Dublin bread...and cheese

So a little bit more chatting and not baking before I start making some breads, hopefully very soon...

Almost 2 months living in Dublin already (well, more come back to live here after almost 7 years) and starting to settle down, so what better than check out bakeries and breads in Dublin. Little bit of research and decided to go to 3 of them, artesian bakeries.

Fist one was The Bretzel Bakery in Portobello, nice Dublin area along one of the canals. This bakery is open since 1870 although has changed owners.The Bakery is well known to generations of the Dublin Jewish community and still known as the Jewish Bakery with it's Kosher status re-established since William Despard and Cormac Keenan took over in 2000.

The Bretzel Bakery in Lennox Street, Dublin 8

They have a good selections of breads, whites, browns, rye, some specialities and confectionary and breakfast, with 4 sourdough: 100% rye, 30%rye, pizza base and small sourdough. This last one, the small sourdough is the one I bought and tried with one of the 3 cheese I got in Sheridans Cheesemonger off Grafton st. I have to thanks staff of this shop for their recommendations and being so professional and kind. You can see in this picture this bread with an irish cheese that I really like: Coolea Mature, from West Cork.

Sourdough from Bretzel Bakery with Coolea cheese

Next bakery was Il Valentino, an italian artisan bakery in Gran Canal, another very nice Dublin area. They only use the 4 ingredients and nothing else (flour, yeast, water and salt) and have as well a good range of breads, patries and cakes, including a sourdough bread. They also have a cafe where you can sit and try their range of products.

Il Valentino Bakery and Cafe

When I was there they didn't have the sourdough bread so I chose the stoneground flour load. Very crusty bread, nice crumbs. This time I used a spanish manchego mature cheese (yeah, couldn't avoid tomato and olive oil)

Stoneground from Il Valentino with Mature Manchego cheese

Last but not least, Paris Bakery, a french bakery in the busy Jervis area. This bakery is quite new (opened in november 2010) and founded by french baker Yannick G. Forel. They also have a nice coffee area where you can taste they breads and pastries.

Paris Bakery in Moore Str.

Loads of bread that you can check from the window and of course I went for a sourdough french baguette. but they have a few more sourdough breads, including a 1kg and another than seemed to be a 6kg sourdough! bread for a few days. So french bread, french cheese. This time a pure recommendation from Sheridans Cheesemonger, Ardi Gasna, a Basque-French from the Pyrenees area cheese meaning literally in basque "sheep cheese". I have to say that the combination of this bread and this cheese was my favourite

Sourdough baguette from Paris bakery with Ardi Gasna cheese

Bread symphony

Dos baguettes blanquísimas y un pain de campagne aderezado con aceite y ajo. Ésta fue mi aportación a una velada de celebración y música en la que casi todo el mundo, menos una servidora, sabía lo que hay que saber sobre notas y corcheas.

No se pueden tener todos los talentos, qué se le va a hacer. Pero lo del pan realmente ayuda a que te inviten a fiestas.

kamut and barleycorn

After the big success with the pain a l'ancienne yesterday, i can't stop baking!. So after work today I wanted to try other type of bread so I check in Bertinet's book and I decided to follow his recipe for baguettes and already the white flour when I decided to experiment...very risky I'd say as I am kind of a beginner.

So looking in my flours I mixed kamut and bareycorn, both that I never use and decided to make the baguettes. Here is the recipe I used:

- 280g organic kamut flour
- 280g mix grain barleycorn flour
- 10g dried yeast
- 10g sea salt
- 350g water

I mixed the yeast with the flour and then added the rest of the ingredients with the scraper until the dough was firm enough to work with it in the table. I kneaded for about 20min and the left it resting for an hour in a bowl cover with a towel. After this hour the dough doubled and then I cut it in four and rolled it in baguettes, left them again another hour resting, where they doubled again.

This time I baked them at home, so no steam oven so I put a tray with water and spray water before put the bread: max oven at 240 degrees during approximately 12 min. The result was a compact bread but lots of nutty flavors, great smell.



Next day the bread was ok (actually I still have one baguette left and after 4 days it's quite good) so I took it to work to make my lunch: the bread won lots of flavors and textures when I toasted, so I put it back in the oven with some steam for a few minutes. I filled it up with some ginger pork, rocket, tomato and caramelized red onion, having spread olive oil in the bread. I have to say It was a really lovely lunch.