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Second International Holma Workshop in Naturally Leavened Handcrafted Bread in Beautiful Scania, Sweden

October 21, 2014 · by Barbara · Leave a Comment

I am happy to announce the Second International Holma Workshop in Naturally Leavened Handcrafted Bread. This intensive 2-day workshop will be held during a weekend at the end of March 2015. Specifically, sign it on your calendar, the 28th and 29th March 2015. The workshop will be held in the Southern part of Sweden, at close range from the international airport (and beautiful city of) Copenhagen, Denmark. Holma is an organic farm located in the green plains of Scania, right across from Denmark. Accomodation will be in site and organic, scrumptious, meals will be included in the package.

And now to the coolest part, the baking.

Holma has a fully equipped kitchen with a big professional oven, professional stand mixers, large fridges for dough retardation, and… it’s own mill for freshly grinding flour from organic grains.

The workshop will cover the main areas of naturally leavened handcrafted bread. First, you will learn all you always wished to know -but never dared asking- about wild yeast. You will be introduced to several different sourdough cultures, including liquid and solid wheat starters, rye starter, and fruit-based wild yeast. Then you will be taught how to keep them alive and in great shape. And, best of it all, you will leave Holma with clones of those starters.

Then you will be introduced to, and taught how to master, the basic bread baking techniques using natural leaven, including:

– Basic and flavored country batards and boules
– Sourdough baguette
– Whole rye bread
– Heritage emmer bread
– Sourdough ciabatta
– Laminated sourdough dough (croissant and Danish pastries)
– Sourdough pizza and focaccias

Doesn’t it sound like heaven?

Special focus of the workshop will be how too handle high-hydration dough and how to achieve an open crumb, even when working with whole wheat and heritage flours, and how to creatively score loaves in order to make them look beautiful.

Apprentices will also learn how to play with dough, enriching it to their liking with seasonal goodies.

The main teacher will be Holma Organic Kitchen’s Chef Beesham Soogrim, who is an expert in working with fresh and seasonal ingredients and has recently gained attention for his high-skilled and creative mastering of sourdough bread baking. Beesham is a former pupil of Master Manfred Henoksson, and has held with him the First International Holma Workshop in Naturally Leavened Handcrafted Bread. To help Beesham, there will be… moi, Barbara Elisi in blood and flesh (finally!!). So, if you ever wondered how to obtain my open crumb, Holma will be the right place to learn it, directly from the source.

Within the 2-day workshop we will be honored by the presence of Bengt-Göran Carlsson and Hans Larsson from the nonprofit organization OrdBildarna, who will teach us about heritage grains in general and local varieties in particular.

So what are you waiting for?? Let us know your interest as soon as possible, there are only 7 places left out of the 10 available. The fee is 370 Euros, and includes: the course fee, 3 nights stay, and all meals cooked by the wonderful organic vegetarian kitchen at Holma. Mail your interest ASAP to Beesham: beesham63@gmail.com (mobile: 0046 739960721).

Looking forward to meet you and bake the hell out of those ferments in Holma!

Filed Under: Uncategorized ·

Barley Semola Sourdough

June 6, 2014 · by Barbara · 18 Comments

Some loaves just come out happy. This dough, made with no other ambition than having bread for the week, just happened to make loaves with a perfectly moist and open crumb and a crunchy and fragrant crust. That’s why I feel like sharing this simple, yet rewarding, recipe.

Of course the main ingredient is a lively starter, there is no way around it. So go check my previous posts on how to rise and keep a starter cause my beloved 3-year old wheat sourdough culture is a good 70% of my satisfaction in bread baking.

For the variety of shapes showed here, including the cute margueritte you can spot at the end of the post, I used the same dough. The dough was mostly made out of stone-ground organic wheat (also called high extraction wheat) where the majority of the seed is ground into the flour (80% in the one I used). Since I like to experiment with different flours I have also used a part of freshly milled barley flour and a part of finely ground semola (super fine durum) flour. Scroll down to read the simple, yet complete, method. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Buns, Loaf, Sourdough · Tagged: Barley, crusty, high extraction wheat, open crumb, semola

