Pear-Hazelnut Ciabatta

From looking at the above picture, you'd think this was just another ciabatta, right? Simply a different flavor combination than the one posted last week. And you'd be right of course, except that, as always, "l'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux" (what is essential remains invisible to the eyes, as the fox explains to the curious little boy in Le Petit Prince).
Indeed, beyond the listed ingredients, what got baked into this bread is friendship and love and the gratefulness that fills my heart for the support you have steadfastly afforded us since tragedy struck. Frankly I couldn't have made it so far so soon without your help. Each of your comments and emails has reached my heart and added a brick to the foundation on which healing may one day begin. Thank you!
The realization came to me as I was gathering what I needed for this bread: the stone-ground whole wheat flour with golden specks of bran came from a baker on Vancouver Island, the round and plump hazelnuts from a friend's farm in the Fraser Valley, the dried pears from a local friend who is rebuilding his home (as he will be without an oven for more than a year, he kindly brought me all -and I do mean all- his baking supplies). The levain was the distant progeny of the one sent to me last year by another friend on Orcas Island. The apron around my waist was a present from a friend in Maine.
I was  making the ciabatta for a friend from France who will be visiting next month: she lives above a bakery on a quiet street in a city near Paris. She has never eaten homemade bread in her life. 
As I stood thinking of her, weighing each ingredient in turn, I remembered the kindness and passion of the baker who had shared it with me and I suddenly realized that beyond the eagerly awaited guest and my baking friends, all of you were in the kitchen with me as well, still present eight and a half months later, still caring, still remembering Noah and still striving not only to show support but also to prevent further acts of random violence like the one which had devastated the Newtown families. I could never thank you enough. This ciabatta is dedicated to you.
It was inspired by the cool front which has hung over our valley for the past few days: mist rising from the river at dawn, odd leaves turning bright red, apples and pears hanging heavier in the gardens that line the trail, humming birds dancing at the feeders as if already gearing up for the long trip south. 
Cliff Mass, our beloved local meteorologist, says summer isn't over yet and I believe him. Still I have seen the writing on the landscape and distant memories of fall have come drifting back. The yellowing fruit against the old stonewall in my grandfather's orchard, the ripe hazelnuts falling off their husks under the thicket by the chicken coop, we kids filling our pockets before heading out for a day's adventures, the breath of a faraway and long-ago garden brought back by the smell of damp grass as I bend to pick up the paper from my Northwest driveway every morning. Threads of life woven together. Past and present. Love and loss. Being part of a larger whole, of a living tapestry. Separate, yet connected.
A comforting thought to go with the first bread of fall.

Pear-Hazelnut Ciabatta

The method is the same as the one I described in my previous post with minor changes.

• The oatmeal I used was a leftover from breakfast the day before, it hadn't been cooked with baking in mind and was therefore a bit runnier than I would have liked. Had I made oatmeal specifically for this ciabatta, I would have reduced by half the amount of cooking water. As it is, I can't tell you how much water I used because I never measured it. I adjusted for the wet oatmeal by reducing the amount of water added to the dough in the final mix.
• I soaked the pears only briefly (three minutes only and in boiling water) and used the soaking water (which smelled delicious) in the dough.
• The hazelnuts I roasted and peeled, then ground coarsely in a flat bowl with the thich bottom of a small bottle of balsamic vinegar. The grinding was no hassle. But the peeling was rough: I had never truly appreciated before how convenient it was to have two hands when rubbing hazelnuts together. 
• I didn't soak the hazelnuts but right before incorporating them into the dough, I gently hand-mixed them with the pears so that some of the wetness would rub onto them and they wouldn't be as likely to suck up water from the fermenting dough. Next time I might try and soak them briefly as they may have dried out the dough a bit.

Ingredients (for 3 ciabattas)

• 450 g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 150 g whole-wheat flour
• 150 g wholegrain steel-cut oats, cooked, barely salted, unsweetened, at room temperature
• Water 1: 300 g
• Water 2: 75 g
• 150 g dried pears, roughly chopped, soaked for three minutes in boiling water (unless they were super dry and hard, I wouldn't soak them any longer for fear of their turning to mush)
• 80 g hazelnuts, roasted, peeled and coarsely ground
• 150 g ripe liquid levain (100% hydration)
• 150 g ripe poolish (75 g flour + 75 g water + a pinch of instant yeast)
• 18 g fine sea salt

Method (the bread is made over two days)

