Baguette, or French for Bread

Don’t even think of baking a baguette if you haven’t got a masonry oven at your disposal.

Unless you’re as stubborn as I am and want to try it anyway.

In which case you should read this post, because I’ve discovered an easy and foolproof way of baking delicious baguettes, even in an electric oven.

Two weeks ago, I had the privilege of baking baguettes in a masonry oven. The oven hadn’t been used in the past 25 years or so, but it was in a perfect condition to provide me with the most perfect bread ever.

Only, I was a perfect analphabet with masonry ovens!

My first attempt resulted in a charred baguette in less than 5 minutes in the oven.

My second attempt resulted in a pale loaf although it had been 40 minutes in the oven. Still, it looked and tasted awesome, resembling nothing you can bake in a normal oven.

And then the weekend was over, and I had to return to my own kitchen and my electric oven. Maybe next time, I’ll learn to master that old masonry oven where my grandmother used to bake her bread for about four decades..

In the meantime, I’ve now learned to bake decent baguettes even in my electric oven. You just need to make a few special arrangements.

If you have a pizza stone, use it. If you’re like me and don’t possess one, use a normal oven tray but heat it in the oven for about 10 minutes so that it’s piping hot when you place your baguettes on top of it! That way, the baguettes keep their form and the oven spring is spectacular.

This recipe is based on Sébastien Boudet’s recipe. It’s baked with pre-ferment, so that the baguette doesn’t taste like yeast nor like sourdough starter (nothing wrong with the latter but somehow it doesn’t fit to baguette, in my opinion), and with an excellent crust and inner structure.

Here’s what you need to make two long baguettes or three shorter ones:

Pre-ferment:

• 500ml cold water


• 500ml all-purpose flour (do try replacing about 1/5 of the flour by rye flour, for an extra tasty baguette)


• 1g yeast


• 1tsp stiff sourdough starter

For the final dough:

• all of the pre-ferment


• about 300ml all-purpose flour


• 14g salt (about 2 tsp)

Combine water, starter, and yeast in a baking bowl. Stir, then add the flour and stir until you get a dough almost like a thick pancake batter. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let stand for about 12 hours in room temperature.

Next day, the pre-ferment should be bubbling nicely and smell…delicious! If not, something went wrong (too cold? too much draft?) and you have to start over. (This never happened to me, so it’s very unlikely it will happen to you, either!)

Now, add the salt and the rest of the flour. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until you get a smooth and elastic dough. Cover it with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment for about 8-10 hours more (I do this overnight). In the morning, the dough will have at least doubled in size. Now it’s time to set your oven to 300C and start shaping your baguettes. (In case you’re baking in a masonry oven, you have to start heating the oven a couple of hours earlier, of course!)

Pour the dough onto a floured baking surface. Beat the air out, then divide the dough into three parts, and let them rest for about 5-10 minutes. Now, place the pizza stone or your oven tray in the oven so that it will be ready to receive your baguettes.

Then roll each part out into a rectangle as long as you want your baguette to be, and roll it into a tight roll, a bit like when you’re making cinnamon rolls! This is of course not the only way to shape a baguette, but that’s the one that works the best for a beginner as myself: it's the easy way to get an evenly-shaped baguette that holds its form!

Bake your baguettes on the pre-heated oven tray in 275C for about 20 minutes, or until well baked but not burned.

Let cool on a rack and serve with lots of salty butter or good olive oil!

And start planning how to get a masonry oven of your own ;)

Day 21: Sweet Christmas Bread, Finnish Style

You remember I wrote in my previous post about one almost never coming to think of recipes that wouldn't already exist? The following is the exception justifying the use of almost; at least I couldn't find anything similar with a quick Google research.

The first bread I ever baked from scratch was a Finnish Christmas loaf, and, if my memory is to be trusted, it turned out perfect. It was the classical recipe from the best-known traditional Finnish cookbook, Kotiruoka, or Home Cooking. It's baked with molasses, fennel, bitter orange peel, and caraway seeds - and lots of yeast. Which is the reason why I wanted to modify the recipe, to be baked with sourdough starter instead of yeast.

The result was the most delicious and moist loaf ever! (If you happen to like sweet bread and anise taste, that is. I'm the only one in my family who does! More bread for me......!)

