Old Fashioned Sourdough Pancakes (and Waffles) -

The old Western and Alaskan sourdoughs (as the miners and trappers were called) used sourdough for just about everything that had to do with wheat flour. It was a necessary and integral part of life in the wilderness. Sourdough pancakes were a frequent menu item. It is one of the simple pleasures of life.

500 grams of fed sourdough starter (about 2 cups)
25 grams of sugar or 30 grams of honey (about 2 Tbs)
30 grams of olive oil or other oil of choice (4 Tbs) - You can also use butter
1 large egg
4 grams salt (1/2 tsp)
5 grams baking soda (1 tsp)
10 grams warm water (1 Tbs)

A bit of historical note here: About the time of Alaskan exploration by the Americans and Canadians baking powder became available. The sourdoughs were deeply suspicious of baking powder and there was a rumor that if suppressed sexual desire (the salt-peter of its day). A prostitute (so the story goes) wintered at one of the gold mining camps. Unfortunately for her the men had made no strikes and had no money, so they stayed away from her in droves. As the spring thaw opened the adjacent river she hopped one of the first boats out. As she pulled away from the shore she shouted back, “Goodbye - you baking powder eating sons of bitches”. Anyway, use baking soda for the authentic historical kind of pancakes.

Let the sourdough starter sit overnight at room temp and get built up nicely. The next morning add the sugar, salt, egg and oil or butter. Mix this up well and let sit as long as you like while you get the rest of breakfast together. Just before cooking dissolve the baking soda in the warm water and gently fold it into the mixture.

Heat up a cast iron skillet or griddle (or whatever you use). Brush oil lightly onto the skillet with a silicon brush (regular brushes melt). When the heat and oil are just right it only takes seconds to cook each side of the pancake golden brown. You only want pancakes the size of silver dollars or so. Do not make them very big or they won’t cook through before burning. I find that a 1/8c measuring cup is just right. Drop the batter onto the hot skillet with a kind of swirling motion and when bubbles form on the top they are ready to be flipped. It will only take a few before you get the rhythm just right.

Serve them buttered with jam or honey or maple syrup or whatever you like. I like mine just plain buttered with over medium eggs and bacon.

You can also use this same batter with your waffle iron. It will probably take a bit of experimentation to figure which setting gives you the best results with your particular iron.

Monkey Bread -

This sticky sweet yeast bread dessert was first popularized in America by the women’s magazines of the 1950s. Nancy Reagan brought about a resurgence of popularity when she served it at the White House during the Reagan Presidency.Most people have had it made from canned biscuits. The real thing is far superior and not at all difficult.

This is wonderful fresh from the oven. It is not bad reheated.

First, make the dough:

305 grams milk - hot but not scalded. (1-1/3 cups)
57 grams unsalted butter (4 Tbs), cut into pieces
50 grams sugar (1/4 cup)
1 package yeast (do not use rapid-rise)
55 grams 110°F water (1/4 cup) (for blooming yeast)
2 large eggs, room temp
750 grams flour (5 cups)
14 grams salt (2 tsp)

I suppose you could use the paddle on your mixture for the first couple of steps, but I’m too lazy to wash something else, so I just use the dough hook for the whole thing. If you don’t have a good mixer then have fun with the mixing and kneading.

Proof the yeast in the warm water. Mix the milk, sugar and butter 2 minutes low speed. After the milk mixture has cooled to lukewarm add the yeast mix, eggs and stir on low speed for 1 minute. Add the salt and the flour Mix on low speed for 2 minutes. Mix on second speed for 3 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour, or until doubled.

Butter up a good sized bundt pan (at least 12 cup). Don’t use anything else, a tube pan will not work, nor will anything else that has a removable insert.

Glaze:

1/3 cup brown sugar - most use light
2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
2 Tablespoons heavy cream
good handful of chopped pecans (around ½ cup)

Heat up the brown sugar, butter and cream, stir continuously. Just as it comes to the boil, pour it around the bottom of the bundt pan evenly. Sprinkle the chopped pecans over the glaze. Be sure to get nice, even coverage.

The dough should be risen by now. Cut off golf ball sized pieces and roll into balls. Set aside.

Coating:

handful of chopped pecans (about 1/2 cup)
¾ stick melted unsalted butter (5 to 6 Tbs)
Enough sugar to coat (about ¾ cup)

Pour the melted butter into one dish and the sugar into another. Roll each dough ball in the butter and then the sugar and then place them into the bundt pan.

When you are about halfway up the pan sprinkle the pecans. Keep adding layers of coated balls until you reach 2/3 to ¾ of the way up the pan.

Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let rise for about 45 minutes.

Heat the oven to 375°F. Bake for 45 minutes. Flip the bread out onto a cooling rack. There will probably be some coating and nuts in the bottom of the pan. Spoon out onto the bread immediately.

