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Newsletter 55 – Covid 19 update, calendar, kugelhopf

15th July 2020 by Paul Merry

July 7, 2020

Dear Panarians,

I write to announce PANARY is back in business. Your teacher is calling you back to the fold. Although, with all that lock down baking being done throughout the land, I hope you haven’t all become burnt out.

Newsletter 55 - Covid 19 update, calendar, kugelhopf 1
Masked up, attending to the croissants – as students see on 1-day French course

With the easing of lock down restrictions and the social distancing reduced to one metre plus, the classroom bakery at PANARY is ready for you – only 3 at a time. The website has been altered to say that maximum class size is only 3 students. There will be attention to hand hygiene and I am requesting students to bring face covering. With these safety features coupled to a careful approach to distancing, I am confident we can resume breadmaking courses in safety and style. Only four of us will be in the room – it can certainly be called a tutorial atmosphere.

When lockdown occurred, the courses postponed from March to be rescheduled for July have now almost sold out, with just one place left on Sourdough, July 25th.

I recommend to you the calendar for the rest of the year given below.

The Baker’s Topic in this newsletter features a bread from one of these courses: kugelhopf, as taught on the Nordic-Germanic course.

CALENDAR

JULY

  • Sat 18th — 1 Day Basic British Baking (*COURSE FULL*)
  • Sat 25th — 1 Day Sourdough Baking (1 places)

AUGUST

  • Sat 22nd — 1 Day French Baking
  • Sat 29th – 1 Day Basic Baking

SEPTEMBER

  • Sat 5th — 1 Day Pizza and Italian Baking
  • Sun 6th — 1 Day Wood fired Oven 
  • Sat 19th — 2 Day French Baking with Sourdough 

OCTOBER

  • Tue 6th — 1 Day Patisserie/Viennoiserie 
  • Fri 16th — 3 Day Going Professional 
  • Sat 24th — 1 Day Sourdough Baking

NOVEMBER

  • Thu 5th — 4 day bread baking course, Devon 
  • Sat 14th — 1 Day Sweet Doughs Christmas Baking 
  • Sat 28th — 1 Day Nordic-Germanic 

DECEMBER

  • Sat 5th — 1 Day Basic Bread Baking
  • Sun 6th — 1 Day Basic British Baking

Good baking, Panarians.

With best wishes for your health and safety,

Paul

Kugelhopf – popular in the Alsace

15th July 2020 by Paul Merry

The many spellings of the name indicate the provenance of this bread to be from countless places and nations of Central Europe. It is very popular in Alsace, where it is Kugelhopf, and it became a staple among the vast array of cakes in Vienna, where they say Gugelhupf. Other places that lay claim to it, include Switzerland, the Balkans, Czech Republic and Poland. It is found at Christmas and Harvest Festivals, as well as private celebrations like weddings and baptisms.

Kugelhopf or Gugelhupf
Gugelhupf is made on the Nordic-Germanic course (28th Nov 2020)

The bread is rich and soft, and often features raisins and almonds. Like a brioche it is easily described as cake rather than bread.  In Alsace and through the southern German regions, the name is used to refer to any type of coffee bread which has the distinct shape of the central hole with steeply fluted sides and top. The fluted sides make the bread look very imposing. It is thought that the shape of the mould inspired its name since in medieval times it was known in some places as the hat bread. Gugel in ancient German means hat or pointy hood.

The original moulds were enamelled ceramic, but metal is most common today. The ceramic moulds can be so pretty that they are hung up as decoration when not in use, and the Alsatians would include an elaborate mould as part of a woman’s trousseau, with the family’s kugelhopf recipe being given to her by her mother on her wedding day.

The shape of the mould ensures easier cooking as the heat penetrates quickly to the centre of the loaf. This would not necessarily be the case with a heavier ceramic mould which would take a longer baking time.

Towards the end of the mix I predict you will become in awe of the amount of eggs and butter that can be beaten into the dough. A well made kugelhopf is so runny that you could virtually pour it into the mould.

I like the look of whole almonds studded into the outside crust, right at the top of the splendid-looking bread. For this feature, you must remember to toss a dozen or so almonds into the greased mould before pouring the mix into it.