This is what you need for two loaves:

• 200g sourdough starter (on the stiffer side)


• 400g buttermilk


• 200g rye flour


• 200g spelt flour


• 200g all-purpose flour


• 12g salt


• 100ml molasses, divided


• 1tsp aniseed or fennel seeds (I couldn't FIND my fennel seeds, so I used aniseed instead)


• 1tsp bitter orange peel


• 1tsp caraway seeds


• plus some more fennel and caraway seeds for the topping

Combine starter, all three flours, and buttermilk in a baking bowl. Stir so that the flour gets moist and let stand about 20 minutes. In the meantime, combine 60ml of the molasses, the orange peel and slightly crushed fennel (or aniseed) and caraway seeds in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil and remove from heat.

Now, add salt and the molasses mixture into the baking bowl. Knead about 10 minutes or until you have an elastic, smooth dough. I had to add some water because my flour was very thirsty (whole-grain rye and spelt flour tend to be...).

Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment overnight, or about 8 hours.

After the fermentation, beat the dough about 2 minutes and divide it into two parts. Proof each loaf in a proofing basket about 1 hour.

Transfer the loaves on a baking tray and brush with the rest of the molasses (add about 1 Tbsp water to make it liquid enough for brushing) and sprinkle with some seeds.

Bake in 225C for about 15 minutes, then turn the heat down to about 180C and bake until thoroughly cooked, about 45 more minutes. This bread burns easily, so check every once in a while. If necessary, cover the loaves with a wet parchment paper.

Let cool and enjoy with lots of butter!

P.S. I baked this bread now twice with sourdough starter, and the oven spring with the first batch was incredible: first, the loaves didn't seem to rise at all, but suddenly they had turned into small "volcanoes"! The second batch didn't turn out that pretty - but just as delicious ;)

P.P.S. I baked these loaves yesterday but didn't have time to write the post. Today, I'm going to bake Linzer Schnitten - among my favourite Plätzchen! And then - two more days to go!!

 

 

Sourdough Bagels

A bit more than one year ago, I started baking bagels with the recipe from “New York – les recettes culte”. Everyone loved them, and still do. They are everything you’d expect for good bagels to be – delicious and chewy!

Then I got curious: would it be possible to bake perfect bagels without yeast, using only levain instead? And, as usual, the answer is yes! No yeast needed, unless you want the fermentation go faster. (Then just add ½ tsp dry yeast or so.) I used 50% whole grain, 50% all-purpose flour, which I found a perfect compromise between health and pleasure ;) It’s possible to use 100% whole grain, but, well, one would have to get used to it first.

A very significant advantage of this recipe is that the dough doesn’t need to ferment twice – convenient for a lazy baker like myself!

Here’s what you need to make 10 mouth-watering bagels:

• 300g whole-grain wheat or spelt flour


• 325g all-purpose wheat flour


• 325g water


• 150g sourdough starter


• 10g salt


• 2 Tbsp olive oil


• 2 Tbsp agave syrup (or other liquid sugar)


• 1 Tbsp gluten

And for the poaching:

• 3 liters water


• 1 Tbsp salt


• 1 Tbsp potato starch


• 1,5 Tbsp agave syrup (or other liquid sugar)

And some sesame and/or poppy seeds to decorate

This is how to do it:

Mix all ingredients in a baking bowl. Knead until you get a smooth but strong, chewing-gum-like dough – that takes about 10 minutes, at least if kneading by hand like I do.

Let the dough (and your poor hands!) get 10 minutes of rest before going to the next step!

Now divide the dough into 10 parts, each weighing about 110g. Form a smooth ball out of each, then make a hole in the middle. This, by the way, is the unorthodox way of making a bagel: actually, you should roll each piece in a long snake-like-form, then close the ends to form a circle. I’ve tried that method as well, but for me it just doesn’t work!

Place the bagels-to-be on a baking tray covered with a baking sheet. Dust them with a bit of flour, cover with a cling film and let ferment in room temperature for about 4 hours or in the fridge overnight.

