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.

Barley & Wine Crackers

Dawn Woodward, owner of Evelyn's Crackers in Toronto, Canada, and the author of this recipe baked at the Kneading Conference West 2012: inspired by the flavors of Greek biscotti and Baco Noir, an Ontario wine, they are are among her favorites although she no longer offers them for sale.

They can be baked as sheets and broken off in odd pieces after baking or they can be pre-cut with a pizza cutter and separated neatly afterwards. Your choice... I tried both and I thought the triangles were prettier and really not much more work but it is a matter of personal preference. Either way, they come out crispy and flavorful. The fragrance of the red wine is clearly discernable, boosted by the hint of exotic spices and the heat of the black pepper: I can understand getting addicted.
Probably written with a crowd in mind, the recipe printout distributed at the Conference would have yielded way too many crackers, so I simply halved everything and still got plenty. Also it may have contained a typo: when I added up the weights of all the liquids, I found that it called for more liquids than solids which doesn't seem the way to go for crackers. So I added in more flour. I used white whole wheat instead of regular whole wheat. I decreased by one third the amount of spice but you can add it back if you like really bold flavors. What follows is my adaptation of Dawn's recipe.

Ingredients:

• 700 g white whole wheat flour (I used Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill's)* 
• 165 g barley flour (I used Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill's)
• 20 g fine sea salt
• 10 g quatre-épice blend (or you can mix and match cinnamon, black pepper and clove according to your taste)
• 75 g red wine (all I had left) + 50 g water (or 125 g red wine, if you have it)
• 125 g extra-virgin olive oil
• 20 g wildflower honey
• 450 g water, at room temperature

Method:

1. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl
2. Combine all the liquids
3. Create a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the liquids while continuously stirring
4. When the mixture gets too thick to stir, turn out onto the table and knead until smooth and soft (Dawn notes that the dough will be pliable but slightly clay-like due to the barley flour)
5. Let rest 10 minutes then divide in 50 g balls and roll out into long ovals (Dawn suggests 75 g but when I rolled out the bigger balls, I got ovals that were too long for my half-sheet baking pans). Another option is to divide the dough in 150g balls and roll it out directly onto parchment paper 
6. Optional: dock or prick all over with a fork (I found the crackers baked more evenly that way) and pre-cut in desired shape with a pizza cutter
7. Place on parchment or bake directly on tiles in pre-heated 375°F/191°C oven
8. Bake until crisp (start checking after 10 minutes)
9. Cool on a rack
10. Enjoy!

* I used to bake a lot more with white whole wheat flour when I first introduced whole grain breads to my family but I had pretty much stopped doing so a couple of years ago: I found it too bland and by then everyone had gotten used to the fact that I would put in some whole grain in most breads and had actually learned to enjoy the taste.
But then I discovered Fairhaven's white whole wheat flour: it is still very mild (certainly not as flavorful as some of the red wheats I love so much) but it is speckled with bran which makes it both beautiful and fiber-rich and I find it a good substitute for all-purpose flour in many recipes where wheat doesn't play a starring role.
I realize many of you live too far away to have access to this particular flour but there may be a mill in your neighborhood or a natural food store selling bulk artisanal flours and it might be worth a look in case in case you'd like to try your hand at baking with stone-milled white whole wheat.
As for me, I like supporting my local mill, mostly because the miller, Kevin Christensen, is committed to organic grain: he is a firm believer in sustainable agriculture and by sustainable agriculture, he means organic farming. Living right on the Washington Coast as he does, he witnesses first-hand the damages chemical run-offs cause to fragile marine and river ecosystems: it happens regularly that beaches are closed and shellfish harvesting prohibited because of toxic algae blooms. So he works hand in hand with farmers and bakers to promote the demand for organic grains as a way to support healthy farmlands. That is a goal I can relate to.

These barley & wine crackers are being sent to Susan for Yeastspotting.

