hansjoakim's blog

This is Major Tom to Ground Control!

My local grocery store have just started to stock buckwheat flour, a flour I'm completely new to. To try to figure out what it's all about, I pulled Whitley's "Bread Matters" from my shelf - a great book by a passionate baker with a separate chapter on gluten-free baking. On buckwheat, Whitley says:

Good qualities: Traditionally used in Russia (in wholegrain form) to make kasha (porridge) and as flour to make blini (pancakes), usually in combination with wheat flour. In modern gluten-free baking, mainly used sparingly to provide some flavour and nutritional value in breads, cakes and savoury biscuits.

Problems: Disliked by some on account of its pungent flavour, which is an acquired taste.

Hmm. "Pungent flavour". Well... better start off easy on the buckwheat then, right?

So far, I've experimented with a buckwheat content between 5% - 25% of the total flour weight, and I can't say I notice any negative pungency. There's certainly a different flavour note to the breads; quite subtle and hard to describe, really. A subtle, piercing, nutty kind of flavour. Anyways.

Today I baked what I think is becoming one of my favourite multigrain sourdoughs: There's 20% buckwheat and 10% whole rye in this loaf, and the soaker is a combination of flax, sunflower, quinoa and pumpkin seeds.

I do think the buckwheat makes the crust brown quicker than what I usually get. The loaf comes out with a crackling crust, almost like a baguette. And the crumb attains a slightly grey colour, also due to buckwheat, I would guess?

It's fun to mix in different flours in tested recipes. Earlier last week, I used 30% whole rice flour in a pain au levain, and that gave the loaf a completely different flavour. Slightly bitter, I would say. Not something I'd like every day of the week, but certainly terrific together with an ageing brie I was having a love affair with.

For dinner, I went with a blind baked pâte brisée tart shell filled with scrambled eggs, a dab of Dijon mustard and freshly cooked crab. The recipe (and inspiration) came from Michel Roux' brilliant book on pastry.

Cherries are also starting to pop up in grocery stores and markets around here, and this week I had the opportunity to make a cherry clafoutis (not photographed, recipe also from Roux' book) and a Gâteau Basque:

This is a very simple tea/coffee cake with a pastry cream and/or cherry filling. Since I had some left over cherries, I pureed a bunch in my mixer, and used that as the single filling in the cake. As I wrote, it's a very simple cake: Cream butter, sugar and eggs, and fold in flour, a speck of baking powder, some vanilla extract and load up your pastry bag. The batter resembles that of choux pastry, and it's deposited into the pan by first filling the bottom in a spiralling motion. Then pipe a border along the rim, top the interior with filling, before you pipe the top over the whole to seal it. Sprinkle on chopped almonds and bake in a low oven for just under an hour. Nothing too fancy, but goes well with a cup of coffee!

Here are some of my recent loaves: This weekend I had a go at a Pain Meunier ("Miller's bread"), which is a great tasting wheat loaf. Apparently, this kind of bread was invented by boulangers as a way to thank their millers for reliable flour and grains. The whole wheat kernel is used in these recipes; in addition to wheat flours, cracked wheat, wheat germ and wheat bran are often added. The result is a wonderful, nutritious wheat loaf, with an appealing golden colour.

I used the overall recipe from Suas' ABAP as my jumping off point, added some more whole wheat flour, increased the hydration slightly, and tweaked it so that I could use my firm, white starter for the loaf. A very nice everyday wheat loaf!

I've also had great success with turning this dough into rustic wheat baguettes, but then I've opted for a poolish instead of a firm starter as the preferment. This dough yields baguettes with a crisp crust and a full wheaty flavour. Recommended.

The next loaf is the whole grain loaf from the same book. My first go at this formula, so you can see from the photo below that I was slightly "optimistic" in scoring the loaf... The oven spring wasn't exactly tremendous, so the cuts just barely opened up, but the loaf held its profile very well during the bake. I guess a thorough mix followed by gentle shaping is the way to go with loaves like this.

