Pain de Campagnard - Rustic, Countryman's Bread from Beth Hensperger

So here's my third use of sourdough with the help of Beth Hensperger. I decided to try her rustic country bread. The recipe calls for wheat berries, which I actually HAVE! I bought them and used them for one of the rustic breads in the Tartine cookbook (another one that I love, but each bread takes two or three days).

This bread is also a three day bread that I shortened to two days because I used my levain instead of making hers. I started with 1 cup of my sourdough levain and added 1 1/2 cups of warm water and 2 cups of bread flour. The mixture was really wet and bubbly.

On Day Three (it really was my second day, but if you follow the recipe, this is Day Three), I think Beth left out a step. She says to stir down the sponge and add the "yeast mixture." She says to add 1 tsp active dry yeast. I've never used active dry yeast without dissolving it and she does say "yeast mixture" so I dissolved the tsp of yeast in 1/4 cup of water with the tiniest bit of honey to make the yeast happier. THEN I added the what-was-then-yeast-mixture to the sponge.

I drained the wheat berries (1/4 cup soaked in boiling water for FOUR hours - this bread takes all of the third day) and poured them over the yeast and sponge. Then added 1/3 cup of rye flour and a cup of bread flour. This whole combo is mixed well and then you add up to 2 1/2 cups of bread flour, 1/2 cup at a time. I only needed 2 cups, despite the 1/4 cup of yeast mix water.

After kneading this, my bread dough was left to rise for 2 - 2 1/2 hours. The little nubs poking out are the wheat berries. Well, I'm going to leave it and go take a coronavirus on-line chair yoga class.

Two and a half hours and a yoga class later, the risen dough looks like this:

I poured it out of the rising bowl and cut it into two parts. Then I shaped the two parts into smooth balls.

I let these sit on the counter for about five minutes and then placed them upside down in two bannetons.

Bottoms up! Here they are, ready to rise for another 1 1/2 hours. I baked each of them in my cloche. When I do that, I put the bread in the hot cloche at 500 degrees in the oven for 22- 25 minutes. Then I lower the temperature to 450. After 10 minutes at 450, I remove the cover of the cloche and let the loaf brown for another 10 minutes or so.

I just can't figure out the lame and snipped these with scissors - also didn't come out well. I'll bet the bread tastes great for tomorrow's toast, though!

This bread does not have big holes because it is kneaded hard and well. I don't think that was the goal of this bread. Having had it toasted for breakfast, it was delicious. My favorite of these three Beth Hensperger sourdough loaves is the Pain de Seigle, though, because of the caraway seeds.

Oatmeal Graham Bread from Hensperger

I was out of town over the weekend and didn't get home until late Monday so I baked my October oatmeal weekend bread on Tuesday. I picked Beth Hensperger's Oatmeal Graham bread from her wonderful book: Bread for All Seasons.

I love this cookbook and this bread appears in the February section. Personally I think it's perfect for fall as well.

Here is the ingredient list:

2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats (I always use McCann's)
1/2 cup honey (my own from my bees)
4 T butter - she calls for unsalted - I didn't have any and used salted
1 1/2 T active dry yeast
pinch of sugar (I used a dip of honey on a tiny whisk)
1/4 cup warm water
2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups graham or whole wheat flour
2 2/1 - 3 cups unbleached all purpose flour
extra rolled oats for sprinkling
1 egg yolk
2 T sesame seeds

As in many oatmeal breads, first you boil the water and pour it over the oatmeal, honey and butter. This has to cool in order not to kill the yeast in the third step.


Meanwhile you soften the yeast in the water. I stir the yeast with a whisk dipped in honey and then leave the whisk in the mix as the yeast begins to work.


Now that the oatmeal mix is cool and the yeast is up and running, you pour the yeast into the oatmeal in the mixing bowl. Add salt, whole wheat flour (I always use King Arthur's) and a cup of the unbleached flour. You beat this together well - about a minute.

Then you add the rest of the unbleached flour, 1/2 cup at a time. I switch to the bread hook after the mixture gets pretty stiff. Knead first by machine and then some on the counter before leaving it to rise for 1 1/2 - 2 hours.


When the bread has risen, divide the dough in half and shape it into two loaves. Grease the baking pans and sprinkle oatmeal all over the bottom and sides.



Before baking in a 375 oven, brush the tops of the loaves gently with the beaten egg yolk and sprinkle with 1 T sesame seed per loaf.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes and then cool on racks.

This is a beautiful and absolutely delicious bread. It is soft and honey-nutty tasting.

The crumb is pretty and the bread crust is tender. So far this is my favorite of the oatmeal breads. It would do well for sandwiches (tried it at lunch today) or as breakfast toast.

