Rustic Pain de Pecan for BBD#69

The theme for Bread Baking Day #69 is Regionale Brote / Local breads. The host of this month’s challenge, Thomas from Der Gourmet, invited us to bake modern breads with adventurous names, or old classics, or perhaps breads that have been forgotten.

He reminded us that each region has its own charm and this brings with it great breads. He mentioned breads like Paderborner, Basel bread, Munich house bread, and SF Sourdough as examples. 

None of those breads are from my region. In the Southern region of the U.S., we are known for biscuits and cornbread, both charming in their own rite, but not too adventurous, or yeasted for that matter. It was time to get creative.

As I was pondering what bread to make for this challenge, I remembered that Pain de Pecan was the BOM (Bread of the Month) for the Artisan Bread Bread Bakers FB Group. Well now, if there is anything more local to Georgia than pecans, I don’t know what it is, except maybe peaches.

I grew up in metro Atlanta, but both of my parents are from South Georgia. My grandparents on my dad’s side had huge pecan trees growing in their yard. When we visited them, we would gather the nuts that were scattered around the yard and bring home big brown grocery bags full of pecans. They were whole pecans so we had to shell them, but that was part of the fun. We didn’t know how good we had it back then getting loads of pecans so cheaply.

Rustic Pain de Pecan with Homemade Spicy Peach Butter

 

I wanted this loaf to be a truly local/regional bread so in addition to the pecans, I used Bolted Red Fife Bread Flour milled at Anson Mills in South Carolina, and Hard Red Spring Wheat milled in my kitchen. I think flour milled in your own kitchen is about as local as you can get unless of course, I grew the wheat myself.

 

Rustic Pain de Pecan

Makes: One Loaf

Adapted from: David of Hearthbakedtunes 75% hydration loaf

Sourdough Build:

• 120g Water *
• 114g Home-milled whole wheat flour (from Hard Red Spring Wheat)
• 22g Levain (sourdough) **

Final Dough:

• 277g Water, hold back 25g for mixing with salt after autolyse *
• 228g Red Fife Wheat Bread Flour (hand milled style rustic)
• 114g Home-milled Whole Wheat Flour
• 9g Salt
• 90g Pecans, toasted until fragrant
  

* Home-milled flour absorbs more water so if you make this bread using commercially-milled whole wheat and bread flour, you’ll probably need less water.  The original recipe is 75% hydration, my version is more like 87% hydration.

** I used my apple starter, but you can use any kind of sourdough starter for this bread. Just make sure it’s been fed and ready to go.  Refer to this post on how to activate a starter or feed your starter according to your feeding schedule.

 

Make the Sourdough Build:

Combine the water and levain and mix until combined, add the whole wheat flour and mix again until a single consistency is formed. Cover, and allow to rest in a warm place 8-10 hours.

It can take up to 12 hours for the sourdough build to be ready to use. To test for doneness, take a spoonful of the levain and drop it in a glass of water.  If it floats, it’s ready, if it sinks to the bottom, let it ferment a little longer.

Autolyse:

Combine the flour and water and starter and stir until combined but still somewhat shaggy. Allow to rest for 30-40 minutes.

Add the salt and 25 grams water. Knead it into the dough by hand for about 8-10 minutes. After about 6-7 minutes add the pecans and knead until combined. Place the dough in a clean bowl, cover and let rest for 2.5 hours. Fold the dough in thirty minutes increments (four folds total).

Proof the Loaf

Ease the dough out of the bowl onto a floured working surface. Preshape the dough into a boule, let it rest 30 minutes. Then shape the dough into a tight round loaf and place it seam side up in a lined or unlined floured banneton basket. Allow the loaf to proof for two hours.

 

Score and Bake the Loaf

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees F. for 40 minutes with the Emile Henry Bread Cloche on the bottom rack.

Take the cloche (lid and bottom) out of the oven and place them both on surfaces where they won’t crack. I use cloth-covered bread boards for this purpose.

Sprinkle the bottom of the cloche heavily with corn meal or corn flour. Gently flip the loaf out of the basket and onto the bottom of the bread cloche. 

Score the loaf using the pattern of your choice. Place the cloche bottom in the oven and cover it with the lid. Immediately reduce the oven temperature to 450 degrees F.

