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.

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.

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.

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.

This is a Eastern Med bread, from Greece, Cyprus, Turkey. I’ve bought it from Turkish grocers in England, but never knew what it was called.

Daktyla apparently means “fingers” in Greek. Supposedly the loaf resembles a row of fingers, or somesuch. Whatever, it’s very pleasant to eat, and visually pleasing for plonking on the table and sharing during dinner.

Here’s the recipe to make one medium-sized loaf.

Small loaf (or use the above and divide accordingly)

5g active dried yeast or 8g fresh yeast
175g water
175g strong white flour
32g wholemeal flour
33g cornmeal flour, eg masa harina
3g (1/2 tsp) fine sea salt
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp runny honey
2 tsp milk
Sesame seeds

Activate the yeast in the water for 10 mins.
Mix the flours and salt in a bowl, and make a well.
Pour the water into the flours.
Blend half of flour into the water to make a sponge. (Alternatively, just mix half the flours with the water/yeast keeping back the other half of the flour).
Cover with cloth and leave the sponge for 30-60 mins, until bubbling nicely.
Mix the olive oil, honey and milk into the sponge.
Blend the remaining flour into the sponge and bring together to make a soft, moist dough.
Knead.
Rest for until doubled in size (1 1/2 hr), in bowl covered with damp cloth.
Turn out, deflate gently, form into a ball and leave to rest for 10 mins.
Divide the dough – if you’re using the bigger quantities, and want a bit loaf, divide into 6. If you’re using the bigger quantities, and want two smaller loaves, divided into twice. If you’re using the small loaf quantities, divide into 6 equal pieces. (Do with a weighing scale if you want to be accurate).
Form the pieces into balls and leave to rest for 10 mins.
Shape the balls into ovals/rectangles.
Place the ovals in a row on a floured baking sheet, leaving a slight gap between them.
Cover with cloth and prove until doubled in size – maybe 45 mins.

Preheat the oven to 230C.

Brush with milk, sprinkle with sesame seeds then bake for 25 mins, or until nicely browned and hollow-sounding when tapped on the bottom.

Here’s some of the bread I did, catering for a birthday party. From the left: fougasse, apple and oat loaf, alsace loaf with rye.

I made this loaf the other day, inspired by but not following Richard Bertinet’s Honey and lavender loaf recipe from Dough.

I’m sure a lavender scented loaf would be lovely, but it isn’t ideal of your basic sandwiches-for-work loaf, so I excised the lavender. Also, I’m finding the very best breads I’m making at the moment all involve using some leaven; I can’t resist adding 3 or so tablespoons full to whatever recipe I’m following.

What I liked most about this recipe from Dough was the form factor. Although the rising in the oven split the loaf more radically along one of my cuts than the others, ruining any chance of pretty regularity, in principle I was very happy with the shape of this loaf.

So anyway.

250g wholemeal bread flour (I used stuff that had been ground on the waterwheel at Otterton)
250g strong white flour
4 good tablespoons of white leaven
5g dried active yeast (my local supplier of fresh yeast was all out)
10g salt
320g water
1 teaspoon honey (optional)

Mix the flours and salt in a roomy bowl.
Mix the water, yeast and honey, then beat in the leaven. (If I’d had freah yeast, I probably wouldn’t have crumbed it into the flour, as per the Bertinent method).
Blend this liquid mix into the dry mix, and bring together to make a soft dough. (I might have bunged a bit more water in here, so it’s nice and moist).
Turn out onto a lightly oiled surface and knead by scooping with your fingers, stretching and flicking the dough over away from you. I kneaded for about 10 mins until the gluten was really making a nice structure.
Form into a ball then return to the bowl (oiled slighly) to rest until doubled in size. This was vary according to how warm or not your resting area is. Took a couple of hours for me.
Turn out gently on to the work surface, and gently press down to even out the gas pockets that have formed.
Form into a ball again, and rest for 10-15 mins.
Take the ball, and, with the most even surface on work surface, stretch it out gently into a squarish rectangle.
Here’s where the form factor comes into play. To create a nice squarish free-form loaf, fold the four corners into the middle, press down gently.
Put the loaf, “join”-side down, on a baking sheet lined with a floured cloth and leave the proof until doubled in volume. Again, this took a couple of hours.

Pre-heat your oven to 220C.

