BBA Challenge #22: Pain de Campagne

Every Sunday, on ARD, they show the longest-running series show in the history of German television. It's called Tatort, which roughly translates to "Scene of the Crime". It is shown in a 90 minute stretch, without commercials and otherwise uninterrupted starting at exactly 20:15.

It's actually somewhat of a joke with us, as we tell people that we can't do anything on Sunday evenings during Tatort. Though it is one of the highest rated German shows, it is a bit unusual for young people, and even more unusual for non-Germans, to watch the show.

Nevertheless, I love watching it. Each week you have a different city and thus different Kommissare. You do see each pair about twice a week, and over the years get to know a bit about them. My favorite team is Frank Thiel from Münster with partner, Forensics Professor Boerne. Together they are a hilarious pair, though the comedy always black.

On this Particular Sunday, we were at our friend's house. We switch off sundays and either we cook, or she cooks. That Sunday, two Sundays ago, Thiel and Boerne were solving a very odd case, and my friend called asking if I happened to be baking bread, as she didn't have time to run out and buy some.


The mise en place is rather simple- pâte fermentée, a mixture of whole wheat and bread flour, yeast, Guerande Salt, as well as bottled water.


One of the great things about having a mixer with an 8L capacity is that you can just do the ferment in the bowl, covering it with a damp towel for the first rise.


I had originally decided to shape the dough into a couronne, but then changed my mind. I was shaping the dough into a batard when inspiration struck. Well, you could say it struck me down.

You see, when I began the challenge. I marvelled at everyone's creativity. Everyone was doing crazy things with their dough or changing the fruits and nuts around. So when I got a crazy idea, I decided to just go with it and see what came of it later.


About a year ago, a friend introduced us to Das Museum der Dinge (Museum of the thing) tucked away in the punk/alternative enclave of Oranienstrasse. It's more of an archive of- well- things. In their Museum Shop I found this cake mold, designed by Konstantin Slawinski. What caught my eye was the amazing design. It looked like a modernist building. Of course, Amy saw the practical use of the mold- to create different sized portions of cake.

What compelled me to plop a bread into a silicon ring mold? Or what compelled me to make long dough strips and then lay them into the mold? I dunno. All I know is that I wanted a couronne, and I didn't want it to be ordinary.

I also made a few other shapes. From left- a bunch of bananas, an Épi, and a twisted baguette in a U-shape.


The Épi was a lot of fun to do. You just take a pair of scissors, snip, and push the piece to the side.


You do, however, end up with rounded ends, just like with a baguette.


The botom-side of the shape reveals that my mad Épi-making skills have yet to be developed.


However, the lucky recipients of this bread flipped out over it. We gifted it to the parents of our French Canadian friend. I have personally never seen this shape in real life, but they had, and they went on about how it looked just like the ones in France. They probably didn't take a look at the back of the thing.


As for this thing, I took the inspiration from some twisted baguettes from Switzerland that I saw in a bread book. I don't remember which one, however, as it was a bread book I ended up not buying.


So. In case you are still reading. Here is how the couronne turned out. This modernist leveled shape is actually the bottom of the cake mold, but the top of the cake proper. I not only turned the bread 180 degrees mid-way through baking, but I also flipped it over to get the top to brown nicely.


Normally these divisions would indicate different portion sizes. The portions are of differing widths as well as differing heights.


The only problem with the bread was the inconsistent browning. The higher pieces tended to brown faster, leaving me with a multi-browned couronne.


One thing I do regret, though, was making several long snakes of dough and piling them in. I think the next time I make this- and there will be a next time- I will try to keep it to one piece, or maybe form rolls and put them together in the cake mold.


For those of you interested, here is the "bottom" of the loaf. This was originally the top before it was flipped over. You can see some of the portion markings on the sides.


Because I was bringing the couronne to the Tatort dinner, I cut apart the U-twist baguette to get a nice crumb shot. The holes were okay, and the crumb was relatively tight. However, that did not detract from the moist crumb and dry, crunchy crust. Oh, yeah, it tasted good too.


At dinner, we sliced it up according to the portion markings. It was almost like having rolls.


Of course, it was three(!) different kinds of pasta and this bread. I couldn't help myself and had about four or five rather large pieces. I couldn't help it. The bread was so good. I rarely say that, though, because I've had tons of bread, and sometimes it all tastes the same to me. Hold on- let me rephrase. I usually eat good bread- In this country it takes a bit of effort to get bad bread, though it exists. However, I am usually rarely wowed by my own breads. Perhaps I'm too critical. But this one was soft and crunchy and the flavor of the pâte fermentée. It wasn't himmlisch, but it was certainly lecker.

