BBA Challenge #43: Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche

 

So. Here we are. Shredded Asiago.

I've really been dragging my feet towards the end of the challenge. Not just because I didn't want it to end, but mostly because I couldn't find Asiago in Berlin. True, I was only half-heartedly trying.

The thing is, finishing the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge meant finishing a significant part of my baking education. Before I started the challenge bread for me meant measuring in cups, and always forgetting if I already had five or six cups. It meant a tablespoon of yeast and a tablespoon of salt. It meant baking bread either as a boule or in loaf pans, with no other possibilities.

But even as early as Brioche or Ciabatta, bread became transcendental. It might have been baking the Casatiello, which remains my favorite bread of the book. I remember slicing the first piece off the mushroom shaped loaf and just thinking about how much crust this piece had. In fact, it might have been all crust. It might also have been when I made my own starter in anticipation of the sourdough section. Or when I began baking 2 kilo sourdough miches as "practice" for the Poilane-Style Miche.

This bread, as well as the last one are included in the Gracenote section of the book, and are cheese-laden celebrations of what bread can be. For this bread, I really wanted to make everything as in the recipe. No changes, no shortcuts.

The Asiago was not easy to find. I asked at several cheese counters and shops in the city, and in an act of desperation, I posed my question on Twitter. In hindsight, I could have asked at KaDeWe, but it's not usually a place where you can find anything easily unless you shop there regularly, which, really, should not turn into a habit. I really only go there when I'm desperate or can't find something anywhere else, and I guess I wasn't at that point yet.

Despite her initial suggestion to use Parmesan cheese, as she had done for her bread, AP269 was the first to suggest Centro Italia. Further recommendations followed from Peggy at Multikulinarisch.es and Küchenlatein. Poking around on Centro Italia's website, I discovered that they have two locations (Now they have three, one just opened in Prenzlauer Berg). There's one near the Schloss in Charlottenburg, and one in the middle of nowhere in Marienfelde. Luckily for me, the one in Marienfelde was about ten minutes closer, and only required a single train. So, I decided to go to that one the following weekend.

That weekend, I looked up the train schedule, double-checked Google Maps and noted the hours. I left for the Marienfelde location.

It was closed.

Somehow, in the rush that defines the weekend, I had only written down the hours of the Charlottenburg location, which is open two hours longer on the weekend. So, Marienfelde? Closed. When I got home, I checked the train schedules for when I would have to leave for Centro Italia on Monday morning with enough time to get to work. I was determined to get this cheese.

On Monday, I arrived at Centro Italia two minutes before nine. There were three guys smoking just outside the entrance, and I just assumed they were also waiting for the store to open. Of course, I thought it was normal that people would be waiting in front of a large Italian supermarket waiting for it to open in the early morning. After about a half-minute of talking amongst themselves, one of the guys told me that I could go in.

I should have gone directly to the cheese counter and fled. But, instead, I went down every aisle. Zucchini spread, Linguine (!), nine thousand different kinds of tomato sauce. It was amazing how much stuff they managed to pack into such a small space.

I walked out of there with two kinds of olive oil, as well as assorted Italian groceries. When I was at their very extensive cheese counter, I asked about the Asiago and the guy didn't even flinch when I told him I needed a half kilo.

When I finally got home that night, I went to work measuring flour, but when I read down to the rest of the ingredients, I quickly realized we had neither chives nor green onions. So much for starting the bread. I had to wait until that Thursday to pop over to the grocery store after work and nab the last two bunches of green onions. I was looking everywhere for fresh chives in the pot (many fresh herbs are sold in a little pot in Germany, in case you want to try to grow them). No dice. I settled for a small box of frozen chives.

And then. I was able to start the last bread in the Challenge.

I've actually been meaning to write an entire post about this device. It's a Mouli-Julienne from Moulinex. I first heard of it on David Lebovitz's wonderful post about Celeriac salad, he pretty much raved about it, and after a bit of quick googling, I found a picture of it, and then, finally, found one on ebay. Amy refers to it as the "Eiffel Tower" which was puzzling until one day I took it out of the cabinet and the long part was on top, which made it look just like the tower. Take a second to look at it closer, and tilt your neck if you have to.

Asiago is a strange cheese. Not sharp like cheddar or some of the drier Italian Cheeses, and not as mild as say, aged Mozzarella.

