bread

14.02.20 By nick

Classic French Bread Recipe: Pain Ordinaire Careme

Making a 225 year old bread

When I started baking homemade bread some 15 years ago, my “go to” bread book was “The Complete Book of Breads” by Bernard Clayton. This book still holds up and I encourage any baker to pick it up and try his recipes. The breads in the book have easy to follow recipes and have a nice background story on why each bread was selected. For today in particular, this book has a recipe for an old french bread daily loaf (Pain Ordinaire) from a baker named Antonin Careme, who was known as the “cook of kings and the king of cooks”. Careme said that this bread recipe pleased kings and nobles wherever he went and that anyone could make this bread, anywhere, with pleasing results that are easy to achieve.

It turns out that Careme was one of the original “celebrity chefs” while he lived in 18th and 19th centuries so it’s no wonder that Clayton included this formula in his book. It’s also then not very surprising that this formula makes an amazing loaf of homemade bread, even 225 years later.

*as a side note on Antonin Careme, he is credited for being a major component of the French cooking revolution “Grande Cousine” or Haute Cuisine, where fancy platings and different flavor profiles are layered on one another. He is also credited for creating the now traditional “chef’s hat”. This guy was no slouch!

The bread made by this old bread recipe has a soft crust like you would find on a baguette, and a soft crumb like you would find on a sandwich loaf. This is certainly a good analog to the soft Hokkaido Milk Bread we’ve made in the past and can show you how a little different technique and ingredients can change the final bread! It’s a great all around French bread and really think you’ll enjoy making and eating it.

Making This Homemade Bread

While I’ve followed the original recipe as closely as possible, I did take a couple of small liberties in the baking process. Firstly, the recipe would make two large boules so I scaled it down to make just one. Also, while Clayton instructs readers to bake the bread directly on a baking sheet, I decided to use my Emile Henry bread cloche to give the bread a better crust due to the steaming that the cloche promotes. The cloche will help your bread achieve a great crust!

Another slight modification from the original is that I added 2 teaspoons of salt instead of the recipe’s instructions to use just 1. I tasted the dough after kneading and felt that the flavor was lacking so I added another little bit of salt and that seemed to do the trick.

One thing that’s slightly different about this recipe that I’d forgotten about was the wet autolyse mixing. The recipe calls for all the water and yeast, and only half of the flour to be mixed for the first 10 minutes. This creates a wet batter-like mixture that kicks off the gluten development in what I’ll call a “dynamic autolyse”. When we do an autolyse period for sourdough or other types of breads, it’s a pretty static process in that we mix the water and flour and yeast and let things sit. With this recipe you take just half the flour and start the autolyse period during mixing for 10 minutes.

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After the initial 10 minute period, the rest of the flour and all the salt is added while the dough is kneaded. From there you let the dough rest and bulk ferment for 2 hours. During this time, the bread will more than double before it gets shaped and goes to the final rise and then finally to the oven for the bake.

Keep in mind that this recipe is fairly old and also very simple, so this bread can be made by bakers of all stripes and in almost any condition. If you go away on vacation you can pull this up on your phone and impress your family with an easy to make fresh baked loaf of bread in the mornings!

Bread Recipe

Pain Ordinaire Careme

This recipe was originally created some 225 years ago by celebrity chef Antonin Careme and can be found in Bernard Clayton's book "The Complete Book of Breads".

It is a very straightforward, easy to make recipe that anyone can make without much preparation or drama.

500 G King Arthur All Purpose Flour
300 Ml Water (Warm)
2 tsp Salt
1 pack Yeast

Mixing and Kneading

Add half of the flour, all of the water, and all of the yeast in to the mixer bowl and mix with the flat beater for 10 minutes
Switch to the dough hook
Incorporate the rest of the flour and all of the salt in to the mixture and knead for 10 minutes
The dough should be soft, smooth, and clean the sides of the bowl.

Bulk Fermentation

Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 2 hours. It will more than double during this time.

Shaping and Final Proof

On a very lightly floured surface, turn the dough and shape to your desired loaf.
Place the shaped dough in to a proofing basket and cover with plastic

Baking

Preheat the oven to 425˚F with the bread cloche
Remove the bread from the proofing basket and place it on a sheet of parchment paper
Score the bread with a lame or sharp knife to avoid "blowouts"
Load the bread in to the cloche and bake for 15 minutes with the lid
Remove the lid and finish baking for another 15 minutes or until the crust is nicely browned
Remove from the oven and let it cool before enjoying, about 10 minutes

These tools, found online, will help you bake bread at home just like the one I made here. If you follow these links and buy something, I will receive a small percentage to encourage me to keep baking and sharing with you!