Answer to Don: The “Holey” Bread That Fed Generations

May 19, 2014 · by Barbara · 20 Comments

Yes it’s true: we suddenly became all concerned about how many holes we can fit in our slice of bread. When I say “we” I refer obviously to bread nerds, but also to the wider audience of bread lovers, people who don’t necessarily know how to rise a loaf but who appreciate a slice or two (or three or four or a whole loaf) of good rustic sourdough with a moist and open crumb and a crunchy, thick, crust. This wider, somehow unaware, audience is what has made the success of bakeries like Tartine in US, and of similar bakeries happily flourished all over the globe. (Above: Home-milled/home-sifted/home-baked 50% whole wheat sourdough)

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Contemporary, Fooling Around, Review, Sourdough, Traditional · Tagged: Bread Commentary, Bread Revolution, Country Sourdough, Crumb, Holes, Holey Bread, Pain de Campagne

Guest Post: The Hole Truth by Don Sadowsky

May 18, 2014 · by Barbara · 13 Comments

Recently, there has been quite a lot of discussion on forums for bread acolytes regarding the how and why of the current trend toward open crumb’s loaves, also named, “holey” bread. My bread pal Don Sadowsky seemed to have some good explanation about this and I asked him to put his ideas together in a piece for this blog. I will be commenting on and expanding this topic in my next post, bringing in the discussion my own ideas (which don’t always coincide with Don’s). Until then, I hope you will find ten minutes of your time to comfortably sit and enjoy this engaging article on my favorite topic, bread.

“OK, admit it. You feel the pressure, don’t you? You have to have them. Lots of them. Big ones and small ones (but mostly big ones!), deep ones and shallow ones, irregularly spaced, hinting at an endless internal labyrinth complete with its own Minotaur. You know what I’m talking about.
Holes. Holes in your bread. The holey grail of artisan baking.
If yours are tiny you want to compensate by buying a really long bread knife. Your baking friends may make all the appropriate noises, they’ll crow about your beautiful crust, or how high your bread rose, but you know they’re shaking their heads at your pinprick misfortune and hoping that it’s not contagious. Meanwhile you look at the gloriously pitted interiors of their breads and you bow your head in shame.

Baker Contemplating Tiny Holes , Edvard Munch, 1893

How did we get to such a state? Does it really make sense that a slice of bread resembling the surface of the moon is prized over one that resembles a piece of cake? (Maybe Marie Antoinette had a point!) Geez, isn’t bread supposed to hold your jam without dripping? Whatever happened to form follows function? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Fooling Around, Review · Tagged: Bread Commentary, Bread History, Crumb, Guest Post, Holes

PANISSIMO April Round-up and la Colomba di Terry

May 2, 2014 · by Barbara · 4 Comments

April has been a pretty hectic month for my second life in bread. Hosting Panissimo, helping to plan a bread workshop and the challenge of baking my first colomba. For Panissimo collection, here we are: almost 100 breads, for every taste really, each with a recipe. As expected, this month we received several special Easter breads both sweet and savory, to bookmark and save for next year (or do like me: bake Easter breads all year round). Thank you so much for your continuous partecipation, this collection is very dear to me and to my partner in crime, Sandra, who will host the next two editions of Panissimo for the coming May and June. So go to Sandra this month and the next to submit/look at beautiful freshly baked breads.

And what about the colomba?

Until recently, I did not pay enough attention -the attention they truly deserve- to grandi lievitati, big (in the sense of difficult) Italian sweet naturally leavened breads like panettone, veneziana and colomba. Colomba is basically a panettone shaped like a dove, using -like in panettone- pasta madre (a stiff starter) as a leavening agent and an insane amount of eggs and butter. So much of them that the leavening is slowed down and it takes a good 24 hours in a warm spot for the dough to rise plus one all day of preparation of the starter, which needs to be boosted and show super powers.

Well, after one 15 hours rising and 2 extremely long kneading sessions, the dough looked like… a sticky blob. I wasn’t that optimistic…

And I would never have dared hoping that it would have ended up with an aethereal tall crumb which tasted like nothing ever tasted before. Or, better, which tasted like colomba from my childhood (if you are an Italian who was a little kid before the 80’s you know what I am talking about).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, Cakes, Chocolate, Festive, Italian, Loaf, Panissimo, Regional, Sourdough, Sweets, Traditional · Tagged: Cioccolata, Colomba, Easter, Fool-Proof, Grandi Lievitati

International Workshop in Handcrafted Bread in Beautiful Scania, Sweden

April 30, 2014 · by Barbara · 7 Comments

_I am proud to announce a 2-days workshop -August 15th and 16th, 2014- which will interests all of you who just can’t stop dreaming of handling dough, learning about natural fermentation, ancient grains, and the art of crafting beautifully looking and incredibly good tasting loaves.