As I was peeling the wax and paper from the cheese, I discovered these traces of the name. They were probably there just to make sure I hadn't accidentally bought a different cheese. Then again, it could have been "Asiag" cheese, and not Asiago.

And in under a minute, with the help of the "Eiffel Tower" I was done.

I set up my mise en place for the challenge one last time. The thing about having all your ingredients at the ready is that it is so convenient. You're not searching for the salt, and then measuring it out, cursing the spoon scale for being in two pieces- the spoon part on the drying rack, and the scale part in your baking drawer.

As usual, I used my Electrolux DLX/N26/AKM4110W. Just Add Water. And then everything else. It's odd how I haven't really mixed dough by hand ever since I got it at the beginning of last year. And to think that I bought it because I wanted to make pizza. I've made more bread than all the pizzas I've eaten since then.

Of course, when you have an ingredient that is a bit rare, you tend to go overboard with hoarding it until you need to use it. This was a warning for Amy and I, just in case we decide to make grilled cheese with the precious Asiago.

And then, as quickly as the shredding, the dough was done. Normally, I just walk away and then check on the dough periodically, eyeballing it to see how done it is. This is actually easier when I'm doing periodical stretch-and-folds, since the more difficult the dough is to fold, the closer it is to the end of the first rise.

After the allotted three hours, it had risen to between one-and-a-half and double. Perfect.

Despite what the book said (to do it the night before), I roasted the onions as I was making the bread. Yes, that is a quarter sheet pan, only because a half-sheet pan doesn't fit in the oven if I want the door to close.

After the second rise, the bread is flipped over onto the peel and brushed with olive oil.

Then dimpled just like Foccacia.

And, like any good Foccacia, topped with the ingredients. Except that this time they were cheese and onions.

Normally, I just put flour on the peel and flop the bread onto it, score it and immediately load it into the oven using quick jerking motions to get the loaf from peel onto stone. The difficulty is compounded because the breads I love baking are actually the same diameter as the width of the stone. So I have to make sure that the bread is not falling off the back of the peel, and that I've approached the oven symmetrically, so that the sides fit on the peel. If I've done enough stretch-and-folds, the dough tends to just sit on the stone and not move. With doughs with considerably less structure and strength, the dough tends to melt to the edge before oven spring kicks in with its rising power.

With all that in mind, I decided on parchment paper for these loaves. I had a bad experience with a pizza sort of sticking to the peel and going onto the stone half-up and half-down, so I didn't want to chance it, especially with all these toppings and the very rare cheese!

I only remembered afterward that many in the Challenge had written about their onions burning in the oven, atop the bread. I also have the tendency to bake my loaves much darker than most others I know. Perhaps it's because I use darker flour, or because my electric oven has an exposed heating element at the top. Or maybe because I crank up the oven to the max and forget to turn it down. I'm not sure.

The crumb was absolutely lovely, with irregular holes, as well as tons of moisture. Perhaps because I kept to the recommended baking times and didn't overbake it to get it browner.

I was a bit disappointed that the onions burned, but they weren't so burnt that I had to pick them off.

When sliced, the bread took on a near-magical quality. All that cheese! It certainly added flavor to the bread, but you could barely recognize it in the crumb itself.

Though this was supposed to be a three-day bread, the bread sort of somehow started overproofing in the fridge during the last rise after only an hour, so I just took it out and baked it. This is the second loaf, just before going into the oven.

And the bottom of the second one the next morning. I froze half of the first loaf as soon as it came out. The other half we inhaled that evening with soup. I also froze half of the second loaf, and snuck slices from the non-frozen half. Note the smoothness of the bottom. Usually, I love the wrinkled flour dusted bottom of loaves, but for this one, I didn't mind.

It was perfect.

I have enjoyed baking with these other finishers of the BBA Challenge. I hope to be able to add your name soon!

Sally from Bewitching Kitchen
Phyl from Of Cabbages and King Cakes
Cindy from Salt and Serenity
Oggi from I can do that!
Sarah from My Runchey Life
Paul from Yumarama
txfarmer's blog (in chinese)
Abby from Stir it! Scrape it! Mix it! Bake it!
ap269 from Family and Food
Anne Marie from Rosemary and Garlic

If I've forgotten you, please send me an email or a comment with a link to your post and I'll include you in the blogroll.

