Wholegrain spelt pain a l'ancienne

Spelt was an important cereal in Europe from the Bronze Age to medieval times. Today it has survived as a relict crop in Central Europe and northern Spain (mainly in Asturias) and has found a new market as a health food: spelt requires fewer fertilisers as it is resistant to diseases so it is easy to find organic spelt.

So with my wholegrain spelt decided last night to make the well known in this blog pain a l'ancienne. I think we always have make this bread in white versions so a bit of a challenge using an wholemeal flour, and spelt.

So mixed the ingredients last night:

- 380g wholegrain spelt flour
- 300g water (very cold)
- 7g salt
- 4g dried yeast

And I said mixed because as you know you don't knead this bread. All well mix and put it in the fridge until this morning (9 hours). then I left it at room temperature for 2 hours until double the size. With an spatula and loads of flour, tried to make 3 baguettes and oven, 230C for 10 min first with some water/steam and then 25 at 200C. 5 minutes extra with the oven off and the door open.

The result was a bit different as I used to have for a pain a l'ancienne: no big alveolus, breadcrumb a bit more compact, probably due to the type of flour but taste was great. You can definitely feel the 9 hours in the fridge and the flavour of the wholegrain spelt.

Looking forward to use again spelt flour. I found a interesting web: a spanish company producing local spelt flour (Triticum aestivum sub. Spelta). They not only sell white and wholemeal spelt flout but the grain as well. It could be another interesting step producing our own spelt flour. anyone else up to? The company is called Escanda Asturiana

sourdough: day 1

new batches of sourdough: wholemeal, white and spelt...grow, grow, grow...can't wait to use them!

left to right: wholemeal, white and spelt

Waterford soda bread

As Juan wrote in his last post, we have been talking about soda bread these days. I had something in mind about this, because I'd heard and read it's a really, really easy made and very tasty bread. A perfect idea for a Wednesday evening, when you're tired, don't have much time, but yo're willing for some good home made bread to take for dinner. Well, this Waterford soda bread is what you need in such an ocasion.

It also belongs to the family of brown soda breads, as it's made with wholewheat flour (really sorry for this replay, Juan and I never talked about the recipes we were going to prepare, it was a coincidence the both of us prepared different wheaten breads instead a  more classical recipe). And it also belongs to Lepard's 'The handmade loaf'. There are two soda bread recipes in this book. I chose this, because the other one gives a sweet bread, and this wasn't what I was looking for this time. These are the ingredients:

300 gr. wholemeal flour (Irish in my case)
50 gr. oatmeal
20 gr. butter
4,5 gr. bicarbonate of soda
4,5 gr. salt
4,5 gr. caster sugar
200 gr. buttermilk (the recipe says at 20º C, I just took care it didn't come right out from the fridge)
200 gr. whole milk (same tip about the temperature)

Before talking about the procedure, I'll write a bit about buttermilk.For many Spanish people, this is a little bit strange concept. Firstly, because it's not easy to find. The one I bought in a very popular supermarket comes from Germany and doesn't look like the buttermilk you can find in huge amounts in so many Irish shops. Real buttermilk has a yellowish and transparent appereance. Mine looks more like a very liquid but very white yoghourt. What about the taste? Buttermilk really tastes like butter. The other thing tastes more acid. Any other reason to 'despice' buttermilk in sunny Spain? Well, we don't really need it, because we can do hundreds of great cakes and other desserts without using buttermilk.

But if you're reading this from Spain and want to make this bread (or some scones) don't worry, because you can get your own and authentic buttermilk by yourselve at home and don't even need to go to the supermarket to buy this German product. Instead, get the thickest cream you can find (this is not the moment nor the place for a skimmed version), put it in the food processor and make it work for some minutes. Cream will separate in two products: a solid fat -butter, in fact- and a yellowish liquid, the buttermilk. There it is.

OK, now it's time for technique. I told you this is a very convenient idea if you want quick results and no hard working. First, mix the flour, oatmeal and the butter (use your fingers). Then, add salt, sugar and the bicarbonate of soda, and mix evenly. In a different bowl, mix the liquids and put it together with flour. You have to mix -not to knead- everything evenly and quickly, because bicarbonate will start to react as soon as it gets in touch with the buttermilk.

No holes this time

Put it in the oven, preheated at 210º C, covered with foil for 25 minutes. Then, remove the foil and bake for another 25 minutes. Quick, nutritional and wonderful.

epis

Second bread I baked today was some epis based in the recipe of Reinhart Pain de Campagne and I said based because I didn't use any paté fermenté but sourdough. I always wanted to try to bake an epi and now that I did it I realize how easy it is. Adding someyeast to the dough helps to reduce the the time of fermentation. So I did two fermentations, one of 2 hours and the second for 1 hour and the dough was ready for baking.

