Yuzu pompe à l’huile

Hello my friends!!!

It’s been a long time, right! Well the blog is not dead at all, I just encountered technical issues between the web hosting and wordpress and finally A. solved the problem for me!

So I am back!!!

There has been quite a few recipes I wanted to share here, but they have become obsolete since the ingredients are not seasonal any more. All the beautiful foods from the autumn are gone and now it’s getting really cold and winter mode, with leeks, daikon, cabbages. And because it is right before Christmas I am baking pompes a l’huile every weekend.

Since the first I made in 2015 and the recipe I used then, things have evolved a little. I solely use citrus fruits, and more than often yuzus from the garden, which I didn’t have back then. Also I don’t use yeast anymore, it’s been 3 years now I have started using sourdough. The result is amazingly delicious!!! I have also become much better at rolling and shaping. Back in 2015 I was rolling it too thin.

Pompe a l’huile

200g of flour
20g of sourdough
80g of olive oil
30g of sugar
6g of salt
The zest of a yuzu (can be replaced by orange or any other citrus fruit)
The juice of the yuzu (same, can be replaced by any other citrus fruit)
Water

In a large bowl stir all the ingredients but water. Add water little by little while kneading until the dough is smooth and can form a ball. Let rest for a few hours in a warm place. The dough don’t rise much usually, but you should feel it has changed consistency.

Roll in a circle about 30-35cm and make the cuts.

Bake at 200C for 18-20min or until lightly golden.

I think it is almost impossible that this recipe goes wrong!

December 23, 2023

Starting afresh the sourdough adventure

It has been two years since I made Lois, my sourdough, and even though we had our ups and downs, overall, Lois was a great fun to use and taught me a lot. It even survived quietly our absence during our trip to France. So what happened? Why did suddenly things got strange… a few weeks ago my bread started to not rise as much as it would. I naively thought that my rising time was not adequate… and then last week when I was about to feed Lois it was all strange, and I spotted mold on the side of the bottle. I did a rescue operation, which seemed to work. Baked a beautiful brioche, and hopeful that everything was back to normal. But then, Lois died. I didn’t even think that would happen. All a sudden it became liquid, stinky and covered in a white… it was over.

So I had no other choice but start a new one. So here I am back at it… starting again.

But maybe it’s the two years with Lois, the perfect weather, it’s been working like magic and Baden is born in no time, smelling divine. Very active compared to Lois, who has never been a super active kind, and which smell was so so. And after 3 days I made my first bread with it. Smooth and easy!

I hope Baden will be living for a long time and we will have many breads together!!!

November 1, 2022

Fougasse

When I was a child, my mum would come to pick us at school for lunch, then we would walk to the car and somedays, on the way stop to buy some bread at Mr. Richard bread shop. And one bread in particular, fougasse. His signature fougasse unless most other bread shop was not the one with olives, or whatever else you can put in, it was the simplest plain fougasse, and instead of the classic shape it would little hearts cuts and you could pull the little hearts of bread. We lived to eat the little hearts on the way back to the car, and even more when the bread was still warm!!

While fougasse is eaten all year round, I like to have some ready in the summer. It makes the perfect meal with some fresh vegetables and a piece of grilled fish. And it is even more perfect when you have it ready when you get back home after a surfing session at sunset. I love to go surfing on Sunday evening after 17:30, when most day trippers are leaving and you get the ocean for just you, your friends and a couple of regulars. I love driving back home at dusk, seeing the sky becoming purple and the rice paddies turning yellow. And then I am hungry and the fougasse and a fresh cucumber from the garden are waiting to be eaten!

Fougasse

250g of flour
20g of olive oil plus some for the finish
20-30g of sourdough starter
8g of salt
70g of water (may need adjustment depending on flour and sourdough)

Mix all the ingredients and knead lightly. If the dough is too dry add a bit of water, if too wet a bit of flour. The dough must be rather hard and have not much moisture.

Wait a few hours until it has grown.

Then flatten the ball with the hand and wait 15 minutes. After that, roll the dough with a cooking pin to obtain an oblong shape of about 2-3cm thick. With a shaped cutter of the shape you want, I chose plum because I didn’t have hearts like Mr. Richard’s fougasse, cut a few places with the design you fancy.

Bake at 230deg for 15min or until golden. When out of the oven spread a layer of olive oil with a brush.

