back to blog! back to bake!

Long time no see, after a few lazy-bread months including moving to another city/country I m honestly willing to back to bake some bread...just need some warm up. And nothing better to do it than with books...and bread books
I expend an amazing long weekend in London, Olympics included, and of course I did some bread tourism.

First, I was in the beautiful Borough Market around the corner of London Bridge, and luckily for me it was opened everyday during the Olympic games, so I visited it a couple of times. Borough market has been in the same location since 1755 and before that there was a market in the Borough since the XI century. So a bit of a tradition here. You can find loads of different food, great food from meats to vegetables, juices and wines, cooked and ready to eat and of course pastries, sweets and all kind of baked food. so breads. I think I counted at least 3 different stands with breads, sourdough, rye, Italians bread, loafs, soda breads, etc. Some of the big names of London sells their breads here, like Saint John.

And that's the second place where I visited, Saint John Bread and Wine. I was literally 5 minutes from where I was staying, in Whitechapel (yeah, that place where Jack the Ripper used to be active) so decided to go to this one and not to Saint John Restaurant. As you probably know, Saint John is not famous only for their food but also for their breads. Very close to Tower Bridge they have the bakery but unfortunately it was close when I went to see it. Not a big thing, as I could try their bread in that restaurant. Because everything I ordered in Saint John came with bread, toasted, white and brown. My friend Victor and I shared 3 dishes: beetroot and egg salad, cheese plate and smoked mackerel and pickle red cabbage. Breads were the perfect combination. Some of the customers bought some bread and jams after paying the bill, and that's the philosophy of this place: dinning rood, wine and bakery shop.

Finally, apparently I am not able to go anywhere and buy some books. I don't know if it's more a tradition, a obsession or an urge, but anyway I bought a few books in London, 2 of them bread related books.

First one, The bread Revolution, by Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan, founder of The Thoughtful Bread Co in Bristol (and Bath) the first one and from The Firehouse Bakery-Bread School in Skibereen (West Cork).

And the second one, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Tom Herbert and Henry Herbert. Tom is a master baker who runs the famous Hobbs House Bakery that has been the family business for five generations. His brother Henry is the acclaimed chef who runs the Hobbs House Butchery right next door.

So as I said, lets warm up with this two good books and...let's bake!

coming soon...

and now my turn: pain a l'ancienne

Finally I made my own pain a l'ancienne...and I loved it! Everything was by the book and that made me very happy and proud of me. I understood all that things that bread makers say about the feeling of baking your own home made bread, especially the first ones. I watched it, touched, smelled, showed it to everybody and of course ate, but sharing with friends and family. All is gone by now and I think this is a good sign. Now I can't wait to bake more, have to have a little bit of patience or I will spend all my free time (and some of my work too) kneading, mixing and baking. I wouldn't mind thou ;-)

So the bread I decided to make today it was pain a l'ancienne, very interesting and I was looking forward because Lidia was telling lots of things about it: a primitive bread, not need to knead just mainly mix well to have a good consistency. But the long rest in the fridge over night it will bring loads and amazing flavors. Outside it is very crunchy and the inside soft with big alveolus.



Lidia posted here a recipe that she adapted from a spanish blog about bread called madrid tiene miga (madrid has cramb) to used with sourdough instead of dried yeast. press here to check the recipe in this blog, as it is the one I used for my bread. As I said before here in the blog, I had a small accident with my sourdough and I am now in the second day of making another.

So this is the recipe I used:

380g of organic strong white wheat flour (from doves farm)
7g of salt
2.5g of dried yeast
300ml of iced cold water

I mixed the water with the water with 300g of flour using my scraper and leave it resting for 30 min as they said that the autolysis helps to work with the dough and you get a better result. After that time, I added the rest 80g of flour, the yeast and the salt, mix it well and leave it resting in the fridge for another 30 min, after that mixed it again with the scrapr and put it in the fridge all the night to slow the fermentation. This will make the bread more crunchy outside and with lauds of flavors (that's why we use iced cold water, to slow as much as possible the fermentation).

Next day, in my case 8 hours, I took the dough out of the fridge and brought it to work, so I left it outside for around 2.5 hours, so it doubled its size. I put the dough on a greaseproof paper and cut it with the scratcher in three part, giving them a baguette-ish size, not easy as the dough is very soft and you can really work with it. You have to put flour underneath and on top. I pre-heated the oven at 260ºC and put the doughs into it for 10 min at 250ºC and 20% of steam. I work in a restaurant and we have a good combi oven so you can play with temperatures and % of steam (from 10% to 100%) so I decided to try with 20%. After this 10 min I took out the steam and baked them for another 8 min with just 250ºC.

The result was a very good and crunchy breads, with bigs alveolus inside and an amazing flavor. Maybe the color was a little big dark for me, but it wasn't at all burn.



I can tell you that the bread is perfect for dipping, we ate most of them just dipping in olive oil. Perfect. Looking forward to bake more pain a l'ancienne, and use lidia's one with the sourdough.

One last thing. On july it was my birthday but as I spent 4 weeks working in dublin in a new restaurant opening I couldn't see some of my friends, so this weekend, Philippe, Gianmaria and Alessandro gave me a present: as they know I am baking bread now (and really enjoying it) they bought for me a book about breads and baking, bread matters, by Andrew Whitley. I took a look to the book last night before I went to bed, it seems to be very interesting, as it is not only about baking, recipes and techniques but it has a big first part about why to bake your own bread and not to buy industrial ones; then of course it has a very good selection of all types of breads and recipes. Thanks guys, I appreciate and be sure I will use it and bake some bread for you.

Bertinet and Stevens

All day raining in dublin, summer is over in Ireland and autumn and winter is ideal to stay at home reading and making breads. After work I spent some time in a bookshop near the restaurant in city center and of course I bought two books: temptation is too big inside there. One of the books is a well know but I didn't have it: Dough - Simple Contemporary Bread by Richard Bertinet , nice book with very good pictures and a good introduction about how to make bread. Then a quite few recipes. Very interesting with simple explanations. There is a dvd enclose with the book where bertinet explains in a 30 min video how to make bread. Very useful specially for those, like me, who are very visual.





The second one I bought today is Bread by Daniel Stevens, from the River Cottage. I have to confess that I had no idea about this book, the author or the River Cottage, but they very interesting. River Cottage have different projects, courses, a local produce store of food and drinks, books and dvd, a canteen, all with a philosophy of self-sufficiency, food integrity, and consumption of local, seasonal produce.Take a look at their website. The book is impregnated with these principles. It has a good and big introduction about how to make bread, lots of practical information, including how to make a clay oven and a good selection of different recipes. All in a beautiful and very handy handbook.


Looking forward to read the books and practice some of the recipes but as I said before, now it's the time to do it as the cold and rainy seasons are coming.