August 24, 2010
Pain au levain
Last spring, we had a few friends over for dinner who were visiting from the US. One of them works for the excellent magazine The Art of Eating, and kindly thought to bring us the latest issue*.
It would have been a lovely hostess gift under any circumstances, but as I sat down to read it the next day, I was jump-on-the-couch ecstatic to discover that it contained no fewer than fourteen pages (fourteen! pages!) on the subject of pain au levain (a.k.a. sourdough bread), which has been my number-one kitchen obsession for the past year and a half -- probably the longest-standing ever, too. (See my initial post on natural starter bread and ensuing starter-based recipes.)
This fourteen-page (fourteen! pages!) article is written by James MacGuire, an esteemed American chef and baker who, as I learned from the contributors' section, acted as the technical editor in the English translation of Raymond Calvel's fundamental boulangerie book The Taste of Bread.
Following a discussion on the history and technique of pain au levain, MacGuire shares a recipe I eagerly tried a few days later. It was such a success it has become our go-to bread, and I've baked a weekly loaf of it ever since.
The originality of the process is that it requires no kneading (but not that kind of no-kneading). Instead, the dough is simply folded over itself as it ferments in the mixing bowl, a few times every hour over a period of four hours. This develops the gluten and the flavor, yielding a wonderfully tasty loaf with minimal effort.
To be clear, it's not that I mind the kneading, especially since I generally just use my stand mixer, but it is a noisy animal, and this method allows me to get a loaf started in the blissful silence of weekend mornings, without awaking the entire household. (And yes, I realize I could also knead the dough by hand, but I've never really gotten into the zen of kneading high-hydration doughs. I just get annoyed by the goo.)
Another departure from my previous routine is that MacGuire recommends keeping a 66%-hydration starter, i.e. a starter that's fed 2 parts water and 3 parts flour (in weight) at every feeding, as opposed to the half-and-half rule I'd been following up until now. I've made the transition without any problem and frankly my starter seems no less or more active than it was before, but I'm sticking to it out of habit now.
I make the recipe with French T80 flour (farine bise, a partially whole wheat flour), which is the type of flour MacGuire would use while baking in France, and often mix it with some T110 as well (farine intégrale, for which a little more of the grain husk is kept) for a greyer crumb. Because the recipe is written with American bakers in mind, MacGuire suggests emulating T80 or T110 flour by using some all-purpose flour and some whole wheat flour, which you'll sift first to remove part of the bran it contains.
I've scaled down the recipe -- almost halving it -- to make the amount of bread we'll eat within eight days or so, and I've rounded the gram amounts after the scaling, to make the recipe easier to memorize (though I admit I keep a cheat sheet on the fridge).
The overall timeline has you prepare the starter in two successive builds the day before baking (one in the afternoon, one before bed), then prepare the dough in the morning and bake it in the afternoon. This works out smoothly for those who work from home, naturally, but if you don't, you can perhaps fit this into your weekend schedule, building the starter on Saturday and baking the bread on Sunday. I've indicated specific times for clarity, but you can shift the whole process according to your needs.
I still feel I have room for improvement in my understanding and use of this recipe: the oven spring is not always consistent (I got less than usual when I took the photo above) and I'd like to try and get a thicker crust, but the flavor is excellent and the crumb well aerated, so I'm already very pleased with it.
I admit I am not very diligent about the temperature at which I keep my starter and proofing dough (nevertheless I've indicated MacGuire's recommendation below), nor about the temperature of the water I use in the dough, and those are factors I plan to work on.
I would like to note again that there is a lot more to the article that this recipe (did I mention the number of pages it spans?) and you'll get more insight into the recipe by reading about it in MacGuire's words, so I encourage you to get a copy of the magazine if you can. (And you don't need me telling you that this sort of independent, subscriber-funded, ad-free publication needs the support of people like you.)
* Issue #83 can be back-ordered on the Art of Eating website.
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August 17, 2010
Apricot Blueberry Cobbler
I'd been living in California for a few months and thoroughly enjoying the dotcom vibe of my workplace when the big news was announced: we were going to have a company barbecue.
This, to me, was what working in the Silicon Valley at the turn of the century was all about: a lot of fun ideas to make employees happy (water guns! foosball table! free pizza on Fridays!) and therefore more inclined to put in the hours and brainjuice that would help the company grow (until it didn't, but that's another story).
