Sprats for breakfast!

Parmigiano Reggiano and sprats (a type of sardine the Bulgarian buys at the Russian store near Baltimore) make up the bulk of the toppings on this leftover bit of pizza dough. The rest are cracklings (the solids leftover from rendering lard from fatback), Bolivian Rose sea salt (because it happened to be in reach), a dusting of thyme and some thick slices of garlic I thawed from the leftover cloves that weren’t suitable for the garden.

Something odd about these frozen cloves. Some of them become almost translucent and gelatin like when I thaw them while others are as much like fresh garlic that I can’t tell the difference. I wish now I had taken time to bag each variety separately so I’d know if certain varieties freeze better than others do. Something to play with after next summer’s harvest!

About 15 minutes on a pizza stone in a 500F oven and things were turning golden. Looks yum!

Well, I can’t say much for the crust other than it holds the toppings. I wasn’t impressed with it as a traditional pizza crust either. I want everything I use to make a meal to have character of its own! Pizza crust should be able to stand alone as something worth eating! This one doesn’t. I’ll make up a batch of the Tuscan Bread dough, tweak it some more and see how it fairs as pizza crust.

The rest of the flatbread? OMG! I love sprats and the sea salt abides well with them, as does the cheese. The garlic is almost lost in those flavors as is the thyme. The cracklings are a surprise when I bite into one of them. So out of sync with everything else, yet so delightful a contrast to the fish and salt! I think this topping is worth keeping!

I guess I should learn how to make a pizza look nice while I’m at this? Then again… I’d rather it taste great!

Tuscan bread, day two

Boy am I glad we bought a decent bread knife! I don't know how I'd cut this bread else wise. The crumb is so soft! Even after sitting out all day and night the loaf was still exceptionally suited to making a sandwich.

As the Mad Bulgarian brings me Sprats from "the Russian store" somewhere down Baltimore way, I figured I'd use them in a quick and simple sandwich. I'm hooked. Simple as that. This is the bread recipe I've been searching for. Nothing else has come close to this bread, though I still need to tweak it here and there to get just the flavor I'm looking for.

It's easy, inexpensive and possibly manipulable to whatever end I might require. I'm almost disappointed I seem to have reached my goal of prefect bread so quickly. If I have, well there is always the perfect sandwich to pursue!

Tuscan Bread, take two

Okay, I was impressed enough with the first attempt at making this bread to try tweaking the recipe to get a flavor I like better. I used butter in place of of olive oil and I added a teaspoon of salt the original recipe does not call for. Then I shaped the dough to fit bread pans instead of baking it as boles on a stone. I want sandwich bread, not soup sopping bread.

What came out of the oven was once again a surprise. The crust is soft, the crumb even softer. If I didn't have a good bread knife I couldn't cut these loaves! It's like trying to cut store bought white bread!

The loaves are once again a long ways from pretty. They looked nice in the pans and I should have left them alone, but I scored them just before setting them to bake. The tops deflated a bit. Not a big deal, or surprise as I've yet to get the dough to match the recipe's description of tacky, but not sticky. Both attempts at building this bread have been very sticky. I'm guessing a tacky dough would be a firmer dough? I need to work on that. This batch of bread was made with a KA bread flour starter and finished with Wheat Montanna's white flour. The first breads were started with Gold Medal all-puropes flour and finished with KA bread flour.

I also need to deal with the sweetness that is the finished bread. There is no sugar, honey, or molasses in the recipe, yet the bread is almost too sweet. I added a teaspoon of salt to this second batch and barely noticed a difference in flavor. I'm guessing the sweetness comes from using cooked flour as a base for the dough? I don't know anyone who's ever used cooked flour to make bread, so I'm not sure if I'm getting what I should be.

The bread is so close to the texture and usability I'm looking for that I have to keep working with it. The next loaves I'll double the amount of salt. If that doesn't give me what I'm looking for I try using half as much cooked flour.

Then again, I may stay with the basic recipe and use the lard I rendered from this fatback as a replacement for the olive oil the recipe calls for. There is some magic between lard and flour that doesn't happen with any other fat and flour. I might even work some of these cracklin's into a loaf! If I notice much of a difference I'll render some of the leaf fat I have to make a purer lard, though I'm leaning to saving that fat for puff pastries and candies!

Of poolish and biga

As usual I rushed through the building and baking of my breads. I started out with the best of intentions, but distractions always seem to turn up. Thankfully ciabatta tends to be forgiving and while the resulting loaves are far from pretty they are very close to what I hoped for flavor and texture wise!

These two were made with the biga. they were a little smaller and firmer than the poolish based loaves. I cut the smaller loaf into sections this afternoon and stuffed them with hamburger, bacon, jalapeno cheese and mustard. Yummy! The flavor survived the stuffings and the texture was very good for sandwich use. I should take my time next batch and stretch the dough so it doesn't rise quite so high. That's a lot of sandwich to get teeth around. but I've a big mouth so I managed.
These loaves were built off the poolish. They were much wetter than the biga dough and spread out more than they rose, though they are still a bit much for comfortable sandwich bread. I'm sure they make an excellent soup sopping bread! I haven't cut a chunk yet. the flavor continues to improve with time, though the crumb degrades. Like most "living' foods, it's always a balance. When is it perfect?