The workshop will be led by the master baker Manfred Enoksson -simply one of the best bakers in Sweden.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Fooling Around, Sourdough, Swedish · Tagged: artisan bread, sourdough, workshop

Pain au Chocolat, Step-By-Step of a Work in Progress

February 16, 2014 · by Barbara · 28 Comments

Pain au chocolate, chocolate croissant, cornetti al cioccolato. However we may call them at home (mostly me and my daughter), they often pop up in our conversation. Before trying them my child used to like cinnamon rolls. But since finally finding them in a bakery in central Stockholm, chocolate croissant is all she craves. And me with her, only, my craving has last longer than her 5 years of age (read here how I managed to make a super simple brioche version of them a few years back).

In Rome, where I come from, cappuccino and cornetto (Italian croissant) are the locals’ favorite way to start the day. Here in Sweden croissant begin to be seeing around only now, but it is still difficult to find good ones, and fresh ones basically impossible. Our local bakery make our favorite version of them, pain au chocolat, only on Fridays and, honestly, they don’t taste that great. But we buy them anyway cause we love them, we are totally weak for chocolate croissant. Of course, for someone who bakes as much as I do it would be natural to make them at home rather than waiting Fridays for a so so croissant. Alas, up to two nights ago, I have been pushed back by all the stories of insuccess or awful difficulty I have read about making croissant at home. I like baking but I don’t do difficult well. Baking in my opinion should feel natural, easy and maneageable while one does it. So two nights ago I felt it was time to try my hands at croissant and do them my way. I spent no more than a couple of hours reading sources on books and the net and comparing formulas, then I wrote down mine, went to the kitchen, and prepared the ferments: the morning to come I was going to make chocolate croissant! Or pain au chocolat, to be precise. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, Buns, Chocolate, Sourdough, Sweets, Traditional, Yeast · Tagged: Breakfast, butter, Chocolate, Croissant, Pain au chocolat

Assorted Sourdough Ciabattas In Only One Bake

February 12, 2014 · by Barbara · 17 Comments

How to start talking about all these breads? Am I preparing for the opening of my Italian bakery in Stockholm? Well, unfortunately, not. Still no big project like this on the way. But I did have a lot of ripe starter and I decided to use it all. Actually I liked this solution so much that it is becoming my standard way of baking. Time costraints dictated by a life divided between a family and a job make us squeeze passions in between chores. So when I happen to have some bubbly starter ready to go, better to do the best out of it right away, because I don’t know if I will be able to bake again some time soon.

This dough was made with a 25% of organic sprouted whole spelt and quite a good percentage of sourdough, what I consider a healthy bread. You can of course use regular whole wheat or going 100% white flour, the result would be just as beautiful. The main idea behind this method is to leave your dough in a bowl or container (bulk fermentation) for quite a long while after kneading and then quickly form and bake pieces of dough in a very hot oven. Some of them can be filled, some may be not.

For the filling I used baby sweet peppers and taleggio or green olives and taleggio, always sealing the “package” with a stick of gruyere. I admit I spent a whole, long, half hour thinking about a tasty way to seal the filling of these ciabattas and, well, I am pleased about this invention, so pleased I may have to ask for a patent (wish I could!!). This said, I still had enough dough to make some plain ciabattas, some twisted ciabattas, and why not, a twisted baguette. There is no end to the shapes that bread can (quite effortless I tell you) take. Just try it. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Buns, Italian, Loaf, Sourdough, Vegetables · Tagged: Bread, Cheese, Ciabatta, Enriched, Gruyere, Pepper, sourdough, spelt, Taleggio, whole-grain

Lemon Chocolate Fougasse

February 7, 2014 · by Barbara · 16 Comments

So, as usual since I moved to this cold land, in this period of the year I go through month-long colds. Yesterday night, after finally starting the right therapy, I felt my energy back and, guess what, I HAD TO bake.

