I love apples, and, at the Corvallis farmer's market, apples have been abundant lately. Everything from relatively new varieties like Liberty, to old varieties like Spitzenburg, to unusual European apples that are rarely seen in the U.S. like Calville Blanc, a very old French apple best suited for pies.
I decided that the height of the apple season deserved an apple-themed meal, whose centerpiece, of course, would be Normandy Apple Bread, a recipe from Jeffrey Hammelman's Bread that I've been eyeing for quite some time. The recipe is fairly simple. It's mostly white flour, with a bit of whole wheat, uses sourdough, substitutes half the water with apple cider and adds a healthy amount of dried apples. It also includes yeast, but I decided to omit it and let the starter work all alone.
I can heartily recommend it, based on my results:
And here's a picture of the crumb:
.
The baked bread tasted almost like an apple pie, with the sourdough tartness substituting for the lemon juice I often add to a pie.
The rest of the meal included butternut squash stuffed with chicken sausage and apples, spinach salad with pecans and apples, apple cider and, of course ...
APPLE PIE. This is the "Best Apple Pie" recipe from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, but, instead of a traditional top crust, I decided to do a simple crumb topping. My daughter, Iris, is in the background, finishing off a slice of apple bread. She's had some fun with face paints earlier in the day, as you can see.
I decided that the height of the apple season deserved an apple-themed meal, whose centerpiece, of course, would be Normandy Apple Bread, a recipe from Jeffrey Hammelman's Bread that I've been eyeing for quite some time. The recipe is fairly simple. It's mostly white flour, with a bit of whole wheat, uses sourdough, substitutes half the water with apple cider and adds a healthy amount of dried apples. It also includes yeast, but I decided to omit it and let the starter work all alone.
I can heartily recommend it, based on my results:
And here's a picture of the crumb:
.The baked bread tasted almost like an apple pie, with the sourdough tartness substituting for the lemon juice I often add to a pie.
The rest of the meal included butternut squash stuffed with chicken sausage and apples, spinach salad with pecans and apples, apple cider and, of course ...
APPLE PIE. This is the "Best Apple Pie" recipe from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, but, instead of a traditional top crust, I decided to do a simple crumb topping. My daughter, Iris, is in the background, finishing off a slice of apple bread. She's had some fun with face paints earlier in the day, as you can see.
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Well, not really - I just envy you ;-) Here in the central Midwest between the late spring freeze and the summer/fall drought essentially the entire apple crop was lost. By driving almost 200 miles to one of our former orchard hangouts we did manage to get 4 bags of good orchard apples (too bad about that child we had to leave in payment) but not enough to bake with.
So there are lots of good apples in the Northwest eh?
sPh
Sorry to hear about your predicament. Fall without apples just isn't fall, in my book anyway ....
Beautiful, JMonkey--I like the elfette sampling your wares, too.
Apple season here is winding down, most of the orchards are done picking, though there are still plenty of good apples to be had. I didn't know Oregon was an apple-growing region, but then Social Studies was lost on me. (Door County in Wisconsin was pretty proud of its apples, too, once upon a time.)
Heirloom apples are in a bit of a boom with the orchards in our area, as is IPM or integrated pest management, a sort of compromise approach between conventional and organic.
As for starter compensation, I just followed the recipe and eliminated the yeast altogether. It took about 5.5 hours for the bulk rise, and another 3 for the shaped rise, but, remember, I keep my house really chilly. You may not need as much time.
I also didn't knead, but used the trusty stretch and fold. Worked great.
JMonkey- I am finally getting back to this thread. I am still planning on making the Hamelman apple bread for Thanksgiving, but I just want to thank you for inspiring me to try another recipe from his book. I have too many bread books :) and forget about some of the interesting formulas that are in my older books. So I made his sourdough rye with raisins and walnuts:
In any case though the bread was pleasing, but I found it a bit bland. I noticed that the salt percentage was less than the breads that I have been making recently, and that would explain why. Did you think that the apple bread had sufficient salt for your taste? I am comparing this Hamelman formula to both Maggie Glezer's Thom Leonard boule and the whole wheat miche from BBA.