Pain a l'Ancienne

Sunday, February 7, 2010

I think a l'ancienne means something like "in the old-fashioned, or traditional, style." But I like to think of it as "bread of the ancients," or even "bread for old people," which is right up my alley. Those ancients knew how to make bread.
Reader Paul has been urging me to try this recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I wanted to try it, but when I looked at the recipe, I just didn't get how to shape it. As it turns out, you pick up the dough and it shapes itself. It's as if it has gone to obedience school. (Cakes, on the other hand, never go to obedience school. At least they don't graduate).
What the ancients like to do with bread dough is mix it up with ice cold water. This is very counter-intuitive, isn't it? Even though I don't proof my yeast any more, I still fear that too hot or too cold water will kill it, and I usually try to give it a nice, room-temperature water that won't shock its sensitive little system. But in this recipe you want to shock it. The idea is to make it ferment very, very slowly to develop flavor.

Here it is after being mixed with ice water and then put immediately in the refrigerator to retard its growth overnight. I let it rise for another three hours in the morning, and dumped it onto a well-floured counter. With more flour on top, it shapes easily into a rectangle.

This rectangle of dough is cut into six pieces. I used three of them for baguettes, and put three in the freezer, in individual small ziplock bags, for later use--probably for pizza. At least, I'll try one for pizza and see how it works.

Now here's where I didn't understand what was supposed to happen. There are no directions for shaping the bread into baguettes, but once I picked up a strip, I saw why there was no need for directions. If you just pick it up, you barely even need to stretch it. It stretches itself and goes right into the baguette pan, practically of its own accord.

It really was the most remarkably docile bread dough, especially considering that it's a pretty wet dough. It was not quite so tractable when it came time for it to be slashed. In fact, Reinhart says that you can skip the slashing step if the bread is uncooperative, but I don't think you should skip it. He also suggest using scissors, but I thought the scissors were less effective than my usual little lame.

When you see the breads ready to go into the oven, you can tell which one was scissored and which ones were lameed. (Spellcheck is not going to like that word).

You know how wonderful the kitchen smells when bread is baking? Well, this bread smells even more so.

Good as the aroma is, the taste is better. The loaves have a toasted wheat flavor that's quite remarkable. Despite the length of the instructions in the cookbook (and below), it's a very easy bread to make. All you have to do is remember to start it ahead of time. It has only the one rising, most of which is done in the refrigerator.
Between this recipe and the food processor baguette recipe from Mark Bittman, there is very little excuse not to have a few fresh baguettes every week. Well, except for laziness and lack of planning. Since I suffer from both, I assume I won't be having the weekly baguette I'm trying to convince you to make.

A few other pictures, before the recipe. I haven't blogged for a few weeks, but I have been baking something every Saturday morning in January for the neighbors. Three weeks ago, it was caramel rolls.

These were a big hit. The dough is from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, so all I had to do on Saturday morning was shape the day, fill it, and let it rise. (I still had to get up at 6:30, though, which is not my usual hour of rising on Saturday).
The next week, I wanted to do something easier, so I made blueberry muffins--a recipe I'd never tried before, from King Arthur. Although it's been my experience that muffins are the least popular of the January breakfast treats I make, these were eaten up within 45 minutes and roundly praised.

And now January is over, and the poor neighbors have to fend for themselves on Saturday mornings.


Pain a l'Ancienne
--from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Peter Reinhart

6 cups (27 oz.) unbleached bread flour
2 1/4 teaspoons (.56 oz.) salt
1 3/4 teaspoons (.19 oz.) instant yeast
2 1/2 to 3 cups water (19 to 24 oz.), ice cold
Semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting

