Wild Yeast

Notes from my kitchen, in which I bake bread and raise a few other matters

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Pain de Beaucaire

Pain de Beaucaire is one of those breads that is like true magic to me. It really seems impossible that a stiff dough could yield a bread whose crumb is as light and open as this centuries-old bread from Beaucaire, in the south of France.

The secret lies in the bread’s unique shaping method. The dough is formed into two layers, with a layer of wet flour slurry sandwiched between them. When the sandwich is stood on its side to bake, the loaf opens along the “filling” to create its beautiful characteristic fissure, similar to a fendu loaf, and the steam created by the slurry helps lighten the crumb.

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Colomba di Pasqua, Semi-Successful

Be honest, do you see a dove here?

Me neither. How about now?

Okay, I admit it’s a stretch. But unable to find the paper dove-shaped molds that I should have used to bake Colomba di Pasqua, the traditional Italian Easter bread, I resorted to trying to make my own. Two 3-inch deep, 10-inch diameter paper pans with a few strategically placed staples were going to have to do.

Next time I will cut about an inch off the top of the pan so the dove can rise and soar above it instead of being trapped in a paper cage. Actually, there won’t be a next time for these makeshift molds, as I’m going now to order my genuine Italian Colomba pans for next year.

I adapted the recipe from the English translation of Cresci: The Art of Leavened Dough by Iginio Massari and Achille Zoia. I have had this opulent (and unfortunately out-of-print) book for a while, and regularly open it when I’m in the mood for a good drool, but had never baked from it before.

The formula is remarkably similar to the one I use for Panettone, but a little sweeter and richer. I built the sweet starter according to the same method I use for that other classic Italian holiday bread. Instead of using my tried-and-true mixing method for sweet enriched breads, where the sugar is added gradually and the dough is mixed to full gluten development before adding the butter, I followed the method given in Cresci, adding sugar initially in the first dough, and butter and sugar at once in the final dough.

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Lively Up Your Day

If you like to start your morning with a little kick, may I suggest these English muffins? Made with both sourdough starter and yogurt, their tang can be toned down with a little raspberry jam, or turned up with a gloss of unsalted butter.

Either way, maybe they will rock your morning like they rocked mine — as I was finishing my muffin, I felt that rumbling and shaking that in this neck of the woods can only mean one thing: earthquake. It was a little one, as most of them are, but an earthquake nonetheless.

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Apple Cider Sour Rye

If you like assertively sour bread and a dark, flavorful crust, you will like this bread. If you don’t like one or both of those things, please skip it.

Although I started out thinking this bread would be an adaptation of the Normandy Rye from Nancy Silverton’s Breads from the La Brea Bakery, it turned out this bread didn’t want to be that. Instead it wanted to be more sour and more rye. Although at about 41% rye flour I suppose it qualifies as only a light rye, the flavor is not light at all.

The crust on this wants to get really really dark, and you should let it. The crust in the photo below looks like it is burned, but it isn’t. The sugars (which are in extra abundance here from the cider) have caramelized to give the crust a deep, sweet flavor that contrasts very nicely with the sour crumb.

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Sourdough Pancakes

Today is Pancake Day, so this might be a good time to post my favorite sourdough pancakes, the only pancakes I ever make any more. My photo does not do them justice; anyone who can enlighten me about how to get pancakes and syrup to sit still for the camera, please speak up.

Also, anyone who can offer a plausible explanation for why every pancake recipe under the sun makes exactly 14 pancakes will win a prominent place on my list of culinary geniuses.

For the lightest pancakes, fresh mature starter is the best, but I have used refrigerated, several-days-old starter for up to 50% of the total. Pure Vermont maple syrup makes everything good.

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Roasted Potato Bread, Two Ways

roasted-potato-fendu-loaves.jpg

I made a lot of potato bread this weekend.

My intention was to make a simple sourdough bread with the addition of roasted potato nuggets that would stand up to the dough rather than receding into it, lending appreciable color, texture, and potato flavor.

roasted-potato-crumb-1.jpg The first time around, that wasn’t exactly how it played out, but I was still pleased with the bread. I roasted the potatoes at 350F so they were soft but not overly brown, with a few cloves of crushed garlic that I removed after roasting. Even having been left unpeeled, the potatoes did disintegrate almost completely into the dough. The result was a beautiful soft crumb with no discernible potato flavor, making it excellent for sandwiches (even PB&J) as well as accompaniment to the fantastic eggplant parmesan I had at the home of old East-coast friends who are now our neighbors (yes!).

As much as I liked the first loaves, I had not achieved what I set out to, so the following day it was more potato bread. This time I roasted the potatoes at a higher temperature (450F) so they developed more of a crust and a deeper flavor. The 3/4-inch pieces stayed semi-intact during mixing, giving the best of both worlds: a soft, mottled tan crumb studded with golden potato chunks and a definite potato flavor throughout. Definitely not a PB&J bread this time.

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