The First Oatmeal Bread - Oatmeal-Potato Bread from Beth Hensperger

I believe that I own four of Beth Hensperger's books on bread baking. I decided to start the oatmeal breads for October with her oatmeal potato bread from The Bread Bible. I've made the bread many times before and wanted it to be a part of the oatmeal comparison because it is a never-fail, always delicious bread.

Since I began this blog, I have worried about whether it's OK to post recipes that I get from cookbooks. Today I searched and found an article on About.com that leads me to believe that it's OK to post the ingredients but not the words from the cookbook as regards the action taken in to create the recipe.

In this article, the author says: "According to the U.S. Copyright Office, a list of ingredients isn't protected by copyright law, but the instructions and any other "substantial literary expression" that go with it may be."

So here are the ingredients:

1 potato, approximately 6 ounces (I use a baking potato and didn't weigh it - but I imagine it was a little more than 6 ounces)
2 T unsalted butter
1 T active dry yeast
1 T sugar
1 1/2 cups warm milk
1 T salt
1 1/2 cups rolled oats (I always use McCann's - the best)
5 1/2 - 6 cups unbleached flour
a little bit of rolled oats to coat baking pans

The recipe calls for softening the yeast in warm potato water with a little sugar. I usually use honey instead, and did in this recipe. I used honey from my bees and a tiny whisk, dipping the whisk in the honey and then using it to stir the yeast into the warm water.



I am interested in how delicious most breads made with potato water are. I searched the web to figure this out. Sometimes the potato water is used as a substitute for using milk, but in this recipe, both are used.

I cooked the potato, cut into chunks but not peeled, in water to cover for about 20 minutes. Then I ran the potato without peeling it through my ricer and then stirred in the butter. The peels stay in the ricer and it's much easier than peeling the chunks.




Then you combine the potato, the yeast, the sugar, the milk, the salt, the oatmeal, and 2 cups of flour. Whe you beat this together, the dough looks pretty shaggy. Then you gradually add flour until the dough is the right consistency.

Hensperger suggests that the dough be a little sticky because the oatmeal will continue to absorb moisture during the rising.



After the dough has been kneaded and rises in a bowl, you shape it into two loaves. I sprinkled oatmeal on the bottom of the 9 X 4 pan as the recipe suggests, but I think it would have been even prettier in the end if I had sprinkled the oatmeal on the greased sides of the pan as well.



The bread rose beautifully.


Then I baked it in my oven with the baking stone for 10 minutes at 425 and then for 35 minutes at 350. It turned out just perfectly.


I tasted it and loved the salty, potato taste of the slice. The crust is nice - chewy but not tough. I thought the bread was a perfect oatmeal bread.

White Bread Comparison of Recipes

The time has come to compare the September white breads. I got all the breads out of the freezer and allowed them to come to room temperature. Then I tasted each one.

I decided that my comparison would be on crust, taste and texture.

1. White Mountain Bread: The Bread Bible

• Crust: Soft and easy to bite
• Taste: Slightly salty taste
• Texture: Funny - tore not in half but in a curve. The crumb was nice and had some openness to it.
  

2. Basic White Bread II: The Book of Bread

• Crust: Has character but is easy to bite through. It is a little chewy compared to the first one.
• Taste: Nice full taste, a little sweet and really smells of the honey that is in it.
• Texture: The slice feels moist and substantial. However, this one had huge air holes between the bread and the crust - probably because I let the loaves rise too long.

3. Sands Basic White Bread: The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook

• Crust: A little tough and chewy. The crust has a lot of body and complements the bread taste
• Taste: A sour-ish flavor with a bit of salt. Tastes like it would make great sandwiches
• Texture; Moist, even crumb

4. White Bread: Variation I: The Bread Baker's Apprentice

• Crust: Most substantial so far but not as tasty as the King Arthur crust
• Taste: Somewhat ordinary taste but wouldn't compete with anything that was on it. Slightly sweet - uses sugar rather than honey
• Texture: Prettiest crumb of all the recipes - tiny holes, nice feel, crust and bread married very well
  

5. Basic White Bread: Sunset Cookbook of Breads

• Crust: Tough, kind of crackles as you chew through it, not very tasty--has a burnt toast feel and flavor to it.
• Taste: Almost no taste - more like store-bought sandwich bread
• Texture: Almost as pretty as the Reinhart bread. Tiny air holes and a feeling of good holding together in the slice.

So now I have to decide my favorite. The Jones' recipe for Basic White Bread II was my very favorite.

I think I like sweeter white breads and this one smelled of the honey in it. This recipe called for 4 T of honey - 1 T more than the other recipes. It was the most moist of the breads and felt good in my mouth.

I also really liked the feel of the crust. I didn't feel disappointed because of the air hole in the crust - I am quite sure that was not the recipe but was rather due to baker error - my leaving the loaf out rising for too long while I hiked a trail!