Other Campaigne-ros in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge include:

Michelle from Big Black Dog

Oggi from I can do that!

txfarmer's blog in Chinese with lots of pictures

Janice from Round the Table

Susie from Susie's Home and Hobbies

Phyl from Of Cabbages and King Cakes

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen

BBA Challenge #21: Pain a l'Ancienne, a history

This bread.

This is my absolute most favorite bread from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Mark my words, the beast that is Casatiello comes in at a close second, but this bread is probably the best bread I've ever baked. Back before this challenge was a just a gleam in Nicole's eye, I was on The Fresh Loaf, devouring everything I could about baking. And the book- the cover that kept popping up, was that of the book from which we are now baking. Amy, who was in the States at the time asked me if I wanted any books. And I said yes. Even though it was heavy and rather large and expensive, I was grateful for her bringing it back.

The day after she brought it back, I began reading. What I learned was more than I had known about baking in the twelve or so years that I had been doing it on then off then on and off again. I had actually never considered making a baguette let alone an epi. I was halfway through my reading of the book when the Challenge began.

The same day that I made the Andama bread, I made a set of six baguettes that would change my perception of bread. Actually, I had made the dough a few days before, but baked them on the same day as the Andama.

I brought these to a picnic, along with the Andama bread, and everyone went nuts for these.

This is a sourdough example that was really good, but took forever to rise because the sourdough was weak and I was in a hurry. Plus I sort of took a few, okay, many liberties with the procedure. But it was amazing. It was also one of the few times I added Malt Extract Powder to a bread.

Yes, this is from the same batch. This one did not rise as much, so it was gummy and not eaten. Or maybe the one before was the gummy one. In any case, one was perfect, the other one, not so.

You might recognize this one from my recent Ratatouille post. This boule, which my favorite shape of bread, is made with a half-recipe.

 

The thing I find about this bread is that the oven spring is just fantastic. Even with the deep scores in the previous picture, the bread just kept expanding. It came out of the side on this one.

 

This was the last one I made before making the "official" Challenge bread. We were visiting friends in Stuttgart, and I made the bread with the equipment on hand as well as some 1050 flour and yeast that our gracious hosts provided for me.

 

Got all that? Good. Now we start with the official Pain a l'Ancienne made specifically for the BBA Challenge, or, as we know it here, The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread: Making Classic Breads with the Cutting-edge Techniques of a Bread Master Challenge.

 

Because I know no one can resist pictures of my mixer, here is the dough in the first few minutes of mixing.

 

This is the part I most love about machine kneading. The dough (after some mixing and autolysing) just comes together. It turns into this amazing smooth entity. I love saying, though, okay- I love thinking. It's alive!!!

 

I know some people had trouble with this dough. I would very much like to blame the bad flour in the States, but I know that's just not the case. The flour is simply different.

European flour has different characteristics. For one, it is sold based on a standard that every mill is supposed to adhere. You have ash numbers designating the types of flour: 405, 550, 812, 1050, 1600, and then Whole Wheat Flour. The number corresponds to the amount, in milligrams of ash/minerals left over from burning 100g of flour. By this reasoning, whole wheat flour really should be Type 1700, but I guess if you say Vollkorn, then it's pretty obvious that you can't get any more of the wheat in there.

Just to be sure, though, Rye, which is fairly common, has its own set of numbers, as does Spelt, which is known here by what I think is a fairly cute name: Dinkel.

The thing is, that with this bread, the dough isn't supposed to pour out like a batter, it's supposed to pour out like a blob. Every time I pull this dough out of the mixer, it is like a big blob of not-quite rubber. It expands, but then contracts when you put it back.

I always use 1050 flour, which is the darkest, readily available flour here. I actually haven't made it with anything lighter, as I love the earthy taste of the flour in this dough.

The dough is then refrigerated. I usually go the full three days do develop flavor, though I have actually done four with no too-visible ill effects.

 

Since this is a several-day bread, I decided to wake up early on bake day and make them before work. I woke up at six in the morning and took the bowl out of the fridge, plopped it on the counter and went back to bed. It actually didn't quite lose the chill in the two hours I was asleep, though.

 

Nevertheless, when I woke up again, I carefully poured it out onto the floured board.

 

I made the mistake of cutting in half and then into six pieces despite the instructions in the book to cut it the short way into baguettes. Also, because this is a high hydration dough, I was a bit liberal with the flour, partly because I like the way it looks on the finished baguettes. If I had been making a boule, however, I would have used much less flour.

 

Since I was feeling a bit daring, I scored the loaves with very quick and very determined slashes. I also used my awesome Blue Steel sheet pans that I picked up at Mora in Paris. (As is my habit, whenever I link to a site, I visit it, just to get the address right. In this case, I took a 20 minute diversion looking at the goods, rather than- there I go again. I'm actually creating a list of things I need to buy instead of linking.) Because the recipe yields six baguettes, and because I don't want to make a half recipe for less bread, I baked these in two batches.

