If Valentine's Day conjures only one image, it is surely that of chocolate.  And what better  accompaniment to chocolate than tart dried cherries!  (Ok, maybe a nice zinfandel, too).

Although many bread purists argue - and not without merit - that adding anything to bread other than the basic ingredients that compose it - flour, water, salt and leavening - is a sacrilege, the fact is that some of our favorite breads have flavorings, whether cheese or walnuts, spicy peppers, or nuts and seeds that result in a delightful eating experience.

So if we are to be heretics let us at least enjoy it!

This Valentine's creation, Chocolate Cherry Bread, is a favorite of mine as a tasty, offbeat loaf.  Offbeat because it's more like a dessert than a bread, and in fact, it's sometimes referred to as a dessert bread.  What's clear to me, at any rate, is that this isn't something you'd toast and have to accompany eggs and bacon at breakfast.  But lightly toasted after dinner, with a nice glass of wine and perhaps some cheese to accompany, yes, this definitely works.

Here is the recipe I used to create three small - about 1 lb each - boules of chocolate cherry bread:

Two brief notes: 1) The salt percentage may seem low, and in fact is.  However, it's my feeling that what should dominate this bread is sweetness, and thus I've reduced the salt content from its more normal level of 2%.  Feel free to step it up if you wish.  2) The percentage of yeast is definitely higher than typical.  This is, in part, to counter the acidic effects of the cocoa powder which will significantly retard the functioning of yeast - much as does the addition of cinnamon.  The higher level of yeast - along with the addition of levain which is more tolerant of acidity - is one way to guarantee that your loaves proof properly.

Begin by preparing the levain 12 -14 hours in advance of mixing the final dough.  I use a levain that is 100% hydration, so equal weights flour and water.

The next morning when my levain was fully ripened I prepared and weighed the ingredients.  I use Callebaut chocolate, a nice and reasonably priced Belgium chocolate.  It comes in this box as batons, which are used to create pain au chocolat, or chocolate croissants.  A portion of the chocolate batons was melted in a doubleboiler.  To create the chocolate chunks I took the batons (thin, rectangular strips of chocolate about 4 in long and 1/4 in wide) and chopped them into roughly quarter-inch pieces.

To create the final dough, the levain was combined with water to disperse it, and to this was added the sugar to dissolve it partially.  To this mixture was combined the flour, instant dry yeast (IDY) and salt.  Mix time on speed 1 was about three minutes.  After that, the dough was mixed on speed 2 for about two minutes.  Then, with a little gluten development showing,  the mixer was put back on speed 1 for about three minutes while the cocoa powder, chocolate and butter were added.   Finally, the dough was mixed again on speed two for about two minutes - until moderate gluten development is noted.

The dough is fermented for 1 1/2 hours, with a fold at 45 minutes to increase its strength.  Here is the dough after its fold and just before dividing.  Honestly, doesn't that look good enough to eat just as it is!

Once the primary fermentation is completed the dough is divided into three equal pieces and gently rounded into boules.

The shaped boules were placed on a wooden peel on parchment paper, and then covered with plastic wrap and allowed to proof for about one and a quarter hours.

They were prepared for baking by lightly sprinkling the tops with flour and slashing each loaf.

The boules were baked in a 450 degree F oven with steam for 30 minutes, and then the oven was turned off, the door cracked, and the loaves allowed to sit for another 5 minutes on the baking stone.

Here's what came out of the oven:

Pretty tasting looking! And here is what the Chocolate Cherry bread looks like sliced:

       A lovely gift for someone special this Valentine's Day.  Or, hey, just for yourself!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Viennoiserie inhabits a murkey borderland between bread and pastry.  It is a bit of both, and yet neither fully one or the other.  Bread is about grain and the flavor that can be developed from essentially manipulating it.  Pastry, on the other, is about adding ingredients to grain in such a way that the additions create an end product distinctly different from the starting point.  Another way of distinguishing the two - one I once heard from a distinguished Master Baker, if I recall his words correctly - is that bakers are of two types: those who like to wrestle dough and those who have more artistic bents when confronting it.  It was not a critical comment, but intended to draw attention to the fact that most bakers (in fact) tend to be drawn to one or the other side of baking and that few excel at both.

Fair enough, at least in my opinion. 

I am a bread baker at heart and in practice.  But there is a small spark that is drawn to pastrywork, and it finds its occasional expression in attempts at viennoiserie (so-called because its origins were in Vienna) - for the most part in making croissants and pains au chocolat.