Combine flour, salt, yeast, and 2 1/2 cups of water in the bowl of the electric mixer and mix for 5 to 6 minutes on medium speed. The dough should be sticky on the bottom of the bowl but it should release from the sides of the bowl.
Lightly oil a large bowl and immediately transfer the dough with a spatula dipped in water into the bowl. Mist the top of the dough with spray oil and cover the bowl with plastic wrap.
Immediately place the bowl in the refrigerator and retard overnight.
The next day, check the dough to see if it has risen in the refrigerator. It will probably be partially risen but not doubled in size. Leave the bowl of dough out at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours (or longer if necessary) to allow the dough to wake up, lose its chill, and continue fermenting.
When the dough has doubled from its original prerefrigerated size, liberally sprinkle the counter with bread flour (about 1/2 cup). Gently transfer the dough to the floured counter with a plastic dough scraper that has been dipped in cold water, dipping your hands as well to keep the dough from sticking to you. Try to degas the dough as little as possible as you transfer it.
Dry your hands thoroughly and then dip them in flour. Roll the dough gently in the sprinkled flour to coat it thoroughly, simultaneously stretching it into an oblong about 8 inches long and 6 inches wide. If it is too sticky to handle, continue sprinkling flour over it.
Dip a metal pastry scraper (or knife) into cool water to keep it from sticking to the dough, and cut the dough in half width-wise with the pastry scraper by pressing it down through the dough until it severs it, then dipping it again in the water and repeating this action until you have cut down the full length of the dough. (Do not use this blade as a saw; use it as a pincer, pinching the dough cleanly with each cut). Let the dough relax for 5 minutes.
Take one of the dough pieces and repeat the cutting action, but this time cut off 3 equal-sized lengths. Then do the same with the remaining half. This should give you 6 lengths.
Flour your hands and carefully lift one of the dough and transfer it to a parchment-lined pan, gently pulling it to the length of the pan. (Or, easier, use a perforated three-loaf baguette pan)
If it springs back, let it rest for 5 minutes and then gently pull it out again. Depending on your pan size, place 3 strips on the pan. Prepare another pan, and repeat with the remaining strips.
If you don't want to make all six loaves, divide them and refrigerate or freeze the remainining amounts. You can use them for baguettes, focaccia, or pizza.
Preheat the oven to 500°F and make sure to have an empty steam pan in place.
Score the dough strips as for baguettes, slashing the tops with 3 diagonal cuts.
Place the pans inside the oven. Pour 1 cup hot water into the steam pan and close the door. After 30 seconds, open the door, spray the side walls of the oven with water, and close the door. Repeat twice more at 30-second intervals. After the final spray, turn the oven setting down to 475°F and continue baking.
The bread should begin to turn golden brown within 8 or 9 minutes. If the loaves are baking unevenly, rotate them 180 degrees. Continue baking 10 to 15 minutes more, or until the bread is a rich golden brown.
Transfer the hot breads to a cooling rack.

Ciabatta Using Double Flour Addition and Double Hydration

Saturday, January 16, 2010

This is another bread from Breadcetera.com,Steve B's website devoted to "professional quality baked goods from a home kitchen." I was quite worried about him because he hasn't blogged since June 14 of 2009. But then I noticed that he's been faithfully answering people's questions on his blog, so I could stop fretting about his well-being.
I made his version of white whole-wheat bread and grumbled about its being bitter. But there will be no grumbling about this bread. I wanted to try this bread for a few reasons: first, the photos on Steve B's blog looked gorgeous and second, I couldn't resist the title with its uber-scientific "double hydration" and double flour addition method. All it means is that you add both the water and the flour in two separate additions, which turns out not to be so mysterious after all. I got the gorgeous-looking bread, learned a few new techniques, and loved the taste of the ciabatta.
It starts out with a poolish that's mixed together quickly and left standing at room temperature for about 12 hours, so it's perfect to do the night before you're ready to start making the bread.

In the morning, you mix the poolish with some of the water and olive oil, using the whisk attachment (new technique #1) until it's mixed to a "homogeneous slurry" (new word combination #1). Some of the flour is whisked in, and then the rest of the flour added, switching to the dough attachment (this is the "double flour addition").
Oh, and by the way, this recipe specifically calls for King Arthur Organic Select Artisan Flour. They may have changed the name, but this is the closest I could get.

