With a Sponge and a Crusty Baguette

I made baguettes.  Sort of.  My oven is too small to make a loaf of bread that could rightfully be called a baguette, so I guess these technically fall under the definition of a batarde.  Aside from being the French for bastard, a batarde is also a stubbier version of a baguette.

Here's the deal, bread like this is incredibly simple.  Four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt.  I used 20% whole wheat flour for some extra flavor, although that did sacrifice the nice big crumb texture that baguette should have.  Also, the water was 67% of the total weight of the flour.  (This means my dough was at 67% hydration, which is a bready term that you don't really need to care about.  Hydration levels just help to illustrate how different breads happen is all.)

So the bit about the sponge.  Well, a sponge is a term people use to describe a preferment.  This means a portion of the dough that is fermented before the rest of the dough (fermentation is the yeasty bit.  Some people say the bread is rising; other, more accurate, people say that it is undergoing fermentation).  The spongey bit shown here is known as a poolish, so called because it's supposed to be a method from Poland.  It involves taking a portion of your flour, around 30% or so, mixing it with an equal portion of water and a bit of yeast, and letting it sit till it gets light and bubbly.  This first pic is right after mixing the sponge.

Preferments are good because they help to develop extra flavor.  When water and flour are combined, the water activates an amylase enzyme in the flour that breaks the starches down into simple sugars.  This is called autolysis, or self-digestion.  The longer you let this happen, the more complex your flavor will be. Mix it up and ignore it for a while.  Go for a walk where it's quiet and dry; talk about precious things.


Preferments also develop some extra yeasty goodness that wouldn't happen in a quicker method.  Once the yeast is in there, you can't really let the thing sit around forever, so you do have to keep an eye on the optimal timing of the thing, which is based on how much yeast you put in to begin with.  I used enough yeast to have my poolish ready in two hours.  (For the sake of comparison, the pizza dough recipe of which I am rather fond uses a sixteen hour poolish.  Sixteen!)  But here's how it looks after two hours.

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Then you just mix the poolish in with the rest of the flour and water, plus a bit of salt for flavor and yesty crowd control.  Mix, knead, ferment, punch, scale, round, bench, (you don't need to know about all these words, I'm just making them up), shape, proof, and here we are:

Whoops, forgot to cut the slashes in it to make it look official:

That's better.

Bake them in a freakin' hot oven (seriously, 450f or more.  But my lame oven only got to about 375f after 30 minutes of preheating!  And it was set at 500f!  Curious to know if your oven is lying?  Buy an oven thermometer.)  Also, you need to get steam in your oven.  Just put a pan underneath your preheated baking stone (you already have one, correct?).  Pour some hot water in the pan just after you toss the bread onto the stone.

The steam delays the formation of the exterior crust, which gives extra volume to the loaves.  Essentially, the heat makes them blow up as much as possible before the crust hardens and prevents further expansion.  Also, steam causes partial starch gelatinization on the surface of the bread, which gives the crispy baguette crust we all know and love (though it kills my jaw.  Any other TMJ friends out there?)

Here is the bread.  If my oven had been hot enough, those slashes would have blown open into ear-like flaps called grigne.  Ah well.

Smallish holes, due to the extra weight and water absorption of the whole wheat flour.  Still awesome with oil and vinegar, roasted garlic, etc etc.

And the best thing about baguettes?  They have this crackly sound right when you take them out of the oven.  Some people say the baguette is singing, but that's nothing; you should hear them play piano.

Hatful of Challah

I made Challah.  It's a Jewish bread with a lot of eggs going on.  I got it all braided up before I realised that the the thing was too large for my silly little tiny oven.  The thing was all ready to go, so I just chopped it in half.  I didn't really know what else to do.  So instead of one nice Challah braid, I ended up with two loaves that looked more like Glo Worms than anything else.  Also, I used all my eggs in the bread, so I wasn't able to get the tops shiny with an egg wash.  Oh well.

 

This picture wasn't necessarily planned.  I just thought I'd throw it in there for a bit of irony.  Challah and porkchops?  Sorry.  I guess that's about as tasteful as a hot dog in a synagogue.

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Oh yes, things to note about this bread.  It has eggs, a good hit of sugar, and a fair amount of fat, in the form of oil.  All the Challah formulas I've seen use oil, but just the other day I saw one that used butter.  Anybody know how kosher that is, to use butter and all?  Because I know there's something about keeping dairy products away from animal products.  And so, oil in the presence of egg is better than butter with egg, or at least that has been my assumption.

Also, whenever you put egg yolks in bread, they help keep it soft and rich (because of the fats), but they also keep the bread "fresh."  Yolks have lecithin, which is an emulsifier.  Emulsifiers are used to combine two substances that wouldn't normally mix, such as oil and water.  But in the case of bread, emulsifiers help to prevent something called starch retrogradation, or staling.  They keep the moisture in the starch, essentially, so the bread doesn't dry out quite as quickly.

