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Year end, gift vouchers, scalded flour, new PANARY Experiences ….[Newsletter 47]

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December 4, 2018

Dear Panarians,

The year end has been reached for 2018 courses, and now we approach Christmas baking for loved ones, and I plan interesting things for next year’s programme.

A tip for making good mince pies: don’t fill them generously full. By the time the pastry has cooked the filling will be boiling, and if too full it will bubble over and leak out, generally staining them and causing the batch to look a bit ragged. Have restraint with the filling, and as you spoon it in you must feel a little mean.

CALENDAR, 2019

January 2019

February 2019

March 2019

For viewing course descriptions and making bookings, visit https://www.panary.co.uk/course-calendar-and-booking/

New, PANARY Experiences starting in March, 2019

I am designing a new group of courses that are a half-day duration rather than the usual full day.

At these snappy Experiences, guests will get a wonderful view of a baking style, or different types of bread made from one dough, or a snapshot of a particular country’s baking culture

  • the PANARY Experience is lasting a mere 3-4 hours
  • prices kept below £100
  • guests go home with scintillating warm breads taught in the session

Interested to learn more? Please, contact me and I will share more.

GIFT VOUCHERS – the perfect Christmas gift

Among your friends, family, and loved ones there may be a budding baker ready to be drawn out. Or an existing baker thirsty for more knowledge. Nowadays courses and experiences are thoughtful gifts for people who already have all they need.

Purchasing a PANARY Voucher entails only a few clicks – go to https://www.panary.co.uk/gift-vouchers/ 

Looking across vineyard to the big house with the gites where we stay

Looking across vineyard to the big house with the gites where we stay

PANARY in PROVENCE, April 2019, almost booked out!

The gites are almost full, and now we have room for one person to attend the course, starting on April 30th.

To read about this course that occurs in a beautiful vineyard in Provence, and for booking, go to https://www.panary.co.uk/craft-baking-courses/panary-provence/

BAKER’S TOPIC – scalded flour

The scalding of flour involves taking aside a portion of the flour in a bread recipe and stirring very hot water into it. The flour starch is gelatinised in the process, and adding the gelatinised starch to the dough imparts different and special qualities to the fermenting dough and the finished bread. To be gelatinised means that it is made soluble, and in this form as a carbohydrate it becomes readily accessible to the yeast. The scalded material in the dough will give added plasticity to both the crumb and the crust, which is an important feature when making bread without much gluten, such as rye bread. This plasticity also makes the kneading of the dough much easier.

The most noticeable feature of scalding is that the bread retains moisture for much longer. Its “shelf life” may be improved by two days or more. The effect of gelatinising means that the starch is capable of binding more water to itself during doughmaking.

The effect of adding gelatinised (soluble) starch to the fermentation phase of the dough is that it speeds it up. If brisker fermentation is not wanted, the effect is then that less yeast will be needed, and it is always a good thing to be using less yeast. Fermentation is enhanced because the soluble, gelatinised material is “damaged” starch which must be present for the amylase enzymes to attack the starch and convert it to maltose, which in turn other enzymes will convert to glucose which is the class of sugar that the yeast needs to feed on. In the normal bread-making process the damaged starch comes from the destructive force of milling. With the scalded material there is simply more damaged starch added to the mix.

Whisking near-boiling water into wheat flour is known to do a certain amount of damage to the protein in the flour, and eventually this damage impairs the amount and quality of the gluten that these proteins are capable of forming. This inherent damage to protein and gluten is probably the reason why flour scalding has never caught on in the wheat bread baking cultures, despite the marvellous retention of moisture. Scalding is more commonly found with rye breads, and sometimes with spelt.

For rye and spelt my guide is:

  • put aside about one-quarter  (ranging from 20-25%) of the flour for scalding
  • apply to it at least double its weight with the very hot water

Put it in a sturdy bowl and bring the boiling water to it, to be stirred in vigorously with a heavy spoon. It is an arm tiring task, and you must keep at it until it is smooth. It can wait to be applied to the doughmaking after an hour, or up to 24 hours. At around an hour check that it has cooled sufficiently to be usable without harming the yeast or making unnecessarily hot dough.

More of my “rules of thumb” to apply when doughmaking for rye and spelt:

  • have the weight of the new flour roughly the same weight as the total of the scalding
  • remove from the normal amount of doughmaking water a little over half the amount of water used for the scalding. (If you failed to remove any at all the finished dough would be unmanageably sloppy. You must accommodate for the extra water that has gone into the scalding process).

If you enjoy putting some scalded material in a white dough made with strong bread flour, use only about 15% of the flour for the scalding, with twice its weight in the boiling water as usual.