Now comes the "double hydration" part.
You mix everything together except for about 40 grams of water. It's a fairly wet dough as it is, but after mixing and mixing, and allowing to rest, you add the additional water just a little at a time.

I don't know if you can see the difference in the picture on the left and the picture on the right, but it was actually great fun to watch the dough slowly absorb even more water.
Now I understand that "fun" is a relative concept, and if most people were asked to rate, say, 100 activities for their fun quality, and one of the 100 were "watching bread dough slowly absorb small amounts of water," that might, in a general election, come in last. But I get more enjoyment out of that than I would out of hang gliding, which doesn't sound at all fun.
You can see that after all the water is absorbed, it's a very wet dough.

After three hours of rising, the dough is divided in half.

Then this very wet dough is shaped, floured and placed on a couche to let rise again. This is new technique #2. When I mentally pictured the bread on the couche thing, I pictured a big horrible mess. I decided to give it a try anyway.

To my amazement, it wasn't a mess at all. The bread pretty much shaped itself into nice oblong loaves, and they didn't stick at all.
Here's what the directions say: "After proofing, the dough peices are gently flipped onto a transfer peel and then slid from the transfer peel onto an oven peel." Huh? I though I was doing good to have a peel. I definitely don't have one that I consider my transfer peel. I have a peel. One.
So I hoisted both breads on a baking pan lined with parchment and placed the pan on an oven stone. I couldn't decide whether the loaves should be dimpled, so I dimpled just one.

Both loaves came out of the oven looking crispy and golden brown, and smelling delicious. I think that the one I dimpled had a slightly more even shape.

I was so pleased with their appearance that I didn't want to cut into them. Steve B's pictures showed such big holes and great texture, and I was sure mine would not be up to snuff (maybe because I didn't have a transfer peel), but they had the promised "wide open interior crumb."

We ate this bread as an accompaniment to soup, but the bread is so good that the soup (which was good too) became an accompaniment to the bread. This is not a dead-easy bread, but it's worth the time it takes. It's one of those kinds of breads that will make you feel like a professional bread-baker, and it will wow your friends.

If you're wondering what I made for January Coffee Hour #3, it was these cranberry scones:

They're from America's Test Kitchen cookbook, and can also be found at Smittenkitchen.
I've already blogged about these, so I won't say anything more than that they're still about the best scone around: not dry, not too sweet, tender, flaky, and delicious. Add whatever you want. Make a glaze by brushing on cream and sprinkling on sugar (or not). They're hard to mess up.

Cinnamon Sugar Popovers

Saturday, January 9, 2010

This is the second thing I've baked for our annual Saturday morning coffee hours. (The first, a chocolate streusel coffee cake, can be seen on heavenlycakeplace).
I got the idea for these cinnamon-and-sugar popovers from a comment by PinkNest on my Thanksgiving popovers. She said her favorite popovers were with cinnamon and sugar. She didn't say whether butter was involved in her equation, but I liked the idea of rolling them in butter and then in a cinnamon-sugar mix.
This popover recipe is so good! And you can either mix it up the night before, as I did, or make it immediately before putting the popovers in the pan. Just brush each pan with a bit of melted butter, heat the pan for a few minutes, and pour in the batter.

I truly believe these popovers, if made as directed, are foolproof. I have made them several times, and they have never failed to do exactly what they're supposed to do: rise up high and handsome with a delicious taste and a texture that's decidedly non-gummy.
I had a bowl of melted butter and a bowl of cinnamon and sugar waiting for them when they got out of the oven.

The popovers keep their shape, so it's not difficult to pick them up with tongs, roll them in butter, and then spoon the cinnamon-sugar over them.

The first guest arrived just as I was putting the popovers on a platter. She grabbed one off the platter, and was delighted with it.

In fact, everyone loved them. I don't think I've ever baked something for these Saturday morning open houses that anyone has liked better. Someone compared them to the beignets served at Cafe du Monde.