Carrot-Zucchini Bread with Candied Ginger

Here we are, back in the Pacific Northwest where the nights are blissfully cool and the days sweet and bright (for now at least). After more than a month in the food desert that is the little corner of upstate New York where we have been spending our summer vacations since forever, I was eager to bite into vegetables which didn't look as if they had sprouted, plastic-clad, on a supermarket shelf, in other words, I couldn't wait to go back to our little CSA.
I knew it was too early for tomatoes in our neck of the woods, so I wasn't expecting any (I wasn't disappointed!). I also knew zucchini season was on and I was ready with some recipes but  I wasn't prepared for our basket to be almost completely taken over by the green and yellow stuff!

What you see on the picture above is just a sample of the crop. We had way more than that and I knew I had to go beyond sautéed garlic zucchini, zucchini risotto or courgettes farcies (stuffed zucchini). I needed to make something we could freeze and enjoy later, maybe when summer would be but a memory.

It so happened I had just put away a little bag of candied ginger I had bought in Vermont on my way back from Gérard Rubaud's bakery (I have noticed that ginger helps me stay alert when I have to drive long-distance, maybe because it is so spicy) and I had been wondering what to use it for now that I was back home. 
So when I saw a recipe for a bread using zucchini, carrots and candied ginger in Janet Fletcher's beautifully photographed book, Eating Local, The Cookbook Inspired by American Farmers, I knew I had found what I was looking for.
I adapted the recipe a bit: I replaced all of the all-purpose flour by white whole wheat flour and all of the canola oil (which I didn't have) by extra-light olive oil; I more than halved the sugar (using 150 g instead of a whooping 390 g!) and I didn't use any cinnamon (which I don't much care for). It came out so tasty that even my eleven-month old granddaughter (already a miniature foodie) loved it (despite the heat of the ginger). Try it if you are swimming in zucchini. You won't regret it... 

Ingredients: (for two quick breads)

• 400 g freshly-milled white whole wheat flour (I had white wheat berries I needed to use but store-bought flour would work just fine)
• 3 g ground ginger 
• 5 g baking soda (1.5 tsp)
• 1 (scant) g baking powder (1/4 tsp)
• 4 g sea salt
• 90 g chopped candied ginger
• 3 large eggs
• 200 g extra-light olive oil
• 150 g sugar
• 10 g vanilla extract
• 110 g carrots, scrubbed and grated
• 150 g zucchini, grated (unpeeled)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F/163°C and lightly oil two quick-bread pans (Fletcher says to use 8.5 x 4.5 pans but I only have the two I bought at Ikea and they are 10 x 4.5)
2. Mix together flour, ginger, baking soda and baking powder, sifting if you like (I didn't sift but I whisked). Add salt and candied ginger and whisk
3. In large bowl, whisk eggs until foamy. Whisk in oil, sugar and vanilla. Add carrots and zucchini and whisk again
4. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture and stir with wooden spoon until roughly blended
5. Divide the batter between the two pans
6. Bake about one hour (do the toothpick test to judge doneness)
7. Cool on a rack (but wait 10 minutes before taking the breads out of the pans)
8. Enjoy!

There are many more glorious recipes in Fletcher's book and even though it was recommended to me for the photography (which is by Sara Remington and truly stunning), I know I will refer to it over and over throughout the summer, the fall and into early winter just to figure out what to cook from the CSA or the market. It is organized by veggie or fruit and there are also a poultry, meat and eggs section at the end. It features ten different farms from across the country.
It is a lovely book to own if you have a garden or have access to a farm or farmer's market. I got mine used online and it is stamped "No longer the property of the St. Louis Public Library" in bold red letters. It still bears its Dewey identification number: 641.5 EATING.  Since it was only published in 2010, your local library might also still own it.

