76 Years In The Making

I have a booklet that was printed in 1940 by the Fleischmann Yeast Company. This booklet was geared towards the restaurant industry. The large batch of basic sweet dough is a 210 lb. recipe.

Who used this booklet? Whose hand written notes are those in the pages? Where did they work? Did they like their job? What type of ovens did they use?.....my imagination takes me to a time gone by. In 1940 Hitler and Mussolini formed an alliance against France, Paris & London were being bombed, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president and the world was in turmoil. Yet, somewhere, someone was making bread that perhaps brought some normalcy and comfort to peoples lives; these breads were probably viewed as luxuries and reserved for special occasions like the holidays. I have to believe that no matter how hard conditions were that people could find some solace in honest food that was made by passionate people.

After looking at this book for several years and imagining who might have used it I decided it was my turn, 76 years after the original owner. I resurrected the sweet dough formula and made the Dutch cake, which is not a cake but a sweet bread with brioche characteristics.

The master recipe has an ingredient called "Sugar Yolks" which do not contain sugar. One pound of sugar yolks is 22 to 24 yolks. Two lbs of sugar yolks can be replaced with 3 pounds of whole eggs. Old recipes contain some interesting terminology like "C", this is what brown sugar is called in old baking books. I can only assume this terminology was used to avoid confusing one ingredient for another.

This is the dough from a small 18 lb batch. We added black currants, golden raisins and candied orange peel to the master recipe.


The dough divided into 1 lb. loaves after proofing for 2 1/2 hours.




The bread was egg washed and baked at 350° for 30 minutes. After the loaves cooled icing or powdered sugar was applied.


This is the genuine article. This recipe needs to be made more than once every 68 years.



The Fleischmann's Basic Sweet Dough Formula booklet.

Small batch is 33 lbs, large batch is 210 lbs.

The Dutch cake recipe using the dough formula.

A similar holiday recipe for stollen.

Wish You Were Here

This could definitely become a weekend morning ritual. I'll have coffee with that please....

Garlic Cheese Bread

Two of lifes simpler pleasures, bread and cheese
Baguette, garlic butter, fontina, parmesan, provelone, fresh thyme and oregano. Take these ingredients and blast them in a 600° oven for about 3 minutes, enjoy!

Tangzhong

While doing some research on dim sum I ran across a recipe for baking a Japanese bread using the Tangzhong Method. I felt a deep need to make this bread, like anything I read about that I haven’t done.


If you Google Tangzhong Method you will see there is no shortage of information or recipes. It starts with bringing water and flour up to 150°, very much like making a roux, but using water and flour only. This mixture then sets overnight under refrigeration. The next day you use it to make the bread dough.

There is some important baking science in action due to this process. The short version is [raw starch is heated in water > starch granules swell in size > amylase leaks out > starch granules collapse > gelatinization occurs > gel is formed when mixture is chilled = moister bread]

I read this on several technical sites:
Starch is a mixture of two carbohydrate polymers, amylose and amylopectin. Different starches contain these two polymers in different proportions. Wheat contains about 25% amylose and 75% amylopectin.

All of this means very little if the bread does not taste great, which you’ll have to believe me until you make it yourself, it is.

Proofing, cutting and forming the tangzhong dough







For some of the small loaves I filled the dough with an English raspberry preserve and Danish gouda cheese.




The finished filled loaves, small rolls and large loaves.

Sticky Monkey

Very little needs to be said here....Sticky Bun x Monkey Bread ÷ Basic Human Instincts = !!

Brioche - The King of Bread

I call it the king of bread for several reasons, 1). There are large amounts of butter in the dough so you don’t need to serve butter with it, 2). It’s a complete meal because there’s an extraordinary amount of eggs in it, 3). It wears a crown, and 4). It’s just great bread.

Below are some different shapes & sizes we’re working on. The last picture is not brioche, those are asiago cheese puffs coated with parmesan.

Happy Holiday's

The holiday's for me have always been about the flavors and not so much about the retail madness. I can't remember what gifts I received when I was 8 years old but I do remember the taste and smell of my grandmothers Italian wedding cookies or my mothers decorated butter cookies. My brothers and I would disturb our younger sisters by dramatically biting the heads off the Santa cookies......I know that's twisted, but remember, there was no Internet, xbox 360, cell phones, texting or 400 channels on the TV....just cookies.

My kids have food memories too. One of them is rather recent, it's the Dutch egg bread that I wrote about last year, they asked me if I was going to bake some in the test kitchen this year and I realized they now had a permanent flavor memory that will last a lifetime. They won't remember 10 years from now what gifts they opened but I guarantee they'll remember the buttery bread filled with currants and golden raisins.

So, have a happy holiday season and I hope you will create some memorable flavors that will last you and your family a lifetime also.