Then it’s time to turn your oven on (225 C) and boil the poaching water in a large saucepan. Mix the starch with 100ml of cold water and add it to the poaching water, mixing with a spiral whisk so that the starch doesn’t go clumpy! Then add salt and syrup. Poach your bagels for about 30 seconds from both sides, remove with a skimmer, and place back on the oven tray.

Sprinkle with seeds – my favourite ones are black and white sesame seeds and poppy seeds.

Bake your bagels until they are golden brown, or about 20-25 minutes. Let cool on a rack before serving them!

P.S. Note that the amount of water you need for the dough depends on the flour you use: my whole-grain flour is very “thirsty”, that is: it needs more water. So I'd advise you to start the dough with a bit less water and add more if needed.

Salla's Sunflower Bread

After one month of packing, one week of traveling, and one month of unpacking I’m finally more or less installed to my new home.

Before even starting unpacking, though, I started baking bread. So the first morning in our new home, we already had sourdough bread for breakfast!

I’ve baked a lot of different breads now: Finnish rye bread, spelt bread, a French country-side loaf with 10% rye and 90% all-purpose flour. But today, I baked four loaves of the most delicious bread I’ve baked so far here in Finland!

I came up with this recipe thanks to my friend Salla who loved my rye bread but suggested I could add sunflower seeds to it. At the same time, I thought of adding a bit of spelt for a richer taste and a softer result. And it worked amazingly well! The bread has a crunchy crust, a very soft inside, a nice nutty taste – and the best thing is: the sunflower seeds on top get roasted, so they add an indescribably rich flavour to the whole experience.

This is a basic 1-2-3 recipe, but I write the measures down anyway, just in case!

For two nice small loaves you need:

• 200g sourdough starter


• 400g water


• 200g whole-grain spelt flour


• 400g whole-grain rye flour


• 12g sea salt


• a generous handful of sunflower seeds for the dough, another one for the topping

In a baking bowl, combine starter, water, and the flours. Let stand 20-40 minutes. Then add salt and knead about 10 minutes, or until you just can’t anymore. Add a handful of sunflower seeds and knead one minute more.

Cover the bowl with a moist kitchen towel and let ferment 5-10 hours at room temperature (my dough normally ferments overnight). Then knead the dough quickly again, and form it into two equal-sized balls. Transfer the dough balls into floured proofing baskets. Cover with a kitchen towel and let ferment about one hour.

Heat your oven to 250C. Now you have to be quick: transfer both loaves on a baking tray, brush them with water, cut “sun rays” on top (like in the round bread in this picture) and sprinkle generously with sunflower seeds. Place a cup filled with water on the baking tray for a better crust.

Bake the loaves at 250C for 10 minutes or so, and then reduce the temperature to 200C and bake until well done but not burned, or about 35 minutes more.

Enjoy with butter or good olive oil!

P.S. My camera is still missing - probably in one of those still unpacked boxes - so my N9's camera will have to do for now!

Finnish Rye Bread

It looks greenish and disgusting, feels like concrete in your hands and stinks like something you just might want to feed to your worst enemy. But here’s the miracle: when you bake it, it turns out to be one of most delicious breads in the world. And also the healthiest. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you – the Finnish rye bread!

As you might have guessed, I bake my rye bread with sourdough starter, without any additional yeast. My starter is based on all-purpose wheat flour, but about 12 hours before I want to make the rye bread dough, I take 60g of the starter, place in a clean jar, and refresh with 60g water and 60g rye flour. That way, there is only a tiny little bit wheat in the final bread (less than 5%). I’ve also tried to maintain a rye-only-starter, but it has always turned bad after a couple of days…

This is what you need for one loaf:

• 150g sourdough starter, refreshed 10-12 hours before


• 350g fresh water


• 450g rye flour – whole-grain, if possible


• 10g salt

Combine 300g water and the flour in a baking bowl. Stir with a fork until all the flour is moist. Add the rest of water if needed. (Some flours are thirstier than others ;) ) Let stand for about 20 to 40 minutes. Then add the starter and salt. Knead for about 10-15 minutes, or until you can no more – unless you’re using a machine, in which case 10 minutes should be enough.

Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment at room temperature for about 6-8 hours. Then fold the dough a couple of times and place in a floured proofing basket. Let ferment 1-2 hours more. Preheat your oven to 250 C and bake the loaf about 10 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 225 C (or even 200 C) and bake until thoroughly cooked, or some 30 minutes more.