It is winter where I live, and so my kitchen is cooler than usual.  Good conditions for working with laminated dough.  Today, on an off-day from work, I decided to take a baker's bus-man's holiday and make croissants.

Actually, I began the journey last night, when I mixed my dough and created a butter block to be incorporated into it. 

Today was spent laminating the dough through a series of manipulations called 'turns' which involve rolling out the dough and butter block into a rectangle, folding it into thirds (much like a business letter) and then, after chilling it, re-rolling it out, so to increase the number of laminations.  Eventually (the third fold), the rectangle is rolled out to an extent that both ends are folded towards the middle and then one over the other (called a 'book fold').

Here is what the lamination looks like after the book fold:

After the book fold the dough is then refrigerated again and then cut into two piece, each of which is rolled out to a rectangle of about 7 inches high by 18-22 inches long.  At this point, the dough is cut and subsequently shaped into either pains au chocolat or croissants:

Here are some photos of the steps involved in each:

The shaped croissants and pains au chocolat are then proofed from 1 - 2 hours, eggwashed, and then baked for 15 - 18 minutes.  I like to begin the bake at 425° F and then lower the temperature by 25° after each 5 minute increment.

And here is how the finished product turned out today:

A few lessons learned from my experience with viennoiserie:

• work in a cool kitchen and on a cool counter.  The secret to laminated doughs is keeping the butter and dough laminations from melting into one another.  A warm kitchen will defeat this.

• liberally sprinkle the counter top with flour.  Once the dough sticks as you roll it out, you destroy the laminations.

• work quickly.  Roll out the dough with confidence and vigor.  Even chilled butter will melt if worked on for too long a period.  Don't pussyfoot about handling the dough.

• respect the dough.  If, after repeated rolling, it is not stretching, surrender to it and place it back into the refrigerator for 10 - 20 minutes.  It will relax and once again bend to your will.  If, on the other hand, you turn the exercise into a test of wills, you will lose - the dough will tear and all your elaborate preparations will be for naught.

Here then, with lessons in hand, and the frank admission that I am still a beginner in the world of viennoiserie, are the results of today's bake:

Not bad, though the laminations could be clearer and more distinct.  I'd give myself a grade of a B.

But the flavor, ahhh, that is something altogether better!

And reason enough to keep working at crafting the perfect croissant.

For a special lady's birthday I wanted to do something special.  I should mention that she loves the cocktail ryes I make.  So how to tweak something that had a pretty good flavor and texture to begin with?

The answer is to attempt a Detmolder method of sourdough rye.  This involves building a rye sour (levain) in three stages.  Each stage is intended to bring out fully a characteristic of rye sourdough.  The process spans a day as the sour is first allowed to develop its maximum yeast production.  In the second stage, by manipulating temperature and hydration of the sour, it develops its full acetic acid (sour) potential.  And finally, in the final stage of development, the sourdough develops lactic acid which serves to smooth out the acidity developed in the second or "basic sour" stage.

A full accounting of this arduous, but ultimately satisfying method of making rye sourdough is found in Jeffrey Hamelman's masterful book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes.

Developing the rye culture that would eventually be incorporated into the final dough required constructing a makeshift proofer that allowed me to fairly accurately maintain differing temperatures within the sour during each stage of development.

A buspan with a lid, and a breadpan filled with a wet towel that had been heated in the microwave served to generate sufficient heat to maintain the desired temps.

Because the leavening power of the sourdough is developed so extensively during the three-stage build, once the final dough is mixed, there is a very short fermentation period before the dough is shaped and allowed a final proof. 

In this case, the rye I decided upon is 72% rye flour and 100% hydration, meaning that it contains as much water as flour.  The resulting 'dough' is in true a paste, and shaping is little more than pouring it into a breadpan and then gently pressing it out to fill the pan.  I also added sunflower and sesame seeds which impart a nice added flavor to the sweetness of the rye - all the more so if it is lightly toasted.

The fermentation period was just under 30 minutes.  Final proof after shaping was a brief one hour, and then the bread was baked at 460 degrees F for 15 minutes, before lowering the temperature to around 400 degrees for an additional 45 minutes.

The end result is a loaf that still requires nearly 48 additional hours for the crumb to fully develop and dry out sufficiently.   Once cooled, the loaves were wrapped in linen and stored on the counter for 2 days.

A long wait, but ah, one that was truly worth it.  This cocktail rye is moist and sweet and the nuttiness provided by the sunflower and sesame seeds makes for a nice contrast with its sweetness.

This is rye that demands much attention in its construction, but whose payoff is undeniable!