The night before

1. Feed the levain
2. Prepare the poolish
3. Roast, peel and chop the hazelnuts

Early on the day of the bake (at least two hours before mixing begins)

• Roughly chop the pears and soak them to cover for three minutes in boiling water
• Drain, saving the water

Mixing 

1. Pour water 1 (including pear-soaking water) in bowl of mixer
2. Add all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, oatmeal, levain and poolish
3. Mix on low speed until incorporated
4. Add the salt
5. Mix on low speed until gluten is developed
6. Add water 2 (slowly and in stages) and crank up speed one notch
7. Mix briefly (just until the water is incorporated)
8. Bring speed back down to low and add pears and hazelnuts
9. Mix until incorporated
10. Set dough to rise in oiled and covered pan

• Dough temperature was 80°F/26°C and room temperature 72°F/22°C
• I gave the dough two folds at 50 minute-intervals
• Fermentation time was 4 hours, followed by 45-minutes proofing time (I am not sure why the dough fermented faster than last week. Maybe the sugar in the pears sped up the process?)

Dividing and Baking

As described for the teff ciabatta

• Except that I set the oven to 410°F/210°C for the first 15 minutes
• And lowered it to 400°F/204°C afterwards to prevent the crust from darkening too much (again because of the sugar in the pears)
• I also tented the ciabattas with aluminum foil after the first 15 minutes
• I used steam at the beginning and kept the oven door ajar for the last five minutes

Christine Ferber's Beraweka

I already knew Christine Ferber for a master confiturière (jam-maker). I have her book, Mes confitures (now available in English), which I consider my jam bible. I do own a handful of other jam books accumulated over the years but if I were to be sentenced to a desert island and could only take one with me, hers would be the one: the flavor combinations are spectacular and the recipes spot on. I also like the fact that the book is organized by season. Needless to say, in my part of the world, the chapters that get the most mileage are summer and fall but if the above-mentioned desert island involved a tropical clime, I wouldn't mind putting the winter chapter to the test (hello, pineapple, banana and coconut jam!).
What I didn't know and learned from my favorite French radio food podcast (in an episode broadcast live from Strasbourg a year ago and available on the web until September 2014) is that Christine Ferber is also a celebrated pâtissière-chocolatière-confiseuse (pastry-chef, chocolate maker and confectioner), that she owns a pâtisserie (pastry-shop) near Colmar in the Alsace region of France and that every year she makes a sumptuous traditional Alsatian holiday bread, the Beraweka, also known as Beerawecka or Bierawecka or Birewecke.
The origins of the bread (traditionally enjoyed at Christmas with a glass of vin chaud - hot mulled wine -, Gewürztraminer or Riesling vendange tardive (late harvest Riesling) upon returning home from midnight mass) are a bit unclear: some believe Beraweka to be as old as Alsace itself (Beera meaning "pear" and Wecka "bread" in Alsatian) while others think it was brought to the area by the once vibrant Jewish community as a traditional Passover dessert (bere meaning Pessa'h in Yiddish). In the Jewish version, it requires plenty of dried fruit but no pears and it remains unleavened.
There seem to be as many recipes as there are spellings for Beraweka: some call for dried apples; some require scalding all the dried fruit before soaking it in kirsch; some replace almonds with hazelnuts. The variations are endless. In Christine Ferber's village of Niedermorschwihr, the bread is traditionally made at home from a recipe handed down from mother to daughter since the sixteenth century. She feels very fortunate because her fellow villagers still honor the age-old tradition of bringing their holiday breads to the baker for baking, which means that each December she gets to experience many different Berawekas.
Winters can be long and harsh in Alsace and drying fruit has always been a favorite way of making sure summer bounty would remain available throughout the cold and dark months. Ferber says she starts drying pears from nearby orchards in August. She chooses barely ripe sweet pears, cuts them in half, removes the core, and cuts eight slices out of each half. She puts these slices on racks in the oven and lets them dry for eight hours at 70°F/158°C. She stores the dried fruit in a dry spot away from the light. She also dries her own questches (damson plums).
Christine shared her recipe with the audience. I have translated it below, with some modifications. Many Alsatian Beraweka recipes use regular bread dough. Christine's uses brioche dough. Since the amount of dough is minimal (just enough for the fruit to stick together), the bread never dries out and keeps forever. Christine says she still has some at home that she made five years ago. I wasn't planning on making brioche, so I used a bit of levain-based sifted flour dough I had just proofed for another recipe. It turned out just fine. I doubt I'll have enough left over to test the five-year shelf life though...
Christine also uses two different kinds of anise when I only had one sort: rather than using more of that one, I replaced the other one by a good pinch of mixed baking spices. Finally since there were no pictures of the Beraweka on the podcast's webpage and I couldn't find attractive ones elsewhere on the web, I didn't know what it was supposed to look like. Looks-wise, mine certainly didn't end up like a winner but when I bit into a slice, I felt transported as by magic to a faraway place and time that tasted just as Christmas does in dreams.

