Sourdough Suppers

Hilary Cacchio

Description

An exquisite collection of moreish meals created around handmade breads and simple seasonal ingredients. Chef and sourdough teacher Hilary Cacchio shares 17 years of experience in her new bread cookbook, SourdoughSuppers. It is split into 12 monthly chapters, guiding readers through the seasons. The first few recipes in each chapter are the breads for the month, followed by recipes that either use bread or go well with the bread(s) featured. They are always colourful, easy, big-flavoured, informal and occasionally indulgent dishes that Hilary cooks herself. Each chapter opens with a full-colour illustration and Hilary peppers the book with anecdotes throughout, elevating Sourdough Suppers into more than just a cook book. From stories from her life as a chef; market life in the Pyrenees; a discussion about seasonal vegetables; and tips on how to transform fresh ingredients into vibrant dishes, the reader will be both informed and entertained. The book covers a wide range of sourdough topics, including what wild yeast/sourdough culture is; how slow fermenting dough and making our bread naturally can benefit our taste buds and our health; its history; exposing myths; how to source a culture; storing and preparing a culture for baking; and trouble-shooting. Hilary also includes sections that explain the five elements of bread making (culture/flour/salt/water/time); the stages of bread making; the equipment required and how to convert all of the recipes from culture to commercial yeast. The philosophy of the bread-making part of the book is that after a very short while the new baker will be able to produce their natural breads with only fifteen minutes hands-on time. SourdoughSuppers is scattered with illustrations by the New Talent Bafta-winning illustrator and animator, Kate Charter. It's original and fresh and will appeal to bakers, inexperienced and expert, and anyone who loves bread.

Informations

• Publié par: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 28 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789019278
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Copyright 2018 Hilary Cacchio
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
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ISBN 978 1789019 278
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

Contents
Introduction
A potted history
What is a sourdough culture?
Exploding a few myths
Sourcing a sourdough culture
Storing and preparing for baking
Troubleshooting
How much to use in a recipe
The five elements
Stages of bread-making
Equipment
Converting recipes for commercial yeast
Recipes
Glossary
Some additional reading and information
A few sources and suppliers
Acknowledgements
Recipes
May
A very simple white dough
A very simple wholemeal/spelt dough
Barley pittas
Georgia flatbreads
Moroccan flatbreads stuffed with spicy onion and feta
Roast garlic and olive hummus
Muhammara
June
Jersey Royal ‘Tortano’
Langos
‘Egg sandwich’ salad with salad cream, asparagus and mountain croutons
Asparagus soup
Fresh cheese with spring herbs
July
Soft summer rolls
Aubergine, chickpea and mint burgers
Fresh beetroot and carrot Chutney
Chipotle and roast garlic sauce
Avocado panzanella
Saganaki
August
An airy Italian dough
Pane pugliese
Ciabatta
Focaccia
Preserved lemon and fig focaccia
Gazpacho with prawn, avocado and lime salsa
Slow roast pulled pork with chipotle barbecue sauce and Discovery apple salsa
Tomato paella with pea and chervil/mint salsa
Sizzling prawns in garlic and chilli oil
September
Pane Montanaro
Hanger steak and Roquefort sandwich
Butter lettuce with tomato vinaigrette
Sourdough battered onion rings
Spicy chickpea ‘fries’
Chilli and tomato ketchup
October
Apple, walnut and cider coils
Roast Queensland Blue, cheddar and thyme soup
Maple butterscotch, apple and cider betty
Cheeses to match
November
Carrot, sesame and kalonji naan breads
Vada Pav with coriander, cashew and coconut chutney
Fennel marinated in Lemon
‘Fresh’ mango and chilli chutney
December
Pompe à l’huile
Fennel crackers
Manchego with orange, carrot and sherry marmalade
Smoked salmon rillettes
Stuffing balls (bread gnocchi)
Pan de higos
January
Cottage loaf
Baked beans with chunky blue cheese dressing
Boles de picolat
Fish-finger sandwiches with minted pea salsa and gribiche sauce
Preserved lemons
February
Brioche
Sticky pecan and maple buns
Chocolate-filled ‘wild’ doughnuts
Prune, Armagnac and honey ice cream sandwiches with warm chocolate sauce
March
‘All-in-one’ two-day sourdough
Five-day New York sourdough
Pyrenean leek and potato broth
Alioli with eggs
The ultimate ‘munch sir’
Shin of beef slow-cooked in Theakston’s Old Peculier
April
Malted wheat and rye loaf
Black bean mole
Slow-braised baby leeks
Avocado rarebit