All the neighbors were trying to outdo themselves in flattering comments so they would be quoted in the tasting panel: "An incredible explosion of deliciousness!" I had to explain that I don't have a tasting panel feature in this blog. They couldn't believe it when I ran out. "Didn't you make two pans?" A neighbor who arrived after the twelve popovers were eaten was morose. "I only got up because you told me you were making cinnamon and sugar popovers."
It looks like I'd better make these again, and soon.

ROSE'S FAIL-SAFE AND HIGHLY DELICIOUS POPOVERS
--From The Bread Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
Wondra flour: 1 cup plus 3 tablespoons or 145 grams
Salt: 1/2 teaspoon
Sugar: 1/2 teaspoon
Whole milk: 1 liquid cup or 242 grams
Eggs: 2 large
Unsalted butter, melted and cooled: 4 tablespoons or 56 grams (divided)

1. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar. Slowly whisk in the milk. Add the eggs, one at a time, whisking for about 1 minute after each egg is added. Beat until batter is smooth. Beat in 2 tablespoons of the melted butter. Transfer batter to a pitcher. Use immediately or refrigerate for up to 24 hours.

2. Before baking, preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

3. Using a pastry brush, coat the interior of the popover pan (you can use either the pan that makes six large or the one that makes 12 small popovers). Put the pan in the preheated oven for about 3 minutes (don't let the butter burn!) until the butter is hot.

4. Remove the pan from the oven, and fill each cup about half-full. Bake for 15 minutes.

5. Lower the heat to 350 F. and continue baking another 20-25 minutes for small popovers and 40-45 minutes for the larger ones.

6. Ten minutes before they're done, open the oven door and, with a sharp knife, quickly make a small slit in the side of each raised popover. This will release the steam and let the inside dry out more.

7. Lift the popovers out of the pan and onto a rack. Let cool slightly.

8. For cinnamon-sugar popovers, dip each popover into melted butter (melt 4-6 tablespoons butter) and then into a cinnamon-sugar mix (about 1/2 cup sugar, preferably extra fine, and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon).

9. Serve immediately.

New Year's Eve Dinner

Friday, January 1, 2010
And it seems like only yesterday that we were in a panic about Y2K. Do you even remember it now?
Two years ago, I blogged about our annual neighborhood New Year's Eve travelling dinner party. Last year, I didn't. The neighbors complained: "I was looking forward to seeing pictures of all the food--what's wrong with you?" This year, I assigned Jim camera duty. The neighbors complained: "Don't we have any privacy rights? What's wrong with you?" This is a hard bunch to please.
To respect their privacy rights, about which they have never before expressed concern, I will use only their initials.
This year, our theme was Volume I of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The book club went to S.P.'s sister's house in Martha's Vineyard last fall, and we saw Julie and Julia as a group. When we came out of the movie, someone (M.W.) said, "Why don't we make recipes from Mastering the Art for our New Year's dinner?" We all agreed this was a fine idea, especially since New Year's Eve was three or four months away, and so the idea didn't really require a lot of commitment.
As NYE approached, we didn't lose our enthusiasm, and we passed around the several battered copies of Mastering that, among us, we owned. I was assigned the hors d'oeuvre course. L.D. got the soup, S.P. the salad, and B.B. drew dessert. M.L. said she wanted to do Julia's classic boeuf bourguiggnon, and J.N. volunteered to be M.L.'s assistant. (Using initials is harder than you might think--I keep forgetting who these people are).
I spent a lot of time looking through the small hors d'oeuvre chapter, while also perusing a lot of related information. I finally settled on vegetables a la Grecque, cold Roquefort balls, Quiche Lorraine, and creamed shrimp on toasts.