Morning Cuddle Bread with Oats, Plums and Hazelnuts

The anxiety of influence is most certainly a reality for some. After all, a whole book has been written on the subject (although the author probably didn't have the art of baking in mind) but I am happy to report I don't suffer from it. I love leisurely browsing through books and/or exploring online worlds and letting ideas wash over me, leaving behind precious little nuggets of inspiration. Sometimes - and that's the most fun - these nuggets combine to form something completely different.
That's how the morning cuddle bread came to be. A couple of weeks ago a British Columbia food podcast had pointed me towards an oatmeal, walnut and plum bread, which the Man pronounced to be a wonderful breakfast bread...

...and as I was contemplating what to bake for him for Valentine's Day, I remembered another fruit and nut bread I had once bookmarked in Les 20 meilleurs ouvriers de France et médaillés d'argent se dévoilent et vous offrent leurs recettes choisies, a book put together by l'Équipe de France de boulangerie (the French Baking Team) in the early 90's.  What I had liked most about it was its endearing shape (two entertwined pieces of dough) and its name, pain câlin du matin (literally morning cuddle bread).

Oven-roasted hazelnuts

The two recipes got reborn as one: from Chef Bruce (the British Columbia baker), I retained the idea of the plums (the Man is a huge plum fan!) and the nuts (but instead of the walnuts, I used the fragrant hazelnuts my friend Meeghen had brought me from her own orchard). I also stayed with the mix of wheat (whole-grain and all-purpose) and oatmeal (I love the tenderness of an oatmeal crumb). From the French recipe - by Gérald Biremont, "meilleur ouvrier de France" (best artisan baker in France) - I took the shape and the name. After all, what's more appropriate on Valentine's Day morning that a sweet little cuddle?

Interestingly both recipes call for a straight dough but I always prefer using a preferment: the bread keeps better, if nothing else, and I find it tastier too. So I reinterpreted the Canadian recipe to use both a poolish (made with only a speck or two of instant yeast) and some levain. It took its own sweet time to ferment but, hey, Valentine Day comes around only once a year. Besides the dough did all the work, leaving the cuddling to us...

Ingredients: (for 8 morning cuddle breads or 4 cuddle breads and a loaf)

For the poolish

• 280 g all-purpose flour
• 280 g water 
• one tiny pinch of instant yeast (0.06 g)

For the final dough

• 200 g mature white starter at 100% hydration
• 320 g all-purpose flour
• 150 g white whole wheat flour
• 115 g old-fashioned oat flakes, coarsely ground in a food processor
• 180 g water  (amount to be adjusted up or down depending on your flours, the humidity in the air, etc.)
• 100 g oven-roasted hazelnuts, roughly peeled and chopped
• 110 g dried plums, roughly chopped
• 19 g salt

Method: (this bread is made over two days since the starter and the poolish both need to be fed the evening before and to ferment overnight)

1. The night before, mix the poolish and feed the starter. Let both ferment overnight at room temperature (if very warm where you live, fermentation could be faster, which means you may need to adjust your schedule accordingly)
2. On baking day, mix the flours, the starter, the poolish and the water until all the ingredients are well distributed and all flour is hydrated. Let rest for 20 minutes
3. Add salt and mix on low speed until a soft pliable dough is formed (don't overmix)
4. Add the plums and hazelnuts and mix gently (I find it easier to take the dough out of the mixer at this stage and mix in the fruit and nuts by hand)
5. Set in an oiled container and let rise until at least doubled (it took close to 6 hours at 72°F/22°C)
6. Divide in two pieces of roughly 850 g each
7. If you want to make only cuddle breads, then divide each of these pieces in 8 and make 8 baguette-shaped cylinders. Twist them together by pairs. If you want 4 cuddle breads and one loaf, divide and shape accordingly
8. Proof until doubled in size (in my case, it took one hour and a half at 72°F/22°C). Pre-heat oven to 400°F/204°C
9. When ready bake for 15 minutes (with steam the first five minutes) then check the color and if necessary turn oven down a bit. Turn the breads 180° and bake another 15 minutes. They will be ready when they have a rich color and sound hollow when thumped on the bottom.
10. Cool on a rack!