 

And when they came out...  Glorious.

They had streaks of flour and the scoring opened, though the bread also opened in other random places.

 

In an homage to my first batch, I wrapped these in whatever kitchen towel we had on-hand.

I gave two to the lovely ladies (one each) at my favorite local bookstore: ebertundweber, two to one of my co-workers, devoured one for breakfast with Nutella, and saved the other one for dinner.

The crumb is always open. And the bread? Well, it's always delicious.

Other Boulangers a l'Ancienne include:

Janice from Round The Table

Carolyn from Two Skinny Jenkins

Paul from Yumarama

Kelly from Something Shiny

Mags from The Other Side of Fifty

Cindy from Salt and Serenity

Jolene from What's Cookin, Chicago?

Thanks again to Nicole from Pinch My Salt for the The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread: Making Classic Breads with the Cutting-edge Techniques of a Bread Master Challenge.

BBA Challenge #20: Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire

When I lived in Brooklyn, there was this small cafe on Graham Avenue called Phoebe's. It took me a while this morning to remember what it was called, but I was able to somehow cull it from the inner reaches of my brain. I remember eating there every now and again, and often having lunch there on Tuesdays or Thursdays. It was odd. I would plan my days off to match so that I always had the same waitstaff. The thing I loved most about the place was this amazing multi-grain bread that I have never been able to reproduce. It just had everything in it and was so light and amazing toasted.

When I started this Challenge, I never thought I'd have so many trips into my memory based on bread. Italian Bread reminded me of buying soft loaves at Key Food, Cinnamon Buns reminded me of the very last Cinnabon I had at Newark Airport, hungry for anything, and finding that there were close to zero vegetarian options in the building. Bagels reminded me of my time at college, discovering what Bagels were. Well, that, the experience of having all manner of bad to good bagels in New York. I never thought this bread would bring back such a specific memory of days spent reading at a cafe I haven't thought about in years.

I love any excuse to use buttermilk in bread. The weird thing about it here is that is sold in rather large yogurt-type containers. The Becher is made of thin plastic with a foil lid. There is no additional lid for saving it. Look again at the container. Notice something odd? Like a glass of delicious Buttermilk with a straw sticking out? Yeah. They drink it here, though most dispense with the glass and straw, peel pack a corner of the foil and just drink from the package.

The mise en place was relatively simple. I did forget to photograph the soaker grains, but they are in the upper left of the photograph. Also, you have to have brown rice left over. We had some Mexican Rice left over- oil toasted and cooked in tomato sauce with cilantro. I didn't notice any influence of the rice to the final bread flavor, however.

The mixture started out watery. With the DLX, you have to add the water in first, otherwise it can't harness the awesome power of friction.

And this is what it looks like when it's done and ready to be risen.

In case you are wondering, I've adopted the European way of writing the number '1' so that it looks like a depressed '7'. The above says 11:45. If the number was a 7, it would look happy, but have a line through it.

 

Here, you roll out the dough into a rectangle. Oh, wait scratch that. I had read on other blogs that the bread is too much for a single loaf pan, so I realized I wasn't going to go further with the shaping.

So I tried my hand at a free-form batard and put it on the peel to rise.

After about 45 minutes it had grown into a monster. I slit and slid it onto the baking stone.

And here is where I normally eyeball the bread. Now, however. I take the temperature to test for doneness. It hasn't failed me at all. I have to interject here, though- The book is not written for an international audience, so the measurements are in ounces, which I convert to grams, and in Fahrenheit, which I convert when it comes to baking temperatures. For inner temperature, I just get out my Fahrenheit thermometer.

The bread totally exploded. In a good way. It completely opened up in the first fifteen minutes and looked like another bread was baking in its place. Nevertheless, it browned beautifully.

Because it opened so much, it lost much of its batard shape. It was more oval than anything.

But still amazing.

And, in a return to form, I took a picture of the bottom of the bread.

The color of the crumb was my favorite part of the bread. It was so creamy. Perhaps from the brown sugar, perhaps from the rice.

Although it didn't taste like the bread at Phoebes- It wasn't even close- the bread was amazing. Sweet in an understated way, and just the right flavor of- I'm not going to say health, because it didn't taste healthy. It just tasted amazing. The flavor you would expect the word bread to taste like.

Other Multigrain Bread Extraordinary Bakers include:

Anne from Rosemary and Garlic

Deborah from Italian Food Forever

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen

Susie from Susie's Home and Hobbies

You can learn more about the challenge at the BBA page at Pinch My Salt.