Let it cool for at least 20 minutes and then enjoy while warm.

Herself Sez: O Yeah! Made with dark brown sugar, oodles of pecans and lots of butter - yummm!! Fingers get sticky and greasy - you just gotta lick ‘em off! And then it takes a washcloth to  take care of your face!! This is wonderful stuff! But I warn you, a whole loaf is just too much for two people - even 1/2 a loaf is too much for the two of us. We usually end up giving away about 3/4 of the loaf to friends (the grandchildren are mostly non-sugar kids at this point, so we don’t even offer it to them). The Ol’ Curmudgeon only makes it when we have people in mind to give the majority of it to - so it won’t go to waste (or to waist!).

Light Rye Bread -

Somehow light rye bread, a staple of Middle-European diets, got called Jewish Rye or New York Rye in this country. It is thought that rye was originally considered a weed that would occasionally grow in the wheat fields. The stuff is heartier and more cold resistant than wheat, so it is easier to grow. Very tasty. The main problem is that rye flour doesn’t have the gluten that wheat flour does and doesn’t rise worth beans. So we add wheat flour in various amounts to get a decent bread. Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to make a 100% rye bread, but that’s not what this article is about.Now, this recipe is based on rye sourdough starter and you need to get some going before you tackle this one. See the earlier article Rye Sourdough Mysteries to see how to get the sourdough started. If you already have starter just jump right in. If you don’t, it will be about 15 days of prep before you are ready.

Most of my bread recipes are either derived from or influenced by Jeffrey Hamelman’s wonderful book - Bread. This one is no different in that respect.

This will make 2 smallish loaves or 1 larger loaf.

215g rye sourdough
680g High gluten flour
430g water
15g caraway seeds
15g salt
1 pkg yeast - regular, not instant - we want a slow rise to develop flavor.

You could use bread flour in place of the high gluten stuff. The proportion will probably be about the same. Do yourself a favor and order some of the high gluten flour off the King Arthur website, I don’t imagine you will find in your local supermarket. Your taste buds will thank you.

This makes a rather sticky dough that would be a bit unpleasant to knead by hand. Depending on the moisture content of your starter you may need to diddle the water up or down a bit. I keep my rye sourdough at 50/50 balance (100% hydration).

Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, Mix on first speed for 3 minutes. Mix on second speed for 3 minutes.

Rise 1 to 2 hours.

Divide the dough in half. Place into small, greased bread pans. This is a bit loose for free-form. Make it stiffer if you want free-form loaves.

Rise 1 to 2 hours.

Spray your oven before loading, after 30 seconds, and again after an additional 3 minutes. Bake at 460°F for 15 minutes then lower the oven temp to 440°F for 25 minutes.

If you have made a stiffer, free-form loaf then just before loading, score the loaves.

Makes good toast. Makes a dandy platform for strong flavored sandwich stuff.

Herself sez: A sandwich that is a joy on this bread involves some mayo, some Grey Poupon Harvest Coarse Ground mustard (yumm), some swiss cheese, some ham and some sweet pickles. Slice bread in your preferred thickness. Apply condiments and sandwich contents to bread in your preferred proportions.

Oatmeal Cookies -

The cookie has a long evolution. The first grain stuffs baked were bread forms. These early breads have been traced to the Neolithic era - around 10,000 years back. The earliest breads were unleavened flat breads cooked on a hot stone - think tortilla and such. The next step in the cookie evolution was the risen and baked bread forms. Next, inventive cooks started adding sweets and goodies to the breads and this evolved into the cake. When the bakers started adding all the goodies, they would frequently make small test cakes. These were often so good that the cooks would make whole batches of the little cakes. Various sweet little cakes were common in the Middle East and spread west from the Byzantine Empire. These are still around in Greek and Lebanese cooking: kourambiedes (Greek shortbread) and mamoul (Lebanese/Syrian date stuffed) come to mind. As the little cakes moved west, a Dutch word “Koeptje” was applied. Means - little cakes (how surprising). Anglicized into - cookie.Of course, the Brits would call them tea cakes.

The oat has been cultivated only fairly recently - like the past 3,000 years. It is thought that the oat was derived from a weed which grew in the wheat and barley fields. Unlike wheat, oats grow rancid rather quickly and have to be processed immediately upon harvest. Groats-maker was a recognized Medieval trade - the first step of oat processing is the removal of the outer husk. This is called a groat. It is rock hard and has to be soaked and boiled for a good while or you’d never get them chewed up.

The oat has a pretty good reputation in modern times. Lots of soluble fiber, anti-inflammatory properties, and all that. However, throughout most of history oats were regarded as only fit for animal consumption. If it makes your horse work better, wouldn’t it make you work better? The Romans scorned them. The Scots ate them. It has been observed that the Romans never beat the Scots - oats, anyone?