When the loaf has risen nicely, cut a double-cross on the top (I’m using a lame with a razor blade these day – like this).
Spray the inside of your oven with water.
I’m using a baking stone these days, so, using a floured, lipless baking sheet as a peel, I slid it in and baked it for 10 mins at 220c, then turned the oven down to 200C and baked for another half an hour, until the loaf gave a nice hollow sound when knocked on the bottom.

Cool on a rack, under a moist tea towel if you like to keep the crust a little softer.

I was a bit annoyed with the uneven opening of the cuts, but it tastes great.

I’ve been making bread on and off most of my adult life, starting, like much of my more homely, traditional interests, with the time I spent on small organic farms in the Buller Gorge, South Island, New Zealand in the late 1980s and 1990s (a couple of years in total, on about off). There, mentored and encouraged by first Mr Stephen McGraph of Newton Livery then, more significantly, by Ms Nadia Jowsey of Old Man Mountain, a highly accomplished baker and chef, I started to learn all about making real bread.

Last year, I was given a copy of The Handmade Loaf as a present. This excellent book is by Dan Lepard, the master baker who has been writing the baking column in the Weekend Guardian the past few years. Its emphasis is on using a natural leaven – aka levain, aka ferment – in your breads. I’m not sure I can entirely summarise the difference in results between a homemade loaf made with just commercial yeast (be in easy-blend, dried or fresh) and one made with your own leaven, but it certainly adds different qualities: you can achieve very different textures, but the main difference is probably a depth of flavour. Plus, where making your own bread is always deeply satisfying, that feeling is multiplied when the only raising agent you’re using is a natural yeast you’ve cultivated yourself. There are different methods of doing this, but Lepard’s basically involves using the natural yeasts presents on the skin of raisins, feeding it with flour and water, and nurturing it over a week or so.

Not all my experiments with the recipes from The Handmade Loaf have been a resounding success, but all have been informative experiences. And some of them have resulted in some of the best breads I’ve ever made.

Here are just a few examples from the past few months.

The mill loaf
This is second recipe in The Handmade Loaf. It uses leaven made with white flour (you can make rye leavens, etc), alongside white flour, wholewheat flour and rye flour. It’s a great all-rounder, for wholesome sarnies, top toast or just a few slices with a meal. It’s one of the recipes in the book I make the most, though for home use I half the book’s quantities, which call for half a kilo of levian, along with a kilo of flours (combined), and more than half a kilo of water.

Onion and bay loaf
This is a yummy loaf where you chop some onion, then head it, along with some bay leaves, in milk. You then cool the milk and use it for the dough’s only liquid. The finished loaf is a lovely savoury affair, that’s both nice and alliumy and instilled with the distinctive sweetness of bay. This one uses both some white levain and some fresh yeast.

Lemon barley cob
Made this one a while back. It uses white leavain and some fresh yeast, combined with 100g barley flour and 150g white flour. A little lemon juice and zest gives it, in combination with the barley flour, gives it a slight tang. Need to practice this one a bit more.

Ale bread with wheat grains
This is a great one, though takes a little more advanced planning. Its given distinction by the addition of wheat grains, which you simmer, then soak overnight in ale. I love ale. I love bread. And of course the two are closely related – or at least they used to be, before the advent of commercial yeast when much baking would apparently involve using the barm from beer-making for your yeast starter.

Rolled oat and apple bread
This is one of my favourites from The Handmade Loaf, so far. Adding the remains of the porridge to the bread dough was one of the things I learned from Stephen and Nadia, and this recipe incorporates a similar process – making some semi-porridge by soaking oats in boiling water. The apple here also keeps the loaf loaf and moist and soft. The recipe uses grated apple, but I had some pureed remains of our apples in the freezer, and added that instead on one occasion; the results were similarly successful.

Barm bread
Another connection with the old tradition of making beer with beer barm. Here, you make a barm by mixing bottle-conditioned ale with some white flour and white leaven the leaving it overnight. The loaf itself just uses this barm, water, strong white flour, and a little salt. Yum. Check out the texture – I’ve never achieved anything like that with a non-leaven bread. Though again, this needs a little practice, as it’s a bit too crusty.

Bottom line: get this book. And get baking! That said though, what’s with the prices on that book now? Mitchel Beazley – do another print run for crying out loud!