That Yolk Isn't Runny Anymore, Part II

I had big plans for the follow up to the previous post.  I really did.  There was a video involved and everything.  However, the batteries on my camera were much closer to dead than I thought, which sort of took the wind out of my sails, creatively speaking.  But there are pictures.

So here you go, That Yolk Isn't Runny Anymore, Part II, "What's All This Then About Boundaries?"

Yes, boundaries.  Boundaries will keep your egginess happy at much higher temperatures than usual.  And in the case of custards, boundaries = starch.  If you've ever added some flour or cornstarch to a cheesecake or pumpkin pie recipe, this is to give a bit of a cushion against the whole syneresis monster.

Probably the most basic, and most versatile, starch based custard is good ol' pastry cream.  Basically it's just pudding, with eggs.  You can make it with any flavor you feel like, and use it to fill anything you want.  Had an Eclair recently?  Pastry cream.  Banana cream pie?  Banana pastry cream.  Ohhhh, speaking of...

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So we'll saute up some bananas, B's Foster style and all.  That means buttery caramel and flaming rum.

So you have to stir the butter and sugar pretty awesomely fast, so it doesn't burn and all.  There's like a half cup of sugar in there, and a chunk of butter.  I don't know how much.  Who says baking needs to be precise?  Whatever.  Anyway, then you throw in banana bits when the lot turns brown, but before it turns black.

And then the fun part!  Chuck in a bunch of rum and let 'er blow.  This is really where I wanted the video to work, but alas, we're stuck with interesting long exposure photography.  So that flambe bit, there's differing opinions on it and all.  I'm of the opinion that it's strictly for show, and doesn't really do much other then burn off some alcohol that would have evaporated anyway.

But anyway, after the flames die out, pour it into a tart shell.  I made the tart dough with 50% whole wheat flour, brown sugar, and some cinnamon.  Sort of a graham cracker thing that way.

So here's the pastry cream part.  First, whisk up some eggs with some sugar and starch. 

I prefer cornstarch.  You can use flour, which is more common in the UK, or potato starch, which I've been told is common in France.  Any kind of starch, really. Also, I used brown sugar to compliment the other flavors going on with the bananas and all.  Then you whisk in hot milk, and stick it back on the stove.

It starts off liquidy, but then it magically thickens!  Smack it around in there so it doesn't burn, and bring it on up to a good boil.  Here's the trick when you're using starch in a custard: not only does it allow you to super heat your eggs, it actually requires you to do so.  Egg yolks have this thing called amylase, which is an enzyme that eats starch.  If you don't destroy the enzyme with heat, then over the next day or two the starches will break down and you'll get a watery mess.  So boil that cream!  And then pour it over the bananas.  Chill it in the fridge, covered with plastic wrap if you're not a fan of puddin' skin.  Then top it all off with some whipped cream for good measure.

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There you have it.  It actually ended up with some freshly grated nutmeg over the top, after the picture was taken.  I used the tart to bribe people to come keep me company, because I get lonely over here on the east side.  It was dark as we ate at my home, and on cold wooden seats, well it suddenly struck me: I just might die with a smile on my face after all.

That Yolk Isn't Runny Anymore, Part I

What Makes Relationships Work, and How We Can Apply This to Custard Cookery

Imagine a room of family members at a holiday gathering. This is not a lovey dovey close family. This is the awkward family that only gets together once a year, if that. They are all sitting around, with their hands in their pockets, making idle conversation about nothing in particular. There is no love in this family.

Love! If all they had was a bit of love! Let's see what happens when we add some to the mix. I think I’ll press the Storge button. One by one, the family members begin noticing each other. They get up from there well worn seats and mingle. They move about the room, and talk with all sorts of people they never really knew!

Once the warm fuzzies really set in, they take their hands out of their pockets. The love starts flowing, and one of them puts his arm around a long forgotten cousin. A little girl holds her grandfather’s hand. They all begin to enjoy to the happiness of physical contact. At this point, there is a sweetened glow of joy delicately contained within the family’s bonds.

If it ended there, all would be good. Unfortunately, we haven’t yet turned off the love. And, as we’ll now see, too much love is a bad thing. Creepy Uncle Dan thinks that he’s not getting as much love as Wacky Aunt Sue, and so he gets greedy. Little Charley, the spoiled nephew, gets selfish, and grabs more hands than he can handle. The family is now squeezing the happiness and joy out of the room! They are worse off than before any of this love stuff tried to start happening! And the damage cannot be undone! Your heart has been curdled by love!

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This is how custard works. Except replace the family with egg proteins, the love with heat, the joy and happiness with a liquid. It’s all there: cold egg proteins are anti-social, tangled up within themselves. Warmed up, they begin to loosen and denature. Once they bond, through a process called coagulation, they hold the liquid in a uniform mass. Too much heat, and curdling happens. This is called syneresis. The protein bonds get too close and squeeze the liquid away.

