Sonora White Whole Wheat Jelly Roll

West/Southwest meets North/Northwest, white Sonora wheat meets red kuri squash. Made with 60% Sonora white whole wheat pastry flour (bought at Grist & Toll in Los Angeles, California, from grain grown either in California or in Arizona) and 40% white whole wheat pastry flour (bought at Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill in Burlington, Washington) from grain grown in nearby Lynden, this sunny cake is a regular melting pot, all the more so as it is filled with jam made last fall from our Northwest bumper crop of red kuris.

The Sonora accounts for the pale yellow and the red kuri for the bright orange, and together, they make for a soft texture and complex taste. They may overshadow the less assertive Northwest white but then, sorry, Lynden grain, this time you were invited in a strictly supporting role as, right or wrong, I wasn't sure the Sonora would have been up for a roll with macho kuri jam without your help. But fear not, your turn to shine will come again...

Ingredients

*   I used two different flours because I wasn't sure that the Sonora flour would be strong enough for a jelly roll if used by itself

** I used grape-seed oil

*** Or any medium-soft jam or jelly

For those of you who are using BreadStorm (including the free version), please click on this link to import the formula.  For more on BreadStorm, you may want to read this post.

Method
For the instructions, please refer to the first five steps of this King Arthur Flour recipe (from which I adapted the list of ingredients).

If there is any red kuri jelly roll leftover, you might want to squeeze a sweet orange (such as a Cara Cara navel) over the whole thing the next day, let the crumb soak up the juice for a couple of minutes and... I'll say no more, you'll know bliss when you taste it.

Autumn Focaccia

Sometimes a girl just wants to have fun! After several weeks of steaming, pureeing, simmering, gratin-ing, sautéing, freezing and preserving my favorite squash - the orange kabocha, aka red kuri or Hokkaido squash - (of which we had a most welcome glut this year thanks to our CSA), I decided to do something I had never done or seen done before: make squash flour and bake with it!
I chose a beautiful bright one...

...washed it, cut it in two, scooped out the seeds, steamed one half for dinner and grated the other half raw, unpeeled, in the food processor. After drying out the grated squash for a few hours in the dehydrator, I had colorful strands of crisp squash (actually quite tasty on their own) which I ground into flour. Half the squash above yielded about 300 g of "flour".
Now what to do with it? I toyed for a few days with the idea of baking a triple pumpkin bread (pumpkin flour, pumpkin purée and pumpkin seeds) but it might have been led to tastebud overload. Besides I wanted to see how the color of the flour would translate into the crumb on its own.

So I made a simple focaccia with two preferments: a poolish and some liquid levain. Because I love the rustic taste of rye, I put a bit of freshly milled wholegrain rye in the poolish. I only used 10% of kabocha flour in proportion to the total dough flour and while it smelled exquisite when mixing and fermenting/proofing, the flavor had all but disappeared in the one focaccia we tasted (the other one went straight to the freezer). The one we ate had been sprinkled with thinly sliced leek white however. If there were such things as arm-wrestling matches between ingredients, leek would lick squash in a heartbeat! Wrong choice of topping, MC!
Next time I'll skip the leek and increase the percentage of squash flour to 15 or 20%. Since it has no gluten, it doesn't do much for the crumb but it doesn't seem to hamper its development either and that's basically what I had been wondering about...
Now some of you who may ask why I used two preferments (every time I do I get some mail or comment about that). The only reason really is that my liquid levain was bubbling on the counter next to the mixing bowl and it would have been a waste not to incorporate some of it. No huge brainstorm. Just an opportunity to make use of surplus levain.
Having never baked with pumpkin flour before and not knowing how it would behave, I had originally opted for a poolish instead of a biga (the traditional Italian pre-ferment for a focaccia according to Carol Field): if it helped itself to a large part of the water in the dough, I would end up with a brick. To minimize the risk, I went for a poolish which is equal parts flour and water.
Next time though, I may try and skip the poolish entirely. Breads made with natural starter have a much longer shelf life. Since we eat a lot of bread and usually have two or three kinds out at any given time to be enjoyed at different meals, my preference goes to breads which stay fresh for more than twenty-four hours.
Alternatively I may try and find out how William Leaman of Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle does it. His baguettes are fermented with a mix of poolish and levain and they do stay fresh! I kept half of one on my kitchen counter for almost two days (in a plastic bag) and it wasn't a bit stale or dried out. It has to be more than just his magic touch. If I ever learn how he does it, I'll report back. Meanwhile I'll probably stick to levain (but of course it won't be a true focaccia, will it?)