The formula calls for a whole wheat levain, so the only white flour comes from the stiff starter used to seed the levain. The rest is a mix of whole wheat flour, rye meal, medium rye flour and a soaker of flax, sesame, sunflower seeds and rolled oats. I just had a slice with some chèvre and one with herring, and I found both to be "most agreeable" (i.e. "great"). The dominating taste in this loaf for me, is the soaker combined with a certain spicyness that I'll ascribe to the rye meal.

Yesterday I baked two Gibassiers - a flat bread from the Luberon region of France. The dough is rich, made up of milk, eggs, olive oil, butter, orange blossom water (I couldn't find any, so I used Cointreau instead - perhaps making this the "grown up version" of the Gibassier?), candied orange peel and anise seeds. Mixing this kind of dough is pretty labour intensive, as it should have a good windowpane before mixing is over, and sugar and butter need to be added late in the mixing process to not inhibit gluten formation.

To be perfectly honest, I was slightly disappointed by the resulting loaves. Don't get me wrong: The taste was remarkabe, the crumb was velvety soft and delicate and the kitchen filled up with the most pleasing orange scent. It was just that, at every second bite, I was a bit reminded by my favourite scone recipe... And that's something one pulls from the oven about 30 minutes after mixing has begun - the Gibassier is made with an overnight sponge and needs to see some pretty intense mixing. Of course, a scone can never compete in terms of crumb texture, keeping qualities or the full taste complexity of the Gibassier, but I'm still undecided whether the end result is fully worth it. Well, it certainly is if you want to bake something special for a celebration or a holiday, but perhaps not as a mid-week treat... Let's leave it at that for now. I'll probably change my mind the next time I make them ;)

...but bread is alright.

I wanted to experiment a little this week, so I decided to bake two new loaves. I think both turned out rather well, and I'll probably add them to the list of loaves I'm baking quite frequently. The first one is a loaf that goes remarkably well with most kinds of fruit, preserves, a wide range of cheeses and besides your dinner plate: A sourdough rye with toasted hazelnuts and raisins.

This loaf is based on my favourite 40% rye recipe, with a healthy filling of toasted hazelnuts and raisins. For this loaf, I used 15% each of nuts and raisins, based on the overall flour weight.

Above is the crumb; the significant amount of nuts and raisins makes sure you get a healthy bite of nutty sweetness in each slice :) And as I said, this loaf is spectacular with most kinds of cheese (trust me when I recommend goat cheese and/or strong blue cheese), and they're a great treat on hiking trips if you shape them into rolls:

The next loaf on the list, is a pain de campagne-style loaf with roasted tomatoes and sun-dried tomatoes:

I had some tomatoes lying around that I wanted to put to good use, and figured I could put them in some loaves. I cut them into cubes, tossed them in olive oil, salt, pepper and basil, and roasted them good and long... to add more punch to the loaves, I also added a bit sun-dried tomatoes. I wanted a "rustic" look on these, so I didn't shape them into anything particular after their bench rest; I simply patted them into two rectangles on top of parchment paper on my peel. Still, they sprung up quite significantly in the oven:

A very tender and moist crumb, with a crunchy crust. I really like how tomatoes colour the crust and infuses it with dark spots... A great loaf for salads or pasta dishes!

If you're eating at my house, there's a good chance there's dessert waiting... It's been a gruelling long winter around these parts, and, in a desperate attempt to force spring upon these shores, I opted for a "fresh fruit" charlotte. "Fresh fruit" in that I had to resort to frozen berries to make the charlotte... Hopefully there's real fresh fruit around for my next attempt at this one ;) The recipe is taken from Suas' ABAP, and below is a photo of the mise en place for the charlotte:

Here's a 15cm cake form lined with a ladyfinger bottom and ladyfingers along the sides (trimmings and unused, wrinkled ladyfingers on the right). That was a time consuming task - getting all those fingers standing upright at the same time... I'll admit that my piping skills are not all that, so most of the ladyfingers had some "blisters" or wrinkles to them. Still - they lined up! Over the form are the two frozen discs that go into the charlotte: A berry compote on the left and a frozen disc of lemon crèmeux on the right. Not shown is the diplomat cream that is used for filling (I had to stash the bowl with diplomat cream in the fridge while lining up these guys). The filled charlotte (after the diplomat cream is set) is topped with berries (again, I had to resort to frozen berries... still tasted good though):

And another one:

English accent: "I got blisters on my fingers!" Seriously, this charlotte tasted great. The berry compote insert and the diplomat cream go extremely well together, and the lemon crèmeux adds a lot of fruity summer vibes to each spoonful. Yum.

