Tuscan Bread

Negli angoli di casa cerchi il mondo
nei libri e nei poeti cerchi te...

In the corners of the house you're looking for the world
in the books and the poets you're looking for yourself...
~ Francesco Guccini, Another Day Went By

Take a summer afternoon. Fresh and quirky as the afternoons hooded with fog on the North Pacific, or those pissed off with rain in August up in the mountains. Take a dough of ancient times, lazy but exciting as a poker match on a wrinkled, flowered tablecloth. Add the tenderness of a freshly baked loaf, and that scent so similar to the loaf that they used to give you at the corner, in those fantastic sunny mornings when you had the time to slide in front of the counter for 100 Liras worth of Coke-shaped candies.
Fresh bread, jam and a violent layer of butter were the perfect world, when you really believed in God, and you imagined Him smiling and walking around the clouds, although maybe He got a bit sad if He happened to look down here. You were able to inhabit the stars and the planets with your imagination, arguing with your classmates over the ownership of Alpha, Beta, and the Pole Star, as well as a share of Saturn and the absolute dominion over Jupiter. And everything would last forever, the house on a tree, the daisies, the board games, bread&nutella and the afternoon tea. Because it was easy to take each other by hand and slip into the night, without thinking what it will be, where it will be, tomorrow.


Short note: I'm pleased to announce that this recipe is part of the August 2013 issue of Threef, a photography & food magazine; it's a special issue dedicated to Time, the time that passes, that stops or that you dream of, and also the time that never comes back.
If you weren't judge me biased, I'd recommend you browse it, because it's really worth it. But I won't say anything, because I'm not biased.




Tuscan Bread*
for 1 loaf

Starter
fine ground flour 300 gr
water 180 gr
fresh brewer's yeast 5 gr

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl until the dough is well blended, but working as little as possible. Cover and let rise at room temperature for 20-24 hours.

Second Rise 105 gr
fine ground flour 100 gr
water 50 gr
fresh brewer's yeast 2 gr

Dissolve the starter and the yeast with the water and knead briefly with the flour, then cover again and let rise for another 20-24 hours.

Dough
fine ground flour 250 gr
water 150 gr ca
fresh brewer's yeast 2 gr

Place the flour on the work surface, make a well in the middle, then crumble in the center the fresh yeast and the starter. Dissolve with water and when you get a well-blended mixture, add the flour and knead by hand, working as little as possible. Shape the dough into a loaf, push it down and lay it vertically in front of you. Lift one edge and fold it toward the center, place your thumbs on the folded part and press until you reach the surface of the table below. Keep folding in the same direction until you completely roll the dough. Place it on a kitchen towel, well dusted with flour, with the fold underneath, dust with more flour, wrap it with the cloth, squeezing a little and sealing it as if it were a package, and let it rise for at least half hour. When ready, there will be cracks all over the surface. Sprinkle some flour on the back of a tray, grab the towel and position the bread on your forearm, then transfer it on the tray placing the fold underneath without any abrupt movement. Slide it on a baking stone or a baking sheet already hot, bake it in a preheated oven at 430 for 10 minutes, then lower to 350-375 approximately for 40 minutes.

*I took the recipe from the infallible bible of the Simili Sisters, Pane e Roba Dolce (Bread and Sweet Things). A must-have for all food fanatics and food bloggers out there, bakers and not, since the dawn of time.

Irish Soda Bread

Yesterday I happened to be in the Richmond district, in the North West corner of the city. I haven't been there very often, and the only things I could remember were the fog, which hits earlier and it's thicker than in the rest of the city, and the large Russian community, which explains the huge concentration of piroshki, blini and caviar for sale in all Geary Street's produce stores.
Jumping from Eastern Europe to Ireland has never been that easy: I could have never imagined that, tucked between an herring, a glass of vodka and a red beet soup, one could find one of the few Irish bakeries of the whole San Francisco, if not the only one. Excuse me, but where did they hide it all these years????!!!?? One must be really careless not to see it, since with its bright green entrance, John Campbell's Irish Bakery is very difficult to ignore. Careless to say the least....