The shrimp on toast required bread, naturally, and Julia recommended homemade pain de mie. Ha! I can do that, I thought to myself. I had forgotten had easy it is to make pain de mie, AKA Pullman loaf. I got out my Pullman loaf pan, and The Bread Bible, and mixed it up in just a few minutes. It was easier than going to the grocery store and buying a loaf, especially since the roads are still very icy and all parking lots have huge piles of snow sitting around blocking your view of oncoming traffic.
On Thursday, I sliced the bread--it slices very nicely--

and cut the slices with a two-inch biscuit cutter.

I really enjoyed cutting the bread circles. I also enjoyed making clarified butter, and sauteeing the rounds. I was still moving at a slow pace and having a good time.

Then I put together the vegetables a la Grecque. I've never hankered to make these because they sound kind of boring, but the other things I was making were heavy-laden with cream, eggs, cheese and things of that nature, so something less artery-clogging seemed in order as a palate cleanser.
I decided to make a small plate of mushrooms, red peppers, and carrots.

To make them in the Greek manner (or what the French consider to be the Greek manner), you cut them up and cook them in a broth made of water, olive oil, lemon, shallots, celery, herbs, fennel seeds and peppercorns.

This is how they turned out. The picture is a little dark; they were actually quite pretty.

The cold Roquefort balls were also easy and make-ahead. Roquefort cheese, butter, chives, minced celery, a dash of cayenne, and a few drops of Worcestershire; shaped into little balls and rolled in breadcrumbs and minced parsley.

Butter and cream are so tricky. They can actually make things seem light--these little cheese balls were so ethereal and delicate. It's a miracle to me that you can mix two high-fat foods together and end up with something that could be packaged with a "Lite" label. But that would be wrong.

At this point, I was feeling pretty good. I had got two of the appetizers already made and in the refrigerator. But I still had to do the quiche, which means making the crust and refrigerating it for a while. Suddenly, all the time in the world has collapsed into just a few hours.
I had already decided that I'd try to follow the details of the recipes as much as possible, which meant homemade bread and following Julia's pastry recipe. She didn't use a food processor, so I wouldn't use a food processor. She used a crazy amount of butter (13 tablespoons for two cups of flour--her pate brisee recipe); I'd use a crazy amount of butter. It's not easy to work that much butter into flour, and I never did get to the stage of small pea-size bits of butter. I thought maybe it would be ok because I still had to do the step called fraisage, where you use the heel of your hand to work butter into the flour, but even after that, I didn't think it was right. But I was running out of time and couldn't start over, so this was going to have to do.

But I ultimately worked it into a tart pan. I remembered that I had some pie weights somewhere, bought at some point when I was going to try to get better at making pastry. I make these pie resolutions periodically and then get discouraged when I mess around with pie dough. Today was no exception.

The pie crust shrank, as is its wont, and I forgot to put it on a pan when I filled it and put it in the oven. In my defense, I have to say that Julia Childs' recipes are often not that easy to follow, and they often have key instructions hidden in some random part of the recipe. Not in my defense, I should have figured out without being told that a tart pan with a removable bottom and filled with uncooked custard was going to leak. It did. My oven was a mess. I neglected to do the top with butter. But the quiche still turned out looking pretty good.

Julia's quiche Lorraine recipe is made without cheese, so it's just a plain custard and the bacon pieces are pressed down on the bottom of the pastry. The quiche itself is very delicious, and so were the sides and tops of the crust. The bottom was very soggy, though--it didn't get done enough during the partial bake to withstand the custard.
Finally, I made the cheese puffs. The official title is fondue de crustaces, or cream filling with shellfish, plopped on top of an already-made sauteed bread round, and broiled. These were the most delicious of the four appetizers I made, and a huge hit. It was a race against the clock to finish them by 7:00, the designated starting time. And neither Jim nor I had time to take pictures of the process. It's a thick cream sauce, flavored with tarragon and a little sherry, as well as some grated Swiss cheese. (I used a nice French Abondance). I diced cooked shrimp, which I heated up with a minced shallot, and put it into the very thick sauce and sprinkled it with a little more cheese. This is worth making again, although it's time-consuming, expensive, and very rich.