BBA Challenge #41 Whole Wheat Bread

If White Bread is the candy of breads, then Whole Wheat Bread must be the- er- bread- of breads. It's pretty funny to make the leap from White Bread, which is known in some circles as the evil of the world, to Whole Wheat Bread, which is supposed to be the healthy bread, the one you buy out of obligation, but not because it tastes good. But such is the (alphabetical) order in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and in the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge.

For this bread, I was determined not to repeat the same mistakes that my other co-bakers had made. Some had made bricks and moved on, some were successful. But, the thing is, I think this recipe is not that good. There's all the makings of what would become Peter Reinhart's epoxy theory, but the recipe is just so-so. Whole Wheat Flour is notorious for being difficult to work with- I usually get pretty dense breads when I make whole wheat sourdough bread, so I usually go with the trick I learned from the Poilâne-style miche- I buy coarse-ground whole-wheat flour, and I sift out most of the bran.


Everything in its right place. I used every ingredient listed, knowing that eggs, oil and honey (the three in the center) act as natural dough conditioners, and would help the bread to be less brick-y.


Still, even with all of these additives, I was fairly skeptical. Like with the 100% Rye Sourdough bread, I just sort of cruised my way through the kneading of the bread.


I hardly thought it was going to work out.


But it did.


Unfortunately, when it came to the shaping, I sort of failed at it. The thing is, I don't bake loaves in pans anymore. I tend to just bake a boule and slice odd-shaped slices from it.


So, even though they did fit, they were a bit lumpy.


As with the rye bread, I forgot that I was even baking until I walked into the kitchen and found the that the dough had crested the loaf pans.


I went ahead and baked them and let them cool before slicing into them.


The crumb was rather open, but, in truth, I didn't care much for this bread. Yes, it did have that nutty whole wheat flavor, but the thing was that, for me, it didn't taste like bread. It was- gasp!- like cake.

So, this one can be seen as the cake of bread. Or, in other words, bread cake.

Pass. Move on.

At least the list of alphabetical breads is over with.

Bring on the cheese breads!

BBA Challenge #38: Tuscan Bread

I guess this is the moment when it all went sensationally wrong, way back when.

Somehow, intentionally making a salt-free bread seems to have wronged the delicate balance of the bread universe, so it had to strike back somehow. This is the bread that made me realize something was wrong with the oven.

When I first started baking, I would religiously measure six cups of flour. Oh, wait. is that four or five? Hold on, I have to pour everything back into the bag of flour. One. Two. Three. Four. Whenever my concentration would waver, I would measure out the cups of flour into different parts of the bowl in order to have a visible mark of having the complete six cups of flour.

I would then pour in one tablespoon of yeast, because I couldn't be bothered to measure out 2 1/2 teaspoons. I thought- what's an extra half teaspoon of yeast? Then, two cups of warm water between 105F and 115F. I'd knead the bread by hand, let it rise exactly an hour and a half, punch it down and let it rise another 45 minutes before baking it for 15 minutes at 400F and an addition 25 at 250F.

And there you have it. The bread recipe that I baked quite seldom, and never intentionally. That is, when I would take a bite of the bread, it tasted like water. Lifeless. Beautiful loaves with no flavor. Which, if you're paying attention, would mean I had forgotten the salt. I know, I know, in the confusion of measuring out six, and exactly six, cups of flour, I had somehow forgotten the salt.

The recipe above, with the inclusion of a tablespoon of salt, that is, was the recipe I baked from for about nine years before joining the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge. And since then, I have never baked a loaf of bread without the salt. Until now.


Note the absence of salt, the inclusion of an absurd amount of olive oil as well as- um- cooked flour paste, the kind that you used to get in kindergarten, but made with a darker flour.


Into the machine it goes. Note the general lack of counter space. Fruit is in the heart-shaped bowls we picked up second-hand in Belgium, and a stray cake pan is sitting atop the basket we use for potatoes.


So here's where it all starts going awry. Well, not to say that the paste wasn't awry enough. After a very fast bulk rise, I pack the entire thing into an undersized brotform, and forget about it for an hour. Okay, or two. Without the salt, the monster grew quite fast, and expanded to look like a dough-brain.


I flipped it onto the peel, and, not wanting to chance the bread collapsing when sliding it into the oven, I took the easy way out and used parchment paper, which I rarely do, even for pizza.

