Chestnuts were an important traditional foodstuff in parts of Italy. Peasants could supplement their diets with chestnuts, and flour was a natural extension of this. Roasted chestnuts remain a common sight in Roma over the winter, though I’m skeptical about whether this is because Romans demand it, or because it’s another cute novelty to sell to tourists.

Anyway, I bought some chestnut flour – farina di castagna – from the Testaccio Ex-Mattatoio producers’ market last weekend, on a whim. Didn’t really have any idea what to do with it. And nor do I particularly like chestnuts. Living in New Zealand years ago, some friends who tried to live as much as possible by foraging provided enough for me to eat far too many, resulting in a certain aversion. Which might not sound promising, but bear with me.

After a bit of Googling and polling friends, I plan to use it to make various items at some stage, including the Italian traditional castagnaccio – a kind of peasant cake that doesn’t include sugar and instead realies on the natural sweetness of chestnuts. (Chestnut flour is also known as farina dolce – sweet flour.) Also: chestnut flour pancakes (maybe on Shrove Tuesday, which is looming) and this cake, which comes from a gluten-free angle. If I can work out a replacement for crème fraîche, which isn’t readily available here in Roma. Apparently I can use panna acida.

But first, I made some bread, inspired by a recipe in Richard Bertinet’s Dough. His version uses rye flour; here I replaced that with chestnut flour. I also reduced the yeast in his recipe and added some white leaven. What the hell.

So:
400g strong white flour
100g chestnut flour
10g salt
320g water
6g fresh (fresh)
50g white leaven (100% hydration)

Combine the flours and salt.
Whisk together the leaven, yeast and water (warm – use dough temp x 2 minus flour temp to give you a water temp… or just warm…).
Add liquid to flours, bring to a dough.
Knead.
Form a ball, rest, covered, until doubled in height. I’m not going to suggest a time, as that really is so dependant on the temperature of your room.
I divided it into two, formed balls, rested 10 mins then I made rings, but really, knock yourself out with the shape.
Prove again, until doubled in height.
Bake at 220C for 15 mins, then lower temp to 200C and bake another 15 mins. Or if you’re doing one large loaf, it may need longer. Trust your judgment!

And you know what, it’s yummy. The nuts give the crumb a slight purply tinge and the taste is indeed subtly sweet.

I really ought to try and take better pictures though. Random snaps from my phone don’t cut it. And that tablecloth is getting a bit overused as a backdrop.

I played it by ear (well, by fingers) with some of the quantities, and I wanted to keep the dough very soft and wet – hence it flattened slightly when I moved it from the proving basket to bake. But flavour-wise, it’s great.

I’ve been struggling to get used to Italian flours. Many of them are low protein, unlike your standard British bread flour, which is ground from harder wheat. Harder wheat produces stronger flour, with more protein, say 13% or higher – giving the requisite gluten proteins to create certain bread structures, for the types of bread we’re more used to making in the UK.

Anyway, the recipe:

Cook about 50g of farro in water, simmering for about 45 minutes, until the grain is soft.
(You could use the cooking water for the sponge, though I didn’t in this case. You can also soak the grain overnight in ale, wine or friuit juice, if you’re interested in experimenting! Also, if you can’t get farro, wheat grains, aka wheat berries, would be fine.)

Make a sponge with:
360g water
250g wholewheat flour (I used an Italian integrale)
10g fresh yeast (or say 5g ADY if you can’t find fresh)

Leave the sponge to ferment for 8-12 hours. I did it overnight, in a fairly cold kitchen. (We’re in Rome, but it is January – nights getting down to around 0C.)

Make up the dough with:
The sponge
10g salt
150g wholewheat flour
100g white bread flour (I used an Italian bread which, despite being called “Farina di grano duro” – flour from hard wheat – and professing to be “per pane, focacce e dolci” – for bread, foccacia and sweets – is only 10% protein. See my perplexity? It worked ok though, so you could use a British plain flour.)

Bring the dough together and add the farro grains.
Knead. It’s sticky, that’s good, don’t worry!
Clean off your hands with some extra flour and bring the dough to a ball.
Ferment, covered, for about 4 hours, or until doubled in size.
I gave mine a few turns.
Turn out, form a ball, and rest for 10 minutes.
I formed a baton and proved it in a 36cm (14″) long basket.
Final prove until doubled in volume.
I turned it onto a baking sheet and made one long dorsal cut.