Bake the bread with the lid on for 25 minutes. Remove the lid and finish baking 10-15 or until desired crust is produced.

Let it cool completely on a wire rack.

This bread has been Yeastspotted.

 

 

Thanks to Thomas from Der Gourmet, for choosing Regionale Brote / Local breads as the theme for Bread Baking Day #69.  And many thanks to Zorra for creating this event many years ago.

Happy Baking!

Cathy

 

There’s no bread like Home-Milled

Be it ever so humble, there’s no bread like home-milled whole wheat. 

Several weeks ago, Golden Wheat Farms sent me a sample of hard red winter winter wheat berries.  I milled the grains into flour and planned to use the flour right away, but I couldn’t decide what bread to make. I wanted to use it in something special. I usually freeze home-milled flour so it doesn’t go rancid, but this particular flour sat in a sealed container on my counter for a couple of weeks. It has been cold in my kitchen so it was just fine.

After waiting all this time, I decided to make a humble loaf of whole wheat bread using the simplest of ingredients. I wanted to taste the wheat flavor and not mask it with anything else.

This Whole Grain Artisan Loaf is made with home-milled whole wheat flour, water, salt and yeast. What brings out the flavor is the overnight poolish. 

 

This loaf was so easy to make. As with most breads I’ve made recently, this one was made completely by hand. I mixed the poolish the night before and let it sit at warm room temperature overnight and then started the final dough the next afternoon. The bread was ready by early evening.  Most of the time was spent fermenting the dough.

I brought the bread with me to visit a friend.  My friend is a very gracious taste tester.  He’s tasted a lot of my failures and successes, but this time he was delighted when he took a bite. He said it reminded him of the bread he ate growing up in Eastern Europe. I believe he was referring to a miche because that’s what this bread reminds me of as well. I gave him the rest of the loaf.  A couple of days later, I was missing the flavor of this bread so I made another loaf.

 

Home-Milled Whole Wheat Bread

Makes: 1 Loaf

I made the first loaf with an overnight poolish of sifted (about 85% extraction) whole wheat flour and water and a pinch of yeast. The second loaf was made with unsifted whole wheat flour.  I used a new triangle proofing basket for the first loaf.  I shaped the second loaf into a boule and proofed it on parchment paper.  I used different scoring patterns on each loaf.  I liked them both.

Adapted from: Bread Science, the chemistry and craft of making bread by Emily Buehler

 

Sponge:

Whole wheat flour (sifted once or unsifted)	187 g	1 2/3 cups
Water, lukewarm	187 g
Instant yeast	a pinch	a pinch

 

Final Dough:

Whole wheat flour	187 g	1 2/3 cups
Sponge	374 g	use all of it
Water*	140 g	2/3 cup
Instant yeast	1/2 tsp.	1/2 tsp.
Sea salt	2 tsp.	2 tsp.

* For the first loaf, I used 140 g plus an additional tablespoon or so of water in the final dough. For the second loaf, I only used 100 g of water in the final dough.

 

Prepare the Sponge:

Prepare the sponge 12 to 15 hours before you plan to mix the final dough. The water should be about 50 to 55 degrees F. or warmer if your house is cold. The final temperature should be about 65 degrees F.

Cover the sponge and let it rest at room temperature. 

 

Mix the Final Dough:

Mix the ingredients using a Danish dough whisk or wooden spoon.  The second time around, I found it helpful to add the sponge to the bowl first, and break it up with some of the water before adding the dry ingredients. Don’t add all of the water at this point because you may not need all of it. Add in flour and water gradually to make a workable dough.  Knead the dough for a few minutes on a lightly floured counter.  It will still be a bit tacky.  Place it in a clean bowl and cover it with plastic wrap or a towel.

 

Bulk Fermentation:

Let the dough bulk ferment for 2 hours. After 1 hour, fold the dough and place it back in the bowl.  Cover the bowl and let the dough proof for another hour.

Shape the Loaf:

When it is fully risen again, shape the dough into a boule and place seam side down in a floured banneton (proofing) basket for the final proof.  I decided to test my new triangle proofing basket on this loaf.  I dusted the basket with corn flour and placed the loaf in it to rise.