Among the products that grabbed my attention, the myriad of little pies, all with SUPER EXTRA perfect edges, some Baileys scones that would give me a buzz at the first bite, and, of course, the legendary Soda Bread, the traditional buttermilk Irish bread (and then, since we're still in San Francisco, I couldn't help noticing the focaccia bread, which I think is not properly Irish, but I could be wrong...).
I've immediately remembered this recipe that I had tried years ago from J. Hamelman's book on bread, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, which is sort of a Bible for all those who like kneading some dough. And I've also remembered that in order to make it right, one would need a special whole-wheat flour, genuine Irish, which is impossible to find here. I had the nerve to ask the saleswoman if they could sell me a little of that flour, like if I didn't have already a wide collection, with my all-purpose, type 0, pastry flour, bread flour, whole-wheat, whole-wheat pastry flour, corn, extra-fine corn, semolina, garbanzo beans and chestnut flour (and I'm sure I'm missing something here...). No, I'm sorry, it's not for sale. Perfect, I love this bakery even more and I can even forgive them the olive focaccia. I bow to their expertise, buy a couple of shortbread cookies, simple and fragrant, and I walk away with a new challenge in my pocket.

Hamelman, who's lived and worked in Ireland for few years, warn us that it's practically impossible to reproduce Irish Soda Bread on the other side of the ocean, both because there is no proper flour, and because the buttermilk we have available is only a poor imitation of the Irish one, tangy, full of flavor and fat from those green-pastured cows. Ehi, it wasn't me who said so! And yet, it's Hamelman himself who gives us a couple of tricks that can yield a quite satisfactory result: the first is to use a mix of whole-wheat flour and coarsely ground wheat flakes (that can somehow substitute the Irish whole-meal flour); the second is to substitute approximately 20% of our buttermilk with an equal amount of yogurt or sour cream.
A patch here and a patch there, and we have our own version of Irish Soda Bread. After all, if John Campbell from Belfast is selling me focaccia by weight, I think I'm allowed to make his bread, don't you think?
And it's still Hamelman, God bless him, who comes to rescue me with a footnote below the recipe. When I read his words, I almost wanted to catch a plane and go visit him in Vermont to thank him in person. I know I'm going into a difficult subject and the arguments can't be reduced to few lines, but, even if I like to experiment in the kitchen, I'm fundamentally against the modern philosophy of having everything of everything everywhere. It's what I call ubiquitous strawberry. Not only strawberries, but also grapes, pineapple, blueberries and peaches available all year round: it sounds like the description of the Garden of Eden, instead it's today's reality, to me not exactly heavenly. I'm against the ubiquitous and universal strawberry, just like I'm against burrata cheese in Chicago or Sicilian granita in Bormio (small village in Northern Italy). Yes, you can make it, but please don't call it Sicilian granita , the same way they call Parmigiano that plasticized cheese from Chile, or Mozzarella that sort of processed cheese that never goes bad. Ehm...forgive me...I'm digressing here. To go back to our subject, I'd like to finish off with these words, about our Irish Soda Bread: "In a way, I'm glad we can't quite duplicate the bread here; like the Guiness, it's somehow right that soda bread can't simply cross the ocean and still be as good as it is in Ireland herself".
(J. Hamelman, Bread, p. 264)

John Campbell's Irish Bakery
5625 Geary Blvd.
(between 20th & 21st Avenue)
San Francisco, CA 94121
Tel: (415) 387-1536


Irish Soda Bread
for one round loaf of approximately 500 gr.

pastry flour 200 gr.
whole-wheat flour 30 gr.
wheat flakes 70 gr.
milk powder 12 gr.
sugar 1/2 teaspoon
salt 3/4 teaspoon(3 gr.)
baking soda 1 and a 1/2 teaspoon (8 gr.)
baking powder 1/2 teaspoon
buttermilk 265 gr.
(or 190 gr. buttermilk and 75 gr. yogurt or sour cream)