The final bake, was some Paris-Brest pastries. I've never tasted the real thing (I'll do on my next trip to France), but I was immediatelly intrigued when I read about them in my pastry book. In short, this pastry was created in 1891 by a pastry chef called Pierre Gateau (no kidding!), who piped pâte à choux in the shape of bicycle wheels, and filled them with the most rich cream you can imagine (a comination of pastry cream, butter and praline paste). As monsieur Gateau owned a patisserie along the route of the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race, he made this pastry to honor the riders of the race.

Praline paste, which goes into the Crème Paris-Brest, is something I've never seen in stores around here. Luckily, I found a recipe for the paste in Friberg's pastry book (I love that his book contains a recipe for basically any pastry component you'll ever need):

Above on the left is the butter/praline paste mix (it's a bit spotty in places, because I had a hard time grinding the hazelnuts fine enough in my processor), and on the right is my pastry cream. So, left + right (folded together) = Crème Paris-Brest:

Now, if you've ever banged your head in the wall in utter frustration of never getting large holes in your crumb, I would prescribe making some choux pastry. That'll get your spirits up and help you regain your confidence:

No sourdough in these ones however... it's all about capturing the steam. Now, piping the cream in the middle of the choux "wheels" resulted in something amazingly decadent and rich:

As I haven't had these before, I can't say if I nailed the design or the look of a genuine Paris-Brest, but the taste was incredible. If anyone here has tried them, or made them, I'd love to hear from you! There are some things I'd like to discuss about this choux business. Anyways...the Paris-Brest: Light choux pastry with that rich praline cream sandwiched in between... ohlala. Tres bien! Bon appétit!

I made two loaves this week: The first was a take on the "Pain au levain with whole wheat flour" from Hamelman's book. Although I've had the book on my shelf for just over a year, I hadn't tried any of his pain au levains before. The time was overripe (like a "bubbly, collapsed poolish"-overripe). To make things a bit more interesting, I replaced half of the bread flour with spelt, and added a liberal amount of wheat bran to the recipe. I guess this detracted a bit from the potential loaf volume, but added to its nutritional value and the flavour.

Cutting loaves successfully is something of the hardest of the whole bread baking process if you ask me... Since this is a pretty light loaf (only 20% whole wheat and 5% rye), I opted for the classic baguette cut. Not very symmetrical or anything, but a nice bloom on the first cut at least. "The first cut is the deepest", that's a song, isn't it?

Below is a photo of the crumb - pretty homogeneous crumb with no large pockets, but that's usually the way loaves turn out at my place. To be honest, I prefer a more even crumb too. I was very happy with the profile of the loaf, especially since there's quite a bit of spelt in there. The photo doesn't show it, but the crumb is also specked with wheat bran. Yum!

I really enjoyed making this pain au levain from "Bread", and I was amazed by how quickly it all came together. That's what you get from working mainly with rye doughs, I guess :-)

The flavour is very clean, wholesome wheat and the crust has a brilliant crunch to it. The crumb is also very soft, and this loaf goes well with both fish, meat and cheese.

The second loaf I made was a Leinsamenbrot - a rye loaf stuffed with flax seed. This is approximately 66% rye, so it's a pretty filling bread. I'm getting more and more into making hearty rye loaves with my firm white starter (50% hydration), and I wonder how much further the rye content can be increased without getting those large holes from the dreaded starch attack during baking. For this loaf, approx. 15% of the total flour comes from the starter, the final dough is quite high in hydration (77-78% I guess), and there's only a small speck of yeast in it (about 0.3% fresh yeast). I let it bulk ferment for roughly 2 hours and final proof 1hr 15 mins. I've found this procedure to result in nice, open crumbs and a pleasant rye flavour. If you're after a really sour rye, you'll probably have to opt for a rye starter as well!