I have carefully measured all the water that went into a small roll dough made with strong white wheat flour, including a small parcel of scalded flour that used 15% of the flour. One kilo of that flour would normally take 650 ml water to make dough of the correct softness.  The total water that went into the one kilo flour mix with the scalding was 780 ml.

In Sweden a recommended method is to make the rye scalding with much more water so that the gelatinised material finishes as a runny paste that has a twofold purpose: most of it is put in the dough, while the rest is used as a glaze on the rye loaves heading into the oven.  To make this runny paste the ratio of hot water to rye flour is 4:1, even 5:1.

Good baking, Panarians.

Paul

 

Bakers’ Topic – plaiting (2)

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We are continuing the theme of last newsletter, plaiting.
The 5-strand plait
This time there is no clever starting in the middle liked you learned about the 3-strand plait.
Remember to plait loosely, to allow it to hold its shape while it grows and eventually springs in the oven.
The moves for plaiting a 5-strand: 2 over 3; 5 over 2; and 1 over 3

First picture (above) shows the strands laid out in front of you, and 2 over 3.


Second pic shows 5 coming back the other way, placed over 2 (sitting now between the new 1 & 3).


Third pic shows the final move, 1 over 3,( now 1 is the new 3) and you start the three moves again…..
This is what it is looking like when you are half-way through:

Good luck with plaiting – practice makes perfect after all.
Paul

BAKERS’ TOPIC, flour too strong?

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We all know the benefit of good quality bread flour, which has a protein strength sufficient to make robust gluten that assures the baker a well risen and handsome loaf. This is what we know to expect in typical English bread flour. However, there are occasions when the strength of the gluten in strong bread flour will undermine what you are setting out to do.
Take, for example, the Danish pastries shown here in the photo – the type based on the folded square. They were made on my recent Patisserie – Viennoiserie course. When the flour is too strong, the folded sides unfold again when they are proving, or when they meet the shock of the oven. The gluten has not become totally relaxed and its propensity to be elastic has defeated your purpose as the pretty folded envelopes unfold to become failed flat things with their filling totally exposed.

The solution is two-fold: (i) weaken the flour by adding a good portion of plain flour to the bread flour; (ii) complete the making of the slab of Danish pastry many hours before you are going to use it, and let it sit in the refrigerator to relax fully.

In both the above solutions you are employing a tactic to beat the component of the gluten in the bread flour that gives it elasticity, wherein lies its strength and firm pull. By parking it in the fridge overnight after completing all the folds and laminations, it will have many hours to relax, and there will be less elasticity, less risk of the square shapes opening out.
The solution (i) is also achieved by simply learning about all the flours available on the market so that you have flours of weaker protein (and gluten of course) in your store. Flours of merely 10-11% protein will often suit your purpose, and imported European flours are suitable because their characteristics feature more pronounced extensibility of gluten rather than powerful elasticity and strength.

This discussion centred around Danish pastries is echoed when you think about pizza. I always get the students at PANARY to add plain flour to the strong bread flour when they are making pizzas all in one morning session (meaning they are not able to be parked in the fridge for 12 hours). The strong and bucky gluten in the bread flour is fighting you when you are trying to flatten the pizza into a thin disc, so something has to be done to render it less elastic, meaning weaker. Regarding imported flour, those famous Italian pizza making flours that you come across in specialist outlets here are surprisingly high in the actual protein count, but they are astonishingly stretchy (extensibility), and have so little elasticity that they are a dream to work with. That’s mother nature for you – European flour is big on extensibility, short on tough elasticity.

Yes, Panarians, the world of flour is diverse and exciting.

Baker’s Tip

SIMPLE PLAITING

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BAKER’S TIP

SIMPLE PLAITING

When you are making a simple three-strand plait, like the one shown above, there is a procedure to follow.

Roll out the three strands with their tapering ends, and place them on the bench running straight up in front of you. Don’t start to plait from the top, instead you must start the plaiting half-way along the strands, and complete the plaiting towards yourself. The simple 3-strander technique (that most girls already know because of female hair plaiting) can be drummed into the boys by chanting “outside to inside” as you proceed. To finish this first phase, the three fine tips must simply be welded together in a brutal action.

The second phase begins by getting your hands under the middle of the plait with the three separate strands clasped between your fingers and flipping the whole thing over towards you, somersault fashion. Now the remaining loose strands will be plaited again towards you, and by flipping it over they will be ready to adopt the correct pattern. Again, finish with the brutal weld, and hey presto! a beautiful looking plait with two handsome ends, neat and alike.

Further tip: don’t plait tight, allow the bulgy strands to sit slightly loosely.

Contact PANARY

To contact Paul Merry, or speak with him:

email: info@panary.co.uk
or phone: +44 (0)1747 851102

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