Pierre Hermé, the renowned pastry chef and macaron all-time wizard, has been friends with Christine Ferber for more than forty years (his mom is from the same village). According to him, her Beraweka is one of the five products that should be on everyone's bucket list (he didn't actually use the expression "bucket list" but he did say it was one of five products everyone should taste at least once in his or her lifetime). I don't know if I'll ever make it to Niedermorschwihr but at least I have Christine's recipe and now so do you. Christine said it herself, the bread really isn't difficult to make. It only requires a bit of time and patience. As for another Alsatian Christmas favorite, the Stollen, she said the best she has ever had was Pierre Hermé's (who got the recipe from his own mother). 

Ingredients (for two breads)
(Note: Christine actually makes four 250 g-breads with this recipe. Since I didn't soak the pears in water, I ended up with a lighter"dough"which I decided to divide in two)

• 100 g dried pears (Christine soaks hers for 24 hours in 500 g hot water. See Note, Method, step 1)
• 100 g dried plums, pitless (in the absence of Damson plums, I used California dried plums, also known as prunes)
• 100 g dried figs (I used small black mission figs)
• 100 g dried apricots (I used unsulphured ones)
• 100 g raisins
• 50 g kirsch (to which I added another 50 g for a total of 100 g)
• 50 g candied lemon, slivered (home-made would be preferable to store-bought and certainly closer quality-wise to what Christine has available to her in Alsace but it is an extra-step and if it prevents you from giving the bread a chance, it isn't worth it. I used candied orange and lemon that my friends from Tree-Top Baking kindly gave me. Next year if I get my act together early enough, I might try making my own)
• 50 g candied orange, slivered (same remark)
• 40 g walnuts, roughly chopped
• 40 g almonds, peeled (mine were pre-sliced)
• 5 g green anise (I used regular ground anise seed)
• 5 g baking spice (a mixture of cinnamon, mace, anise and cardamom) (Ferber uses ground anise seed)
• 100 g brioche dough (or any other bread dough you have on hand), divided in tiny pieces
• walnuts and almonds for decoration (I skipped that step)

Method: (the bread is made over three days but requires minimal intervention until the third day)

1. On the first day, scald the pears and let them soak overnight (Note: I did that and my pears -which were fairly tender to begin with - ended up way too soft). So, as an alternative, if your dried pears are almost tender enough to be eaten straight out of the bag, just slice them into slivers on the second day and add them to the bowl with the other fruit
2. Soak the raisins in the kirsch and let them macerate overnight
3. On the second day, sliver the figs, apricots and plums. Put these slivers together with the pears and the raisins in a large bowl
4. Add the candied lemon and orange and leave to macerate overnight, covered (that's when I added the extra 50 g of kirsch since I wasn't using the softened pears)
5. On the third day, add the spices, the walnuts, the almonds and the little pieces of dough
6. Mix until everything sticks together
7. Pre-heat oven to 300°F/150°C
8. Wet your hands and shape the breads as small bâtards
9. Set on a parchment-paper baking sheet and bake for one hour (Christine didn't mention proofing but I didn't feel comfortable going straight from mixing to baking. So I set the baking sheet inside a tightly closed clear plastic bag and gave it an hour. I could see no appreciable difference in the size of the breads but maybe the levain still worked a bit of its magic)
10. Bake for one hour
11. Cool on a rack (Christine doesn't say to glaze the bread but I did. When it came out of the oven, I brushed it all over with a bit of confectioner's sugar diluted in two tablespoons of kirsch and a drop of boiling water. It made it all shiny)
12. When cool, wrap tightly in plastic wrap and wait at least a week before eating
13. Enjoy!

Pre-soaking

Post-soaking

Pre-baking

Post-baking

The Beraweka is going to Yeastspotting, Susan's weekly round-up of breads.

More info: If you read French, you might enjoy this interview of Christine Ferber for Le Journal des femmes).