Kugelhopf Recipe

Ingredients

The recipe below will make one large bread in a mould of 23cm (9inch) wide. 

  • 400 gm (14oz) white flour of medium-strong strength
  • 5 gm (1/2 teaspoon) salt
  • 200 ml (7fl.oz) milk, warmed
  • 20 gm (2/3oz) fresh yeast
  • 60 gm (2oz) sugar
  • zest of either one lemon or orange
  • 3 eggs
  • 120-140 gm (4-5oz) butter, room temperature – still firm, not soft
  • 150 gm (5oz) sultanas and raisins (soaked in rum-optional)
  • Almonds for decoration, about 50 gm

Method

  1. Mix the flour, sugar and salt together in a bowl wide enough to make a well in the centre.
  2. Disperse the yeast in the warm milk and pour the liquid into the well. 
  3. Draw enough flour down from the steep sides to make a wet batter in the centre. 
  4. This is the first stage, the ferment, which will get the yeast feeding actively. At this point make sure the butter is out of the refrigerator.
  5. After about half an hour, when the ferment is frothing vigorously, add the eggs and begin making the dough.  It should be a wet dough, but it should be firm enough to leave the sides of the bowl when it starts becoming stretchable and elastic. 
  6. Beat it with a rotary action with your hand or a wooden spoon, employing a lifting action that pulls and stretches it.  A mixing machine would be a fine alternative if you wish to avoid any risk of exhaustion. When the dough feels pliable and elastic it will also appear glossy.
  7. Beat the butter into it in two or three bursts. 
  8. Stop the kneading when you are confident that the butter has been worked in evenly.  Don’t be alarmed if the dough is so slack it will almost pour.
  9. Now gently incorporate the fruit and zest. If you have soaked the raisins in booze, make sure they are well-drained before mixing them in.
  10. The proof will occur in the mould, which should be made ready by a  heavy greasing with butter, and whole or slivered almonds strewn around the indentations at the bottom (which will be the top of the cake when it is baked).
  11. Scrape the dough out into the mould, which should be approximately half full. 
  12. Cover it carefully, and prove in a warm place until it has risen almost to the top of the mould, about an inch short of the top. This will probably take 40 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the warmth of your kitchen.
  13. The oven should be medium in heat. Brick Oven. In brick oven baking this means all the bread baking is over and the temperature of the oven has slumped down to temperatures suitable for casseroles, pastry, cake. Domestic Oven. For domestic, ovens you must make sure your oven is not too hot, because the Gugelhupf is a sugary bread which will burn easily.  Somewhere around 190C, 380F or gas mark 6 should be the setting. 
  14. The baking time will be 30-40 minutes.  The colour should be a deep golden brown, and a test to see whether it is done can be the skewer test: when inserted into the belly of the bread, the skewer should come out clean if it is properly baked.
  15. Further, after turning it out, you can confirm that it is baked by a gentle finger poke to the inside top, whereupon it springs back when you poke a dent in it.
  16. Turning it out must be done with care. Gently shake it out of the mould onto a cooling wire. Before serving, dust with icing sugar when it has cooled.
Learn to bake this bread on my Nordic-German class

Green dough

21st May 2020 by Paul Merry

In the same way that unripe fruit is described as green, the jargon of the craftsmen bakers applied the same expression to wheaten dough that had not developed fully and hence was considered unripe. When I began baking in the seventies, I was fortunate that I could still meet and work with these old tradesmen/craftsmen, and I learned many of their expressions, customs and yardsticks.

There is a price to pay for working green dough, and you will never make your best bread with it. There is a tightness to the structure, and the loaves are of a mean and small stature because the lack of fermentation leaves the gluten undeveloped and less stretchy. To develop fully, gluten needs more than simply time to enable the water to merge wih the gluten proteins (glutenin and gliadin) to form an expandable webbing. There must also be the process of adequate fermentation activity which, by leaving organic acids in its wake, mellows and strengthens the gluten so that it has the capability of expanding fully as it traps the gas made by the yeast. Proceeding to work off a green dough means that you are carrying on with something that has not reached its full potential.

