World Bread Day 2012: Pear and Spelt Bread

Today is World Bread Day 2012 and to celebrate the renewed interest in artisan bread-baking throughout the world, I am happy to participate in the bread roundup with this flavorful Pear and Spelt Bread from Hanne Risgaard's gorgeous book, Home Baked - Nordic Recipes and Techniques for Organic Bread and Pastry. The recipe is on page 142 and originally titled "Pear and Sourdough Bread." I adapted it slightly, using freshly milled whole spelt instead of sifted spelt flour and no commercial yeast at all (the recipe calls for fresh yeast).

We share a pear tree with our neighbors and even though the tree is technically in their garden, they kindly let us pick the fruit on their side of the hedge as well as ours. I make jam and jelly as well as galettes and crumbles and we all share in the bounty. This year, I received Hanne's book when the tree was at its most prolific and I knew I had to make the bread. What a treat! 

Barley Bread

For as long as I can remember, I have been a barley girl. Of course it helped that in France when I was a kid,  a sucre d'orge (literally candy made with barley sugar) was a treat. Tubular and fashionably skinny, always tightly wrapped, most often in cellophane but occasionally in shiny silver paper which gave no clue to the flavor inside, known for having soothed many of life's minor woes and pains for generations of children, it held a mysterious appeal. By contrast, the plump sucette (lollipop), always clad in revealing colors and coiffed with a bouffant paper twist, seemed resolutely modern. Probably thanks to its down-to-earth chubbiness, it was often a kid's first choice at the boulangerie-confiserie (bakery-candy store) but not mine.
Since I spent a large part of my childhood reading and re-reading the books which had belonged to my dad and my uncle in their youth (they had won them at school for being top students), I kept solid footing in an enchanted other world (of which the black and white illustrations offered tantalizing glimpses) and, in my own, I looked for and cherished surviving signs of a vanishing past. Sucres d'orge (thus called because barley water -soon to be replaced by glucose- was the original sweetener) were therefore my favorites and I spent many a drizzly or blustery Sunday afternoon with my nose in one of the characteristic red books and a sucre d'orge in my pocket (my parents were not liberal with candy but since I never had a sweet tooth,  looking at it afforded me more pleasure than eating it and a single one went a long way).

Many years and a move across the ocean later, I discovered that orge (barley) could actually appear on the table in a soup or a barlotto (a risotto made with barley instead of rice) or simply as a grain and when I did, I fell in love all over again.  So when a Baking With Barley class was offered last year at Kneading Conference West, I knew I wanted to attend.
The class was taught jointly by Leslie Mackie (owner of Macrina Bakery in Seattle) and Andrew Ross, a cereal chemist at Oregon State University (OSU). Leslie has been experimenting with barley from the time she first started Macrina:  she liked using locally grown grain and, at the time, that meant mostly barley. She now puts it in monkey bread (for an added touch of sweetness), in Francese bread and in Pugliese bread (an exceptionally tasty miche for which she was in the process of developing a formula).
As for Andrew - who is not only a scientist but also a passionate baker - he has developed formulas for various barley breads within the framework of the barley project: he brought barley baguettes and barley miches to the class and demonstrated barley pitas and bretzels. I was hooked (especially when I discovered that my local mill made a beautiful whole grain barley flour).
I was hoping to be able to go and observe Andrew at work at OSU in Corvalis and to do a full Meet the Baker post on him afterwards. But it didn't work out according to plan. He was unexpectedly swamped with work when we showed up at the agreed-upon date last month and there was no way he could fit baking into his schedule on that particular day. As for us, we were traveling through Corvalis on our way back home from the coast and we couldn't possibly come back later in the week. He very kindly showed me his beautiful lab/bakery and answered the questions I had prepared but I made it quick as I knew he had to go back to work.  I would still love to see him bake and also to hear more about the relationship between the University and the local farmer though but it will have to wait. Maybe the stars will align better on another visit to Oregon!
Meanwhile Andrew gave me a few useful infos and pointers on baking with barley:

• The preferred barley is a hulless variety, also called naked barley (the hull falls off when the grain is harvested): it has the best nutritional profile
• Barley contains a soluble fiber called beta-glucan which has been shown to slow glucose absorption and is thought to help lower blood cholesterol
• People with celiac disease or high sensitivity to gluten should not eat barley: it contains protases which are very close to gluten
• A 100% barley starter yields a very acidic bread. Not pleasant
• The higher the percentage of barley in relation to wheat, the less extensible the dough
• For a better crumb, it is best to use barley flour in conjunction with high-gluten flour
• Using a stiff starter also helps compensate for the lesser amount of gluten in the dough
• To keep the dough from sticking, use more water or flour than you normally would 
• Increase dough hydration by 5 to 10% if making a 50% barley-50% wheat bread
• If using a high tpercentage of barley, it is best to underproof a little
• A good rule of thumb for flavor, nutrition and extensibility is to use a total of 20 to 30% of barley in the  dough
• Barley flat breads and tortillas are much easier to make than raised breads.