Bake in a preheated oven at 220C for 20 minutes, then turn down to 200C and bake for another 20 minutes. Or thereabouts.

This project involved making six mini-cakes, themed around a festival… so my excuse is that it’s Samhain/Halloween, you know, the night when the barriers between life and death are at their thinnest, and the dead rise from their graves. So yeah, my cakes are ghouls rising from the ground.

Inside is fruit cake, all the rest is made from sugar paste and food colourings.

And here they are individually:

Anyone guess who this guy’s inspired by?

This one’s inspiration is a little more tricky:

And the inspiration for this one is pretty obscure (unless you’re a fan of a certain strand of zombie movies… ):

These last three were all a bit more ad-libbed. I’m particularly proud of this chap’s cranial occurence:

Palatable?

And finally, a grasping zombish hand (cos we had to do at least 2 different shapes for this project).

This is my first take on another recipe from Dan Lepard’s essential The Handmade Loaf.

As we’re gearing up to move house, I’m trying to use up ingredients – resulting in some changes to Dan L’s recipe. I also didn’t strictly follow his method – hey, a baker’s got to follow their instinct’s right?

So, ingredients:
250g strong white flour
150g plain flour
150g rye flour
8g salt
300g water
3g active dried yeast
50g honey
450g white leaven
50g butter, melted then cooled slightly
80g hazelnuts, toasted and chopped
280g cooked, soaked rye grains
(In this case, I boiled the rye grains for about 45 mins, cooled them, drained them, and soaked them overnight in apple juice. I used the cooking water for make up the dough.)

Method:
Add the yeast to the water (the rye cooking water), with the honey, and leave to activate.
Whisk the leaven into the yeast/water mix.
Combine the flours and salt in a roomy bowl.
Pour the liquid into the flours, along with the melted butter.
Bring to a dough and knead thoroughly.
Stretch out, then sprinkle on the chopped nuts and rye grains. (I’m adding them later than Dan L instructs as it struck me that chopped nuts could tear the dough, and damage the gluten structure, if added when initially making the dough.)
Knead to combine, then return to the bowl, cleaned and oiled slightly.
Leave 30 minutes, then give it a turn (ie stretch out, fold into thirds).
Leave another 30 minutes, then give it another turn.
Leave the dough now until doubled in size.
Turn out, weigh, scale two pieces, then hand each one up into a ball and rest 10 minutes.
Pin out each piece to a disc about 20cm in diameter, and cut five slits through the dough around the edge. Stretch each one of these,er, pseudopodia….
Cover and leave to prove, until doubled in size and suitably soft to the touch.
Bake in an oven preheated to 210C (190C fan) for 35 mins – check after half an hour; Dan L says they should be “a good rich brown in colour”.

Yep, I’ll admit it, mine are perhaps a little too “high bake”… the recipe says bake 40-50 mins, and I stupidly didn’t check mine before 40 mins.

Annoyingly, I didn’t make a record of it at the time and I can’t remember where I got the recipe.

Recently, however, I learned this version, which was referred to as a “French crown”. This is scaled for a 1kg loaf:
536g Flour (100%)
311g Water (58%)
5g Fresh yeast (1%)
5g Sugar (1%)
11g Salt (1.9%)
134g White leaven (25%)

It used a 2-4 hour fermentation time, and created a nice plump, white version. It also uses a French white flour – apparently, to recreate this softer flour in the UK, we can do a blend of strong white and plain flours.

I want to develop a version that uses more natural leaven (or sourdough starter), a longer fermenation and isn’t 100% white flour. I’ve also been experimenting with overnight proving in the fridge.

Here’s what I’ve been using.

Sponge:
170g strong white flour
100g rye flour
310g water
200g white leaven (mine’s currently made with 50/50 water/flour)
[I've also been adding a little yeast - 1g ADY or easyblend, or 2g fresh; hey sourdough purists, I'm experimenting!]

I’ve been leaving this sponge for around 9 to 16 hours, then making up a dough by adding:
100g strong white flour
170g plain flour
11g salt

I’ve been kneading for around 10 mins, then leaving it half an hour, and giving it a quick knead. I’ve also done a few folds.

