pictured below are the pane casareccio di Genzano - Genzano Country Bread). Pane di Genzano I finished baking at about 2 p.m. and let the breads cool, then delivered the loaves for the dinner. Jean-Pierre Moulle, the chef at Chez Panisse, was there to greet me. We talked briefly about the breads and I mentioned I was a home baker, not a professional. "I know, but you did not bake these at home," he said. "Yes, I did," I countered -- and I noticed his eyebrow rise a bit. Later that evening, at a party preceding the dinner, Alice Waters took me aside, bread lover that she is, and thanked me warmly. It was a nice moment. For a home baker, there's always the moment of anticipation when the bread comes out of the oven and you wait for it to cool before tearing into it. Alas, with these loaves, I didn't get a chance to cut into them, to evaluate the flavor and aromas or assess the interior crumb or the density of the crust -- all crucial to a decent loaf. But I trust they were fine. The thing is, I don't bake for a living. There is no daily pressure, no waking at 1 a.m. to get to the ovens, no staff, no orders. It's just me and the bread. And until yesterday, I've only given my breads away to friends. Now I've donated them for a worthwhile cause. Maybe I've just widened the circle of people who eat my bread. And that's just fine. Dinner bread January 25, 2010 in Bread, Chef | Permalink | Comments (32) Technorati Tags: Bread, Food Reblog (0) | IFrame: favbutton-6a00d8341cc84e53ef0128770e7e4b970c | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | January 21, 2010 What's in that School Lunch Anyway? There's been a lot of talk lately about school nutrition, but what do kids actually eat? Ed Bruske, a former reporter who blogs at the Slow Cook, spent a week in a DC public school to find out. He came away with a cheese-filled six part series that is well worth reading. January 21, 2010 in Food and Drink, Nutrition | Permalink | Comments (1) Reblog (0) | IFrame: favbutton-6a00d8341cc84e53ef0120a7f77623970b | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | January 19, 2010 Really Easy Potato Pizza From Jim Lahey's "My Bread" ... Trust Me, It's Great By Samuel Fromartz One of the challenges for a home baker is to try and figure out how to make a great bread once you've tasted it. Like encountering the Platonic ideal, you recognize it, reach for it and try and duplicate it -- and then you fail miserably and often give up. Jim Lahey, the founder of Sullivan Street Bakery, was like a culinary Plato for me. Every bread he turned out was amazing and no matter how hard I tried I couldn't find a way to make the airy, light, wonderfully tasteful bread at home. To learn more, I actually visited his bakery in New York several years ago and did a story on him. And while he gave me a few generous tips in an interview (and critiqued the sample I had in my backpack), it wasn't enough. I had to learn on my own and like most bread, I later realized success was less about the recipe than the technique. Lahey, of course, later caused a storm on the Internet with his no-knead bread recipe, courtesy of Mark Bittman. Then, he spun those recipes into My Bread published this past fall, which ranks as a perfect starting point for an aspiring baker. 61SBam5Z8gL._SL160_ Less known than his bread, however, are his terrific pizzas, which he also includes in the book. These aren't the round pizzas he serves up at his New York restaurant, Company, but rectangular sheets of exceedingly thin-crust pizza, topped with onions, mushrooms or just tomato sauce. They are sold by the slice in his bakery. The big secret about these crispy gems? Like no-knead bread they are dead easy and fast to make. For the effort, you get great results. Continue reading "Really Easy Potato Pizza From Jim Lahey's "My Bread" ... Trust Me, It's Great" >> January 19, 2010 in Bread, Recipe | Permalink | Comments (3) Reblog (0) | IFrame: favbutton-6a00d8341cc84e53ef0120a7614e7c970b | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | January 12, 2010 Atlantic Writer Blames Arugula for California's Failing Schools In the media world, the hatchet job has long been a profitable one. It involves finding a major figure, uncovering a supposed flaw and then showing the world how it is a symptom of everything that's wrong with -- fill in the blank -- politics, business, schools, etc. Caitlin Flanagan's rant about Alice Waters qualifies as a glowing example of the genre. In the piece, she argues that Water's school gardens are doing everything to disenfranchise poor, undereducated kids by making them work outdoors rather than hitting the books. She leads off with a supposed child of a former migrant worker who goes to school -- only to do migrant-like work at the Berkeley middle school garden that Waters organized. The child is a figment of Flanagan's hyperactive imagination. Did she go to the school, talk to the kids or parents or teachers, ask if any kids