Enjoy!

The morning cuddle bread is going to Susan for Yeastspotting.

Hutzelbrot with dried cherries and cranberries

Besides the delightful taste of this bread, what I love about this Peter Reinhard recipe (from his book Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor) is that it uses a mash and that the mash can be made in part with "old bread". To me there is already something deeply satisfying about pre-soaking whole grain flour and having the enzymes start working hours and hours before you even begin to mix your dough but when you can feed them your stale bread too, wow, it's just too good to pass up!
Reinhart uses (or suggests using, it's hard to figure out which) a mix of dried fruit for this bread, such as citron, apricots, figs, plums, cherries, cranberries, golden raisins). Even though I had pretty much everything on hand but the citron, I decided to focus the flavors a little more and go for the sweet dried cherries my friend Kim had brought from Wisconsin (each one like a burst of summer in the mouth, thank you, Kim!), paired with slightly tarter dried cranberries from Washington State. I also decided to soak the old bread in apple juice since I had some I needed to use up and it would nicely boost the fruit taste. The bread turned out crusty and surprisingly light.
It takes two days to make which is perfectly fine with me since most of the time the ingredients toil away all by themselves....

Ingredients (slightly adapted): makes 2 batards


For the soaked bread (altus)

• 1/2 inch-bread cubes with crust left on soaked in hot organic apple juice or water and left at room temperature for at least 4 hours and preferably overnight. Use just enough liquid to saturate and soften the bread. Reinhart advises using rye bread but he says whole wheat is fine too. Squeeze out excess liquid before adding to the mash (I didn't weigh anything to start with, just used up all my stale bread and made a big bowl of actus. When required by the recipe, I took out the 170 g needed for the mash, weighed the rest, put it in a ziploc bag, labeled it and stored it in the freezer for next time)

For the mash

• 300 g water
• 64 g coarse whole wheat (I used flour from Cedar Isle Farm in Agassiz, British Columbia, which my friend Meeghen kindly brought me)
• 64 g 75% sifted rye flour (I used flour from True Grain Bread on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, which Meeghen also brought me. Thank you, Meeghen, for giving me the opportunity to bake with these gorgeous flours!)
• 1 g diastactic malt powder
• 170 g altus

For the starter

• 71 g whole wheat or rye starter
• 213 g whole rye flour
• 170 g water at room temperature (70°F/21°C)

For the dough

• all of the starter (454 g)
• all of the mash (397 g)
• 99 g white whole wheat flour + 200 g (which I had to add because my dough was way too wet, possibly because I had pre-soaked the fruit which Reinhart doesn't say to do)
• 99 g whole rye flour
• 100 g sweet dried cherries (briefly pre-soaked, then drained)
• 70 g dried cranberries (briefly pre-soaked, then drained)
• 14 g salt (I didn't add to that amount even though I added more flour: I just tasted the dough and it seemed fine)
• 7 g instant dry yeast

Method:

On Day 1

1. Mix the mash ingredients (save for the altus) (using water heated to 165°F/74°C) making sure the flour is fully  hydrated and the end product resembles a thin pudding or gravy. Cover and keep warm (150°F/66°C) if possible for 3 hours or at least for 60 minutes. Reinhart suggests using the oven for that step (turning it repeatedly on and off if it doesn't have such a low setting) 
2. After 3 hours, stir in the soaked bread and refrigerate until ready to use (you can also leave it overnight at room temperature) if you are planning to use it within the next 24 hours
3. Mix all of the starter ingredients and knead with wet hands to form a ball of dough. Let it rest 5 minutes and knead again. The dough will be tacky. Allow it to double at room temperature (which can take up to 8 hours depending on the temperature). When fully developed, knead for a few seconds, cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight if necessary to coordinate timing with the mash. Remove from the refrigerator about 2 hours before mixing the final dough

