Portuguese Sweet Bread: A Lazy Bakers Project

Saturday, April 25, 2009


Melinda said, "Even if it's not my turn, I'd like to make the Portuguese bread in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Is that okay with you?" "Sure," I said. Melinda is such a sweet talker. Also I'd never made Portuguese bread, or, to my knowledge, tasted it, and I figured it would be some relative of French or Italian bread. When I looked at the recipe, though, I got a little uneasy. First, it's Portuguese sweet bread, not just Portuguese bread, and it's got quite a bit of sugar in it. Also vegetable shortening, which seemed odd. And vanilla, orange, and lemon extracts, which seemed even odder. And a description of a loaf that turns out "squishy." Not so appetizing. Also I couldn't figure out what I was going to do with it. It sounded like it wouldn't make great sandwiches, and, although Peter Reinhart says it makes excellent bread pudding, I didn't see a bread pudding in my future.
Here's what Wikipedia says:
Portuguese sweet bread (Massa Sovada or simply Massa, Pão Doce and the Easter version with eggs is better known as Folar) is a bread made with milk, sugar and/or honey to produce a subtly sweet lightly textured loaf. It was traditionally made around the Christmas and Easter holidays (often with hard boiled eggs baked into the loaves for the latter holiday) as a round-shaped loaf, but today it is made and available year round. The bread is usually served simply with butter and is sometimes eaten with meals (breakfast in particular), but often as a dessert. Portuguese sweet bread is common in both Hawaiian cuisine and New England cuisine as it was brought to those regions by their large Portuguese immigrant populations.
That description sounded okay (except for the baked-in hard-boiled egg part--thanks for not choosing that version Melinda!)
This is an easy bread, although it does take most of the day to get it to the ready-to-eat point.
You start out with a sponge, but it's a very simple version: just stir together yeast, water, bread flour, and sugar, and let it alone for a few hours until it's bubbling away.

Mixing the dough is also pretty easy, but there were a few things that gave me pause. After I added the orange and lemon extracts, the smell of fake citrus and alcohol was very strong and not particularly pleasant. Also, although the dough was easy, it took about 15 minutes to mix it in the KitchenAid. If you mixed it by hand, you'd be ready to shoot yourself by the time it was done. Portuguese ladies must have biceps of steel. I advise adding all the water (the recipe calls for 6 T. of water, to be added "as needed" to make a soft, supple dough). The dough seems pretty soft, even without any extra water added, but I think it needs the entire amount of water to get to the point where the gluten is developed.

It's a slow riser. It took over two hours--maybe closer to three--until it had risen enough to be shaped into two boules.

Reinhart says to shape them and put them into pie pans, which is just what I did.

Another hour or two to let rise as shaped, and I had long ago given up on the idea of having bread with dinner. In fact, the whole idea of dinner had fallen by the wayside, and we settled for crackers and hummus and wine for dinner. I personally love having appetizers for dinner, but Jim looked pretty morose at this offering. I appeased him with assurances of fresh bread and butter as a midnight snack. This is another recipe with an egg wash, which I love because of the shininess it imparts.

It's so shiny it almost glows in the dark!

The aroma coming from the oven during the last half-hour of baking is fabulous! I don't know if I've ever baked a bread that smelled better (or maybe it was just because I hadn't eaten dinner). It smelled yeasty, and sweet, and the three extracts somehow merged to add something faintly exotic but not at all overpowering.
When I ate the first piece, I still wasn't quite sure whether I liked it. The bread was very soft and tender, but it was definitely sweet--a surprisingly sugary first bite that mellowed to a more subtle sweetness. By the second slice, I decided I liked it, and by the third slice, spread with soft butter, I decided I liked it a lot.

I remembered that my neighbor Laurel loved to go to Portuguese restaurants and bakeries when she was visiting New England, so I gave her the second loaf on Sunday morning. She said she'd made French toast, and the bread was so flavorful and sweet that it didn't need syrup--just butter.
Lazy Bakers--I hope you like this as much as I did.

PORTUGUESE SWEET BREAD
--from The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Peter Reinhart


Sponge
1/2 cup (2.25 ounces) unbleached bread flour
1 T. (.5 ounce) granulated sugar
2 1/4 tsp. (.25 ounce) instant yeast
1/2 cup (4 ounces) water, at room temperature

Dough
6 T. (3 ounces) granulated sugar
1 tsp. (.25 ounce) salt
1/4 cup (1.25 ounces) powdered milk
2 T. (1 ounce) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 T. (1 ounce) vegetable shortening
2 large eggs
1 tsp. (.17 ounce) lemon extract
1 tsp. (.17 ounce) orange extract
1 tsp. (.17 ounce) vanilla extract
3 cups (13.5 ounces) unbleached bread flour
6 T. (3 ounces) water, at room temp.

