Three Clever Sisters

I made some real progress on the BBA Challenge over Thanksgiving weekend–I have three, yes three! BBA related posts from the holidays.  This is the first, and I hope to get the rest updated in a timely fashion (as opposed to oh, a month later, when I hardly remember what I made).

I made this bread on Wednesday, figuring we could use the loaves as an accompaniment to dinner the  next day (and for nibbling on before that).  Like the French Bread, this dough starts with a pre-ferment by way of a biga–it’s much like pate fermentee in that it’s a pre-kneaded dough, but only bread flour is used this time (as compared to the mixture of bread and AP flour in French Bread).  As with all pre-ferments, you let it rise, punch it down and pop it in the fridge overnight.  Then you cut it into small pieces and mix in more flour, water, and yeast.

Here’s the risen dough–pretty impressive (though because I was working from home and got distracted, a bit more voluminous than it probably should have been).

Now shaped into batards.  I’m still getting this down–I don’t think I manage to create quite the amount of surface tension that is required (though usually the eventual rising seems to take care of that).  The batards are just the first step in shaping, as they rest for about 5-10 minutes before…

you stretch them out to the length of your baking sheet.  Compared to the pre-elongated batards above, these look kind of sad and spindly.  However…

They plump up nicely (ah, the magic of yeast!).  I scored them with my lame and in they went to the oven.

Voila!  (Or, I guess, since we’re in Italy now, “Ecco!”) 

I’ll admit the crust looks a little “blah’ in these pictures.  Besides never having enough light to get a good non-flash photo, I didn’t have any non-diastatic barley malt powder on hand (what, don’t you?) which is an optional ingredient, and which I expect gives you a much nicer crust.  Also, if I made this again I might try baking at the lower temperature that Reinhart suggests for a thick-crusted loaf.  I would think that serving this bread alongside a nice Italian meal that had great pan juices or sauces that beg to be sopped up with good bread warrants a bread with a rustic, substantial crust.  (I’m not sure why baking at a lower temperature produces this effect.  I haven’t seen him mention it for other breads but it is interesting to know, I’m sure it would work in any case).

We all enjoyed the bread.  It is sort of that standard Italian bread you get as a side at Italian take-outs or buy frozen pre-lathered with garlic butter, but as is the experience with other BBA breads, much better than those artificially quick-leavened loaves.  Also, due to the copious baking that was going on over the past week, we still have half a loaf left.  And while it’s certainly not at its freshest, it’s still rather easy to slice and makes a fantastic toast.  That alone is pretty impressive to me!

My BBA Challenge Foccacia turned out better than I expected.  My experiences with ciabatta (BBA and otherwise) had me worried;  while these aren’t the same breads (aside of both being Italian), I imagined foccacia required a rather wet dough to achieve plenty of big air pockets, much like ciabatta.  Considering, per my husband, that my ciabatta was like  a “brick”, I was expecting the same trouble with my foccacia.   (How hard it is to add more water?  Apparently for me, hard).

I added the maximum amount of water called for in the recipe (not that this helped with ciabatta, but I don’t learn).  In fact I even worried I had added too much water.  The recipe says that the dough should clear the sides of the bowl once it’s mixed.  While mine did that, it did not pull away cleanly–which is what I typically understand that instruction to mean.  Rather, a few streaks of dough still clung on the sides of my kitchenaid bowl.  But in retrospect, perhaps this is what was called for!  In addition, this dough has quite a bit of olive oil inR it, which gives it a softer texture.

Like the ciabatta, the envelope folding technique was employed several times during the rising process; i.e. pat the dough into a rectangle; stretch out each end and fold back in thirds, over itself like folding a business letter.  I don’t know what this special technique does.  At least for puff pastry and croissants, it creates layers of dough and butter which then allow for the dramatic rise (if you do real puff pastry, apparently up to 9 times in volume.   I am happy enough with the mere 4-5 times I get out of quick puff, which only takes about 1/2 hour rather than 9 or 10.  An acceptable tradeoff!).   Considering Peter Reinhart eschews that type of mattress-thick foccacia, I’m guessing this serves some other purpose.

Once the folding and rising process is through, you spread your dough into the baking pan.  You don’t actually press it out to fill the pan, the idea is that it will expand outwards as well as upwards to fill the space.  I was nervous about this–for this growth to be accomplished I reasoned a pretty slack dough would be necessary, bringing up my concerns about sufficient hydration.  On the other hand, did I mention how much olive oil was in this already?  That would certainly allow those little gluten molecules to slip all over the place and expand all over the place!

While I had to give it some help, my dough did do a pretty good job of growing properly.  The finger dimpling (to release some air without deflating, but quite possibly also to create pockets to absorb even more olive oil) helped fill in those corners where the dough had failed to reach.

And just for a “dramatic shot”–shadows and light–more foccacia just before baking:

Success!  The finished bread was a great foccacia–delicious flavor from the olive oil (and I didn’t even use a flavored oil) though I note a slightly unctuous feel to the bread.  (This is not a bad thing–this is what foccacia is supposed to be like–but quite a departure from other breads I have made recently).  As Peter Reinhart says, his version is far preferable to those foccacias that are so ubiquitous but are really just flavorless, too-thick and starchy breads.  (All volume, no substance!)  Despite copious additions olive oil, this is still light tasting, flavorful, and delicious!

Jeesh–I don’t even know how long ago I made these.  To the extent I ever have anything useful to say about a recipe or any noteworthy observations, I’m sure I’ve forgotten them by now.  On the other hand, it’s pretty cool to have made your own English muffins!

This was of course the next bread in the BBA Challenge.  I love English muffins, though often more in theory than when I actually buy them.  They are often so disappointing!  Slightly stale tasting even when just purchased, insubstantial…so how about the recipe?

In a way this is kind of like bagels–you do the first part of the baking on the stovetop, and then finish baking in the oven.  Except in this case rather than dropping the pieces of dough into a hot water bath, you bring out the pancake griddle!

The beginning is similar enough to any other bread dough we’ve seen so far:

 Then you make the muffins.  Surprisingly to me, you roll them into little balls for the second proof:

 And let them grow on a bed of cornmeal (this is starting to look familiar, isn’t it?)

 Then you put them on your hot griddle.  There’s a bit of timing according to Reinhart, you don’t want to flip to early or else they may deflate on you in the oven.  (See the little indentures?  Maybe I should have used a spatula rather than my hand to transfer these to the stove).

 I seemed to manage that OK, but apparently still have not mastered my griddle–the flame is very uneven and, just like when I make pancakes, the buns on one end burned before the other end even firmed up.  (I have since switched griddles to the lower-power flame and this works much better; however, this was in the month or two since I made these).

Burnt or otherwise, it was fun to see how they really were looking like English muffins!  More the jumbo size version than regular, certainly.

 You finish baking them in the oven, and let them cool.

And voila–nooks and crannies and butter!