Let cool - and eat with lots of butter ;) This bread keeps very well, at least one week.

P.S. If you don’t have a proofing basket yet, do buy one! Before I had one, I never managed my breads to grow so beautifully…

 

 

 

 

Pretzels, Medieval Style

If you ask about any German what’s their best recipe for making pretzels at home, they would look at you as if you were from outer space and say, “I never BAKE them myself, I BUY them!” And that makes sense: every bakery here in Germany has delicious fresh pretzels all day round. It’s like Finns and the Carelian pasties – why bother baking them yourself when you can buy them everywhere?

But here’s the thing: in four months or so, I’ll be living in a country where the only pretzels to be found are sold at Lidl (and from what I’ve heard, they come directly from… China! Please let this be an urban legend!!), or at some exclusive bakery at a ridiculous price. So I thought, it’s time I learn to bake my own.

The first pretzels are said to be baked in 610 AD (according to Wikipedia). Back then, there was no white flour nor commercial yeast available, so I thought it would make sense to try with 100% whole-grain and sourdough starter. I added just a little bit of yeast to speed up the fermentation – but maybe this wouldn’t be even necessary. As a base for my recipe, I used this one from Plötzlblog. But as you can see, mine is quite different…

The problem for us home-bakers is that in bakeries pretzels are immersed into lye solution before being baked in the oven. Now I’m not a big fan of such dangerous experiments in a kitchen - especially with young kids around. But luckily, there’s another way: to use a baking soda soak instead. And hurray, it works! My first result didn’t convince the kids yet (“MUM!!! Go to the bakery and get some REAL ones!”), but the second attempt did. So I’m more than happy to share this recipe with you!

For 6 pretzels you need:

• 140g sourdough starter


• 170ml water


• 300g whole-grain wheat flour


• 0,5g dry yeast


• 10g gluten (for a chewier texture)


• 6g salt


• 10g sugar


• 20g butter (or vegan margarine)

For the soak:

• 3 Tbsp baking soda


• 1 liter water

To garnish:

• 2 tsp or so pretzel salt

Combine all ingredients in a baking bowl and knead the dough for about 15 minutes (I do it by hand, you can use a kitchen machine if you have one), until nice and firm. If you notice that there’s too little water, add some more, but not too much: this dough should be firm, a bit like chewing gum ;)

Let the dough ferment in a warmish place about 30 minutes. Then knead again for 1-2 minutes, divide the dough into 6 equal-sized parts (mine were about 110g each) and wait a few minutes before working them into long thin sticks that are thicker in the middle. If the consistency of your dough is right, you don’t even need flour on the working surface. When all are done, shape them into pretzels. Mine started to look more or less ok after the fourth one or so…!

Place your pretzels on a baking tray covered with a baking sheet. Cover with a cling film and a place in a cool place (fridge, cellar, balcony) – about 7-10 degrees would be ideal. Let ferment over night. (For a quicker fermentation, let ferment in room temperature for 4-5 hours.)

In the morning, set your oven to 225 C. Bring 1 liter of water to the boil. Add the baking soda – it frizzles a lot at first! Then soak your pretzels one by one in the boiling soda soak, about 30 seconds each. Place the soaked ones on the baking tray. When all are done, use a razor blade to make a long cut in the middle of the thick part, sprinkle salt on your pretzels, and bake them in the oven until beautifully brown, or about 15-20 minutes.

Serve with butter and coffee – or beer, depending on what time of the day it is!

Grissini with Rosemary and Olive Oil

Among my favourite Italian bread types are grissini, those long bread sticks that you can nibble on while waiting for the meal to be served. They come in various different flavours, but I prefer the ones with rosemary.

On Wednesday, I tried baking my own grissini for the first time. The taste compensates the somewhat imperfect shape!

I made the dough using sourdough starter instead of commercial yeast and once again, you really don’t taste it. I love to play with the idea that in 1679 when grissini are said to be invented there was no commercial yeast - so the recipe that follows just could be the original one..! Who knows?

