A crest of glorious breadiness.

I made the same loaf of bread today, sans chia seeds. And you know what? YOU KNOW WHAT? Victory. Bam.

Thousands of seeds, none of them chia.

Those chia seeds are gone, baby. And I can make seedy bread. DOUBLE WIN.

In love with seedful things.

For lunch I had a pesto (also made by me, without chia seeds), tomato (grown by friends, without chia seeds) and feta (store-bought: chia status unknown) sandwich on my seedy bread. It was delicious and nourishing and if you ask me, chia seeds are a load of crapola.

An additional lesson I learned: if you make something crummy and get angry with the whole cooking affair, one of the quickest remedies is to immediately remake whatever it was and totally nail it. Of course if you attempt to immediately remake it and fail, you end up in a miserable feedback loop of disaster. Choose wisely.

Rough recipe

Stuff goes in:

• 470g flour (I used a 50/50 mix of wholewheat and white)
• 5g salt
• 2 tsp dried yeast
• 15g poppyseeds
• 30g sesame seeds, toasted
• 40g mixed pepitas and sunflower seeds, toasted
• 329mL warm water
• 1 packet chia seeds, discarded

Note: the seed mix can vary wildly, provided you don’t use chia seeds (grrrr); this is the blend I came up with based on what I had in the cupboard.

What you do with it:

• Mix the flours, salt, yeast and seeds in a big ol’ bowl.
• Add the water and mix it all together
• Knead until it turns into a bread dough: thick, cohesive, consistent, unified, a good level of gluten development. Took me about ten minutes by hand.
• Rise for 20 minutes; punchdown/fold; rise for 40 minutes; shape into a loaf; rise in the loaf pan for 30 minutes, then slash the top and bake at about 220°C for around 40 minutes.

seeds, sesame

I feel like I’ve got this bread making business under control nowadays: I can reliably produce delectable loaves of sandwich-appropriate bread. Hellz yeah. I can make foccaccia, naan, tortillas. I can, when called upon, produce crusty, open-crumbed bread suitable for drizzling with olive oil and then crushing marinated feta against…I’m sorry, I got distracted there for a second.

seeds, pumpkin and/or sunflower

So, basic bread-making: TICK. Feel like I’ve earned that merit badge. Let’s crank it up: time to face one of my 2012 cooking challenges. I love multigrain bread, but haven’t had it for aaaaages. Like a bolt from the blue, I realised I could have a go at making it myself. “I could try making multigrain bread myself!” I cried. “Excellent,” M replied “could you finish changing the tyre first? You’re going to be late for work.”

In order to heighten the chances of success, I decided to adapt my basic sandwich loaf recipe, to incorporate some mixed seeds. My usual loaf is a 50/50 blend of wholemeal and white flour, at 70% hydration. I toasted pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds, and found a packet of poppyseeds at the back of the pantry (estimated date of purchase: 1981-3).

seeds, chia (pre-glugging)

Then the chia seeds on the pantry door winked at me, the little bastards. “Still don’t know what to do with us, eh? Well, no hurry, dearie, you’ll get there!” Smug little grains. They’re going in. Since chia seeds are hyper-hydrophilic, I thought they might detract from the hydration of the loaf if they didn’t bring their own water along: so I soaked them in boiling water first.

seeds, chia (post-glugging)

Holy cow, those things suck it up. I mixed up 40g of chia seeds with 160g boiling water, and left them to soak while I had my lunch: they turned, almost instantly, into a thick grey gel, like frogspawn left out in the sun. Remind me again why the blogging community has gone haywire over this stuff? Skeptical but optimistic, I mixed it in with my seeds, flour, yeast, salt, etc…

seeds, not pictured. This is flour.

The dough was thick and tacky, but strengthened with kneading to resemble a gluey bread dough. It was slow to rise, but rise it did…so I went ahead and baked it. The result. Hm.

seeds, unimpressive

Let’s go through the checklist of doom. Did not rise in the oven: check. Did not become a light and springy sandwich bread with the added crunch of toasted seeds: check. Chewy and firm, one may almost say rubbery, crumb: check. Squat square loaf. I’m not impressed. In fact, I’m outright annoyed with the whole chia seed thing. It wrecked my bread. It wrecked peanut-butter chocolate chip bikkies and how is that even possible? It has wrecked one too many things.

