Walnut Gouda Bread

The 40% rye sourdough from the last bake was so flavorful that I was inspired to make more rye bread. It was also a good opportunity to use up some Gouda cheese. For this bake, I made up a rye starter using 500g of Organic Rye flour. I used up the 2kg of Pilsbury Maida which I picked up on my way home on Friday. After making the mistake of using too much water in my last bake, I reduced the hydration this time round to 68%.

The walnuts and cheese were folded in before the bulk fermentation. During the shaping of the loaves, I added in the remaining cheese. I decided on a batard shape as I wanted to cram it in a single bake.

The smell was heavenly and I am looking forward for a bite as soon as they cool down.

40% Rye Hazelnut Fruit Load

A friend asked me for some sourdough starter recently but I was unable to give him then because I had thrown out my existing culture. I promised to give him some as soon as I have started a new culture.

To test this new culture, I decided to bake some rye fruit and nut bread. I had only some Pilsbury Maida and the remaining organic rye flour. The formula was based loosely on Hamelman's 40% rye sourdough formula.

The loaves turned out a little flat as I included a little more water than the formula called for. Their lack of beauty was compensated by the robust flavor.

I can't wait for the morning to slice it and see how the crumb turn out. Just thinking of the bread with Sarabeth's Blood Orange jam and butter has already got me drooling.

Super Peel from Cut The Mustard


Walnut Fennel Raisin Bread with Wessex Mills Strong White Bread Flour



Cut The Mustard

I visited Cut The Mustard at 1 Greendale Ave in Bukit Timah recently. They carry a range of specialty and gourmet products at very reasonable prices. There was a range of flours from Wessex Mills as well as Organic Stoneground Spelt and Whole Wheat flour from Gilchester Organics. I picked up a bag of the Strong White Bread Flour to try. It was very reasonable at $6.50 for 1.5kg. Considering that the local Prima Bread flour is retailing at over $3.00 per kg, the price for this unbleached high quality flour from the UK is a steal.

There is also a surprise find at the store. They actually carry The Super Peel. The Super Peel is a magical tool and it works in a very dramatic way. See this video. This is probably the only store in Singapore carrying this product.

For this test bake, I used the entire bag together with 1kg of whole wheat flour, making it a total of 2.5kg. This was the largest quantity of flour I have ever attempted. As it was a totally new flour and I was clueless about how much water it would absorb, I hazard a guess of 80% hydration.

I prepared a preferment with 500g of the White Flour in the afternoon and the main dough was mixed at around 11.00pm. As it was already very late, I opted for the prolonged autolyse method. The following day after about 12 hours, the dough was taken out for a couple of folds. I decided to make my favorite walnut fennel raisin bread. The 2.5kg of flour yielded 6 loaves.

After the loaves had cooled down, I sliced a couple of them and was very pleased with the results of the bake.

Poilane. See the heavy snow.

Poilane cushions, not miche :=)
Poilane backroom with bread chandelier
Poilane slices with Proscuitto de Parma and Meslun assembled in hotel room
Gosselin
Baguette Ancienne
Breads at Borough market
Breads at Borough market


Visit to Poilane and Gosselin in Paris

Ever since I started baking Artisanal bread, I have always wondered what the real stuff tastes like. Although I have had slices of Poilane which has been shipped here, the bread was already past its prime.

I finally got a chance to visit Poilane recently. Despite the heavy snow on that day, I managed to visit Gosselin also. Unfortunately there just wasn't enough time to visit Kayser , Boubsa and Ganachaud.

The people at Poilane were obliging in answering my questions. I requested for a visit to their wood fired oven in the basement but the lady said that they entertained visits only in the Summer.

Trudging in the heavy snow with slush all round with an armful of stuff was worse than an army route march. With one hand holding an umbrella, the other hand holding a map to navigate the streets of Paris and bags and bags of wife's shopping dangling from the arm, it was an ordeal that only a bread fanatic could endure. I had to call it quits after 2 bakeries as it was getting dark.

At Gosselin, I was surprised that the Baguette Ancienne cost less than local baguettes at 1.15 Euro. Baguette Ancienne, which Peter Reinhart described so much in his book selling for less than our local baguette in Paris??? and we are talking about the baguette which won the Parisian baguette of the year.

Over in the Borough Market in London, there were stalls selling the most beautiful breads and the only reason why we don't hear of such bakers is that they don't write books nor do they have on online presence.