For this barley bread, I used the Whey Sourdough recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's How to Make Bread, a book I already blogged about here and here. At Emmanuel's suggestion (when we talked on the phone back in April after I found an error in one of the recipes), I substituted half Greek yogurt and half milk for the whey (which I didn't have) and, mindful of Andrew's recommendation, I replaced 20% of the white flour by whole grain barley flour (hulless variety).  The resulting bread was delicate and flavorful with a slightly fermented taste (very different from regular sourdough) which I find utterly seductive. Not a memory-trigger like the old-fashioned sucre d'orge but definitely a keeper and maybe a memory-maker for the kids and grand-kids in our life! What could be sweeter than that?

Ingredients:

• 160 g white sourdough starter
• 150 g milk (I used 2% milkfat)
• 150 g plain Greek yogurt (mine was 0% fat but regular fullfat Greek yogurt would work fine)
• 200 g all-purpose unbleached flour (Hadjiandreou uses bread flour with a higher gluten percentage but I had none on hand. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had used that)
• 120 g  all-purpose unbleached flour (again he uses bread flour)
• 100 g barley flour
• 10 g salt (Hadjiandreou uses 8 g)

Method: (adapted from the book)

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix starter, yogurt and milk with a wooden spoon until well combined
2. Add 200 g of all-purpose flour and mix well. Cover and let ferment overnight in a cool place (it should show tiny bubbles 12 hours later when ready)
3. In a smaller bowl, mix 120 g of all-purpose flour, the barley flour and the salt
4. Add to fermented mix and mix by hand until it comes together
5. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes
6. After 10 minutes, stretch and fold the dough inside the bowl by going twice around the bowl with four stretches and foldings at each 90° turn (8 stretches/foldings in all)
7. Let rest 10 minutes again, covered. Repeat twice
8. Complete a fourth stretch and fold cycle and let the dough rest one hour, covered
9. Ligthly flour a work surgace and put the dough on it
10. Shape into a smooth, rounded disc
11. Dust a proofing basket with flour and lay the dough inside
12. Let it rise until double the size (which will take between 3 and 6 hours)
13. When ready, transfer dough to a non-preheated Dutch oven (using a large piece of parchment paper as a sling to carry the dough) and replace the lid on the Dutch oven
14. Bake in non-preheated oven set at 475°F/246°C for 35 minutes
15. Remove Dutch oven from oven and bread from Dutch oven (exercising caution as both will be very hot)
16. Replace bread in oven, turn oven temperature down to 435°F/224°C and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the boule is golden and makes a satisfying hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
17. Enjoy!

The Barley Bread can also be baked the usual way in a hot oven. I just find the unheated Dutch oven/oven method works wonders with boules and it saves having to preheat the oven for an extended length of time.

The Barley Bread is going to Susan for this week's issue of Yeastspotting.

Honey-& Goat Cheese-Filled Muffins

I have been a subscriber to Eating Well Magazine forever. I like its health and/or nutrition-related articles although I rarely cook or bake from the recipes. The January-February 2010 issue is different. For the first time in months, I found myself reaching for post-its and earmarking pages, especially from the Wake Up to Whole Grains feature article, written by Maria Speck. Speck was raised by a German father, to whom she attributes her yearning for whole grains, and by a Greek mother who taught her to love the flavors of her native country (hence the figs, the goat cheese and the honey). I love whole grains too and, maybe because I hail from the Mediterranean as well (through my mom whose grandma was a black-eyed Provençale with Italian forebears), I have a passion for figs and goat cheese. So I decided to try these whole-grain muffins. They are good! They keep two or three days at room temperature and freeze really well. If frozen, Speck recommends microwaving them (wrapped in a paper towel) for 30-45 seconds on High. Personally I don't really like them warm (I don't think the flavors come out as well) but I love them at room temp. My only modification was not to put in any sugar (Speck adds 3/4 cup packed dark or light brown sugar to the batter). To my taste, the muffins are plenty sweet without it but the Man thinks they could be a tad sweeter and he eats them spread with rhubarb jam. Since I don't have a sweet tooth, if it were not for him, I probably would have skipped the honey as well (although I do love the flavor). For all I know, the taste for sweets might be genetic: until his very last years, my dad didn't like sweets either and as for myself, even as a Parisian child, on the eagerly awaited occasions when my mom took us to the neighborhood bakery to purchase our afternoon snacks, my brothers always chose a "pain au chocolat" or a "pain aux raisins" (chocolate or raisins croissants) or a "chausson aux pommes" (apple-pastry) but I always went for a "pain de gruau" (a plain crusty mini-loaf). I even remember that when my tonsils were taken out (I must have been 7 or 8) and I had to eat soft food for a day or two, my mom splurged on 3/4 of a liter (that's how ice-cream was sold in Paris then, maybe still is) of vanilla ice-cream from nearby Boissier, a renowned "pâtissier, chocolatier et glacier" (pastry-shop & chocolate and ice-cream maker). I ate one spoonful, loved the feel of the cold gliding down my sore throat but had to stop eating as the sweetness and the richness literally made me gag. Since there were no freezers in those days, my whole family promptly had the ice-cream for lunch! To this day, I feel guilty for turning down a treat that my mom bought with such love and anticipated joy and that we could probably ill afford... Well, at least, I have been consistent with myself over the years. I still don't care for most ice-creams! Ingredients (for 12 muffins): 100 g crumbled soft goat cheese or reduced-fat cream cheese (Neufchâtel) (I used Trader Joe's plain fresh goat cheese, one of those sold in a package of three) 30 g honey grated zest of half a lemon 8 g vanilla extract, divided 317 g white whole wheat 5 g baking powder 3 g baking soda 1 pinch of salt 2 large eggs + 1 large egg white 260 g plain yogurt (Speck uses buttermilk but I didn't have any. If using thick Greek yogurt, such as Fage, you may need to dilute it with some milk. I used homemade yogurt and it was fine as it was) 50 g extra-virgin olive oil 107 g dried figs, chopped (I used Black Mission figs) chopped caramelized hazelnuts for topping (Speck uses turbinado or granulated sugar but I had a bit of leftover hazelnuts I had kept in the freezer from another recipe and I used that) Method:

