Baguettes

Yesterday, while stumbling my way around this silly, empty internet thing, I ran across a really great website about bread. I wish I could link to it, but I apparently forgot to bookmark it :( Anyways, while reading about a hundred things I had never considered in my baking before (like dough temperature, and hard water affecting the bread, for example), the craving for a nice French baguette struck me. I started thinking about goat cheese, and bruschetta, and that delicate crackling sound of the cooling crust.

So in response to that craving, today I made two of the most splendidly awful looking pair of baguettes I've ever seen. The chewy texture and complex, salty flavor were spot on, though. The crust was delightfully crispy, but not as golden and crackly as I could have hoped. The recipe I followed called for a "moist, sticky dough" and a total of almost 4 hours of rising/proofing time. So I'm not much surprised that I ended up with loose, flat, over-proofed baguettes, rather than the round, slender beauties I had imagined. These actually reminded me more of ciabatta bread, with the flattened slipper shape and bubbly, holey crumb.





But it made me feel much better to read another article that stated (after many helpful and detailed paragraphs full of some things I did not know, and some things that I did know but had forgotten about the fabled perfect baguette) that the author of the article had received better training in bread-baking than myself, and had been working on perfecting his baguette for 5 years. So certainly there are no hard feelings if my first self-guided attempt is knobby and ugly and pale. Baguettes-1, Candace-0. See ya next round, punk...

Even if they ended up over-proofed, I did confirm one thing I read yesterday--that a short rise time develops less flavor. In fact, it's recommended to use a technique called poolish, or a starter, or to rise the dough in the refrigerator. The main idea of all of these methods is that the dough is at least a day old before it ever gets any heat. Letting this dough sit around in the kitchen all day today as I went about my chores built a toasty, yeasty, salty flavor that was noticeably absent in my last white bread. It's perfect by itself, and it's heavenly with a little butter.

These beauties have a great open texture, and I can't wait to toast them up and plunge the spears of bread into a big garlicky bowl of warm bruschetta.

Chocolate Berry Scones

There are precious few flavor combinations so decadent as the dark richness of chocolate crossed with the sprightly summer gush of fresh berries. The last time I experienced these flavors together in all their glory was with some chocolate-hazelnut muffins, warmed and spread with all-fruit raspberry jam. Simple but amazing for breakfast, desert, or no reason at all. Lately, though, I seem to keep running into scone recipes, so I decided to reincarnate that holy chocolate-berry sensation into a sugar-crusted scone.





Since we started doing cranberry-orange scones at the bakery upon the request of one of our wholesale accounts, its occurred to me that maybe people don't know what a real scone is; that you're probably more familiar with the cake-y starbucks version. So let me re-define the scone for those of you who may be wondering what exactly it is.

Scone n. 1. A small, rich, biscuit-like pastry or quick bread, sometimes baked on a griddle.

In short, a scone is basically a sweet biscuit. Some people dislike the almost dry crumbliness that characterizes a good scone, so I can understand why everyone's favorite coffee chain would make a puffy, frosted version of it. But nothing goes better with a good cup of hot tea than something a smidge less sweet, with a bit more texture and a pinch more class. Sometimes the mood of afternoon just calls for a little tea time.

Edit: At least that's what a good scone is supposed to be like...after trying these guys, it seems I've made a scone to make starbucks proud...soft and cakey, like a flat muffin. Not the texture I was shooting for :( I'm thinking maybe it could be made more dry by adding the buttermilk only a little at a time until the dough will just stick together, or perhaps by adding a little more flour. Of course, the taste is just fine made according to the recipe...

Chocolate Berry Scones

makes 8 small scones

2/3 c. buttermilk
2 eggs (one for the mix, the other for eggwashing the top)
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
1/4 c. dutch processed cocoa powder
1/2 c. white sugar
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 c. cold, diced butter
2/3 c. mixed frozen berries
1/3 c. semisweet chocolate chips
coarse sugar, to top

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Mix buttermilk, 1 egg, and vanilla together in a small bowl. In another bowl, mix together flour, cocoa powder, sugar, baking powder and salt.

With a pastry blender, or 2 knives, cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse crumbs.

