It's at the point where I want to ask "Son Boulanger" from "La Perle et Son Boulanger" at the market for some of his sourdough starter to make my own version of his magnificent bread. Making starter is a three-day process I will soon embark on, but the other day I wanted bread and it was Friday, and that's two whole days before Sunday. What's a girl to do?
Yes, I could go to Première Moisson where the bread is also amazing (but not quite as amazing) and buy a loaf, but that felt like cheating on my "boulanger", even if he does belong to the Pearl. So I made my own. There's something really nice about making your own bread. The kneading, the patience to let it rise, the baking...I was mostly convinced when I found a recipe that called for yogurt since I need to use up my kilogram of yogurt by the time I leave for Toronto this Friday.
So practicality and desire came together in the form of multigrain bread.
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 1/2 cups boiling water
2 tbsp honey
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp ground fennel seeds (or anise. Is there a difference? There must be, but I don't know it. If you don't like the black licorice flavour, skip it)
2 tsp cane sugar
1/2 cup warm water
2 packages dry yeast
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups all-purpose flour (I used 4 cups of whole wheat, which is bad, but probably better than trying to use my latest gluten-free flour blend)
1/2 cup wheat bran or oat bran (or a mix of both)
Water and salt to glaze (or egg)
Plus honey and jam and things to serve (above: blueberry honey and apple butter), or toast the bread for hamburger buns.
This was just plain fun. It took forever, but I had the time.
I combined the buckwheat oats and cornmeal in a large bowl and stirred in the water, salt, oil, honey and ground fennel (I even ground my whole fennel seeds in my mortar and pestle. Yes, that was a little self pat on the back...but I so wish I had a coffee grinder. I live down the road from Canadian Tire but I'm stubbornly waiting to find one at a yard sale for even less. Apparently when Quebecers move they take their coffee grinders with them. They'll leave a brand new DVD player, expensive appliances, pots, pans, and juicers, but a grinder goes with them.
Then I set the mixture aside to let it cool for 20 minutes while I worked with the yeast.
I had one package of dry yeast and one package of dry instant yeast. These are not the same things. You add the instant yeast to dry ingredients, not to warm water, but the non-instant yeast needs to froth and bubble in warmth for 10 minutes. I also messed this step up. You're supposed to dissolve the sugar in the water first, then sprinkle the yeast over top. I added the sugar last and stirred it in. I didn't know if it was okay to stir the yeast but then I saw a TV show later that instructed you to do just that anyway. I breathed easier. What I don't know about bread could fill a book. Unfortunately, no one would buy it.
My yeast bubbled up, though, merrily. It got frothy and kept popping up like gnocchi out of the water, except the result looked like the top of a cappuccino, not pasta. Both are Italian, so both are good.
In the 10 minutes this whole bubbling thing took I mixed the whole wheat flour with the wheat bran and the instant yeast. It really didn't take 10 minutes, though, so I did some thumb-twiddling while I was at it.
Then I stirred the frothy yeast and added it to the buckwheat-cornmeal mixture. I plopped in the cup of yogurt and the whole wheat flour mixture and stirred it gently together. It was supposed to get to the point where it didn't stick to my hands, but that didn't happen. So I added a bit more flour...and it almost happened...I kind of sort of tried to knead for 10 minutes, but that didn't really happen either since it was all sticking to my hands.
Well...
I put the dough in my big oiled bowl and covered it with plastic wrap. Into the oven on the lowest possible heat with the door slightly open for 1 1/2 hours. It doubled! Miracle of miracles it actually doubled in size like it was supposed to! Usually bread only needs one package of yeast so the two packages must have been working well.
So to thank it for doubling I punched it down. I divided it in half and put one in a loaf pan and one onto a baking sheet to make a country loaf like I'd recently seen someone much better at bread than me do. The pans were lightly oiled too, just like they were supposed to be. Now that my bread had risen I didn't want to mess anything else up and ruin my good luck.
I covered it again with plastic wrap (loosely) and it let it rise for an hour.
It actually rose again! It was going to be voluminous bread! But then when I took the plastic wrap off and brushed with the glaze it started deflating. Oh no! The oven was preheating since the bread had been in there only at low to rise. What do I do? What COULD I do? Cry a little inside was about all.
When the oven preheated to 400 I put in the loaves and baked for about 45 minutes, until the centre of the bread registered 190 Fahrenheit on a meat thermometre. It was funny...my thinner baking sheet loaf didn't cook as fast as my loaf pan loaf for some reason. The loaf pan temperature shot up on my meat thermometre but the country-style loaf took its time and even needed an extra 5 minutes. I have no idea how this is possible. Well, I took the breads out, let them cool, and enjoyed the wonderful whole wheat chew of Première Moisson flour in my under-risen but still delicious, homemade bread.
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