1. Preheat oven to 425ºF/218ºC. Line 12 regular muffin cups with paper liners or coat with cooking spray
2. Thoroughly combine the cheese, honey, lemon zest and 1/4 teaspoon of the vanilla extract in a small bowl. Set aside
3. Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl
4. Lightly beat eggs and egg white in a medium bowl, add the sugar (if using) and the remaining vanilla extract and whisk until dissolved
5. Gradually whisk in yogurt (or buttermilk) and oil until smooth
6. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in the figs
7. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin cups. Add 1 generous teaspoon of the reserved cheese filling to the center of each muffin and cover with the remaining batter (the filling should not be visible). Sprinkle with finely chopped caramelized hazelnuts (or sugar if using)
8. Bake the muffins until the edges start to brown and the top springs back when gently pressed (13 to 15 minutes, according to Speck. In my case, it was closer to 20 minutes)
9. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

Gâteau à l'orange (with white starter and yogurt)

When I first made this cake, the Man officially declared it to be the best he ever had. Hard to believe but that's what he said. Since it is easy and healthful, I have made it several times since, varying the ingredients: replacing some of the oil by applesauce (the cake doesn't rise as much), replacing the agave syrup by twice the same amount of sugar (makes the cake a bit lighter), skipping the eggs altogether (makes for a denser cake), using more oil (the cake rises a little more), replacing the yogurt by almond milk (makes for a lighter cake). The texture varies somewhat but the end result remains a very moist cake with a lovely orange flavor.
When I was growing up in Paris, a wonderful woman named Micheline worked in our house as a mother's helper. She came from the Berry in central France and had the strongest regional accent I had ever heard. She also had a huge heart and a sunny disposition. Her husband worked at the post office and her little boy was an adorable little rascal who one day - he must have been 6 - decided to drench passers-by in the street below (we were on the 8th floor) using the water hose my mom kept coiled on the balcony for her plants. He had a pretty good aim too!
Well anyway, Micheline was a very good cook and she often baked for us a "gâteau à l'orange", basically a pound cake containing equal amounts of butter, sugar, flour and eggs, plus one orange. She put the zest in the batter and poured the juice all over the cake when it came out of the oven. Scrumptious!
I made that cake many times back in the days when we had never heard of cholesterol and it was always a huge success. Since the cake is just as good made with more healthful ingredients, now that my local supermarket carries organic oranges (and needs to be encouraged to continue to do so), I see no reason not to indulge again.

Ingredients:

• 240 g mature white starter
• 228 g plain (or vanilla) yogurt (I used homemade full-fat yogurt)
• 30 g almond milk (regular milk would work fine) (depending on the hydration rate of your starter and the thickness of the yogurt, you may want to use a bit more or a bit less)
• 110 g white whole wheat flour
• 230 g unbleached all-purpose flour
• 80 g agave syrup
• 20 g liquid honey (I would have used 100 g agave syrup but I ran out)
• 1 orange, untreated, unpeeled, organic if possible, thoroughly washed, then chopped fine (rind and all) in the food processor (cut up the orange first to make sure there are no seeds)
• the juice of another orange
• 9 g baking soda
• 1 pinch of salt

Method:

1. In a large bowl, mix the starter, the flours and the yogurt
2. Add milk to adjust the consistency (it should be look like a starter with an 80% hydration rate)
3. Set to rise (the duration of the rise will vary according to the room temperature)
4. When nicely risen, pre-heat the oven at 350º F/177º C
5. Mix in the remaining ingredients, adding the baking soda last and pour into a pre-oiled cake pan (I used a kouglof pan as I like the shape but any deep pan will do. Don't substitute a shallow pan as the cake would end up being too dense)
6. Bake for 50 minutes
7. Let the cake rest 5 minutes before taking it out of the pan and setting it to cool on a rack
8. Drench with orange juice just before serving (if the cake is for grown-ups only, Grand-Marnier, Cointreau or Triple Sec can replace some of the juice).

Enjoy!

This "gâteau à l'orange" goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast for Yeastpotting.