It took until the Middle Ages for them to be seriously regarded as human food. The Scots bannocks and oatcakes came to the Americas in the 17^th Century. Americans constantly diddled with things in a spirit of unfettered creativity. It was the American cooks that evolved the cookie forms we know today from the European varieties.

As far as we can tell, the modern, true oatmeal cookie was not created until somewhere in the 19^th or 20^th Century in America. Here’s my take on this wonderful treat:

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
192 grams (1 cup) dark brown sugar
100 grams (½ cup) sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1¼ teaspoon vanilla
237 grams (1½ cups) unbleached all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of powdered cloves if you want a bit more kick (highly optional)
½ teaspoon salt
300 grams (3 cups) oatmeal
150 grams (1 cup) raisins (optional - but better with)

Oven at 350°.

Cream butter and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix dry guys together: flour, salt, cinnamon, soda. Mix dry guys in gradually and thoroughly. Mix in oatmeal. Mix in raisins. Drop tablespoons on a ungreased cookie sheet, leave enough room for expansion. I find that the kitchen scoops with the squeeze handles work best for quick measuring and dropping. These handy jobbies come in various sizes, making quick, uniform cookies practical. Bake about 13 to 14 minutes, golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Hey, if you want a really quick and dirty, no cook dessert - kinda-sorta related to mamoul, just take pitted dates, shove a pecan half into each date, roll in powdered sugar. Makes a rather nice afternoon tea sort of goodie. Not a cookie, of course.

Meditation on Bread -

My very best friend growing up was baker for a commune back in the day. Hippiness was her refuge from the world at the time. (In another age, she would have gone to a monastery). Anyway, she turned into a really good baker with a fundamental feeling for what could and could not be done with bread. To this day she is one of those bakers that takes about this much of this, a handful of that, a pinch of the other, whatever she has on hand and feels like doing at the time. That is not the way I function at all, for baking, anyway. Very precise measurement with a digital scale is my way. But you know - we both get good bread at the far end of the process. (Much as I love her - we would probably kill each other if we tried to function in the same kitchen).

God has blessed us with several things that function by fermentation: booze, of course; cheese is fermented milk product; and let us not forget that the bread rising is a result of fermentation. And yes, there is even some alcohol (not much) in the dough before we cook it. That contributes to the flavor at the end. You can encourage the booze qualities of sourdough to the point of getting something to drink. It is pretty nasty, lethal stuff and is called hooch. In the days of the Alaskan frontier the Hoochinoo Indians got very fond of the stuff after learning sourdough technology from the gold miners and fur trappers, or so the story goes. Anyway, while you can encourage and grow the stuff fairly easily, you really don’t want to drink it. Rather vile and it will put your lights out.

There are tons of references to bread in the Scriptures. Even more if you use the full Old Testament (Septuagint) of the Eastern Church. There was, and probably still is for the sillier literalists, some warping out over whether bread should be leavened or unleavened. I leave minutia to those who get some kind of kick from it. Back to the main topic. Bread is important stuff.

In this time and place (USA, 21^st century), bread is so commonplace that we don’t give it a second thought. We do not think about the millions of acres in grain cultivation, the massive labor of harvest, the transportation to the mills, processing, packaging, transport to huge bakeries, preparation, packaging, transportation to grocery. We eventually get this stuff and casually make a sandwich, or some toast, or whatever. Granted that, for the most part, this factory bread is not nearly as tasty as good homemade, it is better than bad homemade.

Firstly, growing the wheat. It used to be that what grew locally was about all you could get. The grain of the region dictated the baking of the region. Just in this country, the breads of the Northern European countries could pretty well be duplicated in the Northern part of the USA. Good hard wheat would grow quite nicely in the colder Northern US. The North (Yankees to the educated) was known for the excellence of the bread which the Northern bakers (home or otherwise) could produce. The South was a whole different proposition for many reasons. The first reason is that hard wheat will not grow in the Southern States. What we get is soft wheat. There is less moisture, protein, and gluten in Southern wheat. Not really good for bread. But killer for pie crusts, biscuits and so forth. The rural nature of the South also made central bakeries impractical. What the Southerner came to regard as normal for meals was cornbread. Wheat flour was used mostly for the coating for deep frying, pies, and biscuits. Hoe cakes and johnny cakes were made from cornmeal. It may be a chicken or egg discussion, but there is some thought that many of the Southern recipes were of African inspiration. I don’t necessarily thinks that the African connection is direct. Certainly the black cooks in the South brought great contributions to the table. I tend to think that what became Southern cooking in the 1800s to early 1900s was an amalgamation of all of the immigrant traditions: English, Irish, Scots, African, French and the rest all lumped together and dictated ultimately by the materials available. Oh yeah, back to the growing. The hard wheat that feeds the world is grown from the central US up to Northern Canada. What!, you exclaim. How on earth can they grow wheat in that rotten a climate? Well, it’s like this: They plant in the late Summer before the freeze and it spends the winter resting. When the Spring thaw hits it grows again and with all the Northern light it grows like gangbusters so that it can be harvested before the brief warm spell is over. Just in time to get the ground prepped for the next planting cycle. You have to remember how huge Northern Canada is. Feeds a lot of people, it does.