It was certainly an eye opening experience and it made me realise that there are many superb bakers and bakeries out there other that those we know from the books. The bakeries in Switzerland were superb and the breads there were exceptionally good. The only regret I had was being unable to carry all those bread home.

Indian wheat flour

I have been baking more whole-wheat breads lately and the inclusion of Indian Maida flour warranted a new post. Maida is the Indian equivalent of all purpose flour. Since the Indian grocery store near my work place carried Pillsbury Maida, I picked up a couple of bags for this flour test.

When I poured it into the flour bowl, I was surprised by the creamy color compared to the Prima bread flour. I would not have noticed the color had it not been placed side by side to the Prima bread flour. In comparison, the Prima flour was so white that it looked absolutely bleached.

For this bake, which is my favorite fruit and nut bread, I made up a formula of 50% Pillsbury Maida and 50% Swarna Chakki Atta. Swarna Chakki Atta is very fine stone ground Indian Atta. You can see their advert on Youtube. The hydration was 80% with 2% Himalayan Pink Salt. So other than the yeast, it was an entirely Indian affair. Even the Walnuts and Giant Raisins were bought from Mustafa although they were imported from California.

The first time I used Swarna Chakki Atta, I was extremely surprised by the flavor. I would say it was the most flavorful bread I had ever made. However, subsequent bakes were not so remarkable. I cannot say that the quality had deteriorated because the law of diminishing marginal utility may have kicked in.

The dough was mixed in, the night before and given a prolonged autolyse overnight. This morning, it was given a stretch and fold with the toasted walnuts and raisins scattered in. After an hour proof, it was baked at 225C for 10min, followed by another 1omin at 200C. I turned the oven down to 190 for the next 10. After the bake, the oven door was left ajar for another 10 min.

The breads were very flavorful when they were taken out from the oven. I brought a loaf to a an Indian food vendor selling Tandoori chicken. He has a Tandoori Oven in his stall where he makes a variety of Naan breads. I had come upon his stall in Bedok Food center by chance and tried out his Garlic Naan breads which I found to be very well made. We chatted about bread(what else?) and I told him about my experiments with Atta flour. Since I had promised to bring him a loaf to try, I had to make good my word. He was surprised when I showed up at his stall with a loaf of bread and some home roasted Organic coffee from Gayo, Indonesia.

Favorite Fruit and Nut Bread

For the past few weeks, I have been making my favorite fruit and nut bread based on a Middle-Eastern stone ground Atta. After trying out a kilo of the flour, I was so impressed by its quality and freshness that I went back to the store and got myself 3 more kilos of it. Somehow, it seem better than the Indian Atta that I had been using.

I made up a formula using the entire kilo of flour. The rest of the flour used for the bread was German type 550 flour to make up a total flour weight of 60 Oz. The water absorbing qualities couldn't have been more different that the Type 550 flour. I ended up using a 85% hydration. For the past few bakes, the nuts that I used were Walnuts and Almonds. For the fruit, I used Golden raisins.

For this bake, I had to resort to Cashews, Almonds and Cranberries as I did not realize that the Raisins and Walnuts were already used up. The resultant crumb was not too dense as the Atta was only 58%. This made the bread very pleasant to eat. The bread was made over 6 hours with only a couple of hours fermentation. Despite the short time, the bread was very flavorful.

Wonderful book

I was rummaging through a pile of music books, looking for my volume of Antonio Carlos Jobim's Bossanova guitar scores when I came upon this little book, a gift from Dan Lepard. It must have been stuck there by my son who has a voracious appetite for books.

I have always loved books of this nature. They offer nuggets of wisdom which are so appropriate for the situations we get ourselves into. The first time I came upon this kind of book was when I was an undergrad in the University. Someone from the Catholic Students Society lent me a book, The Song Of The Bird by Fr Anthony de Mello. It was a collection of stories which were either original or compiled from masters from the past. That book opened up my mind at a time when I was having a lot of doubt. Ironically, I learned recently that the books by Fr De Mello were actually frowned upon by the current Pope.

I went on to discover the writings of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, Lao Tze and the Zen and Sufi masters. What struck me was that they were all so similar. It made me realize that the wisdom passed down through the ages transcended organized religion. As Sri Sri Ravi Shankar once said that Religion is like a banana, the flesh is all the good values that we all treasure, the traditions and rituals that come with the religion is just the skin. Nobody fights over the teachings of love, compassion etc but everybody is fighting over the skin.