August 8, 2022

Welcoming another new year…

I am not good at welcoming new years… Probably because it is too close to my birthday, and I just myself turned one more year and still try to understand what it means… also we celebrate more personal events than any other: birthdays, anniversaries… For many it is a time to look back at achievements and look forward to goals. I have no regrets , and as long as I can remember I never made a good resolutions list. I have no bucket list, nor list of things I want to fix in my life, bad habits I need to get rid of, diets I need to start, addictions I need to quit or things I could do better. Not that I am perfect of course not, but I don’t make lists. Usually when I need to do something I just do it and organize myself to stick to it! January 1st wouldn’t be the time I would particularly change and set goals for myself. So the welcoming of the new year is not so important for me. And for the past 17 years we’ve spent a lot of the new year eves either in a plane or with a big jet lag in the countryside, when it is cold and we usually go early to bed and wake up early too. Though I like the Japanese celebration of new year at a nearby temple or shrine for the festive simplicity of hatsumode 初詣, the first visit of the year to a shrine or temple, and have nice memories of so many spent with friends or family in so many different places in Japan they are also often memories of hours in the cold, waiting in crowded lines for the time to arrive, with bonfire to warm us once in a while. So we now often skip the midnight visit and go later in the day, when it’s less crowded.

Even though we don’t celebrate much, I prepare a nice dinner (as I do every day ;)) and we spend a quiet evening together, as we always do. Nothing fancy… and I like it that way very much.

This year is just the same. At the time I write, everything is quiet outside, though the shrine is all lit up to welcome a few visitors during the night. A. is fast asleep, I am struggling to keep an eye open. We will wake up when the day breaks tomorrow. It will be cold and sunny. I have already baked the bread for our breakfast as I tested a new (to me) baking method using a cast iron pot, which has helped me understand why my breads are often too pale. I have an issue with moisture when I bake them. The cast iron pot just solved the problem and I finally could bake a golden bread, with a crust crunchy outside and well balanced crumbs.

So now I can sleep tight, wish you a good end of the year and see you in 2022!

December 31, 2021

Milk bread

I use to make a lot of fancy breads for breakfast, brioches, viennois bread, milk breads, sugar breads… but since I started using my sourdough Lois, almost a year ago, and was learning how it works, I focused on breads with less ingredients. Yet, milk breads for breakfast are really delicious. And since we now have milk in the fridge 4 days a week or so, I really wanted to make milk breads with milk and sourdough. Originally I planned to do a white flour milk bread but I soon realized that I had no more white flour and all I had was whole wheat flour, so it would be whole wheat milk breads. And rather than making several small breads that dry out rapidly I opted for a giant version that I baked in my panettone mold.

The result was a very soft and mildly sweet bread with a beautiful crumb. so let me share my recipe.

Whole wheat flour mills bread

350g of whole wheat flour
200ml of milk
100g of sourdough
40g of brown sugar
8g of salt
Eventually a bit of water

Note that the above quantities are indications. They may need adjustment depending on the type of flour, the humidity in the air, and your liking.

In a bowl put all the ingredients but the water and knead. If the dough is too dry add a bit of water, or milk. Knead until the dough is smooth.

Let rest at room temperature for 4h or until the dough is significantly more voluminous.

I used a panettone mold lined with cooking paper to shape the bread. Made two cuts on top and waited 1h before baking at 200degrees for 40min (I used a bamboos stick to test if the core was well done). Adjust the baking time to the size and shape of your breads.

That’s it!

August 24, 2021

Sourdough rescue 🚑

Just as I was talking very proudly of my sourdough in my last post, it has decided to scare me like crazy by almost dying…

Indeed, I used it over the weekend to make some delicious giant campagne bread, and I found it Monday morning inert and unresponsive. Probably the lack of food and warmer temperatures it’s not been used to but the diagnosis is still unclear. It was smelling perfectly fine and I feed it as I should except that bubbles didn’t come out and texture was rather unusual. So I started to worry and panic. I devised a rescue plan of the rather large amount of sourdough starter I had. First, I split it in two, one in a dough the rest in intensive care: food every 1.5 hours for 12 hours, lots of love and mixing.

It was breaking my heart to imagine I’ve let it die, but after 9h of intensive care, the starter showed a few bubbles… it was going to be ok!

The dough… well it stayed doing nothing for 12h and then after 24h it finally was doing something. Except that in the meantime we left the country and were back to Tokyo, where I still don’t have an oven. So there were a few options: flat breads in a pan, bread in a skillet, or steamed bread. I opted for the latter and was planning to make stuffed steamed breads, except that work was too busy and I didn’t have time to prepare the filling. So I simply prepared 8 balls of dough, and after work I steamed them to obtain round little breads that we enjoyed with a mix of peas, asparagus, chopped pork filet and onions from the garden and soya sauce, that would have been the perfect seasonal filling, but it ended up outside as a side. When cooking while working one needs to be flexible…

So not only did I rescued my sourdough, but we had delicious little buns to eat!!!

May 25, 2021

Giant breads…

When I started making bread I was so unsure of the results that I was making bread for a single breakfast, basically with 160-180g of flour. After I became more confident I increased slightly and went to double, but baking with yeast, the bread had a hard time keeping fresh in the Japanese weather: too dry in winter and too humid almost all the rest of the time. So my basic flour amount stayed around 300g for a loaf most of the time, unless we had guests and the bread would go in no time. But I felt it was such a waste of time and energy. Kneading 300g or 500g of flour is not much different, and heating the oven once is so much more energy efficient.