Transport: In the days before the transportation revolution it was impractical to expect to get grain from Northern Canada to mills hundreds or thousands of miles away. We routinely ship things thousands of miles as necessary, so it is no big deal to get grain to a mill. We still want to minimize the expense of transport as much as possible, but with rail available it is easy to route huge amounts of grain to the location desired.

The home baker can break the chain at this point, if desired. There is no reason why anyone with an internet connection cannot get delivery of any raw grain wherever desired. Many of the home bakers like to mill their own grain. Home milling equipment is available and affordable. The internet is one huge mall of everything in the world for sale. The thing is that if the home baker desires to grind his own, the tools and information are readily available. Any grain desired can be acquired. We now have advantages that no previous generation could have envisioned, much less realized.

Flour: High quality flour for any common task is usually as near as the grocery. For uncommon tasks, once again, the internet to the rescue. We also have to be careful what we consider high quality. For bread, generally the richer the flour, the better the bread. King Arthur flour is the best I know of for bread. This is not true for pies or biscuits or cakes. Bread flour is generally the highest in protein and gluten. Pie crusts, biscuits and the like are better served with a lower protein and gluten content. Southern flour like White Lily or Martha White will make much better pies and biscuits. Cakes get the tender crumb and little rise from very low protein and gluten. Even the Southern flours are too high to make good cakes. Then there is French bread. There is no American flour which can duplicate the handling characteristics and taste of French flour. (You can come pretty close with King Arthur unbleached A/P). Or true Irish coarse whole wheat, for Irish soda bread. The internet will serve for those who wish to get specialty flours which are not locally available. I will generally check the King Arthur website first, as they carry a good many specialty flours at quite reasonable price. I also double check the web in a general search, just to make sure that I can’t get better pricing somewhere else. Usually I can’t, but it doesn’t take that long to check.

The other thing that we on the consuming end of things don’t often think about is all the varieties of grain that have been developed within the last 50 years or so. We have cheap and readily available quantities and qualities of grain that our ancestors could only dream about. Modern grains are much heartier, more dependable, with tremendously greater production per acre. Amazing. There was an episode of the original Star Trek that I think everyone in Western civilization knows - “The Trouble with Tribbles”. Many may not remember that the centerpiece of the plot was not the Tribbles, but the new grain that was being threatened by the Klingons. Quadro-triticale. Triticale actually exists, a cross between wheat and rye. Contrary to Chekhov’s assertion, it wasn’t the Russians, it was the Scots and Swedes that did it. Anyway, point is that even TV Sci-fi writers can recognize the importance of grain in our lives.

Oh yeah, let’s not forget that the internet solution is actually a three part invention. We can find anything in the world on the net. We have to pay for it, and while too many people abuse plastic and get in over their heads, it really is a wonder that we can simply enter our credit card information for payment. Used to be a really big deal. Even 20 years ago, if you ordered something mail order, you had to send a check, which could take a couple of weeks to clear. Most places did not ship until they had the money in their hands. Last part of the equation is the shipping. With post, UPS, FedEx and the like just about anyone in the civilized world can get a shipment in a pretty short time. Truly amazing.

Another facet of the great time we live in is that there are so many books available on baking - thousands, in fact. We also have the ability to look up just about any recipe that ever was. Cool.

Ovens. It is true that our modern home ovens are not quite as good as the bakers masonry ovens used throughout most of our history. But. They are adequate and a good sight more convenient, just turn them on and let them warm up, cook, then turn them off.

Mixers. I could not bake any more if I had to mix and knead by hand. I’ve gotten too stiff and lost too much hand strength. But - with the power of my Kitchenaid Mixer, I can bake for many more years. The mixer does all the work.

Bread machines. I don’t like them or use them, but millions do. They work.

I’m quite sure that you can think of many more examples of the wonders of modern baking. We really do live in a golden age for bakers.