And what happened? The bread collapsed. Sort of. I noticed that it wasn't baking properly on the bottom, so I attempted to flip it, and stuck half of my mitt into the bottom of the loaf. That's why the picture at the top has that raw, sunken-in look.


So when it came out, it was already mauled. As for the flavor? Well, I would have said inedible. Many others who baked this bread found it tasteless, or tasting like flour paste (but in a good way).


I wasn't too convinced. After all, this bread with no salt. No one intentionally makes bread without salt.

The bread did have this nice sweetness, though, from the flour paste and the flavor of the olive oil. In fact, with this bread, good olive oil is a must, since, without salt, it is one of the prominent flavors.

Oddly enough, Amy said it was the best bread I had ever baked. Which I found strange, but not strange enough to stop me from making sandwiches on the bread. The flavor was complementary to whatever was put on it- mustard and cheese- but, in the end, I know I won't be making this one again.

Other Tuscan bakers include:

Anne Marie of Rosemary and Garlic

Chris from Eating Is The Hard Part

Phyl from Of Cabbages and King Cakes

Oggi from I can do that!

BBA Challenge #35: Sunflower Seed Rye

Oof.

Sometimes I think I'm running out of steam since my baking has basically halted. Part of the reason is that I want to catch up. That is- synchronize what I've baked with what I've posted in order to not forget what the breads were like.

It now seems that by the time I get to the actual post, I've completely forgotten what the bread looked like, or even tasted like. Such is the case with this one. Though I remember the bread being good- slightly dense, chewy on the outside with that slight rye taste, and just a wee bit dry, even. Though I don't remember much else.

I do think that this bread, for me at least, was not really that special since sunflower seeds are used in almost all German Breads. You can buy rolls with them, and even loaves of bread, the seeds themselves baked onto the top crust, and the crumb itself full of the yummy seeds. Whereas this one, yes, it had seeds, but it was not the chock-a-block seed-fest of Sonnenblumenkernkastenbrot (Sunflower-seed loaf bread) that you normally get here.

It's funny that this bread concludes the Sourdough chapter in the Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's another one of those with yeast in it to help the bread rise faster. I would have thought there would be a wider variety in the survey of bread that is the book, but I believe that Peter Reinhart didn't want to overwhelm any beginning bakers, some of whom would probably have had no sourdough experience to begin with.

Still, having had years of normal yeasted-bread experience under my belt, and only a few months of sourdough experience, I have to say that the Sourdough section was quite tame. Yes, you have to wait for the bread to rise on its own. Yes, sometimes you have yeast to help it along. Yes, it's like regular bread, but, really, I didn't find any real surprises, aside from the sheer enormity of the Poilâne-style Miche.

So, without further ado. Into the frying pan...


Actually, a cast-iron pan. The recipe begins with toasting sunflower seeds to unlock their flavors and aromas.


The mise en place reveals a starter (upper left) and a soaker (left). I have to admit that I actually didn't use coarse whole-rye, again, since I was hoping my whole rye flour would be coarse on its own. The specialty flour store where I get my flour has coarse-ground whole wheat flour, so I was actually expecting the whole rye to follow suit, but, alas, it was not to be.


All ingredients take a whirl in the stand mixer...


And come out in a firm blob of strengthened proteins, networked gluten, and sunflower seeds taut within the mixture. This particular dough looks like a pillow because of the stretch and folds I did during the rise.


After the first rise, the dough is shaped into a boule.


And then poked.


And prodded into a ring. The only thing about it is that the opening of the ring really should be that huge. In a fit of doubt that seizes me every now and then, I decided that the hole was way too big, and then padded back inwards.


Normally, one would use dowels to separate the sections, but I reached for the first thing that struck me, the handle of a wooden spoon. Twice for each line- pressing it down a total of eight times for four clear impressions.


So, imagine my disappointment at the risen product. The lines were pretty clearly defined, but the hole in the center had almost completely closed.


Still, I can't deny the memory of the bread being simply delicious when I ate a full third of it (as soon as it cooled, of course) with various cheeses and mustards. Now, if I could remember just how it tasted...

Other Sunflower Seed Rye bakers:

Janice from Round The Table

Abby from Stir it! Scrape it! Mix it! Bake it!

Anne Marie from Rosemary and Garlic