I also promised desert! I found some tempting pears at the store the other day, and decided to have a go at a pear tart. I used a sweet tart dough (pâte sucrée), a frangipane filling and sprinkled the poached pears with cinnamon and sugar. Some chopped almonds and powdered sugar in between the pears. I had no idea how much frangipane to put in the tart - I was hungry and running a bit late, so I think I scooped a bit much into it, but fortunately it didn't spill over the edge...

Hi all,

It's been a while since I posted something here, so I thought I should put up some photos I've taken of stuff I've hauled from the oven over the last month or so. I've been occupied with the bread and pastry books by Friberg and Suas, so all of these recipes are taken from those sources.

Breads

I've baked most of the sourdough breads from ABAP, and I've found the sourdough rye and sourdough multigrain to be excellent breads. I've made a variation on the rye twice - first as a boule:

... then as a batard:

Here's the crumb of the batard version:

This is a very nice, well balanced base recipe for a filling everyday rye. The versions above are approx. 55% ryes, mostly whole rye. Curiously, this rye is made with a stiff white starter, so the flavour is very mildly sour. In the above loaves, there is about 0.3% fresh yeast, so the loaves are bulk fermented a good 2 hours, and given a final proof of just under 90 minutes. There is a delicious rye flavour to these loaves! As I said, I find the recipe to be a great "base" recipe for adding in other things as well - I added caraway and anise seeds to the batard above, and I'll be making this again with other seeds and some whole grain soakers in the future.

Below is a photo of the sourdough multigrain from ABAP - also a terrific formula. Here enjoyed with herring, a fresh salad and sour cream.

Croissants

My freezer's been out of croissants for months on end, so a couple of weeks ago I decided to get my act together and haul out that butter block from the fridge! I used the simplest croissant recipe from ABAP (i.e. no preferments or sourdough), but gave the dough an overnight retardation in the fridge during bulk fermentation. The dough came out relaxed and easy to work with.

I'm using three single turns during lamination of croissant doughs, and this time I formed ordinary croissants (since I'm making these so rarely, I wanted to practice shaping a bit). After a few minutes in the oven, and the melted butter scent is filling the apartment, it's time to crank out that victory beer I've been saving:

I was very happy with how these turned out - as full and rich in taste as any croissants I've made before with a preferment in the dough, but this time with a much lighter interior. I couldn't get a decent photo of the interior cross section, but it was incredibly light and fragile, almost like a spiderweb by the look of it!

Layer upon layer upon layer upon... yum...

Pastry

Easter time is the season for oranges where I come from, so I candied some peel from oranges I had and put them in cream scones together with dark raisins. A real treat!

I like my scones very cake-like (I hate those hard, chewy bricks I sometime get at the store... never again!), so I just blend everything together in a bowl (by hand or using a rubber spatula), before gently pressing the sticky mess into a springform. Slice, wash and bake! I cream washed these before putting them into the oven, so they came out a bit paler than cream scones with a proper egg wash.

Still good for breakfast, though.

After pulling those croissants off, I wanted to take things two turns further, and opted for a go at the puff pastry dough from Friberg's book. I've only done croissants three times before and never any puff, so this was definitely an eye opening experience. A massive chunk of butter where gently incorporated into a shaggy dough, and given five single turns. After the final turn, I rolled the dough gently into a rectangle 2-3 cm thick. In the photo underneath is about 2/3 of the dough (the other third was in the prepping stages of some puff pastry diamonds - more on those below) wrapped in cling film. (By the way, if anyone has made the puff dough from Friberg's book, and you don't mind, would you send me a message? There are some things in preparing the butterblock that I'd like to clear up!)

As I said, this was my first experiment with puff dough, so I had no idea about the powerful punch this stuff packs when it gets into a steaming hot oven. Check out the oven spring:

If there only could be a way to put 243 layers of butter into that rye dough... I used 1/3 of the puff dough to make some puff pastry diamonds with chunky apple filling and some with pastry cream (not shown here).

Finally, for something a bit different - I'm not much of a cake baker, but I'd really love to learn how to do it properly. I've only made one layered cake before (a simple lemon curd cake), so I picked one of the simplest layered cakes in ABAP, an Opera cake. The Opera is typically made from a biscuit viennoise or a joconde sponge base, which is cut and stacked alternately with coffee buttercream and a chocolate ganache. A strong coffee soaker adds to the caffeine rush of this cake. Do not eat it on empty stomach. Or if you are pregnant. Or if you have a heart condition.

