the fruits of our labors

my biggest complaint about artisan bakers is that there is not enough fruit or nuts in their fruit nut breads. but given the expense, i understand their moderate hand. i don't know why i'm bellyaching about it now. i've not purchased so much as a single slice of bread since i started this blog a year and sevenish months ago.

luxury bread

today i'm posting one of my absolute favorite loaves with you. i call her my luxury bread, because she's the most ambrosial loaf in my repertoire and the only one that i anthropomorphize. while i love all my breads dearly, she's got to be the queen of the bunch. and when i occasion to bake her up, i feel like nothing on earth could be better than the moment i sink my teeth into a slice (ok, maybe i shouldn't anthropomorphize). i defy you to disagree.

here's the scoop. you will need two types of nut and four different varieties of dried fruit. not. negotiable. if you try to cut corners, well, then you ain't makin' luxury bread.

you might have noticed that this venture won't be cheap, what with 250g of the fruit, and another 150g of nuts - pecan and wal. yeah. but if you get your goods from trader joes, you will have plenty leftover from the first go round to knead up a few more loaves.. if you can keep yourself from snacking on your stash. i never can.

bench & shape

a few caveats with this loaf: doing the turns is impossible. no, not difficult, impossible. the dough is SOLID, and when you (try to) do them (because yeah, you still have to), you will think you've gone mad, (or i've gone mad for conjuring up this beast, royalty that she is) but by golly, we must forge on with that what is most challenging in order to feel deserved of the fruits of our labors.

after you've given up on your turns (they get harder from the start), trying to shape the bread will drive you bonkers because you have to keep as much of the 400g of fruits and nuts inside the dough as you can so that you don't end up with a surplus of burned goodies on the crust after its gone through a pretty long bake. but you can do it. and after you've had your first bite, you will forget about the pain that you endured and revel in the sheer luxury of it. see, luxury bread.

forget about pannetone for christmas, this is what you should be baking for people this year. it's pure luxury... so you should eat it all the time.

LUXURY BREAD, THE DEETS

THE MORNING BEFORE THE BAKE

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

make your levain:

37g 100% rye, 100% hydration starter
50g h2o
50g organic dark rye flour, i used BRM dark rye

mix it all up, ferment for 7.5 hours

MAKE THE DOUGH

137g levain
310g KA organic A/P
100g KA organic bread flour
90g BRM organic dark rye flour
330g h2o
62.5g each: golden raisins, thompsons raisins, dried cherries, apricots (chopped)
75g pecans
75g walnuts
10g salt

first things first, toast the nuts. put the fruit in a glass measure and fill with boiling hot water. steep 30 minutes, then drain. set all this aside.

mix the levain with the water and the flours until you reach a shaggy mass. autolyse for 1 hour.

after the dough has gone through full autolyse, squish the salt in into the dough with your fingers, then dump the COOLED nuts and fruit in and fold it into the dough. i know, i know, it's going to seem like too much. it's not. ready for bulk fermentation.

BULK FERMENTATION

for the first two hours of the bulk fermentation, perform a series of turns every half hour. i know, it's nutty (literally), and its going to be impossible. just do the best you can. that's all anyone can ask of you in life.

before bulk fermentation

for the last two hours of the bulk fermentation, pop the dough into the fridge and let it do its thing, unmolested.

after bulk fermentation

BENCH. SHAPE. PROOF.

after the bulk fermentation, dust your workspace with brown rice flour and scrape the dough over it. sort o' gather it into a loose boule and let it rest for 10 minutes.

after its rested for 10 minutes, shape the dough into a firm boule, making sure that you tuck in any fruit or nut pieces that poke through. i mean, some stick-outs you can't avoid. just do the best you can or they will burn during the bake.

pop this dough into a linen-lined bowl that's been dusted with organic brown rice flour and pop it into the fridge for a 15-hour proof.

you should always be covering your dough, yeah, all the way from levain through proof. i usually just use a plate. you don't have to get crazy with the plastic wrap.