First of all, grind wheat flakes in a food processor, without turning them into powder, but keeping a coarse texture (I didn't have to do it, since the ones I bought were already good to go).
In a large bowl mix all dry ingredients together. If you're using yogurt (or sour cream), add it to the buttermilk and stir well until the mixture is smooth and homogeneous.
Pour buttermilk over flour mixture and mix lightly for few seconds. It's good enough when the dough comes together and forms a ball. It's not necessary to work it too hard (remember the old muffin rule?). You can make it by hand and without a mixer, because it's nothing like a traditional bread, being more like a compromise between bread and muffins' or scones' dough.
Turn the dough onto the work surface, dusted with flour, work it to give it a round shape and gently flatten it to eliminate any air pocket inside. Dust its surface with flour, transfer the bread to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and divide it with two perpendicular cut, pushing the blade about 80% of the way down.
Bake it at 475 for 15 minutes, then lower the temperature to 450 and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes. You will get a nice golden crust. If the bread is still pale along the cuts, it means that it's not fully cooked. If that's the case, keep baking it for few more minutes. Let it cool on a rack before slicing.
Irish Soda Bread should be eaten the same day. You can freeze it, or keep in a paper bag for few days, then slice it and lightly toast it before eating.

The Miracle Bread

After putting it in a corner to wait for better times, I finally had the chance to try this recipe that about 2 years ago has started spreading like crazy through foodblogs from all over the planet.
Now I wonder why it took me so long to venture into this experiment, since it seems like I can't live without this bread anymore. Oh, yeah, I remember, it must have been because after moving BY MYSELF (yu uhhhhhh!), I lived several months without pots, pans, measuring tools or gadgets of any kind. I had thought that maybe it was more urgent to get a bed, a mattress and a couple of chairs (to tell you the truth I managed to add a pair of boots to the list of things that I needed to buy with maximum urgency, but this is another story...)

Flour, water, salt and yeast, a couple of swirls with your hand, sbam! Done. The rest of the job it's the bread that does it by itself, so I'll have more time to go to the movies or to do some more shopping : )
The credit of spreading this miraculous process through the ether goes to Mark Bittman, aka The Minimalist. He's the one who published it on the NY Times, adapting it from Sullivan Street Bakery in NY. From there the recipe took a life of its own, and the NKB (No Knead Bread) has come out of the oven in Manhattan and Portland, passing through Naples, Cordoba and San Paolo, to finally land in my tiny studio on 30th Street, Noe Valley, San Francisco.

You can find the video with the explanation here. Enjoy the show.


No-Knead Bread
for 1 loaf of about 750 gr.

all purpose flour 430 gr.
water 345 gr.
salt 9 gr.
instant dry yeast 1 gr.
cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting

First of all, check your appointments for the next day and make sure you plan them around bread time. This is the most difficult part, the rest, as it's been pointed out many times before, is so easy even a four year old kid could do it.

In a bowl, mix flour, salt and water. I've used a third whole wheat flour and two thirds white flour. You can change the proportions, but keep in mind that whole wheat flour rises less and makes bread more dense. Next time, I will try to increase the quantity of whole wheat flour and see how far I can go to still get nice holes in the crumb.
Add water and briefly mix with your hand until everything is incorporated, but DO NOT KNEAD (otherwise, what kind of no knead bread is it?).
Cover with plastic and let it rise from 12 to 18 hours, depending on the room temperature. The dough will be wet and sticky, with bubbles all over its surface.

The next day, shed the dough on a cotton towel generously dusted with cornmeal or wheat bran, or a combination of the two (you can also add other kinds of seeds of your choice, like flax or fennel). Fold the dough as shown in the video, flip it so that the seam faces down, dust with more flour, cover with the towel and let it rest for another two to three hours.
Preheat the oven and the baking dish (preferably use a cast iron one, but pyrex will be fine as well) at 450, both need to be piping hot when you are ready to bake.
Using the cloth, flip the dough in the pan very quickly, so that the seam faces up, cover with the lid and put the pan in the oven. After 30 minutes, take off the lid and keep baking for another 15 to 30 minutes until you get a nice brown and crunchy crust. Let it cool on a rack before slicing.
Spread it with jam, bite and congratulate yourself : )