Chia seeds are getting composted the shit out of this place. Then I’m going to make a proper freaking seedy sandwich bread. Is that clear, everybody?

Plump and full of promise!

The shaping was easy: this dough was a dream to work with. Springy, full of air, easy to shape, but with a strong sense of well-developed glutens. Magnificent. Thing is: the emphasis was on the baguettes today. So the dough for both baguettes and batard was ready all at once. The baguettes rested for 15 minutes, got a shaping, then rose for 90 minutes, then baked for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, the batard was shaped and left to rise for what ended up being slightly more than two hours. Experienced bakers will be smiling sympathetically (or maybe smugly, the buttholes) at this point, recognising the scenario. By the time the oven was free, the loaf had been rising for waaaaay too long. When it came time to slash, just before going in the oven, the tell-tale rumbling of the loaf’s skin, combined with the big obvious bubbles under the surface and the lack of spring when I slashed it…

Not a quilt.

…over-proofed. By a huge margin. Over-proofing, if I have understood things correctly, is when the yeast has been allowed to continue partying waaaaay too hard: the glutens in the flour can no longer support all the yeasts that have showed up. Like too many drunks dancing on the balcony singing Tubthumping, the whole thing is going to collapse, either hilariously or heartbreakingly, depending on your perspective. So when you put the loaf in the oven, instead of getting a loaf swelling and blooming with lush risefulness (is too a word), you get…

*sad trombone noise*

Yup. This is actually a really flattering photo: this loaf is only about three inches high. On any other day, this would have devastated me. But not today. Today, I was riding a glowing, triumphant, derby-winning thoroughbred named Umpteen Baguettes. So I wasn’t too fazed by the realisation that the stud named Batard I had just invested in was actually a dog with felt hooves tied on, as I would have been on other days. Instead, M and I trilled with laughter, declared it a fondue bread, and then flogged the servants for a while. Oh, how we laughed!

(Also: how awesome a horse name is Umpteen Baguettes?)

Bertinet, I ♥ you. Your baguette recipe has reinvigorated my interest in sourdoughs, fermented doughs, poolish and the like. And once I blissfully munch my way through my many, many wonderful baguettes, I’ll be back for more.

As I mentioned previously, if anyone can persuade me to rock the slow-rise bread, it’s Bertinet. Having let my lush, silken dough rise for 90 minutes, it was time for shaping. I took about two-thirds of the enormous dough the recipe produced and divided it into ten lumps. After a short rest, these lumps became noodles, all soft and squodgy:

Squidgy and snug

I’ll spare you the more phallic photos. You’re welcome. Then came another 90-minute rise. From kneading, these babies were rising for over three hours. You’d be amazed how quickly three hours flies past when you spend the whole time fantasising about how great your bread is going to be. (Also knitting and reading the Internet, but the fantasising made up a significant proportion.)

so patient...

After the second round of rising, it was in-the-oven time! This was a bit tricky: the shortage unique combination of trays in the house meant I had to come up with a way of getting ten baguettes into the oven, swiftly and without bending any of them, without being able to simply lay them out in neat distribution on flat trays. I managed, although I must admit, the ones on the bottom of the oven got a short, arresting lesson on the impact of oven racks on slow-rise dough (as did I). No matter.

Yes. YES.

See? No matter. These are the creme de la creme des baguettes: they rose, calm and uninterrupted, in a deep baking dish. Perfect. But I gotta tell ya: picking the best of this batch of baguettes was a bit academic. It was like trying to choose between…actually, I haven’t got a good metaphor for this. It was like trying to distinguish between 97.3% perfection and 97.5% perfection…except they were all perfect. Check out this crust:

Crust close up for your salivary stimulation

You see? That’s three baguettes, lined up. Could you pick one over the others? No, of course you couldn’t. I will say they could have done with deeper slashes: I sliced them all before putting them in the oven, but the razor is getting a bit dull and it’s hard to cut deep enough on the first slice. The result is that they bloom beautifully, but not quite enough and often burst out the sides as well (I have this problem with sandwich loaves, too):

Bursting through the crumb - bursting with WIN!