Honey Wheat Pain de Mie -

I needed a good sandwich bread to replace the old Roman Meal. The recipe seems to have been changed over the past several years. We like Pain de Mie or Pullman Loaf. But there is a need for a good whole wheat sandwich loaf, both for taste and also to make the food Nazi a bit happier. The basic honey wheat is a good loaf, but it is more of a good dunking in the soup bread rather than a sandwich loaf. So the search began….I never did find a really good whole wheat sandwich loaf, so I started experimenting. A good tasting whole wheat is Jeffrey Hamelman’s Honey Wheat, from his book Bread. I used that as the basis for this variation. Hamelman uses a pate fermente to give the bread a more robust flavor. I thought about that, but, since I keep a tasty sourdough starter around I decided to use that instead of throwing away so much of it every time I feed it. I also used yeast since I wanted a good rise. So, here it is:

100 g fed sourdough starter
275 g bread flour
300 g whole wheat flour
30 g milk powder
30 g honey
30 g soft butter
300 g water (this may vary a little, depending on the consistancy of your sourdough).
11.0 g salt
7.4 g (1 pkg) yeast

1. Place all the ingredients in the mixing bowl. (I usually proof the yeast in about 1.2 cup of the water, heated to 100°, with a pinch of sugar for about 10 minutes). Mix on first speed for 3 minutes until all the ingredients are incorporated, then on second for 3 minutes more. The dough consistency should be medium. Desired dough temperature should be 78° to 80°F.

2. Let rise for 1 hour. Fold once. Let rise another hour.

3. Divide dough into 2.4 pound loaf. Lube pan and lid. Shape into long, non-tapering cylinder. Place into Pullman pan. Slide the lid on and let rise at 76° for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. If you don’t have a Pain de Mie pan, you can get one from Fantes.com or the King Arthur site. If you are just experimenting you can use a regular bread pan. The scale for a regular pan would probably be 1.5 pounds or a little more. You will need to balance a jellyroll pan or cookie sheet on top, weighted down with a brick. Be careful doing it this way. There is no need to humidify the oven since the bread cooks enclosed in the pan.

4. When the dough is about 1/4 inch from the top of the pan, close the lid. and bake at 400° for 45 minutes. Immediately remove from the pan to a cooling rack. The bread should have a nice, even, golden color. Give it the old thump the bottom test. It should sound like any other done bread. Resist the temptation to cut too soon. After it has cooled wrap it in baker’s cloth and let it rest for 24 hours.

Brands and Ingredients -

I suppose some discussion of various brands of ingredients is in order.Flour: That’s sort of a well, it depends sort of deal. For bread I don’t use anything but King Arthur flour. Higher protein than most. Totally consistent. I can’t address keeping characteristics since I go through it so fast. I haven’t found anything superior or even equal to the King Arthur. Good web site: http://www.kingarthurflour.com/. The local grocery stores carry the all-purpose, bread, and wheat flours. They don’t stock the rye and high gluten varieties, but those can be ordered from the web site and the shipping is only mildly prohibitive.

Here’s the “it depends” side of things: King Arthur is absolutely terrible for pie crusts, biscuits, and cakes. For anything Southern like biscuits, pies, etc., you want a Southern flour like White Lily or Martha White. Southern flour is made from different wheat and is much lower in protein. Southern flour makes lousy bread but great pie crusts and biscuits. If your grocery store doesn’t carry Southern flour, order it off the net. Yankee flour cannot make a decent biscuit. Southern flour doesn’t make good bread. All regional chauvinism aside, them’s the facts, ma’am.

Cookies and such I generally use King Arthur all-purpose and haven’t had any problems.

For oddball stuff like rye berries and such, I use http://www.barryfarm.com/ website. They have all kinds of things for the serious baker.

The one bread that I can think of that you might not want to build with King Arthur would be a real French baguette, then you need to use French flour. A different protein and ash and chemical content in the French flour makes a bit of a difference in the bread. French bread, indeed. What we call French bread is pretty recent, like WWI vintage. It actually came from Austria, and some of the old French still call it Vienna Bread. I have seen people get close by blending ap flour and bread flour. This may get you close to the correct protein level, but it won’t get the exact flavor provided by the different ash and chemical content. The King Arthur website lists a French-Style flour. I haven’t tried it so I can’t vouch for it, but they are usually pretty reliable.

For cakes, use cake flour. I don’t do cakes so I can’t really pontificate about the qualities of the cake flours. My daughter is the cake expert, not I.

Sugar: Around here Dixie Crystals is what we use. I suppose that it is pretty well available in most parts of the country.

Butter: The Land O’ Lakes is the normal butter of choice. Consistently good. We can also get a European butter, Plugra. Very good stuff, but a word of caution. Plugra contains more butterfat and less water than American butter, so it is not a 1 to 1 substitution in baking. You will have to adjust the recipe for about 2% difference. 2% doesn’t sound like a lot, and for small batches, it isn’t. But if you are making a large batch be aware of the difference. Of course, if you can get the real country butter do so. I remember that stuff from when I was younger. Marvelous rich taste. Actually, I would recommend the Plugra or country butter be reserved for table use and stick to Land O’ Lakes for baking, since consistency is necessary in baking.