On Day 2

1. Using a metal scraper, chop the starter into 12 smaller pieces, sprinkling some extra flour over them to prevent them from sticking to each other
2. If mixing by hand (which I did), combine starter and mash in a large bowl with the whole wheat and rye flour, cherries, cranberries, salt and yeast. Mix for about 2 minutes until all the ingredients are evenly integrated and distributed into the dough. The dough should be soft and slightly sticky. If not, add water or flour if needed (that's where I had to add the extra 200 g of white whole wheat flour as the dough was definitely not going to take shape otherwise)
3. When dough feels soft and only slightly sticky, form it into a ball and let it rest for 5 minutes while you oil a container
4. Knead it briefly again for one minute and make any final adjustments to water or flour. It should be malleable and tacky but no longer sticky
5. Form into a ball again and place in prepared container, rolling to coat with oil
6. Cover loosely and let rise at room temperature for about one hour or until it is at least 1 1/2 times its original size
7. Transfer to a lightly floured surface and shape into two batards. Place the batards on a sheet pan lined with semolina-dusted parchment paper. Cover loosely with plastic wrap or a cloth towel and let rise at room temperature for 45 to 60 minutes, until 1 1/2 times their original size
8. While the batards are proofing, preheat the oven to 425°F/218°C. When ready to bake, dust them with flour and score the loaves as desired using a sharp knife or blade
9. Place them in the oven (with steam), lower the oven temperature to 375°F/191°C and bake for 25 minutes
10. Rotate the loaves 180 degrees and continue baking for another 20 to 35 minutes or until the loaves are well-browned and make a hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
11. Cool on a rack and wait at leasts 12 hours before slicing open.

Enjoy!

The Hutzelbrot with dried cherries and cranberries go to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Blood of the Dragon: Healthy New Year Orange Cake

My brothers and I grew up eating a marvelous orange cake which I sadly probably won't make again even though I have the recipe and it couldn't be easier to make or more delicious: 150 g butter + 150 g flour + 150 g sugar + 2 whole eggs + 1 orange (juice and zest) + 1/2 packet of baking powder. Mix everything (except juice). Bake. When cake is done, drench with juice. Revel!
Over the years, I have made it over and over and it always met with the same unmitigated success. I even made it once ages ago for friends who were coming for tea one snowy Sunday afternoon and I burned my wrist when taking it out of the oven and it fell to the floor face down! There was no time to bake another one, so I took a spatula and rescued as much as I could of the part that wasn't in contact with the floor. Of course it was all broken but I pressed it into a charlotte mold and since it was still warm, it took the shape of the mold very nicely. When it had cooled enough, I unmolded it and drizzled warmed up apricot preserves over it. It was beautiful and even better than the original. My guests asked for the recipe which I provided - skipping the floor part - and all was well.
I had forgotten all about it until our youngest son's fourth grade teacher enrolled her whole class in a New York State writing program and the kids were asked to write about specific incidents in their childhood. So he wrote about the cake being scraped off the floor minutes before our guests arrived and his writing was so good and so funny that his piece was chosen to be read aloud in assembly! I was mortified but that wasn't the worst of it.
The worst came what he wrote about a very bumpy flight from Athens to Paris when he was 5 years old. He explained that he had been seating next to me and that the whole plane had been jolted when we were hit by lightning (true), that we had made an unplanned landing in Lyon to check for damages (they were minor) and that we continued to Paris under the cloud cover and that everybody got sick (true again); that we landed in Paris so fast that we were on the ground barely one minute or two before we took off again at warp speed and everyone was deadly pale and afraid and the flight attendants were running down the aisle with a strained look on their faces (still true) and that I turned towards him and shook his hand and said: "A..., it was nice meeting you" (the hand shaking and stiff upper lip discourse all figments of his imagination, needless to say). That too was read in assembly!!! I was never happier to see a kid graduate to middle school so that I become anonymous again...

Well, to come back to the cake, I can't make it anymore for health reasons but that doesn't mean we don't yearn for it every winter when huge baskets of oranges arrive at the grocery store... Last week it was blood oranges. 