16.12.18 By nick 1 Comment

Greek Feta Pull Apart Bread – Step By Step

This pullapart bread is so easy to make! Once in a while you get a little creative in the kitchen. Either because you’re short on time and just make things up as you go or because you don’t have the right ingredients so you just toss things in and hope things work out. But once in a while someone sends you a recipe tip that stirs up the imagination and you just go for it.

This last scenario is what happened to me the other day when my wife sent me a link to this YouTube video showing Aki making a nice looking Greek appetizer. The bread is basically a pull-apart loaf that has olive oil and is stuffed with spices and Feta cheese.

The following items will help you to make this bread. If you end up purchasing any of these items, the site will get a small portion and encourage us to keep going!

Knowing that we were having a dinner party at our house the next evening, I thought I’d give this bread a try and see if I could make it as good as that video made it seem. I did some research and it seems to be a fairly unique bread too. And to top it off this bread seemed pretty easy to make so after we fed the kids I got to work in the kitchen to mix the dough.

Soft, Chewy, And Delicious

This bread turned out way better than I expected. First off, the smell throughout the house was amazing thanks to all the good ingredients that went in to it. I was also pleasantly surprised that the mustard sauce topping wasn’t at all overpowering like I thought it would be. Guests kept commenting on how good this bread turned out, so I guess it’s a winner and a repeat contender for sure!

The overview of this Greek feta bread goes something like this. For the dough, all you need are these ingredients: Flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar, eggs, and olive oil. You mix it all up and let it rise, then you roll it and fill it. For the filling, you mix mustard and olive oil and spread it around the dough, then top with rosemary and oregano. I didn’t have any fresh so I used some dried herbs we had in a jar. Then you crumble and sprinkle the Feta cheese. From there you cut it in to rows, lay them on top of one another, then you cut the rows in to pieces, then lay them one on top of the other in an oiled bread pan. After an hour of rising you bake it and voila!

Here are the steps in a little more detail.

Allow the bread to rest for about half an hour after baking or it could fall apart unexpectedly!

Have some olives and olive oil available for dipping and this will be the hit of your dinner party!

23.10.18 By nick Leave a Comment

Bread with Yeasted Water

There are many ways to make bread. From slow sourdough breads that can take a few days from the time you mix to the time you bake to biscuits that can be mixed and cooked within a few moments, the variety of leavening agents available for the home baker are quite diverse.

By far the most popular method that folks use to bake bread at home is with store bought yeast. Just cut open the little bag and add to your mixing bowl and the dough will “double in size” in fairly short order. From there the baker shapes the dough, lets it rest for a little longer, and off it goes in to the oven for a tasty bread in half an hour.

One of the lesser known ways of making bread is by using yeasted water. Yeasted water is the result of adding something that has a little bit of fruit to a jar, and topping it off with water before sealing the jar and waiting for a few days. I first read about this baking method from this post a few years ago. Being the curious cat that I am, I researched a bit and found very little online at the time but decided to take the post’s words as truth and baked one of my first breads with “leavened water” that I made from plums. You can read the post and get a glimpse of the process but I’ll detail it here again for you. One thing that I think I omitted to say on the original post is that you should make your jar as full of water as possible in order to leave as much air as possible out of the jar. The air could cause your infusion to grow mold. This happened to me once and am sure is fairly common given that you want to generally keep these infusions in a warm area for a while.

So since fall is here it means that our local fruit farm had an abundance of prune plums, which are by far my favorite type of plum, so we bought an unnecessarily large amount. We sure had our fill for the season! I also made some plum jam and decided to make this infused yeasted water bread again with the last few plums of the year. You certainly don’t need to use plums for this, so look around your kitchen and get creative! You can use just about any fruit you want to use. Apples and raisins are other good fruits to use but use your imagination and give it a go.

The first step is to wash you jar and your plum really well. From there all you have to do is put the plums in the jar and fill the jar to the top with water before tightening the lid. Now place your creation somewhere it can be left alone for a few days, but nowhere you could forget about because if you do, the gas that gets built up in the jar could cause the jar to explode and thus remind you of where you had left it!

Check in on your infusion once a day so you can observe how things change but the you’ll know the mixture is ready when there are bubbles at the top of the jar.

If you are not ready to bake when the infusion is ready, you can put it in the fridge for a few days but note that this will increase the amount of time it takes for the bread to proof and may require a little bit of “spiking” with regular yeast. I put my infusion in the fridge for a couple of days this time and didn’t notice much of a slowdown but your mileage may vary.

When you do decide to bake, substitute the water in your formula for your infused yeast water and don’t add any yeast. Mix it all together and watch the magic happen. If after a few hours you don’t see any growth in your dough or it’s really slow, don’t hesitate to add a little bit of yeast to your dough and knead it again for a bit to incorporate everything. There’s no shame in that, you’ll still get the subtle aroma of the fruit and your results will be great!