I used the recipe for the joconde sponge from Friberg's book (finished sponge, messy bowls and working notes below), and took the rest from ABAP.

I can mix a decent buttercream and form an edible chocolate ganache, but for me, the challenge is always in putting the many components together in something that you'd like to serve other people...!

Although my cake is a far cry from this sexy slab of Opera, I was still quite happy with how it turned out:

The layer breakdown:

I've seen Hamelman's five-grain rye sourdough bread recommended a couple of times, but it wasn't until this morning that I had the opportunity to bake it for myself. It's a modest 25% whole rye, but the loaf is also studded with seeds and cracked rye, and there's a lot of flavor in it.

No easily obtainable "high-gluten flour" around these parts, so I used my regular flour, but made sure the dough was strong and well-developed before bulk fermentation. It looked delicious even at that stage: A nice brown ball, flecked with dark flaxseeds and cracked rye. The rye sour infuses each slice with great taste, and the soaker and the high hydration keeps the crumb ultra moist and tender.

So, when breakfast's over, and you pour yourself a cup of black coffee, what better way to finish off your meal than with some Viennoserie? Last week I made a batch of croissant dough, using some prefermented dough and putting 20% whole wheat flour into the mix. Half of the dough was rolled around spinach and feta cheese filling, and the other half was brushed with pastry cream and sprinkled with raisins. Yum!

Howard's been baking his way through many of Suas' recipes at a furious pace. His posts have been equally inspiring and enlightening. With Howard way ahead of the curve, the last few weeks I've found myself sifting through the debris and studying the dough scraps left in his wake. Wanting a simple, clean and filling every day loaf, I had my first crack at the whole wheat sourdough (dough scrap #1).

I branched a stiff white starter off my rye starter on Saturday morning. By Sunday morning, the stiff white levain was good to go. The whole wheat flour I'm using has a very high content of bran, so I'm paying close attention when mixing the dough. As opposed to Howard, who did a shorter mix followed by a series of folds, I went with Suas' directions, and did an improved mix. Due to the many bran particles in the dough, it's difficult to get a perfect windowpane, but after a total of 8 - 10 mins. in the mixer, and a few folds in the bowl using a dough scraper, the dough was remarkably strong when I tugged at it. With the improved mix, there are usually no folds during bulk fermentation, so the dough was allowed to ferment for two hours uninterrupted.

Just yesterday I received my first ever brotforms, and I was a bit nervous that the dough would stick during final proof. A liberal dusting prevented that... thank heavens. Instead, a nicely risen boule bumped down on the peel, and off into the oven it went.

As you can see, the crumb is a bit darker than Howard's (probably due to the coarse WW flour in my mix?), and the above crumb is also more uniform. I'm guessing that Howard's initial autolyse (increased extensibility) and his shorter mixing time are both contributing to a more irregular crumb structure in his version of the bread. Additionally, I shaped the dough into a quite tight boule, which also usually suggests a more uniform crumb. The desired loaf characteristics should dictate the choices made during the baking process.

This is a solid everyday bread that can be used to virtually everything. It's got a deliciously moist crumb, and a splendid aroma. Top it with cheese, meats, fish, jam or nothing - it's a terrific bread either way!

I'm eating a lot of bread these days :)

The latest batch to come out of my oven, is pictured below: Two loaves of Suas' caramelized hazelnut squares.

A total of four different preferments are mixed 12 hours before the final dough: Two levains (a white and a rye levain), and two stiff sponges (a white and a whole wheat sponge). The two sponges and the white levain are very stiff, probably to make the final dough stronger. I did consider doing an autolyse on the non-prefermented flour, but I feel the resulting increased protease activity would counteract the effect of the stiff preferments, so I dropped the autolyse. The recipe doesn't call for any either, and I think it was a wise choice as the overall dough is very wet (77%).