Blood oranges! When I was growing up in France, blood oranges were very sour. They truly had a bite, so much so that I actually didn't care very much for them. They came from Spain and I don't think they had as much sun as the ones we get here which come from California and are sweet and fragrant.
Blood oranges (don't you love the name?) are rich in vitamin C, of course, but also in anthocyanin which is a powerful antioxydant. That gave me an idea. In honor of the Chinese New Year, I would bake a health-friendly orange cake (after all striving to keep my loved ones healthy throughout the year is certainly a priority) and call it Blood of the Dragon (as you can see, my youngest son doesn't have a monopoly on imagination!).

Now I won't lie and tell you the result is as airy and lovely as the original all-butter orange cake. You wouldn't believe me anyway. The texture reminds me more of a pudding than a cake proper but it is very tasty and refreshing. Orange and ginger combine to give it a nice kick (next time I might even add a bit of fresh ginger) and, in the health department, you can't beat the ingredients: nutrient-rich white whole wheat, natural starter (which makes it easier for the body to assimilate the nutrients present in the grain),  ginger (a powerful antioxydant in its own right), fresh oranges, cultured buttermilk, olive oil, etc...  So here is to a wondrous and healthy New Year!

Ingredients (for a 9-inch cake pan):

For the starter

• 180 g mature levain (starter)
• 180 g white whole wheat pastry flour
• 180 g cultured buttermilk
• 25 g ginger syrup

For the batter

• 80 g extra-virgin olive oil
• juice and zest of 2 blood oranges
• 100 g unsweetened applesauce
• 50 g bits of crystallized ginger
• pinch of salt
• note: the oranges I used were very sweet and with the crystallized ginger and the bit of syrup in the starter, I didn't need more sugar. You should taste the batter prior to baking (one of the advantages of baking without eggs is that you can actually have a taste) and determine whether or not sugar should be added

For the finished cake

• blood oranges
• confectioner's sugar

Method:

1. Starter is prepared at least 4 hours before baking: mix all ingredients with wooden spoon, cover tightly and let rise at warm room temparature
2. When the starter has doubled, add other ingredients, mix with wooden spoon and pour in oil-sprayed pan. Bake for 40 minutes in pre-heated 350°F/177°C oven
3. When done (a cake tester comes out clean), turn off the oven and leave the cake inside for another 5 to 10 minutes with oven door ajar. Cool on a rack
4. Dust with confectioner's sugar
5. Serve with freshly sliced blood oranges. Alternatively drench with blood orange juice  before serving.

Blood of the Dragon Orange Cake is going to Susan's for this week's issue of Yeastspotting...

Blackberry Buckwheat Blossoms

When I met Fairhaven miller Kevin Christenson, he told me that buckwheat flour was his favorite and that he always added it to whatever he baked, mostly scones. I asked whether he might be willing to share a recipe but he demured. He said he was no baker, he just picked whatever scone recipe was on hand when he made breakfast for his family and replaced part of the all-purpose flour with buckwheat. So I started looking for a scone recipe I could use but most of the ones I found involved butter and since we are just recovering from the holidays, I thought, no butter, no, thank you, not this time.

 

That's when I remembered Plum Gorgeous: Recipes and Memories from the Orchard, a lovely book by Romney Steele which I couldn't resist buying last fall. Browsing through it, I found a recipe for butterless blackberry polenta muffins. Now my freezer is chokeful of blackberries I picked over the summer in the lanes around our house. I have already made blackberry jelly and blackberry frozen yogurt but I still have lots and lots. So why not bake muffins that would remind us of long walks in the hills along fragrant hedges? 
Except for the cornmeal which I bought in bulk at the natural food store nearby without checking where it came from (or if I did check, I forgot), I used all organic Fairhaven Mills flours. The original recipe calls for all-purpose flour and polenta or stone-ground cornmeal. I used the cornmeal as indicated but kept only one third of the all-purpose flour substituting white whole wheat and buckwheat for the rest. I also decreased the amount of sugar (we like sweet baked goods to be just on the cusp of enough sugar. The original recipe uses over a third more than I do. If you have more of a sweet tooth, by all means dial it back in.)
I don't know of any other wild berry that packs as much aroma and taste as Washington's plump blackberrry (the two varieties that grow in our neighborhood each have their own distinctive flavor). Since the berries go into the batter still frozen, they poach gently during the baking, becoming so marvelously juicy that they burst in the mouth with every bite.  As for the buckwheat and the cornmeal, they are perennial favorites. I have already made these muffins twice and we can't get enough of them. So here is to you, Kevin Christenson! Thank you for these beautiful flours. Next time I pop over, I'll bring you a batch... 