For sandwiches, I liked the Reinhart (Bread Baker's Apprentice) bread the best. The tiny air holes in the crumb and the feel of the bread were very good. It called for 3 1/4 T of sugar. I think if I had used honey rather than sugar, this one would have been my favorite overall. I also liked the ease of using instant yeast in this bread which none of the other recipes did.

I am very disappointed in the Sunset bread - it really brought nothing new to the table. The King Arthur bread was good, but the crust is what made me put it aside. I liked the taste of it but didn't like the feel of the crust.

Except for the Sunset recipe, I would make all of these recipes again, but I'll give 4 stars to the Book of Bread for their great white bread recipe.

So tomorrow begins the first weekend in October. This month I am baking oatmeal breads. Oatmeal seems like a great way to go into the cool fall.

Although Reinhart doesn't offer an oatmeal bread, I have found five recipes that I will use for my October comparison.

Too Late for the BBA Challenge, so What Will I Do?

The bread challenges that are going on on the Internet intrigue me, but I'm too late to the party. I read about the BBA Challenge in the Washington Post. It started back in May and is closed with 200 bakers. They are baking their ways through the Bread Baker's Apprentice, a book that I own and would enjoy baking the recipes, but they are four months into weekly baking, so I can't really do that one. It did make me open the book to see the recipes and get inspired, though!

My grandson for whom I started this blog since he and I were baking every week, has moved away from his interest in bread baking. I continue to bake every week and needed some new perspective to inspire me.

So I've decided to pick a type of bread and bake that type of bread weekly for a month to determine which of the four recipes is the best in my opinion. I have lots of bread cookbooks and will have good choices to do this. I'm going to let The Bread Bible by Beth Hensberger be my guide for the first recipe this time because her recipes are always dependably good. (And I want the first thing I try to be really delicious).

If anyone would like to join me in this endeavor, let me know what you are baking and how it turns out - either post a comment or email me (see contact Linda on the left side).

The bread for September, my first month, will be plain white bread. I started week one with Hensberger's White Mountain Bread. She likes the crumb in this bread which is helped with a combination of water and milk in the recipe.

Note: In this work to find the best white bread I will not be varying the recipe from the cookbooks in which I find them so I won't be giving you the recipe. The previous recipes I've posted on this blog are somewhat different from the place where I found them or they were published already on the Internet. I'll hope instead that you'll want to buy the cookbook I am using and have the treasure for yourself!

As per her instructions, I let this bread rise in a straight sided container. I usually use a pottery bowl, but she says that it is better for the bread to rise up rather than out. So this time I used a large Tupperware straight sided container. When you turn the dough out of a straight sided container, it looks like the picture below!



To form the loaves, I divided the dough with a bench knife and patted each half into a long rectangle. I folded the rectangle into overlapping thirds and then rolled it up from the short end, pinching the ends of the roll with the side of my hand.


When fully risen, she says to slice a 1/4 inch deep slash down the length of the loaf. I did this, but I'm afraid that my slash was too shallow because it didn't really separate during baking. Next time I will be braver.



The loaf baked for 42 minutes and looked beautiful. I am not in my usual kitchen this weekend (I'm in the north Georgia mountains) so I didn't know how it would do without my Thermador oven. But it came out lovely and delicious.

This was a great bread for bacon/lettuce/tomato sandwiches - it toasted beautifully and we made sandwiches with heirloom tomatoes from the Farmer's Market in Rabun County.
As Hensperger noted, the crumb on this bread was very nice.



I believe in order to have an end of the month taste test, I'll need to freeze at least a slice of this bread for comparison.

Features of this recipe for White Mountain Bread: active dry yeast, whole milk, no eggs. I mention these because the next week, the bread I'll try will be from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. Peter Reinhart uses instant milk powder, instant yeast and his recipe has an egg in it.

Note: I also baked a second white bread this weekend from The Book of Bread.

Toasted Pine Nut Bread from Hensperger

Dylan and I were adventurous today. We made bread with toasted pine nuts! This recipe is from Hensperger's book: Bread for All Seasons. It's almost March and this is one of the March recipes.

First you preheat the oven to 325. Spread 1 1/2 cups pine nuts in a single layer on an ungreased cookie sheet. Toast in the oven for 12 minutes, stirring once during the process. Don't let the nuts get dark. Remove from the oven and cool.

Sprinkle 2 packages of yeast and a pinch of brown sugar over 1/4 cup of warm water. Let it stand for about 10 minutes to begin proofing.

Put the pine nuts in a blender or food processor with 1 cup whole-wheat flour and process until it's like coarse meal.
It should look like this mixture below.

In the mixer, combine 1 cup warm water, 2 T brown sugar, 1 cup warm milk, 2 T of butter, melted, and the remaining 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour. Beat about 1 minute. Add the yeast and the nut flour mix. Beat another minute. Then gradually add flour - about 3 - 3 1/2 cups - about 1/2 cup at a time until a soft dough forms.