But so what? Don’t they look gorgeous?

Golden.

We just ate two baguettes for dinner (we had other stuff, too, but mostly the whole meal was built around the baguettes), and that picture still makes me hungry. I didn’t take a photo because I was busy stuffing my face, but the crumb is mega fine: the crust crunchy and light, the crumb soft and flavoursome. This is a fantastic dough.

Family photo! Everyone in! Bunch up!

Baguettes are beautiful. Baguettes are the new black. Baguettes are WIN. I’m so proud.

But the dough from Bertinet’s recipe doesn’t just make ten baguettes: it makes ten baguettes plus a loaf. Whatever happened to that guy? Stay tuned…

So if anyone was going to persuade me to get experimenting with sourdoughs again, it was gonna be Bertinet. I kicked off a starter a couple of years ago, and didn’t have a heck of a lot of luck with it.  Don’t get me wrong, Pongo rocks; I’ve passed on samples to friends and seen wonderful works from him — but I wasn’t having a lot of luck. Using the starter felt like a lot of work for not very spectacular results. Now I’m starting to grok bread a bit more, I think I know why. Pongo might make a reappearance in the future, but for now, I decided to go with one of Bertinet’s recipes, from Crust, his gorgeously-laid out bread book (sequel, I believe, to Dough).

It was the baguettes that did it. Oooooh, baguettes; so beautiful. So crunchy, golden and sexy, especially in Bertinet’s hands. These are baguettes based on a poolish, which is a flour/water/yeast slow ferment. You start of with an equal mix (by weight) of flour and water, plus a little yeast, left overnight in the fridge. Bertinet calls for a blend of rye and white flour, but I didn’t have any rye. Seems to have worked out okay:

Bubble bubble...

The next day, once your poolish has become foamy and lush, you add work the rest of the dough ingredients in — flour, yeast, salt, water. I love the simplicity of it.

...toil and trouble...

Kneaded into a thick, silky, springy ball, I left it to rise for 90 minutes. Now, for comparison, when I make a regular sandwich bread loaf, I usually give it about 20 minutes’ rise, then fold, then another 40 minutes’ rise, then shape, then about 30 minutes later, into the oven. These sourdough baguettes had 90 minutes, then divided into small bits and rested for 15 minutes, then shaped and left for another 90 minutes before baking.

...rise the dough...

But who’s complaining? The dough was beautiful to handle and rose magnificently:

...and let it double!

Ready to be worked. The recipe in Bertinet’s book makes 10 baguettes plus a loaf: not full-on, Yoplait-commercial, stick-them-in-the-basket-of-your-bike-and-wear-a-stripey-jumper baguettes, but not miniscule ones, either.

This dough, if I may take a moment, is wonderful. It is smooth and silky, sturdy and slightly elastic. It feels wonderful to work with. But what of its yield? Find out in the next exciting installment of Poolish Play!

Crunchy crispy crust. Alliterative and delicious.

Well, that’s mostly a lie. Fact is, while I was typing up my notes on that bread I got to thinking about how awesome it was and just had to make some again. Really good stuff. I doubled the amount of flavouring I used, and that made a huge difference. Same recipe, more showboating:

Last time, I tried the plaited loaf and it was beautiful, so I had to do it again. But the rising dough was mega-ugly this time: the thing about working oil into your dough is that it makes it slippery and this can case tears in the outside skin of the raw dough when you’re handling it. So it looked all shredded up and greasy and did not delight the eye. But once it was in the oven…ugly duckling: beautiful swan; funny-looking dough…

fatplaitz!

…crunchy curvaceousness.

Last time I made this bread, I tried to make a pullapart: I divided up the bits of dough, rolled them in the flavourings, and squooshed them back into the loaf tin for the final rise. Where they promptly pulled a Terminator-style remerge and turned back into a loaf. A springy, sliceable loaf! Delicious! But not a pullapart. Not quite a fail, but a win in the wrong direction. This time, I stretched out the dough and piled the fillings on, plus plenty of oil from the sun-dried tomatoes, then rolled it up like a Swiss roll. A few more twists and tucks and that sealed the fat roll of dough up. Into the loaf tin it went:

Unplaited but full, full I tell you, of FLAYVA.