After an "improved mix" and some folds in the bowl using a plastic scraper (thanks to mountaindog for updating me on the vocabulary!), roasted and caramelized hazelnuts were incorporated on first speed. The mixed dough was bulk fermented for two hours, with a very gentle fold after one hour. The dough was a bit sticky but not overly so. Wet hands and a dough scraper saved it from getting stuck to the table :)

No pre-shaping on this one, just cut it in two pieces and scooped them into rectangles and 35 mins. proof.

The rustic "squares" (yeah, mine aren't exactly square now are they?) are incredibly rich in flavor. To me, the recipe is perfectly balanced between a wheaty, slightly sour note and the sweet, decadent hazelnuts. The crumb is very airy and light, and the crust is crunchy and strong. What to put on top of these slices? I tried one with some Dutch cheese and one with a bit of honey, but for this loaf, my best advice is: Bread alone. :)

Here's a photo of some whole rye and whole spelt small breads that I pulled from the oven this morning. They're made from approx. 50% high extraction wheat flour and 25% each of whole rye and whole spelt. The rye comes from a ripe sourdough. To shape them, I form the dough into a batard that I cut crosswise into eight or nine equal pieces. One of the "cut" sides are brushed with water and gently placed in a seed mix. They're flipped and put onto a pan. Delicious and filling, with a savory, "earthy" flavor.

Next up is the spelt bread from Suas' Advanced Bread and Pastry. This was a great dough to work with, 90% spelt and 10% whole spelt, gently mixed, and bulk fermented for three hours. The dough is mixed very carefully, and some dough strength is developed over three folds during the bulk fermentation. 33% of the flour comes from a spelt poolish, so the dough feels quite slack and extensible all the way to final shaping. Suas writes that there's no pre-shaping for these, the dough is simply cut in two, and placed as "rectangles" on "well dusted linen". I think the dough behaved remarkably like a ciabatta dough, even though the hydration is only 68%. Quite fragile and sticky, but still smooth and a joy to work with. A fragrant, great bake that had a tremendous oven spring. The crust is very crispy, and there's a slight nutty flavor (probably coming from the poolish and the inherent "spelt" flavor). I made two of these rustic loaves, and they're well worth the effort! Advanced Bread and Pastry is a book I'm getting more and more fond of.

Finally, slightly branching out ("The Fresh Cake" anyone?): Apple breakfast cake, also from Suas. Lots of apples, walnuts and raisins. Yum!! Probably the best apple cake I've tasted... I picked this one, as it was the least intimidating of Suas' cake recipes ;-)

I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and lovely new year celebrations!

After getting the rye sauerteig starter from Leader's Local Breads going, I have been gradually working my way through Hamelman's rye sourdoughs. I've become completely enamored with hearty rye loaves, and I feel I am getting a bit better at working with these kinds of doughs.

I've baked the straight oatbread from Bread several times, and it has served as one of my favorite "quick breads" that I make when I don't have the time to do a sourdough/pre-fermented bread. However, I've always thought that it's on the light side, and that it stales pretty fast. So, yesterday I had a go at a modified version, where I replaced some of the bread flour with a rye sauer. This is my first iteration, but I feel it turned out pretty good. I post my working recipe below. Next time, I think I'll substitute some of the bread flour with more wholewheat, to give it an even heartier feel. Suggestions are very welcome, and please let me know how it turns out if you have a go at it!

All the rye flour is pre-fermented (34.7%). Apologize for the awkward percentages, I did some tweaks to a preliminary formula, so most quantities came out with decimal percentages. The amounts below yielded two average sized ovals.

Overall formula

• Wheat flour 260 gr. (42.1%)
• Wholewheat flour 143 gr. (23.2%)
• Whole rye flour 214 gr. (34.7%)
• Rolled oats 143 gr. (23.2%)
• Water 540 gr. (87.5%)
• Oil 54 gr. (8.8%)
• Honey 36 gr. (5.8%)
• Salt 12 gr. (2%)
• Fresh yeast 8 gr. (1.3%)

Rye sourdough

• Whole rye flour 214 gr. (100%)
• Water 214 gr. (100%)
• Rye starter 11 gr. (5%)

Prepare rye sourdough 16 - 18 hrs. before the final dough is mixed. Bulk fermentation: 1 hr. Final fermentation: 50 - 60 minutes. Bake at 240C for 15 minutes, then at 220C for another 20-30 minutes.