Turn the dough out and knead it until firm and springy, adding as little flour as possible. Place in a greased container and allow to rise for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Divide the risen dough into two portions. Form each into a round. Place the loaves seam side down on a greased or parchment lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise again - about 50 minutes.

Preheat oven to 425. Slash the tops of the loaves with sharp knife. Don't make the cuts more than 1/4 inch deep. Put the loaves in the oven and immediately turn the oven down to 400. Bake for about 40 - 45 minutes.


The is a rich, tender, interesting bread. We ate half a loaf for dinner.

Seven Grain Honey Bread

Today Dylan and I baked another of my favorite Hensperger recipes from my falling-apart-at-the-seams copy of her Baking Bread: Old and New Traditions.
The recipe calls for seven grain cereal and I only had five grain but I used it and hoped for the best.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups boiling water
• 1 cup seven grain cereal (I used five-grain cereal)
• 1 1/2 T active dry yeast
• pinch sugar
• 1/4 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup warm buttermilk
• 1/3 cup local honey (as a beekeeper, I was thrilled to use my own honey from my backyard bees)
• 3 T corn or other vegetable oil
• 2 T unsalted butter, melted
• 3 eggs (we were almost out of eggs and had only two but I soldiered on)
• 1 T salt
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups unbleached bread flour.

And here's what you do:

• Pour boiling water over the cereal and allow to stand for 1 hour
• Proof the yeast in the warm water with the pinch of sugar (about 10 minutes)
• In a large bowl, combine the buttermilk, honey, oil, butter, eggs, salt, and 1 cup flour.
• Beat hard until smooth
• Add the cereal mixture and the yeast
• Add remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time until the dough clears the sides of the bowl.
• Knead the dough until it is soft and springy (about 3 minutes), adding flour as necessary
• Let rise in a greased bowl covered with plastic wrap for about 1 t0 1 1/4 hours
• Turn dough onto work surface and divide into three parts.
• Make round loaves - I have round baking pans - they are actually called pudding pans - and I used those
• Let rise about 30 to 40 minutes
• About 20 minutes before baking, preheat the oven to 375.
• Bake until golden brown and hollow sounding when tapped about 35 - 40 minutes.

Dylan's favorite part is licking the beater!

Here are the three loaves. I'm lucky they came out at all. I had baked rolls in my convection oven at 375 and thought it was still on when I put the loaves in the oven, but actually I had turned it off.

When the timer went off for me to take the bread out, I realized the oven wasn't even on, the bread was pale blonde and although it had achieved "spring" in the oven, it wasn't done in any way. I left the bread in the oven, turned the convection back on at 375 and baked it for another 20 minutes.

Despite the rocky baking experience and the lack of one egg, the loaves turned out pretty. They are a little softer than I would have imagined and the loaf on the left in the group picture shows the indentation from the cooling rack.

Maple Oatmeal Bread - Part One

Today I made Maple Oatmeal Bread from one of my favorite cookbooks by Beth Hensperger: Baking Bread: Old and New Traditions.

One of the keys to good bread is good ingredients. I used the ingredients above in this recipe. If you shop at Whole Foods, you'll recognize the brands and that most are organic.

The whole wheat flour in the upper right is some flour that I ground myself at a shop in Charleston, SC. It was so much fun - they had the wheat and I put it in the flour grinder and turned it into flour! I felt like the Little Red Hen!


I didn't have the wheat bran called for in the original recipe so I substituted ground flax seed. Here's what is in this bread:

• 2 T active dry yeast
• 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
• 1 1/2 cups warm water
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 2 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/3 cup wheat bran (I used ground flax seed instead)
• 1/2 cup oat bran
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 1/2 cups rolled oats
• 4 1/2 - 5 cups unbleached bread flour

1. First you proof the yeast in 1/2 cup of the warm water mixed with 1 tsp of the maple syrup.
2. Then in the work bowl of the mixer, combine the rest of the water, the maple syrup, milk, oil, salt, brans, whole wheat flour, oats and 1 cup bread flour.
   
3. Add the yeast. Beat for about a minute.
   
4. Then add the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time. The dough should still be moist when you are through so that the brans and the oatmeal can continue to absorb moisture as the dough rises.
5. Knead the bread and then put it in a greased bowl to rise for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. (Continued in next post)

Buttermilk Honey Bread - Part Two

As soon as I posted Part One, the timer went off and this bread was ready to come out of the oven. It makes great toast and sandwiches. Generally I am a fan of cooking with buttermilk.

I was sad to find out, as I set up the Part One post, that the Beth Hensperger book from which this recipe came is out of print. There are two copies on Amazon listed at over $144 and higher. You might also be able to find it on Bookfinder.com. I searched and found a few softcover copies of the book (mine is hardbound) for much less money.