Alternately, shape the dough into a boule and let it rise on a floured board or parchment paper.  As you can see from the photo below, I don’t like to waste parchment paper so I’m reusing it (again).

Cover the loaf so it doesn’t dry out.

 

Proof the Loaf:

Let the dough proof until it is soft and full of gas. Poke the dough. If it leaves an impression and doesn’t spring back, the dough is ready. I let my loaves proof for about 45 minutes to an hour.

I wasn’t sure if the dough would fill up the triangle basket, but it did.  I pressed it down lightly to fill in the corners.

Prepare the oven for baking:

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. with a baking stone on the bottom rack and a steam pan underneath or a cast iron skillet on the top rack.

Score the Loaf:

Gently turn the loaf out of the basket and onto parchment paper. Score the loaf in the pattern of your choice. I used a Longuet lame to score straight patterns on the triangle loaf and the Adour lame to score around the top of the loaf like I did on the Cuban Bread but this time I added some scoring around the sides of the loaf as well.

 

Baking the Loaf:

Slide the loaf (on the parchment paper) onto the preheated baking stone.  Add hot water to the steam pan or several ice cubes to the iron skillet. Bake the loaf for 30 to 40 minutes.  The crust will be brown and the bottom should sound hollow when thumped.

 

Cool the Loaf:

Cool the loaf on a wire rack to allow the air to circulate below the bread. Then slice and enjoy. 

Here are the crumb shots for both loaves. The first loaf was a little more hydrated so it had some holes.  I used less water for the second loaf so it had a tighter crumb. They both tasted delicious.

 

I really enjoyed the red winter wheat from Golden Wheat Farms. I appreciate the opportunity to test it. It performed really well in this bread. 

Even though these loaves are made with the simplest of ingredients, they both tasted really good.  The first loaf tasted good plain and dipped in oil and herbs.  I enjoyed the second loaf with just butter or peanut butter.

 

I’m sharing these loaves with:

BYOB - Il Cestino del Pane

Yeastspotting

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy

Mill your own flour using the WonderMill Grain Mill –Giveaway from Bread Experience

I enjoy milling my own grains into flour. There’s something really satisfying about being the miller and the baker.

When you mill your own flour, what you get is nutritious whole wheat flour where nothing has been removed. The flour retains the complete endosperm, meaning the bran and germ have not been sifted out as with white flour.

I incorporate home-milled flour into breads as much as possible. I especially enjoy milling whole wheat flour from hard red or white wheat berries and other whole grains, such as Einkorn, Spelt, Khorasan, and rye, to name a few.

My grain mill of choice for the past several years has been the WonderMill Electric Grain Mill. I like it so much that I became an authorized dealer a couple of years ago and this year, I’m delighted to be giving one away. The link to enter the giveaway is located at the bottom of this post.

 

Why I like the WonderMill Electric Grain Mill

I like this grain mill because it’s so easy to use and it’s really fast. It can handle a small batch of flour or several pounds. It’s a great tool for homebakers. The price is very affordable. I bought my mill several years ago. I’ve been following the manufacturers instructions for using and maintaining it, and I haven’t had any problems. It still works wonderfully well.

The WonderMill Grain Mill can grind over 100 pounds of flour in an hour. You don't have to worry about overloading the WonderMill because of it's large 1 3/4 hp motor. Not only does it grind wheat, rice and other small grains, but will also grind legumes and garbanzo beans. You can create super fine flour or coarse flour at temperatures that preserve nutrients, ensuring that you will always have the perfect flour for your food.

Grinding wheat in my grain mill

Here is my grain mill. As you can see from the photo below, it has a prominent place on my kitchen counter. In this photo, I’m grinding hard red winter berries into whole wheat flour. The grain mill has three settings: pastry, bread and coarse.  I like to use the pastry setting for crackers and pastries and the coarse setting for rye flour, but for this whole wheat flour, I used the bread setting.

 

A few months ago, Golden Wheat Farms sent me a sample of the wheat they grow on their farm in Kansas. I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to grind it into flour and use in bread. I decided now was the time. I’ll be posting about that bread soon. For this post, I wanted to show the grains before and after milling.