Another fault with green dough is that the resulting bread will stale quicker for the same reason as it has poor stature – the lack of fermentation development results in a rapid staling process as the starches and proteins expel more easily the water bound to them.

There are three signs by which you will recognise that you have worked green dough, well before it reaches the oven:

  • open, self-supporting shapes like cobs will slump badly
  • the dough will retain bubbles to the extent that it is difficult to mould (shape), and will have ungainly bubbles on its surface when shaped and
  • the loaves will be uncharacteristically slow in final proof.

After the oven you will see that the crust colour is strangely bright, even reddish, since there will be a greater amount of residual sugars left behind in green dough owing to the reduced yeast activity. This reddish crust colour was called “foxy” by the craftsmen bakers.

How to avoid green dough?

By being in tune with the clear signs of ripeness of a fully developed dough, and being patient as you await that state.

Green dough 2
Sideways view of ripe dough

Yeasted Dough

For conventionally yeasted doughs there must be gas deposits on the surface, or the surface must be pock-marked; if abruptly slapped the surface of the dough should sink away; if poked with a floury finger, the resultant hole should not be able to close, but should stay as a distinct cavity. If, as I recommend, you prove the bulk dough in a clear plastic (or glass) vessel, whereby you can see the sides of the bulk dough, you can learn through practice what exactly are the size of the gas bubbles visible at the side when the dough is fully ripe.

Wheaten Sourdough

For wheaten sourdough, which may only rise about a quarter or a third in its bulk, you will learn to recognise the look of the side bubbles as well as the tiny blisters on its surface. With sourdough you will also appreciate the feel of strength and gluten development as you give it a series of folds in the earlier stages of its bulk proof. By the last fold you will feel that it is feeling floppier as fermentation gases are lodging in it.

There are occasions when you may be aware that a green dough has been taken to the table. The situation can sometimes be rectified by giving it an abnormally long bench rest (usually called by me “intermediate rest”), and in that way some more fermentation maturity can be achieved, with the final bread being saved from the most unappealing aspects of green dough.

Newsletter 54 – Covid 19 interruption, the baguette….

9th April 2020 by Paul Merry

Tuesday April 7th, 2020

Dear Panarians,

This newsletter will find you in your homes, undergoing various forms of “lockdown”.

Covid 19 has caused the postponement of all my courses for April-May-June. By the middle of July, however, I am hoping that our lives will have resumed some normal patterns, and on the strength of that hope I am setting a full programme for the second half of the year. See the new Calendar below.

For the Baker’s Topic here I had the mischievous urge to write about the quirky behaviour of sourdough bacteria, thinking it was a topic that chimed well with the current world absorption with another infamous little microbe. But since a virus is not bacteria I have moved on to a more sensible topic. In each of the next few newsletters I shall compose a topic that deals with an interesting facet, or a recipe, from several of the forthcoming courses that had to be postponed.

Click here to view the BAKER’S TOPIC – the baguette

CALENDAR  – the second half of the year

July 2020

  • Sat 18th — 1 Day Basic British 
  • Sat 25th — 1 Day Sourdough Baking 

August 2020

  • Sat 8th — 1 Day Basic Bread Baking 
  • Sat 22nd — 1 Day French Baking 

September 2020

  • Sat 5th — 1 Day Pizza and Italian Baking 
  • Sun 6th — 1 Day Wood-fired Oven 
  • Sat 19th — 2 Day French – with Sourdough 

October 2020

  • Tue 6th — 1 Day Patisserie/Viennoiserie 
  • Fri 16th — 3 Day Going Professional 
  • Sat 24th — 1 Day Sourdough Baking 

November 2020

  • Thu 5th — 4 day bread baking course, Devon 
  • Sat 14th — 1 Day Sweet Doughs Christmas Baking 
  • Sat 28th — 1 Day Nordic-Germanic 

December 2020

  • Sat 5th — 1 Day Basic Bread Baking 

That’s it. Good baking Panarians.  Paul

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panary adj [L.panis bread + - ARY] Of or pertaining to bread; p. fermentation