Two weeks, two new breads from famous bakers. The daughter of one of my customers moved back to Wales from France with her Breton husband who, of course, was soon raving about my Pain de Campagne. So I poked around the net for a Breton bread to have a go at. The only thing that came up was a couple of versions of a bread by Real Bread Campaigns’s poster boy Richard Bertinet containing sel gris and some buckwheat flour. Spar Bethesda was fresh out of sel gris but I had some buckwheat in stock. The original recipe is yeasted but called for 30% pate fermentee so I just swapped that for starter.
I thought it was quite good at first but it didn’t seem to age very well.
This week Gert was very specific. The phone rang – “Turn to page 208 in Comptoire Libanais, Saj Bread.” This is the excellent Lebanese cookbook by Tony Kitous and one Dan Lepard, poster boy of The Great Australian Bake-off, AKA The Baking Guy. Dan did the photographs for the book – must be very handy when your photographer doubles on bread recipes.
Interesting genuine sourdough flatbread with a good whack of barley flour cooked on a wok inverted over the gas. The hydration was hugely out – nearly broke my wrist trying to knead it. I added so much water I started to think my calculation was out but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. Not sure either about the wok business – I know they use a copper dome in Lebanon but I can’t see any advantage over using a cast iron skillet (I’ve started doing wheat tortillas on a Welsh bakestone).
Jolly good flabreads.
Poster Boys
The PArtisan Baker 