We served Argyle sparkling wine, made from an Oregon vineyard, with the appetizers, which I highly recommend.
The only thing remaining on the plates when we left to go to L.D.'s house for soup was about a quarter-cup of vegetables, which I take as proof that if you offer people vegetables, bacon, cheese, or shrimp, you'll always have leftover vegetables.
The soup was the mushroom soup from Mastering the Art, and L.D.'s rendition was perfect. She grumbled about how it took her all day, but she turned out a soup you could dream about. As I'm writing about it now, I wish I had just one more taste.

S.P. didn't make a salad from Julia's cookbook--it turns out that there is no salad chapter, and Julia would probably tell us a salad in France is lettuce with a good vinaigrette. Don't be adding fruit or nuts or cheese or some other fancy stuff, she might say. In fact, S.P. made a green salad with a perfect champagne vinaigrette--courtesy of Ina Garten--and toasts with goat cheese.

I'm pretty sure this salad would be just fine with Julia.
Next, the main course, presented by M.L. and J.N.--Julia's classic boeuf bourguignon. This was the first recipe of Julia Child's that I ever tried, and it forever changed the way I thought about what I used to call stew.

With roasted vegetables on the side, it was a wonderful entree.

I wondered what dessert B.B. would make: a tart? a sweet souffle? Maybe a mousse? Well, B.B., who is well known for having a mind of her own, decided she didn't really want to make a French dessert, so she made a chocolate mousse pie.

She might have been able to get away with claiming it was a variation on a version of one of Julia's chocolate mousse recipes if it weren't for the Oreo crust. I can't say for sure that Julia never made an oreo pie crust, but it seems unlikely. In fact, she said she'd never even tried an Oreo (or a Twinkie), although she always claimed not to be a food snob, and said she loved hamburgers, hot dogs, and potato chips. So she might very well have been just crazy about this chocolate mousse pie, which was especially good with the big cloud of whipped cream and the shaved chocolate.
Unlike some recent years, we made it up well past midnight. We made predictions for 2010. The person who has the most correct predictions gets to have a bright green glass women's head wearing a Santa Claus hat for a year. Tiger Woods featured prominently in this year's predictions.

Happy New Year to you all, and may you enjoy good food and good company throughout the year!

Mark Bittman's Food Processor Baguettes

Sunday, December 27, 2009

I had no hope at all for this very simple recipe for baguettes. I don't even know what possessed me to try it, except that my daughter Elizabeth had asked me for a bread recipe that used a food processor, and my daughter Sarah had asked me for Bittman's How to Cook Everything as a Christmas present. When I was leafing through the new, improved version of the cookbook, I ran across the recipe for "Easiest and Best French Bread." Oh, right, I thought. Toss four simple ingredients into a food processor, and then, when you think of it, give them a little shaping and bake. I'm sure that's going to make a good baguette.

I don't know why, but this easy-as-pie recipe turned out a better baguette than the Peter Reinhart version I made a few weeks ago where I laboriously sieved whole wheat flour to try to approximate "clear flour." It's not at all fair that something this easy should turn out so good, but there you are. It's a recipe that you should try anytime you feel like turning out a flavorful baguette but you don't want to start the process three days ahead of time.

The recipe consists of flour, water, salt, and yeast. Everything goes in a food processor for about 30 seconds. You gather up the dough--it's pretty wet--put it in a bowl and let it rise for a few hours.

Shape it into three loaves and put them into a French bread pan.

Let them rise again, slash them, and put them in the oven.

Take them out a half-hour later.

That's it! I don't know why one of the loaves looks so much more decorous than the other two--I guess the slashes weren't as deep.