And so, on barbecue day, everyone pitched in -- some set up the burger assembly station, others grilled the burger patties (and veggie substitutes, this was California after all), others yet plopped scoops of salad (potato or pasta salad, I mean) onto plates, or rounded up anyone still hiding out in his cube -- before sitting down on the sunny deck at the back of our offices to dig in.
A few people had volunteered to bring dessert, and among them, someone (Barbara from client operations, I think) had baked a peach cobbler.
While people oohed and aahed, I asked: what's a cobbler? A cobbler, someone explained, is someone who mends shoes (un cordonnier in French). This didn't make much sense to me, so I gently inquired: okay, but, um, why? My American-born coworkers conferred for a while, spoon in mid-air and brow furrowed, until they had to admit no one had a reasonable explanation.
No matter: we all know where the proof of the pudding is, and this one was very good indeed.
A cobbler is one of those all-American desserts with funny names -- together with the brown betty, the buckle, the grunt, the slump, and the pandowdy -- in which seasonal fruit is topped with some sort of dough, and then cooked or baked.
In the case of the cobbler, the topping is a sugar-dusted biscuit dough that is strewn across the fruit, either in rough hand-torn pieces, as I like to do, or in neat rounds, if you prefer (though I suspect it only looks that way if you use the ready-made biscuit dough sold in canisters at the grocery store).
The cobbler is a nice change of pace from the crumble or the crisp, in that it offers a wider range of textures: the dough becomes browned and crisp at the top, remains tender like the insides of a scone in the middle, and melds with the juicy fruit at the bottom.
Because I was first introduced to the cobbler by way of Barbara's, it remains iconically linked to peaches in my mind. But really, any ripe fruit can be used, and I particularly like the apricot and blueberry version I baked last week when friends came over for dinner.
I use ground almonds in my cobbler dough for a smoother mouthfeel, and when I make it for stone fruit, I like to flavor it with a prudent splash of orange blossom water. It is often recommended to serve the cobbler with vanilla ice cream, but I am French and I like it better with crème fraîche: I think it does a better job at underlining the natural sweetness of the fruit.
If you're still puzzled about the name, as I am, know that it may in fact be linked to the topping's resemblance to the shape of cobblestones, or of cobbles, which are either rounded hills or lumps of coals. But the truth is nobody really knows -- not even food history librarian Lynne Olver, who nonetheless offers quotes and references that speaks to the origins of the dish.
(And for more desserts in the cobbler family, see this rhubarb raspberry grunt and this brown butter spiced crisp.)
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August 10, 2010
Gomadofu (Sesame "Tofu")
Because summers in Japan are hot and humid, Japanese cooks know a thing or two about the refreshing dishes such sultry days call for.
Gomadofu falls into that category: a concoction of sesame paste cooked with a thickening agent until set, it resembles tofu in color and texture, hence the name (goma = sesame), and is served chilled.
I first came across it when Maxence and I traveled to Japan last spring, and stayed overnight at a temple in Koya-san. There we were served a shojin ryori dinner, the vegan cuisine that is practiced by Zen Buddhist monks in Japan*, and one of the many little dishes brought to us was a shallow cup of gomadofu, silky on the tongue and richly flavorful.
I hadn't really thought to make it myself until I found this post on Maki's ever-helpful Japanese food blog. Her recipe seemed so easy, I couldn't not try it.
I already had sesame paste on hand -- mine is a Middle-Eastern-style tahini I buy at the organic store -- so all I needed to get was some kudzu powder, a starch drawn from a Japanese vine, which is not hard to find if you have access to a natural foods store or a Japanese market.
I made my first batch following Maki's recipe, to deliciously rewarding results. All you do, really, is combine the sesame paste with kudzu powder and water, heat it up to thicken, then chill to set.
On a later occasion, I used a couple of tips I got from another inspiring Japanese food blog I frequent, called Tess's Japanese Kitchen. I steeped some kombu (a type of seaweed) in the water first, and added a little sake for flavor, but both of these steps are optional.
All in all, very little exertion is required to create your very own sesame "tofu," which you'll then divide into cubes and serve cold, as an appetizer or as part of a light meal, typically pairing it with soy sauce, wasabi, and freshly grated ginger, or the homemade sauce Tess suggests.
