And we are 5 now...

...Adele is our new little pumpkin and it's almost hard to believe she will be 5 months in two days. She has been tasting a few things here and there, like cooked pear and carrot, but she's taking it slowly and still prefers the comfort of a warm bottle of milk...

The cold days are coming and I'm feeling that cooking vibe coming back. Nothing breaks a cold day like baking a big loaf of bread and having the oven warm up the kitchen. Oh and the smell! 

I have recently made the most amazing discovery and though it has been pretty much all over the web, I just have to share it with you all. It all started when searching for a good recipe for pillowy white bread, a bit like wonder-bread, without the bad stuff in it. I personally love crusty bread with a fair amount of rye, but lets be honest, my two toddlers don't agree with that when it comes to making sandwiches. After many loafs going straight to the bin and a month hiatus from baking altogether, I discovered it. 

TangZhong!

Now that I got your full attention, let me tell you that it's the best method I ever found for making that illusive wonder-bread. The bread retains just enough moisture, the crumb melts in the mouth, the crust is thin and light golden, the taste is just right... and if that wasn't enough, it's super easy to make and keeps for days without any chemicals added to it (if it lasts that long!). 

Now, I don't know the exact science behind it, but I challenge you all to give it a try! The only problem you might encounter is that a bread box (Pullman) is absolutely necessary to pull this off. These might be found in speciality shops, but I also seen them on ebay and several websites. They are a bit costly, but completely worth it. 

The recipe is basically that of an enriched bread, with milk powder and butter added to the dough (no eggs). The trick that changes everything is the Tangzhong, which is a mixture of flour and water, cooked until it reaches 140F (60C).

The result? Take a look!

 

No inside pictures yet, the bread was so hot that I decided to wait and ended up falling asleep. Will be coming soon!

So here's the recipe! Enjoy and let me know how it turns out!

TangZhong Bread

TangZhong

250 ml of water

50 g of all purpose flour

Bread Ingredients

500 g of all purpose flour

2 tbsp of skim milk powder

160 g of prepared tangzhong

210 ml of warm water

8 g of salt

50 of sugar

10 g of dry instant yeast

50 g of unsalted butter

Prepare the tangzhong, by whisking the flour and water together in a small pan. Cook on low heat without letting it boil (until 60C). It should thicken but still be quite runny. Set aside to cool. (you can keep any extra tangzhong in the fridge for a few days).

Now, mix all the dry ingredients for the bread, add the water, tangzhong and melted butter. Start working the dough until it becomes soft and elastic (about 10 minutes by hand). Let the dough rise in a well oiled and covered bowl for 1 hour (in a warm spot, like a barely heated oven). Punch down and let rest for 15 minutes. 

Pour the dough on a floured surface and punch it down gently, shaping it into a rectangle, the same length as the bread box. Roll it tightly and drop it into the pullman box with the seam down. 

Turn on the oven at 180C and let the dough rise in the box (without the lid) and just covered with plastic wrap (so you can see what's going on). That's about 25 minutes. 

When the top of the dough is just about to reach the top of the box, put the lid on (it shouldn't touch the dough yet. Now give it another 10 minutes to fill the box a bit more and bake for 40 minutes (35 if you like it whiter). Remove the bread from the box immediately after baking and let it cool on a rack.

This recipe is exactly the right amount to fill one pullman bread pan with the lid on.

Enjoy! 

This got me started...

...and sure enough, it is a starter, more precisely, a sourdough starter.

I had my first try at it last Winter, without much success, but this year, I came back with a vengeance.

For those unfamiliar with this, sourdough is more than just a kind of bread, it's a whole different wave length when it comes to bread making... it's the hard core stuff.

My grandfather was a baker. I remember how he kept his starter in a jar next to  the wood fire oven. As far as my memory can stretch, it actually didn't look much like the sourdough you'll see around on so many websites, a foamy liquid goo. Nop. All it was, was a large piece of dough, kept from the last batch of bread. It looked a bit dried out, on the outside,  but inside, it was swarming with live cultures.

Sourdough is a bit like a pet that you need to feed every now and then. You can practically keep it forever on the back of the fridge, forgotten. Feed it and those suckers will be back and ready for action in no time.


Want to try it home? Don't know where to start?
I decided to try the method at The Sourdough Companion.The instructions might seem a bit tedious and it might take you over 2 weeks to get a proper starter that is strong enough to make a good loaf, but believe me, it's amazingly rewarding and it's really not much work at all. When you see those first bubbles appear in the jar, it's magic!

Here are my first signs of activity after 6 days...

After 8 days of refreshing, it was nearly coming out of the jar!
It was time to test it.
And here's my first sourdough bread this year...

The rise is much slower than when using regular store bough yeast so I ended up cooking the bread at 2 am! This means, that cooking sourdough bread is something to be planned ahead of time, preferably the day before or even a couple of days before if the starter is kept in the fridge.
In any case, the result was seriously amazing!

This loaf was made with 1 cup of sourdough starter (called sponge), 2 cups of mixed flour (white and rye), 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of olive oil and just enough water to make a soft dough.
As instructed at The Sourdough Companion, it was folded several times while rising and the final rise took about 3 hours. I baked it on a preheated stone, second top rack, at 240 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes (keep an eye, I usually lower it to 200 after 10 minutes). I also added steam  by pouring about half a cup of water at the bottom of the oven (first 5 minutes, to help the rise). As a side note, I have been treating my oven pretty roughly, so you can always put an aluminum tray at the bottom and pour the water in. I just feel I get more steam this way. 

Yum.

The crumb wasn't heavy, but I hope I can get it to be more airy in the next batches. It might have to do with the fact that my starter is not yet strong enough, but in any case, it was really good and I like that slight sour tang. Still much work ahead!

Meanwhile, here's a sourdough pizza that turned out equally yummy!

 Mushroom pizza with basil, straight out of the oven.

Anyone out there managed to build a good starter? Maybe we could  make a swap. Just drop me a note. It would be fun to see if different starters really taste different or not.
I'll gladly send out free samples to anyone who links my page.

Cheers all!