Ingredients: (adapted from Plum Gorgeous)

• 80 g all-purpose flour
• 80 g white whole wheat flour
• 90 g buckwheat flour
• 90 g stone-ground cornmeal (or fine polenta)
• 70 g sugar
• 15 g baking powder
• zest of one orange
• 2 eggs
• 160 g whole milk
• 52 g extra-light olive oil (safflower or other vegetable oil can be used as well)
• 130 g frozen blackberries (+ 12 for topping) (do not thaw before folding into the batter)
• 1 pinch of salt

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F/177°C
2. Line 12-muffin pan with paper baking cups
3. Combine flours, polenta and baking powder in a bowl. Mix well. Add sugar and orange zest
4. Lightly whisk together eggs, milk and oil in separate bowl, then stir in the flour mixture
5. Fold in the berries
6. Scoop the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Top with a blackberry if desired
7. Bake until golden, about 20 minutes.

The Blackberry Buckwheat Blossoms are going to Susan for Yeastspotting, her weekly roundup of breads and other baked goodies.

Related post: Meet the Miller: Kevin Christenson

Seven Stars Bakery's Pumpkin Seed Bread

Sometimes I dream we are back in Providence, RI, and we go and have lunch at one of Seven Stars Bakery's three locations... In the two days we were there in November (I was attending a BBGA class with Richard Miscovich at Johnson's & Wales beautiful campus), we managed to hit all three. I can't say I have a favorite. We liked them all. All three feature the same seductive breads, pastries and cookies (everything is made in a nearby central location that Jim Williams, the owner, was kind enough to take us visit) and in all three, the atmosphere was relaxed and appealing: friends of all ages chatting over coffee or tea, dads reading books to toddlers before heading home from grocery shopping, students crouched over laptop screens or texting without a pause in their conversations, tourists - like us- rejoicing in the variety and quality of the offerings.

Everybody - friends, dads, students, tourists - had a tempting treat on the table in front of them and we had a (very) hard time limiting ourselves to what the two of us could reasonably sample. And that's coming from a woman who really doesn't like sweet things but who can resist Seven Stars' chocolate almond croissant? Not me... Although, true to form, I enjoyed the vegetarian sandwich even more.

In the evening, Jim and Lynn Williams were the gracious hosts for BBGA's Guildhall Gathering, which gave us the opportunity to taste even more breads and that's how I "discovered" and fell in love with their Pumpkin Seed Bread.

Seven Stars Bakery's Pumpkin Bread as sold at the bakery

I asked Jim if he wouldn't mind sharing the formula and, generous to a tee as are most bakers I know, he said he'd send it to me. So here we go... But before we proceed, you may want to take a closer look at the bakery's website, and more specifically at its baking process page which you'll find a most informative description of the work going on in a serious artisan bakery.

Back to the pumpkin bread. I had meant to bake it for Thanksgiving but we got back shortly before the holiday and it took an inordinate amount of time for me to rekindle my levain's enthusiasm for baking. Then we hit a cold spell and it was just freezing in the house (at least it felt like it) and when I did get to the bread, canned pumpkin had disappeared from the stores. Apparently it is a seasonal product in Washington State. Once Thanksgiving is over, it is as if it never existed. That's new to me as one of the rare things I could be sure to find year-round where I come from in the Northeast is canned pumpkin. But never mind that, we did manage to find a can after hitting a number of grocery stores and I just now baked the bread for our Christmas brunch (hence the wreath shape).