On one occasion, I proved it for a few hours, then shaped the ring, and left that to for its final prove overnight in the fridge. Took it out, left it for around two hours to bring the dough temp up again, then baked it. It was very nice, with a decent irregular crumb, chewy crust and low-to-middling sourness.

On a second occasion, I made up the dough, kneaded it, then proved it overnight in the fridge. In the morning, I left it to warm to ambient temp (around 17-18C), then gave it a few folds, shaped it, and gave it a final prove of a few hours, then baked. This is the result for that one:

Or here it is cut:

Sorry, it’s a rough phone photo, but you can see the nice irregular crumb again.

When I get this just right, I reckon it just might be my signature loaf.

This one is loosely based on a sourdough from The Ballymaloe Bread Book, but I varied it to use some other bits and pieces, and use techniques I’m more comfortable with.

It doesn’t use any commercial yeast, just a leaven – in this case one made with a strong white flour.

In a roomy bowl, combine:
150g wheat leaven
225g strong white flour
225g water (warm, but as this is a long fermentation, the exact temp isn’t crucial)
Mix and leave for around a day.

Then add:
400g wholemeal flour (I’m using stuff grown in Sussex, so it’s fairly soft, but works ok. Best of all, it’s stroneground at Winchester City Mill).
50g rye flour
100g strong white flour
14g fine sea salt
150g (ish) of wheatberries – ie whole wheat grains that have been boiled until soft.
50g of butter, melted
225g water (warm, but again, as it’s a long fermentation, it just has to be suitable for encouraging the leaven’s lifeforms)
Mix to a good dough, and knead. I gave it a good initial knead, then did the Dan Lepard technique of three more short kneads, every 10 mins.

Scale into two pieces, rest, form batons, then put in two greased 2lb loaf tins.

Prove for around 5 hours (depend on the temperature of your room; my kitchen was only around 18c), then bake in an oven fully preheated to 230C (or 210C fan oven), for around 40 mins.

For Lawrence and Jo’s wedding on 19 December 2010, I made the cake, with Fran doing much of the decoration. I’m slightly disappointed with most of the photos I got of the cake, many of them are pretty gloomy – not ideal for something involving so much dark chocolate! But anyway, here’s one:

It’s based on my “big cake” recipe, and I discuss it more over here on Cake-Off.

Dom and myself also did some catering for the late evening supper at the wedding. For this, I baked three different types of bread from three of my favourite baker-writers. These were Andrew Whitley’s seeded rye bread a 100% rye sourdough from Bread Matters; the wonderfully moist rolled oat and apple bread from The Handmade Loaf by Dan Lepard; and Richard Bertinet’s lovely simple fougasse from Dough.

For Christmas itself, I was keen to try and make a panettone. I really want to follow a traditional recipe – meaning, making a naturally leavened dough. Yep, apparently an authentic panettone is what many people would term a “sourdough” – it doesn’t use any commercial yeast, but instead involves a slow fermentation process based on a natural leaven. As that natural leaven is wheat-based, personally I wouldn’t call it a sourdough, but there you go (I’m of the school of thought that reserves the term sourdough for a rye leaven used to make rye-based bread – like the above-mentioned seeded rye).

Having said all that, though, when it came to the crunch, after all of the above, I didn’t really have the time to experiment with a fully naturally leavened panettone, so I cheated and kinda made up a recipe that used from yeast too.

I didn’t really write it all down properly, but I used:
50g white leaven
10g ADY (ran out of fresh, but could have used 5g fresh)
350g water – my flour was cold, only about 16C, so the water was about 38C.
Combined.

In a large bowl, I mixed:
800g strong white flour
50g caster sugar
10g salt
zest of one lemon
100g pine nuts
50g flaked almonds
100g raisins
100g mixed peel
2 eggs, beaten
50g melted butter

Then added the leaven/yeast mix, and brought it to a soft dough.

Proved until doubled in volume, knocked back, rested, then formed into a ball, which I squashed into more of a teardrop shaped and put in a large catering tin, which I’d lined with baking parchment.

Proved again, till doubled in volume – or at least until it felt right with the pinch test. Glazed with basic egg wash, though I’ve seen recipes (like this one on the Wild Yeast blog, which I got via this thread on The Fresh Loaf) that use much more elaborate glazes. Some of them seem to glaze after baking too. There’s still a lot to learn about making panettone.