I had fun with the olive oil I used to "paint" the focaccie: seeking flavors that would enhance and complement the squash without overpowering it (no wrestling matches allowed), I picked rosemary and sage from the garden and used some of the chile I had bought fresh last fall from a Thai vendor at our farmers' market, cut up and dehydrated. The oil infused while the dough fermented...

Ingredients (for two focaccie)

For the poolish

• 250 g all-purpose flour, unbleached
• 50 g whole grain rye flour
• pinch of instant yeast

For the final dough

• 700 g all-purpose flour, unbleached
• 100 g kabocha "flour" (see above description of the pumpkin-flour-making process)
• all of the poolish
• 100 g mature white levain at 100% hydration
• 480 g water (you may need more or less according to the dryness of the weather, your flour, etc.)
• 22 g fine sea salt

For the olive oil "paint"

• Your favorite extra-virgin olive oil (I like the fruitiness of Trader Joe's Premium cold pressed EVOO, the one that comes with a dispensing cap attached to the neck of the bottle. I have searched high and low for olive oil over the years, seeking one that would be both tasty and reasonably priced. I tried many different supermarket brands, including all (and I mean all) of the ones sold at TJ's and Costco. Tired of being stuck with less than satisfactory oils for weeks on end - it isn't as if we could sample before buying - I now always reach for this one and it has never disappointed. I don't have any shares in TJ's or any incentive to promote any of their products. I just want them to continue offering the product as I don't feel like going on an EVOO quest ever again!)
• A mix of fresh or dry rosemary or sage
• Little pieces of dried chile (in a pinch you might use a tiny bit (think half-a-teaspoon) of red pepper flakes but it might stick to the top of the bread and impart too much heat. The beauty of the little pieces of chile is that you can pick them out after baking if you just want the taste, not the spiciness)

For the topping (optional)

• Thinly sliced leek (white part only) or onion
• A pinch of Maldon salt
• Grated cheese (if desired)

Method:  (because of the pre-ferments, this bread is made over two days)

The evening before mixing

1. Prepare the poolish by mixing the flours and the water and adding a pinch of instant yeast
2. Cover and leave to ferment at room temperature
3. Feed you levain as you normally do

The day of the bake

1. Mix the flours, the water, the salt, and the two pre-ferments (I started mixing by hand in a bowl but my wrists protested so I switched to my Kitchen-Aid mixer with the hook, on first speed)
2. Mix until you start seeing some gluten development (check the gluten window and stop mixing as soon as you get the beginning of one. It should take less than five minutes in the mixer)
3. The dough should  have medium soft consistency. Adjust hydration as needed
4. Transfer the dough to an oiled container, folding the dough once after thirty minutes if you think it needs it
5. Leave it to ferment for as long as it takes for the dough to more than double and stop bouncing back quickly when palpated with a finger (how long it takes is directly linked to dough and room temperatures. In my case, dough temperature was 71°F/22°C which was a bit on the low side and room temp was 65°F/18°C. In my countertop proofer, set at 75°F/24°C, it took the dough close to seven hours to finish fermenting)
6. Transfer the dough to a floured countertop and divide it in two
7. Stretch each of the two pieces of dough onto a semolina-sprinkled-parchment-paper-lined half-sheet and set to proof inside a large plastic bag (make sure to blow into the bag and close it securely so that the plastic doesn't touch the bread) for about an hour and a half (or until the dough stops bouncing back immediately when palpated with a finger)
8. When the focaccie are done proofing, dimple them all over gently with the tips of your fingers and use a wide pastry brush to "paint" them with the strained olive oil (leftover oil, if any, can be used to sauté potatoes or dress a salad)
9. Sprinkle with the desired toppings (I used some of the oil-soaked rosemary on one and leek white on the other, bits of chile and some Maldon salt on both)
10. Bake with steam on a baking stone in a pre-heated 400°F/204°C oven for about 25 minutes
11. Cool on a rack and remove the toppings that you wouldn't want to eat, such as rosemary leaves or pieces of roasted chile
12. Enjoy!