Ok, rye and rut do start with the same letter,  and I'm probably in a rye rut, but it's a tasty place to be so I'll live with it awhile longer.

I was so pleased with the openness of my last loaf that I decided to repeat it with a few variations to see if I could still obtain a fairly open crumb structure.  Here's the recipe:

Although this is, like the previous loaf, a 72% rye with 100% hydration, I decided to omit the hot rye soaker.  In its place I substituted a cold soaker for the seeds on the morning of the bake - so a soaker for about an hour.

The rye sour was prepared the previous evening, and because our temps are starting to fall, it took a full 14 hours until I deemed it sufficiently domed and ready for use.  In the meantime, I prepared the seed soaker using sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and all the remaining water that would go into the final dough.

Rye sour and soaker were mixed together on Speed 1, and while they incorporated I mixed the high gluten flour, rye flour and salt.  These were added and mixed on Speed 1 for 10 minutes.  Like the former loaf, there is no discernable gluten development - what you have is a pudding.

The primary fermentation was allowed to go for 50 minutes until I saw a good increase in volume.  I then gently scraped the dough into an oiled bread pan, degassing it slightly, but trying to retain as much of the gas as possible.  The final proof was a full hour until the dough had increased about 50% in volume.

The bread was baked with steam for 75 minutes, starting at 460° F, and stepping the temp down by 25 degree increments every 15 minutes.

As with the previous loaf, when it had cooled I wrapped it in linen for two days before cutting.

Here's the result:

I'm again very pleased with the openness of the crumb given the relatively high rye content.  The seeds provide a nice added  flavor, and this time the inclusion of more sunflower seeds than sesame by weight gives the bread a noticeable crunch that I like.  Lightly toasted, the flavor of the seeds is even more pronounced.

While I'll probably start playing with 80 and 90% ryes next, this one at 72% is a real keeper that just doesn't disappoint.

There is nothing in my experience that matches a good thin crust pizza baked in a wood fired oven.  In as little as two minutes, at temperatures north of 800° F the pizza is finished.  And what a treat it is to bite into the slightly blackened flatbread and savor its flavor and those of the chosen toppings!

Of course, constructing a thin crust pizza is very different than the ones found at mass produced pizza joints like Papa Johns or Dominos.  Because the bake time is so short, you apply toppings sparingly - a small amount of sauce that barely covers the dough, and not piles of toppings but small amounts.  And because the heat of the oven is so intense, vegetable toppings need to be lightly sauteed to prevent blackening and burning, while meat toppings, such as sausage, must be very thinly sliced so that they cook in a very short time.  (Actually, you would want to precook these, but still slice them very thinly.)

I guess the bottom line about a flatbread such as a thin crust pizza is that it really is all about the bread.  That's the main event, and whatever sauces or toppings that accompany it are meant to add to its flavor, not to overwhelm or mask the bread.

So, good pizza requires good dough that can stand on its own.

For those of us who treasure good homemade pizza but lack either a wood fired oven or a Big Green Egg that can generate very high temperatures, making pizza in a conventional oven is a challenge.  And in my own experience, it leads to more frustration than satisfaction.  But being a glutton for punishment...

And so, yesterday, as Labor Day approached, I once again yielded to the masochistic side of me and decided to make one more foray into the folly of trying to create a good pizza in a regular gas oven.

Since it's all about the dough, I had begun a day earlier by creating a preferment using a portion of the flour and water that would constitute the pizza dough, and mixing in with it just a little bit of my sourdough starter (levain).  This was allowed to ferment overnight - about 14 hours in all - until it was nice and bubbly and had a pleasing aroma.  This preferment is the secret weapon to creating flavor in the dough.  Without it, you would have to let the dough sit - in a very cool environment - for about 24 hours to develop comparable flavor.

After mixing the final dough the next morning, it fermented for two hours, with a fold to give it a bit of strength - but not too much (you need to be able to stretch the dough to make the pizza).  After that, I shaped it into a ball, placed it in a covered container in my refrigerator, and allowed it to sit for the remainder of the day (about 8 hours).

Once I decided dinner was about 2 hours away, I removed the dough from the fridge and allowed it to warm up.  Here is a picture of the dough ball in its container:

In the meantime, I began slicing up the toppings, and then sauteeing some of them.  I had decided on red and orange peppers, Vidalia onion, crimini mushrooms, thinly sliced tomatoes, fresh basil and thinly sliced fresh mozarella.

Once the dough had warmed sufficiently, I stretched it carefully in several steps until it finally measured about 18 inches by 12 inches.  After stretching I 'docked' it with a dough docker to keep the bread from forming bubbles like a pita.  (You can prick it with a fork as you would a pie crust to get the same result).