felt they were being exploited, or even wasting time -- in a school garden? Why bother because she already knew the answer. I don't think anyone would dispute that schools are in trouble, especially California's with its famous budget troubles. A piece looking into those schools -- something that Flanagan's colleague Sandra Tsing Loh, for example, has done amusingly well in these same pages - would be welcome. And in fact, in the same Atlantic issue, there is a very worthwhile piece on what really makes students excel (hint: it's the teachers). Flanagan, however, fixates on little seedlings and argues not only that the gardens are misplaced but suggests they are the cause of said educational failures. Blame the arugula for school dropouts. The purpose of this argument is to skewer a person Flanagan viscerally detests. But finding Alice Waters' precious local foodie proclivities distasteful is one thing. (Even I found the bit where she poached an egg over an open hearth on 60-Minutes a bit much). Pinning the ills of the state's educational system on school gardens is something else again. What's next? Blaming the deep recession on Michelle Obama's White House garden because it takes the president's attention off more weighty problems at hand? It's long been known that adequate nutrition has a direct relationship on children's achievement in school. Whether gardens would have a bearing on this equation is a question Flanagan chooses to ignore. (Oh wait, she does explore this issue by traveling to a grocery store in Compton to get her answer. She decides poor people can get good food, but they mostly like junk and nothing but upward mobility will change that). Maybe the gardens can help with the nutrition equation. Perhaps they won't. But you can't get anything to grow without diligence, attention, planning and hard work -- all qualities that can be applied to other endeavors, even farming. (She never considers that a kid really drawn to the garden might end up owning a farm business in the state's $39 billion agriculture industry, rather than being a migrant -- not a far-fetched path in California). Whatever the case, it's clear that the gardens are a minor sideshow in the issues facing the California school system. As she writes: I have never seen an entire school system as fundamentally broken and rudderless as the California public schools, a system in which one out of five high-school students drops out before graduation, and in which scarcely 60 percent of the African American and Hispanic students leave school with a diploma. These young people are cast adrift in a $50 billion system in which failure is almost a foregone conclusion. In that universe of problems, she focuses on ... gardens? Frankly, I think her imaginary migrant parents would probably spend more time worrying about Sacramento gutting meager school resources and teachers' positions then about the 1-1/2 hours a week their kid spends tending the arugula. And they should. January 12, 2010 in Media, Sustainable | Permalink | Comments (6) Reblog (0) | IFrame: favbutton-6a00d8341cc84e53ef012876cd4192970c | Digg This | Save to del.icio.us | Twitter Updates follow me on Twitter Enter your email address: _____________________ [ Subscribe ] Delivered by FeedBurner * ChewsWise Search * ________________ [ Search ] Categories * Books * Bread * Chef * Ethanol * Farm Bill * Farms * Food and Drink * Food Safety * Gardening * GMO * Humane * Interview * Local * Media * Nutrition * Organic * Recipe * Regulation * Retail * Seafood * Sustainable * Television * USDA * Wal-Mart [IMG] Subscribe in a reader Blog powered by TypePad Amazon.com Widgets Blogs * 101 Cookbooks - Healthy Recipe Journal * Ask Hank: Bread Making Tips * Beyond Green * Beyond Pesticides * Blogfish * Center for a Livable Future * Civil Eats * Cooking Up A Story * Culinate - Eat to Your Ideal * Dan Lepard * Eating Liberally * Edible Nation * Enviroblog * Ethicurean * Fair Trade Certified * FarmPolicy.com * Green Fork * Green LA girl * Grist * Gristmill * IATP | Think Forward * La Vida Locavore * La Vie Verte * Michael Ruhlman * Mulch * Obama Foodorama * Oceana Wavemakers * Organic Confidential * Peter Reinhart's Blog * Poor Man's Feast * Sea Notes * Sierra Club: The Green Life * Stir the Pots * The Complete Patient * The Dinner Files * The Ethicurean * The Green Life * The Slow Cook * U.S. Food Policy * Wild Yeast Become a Fan About * ChewsWise * Samuel Fromartz Book * [IMG] Interviews * Author, Food Activist Mark Winne * Whole Foods' John Mackey * Honest Tea's Seth Goldman Top Posts * What Should Nobu Do on Bluefin Tuna? * Organic Standards: "Honeymoon is Over." * Reflections on Best Baguette * Why'd You Sell Honest Tea to Freakin' Coke? * Energy & Organic Farming * Organic Vegan Twinkie Arrives Recent Posts * Behind the Taste and Health Quotient of Whole Grains * Will This DC Community Garden Survive? * On Sale Now!!! 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