The Dough


The Rise


The Bread


The Consumption

Parmigiano-Reggiano

Sourdough - Day 1

We had a large amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano so we decided to incorporate about 5 lbs of rather large cubes into the 24 lb batch of dough. It took about 1-1/2 hours extra to get though the first proof. I suspect the salt content of the cheese had something to do with the slow down.

The unanswered questions - will the salt in the cheese slow the 2nd proofing down too much? Will the cheese draw moisture from the dough? What type of interior melting will occur with a cheese this dense?..... Well, I don't know, those very questions is what makes you try it. It is always better to try something new and risk failure than to keep doing the same thing just because you are comfortable with the predictable outcome.





Sourdough - Day 2

Any of our concerns about this experiment were dissolved about 10 minutes into the baking process. At this point you could tell the bread was producing a good initial jump in the oven.

Because of the high ration of cheese in the dough we let it sit out for 1 hour before putting in in the cooler last night, just to give it a chance to develop. This morning the dough was really firm when it came out of the cooler and needed 2 hours of floor time before it was baked.

As you can see the bread had great blistering and the cheese randomly ruptured through the bread wherever it was close to the crust.

Extreme Sourdough

I’ve made several posts about our  sourdough experiments using a 13 year old starter we maintain. I also recently made a post about braised shortribs and the all important pure rendered shortrib fat that’s a byproduct of the cooking process. On a whimsy today those two things came together as I prepared to bake sourdough. First I melted the shortrib fat and brushed it on the dough, it is truly savory good stuff. Then topped the dough with thyme and whole rosemary sprigs followed by bleu cheese and then into the oven. Sourdough + beef + bleu cheese & herbs is an ethereal combination. I wish you could be here to receive a loaf of this heavenly bread, if you click on the picture to get a close-up you can almost taste it. This would make the perfect bread for a steakhouse concept.

The second picture is a Parmigiano-Reggiano sourdough with fresh herbs. The remarkable blistering on this bread is produced by a slow 24 hour fermentation that gives the bread its unique character and extraordinary crust.

Sourdough Bread Baking

It's Alive!
Three hour rise on a 16 lb. batch of sourdough. That plastic bubble is ready to blow! This 12 year old starter is really healthy.


Incredible
The incredible bleu cheese & roasted garlic sourdough. Two pound loaf proofed in a willow basket for 24 hours, slashed with a lame, brushed with garlic-rosemary olive oil, topped with bleu cheese and roasted garlic cloves.


Oven Ready
After 24 hours the two pound loaf is ready for the oven.


Fermentation
Look at the blistering on this loaf. A product of slow, cold aging of the dough.


The Good StuffOne pound loaves of asiago cheese sourdough.

“Acorns were good till bread was found.”Francis Bacon, English philosopher, statesman (1561-1626)


Variety
Multiple loaves from today’s baking. Back center loaf was baked with whole rosemary sprigs and roasted garlic on top.

"You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread."Henry Miller, American writer (1891-1980)

Crustacious
The goodness of golden crust. It really doesn’t get much better than this.

"How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?"Julia Child


Gargantuan Boule
This is a crusty four pound country sourdough boule with stone-ground bran. This loaf has an incredibly sweet crust and superb crumb. This loaf ended up in the hands of a large family in need of assistance, they took the loaf home and toasted slices of it in the broiler of the oven, slathered it with butter & jelly and that was dinner….they ate the whole 4 pound loaf! We don’t sell bread we give it all away and stories like this make it all worthwhile.

“Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods; and good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts.”James Beard (1903-1985)

Bubbling Starter
Sweet & sour super fragrant 12 year old sourdough mother.


Multi Loaf ProofingAfter a cold night in the cooler the dough needs a little floor time before going into the oven.


Aromatic Mini Blue
These country sourdough boules with bleu cheese and garlic are the bomb. I had these in the car today and got stuck in a traffic jam; the aroma was so intense that I had to pull over and crack a loaf.


Caramelized Crust
The crust on these two pound boules are sweet and crunchy, the end result of starch converting to sugar.


Un-slashed Loaves
Just after turning the loaves out of the willow baskets.


Slashing The LoavesJust prior to going in the oven.


Baked Cinnamon Raisin Sourdough
Ready to eat!


Focaccia – Loaf Of 100 Cloves
Great sandwich bread with bleu cheese, roasted garlic, rosemary oil and fresh rosemary.


Raisin Boule
Two pound loaves of sourdough with cinnamon, organic red & green raisins, honey and unprocessed bran.


A Really Good Baking Day
Today the bread preformed really well. Yesterday I made the dough and proofed it for 1 hour longer than normal, rounded it and gave it a little floor time to produce some leavening before putting it in the cooler for the night. This is a method I used years ago which allows me to bring the dough out of the cooler in the morning and go directly into the oven without any additional proofing. As you can see the bread has exceptional rise.


The Perfect Sandwich Bread
Tomato sauce with asiago and roasted garlic. Bleu cheese with rosemary. These two breads really make fantastic sandwiches.