For 20 long, thin grissini you need

• 450g flour (I used spelt, type 630 - next time I’ll try with whole-grain)


• 300g water


• 150g sourdough starter, refreshed 3-4 hours before (but doubled in volume - if not, wait until it has)


• 3 Tbsp olive oil


• 2 tsp dried rosemary


• 11g salt


• Plus some more olive oil, salt, and fresh rosemary (optional) for finishing.

In a baking bowl, combine flour and water and let stand for about 30 minutes. Then add all other ingredients and knead 10 minutes or so. Cover the dough with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment 6-8 hours.

On a baking surface, work the dough so that the air bubbles disappear. Divide the dough in 20 parts, and work each part into a long, thin bread. Place on an oven pan (either greased or covered with greaseproof paper) and let ferment about 20-30 minutes. Brush your grissini evenly with olive oil and grind some salt on top. If you want, you can also decorate your grissini with fresh rosemary leaves. Bake in a preheated oven (225C) 10-15 minutes or until golden brown (but be careful, they burn easily!).

Serve as an appetizer with a glass of red wine! If anything is left over, store in a dry and cool place.

Braided Loaf with Vanilla, Lemon, and Cardamom

My grandmother taught me how to braid loaves. She used to make a big loaf and give me a bit of the dough so I could make my own miniature loaf. I knew how to braid three, four, and five-strain braids. I had totally forgotten just how delicious these braided loaves were until we moved to Germany and tasted Zopfbrot (as the Germans call a sweet braided loaf) at a friend’s place.

Zopfbrot you can buy at the baker’s normally has milk in it, so it’s a no-go for anyone with lactose issues. But I’ve come up with my own braided loaf recipe that I find even better than anything you can buy! The secret ingredient of my loaf is - of course - sourdough starter (see my previous post about creating your own starter). It makes the loaf very moist and tastier than the ones baked with commercial yeast. It also makes it keep longer. Using sourdough also makes baking more easy-going - you don't need to worry about the right temperature of the liquid or about the right order to add the ingredients.

And no, it does not taste sour at all! Just remember to refresh your starter about 3-4 hours before making the dough. But make sure your starter has doubled in volume - if not, wait until it has. Mine doubles in 3-4 hours, but that depends on many factors, such as the temperature in your kitchen!

Another secret are the spices I use in my loaf: a mixture of vanilla, lemon, and cardamom. I find it a winning combination - but feel free to use any other spices of your liking. You can also add sultanas in the dough (a handful or two).

Unfortunately I had also forgotten how to braid.. But I quickly learned it again -  there are excellent instructions on this subject in books like Professional Baking or on the Internet.

For one loaf you need:

• 350g flour


• 65g sugar


• 1 egg


• 150 water or milk


• 120g sourdough (refreshed 3-4 hours before)


• 1 tsp cardamom


• 3 tsp vanilla sugar


• grated zest of 1 small lemon (organic)


• 5g salt


• 75g melted butter

Combine all ingredients in a baking bowl, except for the butter. Knead until the dough has gained a bubblegum-like consistency, or about 10 minutes. Add the butter and knead about two more minutes, or until it has been absorbed in the dough.

Cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel and let ferment 8-12 hours.

On a baking surface covered with flour, knead the dough until bubbles have disappeared. Divide the dough in 3 (or 4, or 5) equal-sized parts and braid. (In the loaf featuring in the picture, I added a smaller braid on top of the main one.)

Transfer on a baking pan, cover with a kitchen towel, and let ferment 1-2 hours. Wash with egg yolk, decorate with almond flakes or pearl sugar, and bake in a preheated oven (200 C) until well-baked, or about 45 minutes.

Cool on a rack and serve sliced, either plain or with butter and/or jam.

This loaf keeps very well, at least one week. Or in theory it does :)

Sweet Italian Fruit Bread

When I was on my first Inter-rail in Christmas holidays back in 1996, I travelled light, only with a 30 liter backpack or so. (Ok, most of my stuff didn’t fit in, but luckily my bf had a slightly bigger bag that could fit in the rest! How convenient.. ) So, it was quite impossible to do any kind of shopping, there just wasn’t any room left for any new treasures - except for a huge Panettone, which I hung to my backpack. It must’ve looked quite funny, the Panettone being almost the size of my bag..!

