pain au levain

Baking levain bread is a very slow process but it yields delicious bread! I followed the Ken Forkish's levain bread recipes from his book: the Overnight Country Brown rested for about 13 hours before shaping and tripled in size. The second recipe was his Feild Blend #1 that has whole wheat and rye flour and was shaped last night, rest in the fridge overnight and was baked today in the morning. I keep 2 wild yeast starters, a whole wheat flour (which I used for all these breads) and a white wheat flour starter that I use to make Pão Alentejano. I loved the flavor that comes from long fermentation and wild yeasts: it's slightly acid, with a delicious crust and soft interior.

whole wheat starter

This is how the Overnight Country Brown looked like after 13 hours of bulk fermentation.

Proofing in a basket

Lots of bread!!

a tradição do pão em portugal

Pedro returned from a 3 week stay in Portugal and brought back a new addition to my small collection:

"A tradição do pão em Portugal" by the French ethnographer Mouette Barboff  is a beautiful must-have book for all those interested in Portuguese bread. It doesn't have any recipes, sadly, but it is a very thorough research of traditional techniques and styles of bread from the various regions, from seed to table. Inevitably, memories of my grandfather making cornbread exactly the same way as described in the book came back to me. And so I decided to make corn bread today. In reading it I also found out that in some regions there is a tradition in couscous making. I did not know that. 

ooh la la, elle a fait croissants!!

I finally ventured in the complex art of homemade butter croissants. Following the Tartine recipe, it took me 3 days to finish! Patience is really the key here, along with strong muscles to hammer down the butter and roll out the dough. In the end, they tasted delicious!

DAY 1: prepare the overnight poolish and a sourdough levain, they will serve as ferment allowing a slow rise and a more complex flavor.

DAY 2: mix the dough, beat the butter into a flatten sheet and laminate the dough with the butter. Before spending the night wrapped in plastic in the fridge, the dough is folded and laminated with the an immense quantity of butter. The folding and rolling out the dough is what gives it its ultimate butter flakiness.   

DAY 3: after a slow rise in the fridge, I rolled out the dough, cut it into triangles and rolled the croissants. I made 2 batches of small and regular croissants and froze 1/3 of the dough to use next week. 

These are going to lucky fellows over at Outsystems.  

pão alentejano

This was suppose to be "pão alentejano" but since I still don't have a scale, it's just "pão". The measurements were a bit off, so instead of a dense loaf, typical of bread from this region of Portugal, it came out of the oven very soft and full of holes! A very delicious one I would say and Pedro agrees: after the first loaf came out of the oven, he ate half! 

I get most of my inspiration in Paulo's blog and from reading several books. He explains every single detail and what to expect in each stage. After many trials and errors, I now understand how the dough should behave, what a decent starter should smell like, what flours are best and, above all, the importance of patience. This bread took 7 hours from start to finish! I didn't labor around it for 7 hours, as you can imagine. It's quite easy to make, it only took about 30-40 minutes total, from mixing the flour to kneading and shaping. 

bread in a dutch oven

Kinfolk's Dutch oven bread 

Making bread is a process. A slow and patient process. This film by Kinfolk portraits bread making beautifully: with every step follows a waiting period, so you need to take the time.
I've always read that to achieve better results in retaining moisture during baking to use a cast iron dutch oven. I finally got one. Last night I baked my first loaf with it.

Everyone always asks me for the recipe, but I don't really follow any recipe. I just randomly mix the ingredients. But I promise I'll write a post with a step by step recipe to make a loaf. 

pizza and bread

entrudo, entradas, entrudanças

Instead of sleeping in the snow, this year for Entrudo we went south to the small village of Entradas  to attend Entrudanças and spent 3 lovely days dancing, singing and eating. 

Dancing: in the past few years, we have attended traditional dance balls and workshops, so coming to Entrudanças was perfect. Though we still are quite a  bit dis-coordinate, we practiced and danced like crazy!

Singing: although Entrudanças is mostly about dancing, singing is a major tradition in Alentejo. We were so lucky to have met up with a friend of mine's sister that invited us for dinner at a tavern where we ate and sang along to traditional songs. Later in evening Pedro Mestre joined us for more sing-a-long, which was a nice surprise. 

Eating: this was amazing!! In the same day we ate pig brains and frog legs and tasted my first authentic açorda. I was so inspired, that on our way home we bought bread and I tried to make açorda for dinner! 

Of course we asked around about traditional bakeries that still bake with wood ovens but no luck.  

Coincidentally, I just read this post on traditional Alentejo bread over at Xuxudidi which makes me want to meet this lovely lady.

corn bread

corn bread made in Lisbon. 

tomorrow i'm checking off # 90 and # 94 from my list!

flour

i heart flour
whole wheat

wheat 

buckwheat 

corn 

bread baking sunday

Today was bread making day. I followed this recipe from the baker but with a few differences: I added some whole wheat flour and kneaded the dough with this very energetic french kneading technique which I've been wanting to try out.

It came out beautifully, though I do tend not to over bake. (I miss my grandfather's wood oven....) If anyone wants a bit of starter to bake their own bread, I have plenty to share.

I think next time I'll make small little round buns.

boulangerie á la ancienne

Most people go to Paris to say hello to Mona Lisa and stare at certain metal tower. I went to Paris to check off number 12 and number 7 ;) But on my list of things to do in Paris was also a visit to a special bakery: La Boulangerie par Véronique Mauclerc near the Buttes-Chaumont park. One of Paris's finest bakers... and she's a woman... which makes me feel very inspired!

This is probably the only bakery in Paris that uses a starter, all natural ingredients and bakes the bread in a wood-fire oven from the early 20th century (one of two that still exist in Paris). The whole bakery dates back to that time and still preserves it's original aspect. 

Unfortunately, Veronique wasn't in when we arrived so I wasn't able to ask about her baking process nor have a closer look at the oven. I guess I'll have to go back to Paris someday to have a talk with her, but next time, I'll make sure she's in. (I wonder if she needs an assistant....)

The bread on display is carefully labeled with the flours used. We did buy different types of bread to taste. The weird thing is that you expect the flavors to be out-of-this-world, but in fact they are so simple and natural! Eating industrial bread for so many years has taken away the real flavors of bread and everyone forgot what bread really tastes like. 

Tartine Bread

After several attempts at baking the basic country bread recipe, I realised something wasn't right because all my loaves were coming out pancake styled and nothing like the beautiful loaves in the book. Until one day the Baker enlightened my path and discovered what I (and everyone else who strickly follows recipes) was going wrong. Recipes are meant to be reinvented! When it comes to artisan bread you really have to understand the bread making process. So the problem was the original recipe has too much water. In this wonderful post, the Baker explains exactly what was going wrong and how to fix it.

After testing out my grandfather's amazing stone oven, I tripled the original recipe, plus the extra amount of flour suggested by the Baker and mixed in almost 400gr of organic seeds. The rest of the process went smoothly... exactly as discribed in the book, though I did give the dough some extra turns. 

I don't know if the secret is in the dough or in the oven, but I was astonished at how fast it baked: 15 minutes! I saw it rise and crisp, right before my eyes. In Lisbon, the baking process took more than an hour.

Nine beautiful and perfect loaves: crispy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside. 

In the end, it was a scary feeling because I had just realized that I would be very happy as a bread baker...