My new daily bread and an old favourite book

Rice and porridge

Hello you dear people who have sacrificed their email addresses to hear from this wretched mess of a line cook.

Welcome to this free edition of the Recovering Line Cook newsletter. It’s been a few weeks since I sent one of these. I’ve been focussing a little this month on paid subscriber stuff (a note on that below) so it is nice to be writing this again for everyone.

This week I’ll be sharing what has accidentally become my go-to bread recipe this summer. It’s lovely stuff. There’s also a few words on one of my favourite food books, and a request for advice following a new gadget I’ve invested in recently.

See you in the comments… or not, it’s fine, but it’s nice to chat if you’re into that kinda thing.

Kiss kiss,

Wil

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My new daily bread

I remember a time when all I wanted to cook was “clever” stuff. Back when I was first working in restaurant kitchens, I mean. I wanted to come up with novel uses of obscure ingredients like fish lips, scallop skirts and, lobster steam. That was the dream, the goal. To impress the wonderful cooks I found myself working with.

Now, all I want is for my 2 year old to eat and enjoy the boiled rice and sausages I’ve cooked for her.

That’s why I’ve been so delighted with how enthusiastic my little ones have been about my bread this summer.

I remember how little I cared for anything other than sliced white when I was a kid and I’m constantly impressed with how open my kids are to different breads. They’ve never needed the crusts cut off anything and they actually prefer dark rye to any white and fluffy thing they’re ever offered.

I suppose that’s the Finnish in them.

But this summer I made a small, tiny, I thought, change to my standard recipe and both my kids love the result. It’s got to the point that when my wife and I offer them a snack at the moment their first reaction is to ask for, and forgive me for sounding like I’m boasting, “daddy bread”.

After all the stews gone untouched and plates of spaghetti thrown away, their love for this simple bread makes me infinitely happy.

Best of all, I only really thought of making the change so I didn’t have to throw away a portion of porridge that had been left after breakfast with the kids a few months back. (Porridge is universally accepted by them so long as it is topped with sufficient strawberry jam).

And remembering the Japanese tangzhong bread-making method that makes use of a paste of cooked flour and water, I wondered if the leftover porridge might be of similar use in my standard commercial yeast-leavened bread.

The result is some of the loveliest bread I’ve made. And having “eyeballed” the recipe a few times when I first made it, I took a note of measurements to share with you and it has proved really consistent as well.

First things first, it’s so simple to make. No kneading and just a few half-arsed folds as it rises. Despite this low effort the crumb still has a pleasing chew and softness, and cooked the way I suggest, has a really tender crust. I’m convinced the porridge doesn’t just give the bread a pleasingly glossy texture when fresh but also keeps the bread fresh far longer than when I make this same loaf without it. My cursory Googling suggests the “gelatinized starch” “conditions” the dough, increasing water retention and softening gluten. Either way, I’m sold.

Here’s how to do it yourself as I have been…

Ingredients

135g of cold cooked oat porridge (nice and thick)
200g white bread flour
100g whole wheat flour (Note: I actually use this type of flour called Puolikarkea vehnäjauho in Finland, which only has a small percentage of the outer bran of the grain and is a half-way between white and whole wheat flour. If you have anything that fits that description local to you this is a nice recipe to use some.)
1 teaspoon dry yeast
220g water
1 teaspoon fine salt

Method

Blend the flours with the dry yeast and salt, in a large bowl (he says, as if you were going to mix them in the sink or a shoebox). Add your porridge to the water and mix them into a lumpy slurry, the porridge doesn’t need to be “dissolved” completely. Add to the dry ingredients and bring them all together, then let this sit, covered for twenty minutes.

Now the dough has rested, do your first folds by wetting your hand (this stops dough sticking to your fingers) and, in the bowl, bring one side up so it stretches out, then fold it over the rest of the dough. Do this four times, for each side of the dough. Then cover and rest. Repeat this 3 or 4 times, waiting 20/30 minutes between each time, until the dough is getting stretchy and the gluten has developed. During this process the dough will rise so the folding functions a little like the “knocking back” stage as well.

Then, as I talk through here, shape your loaf and place into a floured banneton. Let it rise until it is close to double the size of the dough when you made your final folds and placed it in the banneton.

I’ve tried baking bread in my Le Creuset dutch oven, I’ve tried having a tray of water in the bottom of the oven to make steam. At the moment I tend to spray the scored dough with a good spritz of water. I think it works well to encourage oven spring. With your bread scored, bake at 250 degrees Celsius/480F for twenty minutes, then lower temp to 190/370 for ten minutes.

Let it cool before cutting into it. Keep it fresh by wrapping it in a clean tea towel, this keeps the crust crisp much better than wrapping in plastic.

Would love to know how you get on with this one and if you think the porridge improves your bread.

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A book recommendation

I think this week’s recommendation is the perfect cookbook. It doesn’t try to be overly profound, poetic, or beautiful. It makes do with speaking simply, manifesting a directness that comes from deeply held opinion born of well-earned experience.

The book is Roast Chicken and other Stories by Simon Hopkinson with Lindsey Bareham. The friendly and accessible prose is reflected in the structure of the book as well, which is broken up into chapters dedicated to one single ingredient. These include chocolate, garlic, tomatoes, and the somewhat more esoterically, brains.

Hopkinson is a legend of British cooking and, as I suggested, his words are full of wisdom. One passage I always remember goes like this:

The better the bird, the better the dish cooked.

Well, up to a point.

A good cook can produce a good dish from any old scrawbag of a chook. A poor cook will produce a poor dish - even from a Bresse chicken.

The book was published back in the nineties. I return to it both for the wonderful words and the reliable recipes that, though grounded largely in French and British cooking, also take in South-East Asian and Italian flavours as well.

A really lovely book I hope you’ll check out.

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On Gadgets

I get laughs at work sometimes. If I have time, you see, I’ll always choose to do something by hand other than use a machine. The truth is I’m not a fan of gadgets and machines. I hate the cleaning involved, the plugging something heavy in. I’d rather wear my arm out and whip a gallon of cream over getting the mixer out to do it any day.

Probably the reason I’m not the fastest cook in the world.

But that changed this week to some degree. I invested in a rice cooker and I think I’m in love. I’m really grateful to a few readers who commented helping me choose the kind of model to get and convinced me this expensive machine was worth the investment. So far, I’m really enjoying it.

What gadgets can you not do without? Also, are there any magical uses of a rice cooker I should know about since I’m new to this brave new rice cooker world?

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Thanks for reading this week. A quick note that one of the new things I’m sharing with paid subscribers is the serialisation of my memoir How to Fail at Being Finnish. I’m sharing this to both give something extra to paid subscribers, but also to use the process to create a new, hopefully final, edit of a work I’m very proud of.

So, if you’d like to read what I think is a funny, light-hearted but honest look at learning a new way of life in a very different country, I hope you upgrade today. You can read an intro post to the memoir here.

Thanks,

Wil