About the recipe: well, well, i follow at some point the recipe in Reinhart's book the bread baker's apprentice but as I said I used sourdough instead of paté fermenté. In the recipe he said after mixing all the ingredients, knead and add the flour you thinks it's necessary and that what I did. The problem is that finally I don't know how much I put and for so I m going to put here the ingredients but the quantities will be approximated. Sorry for this small confusion. especially because the bread was very good:

300-350g white strong flour

20g rye flour

20g wholemeal flour

120g white flour sourdough

6 g salt

3g quick yeast

175g water

After the second fermentation I cut the dough in 4 pieces, flatted them in rectangles and fold them in loaves, then made some baguettes and cut them with the scissors to make epis. it's easier than you think. Around 20 min in the oven at max. temperature the first 8 min (in my

case 240 degrees) and then at 180 degrees.

In the pics you might think they are together but there are for separate ones. I recommended

this bread if you have guess at home, they are very easy to do and your friends will be delighted with the flavour and the presentation!

Un mundo de harinas

Los que saben de cocina insisten siempre en que la calidad de los productos es esencial para conseguir un buen resultado en un plato. Y acceder a una buena calidad en la materia prima está muy relacionado con la existencia de variedad en el mercado, es decir, con la posibilidad de que el consumidor pueda elegir. A mayor competecia, mayor esfuerzo por parte de los productores para hacerse un hueco en el mercado aportando mejoras en sus productos. Una obviedad, vaya.

Para hacer pan, la madre del cordero está, cómo no, en la harina.. En el año y medio que llevo haciéndolo en casa, he tenido ocasión de comprobar que hay grandes diferencias en cuanto a la oferta harinera que existe en distintos países. Y, me duele en el orgullo patrio reconocerlo, en España no salimos muy bien parados de la comparación. Acceder a harinas de distintos cereales y cultivo orgánico es una tarea que requiere un cierto esfuerzo en Madrid capital, es ardua en su cinturón metropolitano (experiencia personal), y me imagino que próxima al imposible en otras provincias o pueblos, por lo que leo en los blogs panaderos que sigo.

Por eso, durante mi viaje a Cork literalmente aluciné con la oferta de harina disponible. En cualquier supermercado a la vuelta de la esquina era posible encontrar harinas para panificar, de trigo blanco, integral, con grano partido, espelta... Pero mi gran momento harinero tuvo lugar en el English Market que, además de ser un sitio estupendo para la vista y el gusto, tiene su hueco para harinas de lo más variadas: trigo blanco, trigo integral, trigo sarraceno, kamut, garbanzos, espelta, centeno, cebada, semolina, arroz, maíz en varios tipos de molienda...Muchas de ellas de cultivo orgánico. Un gran momento.

Los ha habido similares en París y Londres, pero éstas son grandes capitales en todos los sentidos y me parece lógico que se pueda encontrar prácticamente cualquier cosa de manera relativamente sencilla. Pero Cork es una ciudad mucho más recogida, así que su situación me parece envidiable.

Mi margen de maniobra con el peso de la maleta no era muy amplio, así que tuve que contenerme. Me he traído de Irlanda tres kilos y medio de harina (y medio de azúcar mascabado, pero ésa es otra historia): extra coarse wholemeal, rye y semolina. Os las enseño en la foto. Por cierto, el paño tan mono también es irlandés.

lidia bread

lidia was here in cork for a week with eva and paula. we had a great time, visiting the island, lovely places like cobh, kinsale, killarney, etc, but we had time to cook and bake and to create this blog. So our main aim was and is to share recipe in the distance as we three live in different cities and myself in a different country, so we can put here attempts and doubts and discoveries and questions mainly about bread but also you will find some baking. And while sharing between us we can share with everybody else and enrich this blog with people who want to participate too. so do not be shy.

we made my sourdough, starting with strong wholemeal flour, and after 2 days the sourdough was crazy: double every 12 hours, millions of bubbles and overflowing the glass jar. So we decided to made a white sourdough so we fed it with strong organic white flour. i think this change didn't like it, didn't die but its activity is very slow since then. i m going to feed it today with strong wholemeal flour and put it finally in the fridge. and let's pray it is ok.

so as we said before, while waiting for the sourdough we made a couple of breads, using fresh yeast. the first one, the one i called lidia bread, was a strong flavour wholemeal bread. here is the recipe:

500g organic spelt flour
150g organic wholemeal rye flour
150 strong wholemeal flour
30g fresh yeast
17g salt
400g water

the bread has two fermentation of around 3 hours and then oven for 50 min, first 15 min at maximum temperature (in my oven it's around 140 celsius degrees) and the at 190 degrees. we put some water in a tray underneath the bread, and we wasn't able to spray the bread with water basically because we forgot to buy the spray bottle :-) but it came finally crispy enough.



so the result was a lovely and rich brown bread, during the fermentation the dough grew quiet well but in the oven we didn't get many alveolus, maybe because of the yeast, maybe because it has a high proportion of wholemeal flour or even because of the oven, as it was too close to the top inside of it. Nevertheless the texture and the flavour was unique. lidia promised she is going to try to make it again using this time her sourdough so i am really looking forward for her to make it and share with us. i am sure she will improve it.



and as the bread has only one destiny to fulfill, we all had dinner with it that night, and our food was enhanced with this powerful homemade bread. here you can see a sample with tapenade, semi sun dry tomatoes and feta cheese. it s true as well as lidia said the this bread get even better if you toast it. i m getting hungry again ;-)