The good thing about wheat berries is that they can be stored for a long time. Once you grind them into flour, you need to use the flour fairly soon because it doesn’t have any preservatives in it and will go rancid, but the whole wheat berries will keep for years if stored correctly. 

Would you like to grind your own grains into flour for bread baking?

Here’s your chance!

The Bread Experience is giving away an Electric Grain Mill!

The Bread Experience, in partnership with Mother Earth News, is pleased to announce that we are giving away a WonderMill Electric Grain Mill along with assorted baking tools used to make beautiful artisan breads. The total package is worth $500.00.

To participate in the sweepstakes, go to the Mother Earth News site and enter to win. http://www.motherearthnews.com/bread.aspx#axzz2kNAp5aI0

Good luck and Happy Milling!

Cathy

Gluten-Free Waffles for National Waffle Day

Today is National Waffle Day!  It’s also National Flour Month so I decided to celebrate both events by making gluten-free waffles with different types of flour. 

Flax-Coconut Pancakes are featured on the cover of the March Issue of Food and Wine. I thought they looked divine so I used the same ingredients for the batter, but added a good bit more milk to make these crispy, Gluten-Free Flax-Coconut Waffles.  These delicious waffles are made with brown rice flour, white rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, coconut flour and flaxseed meal.

 

Milling the Gluten-Free Grains

I went to the Asheville Bread Baking Festival this past weekend and attended a session on milling your own flour with Debi Thomas of Wildflour Bakery in Saluda, NC. She demonstrated milling different types of flour in different kinds of mills. I took photos of some of the mills, but forgot to get a photo of the beautiful Swedish mill.  It was on the other end.

This one is a hand grinder.

This is a Kitchen Aid Mixer with a grain mill attachment.  It actually worked pretty well.

 

I was still in the milling mindset when I decided to make these waffles. I didn’t have any tapioca starch and thought I was going to have to run to the store, but then I remembered I had an attachment for my WonderMill electric grain mill that allows me to grind smaller grains such as tapioca pearls. I had some tapioca pearls in the freezer so that saved me a trip to the store. I was able to use my new attachment to grind the tapioca pearls into tapioca starch. So cool!

 

Gluten-Free Flax-Coconut Waffles

A combination of brown rice flour, white rice flour, potato starch and tapioca starch makes an excellent substitution for all-purpose flour. Adding coconut flour provides rich fiber and it’s a good source of protein.

You might enjoy some of these Gluten-free flours for baking.

Makes: About 10 –12 Waffles

Adapted from “Flax-Coconut Pancakes” Food and Wine, March 2011 Issue

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup brown rice flour
• 1/3 cup white rice flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tablespoons potato starch
• 3 tablespoons tapioca starch
• 3 tablespoons coconut flour
• 2 tablespoons flaxseed meal
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1 1/4 cups milk, at room temperature
• 1/4 cup coconut oil, melted, plus more for the griddle
• Fresh fruit and maple syrup, for serving

 

Tapioca Pearls	Tapioca Starch

 

I had coconut flour, white rice flour, potato starch and flax meal, but no brown rice flour.  So I ground some brown rice into flour.  It’s pretty cool to see brown rice kernels turn into flour.

Brown Rice	Brown Rice Flour

 

 

Directions:

1) In a large bowl, whisk the brown and white rice flours with the sugar, potato starch, tapioca starch, coconut flour, flaxseed meal, baking powder and salt.

 

 

2) In another bowl, whisk the eggs and milk with the 1/4 cup of coconut oil and mix into the dry ingredients just until the batter is moistened.  Add more milk if the batter is very thick. 

Note: Be sure the milk is room temperature.  Otherwise, the coconut oil will harden when you add it to the other liquid ingredients.  Ask me how I know…

 

3) Preheat a griddle and brush lightly with coconut oil.    Follow the manufactures instructions for using your griddle.  I used about 2 tablespoons of batter per waffle. I added a good bit more milk, but the first batch was still pretty thick so I added even more milk when I made the rest of the waffles.

 

4) Remove the waffles to serving plates and serve with fruit and real maple syrup.

 

As you can see, I enjoyed the bite that was just waiting to be eaten.  The first batch made thick waffles, but the flavor was wonderful. 