Water: Water is going to make a huge difference in your baking. If your tap water is ok you still want to let it sit overnight before using it in baking so that the chlorine can dissipate. Chlorine makes yeast die. Not good. A good filter like the Brita or Pûr is beneficial. If your water is just no good then get some good quality bottled water for baking. Make a big difference, it does. Another plus of letting water sit awhile is that you generally want the water room temperature, not tap temperature. For a really good discussion of temperature in baking see Jeffrey Hamelman’s book Bread.

Salt: I use kosher salt exclusively for baking. There is a catch to this. You cannot assume that a teaspoon of table salt and a teaspoon of kosher salt is the same. It is not. Kosher salt is a much courser grind. What you want to do is weight, not volume. 10 grams of table salt and 10 grams of kosher salt are equal in salinity, but the 10 grams of course kosher salt is going to occupy a larger volume than the 10 grams of table salt. I do not use sea salt for baking since I cannot be guaranteed that each batch is chemically the same. Sea salt is good for general cooking where you adjust by taste.

Spices: In general I use McCormick, they are consistent and readily available where we live. Your mileage may vary where you live.

Yeast: I use the Fleischman’s Active Dry yeast in the packets. I have had no problem with this stuff. I do proof the yeast in some warm water with a pinch of sugar, even though this is technically not necessary. I really like for my yeast to be alive and awake before I add it to the mix. Don’t use the Rapid Rise, the idea there is that it will eliminate the first rise. The multiple rises enhance the flavor of the bread. Why would you want to eliminate a flavor enhancing step?

Bread machines: I don’t like them and don’t use them. I want more control and direct involvement with my bread. There are many people who do use them and get semi-decent results. Use your own judgment.

Mixer: Kitchenaid. The dough hook does a very decent job and I no longer have the hand strength to do prolonged kneading. I haven’t seen any other mixer that compares. If you can afford it, get the larger lift bowl type, but the hinge top will do the job just fine.

The first and last rule of baking is: Use the best quality ingredients you can get. If any of your ingredients are out of date or stale, toss and replace. Why go to the time and labor or making something with inferior ingredients?

Ovens and How to Fake It –

The traditional oven that evolved in most settled technological cultures bears little resemblance to our modern home ovens. The traditional oven was made of refractory material: stone, brick, adobe, or something similar. The method of cooking was not direct fire as is the case in the modern home oven. A desirable refractory material has two principal properties: it can withstand thermal shock and it is a good heat sink.

Let us look at the properties and methods. To withstand thermal shock means that the material will not shatter or deform or degrade when exposed to the intense heat of the fire. A good heat sink means that the material will readily absorb a great deal of heat from the fire and release it in a slow and steady manner. With material that has these properties an oven was constructed that had a fair number of shelves to hold the baked goods. Usually somewhat of a beehive shape.

To use the oven a fire was constructed, usually with faggots rather than split wood or limb wood. The reason is that the thinner branches of the faggot burned hotter and faster than the larger pieces. When the walls of the oven had reached maximum heat and all the fuel had been consumed (1.5 to 2 hours) then the smoke vent was closed, the oven was raked and swept out and usually mopped which left the oven in a moist state. Therefore there was no smoke or ash to contaminate the bread. The bread was loaded and cooked by the residual heat. It was possible to get more than one baking from the heat before the oven had to be fired again. The mopping moisture/steam contributed to the formation of a nice crust. When we get to the medieval period the town baker needed to produce enough that the ovens might be fired two or three times a day, and the first firing was fairly easy since the oven would still be warm from the last firing.

This whole operation is sometimes known as indirect baking in a falling oven, since the oven temperature was gradually and steadily decreasing. Therefore the bread was frequently loaded into a higher temperature oven than we use and the temperature was somewhat less by the time the bread was done and removed. Oh yeah, when we talk about loading and removing bread it was not done by hand. That’s suicide in that large and hot an oven. No, a peel was used to slide the goods in and out. You can see a peel used in most pizza joints today. It does take a bit of practice to get things in and out without making a mess or getting burned.

Now the point of all the above is how are we to duplicate the old style ovens and why should we bother? Taste and texture is the answer. We cannot get the rich crustiness of the old methods in modern home ovens without a bit of ingenuity.

Refractory material makes it possible to plop a standard round loaf down and have an immediate flash of heat into the bread resulting in a nicer and fuller oven spring than can be achieved by sliding it in on a cookie sheet. There are a couple of ways to get there, other than by building a bread oven in the back yard. First, you can spend from $30 to ridiculous on a pizza stone. These are usually round and don’t fill the whole available space. However they do work quite well and require very little maintenance. The next step up is the ceramic liner for the oven. These work wonderfully, but they start high and get higher.