Egg Wash
1 egg, whisked with 1 tsp. water until frothy.

1. Make the sponge. Stir together the flour, sugar, and yeast in ia small bowl. Add the water and stir until mixed. Cover the howl with plastic wrap for 60-90 minutes, or until the sponge gets foamy.

2. Make the dough. Combine the sugar, salt, powdered milk, butter and shortening in the bowl of an electric mixer. Mix with paddle attachment until smooth, then add eggs and extracts. Switch to dough hook attachment and mix in sponge and flour. Add water. The finished dough should not be wet or sticky. It will take at least 12minutes, maybe more, to reach the right consistency. Oil a large bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap.

3. Ferment at room temperature for about 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size.

4. Remove dough from bowl and divice it into 2 equal pieces. Form each piece into a boule. Place boule, seam side down, into an oiled pie plate. Mist tops with spray oil and cover loosely with plastic wrap.

5. Proof at room temperature for 2 to 3 hours, or until dough fills the pans fully, doubling iin size.

6. Gently brush the loaves with the egg wash. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. with the oven rack on the middle shelf.

7. Bake the loaves for 50 to 60 minutes (mine were done at 50). After 30 minutes, rotate 180 degrees. Because of the high amount of sugar, the dough will brown very quickly, but it will not be done. The final color will be a rich mahogany brown. (The bread looks very dark, but it really didn't burn).

8. Remove the bread from the piei pans and place on a rack to cool. The bread will soften as it cools, resulting in a very soft, squishy loaf. Allow the bread to cool for at least 90 minutes before slicing or serving. (But the sky won't fall if you only wait an hour).

Chris in Rhode Island's Whole Wheat Bread

Saturday, April 11, 2009

A few months ago, when I made whole-wheat bread and was complaining about how I don't much care for whole-wheat bread (something I seem to have been doing on an almost weekly basis), reader Chris in RI told me to try a recipe from King Arthur.
I was hoping to give you a link to the recipe, but I've had no success. Apparently King Arthur has some program to protect its readers' recipes from outsiders. You can get it on the King Arthur site yourself, but you have to sign in and get a password, and go through a bunch of different steps. But once you get in this privileged and secret zone, you'll find an amazing number of recipes. Here's what you do:
1. Go to kingarthur.com
2. Click on "Community"
3. Click on "Baking Circle Message Board"
4. Sign in. (This is where you'll have to get a screen name and password if you're not already a member).
5. Click on "Recipe" tab
6. Click on "Member Recipes"
7. Click on "Search by Member"
8. Type in "Macy"
9. Scroll down to "Macy's 100% Whole Wheat Bread"
10. Voila!
Chris in RI recommended this because she said her family, who are not whole wheat lovers, love this bread. Although I kind of messed the loaf up, it's not the fault of either Chris or Macy, and I thank them both. (As an aside, several of you have been nice enough to send me recipes you think I might like--I do get around to making them eventually. They're all on my to-bake list, which increases much faster than I get around to baking things. When I retire....)
I had two problems that contributed to the bread's odd shape, which I suppose I will have to show you eventually. First, I misjudged the size of loaf pan I should use. I put it in my biggest pan because I thought there was more dough than there turned out to be. I took out enough dough to make six dinner rolls, and still thought I had enough for a big loaf pan. I could tell right away it was going to be a problem because I could barely see it in the bottom of the pan, but I decided to forge ahead. Second, I was using the oven for other things all afternoon, so I had to put off baking the bread, and I think I folded it one too many times. Third, I was having guests for dinner, and by the time the oven was ready, the bread wasn't, but it had to be, so I just put it in the oven. The rolls turned out great.

The bread tasted excellent; it was just, shall we say, aesthetically lacking.

I am filled with admiration for Macy, whoever she might be. Macy is the kind of baker who tweaks recipes many times until she gets them perfect. And she is scrupulously detailed in her directions about mixing and shaping. She also has many hints, which, if you get around to reading them, would be quite helpful. Such as: "Press the dough into the pan with your palm so that it fills into the corners a bit and has a nice, even top." Did I do this? No. Should I have done this? Yes.

See? It looks like it has a goiter. That's because it wasn't even when I put it in the pan, and one side heaved up even more while it was baking.