 

For the next batch, I added more milk and let the waffles cook a little bit longer on the griddle so they were slightly more browned and crispy. The coconut flour and coconut oil give these waffles a very unique flavor and the brown rice provides the crispiness. Deliciousness!

 

Happy Baking!

Cathy

Whole Wheat Olive Oil Bread with Home-Milled Flour: HBinFive

For the March 1st Bread Braid, our mission was to make several different types of breads using the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes 100% Whole Wheat Olive Oil Dough: 1 loaf of 100% Whole Wheat Bread with Olive Oil; 1 loaf of Aloo Paratha; and Whole Wheat BBQ Pizza.

Due to my busy schedule the past couple of weeks, particularly with baking 27 breads for the STIR IT 28 Atlanta Event last weekend, I had to wait until the last minute to make the breads for the bread braid.  I’ll be honest, I almost blew this one off.  I was so exhausted at the beginning of the week, I didn’t want to think about bread much less make any for awhile. Plus, I kept doing stupid things like dropping a whole pan of taco meat on the floor while I was trying to put it away.  But, that’s a story for another day…

My bread-baking reprieve didn’t last very long – two days to be exact.  By Wednesday, I was having withdrawals.  So, I decided to make a half batch of the whole wheat with olive oil dough.

100% Whole Wheat Bread with Olive Oil
You can find the recipe here.



I’ve been doing some more research on home-milling and using different types of grains.  According to my new book (Flour Power: A Guide to Modern Home Grain Milling by Marietta F. Basey), hard red spring wheat has a higher protein content than hard red winter wheat due to the shorter growing cycle, but hard red winter wheat has a better flavor due to the longer growing season (they are both harvested in the summer) so I decided to use a mixture of both.

I used 1 cup of flour made from hard red winter wheat, 1 cup of flour made from hard red spring wheat and 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour I got from the farmer’s market.  I used more of the farmer’s market flour mainly because I didn’t have enough home-milled flour to make the 3 1/2 cups.  The flour from the farmer’s market didn’t specify the type of wheat (only that it was Kansas wheat), but I’m pretty sure it was red winter wheat. 


The home-milled whole wheat flour had also been sifted once to separate the bran and germ.  The resulting flour is called clear flour. Clear flour still retains some of the finer bran fiber from the outer endosperm of the wheat berry and is thus coarser and contains higher levels of ash.  We used this technique in the BBA Challenge for the Marbled Rye Bread. It is usually made from very high-protein wheat and is used for whole-grain and high-fiber breads.

I made up the dough and let it ferment on the counter for a few hours.  However, I didn’t put it in the refrigerator for the overnight retard.  The consistency of the dough looked, smelled and felt so good, I decided to go ahead and bake part of it.



I weighed out two portions.  Each piece weighed slightly under a pound, but it was close enough. I used one piece for this bread and saved the other one for the Aloo Paratha.

 

I shaped the dough into a ball and let it rest for a couple of minutes.  Then I shaped the ball into an elongated oval, placed it on parchment paper, and let the dough rest on the counter for about 90 minutes.  Right before baking, I made three slashes in the loaf using a serrated knife.




Then, I sprayed the loaf with water and sprinkled a mixture of seeds on top. After that, I sprayed the loaf with spray oil to try and keep all (some) of the seeds from falling off.



Then, I placed it on the baking stone with a steam pan underneath and baked it for about 30 minutes.  It had good oven spring.



Here is the finished loaf.



I really liked this bread.  It was very flavorful, not dense at all. It tasted really good as a PB&J.  As I’ve mentioned before, my test of whether a bread is good or not is if it tastes good with PB&J or at least with peanut butter. This one passed the test with flying colors.



I loved the flavor of this bread. It’s one of my favorites so far.  I think part of it is because of the flour I used.  It was fresh and had a wonderful flavor. All I know is that I’ll definitely be making this bread again and using this flour mixture.

Thanks for joining me in the bread-baking blog.  I’ll discuss the other two breads next time. Check out Michelle's blog on March 1st to see what everyone else baked with this dough.




About the HBinFive Baking Group
The HBinFive Baking Group, started by Michelle of Big Black Dogs, is baking through all of the breads in the  Healthy Bread in Five Minutes book. For more information on the new HBinFive baking group, check out Michelle's blog.





Happy Baking!
Cathy