I liked the way they looked when they came out of the oven. I liked the way they smelled. But I'd liked the way the poolish baguettes of a few weeks ago looked and smelled too, and then I was disappointed when I tasted them. But these tasted really good--so much better than I expected. I've considered the possibility that it was just my low expectations that made me so impressed with the way these loaves turned out. Since I expected nothing, any result above nothing would be good. But I don't think so. The outside is crusty but not hard, the inside is chewy and full of rich flavor. If I bought it at a bakery, I'd go back for more.
Everyone knows Mark Bittman is the one who popularized no-knead bread, the craze of a few years ago. But maybe it's this food processor baguette that really deserves the popularity.

Easiest and Best French Bread
--from How to Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

3 1/2 cups (546 grams) bread flour
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. instant yeast
1 1/2 cups water (or more)

1. Process flour, salt, and yeast for a few seconds in food processor, using the metal blade. With the machine running, pour most of the water through the feed tube. Process about 30 seconds, or until dough becomes a sticky, shaggy ball. If it doesn't feel sticky, add more water.

2. Turn dough into large bowl, and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for two to three hours at room temperature.

3. Sprinkle a little flour on the counter, and cut dough into three equal pieces. Shape each into long roll, and place in a lightly floured baguette pan. Cover with a towel, and let rise for another one to two hours. (On a cold day, you'll need the full rising time).

4. About a half-hour before baking, put baking stone in oven, and skillet or pan on lowest shelf. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. When ready to bake, slash loaves with sharp knife and sprinkle lightly with flour. Put about 1/2 cup of ice cubes on pan on lowest shelf of the oven, and quickly put baguette pan on top of baking stone.

5. Spray sides of oven after five minutes and again after ten minutes.

6. Bake 25 to 35 minutes, until crust is golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Christmas Popovers

Friday, December 25, 2009

I usually make a big Christmas breakfast that tides us over until dinner, but today's dinner was going to be early, so I wanted to make something less hearty, but still festive. I decided on Greek yogurt, lightly sugared berries, and granola, but that menu seemed lacking in the festivity category. Suddenly, I thought of popovers. I haven't made them since the year I baked all the breads in The Bread Bible. 2006? Time sure flies when you're eating carbs. Fresh out-of-the-oven popovers with cherry preserves, orange marmalade, and some apricot filling left over from making Polish apricot Christmas cookies. Now that seems festive.

One of the great things about Rose's recipe for popovers is that they can be made ahead of time. I made them Christmas eve and put them in a little pitcher. I don't know why people (including me) are afraid of popovers. They couldn't be much easier. I'm going to have to make it my mission in life to convince people to make them. My former mission was to convince people to weigh ingredients when baking, but it seems that I got rather tiresome about that, or so I gathered when people started leaving the room when I merely mentioned how I loved my scale.

The trick is using Wondra flour. This is Rose's trick, not mine, but I will adopt it for my mission. Mix up Wondra flour, milk, eggs, a few tablespoons of melted butter, a bit of salt and a bit of sugar, and hey presto!

The other trick is in having a popover pan. I'm sure you can use muffin pans, but they are squatter and don't have the nearly straight sides of a specialized popover pan, which is worth buying even if you only use it twice in four years.

Of course, you could also use a full-sized popover pan, but I like to use the smaller ones, because they seem so tiny and harmless that you don't mind eating a second, or even, possibly, a third.


And a new Christmas tradition is born.

Poolish Baguettes

Saturday, December 12, 2009

When I was trying to think of a new bread to make this weekend, it occurred to me that I hadn't made a baguette in a very long time. I found this recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, and it looked like I'd be able to bake it on Saturday while I was writing a brief. It worked out very well--I sat at the counter and typed away on my laptop (about what the burglary statute means by a "person in lawful possession") while occasionally checking the progress of this slow-rising dough.
All I had to do on Friday was mix up the poolish until it started its bubbling action, and then put it in the refrigerator overnight.