BAKE DAY

time to bake your queen!

preheat the oven to 550 degrees, outfitted with a baking stone and both pieces of your combo cooker for a full hour.

just before you are ready to bake, pull the dough out of the fridge, score it, slide it into the shallow end of the combo cooker, cover with the fatty part, and steam for 30 minutes at 475 degrees.

after the steam, remove the lid of the combo cooker, lower the heat to 450 (DON'T bake at a higher temp. this loaf takes longer to bake than other loaves, and you will end up with a black bottom if you crank the heat. i think my loaf took.... mmm... 1 hour and 10 minutes or so?) bake until the crust is a chestnut brown, and be sure to turn it for the last 20 minutes of the bake so one side doesn't get darker than the rest. and do try to wait a full hour before tearing into it. it'll be hard, i know...

OH, and, uh, you can double your luxury by increasing your ingredients by two, from levain all the way down to the salt.

to the staff of life!

THE LUXURIOUS HEADSHOTS

this post was shared on wild yeast blog's yeast spotting.

seigle d'auvergne

seigle means rye. d'auvergne means 'of auvergne', or, the auvergne region of france known for its, well, rye bread and cheeses. seigle (pronounced seg, with a very short 'l' that lives as a whisper on the sides of the tongue. so, say 'seg(whisper)l'.

my seigle turned out as well as i had imagined it would. auspicious crackling, very (uber!) moist crumb that will probably keep for the duration of my enjoyment of it. as well we all know, rye breads can last for quite a while.

i used daniel leader's 'classic auvergne dark rye' as a template for this seigle (page 158 of 'local breads'), but i modified the formula quite a bit in terms of hydration, fermentation times, and fermentation method, and type of flour. i used dark rye, i believe his formula calls for light.

the crust was nice and crisp when it came out of the oven. i waited until the next day to slice it, and the crust was as tender as the crumb.

i realized today that this seigle is a window that peeks into my preferences. i'm a product of two hippie parents. we were a farm-to-table family, drawing our nourishment from a very large, urban garden in our back yard. while our neighbors barbecued, our vegetarian family harvested okra and shelling beans. alice waters thinks she began the farm to table movement in america, but i think it was my father. well, at least in my life he did.

we thought he was a crazy old man back then, my father, with his compost pile and a tiller that looked like it belonged to a weathered farmer with sod-caked hands. what he was was an urban farmer with high ideals about what his family should eat.

he orchestrated the planting of our plot and the rest of us, we carried out his vision, one that, of course, at the time i did not appreciate and could not know would be the foundation of how i would think about food when i got older. now, in my adult years, when my friends grapple with weight and urges for fast food, i get hankerings for dandelion greens with a little lemon and olive oil. it is now that i thank my father for honing a natural inclination toward the earth and its flavors. he is gone now, but his vision lives on in me.

seigle. i began this earthy loaf with a 75% hydration starter that i made from the 100% hydration, 100% rye starter that i keep, the mother of all my breads. i have a deep, deep respect for her. she has fed me well, and provides weekly miracles that astound me even still, this one and a quarter years after i first began exploring my bread path with her.

this seigle will happily pair with one of the auvergne-produced cheeses - bleu d'auvergne, salers, fourme d'ambert, saint nectaire, cantal...

saint nectaire is known as 'the rye cheese', since it is aged in rye straw. how much more romantic can one get than that? this is the orchestra of eating that i strive for - this earthy bread, the harmony of a cheese that was borne to wed with it, and perhaps a ripe tomato and a fistful of greens.

i had a ploughman's lunch today with my seigle, a bit of bleu d'auvergne, saint nectaire, some avocado, red onion, cucumbers and the  ripest, sweetest tomato a girl could hope for. (BTW, we grew the best tomatoes in our urban garden, and my mother would can them for the winter months to come. i was a lucky kid. hindsight, you know...).

life is good. but it's so much better with bread that you bake with your very own hands. thank you for meeting me here at the page once again. enjoy your seigle d'auvergne, and please let me know how yours turns out for you!

seigle d'auvergne

the night before the bake

make your levain by mixing the following:

45g 75% hydration 100% rye starter

50g h2o

50g organic dark rye flour, i used BRM

cover and let ferment overnight (mine fermented for 12 hours).

