Pain à l’ancienne plus updates

Yeah, again, it’s been a minute. I bake, but I don’t write about what I’ve baked.

Since the last post, I’ve started a sourdough starter, made crumpets with its discard, made bread from it, and baked ciabatta, practiced shaping boules, made baguettes, bought a new oven, and ugh yeah, done some things, man.
Here are pics

This is the pain à l’ancienne, my new fave.

Crumb detail
The sourdough

First baguettes

FBoule and scoring practice with French Country bread

I can’t remember what bread this was. Let’s just call it bread.

Brioche buns

Raisin focaccia

Womp Womp

This one is a bit of a disappointment. It doesn’t taste bad, just plain and a little sour… not interesting at all. The texture is soft, chewy, and has a lot of give; it’s bouncy. And I like that. But, the flavor… meh. It can’t compare to yesterday’s loaf, like buddah dat one.

So, what was different?

1. I used a different brand of flour.
2. I used fresh yeast instead of active dry.
3. I may have overproofed, but I really have no idea. I get so confused by this whole “doubling in volume” bit that the bread making instructions mention.
4. I did a 35 minute autolyse and folded just once instead of kneading.
5. I tried to create a warmer environment for fermentation and proofing, the two fermentation periods.
6. I measured the temperature of the cool water required for the dough, and it’s a lot warmer to the touch than what I used yesterday. Maybe the cool water kept the dough temperature lower during both fermentation periods which allowed for a more complex flavor.

Tomorrow, I’m going to do something closer to what I did with yesterday’s loaf. I’m also going to keep the temperature cool for a slower fermentation. I’m not going to try to rush anything.

Cardamom Spelt Soda Bread

I went rogue this afternoon.

spelt/whole wheat/baking soda/salt/sugar/buttermilk/cardamom

I made up a recipe.

I went to the natural foods store to buy myself a box of lavender tea, and I came home with not only 20 sachets of lavender to brew but also a kilo of fine spelt flour that was on sale, ten days away from expiration. Must bake before waste. But, bake what? I’m not putting spelt in a baguette. Heresy. And a baguette is on tonight’s baking menu.

Soda bread.  My current go-to when I want to play with flour and put something into the oven. Max 10 minutes of action + 50 or so minutes of waiting = bread.

I started with the spelt. 330g weighed then sifted. I then weighed and sifted 100g of whole wheat flour. This whole wheat was so whole I found a wheat ear in my strainer. I felt so rustic in a good way. I also added the remainder of an almost empty bag of grits because why not.

I stirred all the dry ingredients together with my hand and created a well in the middle. Into that well, I poured the buttermilk, stirring it in with a wooden spoon until the mixture became a shaggy mess (shaggy mess, this term keeps getting thrown around in so many of the recipes that I’ve read. I like it. shaggy mess. no, you’re a shaggy mess!)

Once out of the oven, I let it cool on the clothes drying rack underneath a damp towel to avoid too crisp a crust. I don’t have a drying rack. I tried to find one at the mall. No luck. It’s not necessary though. The clothes drying rack is perfect, plus spring is just about here, so for about 6 or so months, we won’t need it for clothes anyway.

Here is the final result

It tastes pretty good, saltier than expected. I think the spelt holds the salt well-dispersed much better than the white flour that I’ve used in the past. I love the rough mealy goodness of the whole wheat, and the cardamom really compliments the flavor of the spelt.

If I had gone full 100 on my urges to experiment, I would have added raisins. I really wanted to add raisins, but the analytical part of brain reminded me about the weight of the raisins possibly affecting the rising, which would then require an adjustment to how much baking soda I use, and too much baking soda with too little buttermilk can create a soapy taste instead of the light sweetness that occurs when the basic of the soda hits the acid of the buttermilk, and I don’t want to add too much buttermilk because that makes for too much spread and a flat as fuck bread and are you feeling the anxiety yet? Okay, so no raisins this time. Raisins next time after I do a little bit of research. That cardamom is begging for raisins. This bread is still tasty though!