Which came out looking a bit like a bus. A bus with a bobble on its head. A delicious, garlic-scented bus…from here, the metaphor gets too weird to be palatable, so I’m letting it go.

Normally one is supposed to wait until the bread is fairly cool before cutting: pressing down the way you have to when cutting isn’t good on a crumb that is still moist and warm and soft. Squashes it right flat, it does. We didn’t care. There was blue cheese and balsamic vinegar waiting and the smell was driving us to delirium. We cut early. You can almost hear the bread’s outrage as it was forced to yield its soft, heavenly secrets of tomato, rosemary and garlic:

A bread with attitude, lording over my camera...

I am not a photographer, nor do I play one on TV: these shots aren’t great because I wanted to put the camera away and eat my lunch. But you can see the chunks of deliciousness through the crumb. It’s also mega springy and soft, like a good pullapart should be, although slicing while hot has definitely squodged it down a bit. But fuck it: too tasty to be damaged by such superficialities.

...but maybe it's got a right to a 'tude.

It’s soft and pull-apart-able, and the oil from the sun-dried tomatoes has given it a crispy crust and a loose, slightly segmenty-dough with an unbelievable flavour. Ahh. Yes. You are right to be jealous.

And don’t wave that bloody awful pre-sliced, plastic-bagged, white wet foam near me, thank you very much. Get stuffed. I’m talking about bread. That shit is good for nothing but…well, I was going to say feeding the ducks, but now that I think of it, give the ducks something decent for Chrissake.

Bread. Naan, tortillas, focaccia; pull-aparts, rye rolls, pumperknickel; I love it all. I love brown, rye, multigrain, seed, and white breads. I love yeasted and quick breads; I love brioche and soft baps, I love baguettes and crunchy-crust, open-crumbed no-knead breads.

So I’ve been experimenting! As I’ve mentioned in the past, one of the hardest things to get right is a sturdy, fine-crumbed sandwich loaf for everyday deliciousness. And I stick by that assertion and the dedicated practice it requires: but sometimes you gotta play around, you know? So when I was invited to morning tea and asked to bring something savoury, I seized the day. Carpe diem! Carpe panis! Sundried tomato, roast garlic and rosemary pullapart. Awwww hellzyeah.

Before I give you the recipe, I have to say: once you start experimenting with bread, you feel like you have found a new world. Suddenly I want to try making sesame seed and pumpkin breads; preserved lemon and dill breads; breads with chunks of caramelised onion and feta. I want to try cinnamon, nut and sultana breads…ooh, baby. There is too little time in my life for all the breads I want to try making. Stay tuned.

Man I Wish I Had Some Right Now Sundried Tomato, Roast Garlic and Rosemary Bread

Yield: 2 loaves

For the dough, you’ll need (knead! hah!):

• 500g white bread flour
• 500g wholemeal bread flour
• 700mL warm water
• 3 tsp dried yeast
• 5 tsp salt

For the flava-flav, you’ll need:

• Many many sundried tomatoes, finely chopped, plus a few tablespoons of the oil they were floating in
• Big fat bunch of rosemary, finely chopped
• Two heads (heads, not cloves) garlic, roasted until tender and squishy,then cooled and finely chopped or mashed

Don’t skimp on the flavourings! When I make this again, I’ll double them.

Mix your flours, yeast and salt, then add the warm water. Add about half of your tomatoes, rosemary and garlic and knead vigourously until your dough reaches the windowpane stage of gluten development. The smell should be driving you crazy with tummy-lust.

Leave to rise until doubled in size: about 20-30 minutes. Fold into thirds, rotate 90 degrees, fold into thirds again, flip over and leave for about 40 minutes. Mix the rest of your tomatoes, garlic and rosemary together with the oil from the tomatoes and allow to sit while the dough rises. When the dough has doubled again, it’s time to shape! Halve your dough.