Baked At 200C for around 45 mins, I think. Doh, should have written more notes.

Anyway, the Wild Yeast blog had some interesting pics – notably about how to cool a panettone, by hanging it upside down. I rigged up an absurd set-up with two chairs and an oven rack. I put a box with soft packing material underneath just in case, as the loaf was heavy the skewers were tearing through.

Here’s the finished panettone:

Being critical for a moment, I think it was too dense. Next Christmas I’ll try and fully naturally-leavened version with longer fermentation to try and open up the crumb more – get some nice big, ciabatta style air-holes. It was very nice though. Ellis certainly thought so:

Other goodies I made over Xmas included this cake:

It was based on my fave cake batter again (Mollie Katzen‘s Cardamom coffee cake), but shrunk, and converted to Xmas spices:
200g soft butter
200g light brown sugar
2 eggs
220g sour cream
220g plain flour
1 t baking powder
1 1/4t baking soda
1 t ground cinammon
1/2 t ground ginger
1 t ground allspice
1/2 t ground cardamom
a good few grates of fresh nutmeg

Cream butter and sugar, add egg.
Sieve together dry ingredients, then add it bit by bit to creamed mix, alternating with additions of sour cream.
Put batter in lined 20cm tin, and bake at 140C (fan over) for about an hour and 20 mins, until skewer comes out clean.
I was tempted to add peel and fruit to make it even more Xmassy, without it being a nasty traditional Xmas cake, but decided against that as the panettone had such fruit in already.

Then, for new years, I made this one:

This one is from Diana Henry’s Roast Figs Sugar Snow. She calls it her “Italian chocolate nut Christmas cake, with chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts”. We had whole chestnuts, which I roasted, then skinned and broke up as per the recipe – they were a bit hard and chewy. Maybe this means they were too old or something. If not, I’d be tempted to leave them out as their toughness wasn’t nice in combination with the more crumbly texture of the other nuts. It was cracking nonetheless. Henry says she was inspired by panforte but in many ways, it’s quite like this Sachertorte recipe I use. It’s very rich, involves nuts (including ground almonds), and is made by melting butter and choc, adding sugar, egg yolks, then ground almonds, and nuts, then folding in whisked egg whites. It also uses orange zest, but I’m wondering whether that was even necessary.

Oh, finally, I also made mince pies, as usual. Here’ my version.

The tops grew kinda sideways in the oven, but otherwise these are cracking loaves. Perfect sandwich loaves, and just the sort of thing to win over people who don’t believe you can make soft white bread in the home. The sour cream adds fat, which is a way of keeping bread moist.

The recipe comes care of Mr Dan Lepard. Check it out here.

Very easy to make too.

I did double quantities, and these two were baked in a long 900g (2lb) loaf tin and a standard 450g (1lb) loaf tin, but for single quantities Dan L recommends a large, deep 2lb tin like these.

This is a loaf I made up as an experiment. I wanted to only use my own white wheat leaven, and not any bought yeast. So I made a sponge up with 300g of leaven, 600g water and 400g strong white flour, and left it, covered, for 24 hours.

I then added a few tablespoons of ground linseed, 2t salt, 150g wholemeal flour, 100g rye flour, 200g white flour, and 300g of rye grain that had been boiled and soaked in wine (that’s 300g after the boiling and soaking, not 300g dry) and mixed up a pretty wet dough. I really ought to try and work out the percentages, but I’m not fully apprised of that system yet. Bear with me! Just started a baking course, so hope to get my head around all that soon.

I made two disc or cob loaves, each one with 1100g of dough.

There was some pretty unsightly cracking on baking (220C for 10 mins then turned down for another half hour ish), but on cooling and cutting they have a nice crumb, some good open air holes (a feature desired of sourdoughs etc, if not of more standard loaves) and a reasonable flavour. And the rye grains are great for a nice chewiness, almost a crunch.

This is a Dan Lepard recipe – published in the Saturday Guardian, but also over here on his forum.

In his intro, Dan says it’s “A loaf that’s unfairly despised by foodies and artisan bakers…”. I wonder why it’s despised. It’s not got the deep flavours of a naturally leavened bread, say, but it’s  fun and with its red hue and lumps of sundried tomato it certainly adds variety to sarnies. The crust, created by rolling the loaf in polenta, is great.