Chestnut and rosemary bread

I can hardly believe it has been almost two months since my last bread baking post, I should seriously think about changing the blog's caption. Not that I haven't been baking in the meanwhile but I've either made stuff I wrote about already or backed from books I've mentioned before, mainly Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery and Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme. I don't want to turn this blog into the Alberto/Nancy or Alberto/Pierre project, and since I lack the slightly histeric wit and catching writing style Julie Powell has, I prefer to give it a miss and not concentrate on only one source. So nothing too interesting has been going on inside my oven until I came up with something of my own last week.

I had made Nancy Silverton's Rosemary Olive Oil bread (beside), a nice rustic bread with a mild rosemary aroma a few weeks before. As I said, nice, but missing something. After I made castagnaccio I got an idea: rosemary is great with chestnuts, so let's try a bread with both. I replaces some bread flour with my remaining chestnut flour, increased the rosemary and oil and started my little project. If I wanted to be fancy I'd call it Tuscan Fall bread, actually that's exactly what I should call it, as it tastes very much like early fall. The end result is quite different from the original rosemary olive oil bread, since rosemary behaves quite like rye flour. Therefore the bread crumb looks greyish, even a bit unappetising by today's standard, the whole structure of the crumb is more compact than your white sourdough bread and the taste has a slight sweet note. I'm not completely happy about the way the crumb looks (really nice crust though), but the taste is great. Rosemary, olive oil and chestnut all there, instead of cancelling out the slightly bitter rosemary taste balanced by the sweet chestnut. I tried the bread out with a few cheeses and meats and it works great with ripe cheeses (what some might call stinky) like taleggio, a ripe camambert and similar.

Tuscan Fall bread

250 g water
177 g starter
410 g bread flour
75 g chestnut flour
1/4 cup wheat germ
2 tsp salt
3 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

Sieve the chestnut flour and mix with bread flour and wheat germ thoroughly. Mix with the starter and enough water to get a slightly sticky dough, the amount given is only approximate. Be careful since the chestnut flour will make the dough stickier than usual, a bit like rye flour does. Wait 30 minutes than knead in the salt for about 2 minutes than rosemary and olive oil, a little at a time to avoid it splashing out. Transfer to an oiled bowl and let rise till about doubled (it took 4 hours for me on a relatively hot day). Once ready pour the dough on a floured working surface and deflate slightly. Shape into a round boule and transfer, smooth side down, in a floured banetton. Wrap inside a plastic bag and transfer to the fridge. Proof for 8 hours (Mine proofed 10 and wise slightly over-proofed). Remove from the fridge and let it rest at room temperature for 1 hour. Meanwhile heat your oven at 250C (480F), and, if you own one, put your baking stone in the oven now. Once the time's up, remove the bread from the banetton and transfer on a floured peel. Wait 10-15 minutes to slightly dry the outside of the bread, than score the bread in the way you prefer with a razor blade or very sharp knife. Transfer the bread to the oven and reduce the temperature to 230C (450F). In the first 10 minutes of baking you might want to spray the walls of your oven with water to improve crust and oven-spring. Let bake another 20 minutes, rotate the bread back to front to be sure it bakes evenly, and bake another 15-20 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and wait till cool before having a taste ;-).

Comments

[Cathy]

What a beautiful loaf Alberto! I recently bought a baking stone and a peel. I'm very happy with the baking stone, but I didn't have much luck using the peel. I guess I didn't use enough flour, because the dough stuck. I had two loaves (which was probably too much to have on a peel that size) so it was a bit of a mess. I should have taken a picture of the finished loaves - they were pretty funny looking! How much flour would you say you put on the peel? I'm tempted to try parchment instead of flour.

[Alberto]

Cathy,

Thanks. I had a few problems the first times too, using a peel sounds easier than it is if you've never tried. I would start with parchment first, sprinkled with cornmeal or semolina. Once you feel comfortable with that leave out the parchment and use either a generous amount of cornmeal, or flour and cornemal. In both cases you can brush the excess off after baking. In any case I'd do one loaf at a time, but maybe you're not as clumsy as me :-).

[Dave]

Nice looking loaf Alberto. Where did you get your banetton?

[Theresa]

Seems like chestnut flour is a main feature in both this and your castagnaccio. Is it easy to find? I wonder if it's not something you have to buy from specialty shops?

[Alberto]

Dave, thanks. I got my banetton, a simple reed one, and a few other basic backing tools from a German internet shop called Hobby Baecker Versand ( http://www.hobbybaecker.de/ ), which I love/hate. They have a good-priced choice of basic equipment but the bulck of their backing catalog is bread mixes, which are blasphemy to me.

Theresa, in Italy it is not too difficult to find, big supermarkets and any backing/pastry ingredients shop will probably have some. Here in Germany I've never seen any, even in health-food shops, which usually carry many kinds of "alternative" flours.

[Robin Clark]

Albert: I've just returned from a trip to Europe (mainly Germany) and was searching for a Frankfurt Green Sauce recipe and came to your web site. Love the web site! (although I must admit your cooking skills are vastly superior to mine).

While I was in Germany I ate a fantasticly dark, very dense bread - not a rye. I've looked for "black bread" recipes on the Internet without success (they all contain caraway seed). Have you any idea what kind of bread I am talking about and where I could find a recipe?

Thanks for your help -

Robin Clark

[Alberto]

Robin, there's so many different breads in Germany that it's hard to reply straightaway. A couple of questions to try and reduce the number of possible candidates:

-was it a grain bread?

-do you know the German name of the bread you're looking for?

-where in Germany did you have this?

[Imminent]

Hi there! Your bread recipe sounds delicious. I am from Sweden and I am having a hard time understanding what the ingredients are :) What is wheat germ? And with starter you mean sourdough?

[Alberto]

Imminent, sorry for the cryptic ingredients ;-). The starter is indeed sourdough.

Wheat germ is the "embryo" within the seed, which is lost during milling: it is particularly rich in vitamin E, oils and minerals but since it can turn rancid easily it is removed. You can do without it, though it does add a little extra nutty taste. Here i Germany it is quite easily found in healthfood stores.