While I was making Chris and Macy's bread, I tasted a bit of dough. I made a terrible face. "Ugh! This is so bitter," I complained to myself. "See, this is my gripe against whole-grain bread." But don't judge a bread by its dough. The bread itself wasn't bitter at all; on the contrary, it was tender, mellow, and sweet. It really is a 100% whole-wheat loaf that's perfect for people who complain repeatedly about whole-wheat bread. In fact, I liked the taste even better than some breads that are only about 30% whole wheat. Macy says that it's the egg that counteracts the bitterness, although I think that in her heart of hearts, Macy has no truck with people who claim that whole wheat is bitter.
In case you were wondering what was in the oven all afternoon, I made a fabulous dish from epicurious.com: salmon with pearl couscous and slow-roasted tomatoes with lemon oregano oil. It was wonderful, and, although it looks fancy, it was easy. But it does require roasting plum tomatoes in a 250-degree oven for about 2 1/2 hours.

Jeffrey Hamelman's Rustic Bread

Sunday, April 5, 2009

I'm kind of a sucker for anything called "rustic" or "peasant." It makes me feel better than eating something named "aristocratic" or "royal." Both Jim and I are from peasant stock as far back as we know about, and I'd feel silly trying to claim to be an aristocrat. Although I'll admit that I used to have fantasies about meeting a British lord and being swept off my feet by him. Then I read enough novels to realize that I had nothing to offer said British lord, so I gave up on that daydream.
But I wonder if there isn't some hungry British lord somewhere who would be say "Oh my darling, I care not for a dowry as long as you make me such wonderful bread." Probably not. Fortunately, when he first met me, Jim cared not about my dowry.
As usual, my good angel ("Eat more fiber! Eat whole grains!") was at war with my bad angel ("Why do you think people switched to white flour? Because it tastes better."). So I compromised with rustic bread which has some white, some rye, and some whole wheat.
As with most of Hamelman's breads, this one is a two-day process because it requires a pre-ferment that sits overnight. When you look at it in the morning, it's nice and bubbly, with a pleasantly yeasty smell. The pre-ferment (all white bread flour) gets thrown into the mixer in blobs after the final dough (made with all three flours) has started to coalesce.

Tossing these blobs into the dough while the KitchenAid was running was my favorite part of making this bread. I think it's because it seems like something you shouldn't do. I was a very obedient child, so it doesn't take much to make me feel like I'm doing something daring and possibly even illegal.
After all that fun, there wasn't much else left to do except fold the bread twice. (Jeffrey Hamelman is very big on folding dough).

Then the loaves are shaped and left to rise again. I used my bannetons again, which I love because they make such professional-looking bread.

During this rising, Jim and I made a quick trip to Smith & Hawken to look at their garden furniture, which was all 30% off. The trip took longer than I thought it would, and I was worried that the dough was going to be a sunken mess by the time I got home, but it still looked hale and hearty. It probably survived because my kitchen is still cold because it's still snowing in the far northland even though it's April.
A friend and neighbor of ours just came home from the hospital after surgery, so I wanted to bring her some bread, and I made chicken soup with asparagus, snowpeas, orzo and tarragon, and also Dorie Greenspan's apple bars with brown sugar-butter glaze. But for some reason I forgot to take pictures of either the soup or the apple bars, even though they were both quite successful. I do have lots of pictures of the patterns the flour makes on the bread, e.g.,

And the bread itself? It's just so ... rustic!

I'm going to give the recipe pretty much as written, but let me tell you that the first 100 or so pages of Hamelman's book are complete, detailed instructions of the various stages of bread-making, so if you really want to understand what's going on, you may want to pick up a copy of his book from the library and check it out.

Rustic Bread
--adapted from Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman

Pre-Ferment
1 lb (3 5/8 cups) bread flour
9.6 oz. (1 1/4 cups) water
.3 oz. (1/2 T) salt
1/8 tsp instant dry yeast

Final Dough
9.6 oz. (2 1/4 cups) bread flour
3.2 oz. (7/8 cup) whole-rye flour
3.2 oz. (3/4 cup) whole-wheat flour
12.5 oz. (1 1/2 cups) water
.3 oz. (1/2 T) salt
.06 oz (1/2 tsp) instant dry yeast

1. Disperse the yeast in the water, add the flour and salt, and mix until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand for 12 to 16 hours.

2. The next day, add all the remaining ingredients to the mixing bowl, except the pre-ferment. Mix on first speed of a mixer for 3 minutes until dough is formed. As the dough is coming together, add the pre-ferment in chunks. Finish mixing on second speed for about 2 1/2 minutes. The dough should be supple and moderately loose.

3. Let dough rise for about 2 1/2 hours, folding it twice during that time, once after 50 minutes and again 50 minutes later.