So you get the picture - I kind of like Panettone. The disadvantage is that you only get it around Christmas time - which, luckily! extends nowadays from early October until the end of January, at least. And the other downside is that it’s very difficult to bake at home. The owners of a local Italian restaurant told me they’d never even want to try such an impossible thing themselves. All the recipes I’ve seen are so complex and time-consuming I’ve decided to give them a try in some quite distant future.

Last time I was in Italy I happened to buy a book called Croissant e biscotti, written by an Italian baking celebrity Luca Montersino. I found an interesting recipe for a sourdough-based chocolate and nut bread that, unfortunately, didn’t work at all (by all means, do try it - the picture looks great!) - but that gave me an idea: why not try the same method, only replacing chocolate and nuts with sultanas, candied lemon and oranges, almonds, lemon zest, and vanilla? After a partial disaster, the second loaf turned out perfect! It would be pretentious to call the result Panettone, so I call it Sweet Italian Fruit Bread instead - until I coin a better name for it. (Suggestions are welcome!)

So here’s how you proceed to get a loaf of it:

Beat together 3 eggs and 130g sugar until fluffy, then add 250g sourdough starter and wheat flour each, 6g salt, 5g fresh yeast, zest of 1/2 lemon, 2 tsp vanilla sugar, 100g candied orange, candied lemon, sultanas, and chopped almonds each, and combine well together. Then add 125g melted butter, stir well, and let ferment for some 8-10 hours in a warm place (25-30 degrees). Transfer into a proofing basket, let ferment another hour or two. Bake in 225 degrees for 10 minutes or so, lower the temperature to 190 degrees, and bake until well done, about 45 minutes. Let it cool on a rack and decorate with some confectioners’ sugar.

This bread is great for Italian-style sweet breakfast - any time of the year! Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do...

Sourdough Bread

I’ve always liked baking my own bread. It reminds me of my grandmother and her delicious bread, baked in a real wood-fired oven. Too bad I never discussed baking bread with her - and now it’s too late.

What I don’t like about most self-baked bread is the yeasty taste: on the day you bake it, it tastes good, but the next day it’s just dull and yeasty. I’ve tried all kinds of ways to avoid that - using a poolish or a quick starter, baking “no-knead bread” - the latter tasted excellent but somehow I never really learned to manage the thing quite properly; it was a horrible mess, with flour and dough everywhere.

When a friend of mine told me she’s got her own sourdough starter and that she could not only bring some to me but also teach me how to take care of it and bake with it, I was more than thrilled! This happened almost a year ago, and I’ve been baking ever since. Sourdough bread is better than anything you can find in even the best bakeries, plus you get to eat it still warm! And obviously, the ingredients cost next to nothing. You can make endless variations, like my favourite sweet bread: Lemon Bread (a post will definitely follow), or sweet Italian panettone-like bread (yes, I will post about it as well). Plus you can give some of the sourdough to your friends and have a lot of fun baking together and sharing ideas and experiences.

This is my basic sourdough bread recipe, just as I learned it from my friend. It’s called 1-2-3, because you need 1 part of starter, 2 parts of water, and 3 parts of flour, plus 2% salt of the flour weight. My regular bread takes 150g starter, 300g water, 450g flour (mixture of rye, spelt, and wheat is my favourite), and 9g salt.

First, you mix water and flour in a big bowl and let it stand for 20-30 minutes. Then you add the starter and salt, and then knead for about 10 minutes or until the dough feels like bubble-gum. You cover the bowl with a damp baking towel, let ferment for 6 to 12 hours, after which you just toss the dough into a cast iron pot or any round ovenproof pot with a lid, close the lid, put the pot in a cold oven, set the temperature to 225 degrees - and wait. This is the hardest part! I suggest you wait 40 minutes, then take the lid out and bake some 20 minutes more. Oh wait, now comes the even harder part - you’ll still have to wait at least one hour before you can cut the bread and eat it. But it will be worth it...

Did I tell you already that I’m somewhat impatient? Sometimes I just don’t seem to have time to let the dough ferment that long, like today. That’s when I add a bit of dry yeast in the dough (with the salt and starter), but just really a tiny little bit, like ⅓ tsp. That will make the dough rise quicker but won’t affect the taste. A nice trick for the hasty baker!