Yeasted Plum Water Bread Recipe

500 grams King Arthur All-Purpose flour
335 ml yeasted plum water
22 grams salt
22 grams sugar

In a medium bowl add your flour, salt, and sugar then add the water. Mix to combine and cover. Using more or less a sourdough method, check in on the dough after half and hour and do a stretch and fold. Do a stretch and fold every half hour or so if your dough is slow to rise. If it’s rising quickly just one of two folds until it can pass the windowpane test easily will suffice.

Once it’s grown and nearly doubled, turn on to a floured surface and pre-shape your loaf to your desired final shape. Put in to a proofing basket and proof for an hour or so at room temperature or in the fridge overnight.

Pre-heat your oven to 500˚F and once ready, score your loaf and load it in the oven before turning the oven down to 450˚F. If you’re using a cloche like I did, bake it with the lid on for 15 minutes and finish baking without the lid, another 15 minutes or so.

Remove the loaf from the oven and let cool before enjoying.

Check out the full video of the process below. If you have any questions leave a comment on YouTube and make sure to subscribe to the channel!

All of the gear that I used to make the bread is listed below:

2.12.16 By nick Leave a Comment

No Knead Bread

Check out this short video for a brief overview on making no-knead bread.

As you can see, it’s really easy! Mix the ingredients and let them hang out overnight. Whenever you’re ready, pre-heat the dutch oven or cloche, load the bread, and bake away.

No-Knead Artisan Bread at Home

No-knead bread is a good way to make bread. It gives you a nice crust, decent flavor, and a good looking end product! This will get you on your way to artisan breads at home with minimal fuss.

7.10.16 By nick Leave a Comment

Infused Yeast Water Bread

Fall is here and one of my favorite end-of-summer/start-of-fall fruits is the prune plum. I was always a plum fan but what really makes me love them is the fun memories they bring back. One day while visiting family in Seattle’s Madison Park neighborhood I noticed how there were plum trees everywhere! My daughter was 3 at the time and we went out for an evening stroll when all of the sudden, a plum fell right on her head! Oh how we laughed at that! She ate that plum and we picked a few more along our route to be sure. We bonded over plums and I guess I’ve always loved them even more since that day.

Now that season is here again and I bought a huge quantity at our local fruit farm. Try as we might to eat them all, we weren’t able to. We even gave a third to our neighbors and still had some left over after 2 weeks! So, instead of baking a pie (which I really wanted to do!) I decided to make some yeasted water with the plums to try to make bread. I also harvested several seeds and will try to plant plum trees in our yard. If anyone has any insight on planting plum trees from seeds, connect with me via Facebook!

If you’ve never heard of yeasted water, it’s kind of magical. You get a mason jar, fill it with about 2/3 water, and add your fruit of choice to the water. I just pitted about 3 plums and lightly smooshed them in the jar. I then put the lid on tightly and put the jar in a cool darkish place for a week.

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Checking on it every few days I could see the magic start to happen. Bubbles were forming and I took the sniff test each time to make note of the sweet smell and to hear the bubbles fizz. After a week’s time the plums had all floated to the surface and the water had gone from clear to “plum” color – a beautiful dark rose/light purple hue. It also smelled very sweet. I almost took a swig to taste it but decided to save every drop for a double batch of bread.

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So, “how do you use yeast water to make bread?” you may ask. It’s really quite simple. Instead of adding any yeast, you just use the water. Does it work? You betcha! I got my inspiration from this post about a year ago and tried it, and have used this method a few times since. The tricky part is figuring out how much water to use in order to replace your yeast. Since I didn’t want it to fail I used all of the water and cheated by spiking the bread with just 1 gram of yeast. Turns out I really didn’t need this extra yeast as the dough was super active after a few hours on the bench.

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Process

Weigh the flour and add to a large mixing bowl
Add the other dry ingredients to the mix
Add the water to the mix, removing the fruit while doing so. You could probably leave it in but I didn’t want chunks in these breads.
Mix by hand or mixer until the dough mass just comes together. Cover with a lid and let sit for 30 minutes.
Mix by hand for another 5 minutes, and cover again for about 30 minutes.
Do 4 stretch and folds at 30 minute intervals. At the end of this cycle I saw bubbles indicating that the yeast was thriving and helping the bread to rise. My dough was really wonderful to work with at this point.
Let it sit and rest for about another 90 minutes.
After the dough has risen nicely, dump it out on a floured surface and divide in two. Pre-shape in to balls and let them rest for 5-10 minutes.
Shape your dough as desired and place in to proofing baskets.
Final proof for about an hour.
Put your bread cloche in the oven and pre-heat it to 425˚F.
Cut off a piece of parchment paper and put it on your baking peel. With oven gloves, carefully slide the bread in to the cloche and cover with the lid.
Bake with the lid for 15 minutes and remove it.
Bake the bread for another 15-20 minutes and remove once the bread is done.
Let it cool and enjoy!