4. Divide the dough into two 1.5 pound pieces. Preshape lightly into rounds, cover with plastic, and let rest for 20 minutes. When it's relaxed, shape into round or oval loaves, place them in floured bannetons or between folds of floured baker's linen, and cover with plastic.

5. Let rise about 1 1/2 hours.

7. Preheat oven to 450F. Invert loaves on peel. Slash with a blade. Presteam the oven, load the bread, and steam again. Bake for 35-38 minutes.

Beranbaum's Best Buns

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Reader Oriana (Doughadear) sent me a link to this article from The Washington Post. Oriana said she made them nearly every week, although she has never actually used them as hamburger buns, and takes them along when she visits someone's house.
This was quite a recommendation. Hamburger buns are not that exciting. They're fluffy and soft--even the whole wheat ones--and pretty flavorless. The hamburger patty, along with the condiments, is what gives the hamburger its great all-American taste. The bun is just there to keep your hands from getting too greasy. At least, that was my opinion before I tasted Rose's hamburger buns.
They're made m ostly of all-purpose flour, with just 1/4 cup of whole wheat flour, a soupcon of honey (one teaspoon, to be exact), and some olive oil. The recipe also gives the healthier option of adding 3/4 cup of toasted mixed seeds to the dough, and I think I'll try that next time, but I wanted the unadulterated bun this time.
After the dough rises, you cut the dough in eight pieces, if you want normal-sized buns, shape them into balls, and flatten them slightly.

After about an hour and half, they puff up nicely and begin to look like the real thing.

If you are so inclined, you can brush them with a little milk or water, and scatter some sesame seeds on top. I did half and half. After just a little over 15 minutes in the oven, they look like real hamburger buns and smell like bread, not like soft cotton.

They look good, they smell good, and they're sturdy enough to stand up to a bread knife.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating. (What on earth does that mean, anyhow?) These buns are delicious! They're not the afterthought to a piece of grilled meat. In fact, if you couldn't finish the whole hamburger, you would probably jettison the meat and finish the bun instead of vice-versa. The small amount of whole wheat is enough to give them some sturdiness, and they have a real crust. It's hard to imagine a sandwich that wouldn't be markedly improved by this bun, which really gives a whole new meaning to the word. I highly recommend these buns; if you don't like hamburgers, try them with something else. Or try them just as bread. But try them.
Thanks to Oriana for the tip.

Rose's Ricotta Loaf

Saturday, March 22, 2009

I've been thinking with great nostalgia lately about opening Rose's Bread Bible for the first time, and making my first successful bread, which was actually my second attempt. All the nostalgia made me want to go back and make a bread I've already made instead of trying another new one, so I just opened the book at random and happened on Ricotta Loaf. I remembered loving that bread the first time I made it, so I was happy. Then I remembered that Rose's blog has a recipe for Ricotta Bliss, which she says is the ricotta loaf perfected, and I remembered that that version was awfully good too. I dithered around for a while trying to decide whether I should make the original, perhaps slightly inferior, loaf or the new, improved one. I settled on the loaf from the book, which was actually even better than I remembered.
It's one of the easier breads in the cookbooks and one of the quickest to mix up. You put everything in the food processor except the water, pulse it a few times, add the water, and then process for about a minute. I suppose a bread machine is easier, but it couldn't be much easier. The dough is lovely, smooth, and supple. It looks rich because of the egg and butter, and I guess it is (for the same reasons), but the ricotta makes me think it's actually a very healthy bread.

Even though it's made in a loaf pan, you get to slash it down the middle, which I love to do. And Jim loves to take pictures of the result, so it's a win-win situation. I suppose I could always do it with every bread that I bake, but I don't unless there are explicit instructions to do so.
Once the bread is done, you have the option of brushing it with melted butter. I didn't, because I was telling myself it was a very healthful loaf of bread and the melted butter might have required me to abandon that illusion.

What a lovely mid-afternoon treat this turned out to be! I had mine with lemon curd--because it's a fruit, you know. Jim had his with butter. I hope he doesn't go to hell, on account of being so much less virtuous than I am.

Rose's Ricotta Loaf
--adapted from The Bread Bible, by Rose Levy Beranbaum

3 1/2 cups (500 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
2 T. (25 grams) sugar
1/2 T. (4.8 grams) instant yeast
1 cup plus 1 1/2 T. (250 grams) whole-milk ricotta
7 T. (100 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 large egg
1/2 T. (10 grams) salt
1/2 cup (118 grams) cold water

1. Put flour, sugar, yeast, ricotta, butter, egg, and salt in bowl of food processor and pulse about 15 times. With the motor running, add the cold water. Process for about one minute.