I myself like it with yuzukosho (a yuzu and pepper condiment) and a little seaweed -- strips of torn nori or, as pictured above, a sprinkle of freshwater seaweed from Jugetsudo in Paris -- in addition to soy sauce.
Having made the original sesame version a few times now, I am planning to branch out and make amondodofu with almond butter and kashudofu with cashew butter**.
Don't forget to read Maki's post and Tess's post; they both offer interesting info on gomadofu.
* If you'd like to learn more about shojin ryori, Maki recommends a book called The Enlightened Kitchen, by Mari Fujii.
** Not official names; I've just made them up.
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August 6, 2010
[Edible Idiom] Ne pas manger de ce pain-là
This is part of a series on French idiomatic expressions that relate to food. Browse the list of idioms featured so far.
This week's expression is, "Ne pas manger de ce pain-là."
Translated as, "not eating that kind of bread," it means refusing to act in a way that goes against your values, steering clear of a situation or behavior that you think is beneath you.
Example: "Il faudrait que je fasse des ronds de jambe à la directrice pour obtenir une place pour ma fille, mais je ne mange pas de ce pain-là." "I'd have to kowtow to the principal to get a spot for my daughter, but I don't eat that kind of bread."
Listen to the idiom and example read aloud:
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August 3, 2010
Olive Oil and Seed Crackers
If you've been on the fence about getting a pasta roller -- either an attachment for your stand mixer or a hand-cranked one for your biceps -- I may be able to offer the justification you were hoping for: a pasta roller proves handy for homemade crackers, too.
You see, to make good crackers, you need to roll the dough out thinly, for optimal snap, and evenly, so that they'll bake in a uniform fashion, without doughy or burnt spots.
And as I learned from my talented friends at Hidden Kitchen (see their blog), a pasta roller is the ideal tool to achieve that. You'll use the first roller only, the one that's just two cylinders facing each other and rolling inward, and switch from narrow to narrower, exactly like you would for pasta, until you have a super thin strip of dough, ready to be baked.
It's also a kitchen activity that ranks high on the fun-o-meter: rolling pasta or cracker dough never fails to remind me of my play-doh days, and I could spend all afternoon doing just that.
My cracker recipe is quite simple: regular flour and semolina flour (the latter provides a slightly more rustic texture), some seeds (I use sesame and poppy seeds), a bit of salt and olive oil, and enough water to bind into a dough that will be smooth but not tacky (or it will gunk up your pasta roller).
The crackers you get in return for your efforts are impeccably crisp -- sturdy enough to scoop up stuff, but thin enough to shatter under your bite -- and will remain so for a few weeks.
This is a good thing because the recipe makes quite a bit, but as long as you're taking out the roller and preheating the oven, you might as well bake a good batch. And really, once you have them around I don't think you'll run out of things to eat them with: hummus, roasted eggplant and yogurt dip, anchoïade, muhammara, peacamole, cashew cheese, you get the idea.
The recipe is naturally open to variations, so you could add the spices and dried herbs of your choice, and possibly some grated hard cheese to the dough. If you decide to play around with the seeds, though, I recommend you stick to teeny ones, or they'll get in the way of the thinning of the dough.
Sourdough starter note: If you maintain a sourdough starter, you can use up some of your excess starter in this recipe, according to the same conversion rule I've described before: here, I've been using 100 grams (3 1/2 ounces) 100%-hydration starter, and lowering the amount of flours to 125 grams (4.4 ounces) each and the water to 75 ml (5 tablespoons).
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Permalink | Posted by clotilde in Appetizers - Bread & Brioche - Recipe Inside!
August 1, 2010
August 2010 Desktop Calendar
At the beginning of every month, I am offering C&Z; readers a new wallpaper to apply on the desktop of your computer, with a food-related picture and a calendar of the current month.
Our calendar for August is a picture of slow-roasted tomatoes (tomates confites in French), a fine way of preserving a glut of fresh tomatoes, if such is your delicious plight.
It's simple, really: you just bake halved tomatoes for a few hours in a low oven, and the process leaves you with scarlet half-moons that pack a tomato punch, ready to be thrown later in salads, sandwiches, pasta, and assorted dips and spreads. (See recipe details.)
What about you, what's your favorite way to deal with too many tomatoes?
Instructions to get your calendar are below.
"August 2010 Desktop Calendar" continues »