I tried making a pullapart loaf by cutting one loaf’s worth of dough into lots of little bits and then brushing them generously with the oil/flavourings, then squishing back together as I piled them into the loaf tin. It didn’t do much, though: the dough was pretty vigourous and over the course of the final rise, it just reabsorbed all the separate sections into one very tasty but very cohesive loaf.

The other loaf I plaited: divide the dough into three sections and roll into tight, fat snakes. Brush generously with oil/ flavourings and then plait loosely: I did mine in a loaf tin, but I think you could probably do it on a flat tray as well, though it may spread outwards a bit more. Pour any remaining oil/flavourings over the top and put the loaves aside for their final rise (about 20-30 minutes for mine).

bwaup!

Bake at 200 degrees for 30-40 minutes, until the loaf looks crusty and sounds hollow when tapped. You may want to slide the loaves out of their tins for the last 5-10 minutes, to let their bottoms get crispy. Love me a crispy bottom, yessir.

Ideally, you should let the loaves cool before you cut them, but frankly the smell will be triggering some pretty intense feelings in you. I recommend tearing them apart with your hands and devouring with a delicious soft cheese or some really good oil.

Bertinet has a really good attitude towards breadmaking: there’s a lot of affection and respect towards the bread, but not towards a lot of the pomp and rules that people insist upon when cooking. When reading about breadmaking, you sometimes get the impression that it’s a sacred alchemy and you have to have eggs at a particular temperature and must never use salt that has been looked at by a pig and so on — it’s that whole “cooking is an art, but baking is a science” attitude I’m pretty sceptical about. Bertinet gives the impression that he has his head screwed on, loves bread, and that breadmaking is not at all esoteric or specialised.

But here’s the bit of basic maths that is really rocking my rolls. 70% hydration dough: sounds kinda technical and like I know what I’m talking about, huh? The hydration percentage is how much water versus how much flour you’re using. 100% hydration would be equal parts water and flour; 50% hydration would be half as much water as flour (or twice as much flour as water, if you like). To get 70% hydration, I weigh the flour, and then take 70% of that weight, and that’s how much water to add (by weight). So three cups of flour usually clocks in at around 420g (this is off the top of my head, and your results may vary), and 70% of that is about 294g – so I use 294g of water. (And there’s yeast and salt and a bit of olive oil in there, too, but I don’t factor that in when weighing.) Some good kneading, and leave to rise. Fold, rise again, then shape. Here they are, sexy and enjoying their final rise before baking:

Before!

The important thing when shaping seems to be to get a really taut surface. You do this by curling the dough under and into itself, a few times: trickier on a loaf, but dead easy on rolls. (Look up Bertinet on YouTube and you’ll get some good videos.) When they’ve had a chance to rise again and look ready, brush with a little beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds — or, if you’re me (and if you’re reading this blog, chances are you are), a dash of gomashio. Then slash the tops and pop in the oven. And then things get sexy.

After!

I’m very proud of this batch. Rye flour gives a fine, soft crumb and the flavour is…well, it’s wonderful. I can’t put my finger on what it is I notice about the taste of rye bread. Something reminiscent of sourdough, but not as sour? Not sure. These babies sure are tasty: rye + avocado = OMGNOM.

I neither apologise nor suggest reason for my emotional bonds to cooking. Because one would be grovelly, the other would be pointless and waffly. Cooking offers comfort, joy, and a sense of purpose when I’m feeling low. Makes the house smell good, too. But the flipside: cooking sometimes hurts my feelings.

M has been fine-tuning his already pretty damn fine sandwich bread skillz and I elected to try his new recipe. Mix; knead; rise; so far so good. Punchdown like a pro, second rise; definitely on my A-game. Then came shaping time. I’m beginning to think shaping is everything. You can make bread out of pinwheels and pocket fluff and if you get the shaping right you’ll still end up with a mighty sexy loaf (which will taste cruddy, but that’s what you get for making bread out of weird shit like that).

On the other hand, if you have a plump, innocent bread dough that has been rising obediently all morning, and then you decide to do the final, critical loaf shaping immediately prior to lunch — when the brain is twitchy, the stomach shouty — you may find that your half-arsed plopping and slapping about results in…

Oh...oh God...