I made a whole recipe of poolish, and didn't realize until Saturday that I only needed a cup of it. The poolish was so lively and gluteny that I couldn't bear to throw it away, so I googled "freezing poolish." According to a source, whether reliable or unreliable I have yet to find out, poolish can be frozen for up to three months and used successfully if it's brought back to room temperature. We'll see.
The real fun started when I tried to approximate something called "clear flour." Reinhart says that you get this by sifting whole wheat flour and leaving behind the bran. He also says, not particularly helpfully, that most home sifters don't have fine enough holes to separate the flour from the bran. (Is this anything like separating the wheat from the chaff?) If there is not a sizeable amount of bran left behind in the sifter, he says, you'll know it's not working.

I sifted out only two pieces of bran from over a cup of flour, so I could see that this wasn't going to work. I searched my kitchen for something with finer mesh than a sifter, and came up with an ancient tea caddy. This actually worked pretty well.

However, since I could sift only about a tablespoon at a time, I got tired of it before I sifted through the entire 8 ounces, so I filled in with extra bread flour. (This is what Reinhart suggests if you can't sift away the bran, so I felt I had permission to do it that way). I did get a nice mountain of very finely sifted flour.

The dough came together nicely, and went into a bowl for a two-hour rise.

It looks a little like an angry mask, doesn't it? But after the first rising, and a little hand-kneading, it loses its angry appearance and just looks like bread dough.

Another few hours, and the dough is ready to divide and shape.

The dough scraper is one of those little gadgets that, once you have it, you don't see how you ever did without it.
The dough almost shaped itself into three baguettes.

I loved the way these baguettes looked when they came out of the oven--just the right deep brown color, and the kitchen smelled exactly the way your house is supposed to smell if you're trying to sell your house: warm, homey, yeasty, delicious.

Because it looked so beautiful, it was a bit of a letdown to taste the bread. It was good. It had a very nice wheaty flavor, but it didn't have the open, chewy texture that I was hoping for.

It wasn't bad at all, but I would have to say that it wasn't worth the time spent sifting flour through a tea caddy. I'd like to try something made with authentic "clear flour" sometime to see what this bread is supposed to taste like. Meanwhile, I'll look for other recipes to use up my frozen poolish, and hope I remember to do it sometime in the next three months.

Poolish Baguettes
--adapted from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart

1 cup (7 ounces) poolish*
1 3/4 cups (8 ounces) whole wheat flour, sifted (or use all bread flour except for about 2 tablespoons of unsifted whole wheat flour)
2 cups (9 ounces) bread flour
1 1/2 tsp. (.37 ounce) salt
3/4 tsp. (.08 ounce) instant yeast
1 1/8 to 1 1/4 cups (9 to 10 ounces) water

1. Stir together the flours, salt and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add the poolish pieces and the water, and mix on low speed with the paddle attachment until the ingredients form a ball. Add more water or flour as needed, to create a dough that is soft but not sticky.

2. Knead on medium speed with dough hook about six minutes, until dough is soft and pliable. Lightly oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, coating all over with oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Let rise about 2 hours, or until dough is nearly doubled in size. Remove dough from bowl and knead about a minute. Return to bowl and cover again.

4. Let rise another 2 hours until dough is doubled in size.

5. Divide dough in 3 pieces on a floured counter. Shape into baguettes. Putting them in a three-baguette pan works perfectly. Let rise another hour.

6. Preheat oven to 500. Place baking stone on lower third of oven. Slash baguettes with knife or razor blade, and put in oven. Create steam in oven by putting either about 1/2 cup ice cubes or 1 cup hot water in preheated pan on rack below the rack with the baking stone.

7. Spray additional water twice on oven walls at 30-second intervals, if desired, and then lower heat to 450. Bake for 10 minutes. Rotate pan, and bake for another 8 to 12 minutes, until bread is golden brown.

8. Remove bread from oven and let cool on a rack.


*Poolish (Makes about 23 ounces)

Stir together 2 1/2 cups (11.25 ounces) bread flour, 1 1/2 cups (12 ounces) water, and 1/4 tsp. instant yeast. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and ferment at room temp. for 3 to 4 hours, or until bubbly and foamy. Refrigerate it for up to 3 days. Remove from refrigerator an hour or two before using.