The Autumn Focaccia is going to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Giant Kabocha Scone

It all began with a word, potimarron, which is the common name in French for scarlet kabocha (also known as red kuri squash or orange hokkaido squash). That word may not look or sound like much to non-native French speakers, but to these French ears, it evokes two of childhood's cold weather pleasures, pumpkin (potiron) and chestnuts (marrons).
We didn't have jack-o'-lanterns (or potimarrons for that matter) in France when I was growing up but my grandfather grew huge potirons (Cinderella pumpkins) in his vegetable garden (my grandmother made sweet pumpkin soup every fall) and the fragrance of roasting chestnuts was ubiquitous in Paris in late fall and winter: as soon as I was old enough to go to my weekly piano lessons by myself, my mother would give me a few coins so I could buy myself a cornet de marrons chauds (a paper cone of hot chestnuts) when I exited the métro at Place de l'Étoile. I would stick the hot cone in my coat pocket and one of my hands would remain warm all the way down Avenue de Wagram where a bitter wind always chilled me to the bones.
I remember the chestnut man too. He was dressed all in black and wore a thick tweed cap with flaps that covered his ears. He rubbed his hands constantly and when he removed one of his knit gloves to rummage for change in the tin box where he kept his money, I could see that his fingertips were red. As I left clutching my cornet deep inside my coat pocket, I could hear him start calling again in a singsong: "Chauds, chauds, les marrons chauds..."(Hot chestnuts, hot chestnuts) and while I dearly loved my white-haired and soft-cheeked piano teacher, this scratchy little tune has remained alive in my memory when, sadly, her polkas, sonatas and mazurkas have long since sunk into oblivion.
So when I first heard (or read, I can't remember) the word potimarron and long before I had a chance to see or taste the actual squash, I was already under the spell. When I finally managed to get my hands on one of these bright beauties, the spell worked its magic and I fell in love.

Of course the kabocha is an easy squash to love. Since its skin is edible, while it does have to be washed, it doesn't have to be peeled. It can be sliced open, seeded, then steamed or roasted. It can also be cut into chunks and added to a soup where it boils happily with other vegetables. It cooks rather fast in fact. Its flesh is both creamy and dry and does taste a lot like buttery chestnuts. It is also choke-full of vitamins, fiber and oligo-elements.
For all these reasons, when I saw a potimarron cookbook in a bookstore in Paris last March, I couldn't resist, all the more because its author was Cléa, a French blogger I greatly admire for her imaginative and flavorful cuisine. We now live in a part of the country where kabochas are commonly grown (among many other beautiful and tasty winter squashes) and having so many creative kabocha recipes at my disposal means we can take full advantage of this local crop without ever feeling bored or tired.
Witness the giant scone breadsong  and I made for breakfast a couple of days ago. She was in town for a BBGA-sponsored baking class which I also attended and she stayed over at our house. I did the mixing and breadsong kindly did the shaping, giving me a personal demo of her scone hand-"laminating" technique (she normally shapes the dough in a rectangle but it is easy enough to reshape it in a circle once the "laminating" is done).
It was indeed a learning experience to see breadsong at work: seemingly heeding secret orders, the dough shaped up for her in a way it may never have for me. I had thought it was really dry and would require the addition of buttermilk or yogurt but breadsong said, no, it would come together as it was and she was absolutely right, it did. Sheer mastery! Thank you, breadsong, I will always trust crumbly scone dough from now on and also, always, always, "laminate"as it does indeed make for a much airier texture. My heartfelt thanks to you too, Cléa, for being a fellow kabocha lover and for sharing your many ways of enjoying this magnificent squash! 

Ingredients:

• 125 g cooked kabocha puree (I steamed big chunks of the unpeeled kabocha, then ran the cooked squash through the foodmill. I tried using the food processor but it wouldn't work: I would have had to add some liquid, which I didn't want to do)
• 20 g olive oil
• 50 g fresh goat cheese, crumbled (Cléa used fresh sheep's milk cheese but I didn't have any)
• 1 egg
• 100 g emmer flour (I milled emmer berries I had on hand. If you don't have access to emmer, you may want to replace it with all-purpose flour or white whole wheat flour or equal parts of all-purpose and regular whole wheat flour)
• 150 g oat flour (Cléa uses corn flour but I didn't have any)
• 10 g baking powder
• 6 g sel
• 25 g dried apricots, chopped
• 25 g hard sheep's milk cheese, grated (I used a Basque cheese but I suspect Manchego would work fine too and it may be easier to find)

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F/180°C
2. In a big bowl, mix together the kabocha puree, the oil, the goat cheese and the egg until mostly incorporated (I used a fork)
3. Add the apricots and the hard cheese
4. Transfer to a work surface and quickly work the dough into an 8-inch circle (it will look impossibly crumbly at first)
5. Cut in six with a dough cutter without detaching the slices
6. Bake for 30 minutes
7. Enjoy warm or cold (it will keep well for a few days in a ziploc bag).

The Giant Kabocha Scone goes to Susan for Yeastspotting.