Since I’ve baked with my sourdough Lois, as I was experimenting I went down to smaller loafs again for a bit, and increasing their size little by little, I also got rid of the scale. I do everything using my feeling, learning to understand how the dough is rather than trusting the scale always. Indeed, I feed my sourdough also without a scale, more than often I keep rather hard but when I want to wash its home I then liquify it to move it before making it hard again when moving in again. And with the weather changing really quickly, the scale was no good to tell me how much hydrated should be the dough, but my hands are rather good. It also helps when working with different kind of flours, like I do.

What I am targeting is a large loaf that can make 3 breakfasts and eventually a few extra slices for tea-time, for this I use the equivalent of 500g or slightly more of flour, which happens to be perfect to use a large part of my sourdough before it becomes too voluminous!!!

My all-time favorite is definitely campagne bread using about 20% of whole wheat flour or of buckwheat flour. The others that I love baking are the boxed whole wheat bread with nuts, seeds and dry fruits, I love the shape of its slices and the patterns the fruits etc… create in it. or the naturally very sweet whole wheat and chestnut flour bread. While chestnut flour contains no gluten you obtain a denser crumb but all the same delicious.

What is your favorite bread recipe?

May 23, 2021

Whole wheat bread

Having a nice loaf of bread waiting for you for breakfast is one of the many reasons I started making bread. Controlling what is inside and where ingredients come from is also as much important. I have had a hard time finding nice flour, I started with using flour I would bring back from France and shifted to Japanese flour, but honestly finding organic or chemical free local flour has been quite a challenge. And when I finally found it (アオヤギ製粉), discussing with the owner to see if they provide me with whole wheat flour, he told me there will be no harvest for the next 3 years because they need to replace some of their equipment… huge deception… so I order pretty much all their stock to support them (hoping it would enable them to fix their equipment faster) and be sure I would have enough for a year (that’s how long I think I can keep it in the Japanese weather). But I am pretty sure I won’t, now that I realized I use about 5kg of flour per month!!!! So I have turned back to the more commercial organic flour I’ve been finding at the supermarket, made in Japan but sold in tiny 500g bags (and this is the big size, the normal being 300g!!!). But at least there is some whole wheat flour which makes me happy. Indeed one of my favorite bread is pumpernickel and the other is a rich whole wheat bread with nuts, seeds, raisins etc… very dense, energetic and delicious! It reminds me some of the breads we often had at home, toasted with butter. So let me share my recipe.

Some of my flour stock… 20kg of flour is basically 4 months of bread making and pasta, quiche, scones, crepes…

Energy packed bread

500g of whole wheat flour
10g of salt
150g of sourdough
30g of brown sugar
70g of sultanas
70g of whole hazelnut
30g of pumpkin seeds
You can add more but I like it that way….
Water

In a large bowl mix together the flour, the sourdough, the salt and sugar. Add water as needed when kneading to obtain a soft slightly wet dough. Then add the nuts, seeds, sultanas. Knead to obtain an homogeneous mixture. Leave to rest for 6 to 24h depending on temperatures. After it has grown, shape it and leave again for another 2-3h. Bake 30 min at 230deg.

May 11, 2021

Anise bread

Anise, fennel, star anise, and also cumin, carvi seeds and caraway seeds are some of my favorite seasoning seeds. Maybe because I grew up in the south of France where fennel grew everywhere on the path sides and it was so easy to harvest while admiring the beautiful shape of the flowers and the little white snails that would gather on the stems, that I used to call “colimaçon” but are in fact “caragouille rosee”, and chewing a piece of flower… or because of my grand mother homemade pastis, this very distinctive drink made from anise and also typical from the region. My mother would use ample fennel to stuff a fish we would have fished, and bake it with potatoes and tomatoes. A dish every one loved very much.

Funnily, in Japan this is not something so common. And I hardly have seen fennel growing anywhere in the wild. Maybe some areas do have some, or my eyes haven’t been opened enough. So most of the fennel and anise I use is either coming from my parents, or bought from the grocery. Recently I have bought quite a bit more often than usual, probably since we’ve been to Malta, to make Qagħaq tal-Ħmira… so I decided to use them to make straightforward anise seeds breads. Less elaborated than the Maltese breads and I was very very much please with the result. I must say that it is thanks to a very healthy sourdough and warmer temperatures. It goes like below for the recipe and I hope you will enjoy!

Anise breads

300g of flour
80g of sourdough
1tsp of salt
Water
1tbs of anise seeds

The recipe is simple as can be. In a large bowl mix the sourdough the flower, the salt. Add water little by little and knead to obtain a smooth dough. Add the anise seeds and knead a little further.

Let rest under a wet clothe until the dough grows. Mine was really growing happily.

When quite fluffy move to a flat surface dusted with flour. Flatten the dough gently with your palm. Cut into 6 pieces. Make 6 balls. Then flatten and cut three ribbons and braid then. Leave to rest for an hour then bake at 240deg until golden.

March 27, 2021