Kneadyguy’s Pain de Crap-agnard

A fortnight ago I received a comment from W. This was remarkable because it was the first comment from someone who isn’t either family or a close friend. It’s starting to feel like I’ve got a proper blog going on here.

W and I have been corresponding back and forth and she has generously lent me two interesting books on the subject of baking.

I’ve started with Pain de Campagnard from The Bread Bible. This is a wholemeal and rye loaf built from a three day old sponge starter.

Kneadyguy’s Pain de Campagnard

My review
A floor tile of uneatable crap!
End review

Sigh, this was meant to be a normal round rustic loaf. My dough was just very, very wet. I couldn’t knead it, fold it or shape it. It regressed into a gloopy puddle whenever I tried to handle it. You can see from the picture what happened when I put it onto the baking tray.

I’m guessing that I made a mistake somewhere with the amounts. It’s an American recipe so everything is measured in those God damned American cup measures.

Perhaps I could pretend it is a very large homemade biscuit.

Dilbert

During my surfing of the internet I’ve noticed that this dill bread recipe is very popular. It’s just a straightforward, white bread with the addition of onion, dill and lots of cream cheese. With so many delicious ingredients it would be hard to go wrong. And as luck would have it, I’ve a constant supply of fresh dill growing on my front balcony. The wife and I have recently started a small herb garden. I suspect she is trying to divert my new enthusiasm for growing strange things.

After my last couple of successes, I started this recipe feeling very confident indeed. I cast my experienced eye over the recipe and thought to myself, “No, no. this is all wrong. It’s a recipe for amateurs. There’s far too much yeast. Let’s cut back on the gunpowder and instead grow an aggresive sponge starter. Eh, and what’s this? Just one rising and a proving of one and a half hours each. This is clearly meant for Jamie Oliver fanboys. Let’s give it two risings with one being for 24hrs in the fridge. That will give the bread time to develop an interesting bubbly texture.
Oh and this presentation – euuhhh. Bread tins! God I hate bread tin. So naff and Northern European.”

So, I decide to bake half the dough in a bread tin and the other half as a country style loaf directly on the baking stone. Sexy baking stone = Sexy bread. Unsurprisingly it was a disaster from start to finish. During the first rising, the dough almost exploded due to my TNT sponge starter. The second rising was fast but at least under control. The final proving, well the dough just gave up. The weight of lifting all that cheese a third time was too much for the glutens.

I knew things were going badly but my ego was determined that I would somehow improve the recipe. So for the sake of a little decoration, I decided to cut a slit accross the top of the loaf and dust with a little white flour. There was a slow hissing/farting noise and the dough sank another half inch in exhausted protest.

The end result was, unsurprisingly, a tad heavy. Oh, and that other loaf I cooked directly on the stone, well the cheese burnt and turned black in the first five mins.

Scandanavian Dill Bread
(Sorry. I forgot to take pictures.)

My review
Appearance: Looks like a yellow brick.
Crust: None worth speaking of. The burnt pieces of onion tasted quite bitter.
Texture: Tastes like a yellow brick.
Taste: Basically a boring white loaf. The nuggets of onion hidden inside are tasty. I can’t really taste the dill.

Wife’s review:
Appearance: “That’s a lot of bread.” (Looking very unenthusiastic)
Texture: “It’s too cakey.”
Taste: “You used a WHOLE tub of cream cheese! How much did that cost? “
“Stop adding cheese to your doughs. The breads always turns out tasting of that artificial cheese flavouring you get with cheesy crackers.”

We only managed to eat about half of this loaf but I’ve processed the remainder into breadcrumbs and stored them in the freezer. With all that cheese, onion and dill they should make a tasty coating for fish.

Even yeast deserves better than this.

I’ve baked a few loafs by now and a pattern of sorts has started to emerge. I always cock it up. The annoying thing is that I’ve cocked up a different stage each and every time. Today’s mistake was memorable for being particularly dumb; I left out an ingredient.

” Eah? How is that possible? There are only four ingredients required to make dough.”

“Correct! Flour, water, yeast and salt. And I left out the ‘effing salt”.

I’d finished the initial stages of mixing and kneading and was pleased with myself for doing a good job with shaping the dough. Then I noticed the unopened salt jar besides me. @#$#!!! I tried to save the situation by flattening out my dough, adding the salt, kneading again and reshaping. But dough is a temperamental mistress and this batch didn’t appreciate my clumsy Irish caresses. The salt stuck together in lumps and my dough became so over kneaded that it just tore off in clumps in my hands. “How bad?”, you might say. Well the last time I over kneaded my dough was when I prepared the loaf in my ‘About‘ section.

Stoner

If you’ve read my last few posts you’ll notice a growing frustration at my inability to make a crusty loaf of bread. The secret of course is to do the research, improve my techniques and experiment until I get it right. But that all sounds like hard work so instead I’ve been looking around for a toy which promises a quick fix.

So whilst most guys dream of owning a Porshe, a plasma screen or a moderately successful Swedish model, well I’m caught up in a fantasy of a baking stone.

A baking stone is really just a baking tray made from some ceramic material. It becomes scaldingly hot inside your cooker and provides a similar intense heat to that which you would get inside a professional brick oven.

I’ve been calling around the various baking shops in Singapore and no none seem to stock the fecking things. But then I hit some luck when I called a small, local baking store in the housing estates called Gim Hin Lee.

Kneadyguy: “Hi. Do you by any chance sell baking stones?”
Owner: “Yes.”
Kneadyguy: “Oh my God! Thank you. I love you. I’ll be at the shop in twenty minutes”.

20 minutes later

Kneadyguy: “Hi, its me from the phone. The baking stone guy.”
Owner: “” (Retreating slightly from the counter.)
Kneadyguy: “So, where is it?”
Owner: “…..” (Staring me in the eye.)
Kneadyguy: “Am, WHERE is the baking stone?”
Owner: “Ah, baking store.” (smiling)
Kneadyguy: “Yes, it’s very nice but the baking stone?”
Owner: “Yes, baking store!”
Kneadyguy: “I’ll definitely have a look around but first of all could you show me the…. “

Pretty dumb

Before starting this blog I was already experimenting with breadmaking using a breadmaker. The breadmaker came with a variety of simple directions and recipes, all in those bloody annoying American measuring units. But yankie units weren’t going to flummox a resourceful cook and statistician like myself. Somewhere in my kitchen I found one of those plastic containers which measure out a standard cup of flour.

Late at night I would add the ingredients to the machine and set the timer. I’d wake in the morning with the magical smell of bread creeping through my flat. The walk to the kitchen was exciting like Christmas. In the breadmachine would be small clumps of unmixed, unrisen and very unappetizing burnt dough balls. Six attempts resulted in six identical, spirit crushing disasters. Santa was leaving lumps of yellow coal in my Christmas stocking.

Eventually I worked out the problem. My measuring cup was designed for washing machine powder and not for cooking.