2. Put dough in lightly greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow to rise until doubled, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

3. An hour before baking, preheat oven to 375. If you have a baking stone, preheat that at the same time, and preheat a cast-iron skillet or baking pan on the lowest shelf of the oven.

4. Shape the dough into a loaf and place it in an oiled or buttered 9" by 5" loaf pan. Cover the dough loosely with oiled plastic wrap and allow it to rise until almost doubled, about 45 minutes to one hour and 15 minutes.

5. With a sharp knife or razor blade, make a long 1/2-inch slash down the middle of the bread. Mist the dough with water and set the pan on the preheated baking stone. Add 1/2 cup ice cubes into the pan on the bottom shelf and close oven door.

6. Bake 40 to 50 minutes. Turn bread around about halfway through baking for more even browning. If bread is getting too brown on top, drape a piece of foil loosely on the top.

7. Unmold bread and place on wire rack. Brush with melted butter if desired. Let cool before slicing.

Artisan Five-Minute Deli Rye

Last Saturday, some friends invited us to a Pinot Noir tasting party. The idea was that we would see if we could tell Oregon Pinot Noir from northern California Pinot Noir (we couldn't) and to see if there was a clear favorite among four different wines (there wasn't). I was supposed to bring bread. Since I know that Fred, who would be the wine pourer, is a big fan of caraway rye bread, I figured if I brought him a loaf of caraway rye, he might pour extra-big glasses of wine for me. I think my ploy worked, but I don't remember.
I really wanted to bake Rose's rye bread recipe, which is the best I've made, but I was going to be gone all day Saturday and I didn't think I could work it into the schedule, so I settled on the Five-Minute recipe, which does have the advantage of giving you a lot of flexibility.
The recipe is supposed to make four loaves of bread, but they would be very small one-pound loaves. I scooped up nearly two pounds of dough for my first loaf.

The bread is supposed to be brushed with a cornstarch wash to make it nice and shiny, so I was envisioning a fat, brown, gleaming loaf of caraway-speckled bread.

I learned that if you mix up cornstarch and water but forget to heat it to a boil, it doesn't make the bread shiny. In fact, it seems to have the reverse effect. At least, something made this bread refuse to brown. I finally took it out of the oven because it had been baking for over twice as long as it was supposed to; even allowing for the fact that it was bigger than the recipe's one-pound loaf, it still was behaving oddly.

Not only did it have a dull matte finish, but the little slashes I made on top of the bread expanded so that the bread looked like it had exploded. My poor bread was kind of an ugly duckling. But I covered it in plain brown wrapping and sneaked it inside the Beiers' house; then I sliced it before anyone could see its oddity. It tasted pretty good though. Curiously, the more wine we drank, the better the bread tasted.
A few days later, I made another loaf. This time I took out 1.2 pounds and made a torpedo-shape loaf. I used my LaCloche bread baker, and I remembered to boil the cornstarch wash.

I think this is more what it's supposed to look like. And the slashes looked more normal too.

By now the dough had been in the refrigerator for about a week, so it had a little more tang, but it was by no means funky.
I'm always a little apprehensive about looking at the dough that's been hanging out in the refrigerator for a while--afraid of what I might see. So far, I've seen nothing but bread dough. Which is what I saw on Sunday, a week and four days after I made the original dough: a small amount of normal looking caraway rye dough. In fact, it was small enough that I thought a loaf of bread would look pathetic, so instead, I made four rye dinner rolls.

I thought the rolls were the most successful of the three variations I made, even though there were only a few of them. They were the prettiest--the cornstarch wash actually worked and the slashes didn't deform the bread.

The sad news is that Loaf #1 is gone; Loaf #2 is gone; and Rolls #3-6 are gone. I've been so busy at work that I haven't had time to make more bread, so I'm reduced to having my morning toast with store-bought bread, which makes me glum. I hear my mother's voice reminding me that the starving children in China (I know that some mothers talked about the starving children in India or Africa, but my mother's were always in China) would be grateful for that bread, and I get that whining about not having homemade bread is unattractive, but still. I hope I have time to make some of the real stuff this weekend.

Deli-Style Rye
--adapted from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day
3 c. (709 grams) water
1 1/2 T. (14.4 grams) instant yeast
1 1/2 T. (25 grams) salt
1 1/2 T. (15 grams) caraway seeds
1 cup (130 grams) rye flour
5 1/2 cups (771 grams) all-purpose flour.