For a couple of months I have been thinking of a chocolate-orange fougasse seen around (a Swedish bakery makes a beautiful one) so what better occasion to try making something similar? I always have chocolate and organic lemons at hand, so mine immediately was transformed into a chocolate-lemon fougasse.

And since it was already quite late, I opted for a yeast-based bread rather than a sourdough, which means this bread can be made in quite a short time and without any need to plan ahead. It was the first time I seriously tried to shape a fougasse (ok, tried once before a couple of years ago, but I did not put much thought into it and I was not that happy with the result). It was actually very easy, much easier than you may think… and the result will absolutely impress your family and guests. Effortless and stunning, that’s how we like it, right? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Chocolate, Loaf, Sweets, Traditional, Yeast · Tagged: Chocolate, Fougasse, French, Lemon, Sweet

Chinese Steamed Buns (Mantou) with Fenugreek

February 3, 2014 · by Barbara · 7 Comments

So finally I have got myself to write about my Mantou, some Chinese steamed buns I baked a few weeks ago. I am doing it tonight because my dear friend Sandra is just closing the monthly collection on ethnic breads for Panissimo, so here I am writing even if I should really go rest a lttle.

These buns were then inspired by another (truly dear) friend of mine, Chinese indeed and from the Northern part of China where Mantou are a staple. There is a lot of history, of personal history, behind these buns. And if I close my eyes I can recollect some of the thousand times I have seen my friend having the steamed buns with her lunch. She has always been very fond of them. And I could never understand how. In their proper version Mantou are tasteless: no salt nor sugar are added. On top of it, they have no crust and their crumb is rather dense. Still, my friend loved them so much that she got me interested. Have to say that I did like the savory filled version of the Mantou, which is delicious and very tasty. My friend does not like to remember this episode, but I will never forget the time she actually put some freshly baked Mantou filled with steamy pork in my bag as a precious gift… just before a lecture. The scent was so strong I did not know where to hide… and of course I made fun of her forever for this (what a friend I am!). Anyway, these buns, filled or plain, have accompanied us all the way through our friendship. So when she mentioned that she was not happy with her Mantou baking skills I felt compelled to help out.

Incidentally, my friend happens to have a father who has diabetes, so I though of trying out a version of Mantou her mom could bake and which include a spice, fenugreek, who is supposedly a very strong antidiabetic (the effects of fenugreek bread are undergoing serious scientific scrutiny). She was very excited at the idea and said that my spiced buns, although different, tasted delicious. Should I trust an old friend who always tries to be nice? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Buns, Regional, Traditional, Yeast · Tagged: Chines, Fenugreek, Mantou, Spice, Steamed

Egg and Dairy-Free Baked Yeasted Doughnuts with Strawberry Icing

January 19, 2014 · by Barbara · 11 Comments

I have been wanting to bake yeasted doughnuts since the day Susan, the baker who actually got me into sourdough, published about them. Lately I also had a very urgent need to try make these sweet treats because my little one is totally crazy about them and those sold at supermarkets are not exactly a hymn to healthy eating. But, as usual, I have been postponing. Until I could no longer postpone: my daughter’s birthday is approaching and she asked me to make pink doughnuts and pink cupcakes for her kids’ party instead of a regular cake (she happens to hate cake, as she does not fancy cream and cake dough).

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Breakfast, Buns, Contemporary, Fruit, Sweets, Vegan, Yeast · Tagged: Dairy-Free, Doughnuts, Eggless, strawberry, Vegan

What I Bake When I Am Not Blogging

January 14, 2014 · by Barbara · 25 Comments

In the last few months I have been quite disengaged from blogging, and I do apologize for been particularly absent from comments here or on friends blogs. It is not always possible to sit down and take the time to answer to all or read others’ posts. Often I read both comments and posts but then something come to interrupt me and I don’t have the chance to write that comment that just formed in my mind.
Sometimes it is even difficult to find the time to bake but I kept baking -even during home renovation/travelling.

So I have been baking more than I showed here, and sometimes I took pictures of these breads and wrote down the formulas of the breads I baked.
While reordering my files I have found quite a few of these loaves I have never showed on my personal blog and my request to you is to help me find the motivation to write about these breads. So I ask you, which of these breads would you like to know more about? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Bread, Buns, Fooling Around, Loaf, Sourdough ·