I applied a very thin coating of tomato sauce to the dough. 

Then the toppings were applied.

I placed the finished pizza into a preheated 550°F oven on my rectangular baking stone and baked it for 9 minutes.

What emerged pleasantly surprised me.  The crust had browned nicely - both on top and on the bottom - and the toppings looked nicely baked.

And so, with a nice chianti, I celebrated the last of summer's glory with a homemade pizza that finally did not disappoint.  And this morning I was treated to the delight of cold leftover pizza for breakfast.

Bring on the Fall.

Back in April our bakery, located in a restaurant on the Georgetown waterfront in Washington, DC ,was flooded when the Potomac River overtopped a levee that had (for reasons no one has yet explained) been only partially raised.  The results were devastating: our restaurant and two others were destroyed.  At the time we were supplying bread for our restaurant, a sister restaurant and one of the restaurants on the waterfront that was flooded.  We were working with close to 700 lbs of dough a day when the disaster struck.

In the aftermath, our sister restaurant - Founding Farmers - was forced to purchase nearly all their breads for several months.  The exception was the production of English muffins, which a couple of us did from midnight until 6am each morning in the cramped kitchen at Founding Farmers which was simultaneously being cleaned and awash in water and suds.  It was an unpleasant couple months, but we were lucky to still have jobs, so that trumped our discomfort.

Eventually we were able to lease space at a commercial cake bakery while a new bakery is constructed for us.  Life has returned to normal - I now begin my day at 4am (bankers hours by bakers' standards), and we work in a well-equipped kitchen with  a 4 deck hearth oven and double stack of convection ovens.  Below is a rack of freshly baked ciabatta awaiting delivery to Founding Farmers.

During this time I've continued my own baking adventures at home, mainly involving pain au levain, ryes and a memorable fougasse consumed on the lawn at Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts while listening to kd lang.

But lately, I've focused more on ryes, and last week I returned to a favorite of mine: a 72% rye with a rye soaker and seeds.  It's a 100% hydration dough, due to the seeds (in this case, equal weights of sesame and sunflower), which means that you pretty much pour the dough/batter into pans.  There is no shaping or bench resting with this dough.

Below is the formula I constructed.  This produces 3 x 1.5# loaves.

I mix the dough for about 10 minutes on speed 1.  What makes this dough particularly interesting,  I think, is that there is no water in the final mix: All the water is used in the levain and the rye soaker.

This dough has a short fermentation period and only slightly longer proof before it is baked.  I fermented it for 35 minutes, and then poured it into the pans, where it proofed for 55 minutes.  I docked the tops of the loaves using a fork.

They went into a pre-steamed oven at 475 ° F oven.  After 15 minutes I reduced the temperature by 25 °, and continued to do so until the loaves had baked for 75 minutes (so the final bake temp was 375 ° ).

Loaves were cooled on wire racks, and once cooled wrapped in linen for 48 hours before I cut into them.

I'm quite happy with the result.  The crumb has a nice openness for a high percentage rye, and the combination of the seeds enhances the flavor - especially if the bread is lightly toasted.

Still being a goat cheese aficiando, I enjoy it with this tasty rye in the afternoon - often with a nice glass of rye whiskey!

Today was a day off and so I had decided to bake a focaccia to share with friends at my neighborhood pub, The Old Brogue.  Focaccia is basically a ciabatta dough that gets dressed up with any number of ingredients you can add directly to the dough, or as I prefer, to mix with a good olive oil and use as a topping.

In this case the topping involved parmesan cheese, lightly sauteed Vidalia onions, olive oil, cracked pepper, salt, oregano, rosemary, marjoram, and hot pepper flakes.  The spices were heated in the oil to infuse it with their flavors.  Once I had placed the shaped focaccia in an oiled pan, I allowed it to rise for an hour, dimpled the surface with my fingers, and then added the grated cheese and poured the herbs and oil over the surface.  After another 30 minutes it was ready for baking in a 450 F oven for 20 minutes.

And voila:

Nicoise olive and Vidalia onion fougasse

While this has not been the most pleasant summer in the Washington, D.C. region - what with record high temps - it still beckons foods that are most enjoyed during the summer season.

And for a baker, that means fougasse - a bread originated in the Provencal region of France and made to be enjoyed in picnics and outings.

This could be described as pizza without the sauce: instead of toppings, you just decide which ingredients to wrap into the dough.