However, for the dedicated tightwad there is a much better option. Go to the local big box Homey-D, Lowes, or equivalent and get quarry tiles in the flooring department. These are bricklike tiles 6” x 6” by 3/8” or thereabout. Should be less than $5.00 for enough to do the job. Take out the top rack and line the bottom rack. Instant refractory oven. Note that it takes longer to heat the oven than you are used to since we want the tiles or stone to absorb all the heat possible. This will not hold the heat that a full ceramic oven would but then we are not going to be baking the number of loaves that would be done in a commercial oven.

To duplicate the burst of steam that mopping the floor of the oven would produce we need only a simple spray bottle. Squirt the oven fairly heavily at loading time. Squirt again after about 30 seconds. Squirt again after a minute. That is usually enough.

For the professional baker all this is unnecessary. The sophisticated modern commercial ovens are programmable for varying temperature over time and have programmable steam injection systems. It takes a good bit of technology to make modern ovens duplicate the action of the original ceramic ovens.

Westphalian Pumpernickel – the Real Deal –

Herself sez: The Ol’ Curmudgeon has been promising to post this - now it is here! This is incredible bread. Himself slices it fairly thin, butters it, and we eat it with thick soups - yummm! I like it just by itself as a snack. Very filling.

This is a rye sourdough that has all kinds of body. Sort of resembles a black brick. The normal loaf this size weighs about 2.25 pounds. This weighs in at 4.4 pounds.

There are all kinds of stories about what pumpernickel means and where it came from. One story says that the slang word pumpen meant flatulence, or farts. Nickel was supposed to be slang for the devil, something like ‘Old Scratch’ in English. So, according to this version pumpernickel would mean ‘devil’s fart’. There are other tales and there is no way to say anything other than ‘origin uncertain’.

The bakers in the Westphalia area of Germany – the western central area of modern Germany - came up with this hearty bread as a way to save money and energy. You and I tend to think in modern terms – an oven is a gas or electric device that you turn on, use, and turn off. Wasn’t always that way. Ovens used to be massive structures made of ceramic material – stone and mortar (sometimes mud). You had to get up early and build a fire. Or even better – the apprentices would get up in the wee hours and do the job. The oven would still have had some residual heat, so the fire was fairly easy to start. You burned a fair amount of wood or charcoal and, when the fire was out, you could begin baking. If things were right, the heat would last through the day (and the night). Big masonry structures can hold a lot of heat and release it in a slow and gentle manner. Remember, you don’t bake with direct fire type heat – too intense and uncontrolled for baking. Thing was, after the day’s baking there was still residual heat that would last through the night. So the bakers came up with this bread that cooked – untended – all through the night in the gentle and steadily decreasing heat that was already in the oven. The consequence was that the bread became dark, very dark, almost black from the Maillard reaction for coloring, not coloring agents as is the case in the false recipes of this age. People have had various reactions to this hearty rye – some considered it fit for the Gods, others thought it was fit for horses, not people. Whatever – try it – you may like it – you may hate it. I don’t regard it as good bread for sandwiches and such, but you just can’t beat it for dunking into a full-bodied soup or stew. Also good for canapés or open faced endeavors.

This is adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman’s recipe in his wonderful book – Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes.

Several stages are involved. Start a sourdough and a rye berry soaker the night before:

Sourdough
300 grams rye meal or coarse rye flour
300 grams water
12.5 grams good rye sourdough starter – see the article Rye Sourdough Mysteries.

Let it sit overnight, covered with plastic and a towel. 14 to 16 hours in a cool place – about 70°F.

Soaker
200 grams rye berries
enough water to cover well

Soak overnight. Next day, boil in fresh water about 3 times the volume of the berries for an hour. Drain well and discard the water.

You also need an old bread soaker. Old bread is aged bread, but not stale or moldy. You want the darkest bread you can get, rye preferably, but a dark wheat can be used. Slice up 200 grams of bread and bake at 350°F on a sheet until it gets quite dark (not burned). Soak it in enough water to cover for at least 4 hours. I tend to do it overnight in a covered bowl. See Rye Sourdough Mysteries for a good rye to use as the bread soaker (after it ages a bit).

Be sure the rye berries are well drained. Squeeze as much water as you can out of the bread soaker (twist in a tea towel if necessary) and keep the water. The dough will be too soupy if you don’t get most of the water out of the soakers.

Some of this stuff you can get from a local co-op. If you can’t find the berries, chops, etc. then try Barry Farms on the internet – www.barryfarm.com. The have all the stuff. Shipping can kill you on grain products, but that’s life. King Arthur has a pretty good high gluten flour and medium rye flour and – lots of other good stuff – www.kingarthurflour.com

250 grams high gluten flour
250 grams rye chops (sliced rye flakes – looks kind of like oatmeal)
300 grams water
19 grams salt
1 pack yeast
38 grams blackstrap molasses (optional – but it helps)
all the rye berry soaker
all the bread soaker
all the sourdough

You know the drill with dried yeast – warm a bit of the water to 110°F, add the yeast and a pinch of sugar, let it sit for 15 minute or until it foams and wakes up.

Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl and mix for 10 minutes on low. If additional water is needed, use the reserved bread soaker water. This will be a very sticky dough. If it is really wet, you can add a bit of high gluten flour, but don’t get carried away – it is a sticky dough of medium feel. Let it sit for 30 minutes and then shape into a 4.4 pound loaf. Use a lightly buttered 13” pain de mie or pullman pan (found at fantes.com). Let it rise until it almost touches the top – probably an hour or so. Close the top. Now the fun starts. This thing bakes for a long time – like 10 to 12 hours.

Start the oven off at about 370°F. Bake for an hour, lower the temp 15°F. Every 30 minutes lower another 15°F until you get down to 275°. Let bake for about 3 hours, then turn the oven off and ignore for the rest of the 12 hour total time. The work is over, the waiting is not. Cool on a rack, wrap it in linen and let it sit for at least 24 hours before you get into it. Your first reaction is that you may need a hammer and chisel to cut it. It is the densest, coarsest, darkest bread you have ever seen, but it is good with a robust stew or soup.

Rye Sourdough Mysteries –

Repeat of basic bread message: get and read and use Jeffrey Hamelman’s book – Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes.

First of all, most rye bread made in this country is not good European rye. Most of the European rye breads are sourdough derivatives. From waaaay back. Later bread was done with a process called Detmolder sourdough, which was developed in Germany. Detmolder will get the maximum flavor out of the sourdough. (See previous discussion of Sourdough Breads.)

For any sourdough cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel and let sit in a warm place. Some of the stages will require different temperatures, so check the temp in various places, not only in the kitchen, but also around the rest of the house to find the right temperature zone for that particular stage.

Sourdough is not too hard to develop from scratch. Start off with 90 grams of rye flour and 90 grams of water. Sitting temp around 75°F. For the next 3 days take 90 grams of the starter, 90 grams of flour and 90 grams of water. For the next 7 days do the feed twice a day. You should now have a very robust and strong starter. You can keep it in the refrigerator and feed it once a week as with most starters.

For a Detmolder build start with 32 grams of sourdough, 62 grams of water, and 32 grams of rye flour. Target temp 78°F for 6 hours.

Second stage, 500 grams rye flour, 375 grams water, 125 grams of starter. Target temp 76°F for 24 hours.

Third stage, 1220 grams rye flour, 1220 grams water, 1000 grams starter. Target temp 85°F for 4 hours.

The reason for all the different constancies and temperatures is to develop different parts of the flavor of the sourdough. Reserve a bit of the last build to be the start of the next build. Scale the amounts up or down to meet the needs of the moment.

A nice, basic rye is a good all round eating, sandwich, and dunking in hearty soup bread. It is also a very healthy bread. Even the most rabid food nazi should not object to a good rye.

Here is an easy, plain rye:

270 grams rye flour
231 grams high gluten wheat flour (you won’t get much rise without this)
322 grams water
15 grams salt
1 package yeast
524 grams of Detmolder sourdough

Heat a bit of the water to 110°F, mix in the yeast with a small pinch of sugar, let it rest about 10 minutes. This will make sure the yeast is alive and healthy and thoroughly awake.

Mix everything together on low speed for 4 minutes. Mix on speed 2 for 1 minute. Let rest, covered with plastic for 20 minutes at 82°F. Don’t add extra flour, this is not like a wheat loaf and it will be sticky. I get better results by greasing the rising bowl with a small amount of butter. I also grease the work surface when I form the loaves. This is a sticky dough and too much flour on the work surface will goof up the texture.

I like 1.5 pound loaves, but suit yourself. Divide and shape as you like. Traditional is the standard round loaf, but I usually use bread pans so I can get better sandwich slices. Let it rise for 1 hour at 82°F.

If you have a dough docker, use it on the tops. If you don’t have one just lightly stipple the tops with a dull tipped salad fork. Either way, use a light touch so as not too deflate the loaf. Bake at 490°F for 10 minutes. If you want an extra crispy crust, spray the oven with clean water as you put the loaves in. Spray again at 30 seconds and again at 1 minute and 2 minutes. Lower the temp to 410°F and bake for 45 minutes for a 1.5 pound loaf. For a 2.5 pound loaf bake for 1 hour.

Resist temptation. Let cool on a rack, then wrap in cloth and ignore for 24 hours. This lets the crumb set up nice and firm. If you cut in prematurely, the flavor will not be as rich and full.

Herself sez: If you have questions about this, do ask! The Ol’ Curmudgeon is passionate about baking breads.