Remember your pumpkin pie that sucked cracked last Thanksgiving? Or your cheesecake that was really crappy grainy? Or the fact that your scrambled eggs are always a soupy mix of grit, yet you don’t realize that anything’s actually wrong because nobody ever told you that you’re FREAKING ABUSING YOUR EGG PROTEIN COOKING RESPONSIBILITIES?? These all happened because of syneresis. Your family eggs fell apart because of too much love heat.

What have we learned? Boundaries. Boundaries are important for keeping your heart safe and your custard delicious. I’m not advocating solitude, of course. When you laugh about egg yolks, who feel so very lonely, their only desire is to fry; well I’m afraid it doesn’t make me smile. I wish that I could, but that yolk isn’t runny anymore.

Stay tuned for part two.

bigmac strikes again

After making my saffron buns, I had a few egg whites sitting around. So I figured I'd do what any self respecting pastry nerd would do: make Macarons. I used Joe Pastry's recipe and method. It ended up being a pretty good decision to make them, because I'm scheduled to teach Classic French Pastries in a couple weeks, and it's been nearly two years since I've made macarons.

I'll let the pics speak for themselves this time around.

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stiff peaks in five minutes!
smack that meringue around any longer and it'd be in tears. literally.






Joe says the feet are the most important part.





























They are filled with an amaretto ganache, using Guittard 72% chocolate.

YoSafBread

You didn't expect me to try for a Smith's pun for every post title, did you? Although, ten points if you get this one.

I recently joined a really great forum called The Fresh Loaf. It's full of bread enthusiasts of all skill levels, and I am excited to be part of their community. The people there have a lot to offer, in terms of doughy knowledge and bready wisdom. One of their posted recipes is for Saffron Buns. This inspired my bread this week to be good and saffrony.

I'm sort of fascinated by saffron, to tell the truth. It's the world's most expensive spice, coming in at a couple thousand dollars per pound at most grocery store prices. (Trader Joe's sells a nice little jar for about five bucks. I'm not sure how much is in the jar, but it can't be more than a few grams.) The bright red threads are essentially the stamen from a certain type of crocus flower. One flower will yield only three threads, once per year, hence the high price tag. Now, given this fact, I really only made the bread because my coworker Melissa donated some saffron to the cause. She gets a good hunk of the final product, of course.

I don't know how to describe the flavor of saffron, because to me it has more of an aroma than a taste. The first time I experienced it was when my brother and I made saffron rice in 2004, as a way to become a bit more cultured before I visited India that summer. We agreed that it smelled much like an inflatable plastic wading pool. The plastic smell still gets me, but I can now recognise other aromas, floral ones and planty ones and the like. And it all still fascinates me.

Oh, and don't forget the brilliant yellow color you get from saffron. You have to infuse your liquids with the saffron before you use it. So what I did, taking a cue from Hank Sawtelle, was to infuse some melted butter (30g) with the saffron for 30 minutes, before pouring that into hot milk for further infusion. He quotes Harold McGee in saying that some of the saffron pigmentation is fat soluble, so I figured the butter would help the process along and all. After infusion, the liquid was used for a preferment. This pic is the sponge, all bubbly and ready to go. Look at that color! Fort Knox bread over here, or something.

In addition to the saffron, I added the rest of the ground cardamom from my Christmas bread, and a handful of zante currants. Zante currants, I learned, have actually nothing to do with the tasty berry known as the black currant (or its red or white cousins). Zantes are really just a type of raisin, specifically a raisin made from a type of grape casually known as the "champagne" grape.

So it's apparent that I'm deviating a bit from TFL's saffron bun recipe... But I'm ok with that. I took their recipe as an inspiration, I guess. My recipe is sort of more like a saffron - cardamom poor man's brioche. 30% fat, about 12% sugar, 30% eggs (mostly yolks, mmmmm). And again, done by hand, because I'm a glutton for punishment, ha.

My plan was to make 24 rolls at 65g each. I don't have sheet pans large enough for this (because our oven is tiny), so I figured I would just put them in muffin tins. But when I scaled out the dough, 65g looked way too small. I doubled them up, which I later regretted. Here are the buns, all proofed and all. I called my roommate in after the oven spring hit, and he described them as "comically large." Next time, I'd shoot for 90g.

Now, I don't have a problem with them being larger than expected. However, the size did mean that the bottoms portions inside the muffin cups began to burn before the balloony tops were done. Booo. All was not lost, you just have to not look at, or eat, the bottom portion of the crust :]














See? Not too bad. (Don't look at the bottoms!!!) The taste is unmistakably saffron, and the smell that flooded the kitchen during baking was absolutely amazing. And the color! Haha!!

Eating-wise, they're a bit heavy. I'm not sure if they were underproofed or what, but I thought I did that part correctly. Half of one is definitely enough for one person.