Introduction
Elizabeth David wrote in her book English Bread and Yeast Cookery ,
“… if bread is to be a life companion, then we had better be choosy about it …’ (xxii)
This book is mainly about making bread naturally and full of flavour but not necessarily sour. Therefore the culture preparation instructions and the recipe instructions encourage yeast activity, producing stunning breads that highlight natural flavours from the wheat and yeasts, with just a background of acidity. Most of the breads can be produced within 24-36 hours. The exceptions are the 2 day and 5 day sourdough recipes (March) which introduce techniques that can encourage sourer flavours. It seems impossible to separate a good bread from the meals it is part of, and therefore, having produced some wonderful breads each chapter leads to a selection of supporting ‘acts’ of seasonal, colourful, informal suppers, lunches, breakfasts, savouries, snacks and general grazing.
If you already have a successful sourdough/wild yeast culture and maintenance regime, you can ignore the maintenance schedules and dive straight into the recipes. Not having or not wanting a culture doesn’t preclude you from making tasty, healthy bread, the section on converting the recipes to commercial yeast will make this book just as valuable. After teaching sourdough making for so many years I understand a few people just don’t want it – so all is not lost, this section is the answer for those of you. Finally if you don’t have a culture yet and would like one, I hope the first sections will guide you to success and pleasure. The preparing-for-baking schedules, initially require some patience but they are not cast in stone, just somewhere to start. As you come to know your culture you can experiment by breaking some of the guidelines and creating your own schedule to fit around your life.
It is important to have a good maintenance and storage practise for your culture, and when you get this right the bread almost makes itself. In 12 years of teaching the subject, I have found it is at these stages that many people trip up, making bread before the culture is ready or; storing an unhealthy culture.
For me, it started when I gave someone a bottle of homemade raspberry vinegar and as a thank you she gave me a copy of Nancy Silverton’s La Brea Bakery . Nancy Silverton’s complex instructions for ‘catching a culture’ are much maligned today, but 17 years ago they were the only clear directions available. They are fun and exciting to follow even though they require a bit of extra time and kit.
A few days later in my kitchen in the then Clinton Corners Country Store, Dutchess County, New York and with my bunch of organic grapes, my wild yeast/sourdough culture was born in the presence of greatness! The proprietors of said store, my dearest friends Jeanie and David Bean. David, an East Coast American, was one of the Jets in the movie West Side Story . He met Jeanie Deaks, dancer and East End girl, on stage while performing the musical in the West End in the ‘60s. He whipped her back to America, married her and after an eventful few decades wound up running a country store which is where I met them in the mid 90s. We shared a kitchen, me running an up market freelance chef business and beginning to learn about sourdough, the Beans serving ‘Tea’ and ‘English’ food to the Millbrook Set. They tap-danced their way around my life and my kitchen with such eccentricity, humour and style – I guess it was inevitable this sourdough culture would thrive!
The culture I captured all those years ago still makes great bread for me and many others. Today there are mature, proven cultures available to buy and easier ways of trapping wild yeast, but in none of them does the embryonic culture turn a bright yellow (as in Nancy Silverton’s instructions) before it transforms into being sturdy and lasting.
Since those days my culture has had a few experiences of its own. Exploding in my hold luggage on a certain cheap airline on the way to a castle in Cork and the threat of confiscation at Stansted Airport on the way to Madrid. Generally it travels well, clocking up thousands of miles around Europe. It now mainly spends its time between Cambridge and the Pyrenees.
What follows through this book is by no means definitive. It is the culmination of 17 years of successful sourdough/wild yeast baking around the world. I hope it quickly becomes clear how much flexibility the long slow fermentation process can offer busy inflexible lives. It takes a short while to get acquainted with a culture, its feeding preferences and how to manipulate it to achieve different flavours and results. However, you and your culture will very quickly be producing delicious breads.
All liquids in the bread recipes are measured by weight including the culture, for ease and accuracy. Some non-bread recipes, where it isn’t critical, call for small measurements of an ingredient in grams and some a tablespoon, use whichever is easiest: presume 15g=15mls=1tbs (except salt, always weigh). The bread recipes are written and tested using flours from Shipton Mill, with the exception of a couple of recipes recommending the use of stone-milled flour.
Wherever I am cooking in the world my culture usually travels with me and this is a year in its life. I hope this book will launch you on a lifetime of making great tasting breads.
A Potted History
Risen bread seems to have started with the early (BC) Egyptians. Possibly one day someone left the bowl of gruel, a mixture of ancient grain roughly ground in water, out in the open air too long. Hey presto, fermentation and the transformation from what would probably have been a flat, dense bread to a risen loaf.
Wild yeasts are not exclusive to the Nile Delta (although I believe it is particularly lush with them). They are in the air we breathe, in our kitchen, in the flours we use to bake with (especially in organic and biodynamic) and on our vegetables and fruit. If you have ever left a bunch of black grapes in the fruit bowl a few days too long you will see a white bloom appearing on the skins – this is a wild yeast. Fast-forward several millennia and although some countries held onto the knowledge, practise and skills and continued to make bread using this natural/wild form of yeast e.g. parts of the USA and Eastern Europ