The poor thing never stood a chance, but that didn’t stop me taking it personally. It rose unevenly in the oven, resulting in a loaf that looked like it ought to be inserted somewhere; I gave up, declared it a dud and sliced it open, and revealed a squelchy underbaked middle — although I suspect that has more to do with me giving up than anything else.

Go on, look closer. Euw.

So I did the obvious thing and burst into tears.

The next day — it’s best to wait twenty-four hours after such incidents, to let feelings simmer down — under M’s tutelage, I nurtured a Forgiveness Bread into fruition. Mix; knead; rise; punchdown: all fine. Then came the shaping. M explained a few basic principles to me and demonstrated the general wrist action: I watched, imitated…

COMEBACK BREAD STUNS CRITICS!

I am not saying I wept a few mature tears as the angels infused my kitchen with the warm bread scent of triumph, but I’m not not saying it either.

Tortillas? Pita pockets? No sweat.

Pick a peck of perfect pockets

Soft and fluffy herb and cheese bread? You got it. Hot cross buns? No problemo.

One-a-penny, two-a-penny, yawn.

Scrolls stuffed with spicy pear and ginger?

A delicious pushover

Roast capsicum and feta pull-apart? You got it.

Impressive, yet simple

Slow-rise crusty bread, oh-so-perfect for dipping in fresh olive oil from the press at the farmer’s market? Baby, I wrote the book.

Mouth-wateringly easy

But there is a holy grail in homemade bread. The simple and sturdy sandwich bread. The kind of bread you can slap around the outside of a pile of pickles and cheese and tomatoes and turn what would otherwise be a messy and anti-social, palm-squelching affair into the culmination of Western culture, the sandwich. But it’s not easy: commercial bakeries have all sorts of tricks up their sleeves to make a bread with a fine crumb, consistent strenght and a firm-but-not-crunchy crust — tricks like lecithin and added gluten and newt eyeballs. And, let’s face it, you can buy sandwich bread anywhere. You can get it at petrol stations. So the standard is set pretty high: not only does your homemade stuff have to match theirs, with all their Evil Big Bakery Wizardry, but it has to also be simple enough to offset any potential “but you can buy bread!” comments. As with home-made clothes, there’s an established bar to cross before people stop staring at your weirdly high-waisted jeans, sniggering cruelly and grinding your efforts into the dust. (I’ve been hanging out with a rough crowd.) I think of it as an invisibility standard: when your efforts are indistinguishable from what your average joe expects to be able to buy, you’re on the right path. And then you BLAST ‘EM OUT OF THE WATER WITH YOUR GENIUS!

Where was I? Oh yes, sandwich bread. So, like I illustrated above, I can totally make bread. But making good sandwich bread is a whole new barrel of chipmunks: there are particular requirements placed on it and the fact that you eat it a bajillion times per week means any problems are not ignorable. You’ve got to do it right, or every mouthful of sandwich will be as ashes and dick. M is a pro at it, and so I made him teach me. And lo, the light of the goddess of bread entered me roughly from behind and showed me the path to true bread glory.

I held off blogging about this until I could be sure. I’ve got three loaves under my belt now, each better than the previous, and now I feel like saying it out loud: babies, I can make sandwich bread.

Behold.

This one is half white flour, half wholemeal, but I have had equal success with half white and half rye, so, y’know: am awesome.

It's normal to feel a little jealous.

The key is to have a dough way wetter than you think proper — you should be worrying about it being too wet. It should be so wet that it’s messy to work with (I’m trying to crank up my Google hits here). M pointed out to me that he knew my dough was too dry because I was enjoying kneading it. And kneading: lots of pulling and stretching, less brute force. Folding rather than punching-down. And a little resty-poo for the dough after every handling. I use a little melted butter and plain yoghurt in the dough, too, for flayva — I do admit sometimes I’m a little light-handed with the salt: but you’d be upset if I was too perfect. And then you’d stop reading the blog, and then you’d miss me and have to come crawling back and make a spectacle of yourself and…well, nobody needs that kind of indignity around here.

Yes. A thousand times, yes.

This is my Woodstock.

Note: Oven still dead. This is pure reminiscience.