(*to make your 100% hydrated starter into one that is 75% do the following: in the morning of the day before you plan to make the levain, scoop out 36g of starter, add to a jar with 36g of dark rye flour and 27g water. mix and feed once again in the evening. the next day it will be ready to use for your levain).

bake day!

500g organice dark rye flour, i used BRM

200g strong bread flour, i used KA

550g h2o

125g levain

10g salt

in the bowl of your stand mixer, dissolve the levain in 450g of the h2o, add the rye flour and mix until a smooth, thick, cohesive dough forms.

hey, you know i'm a purest and prefer to make all of my bread by hand, but a dough with such a high percentage of rye will make you grateful that you have a stand mixer. the dough is far too sticky to knead by hand. trust me.

let this autolyse for an hour and 20 minutes.

dissolving the levain, mixing with the seigle flour

the levain, water, and seigle flour amply amalgamated, ready for autolyse

after autolyse

 after autolyse, up close

after the autolyse, add the remaining 100g h2o, the bread flour and salt. machine knead for 9 minutes on the low setting of your mixer using the dough hook attachment (don't use the paddle, even though it might seem like a good idea), scraping down the sides every minute to ensure that all of the flour and water is incorporated.

the dough will be thick and smooth, more like a batter

scrape the sides of the bowl, cover with a plate or a sheet of plastic wrap, or whatever, and begin the 2 hour 40 minute bulk fermentation.

the dough, ready for bulk fermentation

 pre-ferment, up close

 the dough, fully fermented, 2 hours 40 minutes at moderate room temp (73 degrees or so)

after the 2 hour 40 minute bulk fermentation, pour the dough onto a floured bench and rest 10 minutes.

fermented dough on the bench 

the best you can, and don't get frustrated, this is a very sticky dough, and you will not be able to make a perfect boule, shape into a quasi-boule, and plop this (with all your apprehensions in place) into a bowl lined with a linen that has been VERY well dusted with organic brown rice flour. your fingers will be coated with this dough. you will think that you did something wrong, you will want to pitch it, but here's the thing: you did everything right. it is supposed to be sticky with no apparent gluten formation.

pop this into the fridge and proof for an hour and 50 minutes.

your boule, it's gonna look crazy, embrace it!

crazy 'boule' - fully proofed boule! 

okay, you can get excited after you unveil your proofing dough because it will look like the one above...

after 1 hour 50 minutes (45 minutes before bake time, you should have preheated your oven to 550 degrees with a baking stone in place, and a combo cooker heating up to smoking hot along with it), place a piece of parchment over the boule/bowl, place a peel over the parchment and swiftly invert.

remove the bowl and linen to reveal your beauty.

unveiled 

slide the boule, still on the parchment, into the shallow end of your piping hot combo cooker and pop the deep half of the combo cooker on top. slide it into the oven, turn it down to 500 degrees...

 the boule in the shallow part of the combo cooker

bake for 30 minutes with the lid on. after 30 minutes, remove the lid...

a properly steamed seigle 

turn the oven down to 475, bake for another 13 minutes or so. then turn the oven down to 450 degrees and bake till adequately browned. mine baked for another another 17 minutes for a total bake time of 1 hour. of course, cool on a wire rack.

 the seigle is done

it is best to slice high-proportion ryes the next day. the crust, after it comes out of the oven, should be crisp, and the next day it will be velvet-soft. the crumb should be moist, compact, and homogeneous but light, not heavy or gummy.

the headshots

to the staff of life!

this post has been sent over to wild yeast blog's yeast spotting.