1. Mix the yeast, salt, and caraway seeds with the water in a large mixing bowl.

2. Mix in the remaining dry ingredients with a spoon or a stand mixer, using the dough hook.

3. Cover (not airtight), and allow to rest about two hours, or until the dough rises and starts to fall.

4. Refrigerate in a container (not airtight) and use within 14 days.

5. When ready to bake, cut off the amount you want to use (one pound will make a smallish loaf. Shape into whatever shape you want, and allow to rest and rise, 40 minutes to an hour, on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper.

6. Preheat oven to 450, with baking stone placed on middle rack.

7. Paint the top crust with cornstarch (mix 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch with a small amount of water to make a paste; add 1/2 cup water, stir, and bring to boil). Make cuts into top of loaf with slashing knife, razor blade, or serrated bread knife.

8. Place baking pan on hot stone. For a better crust, either pour 1 cup boiling water into another baking sheet on another rack, or put about 1/2 cup ice cubes on preheated baking sheet or skillet on rack below the bread.

9. Bake about 35 minutes for one-pound loaf, longer for a larger loaf, and less for rolls.

10. Let cool on cooling rack before cutting.

Bara Brith - a Lazy Bakers Project

Sunday, March 1, 2008

Bara Brith is a Welsh bread that was suggested by Jeannette, who is Welsh herself. I never heard of it, and I have a hard time remembering its name. I keep wanting to call it B'nai Brith, which is something else altogether. And Jeannette has never made it herself, despite being Welsh, because she buys it at bakeries, like normal Welsh people do.
I had a few other projects ahead of this one, so I wasn't planning to try it for a while. And I got an email from Jeannette, saying she'd given this recipe a try and wasn't that impressed with it, so that moved it down a few places. But, quite by accident I discovered that March 1 (today!) is St. David's Day, so of course I had to make Welsh bread on St. David's Day.
As you may know, St. David is the patron saint of Wales, so St. David's day is a big deal. Men are supposed to wear leeks on their lapels (yes, that is correct), although apparently some wimpy men are now wearing daffodils instead of leeks. I asked Jim if he would be willing to have his picture taken wearing a leek, but he demurred. How about just a scallion? No, definitely not, he said.
Jeannette said that the recipe she had found needed something to give it more flavor--more rising time, or something. So I started looking around to see if I could find other recipes more like what she had in mind. There was a lot on the internet that didn't look especially good, but I found something interesting right in my own back yard. My newest cookbook--How to Bake, by Nick Malgieri, has a recipe for Bara Brith ("speckled bread" in Welsh) and variants for Barm Brack (speckled bread in Irish), as well as Selkirk Bannock (you-know-what in Scottish). Malgieri's version, from Maura Laverty's Traditional Irish Cook Book, has a sponge, a rise, a rest, and another rise--enough steps, I hoped, to develop some taste.
An immediate problem was that all recipes for Bara Brith call for something labeled "mixed peel." I figured this was something like what we generally call candied fruit, and put only in fruitcake at Christmas because we (Americans) don't much like it. It's not readily available in non-fruitcake season, although in Great Britain, the biggest consumer of mixed peel, it's apparently around all the time. I could have ordered some, but not in time for St. David's Day. I could have made my own, which I (briefly) considered. Or I could substitute. I decided to add some dried cranberries to the golden raisins and currants called for. Once I'd decided on that, the rest was easy.

First, I mixed up the sponge--just milk, water, yeast, and bread flour. While that was bubbling, I covered the dried fruit with boiling water, drained it, and set it on paper towels to dry.

Everything but the fruit is mixed together, and the dough does a first rise sans fruit, which is then added and mixed in after the dough has doubled in size.

It's a little hard to get an even distribution of the fruit by kneading and folding it--if I did it again, I think I'd just mix it in right away.

Jeannette's recipe made a big free-form loaf, but Malgieri says you should put it in loaf pans for an authentic Barm Brack. (Jeannette, is he just making this up?) I'm pretty sure that Malgieri is not a Welsh name.

Supposedly, the bread takes 45 minutes to bake. I baked it for 30 minutes, and it was very brown and completely done.

I had to pick off some burned fruit from the outside of the bread, but everything that was hidden inside stayed moist and tasty. In fact, this was a much better bread than I was expecting. It's quite lovely--very tender and soft, with a buttery, spicy taste--almost like a fruited, spiced brioche. British recipes call for something called "mixed spice," which we also don't have. Malgieri's recipe specifies a mixed of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice--if you wanted to do a mix, you could probably use a pumpkin pie mix.

You can see that the fruit isn't quite evenly mixed in, although that's not a critical error.
I know it's not comme il faut to use another recipe when we're all supposed to be doing the same project, but, after all, this is a No Rules Club. Happy St. David's Day!