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Cardamom Spelt Soda Bread (a recipe in the making, still in its experimental stages)

• 330g spelt flour, weighed then sifted
• 100g whole wheat flour, weighed then sifted
• 20-30g grits
• 1 tsp baking soda (I added 1.25, but I think 1 tsp and a pinch is better)
• 1 tsp salt (I used 1.5 of celtic, but felt it a little too salty)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 tsp cardamom
• around 420 ml buttermilk

tools:

• big bowl
• wooden spoon (optional)
• silicone spatula (helpful, but totally optional)
• baking sheet
• parchment paper
• wet sharp knife
• toothpick

1. preheat oven to 180-200F (I have a crazy oven, so I’m chill about this)
2. put parchment on baking sheet
3. mix the dry ingredients together (I think I stirred at least 30 times)
4. make a well in the middle of dry mixture
5. pour in your buttermilk and stir with your hand or a stiff wooden spoon
6. when it’s a shaggy mess, like you see no streaks of buttermilk and at least 97% of the flour is incorporated, plop it onto the parchment-lined baking sheet
7. use either your hands or a silicone spatula to shape it nice and round
8. use the wet sharp knife to cut a cross into the dough (I cut deep) and re-wet the knife with cold water between cuts
9. put in oven
10. wait
11. stick with toothpick to see if done (if the toothpick comes out clean) and also knock on the bottom of the bread (does it sound hollow? if so, done)
12. cool on a drying rack, under a damp towel if you don’t want the crust to get very crisp
13. when totally cool, eat

Burger Buns

yeast/flour/water/egg/butter/sugar/salt/oil/sesame seeds

Today, I made burger buns. I rolled dough into little balls, brushed their tops with eggs and milk (this is what gives them their shine), and dusted them with sesame seeds. I remember my thoughts when I randomly placed that bag of sesame seeds into my Carrefour shopping cart, “What the hell am I going to do with these? This is a really big bag.” In yo FACE, Shantai from two and a half weeks ago! Burger bunzzz!

As you can see, they’re all a bit different. No two are of the same size or shape. There’s the baby one, the fat uncle, the grandma with the snaggle tooth…. A happy family , half of which are currently being destroyed by the collective force of me and my partner’s digestive systems.

…

I kneaded dough for the first time.

I took this picture about five minutes in, and I then kneaded for six minutes more.

I put the kneaded dough into a large oily plastic mixing bowl, covered the bowl with plastic wrap, and let it sit near my furnace to keep the yeast warm and toasty. About an hour and 45 minutes later, when it doubled in size, it became so much fun to play with, this cool stretchy gracefully goopy mass. I felt like a kid again, and the only one home to see my excitement was Phoebe. This is Phoebe.

She was as ‘over it’ during my moments of excitement as she looks in this photograph. I love her.

Here are the balls of dough I rolled from the fun goop.

And here they are after resting under a towel for about an hour.

 

Things I learned today:

• What people call warm and tepid is actually quite hot to me, which explains last week’s series of yeast disappointments. Thank you, thermometer that I accidentally purchased online when I didn’t know what an oven thermometer looked like! You’ve come in handy, meat thermometer.
• Kneading is a lot of fun! You push and fold and turn and push and fold and turn. I love the way the dough feels underneath my hands, how it pushes back. It feels so interactive, and I’m reminded that the dough is alive (yeast). Also, it really is hard to overknead by hand because it sort of hurts to knead (hurts to need, omg I love it).
• Burger buns are super easy to make (recipe here).

 

I made burger buns today. 😀 Never in my life did I think this would be a thing for me to do. I always associated burger buns with bread aisles in grocery stores and picking off the stale bits when I got home. Not anymore! Fresh burger buns are now a thing in my life. I feel so free, so less dependent upon what my local supermarkets decide to provide. It’s a cool feeling.