Tuscan Bread

The boiled water/flour starter was a real mess as far as I'm concerned. Even after I added the other ingredients the dough remained very sticky. I had to keep stopping the mixer and scraping down the sides of the bowl with a cold spatula. After the kneading I had to run cold water over my hands to get the dough into a ball so I could set it to rise. Cold, wet hands work perfectly for handling wet doughs!

This is the dough before it was covered and set aside to rise. I didn't think to take a picture of the risen dough. (I was busy racking cyser and mead.) Our kitchen is around 70F and the dough needed punched down about an hour and a half into its 2 hour rise.

My son tells me I need to learn to shape loaves properly. He works in a commercial kitchen where presentation means something. I don't. I can focus on crust, crumb and flavor. Once I have them where I want them I'll worry about what my bread looks like!

Out of the oven and cooling. I tapped their bottoms. They sounded hollow, but I should have used an instant read thermometer! I think they are a little underdone.

I was a little disappointed with the crumb. As gaseous as the dough had been I'd hoped for big bubbles. Still, the loaves would be great for sandwiches if Peter had suggested a little salt! He did suggest the recipe was a starting point and bakers should work from there. Remembering that, I can't complain too much about the result. Nice crust, crumb is very nice for sandwiches. A little sweet? Maybe toasting it would help?

DW cut several slices and ate them as they were. She allowed a bit of salt would have made them better. I'm thinking a slather of mayo and some fresh cracked pepper, maybe the slightest sprinkle of salt? Some imported Tuscan ham roasted with rosemary? GA! I'm making myself hungry!

Not a bad result my first time through the recipe. I was very surprised with what I got each step of the way from beginning to end. I've never used cooked flour in a recipe before. I'm thinking I might try it alongside the ciabattas I make next week from the poolish and biga I have in the fridge.

Of poolish, biga and ... what the heck is that anyhow?

So here's where I begin. I've been using Gold Medal "all-purpose" flour for my white breads and I have made a few artisan breads with it just to see if the flour makes any great difference in the finished loaf. It does, but not as I'd thought it would so I'm back to trying every recipe using each flour all over again. (sigh) I can say, for my taste and needs, Gold Medal is pretty fair and a good bit cheaper! As I have the KA I might as well use it up. Same with the Wheat Montana I have in the freezer.

The starters below will end up flavoring one of my favorite breads- Ciabatta!

A poolish with 2oz of rye flour

A biga, also with 2oz of rye flour.

I have to mark the time,

as I can't remember my name most days, let alone when I started a ferment!

WTH? This is from Pete R.'s "Tuscan Bread" recipe. Boiling water and flour? Mix until smooth and let sit at room temperature over night?

Okay Peter, you haven't misled me yet.

I'll make the Tuscan Bread tomorrow. The poolish and biga need a few days in the fridge before I use them to build the ciabattas. As the Bulgarian will be gone for the weekend I guess I'll hold off baking the bread until Monday. If she isn't back until Tuesday, she'll not get the loaves fresh from the oven. Not that she cares! How she hoards the bread (for as long as a week), nibbling them instead of gorging on them is beyond me. When they're fair to middlin' good, they seldom last two days in our house!

Oo, that reminds me. I need to get the Bulgarian to teach me how to make a few soups in our Polish tureen. Ciabatta, that has a few days on it, is great for sopping soup!

Bread-building!

Arete (a Greek word), meaning excellence of any kind. In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion of excellence was the act of living up to one's full potential. (paraphrased from Wikipedia)

This is the bread-building book I’m starting from.

Arete in bread building is my goal. When I was a kidling in the early 1960s, we were living on the edge of a Midwestern city, Mom, or some mom, was always baking bread! I suppose most people of my generation and socioeconomic background grew up with the warmth of an oven and the fragrance of baking bread filling their houses and heads.

Wouldn’t you know it, I forgot the butter! Not having time to melt the delicious stuff I poured several tablespoons of olive oil into the bowl instead. Fortunately, the flour accepted it with a little extra effort from the mixer.

It sticks in my mind that a Catholic pope once ruled that during Lent bread could not be made using butter? As the story went, this ruling favored the olive oil producers, Italians mostly. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about such favoritism today. Still, the history of bread is fascinating.

Looks good so far.

I'm not much for shaping loaves yet. I figure the dough will rise enough to shape itself to the pan?

Yepper!

30 some years ago, I decided I’d have enough soft, bland white bread and took a shot at recreating Mom’s version of “basic white bread”, the first bread recipe listed in every home cookbook I’ve looked at from that time. Not only could I not eat what eventually came out of the oven, I couldn’t even cut to eat it! Since then I’ve baked loaves that actually turned the edges of an electric meat slicer, ruined an electric knife and provided family and friends with an excuse to laugh at me. I’ve also made breads those same people offered to buy from me! I’ve carried homemade loaves of herb bread, olive bread and white bread (sliced for sandwiches) along snow-covered roads so friends could have bread with their meals when the bread trucks couldn’t deliver to the local stores.

I’ve met bread builders who’s “so so” loaves have caused me to bang my head in frustration. I’ve given bread away at the local library and shook off the praises of “such good bread!” by telling everyone those loaves were my flops. The good bread I NEVER share!

I believe in balance. I don't share my good bread so my body has developed an intolerance to wheat gluten. Since I'm going to suffer a bit to enjoy a good chunk of bread I HAVE to build the best bread I can! Not being able to eat all the good bread means I have to share it. Ha! Hopefully my intolerance wont become a full blown disease the way it has for so many others I know.