BARA BRITH

SPONGE
6 oz. whole milk
4 oz. water
4 tsp. instant yeast
7.7 oz. bread flour

DOUGH
4 oz. golden raisins (or Sultanas)
3 oz. currants
2 oz. dried cranberries (or mixed peel)
3 oz. unsalted butter, softened
2.5 oz. light brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 tsp. ground cloves
1/8 tsp. allspice
2 large eggs
15 oz. all-purpose flour

1. Make the sponge. Heat milk and water until just warm. Pour into a small bowl, whisk in the yeast, and stir in the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, 30 minutes or so.
2. Combine fruit in a saucepan, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Drain fruit and spread it in a single layer on paper towels.
3. Using a paddle attachment, beat butter with sugar, salt and spices until soft and smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Mix in spounge and flour. With dough hook, knead until dough is smooth and elastic, about five minutes.
4. Put dough in oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Allow dough to rise until doubled, about one hour.
5. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Distribute the fruit on the dough and knead it in evenly. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes.
6. Divide dough in half and shape to fit two 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 loaf pans. Let rise another hour until doubled.
7. Bake at 400 until well risen and golden brown, 30-45 minutes.
8. Unmold and cool on rack.

While I am talking about Nick Malgieri, I must give a quick mention of another recipe from this book--his pecan chocolate bars. I had investment club at my house, and I wanted something delicious enough that we would forget the drubbing we've been taking on the stock market lately. These bars, with cocoa, bittersweet chocolate, caramel, and tons of pecans, were just the thing! We even bought some new stock at a bargain price, and were all quite cheerful at the end of the evening. There was also some wine involved.

King Arthur Pain de Mie

Monday, February 16, 2009

I didn't get around to baking anything this weekend, but, fortunately, as a state employee I get President's Day off. Pondering what bread to bake next, I was looking through more whole grain breads when I said to myself, Hmmph. I want white bread. So I made really white bread. Not only does it have white flour, but it also has potato flour and milk and powdered milk. All manner of white things.
You can call this sandwich bread if you want. But you can also call it pain de mie , which sounds ever so much better and more hoity-toity than white sandwich bread. The recipe is from King Arthur's website, and I chose it because I had some potato flour that I've had for a while and is probably getting to the point where I should either use it up or throw it out. Before I started baking bread, I thought flour lasted forever, so I would have had no qualms about using 20-year old flour (not, I hasten to add, that the potato flour is anywhere close to that), but now I wouldn't dream of doing such a thing.
I had to do quite a bit of searching to find my old pain de mie pan. I got the pan used on eBay.com during the period that I was buying a lot of baking equipment. I remember balking at the purchase of a new pain de mie pan. They're quite expensive, and I figured that I'd never use it again, so I could only bring myself to spend a few dollars, plus shipping. I fell in love with it when it arrived--it's heavy and tall and looks very French.

This is an easy bread to mix up, except that my friend June put a curse on me. We went out for dinner on Saturday--June and I, and our husbands too--and at some point June asked me if the bread I made with the dough hook turned out grainier than the dough I kneaded by hand. I looked at her as if I didn't know what she was talking about (because I didn't), and said I had never noticed such a thing. And, I said, it doesn't make sense because the dough hook kneads more thoroughly than you can knead by hand. But this dough turned out to have little lumps in it. Because that's never happened before, I can only think that it's June's fault, and that she must have put a hex on me or my dough hook. At first I thought there were only a few little lumps, and I tried to carefully pick them out by hand, but then I saw that there were many. If I don't blame June, I blame the potato flour for forming what looked like little mashed potato lumps.

I love baking in this lidded loaf pan! The top presses down on the bread while it's baking, so it turns out almost square. I think that the idea is that the crumb becomes more compressed this way, which is why it's called pain de mie, which means bread of crumb, more or less. I grew up thinking it was called a Pullman loaf, which is not as French or romantic. I could look up why it's called that (because it was served on a Pullman car?), but I think I'll leave that for another time.
I was feeling a little insecure about this bread, because of the lumps and all, so I decided to make up for the lumps by taking its temperature so at least the bread's lumps would be the proper temperature.

The trouble with sticking the thermometer in the middle of the bread is that it leaves a hole. I don't like the idea of a hole in the middle of the bread, which is why I don't usually do it, and it turned out to be 190 degrees on the first testing, so it was a letdown anyway.
For a plain white loaf, this is seriously good bread. The little potato-y lumps that I was so concerned about disappeared in the baking, leaving nothing in their wake but a fine, delicate crumb. I didn't make sandwiches, but it's clear that this bread would be perfect for sandwiches, and even better for grilled sandwiches. It will probably make excellent toast, a hypothesis which I will test tomorrow morning. And yet...I have to admit that this plain white bread, good as it is, just doesn't have the complexity of the whole wheat bread which I've been dissing. The lesson seems to be--enjoy the bread you're eating now.