Add fruit and chocolate chips to flour mixture, stir to coat and evenly distribute them throughout the batter. Add the liquid and stir until it just comes together--do not over-mix it or the scones will be tough. (I had to turn it out onto the counter and knead the last bit of flour into the dough.)





Knead or fold the dough just a few times, and pat into a circle. Mine was pretty sticky, so to make it easier to cut I put it on a circle of greased wax paper in a 8" round cake pan and set it in the freezer for a little while--not until frozen, but just until it was cold and stiff enough to cut it without making a sticky mess. When you do cut it, you can use a knife or bench scraper to cut he disc of dough into eighths and place the slices on an un-greased cookie sheet. (I buttered mine and they spread out a lot, so I would suggest not buttering the pan.)





Brush the top of each scone with eggwash and then sprinkle with coarse sugar, if desired. Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes, until a pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Allow the scones to cool on the pan for 5 minutes or so before removing them to a rack to cool the rest of the way.

Serve with a nice milky Chai or Earl Grey tea.

I Stand Corrected....

So I just started looking up stuff on how to make a sourdough starter, and I found this website, Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter. Apparently, you send then a self-addressed stamped envelope, and in 6 weeks or so, you receive a dried sample of the sourdough starter that this Mr. Carl Griffith apparently used way back in the day. Sweet!

I'm gonna buy me some envelopes as soon as I get paid, yippee!

Buttermilk Bread

I *love* to make my own bread at home. There's just nothing quite as satisfying as your own kitchen filled with that awesome aroma of fresh-baked bread. Lately, I've been dissatisfied with the spongy, dyed-brown 89 cent wheat loaf at the grocery store. Nor would I be happy spending $3 on half as much of the good stuff (which probably still has high-fructose corn syrup in it too, for whatever reason they put that stuff into anything, I'll never know.) So what's the happy medium for a bread-lover like me? Make it!

Many people have trouble parting with the 3-4 hours it takes to make bread from scratch each week, but for someone who really appreciates the art of bread-making, it can be a very fulfilling and relaxing experience to feel the dough come together, sticky between your fingers, and then to knead it back and forth until you're almost hypnotized by the motion, and then the magical swelling like a pregnant belly but so much faster. Plus, I always try to keep my odd culinary senses sharp (like wine tasting, cake decorating, etc. --they won't always come in handy, but often they will!) so weekly bread-making is just good practice for me.

Anyhow, I've been thinking about sourdough lately, but I have no idea where to buy a sourdough starter culture--I just remember this 5-gallon bucket kept in the baking classroom at culinary school; it was full of what looked like sticky flour paste, and you had to "feed it" with more flour, but if you did that it could stay alive for generations. You could cook the same loaves of sourdough as your grandmother made in her time.

So, when I read the recipe in Vegetarian Times magazine for a Buttermilk Boule, and it said that it tasted a bit like sourdough I just had to try it out.

I'm not really sure what the rules are for re-publishing a recipe from a magazine, but here it is anyway, in case you feel compelled to duplicate my experiment without a lot of research to find the recipe from the source. I did a double batch, and formed the dough into hoagie rolls rather than a boule (round) shape.


Buttermilk Boule


makes 1 boule, or 4 large hoagie rolls

1 package dry yeast
1/2 c. warm water
3/4 c. buttermilk
1 1/2 Tb. honey
3 C. bread flour
1 tsp salt
(I would add an egg or some butter to the list, to brush the top before baking; my loaves came out rather ashy looking from the flour, and I think they would look tastier if they were shiny and brown.)





Proof the yeast in the warm water, while microwaving the honey and buttermilk together until warm, but not hot. Preheat the oven to 375 (you don't have to preheat this early, but I find that the extra warmth in the kitchen helps the bread to proof faster.)

Add the buttermilk mixture in with the yeast mixture, and then add salt and bread flour. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (you know it's done when you hold a small piece of the dough up to the light, and it can be gently stretched between your hands so that you can see the light through it without tearing a hole in the dough.)

Let it rise, covered with a towel until doubled (40 min to an hour) before dividing and shaping the dough. Let it rise again on the baking pan, again covered with a towel.

To prep for baking, brush it with the butter or eggwash, and score the top. Bake for 35-40 minutes, until you can tap on the bottom of the loaf/roll and hear a hollow thump.


Tune in next time to see just what I did with these yummy sandwich rolls....