I love the flavor (nutty with a faint sweet note to which the tang of the rye levain offers a delicate counterpoint), the texture (mellow and chewy/crunchy at the same time) and the golden color. It takes its own sweet time to rise but you can make it over two days: I mixed the dough in the morning of the first day around 10, gave it three folds and let it rise slowly for about 4 hours. Then I put it in the garage (where the temperature was about 44°F/7°C) and I let it rest until morning. In the morning (around 8:00 AM), I set it to warm up at 77°F/25°C. It took a while: when I shaped the dough around 1:00 PM, its internal temperature was 66°F/19°C. But by then the room was really warm and the shaped loaves proofed happily in the baskets. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had waited a little more but I had to go out, so by 2:00 PM, they went into the oven. Jim does it a bit differently: his final dough get a 2-hour bulk fermentation, then it proofs for 4 hours and gets baked. He warned me that at home, the process would be somewhat longer and he was right.

All in all, I am happy with the result. The crumb isn't as holey as Seven Stars' but the taste is right, the texture very appealing and I love the color. Thank you for sharing, Jim! Of course I can only encourage those of you who live in New England or have a chance to go visit to check out the bakery and have a taste for yourself. Maybe you'll even meet my friend Lumi who is now a baking instructor at Johnson &Wales and a huge fan of Seven Stars!

Ingredients (for one wreath and one oval loaf):

• 700 g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 106 g whole wheat (I used Fairhaven's white whole wheat berries which I milled for the recipe)
• 42 g cornmeal
• 665 g water (I used 645 g but then it depends on how thirsty your flour is), at required temperature to ultimately get a dough temperature of about 76°F/24°C
• 170 g canned pumpkin
• 102 g sesame seeds, toasted
• 170 g pumpkin seeds, toasted (I actually used 50 g pumpkin and 120 g sunflower seeds as it was all I had)
• 85 g mature wheat levain (at 65% hydration) (mine was my regular levain which calls for 33% whole-grains including wheat, spelt and rye)
• 51 g mature rye levain (at 100% hydration)
• 20 g salt

Method: (I mixed the dough by hand)

1. Mix the two levains and set aside, covered, at warm room temperature
2. Mix the flours and the polenta and most of the water until well incorporated. Cover and let autolyse for about 30 minutes, at warm room temperature
3. Incorporate the levains, then the pumpkin (at same warm room temperature), then add the salt
4. Add the rest of the water as necessary (I was left with about 20g of the original water amount)
5. Mix in the seeds until well distributed in the dough
6. Dough temperature was 75° when set to proof at warm room temperature in an oil-sprayed covered container.
7. Give it three folds 30 minutes apart and let it rise afterwards for about 4 hours (the length of time necessary to almost double).
8. Set it in the fridge (or in a cold spot like a garage) until the next morning
9. The day after, set it to warm up at room temperature and shape it in two loaves (scaled at 1000g)
10. Bake in prey-heated 470°F/243°C oven (with steam the first few minutes) for 10 minutes, then another 10 minutes (without opening the door) at 450°F/232°C, then turn the loaves around and bake another 15 minutes (for a total baking time of 35 minutes).
11. Turn the oven off and let the loaves rest inside with oven door ajar for another 5 minutes
12. Set to cool on a rack.
13. When completely cool, slice a loaf open, top a piece with some extra-sharp Cheddar cheese, set a glass of hard cider at your elbow, close your eyes, take a bite and find yourself magically transported to a crisp fall day in Providence, RI. Enjoy!
    
    Printable recipe

Seven Stars Bakery's Pumpkin Seed Bread will be going to Susan for Yeastspotting, her weekly roundup of breads and other baked goodies.