Whole Wheat Bread

Saturday, February 7, 2009

You know how I'm always saying that all you have to do to cook is know how to read? Well, maybe I'm not always saying it, but I sometimes say it, and baking this bread taught me again that all you have to do to screw something up is not read the directions. Aside from baking scones, sticky rolls, chocolate babka, and sour cream coffee cake, I've been on a healthy-eating quest this year, which meant that I had to up the whole grain quotient in the breads I've made. This one is from one of my Christmas books, Bread, by Jeffrey Hamelman.
This book is unusual because it's really directed at least as much to the professional baker as the home baker, and each recipe tells you how to make, say, 25 loaves as well as 2 or 3. No, that's not the mistake I made--even in a caffeine-deprived state, I would think something was amiss if tried to mix up 20 pounds of flour.
But the book's ingredient sections for individual recipes are divided into three sections: Overall Formula, Pate Fermentee (or Levain), and Final Dough. This is too much information for me. What do I care about the overall formula? I just want to know how to mix things together.
I made the Pate Fermentee Friday night--no problem.

And by Saturday morning, it was nicely bubbling and ready to mix in the rest of the dough.
That's where I was done in by the Overall Formula section. So instead of mixing in 1 lb., .6 ounces of water, I poured in 1 lb., 5.8 ounces. As I kept pouring, and pouring, and pouring, I finally said doubtfully to myself, this seems like an awful lot of water. So I looked at the recipe again and saw my mistake. So there I was with a pound of whole wheat flour, a pound a bread flour, and a ton of water. I thought of possible ways to rescue the situation, but they were all too messy and complicated, so I just dumped the whole mess out.
And it was a mess. Have you ever tried to put a couple of pounds of gluey glop in the garbage disposal?
I was so disheartened that I almost gave up on the idea of baking bread this weekend, but there was my pate fermentee, cheerfully bubbling away, so I decided to give it another go. This time I used a blank piece of paper to cover up the "overall formula" section so I couldn't even see it, but I was feeling quite put out with Mr. Jeffrey Hamelman.
By the time I'd put the two loaves in bannetons and they'd risen nicely, I was feeling more kindly toward Hamelman and decided he probably didn't pull the wings off flies after all, and might be a perfectly lovely man.
I slashed one banneton and put the other in the oven without any cutting, hoping that it would stay in one piece, and it did. I liked the looks of both of them; really, I'm not sure which is more attractive.





When we ate our slices of still-warm bread, though, I was a bit disappointed--very nice and all, but still, it was just a piece of whole wheat bread.
As I was leafing through the book, I came across a section where Hamelman was rhapsodizing about bread: he said that bad bread tasted good when it was warm, but good bread didn't really come into its own until the second day. Oh, please, I thought. It's not like it's fine wine. But when I had another piece of bread on the second day, I thought he might be on to something: I could taste the slight tang from the pate fermentee and detect the sweetness from the honey. But maybe I just didn't want to claim a loaf of bad bread.

Jeffrey Hamelman's Whole-Wheat Bread

For Pate Fermentee:
8 oz. bread flour
5.2 ounces water
.2 oz. salt (1 tsp.)
1/8 tsp. instant dry yeast

For Final Dough:
1 lb. whole-wheat flour
8 oz. bread flour
1 lb., .6 oz. water
.4 oz. salt (2 tsp.)
.13 oz. instant dry yeast (1 1/4 tsp.)
1 oz. honey

1. The night before baking, mix the pate fermentee. Mix yeast, water, flour, and salt until smooth. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let stand for 12 to 16 hours.
2. When ready to make the bread, place all ingredients for final dough in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer with a dough hook. Mix on low speed about three minutes. As dough starts to come together, add the pate fermentee in chunks. Mix for another three minutes on medium speed.
3. Put in bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for a total of about two hours. After one hour, remove bread from bowl and fold it over. Put back in bowl and cover with wrap.
4. Divide into two pieces and shape into rounds. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes. Shape into round or oval loaves, or place into floured bannetons. Cover with plastic and let rise another 1 1/2 hours. (The dough can also be put in a loaf pan or shaped into rolls).
5. Transfer the risen loaves onto a baking sheet lined with parchment, or place directly on baking stone. You can add steam either by pouring a cup of boiling water or about 1/2 cup of ice cubes into a pan on a lower shelf of the oven. Bake in a preheated 450-degree oven for 30-40 minutes. Turn heat down by 25 degrees if bread starts to get too brown.