In this case, I lightly cooked sweet Vidalia onions in a little olive oil until just translucent, cooled them and added nicoise olives.  In a commercial setting, a spiral mixer would mix these with already moderatedly mixed dough without a lot of trouble.  But with a kitchen stand mixer and dough hook, I've learned that only bad things happen - the olives are never incorporated into the dough but eventually get mashed up.

So, I've learned to incorporate the olives by hand: stretching the dough out into a square, adding the olives, and then turning the dough in on itself until the olives are finally distributed throughout.  It's a bit of work, but the outcome is well worth the effort!

In the case of the lightly sauteed onions, the dough hook was effective at mixing them into the dough, and after I added the olives.

This is a crust-heavy bread - and intentionally so.  It's a snack, like pizza, and the cuts, as you can see, not only create more surface crust, but also make it easy to break off bite-sized pieces.  As I said at the outset, a wonderful picnic bread... and definitely one that draws attention!

But it's left me with little time for posting on my learnings...and my bakings.  But this weekend I took a deep breath, baked at home as I love to do, and decided to share the results on this blog.

The first bread I baked was a favorite rye of mine: A 72% rye - making it what I call a cocktail rye - that includes both a rye soaker and a flax seed soaker.  The latter makes the seeds more digestable; the former simulates a 'mash' and yields a sweetness that you otherwise can't get.

As you can see, this is a very wet rye that resembles mud more than dough.  Indeed, high percentage, high hydrated ryes more resemble puddings than bread dough.  And they are baked and subsequently treated similarly.

No commercial yeast was incorporated in this: I used my rye levain and because of necessities actually retarded the shaped dough during its final proof - something that isn't normally done with high-rye percentage rye doughs.

But I'm quite happy with the results.  The loaf is amazingly moist (I keep it wrapped in aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap, so to retard molding) and amazingly sweet.  With a good goat cheese or aged Emmentaler it's heaven!

The large bubbles at the upper left hand of the loaf indicate that I'd pushed its final proof about as far as I could without overproofing it.

  The second bake was a traditional pain au levain (sourdough) taken from Jeffrey Hamelman.  It uses mixed levains - both a wheat-based sourdough and a rye-based one - and incorporates a little whole wheat flour to give it a wonderful character in terms of flavor. 

In this instance, I was forced to retard the shaped loaves for 23 hours.  This is something Hamelman counsels against because of the effect of retarding on flavor - yielding a more noticeably sour tang with the long retardation.  But I had no choice and so decided to do what I had to do.

Although the loaves had a mild tang from the long retardation, it was in no way the sharp sourness that many associate with (and either love or hate about) San Francisco style sourdough). 

I'm especially pleased with the honeycomb structure of the crumb - a good sign of a loaf that is well-risen when it's baked.  

This is a wonderful everyday sandwich bread.  And a reminder that commercially produced bread will never achieve what a home baker can, with a little patience and care. 

Anyway, a day to sleep in and generally relax, and of course, do some baking.

I fired up my white and rye starters last night, not certain what use I would put them to.  This morning I came downstairs and decided I wanted some good multigrain sandwich bread and turned to Hamelman's Five-Grain Levain.  Of course, I had neglected to make a soaker using the seeds the previous night, but I went ahead and mixed about a cup and a half of the following: sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, flaxseed and rolled oats, and poured about 240g of boiling water over them.  Lidded the container and let it sit for about 40 minutes.

From that point I pretty much followed Hamelman's recipe, with the exceptions that I used my rye starter to supplement my regular levain, and also in place of the cracked rye he uses as one of the five grains.  I also added a small portion of sunflower seeds and rolled oats not used in the soaker directly into the dough which was quite wet.

Bulk fermentation was 1 1/2 hours, with a fold at 45 minutes.  By that time, a very slack dough had firmed up considerably due to the thirsty seeds.

I divided the dough, preshaped, rested and made one boule and one bâtard.  Fnal proof was just a little over 1 1/2 hours. 

The breads were baked at 450 degrees F for 40 minutes.  I didn't get a whole lot of oven spring because I really pushed the proof, but as the bâtard clearly shows that the cuts opened nicely, so the dough had a bit of final push in it.

As Hamelman comments, this is a lovely table bread.  The flavors of the grains, seeds and mixed levains are pleasant and complementary, and the crumb is wonderfully light and moist.  Hamelman comments on the fact that the 98% hydration of the dough is not a misprint, but testament to the capacity of the grains and seeds to absorb moisture. 

Even so, the texture of the crumb is light and fluffy.

A perfect sandwich bread!  And tomorrow (and another day off), I'll be piling cold cuts high on it.