Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

Master baker Peter Reinhart beginning his part of the seminar

(Sorry the seminar pictures are fuzzy-- I couldn't use a flash and I was quite far away!)


Saturday morning I had the opportunity to attend the no-knead artisan bread seminar at IACP, featuring my "bread hero" Peter Reinhart (author of several books, including The Bread Baker's Apprentice, which I have read cover to cover; Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, and his newest book, on the no-knead method, Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day).  "Co-starring" was Nancy Baggett, the author of many cookbooks, primarily about desserts, baking and bread.  Her latest is Kneadlessly Simple: Fabulous, Fuss-Free, No-Knead Yeast Breads.  I don't know Nancy's work as well as Peter's, but she's a lovely lady and a good teacher.

(There were two other participants in the seminar, Jean Duane and Silvana Nardone, who were teaching gluten-free breads, but the breads were all made with eggs, so I kind of zoned out on those, I'm afraid! Peter and Nancy's books are not vegan, but most of the breads [except the "enriched" ones] do not contain eggs, and, if they contain milk, non-dairy milks can be used, so their books are usable for vegans.)

Peter made a lovely no-knead Everyday Rye Sandwich Bread for us.



He started out making a sourdough rye starter, then chopping it into his no-knead dough ingredients. He's funny and approachable and very knowledgeable. I was very interested in his demonstration of folding a wet dough to strengthen the gluten. He explained that kneading "organizes" the gluten, but long, slow fermentation and the "stretch and fold" method can do the same thing without hand-kneading or machine kneading. He recommends doing this abut 4 times during the first rise, with 10 minute waits in between.

Here is a short explanation of what this "organization" is: "The plasticity and elasticity are made possible by the presence of an amazing composite of proteins within the wheat kernel, called gluten. These proteins in gluten are long chains of amino acids, some of the longest in the world, in fact, with chains around 1,000 amino acids long! The two major proteins in gluten are calledgliadins and glutenins. The gliadins (think of the word "glide") give the gluten its plasticity because they act kind of like ball bearings or a lubricant. They allow the other major protein, the chains of glutenins, to slide past each other without forming bonds. You can think of the glutenin molecules as long spring-like chains. As the dough is worked and kneaded, these glutenin molecules can link up with each other, end to end, to form super-long, spring-like chains. This makes a tight, coiled mesh, or net, called "the gluten," to trap the gas in, and this gives the dough its elasticity. All those springs want to "spring back" when they are stretched!"
http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/FoodSci_p040.shtml

I haven't been using this technique with my no-knead breads so far, and they are still wonderful, but I found it enormously helpful when I made ciabatta buns with a very wet dough.

Here's a video of Peter demonstrating this method:


Here's Peter showing us how stretchy the dough is:


and then showing us the formed loaf:


His second bread was a lovely twisted and iced Chocolate-Cinnamon Babka, made with dark chocolate (both from his new book). Unfortunately, my camera ran out of juice, so I couldn't take pictures of it, and it was a dough enriched with butter and eggs. However, I plan to try a vegan version soon!

Nancy Baggett made an Easy Oat Bread and a Crusty Seeded Cracked Wheat Pot Boule, both also from her newest book. She uses a different method than other no-knead creators have-- she uses a ICE water in her doughs to slow down the fermentation. I am waiting to get her book from the library (I have bought 4 new books lately, so I want to see if I can justify buying it first!), so I haven't tried her method yet, although I do have the print-out for his class and may try one of these loaves myself soon. Good reviews for this book on amazon, BTW.

Nancy demonstrating her dough (sorry about the fuzzy photo!):


What a privilege to attend a workshop with two such innovative bakers sharing their knowledge!

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That evening, Julie Hasson, Fran Costigan, Gail Davis Rahmy, and I made our way to the Willamette Week's "Eat Mobile" Food Cart Festival.  Gail  has a great description on her blog , not only of everything we ate, but our adventure trying to FIND it!!  Do visit there and see her photos and read the post!  One of my favorites was Asaase Ital Palace, one of only two totally vegan food carts represented at the festival. Their specialty is African-Caribbean/vegan-vegetarian cuisine. They served a tasty Jamaican beans and rice dish and a delicious faux "jerk chicken". I had a fun discussion with one of the owners, about keeping our cultural heritages with vegan food.


Asaase Ital Palace (Photo by Gail Davis Rahmy)

Another favorite was Mono Malo Tapas. Here's what Gail wrote: "("Mono Malo" means "Bad Monkey" in Spanish.) Their vegan-friendly food cart features Montaditos, bite-sized toasted bread slices with various savory toppings. When all was said and done, their grilled garlic and herb portabello with romesco sauce turned out to be one of my festival favorites. After my first taste, I went back for several more." So did I!! I NEED to replicate this! I have already bought some portobellos and I'm getting my smoker out!


Mono Malo Tapas (Photo by Gail Davis Rahmy)

AND, we got to have out picture taken with Peter Reinhart!


(Photo courtesy of Gail Davis Rahmy)

We were so stuffed after this that we couldn't even think of going out to dinner, so we trudged back across the bridge and sought out a place where we could sit and talk and have tea or coffee. Then we roamed around in Whole Foods, checking out new products, and i couldn't resist taking home two 1 1/2 lb. bags of organic powdered sugar-- only $2.99 a bag! It is so expensive where I live! (And I have several birthdays coming up in the family.)

It was a really fun day and such a pleasure to spend it with "kindred spirits"!

I'll report on my last day in Portland on Saturday!

PS: I found out when I got home that there is a Peruvian food cart in Portland and they serve vegan versions of their dishes!! See this article. Guess where I'm going on my next trip to Portland?

Cheers,

As you may know, if you have read my other blog posts on pizza, I have not really cared for whole wheat pizza crust. I have been using about 1/3 whole wheat flour in my dough, with good results, but the whole wheat doughs I have tried have been awful! Until yesterday.

I have owned a copy of my baking hero Peter Reinhart's book, Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads (in addition to his classic The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread) for some time now, but I had not had the nerve to try his 100% whole wheat pizza dough recipe.

However, DH and I are following the Weight Watcher's Core Plan and so we are trying to eat whole grain products for the most part. After a month without pizza, we decided to use our remaining extra points for a pizza blow-out for lunch! I planned it a day ahead and made Peter's whole wheat dough.

The recipe calls for two pre-doughs, a biga (Italian bread starter), which has to be refrigerated overnight, and a soaker, which is some of the flour (in this case-- it can also be whole grains) with liquid and sometimes a little salt.


Biga on the left, soaker on the right. I used my home-ground hard red wheat flour, so the dough looked fairly dark. If you used white whole wheat, it would be more golden in color.

You probably have some idea of what a starter is (this one is started with yeast, not sourdough), but why use a soaker? Well, for one thing, flour soaks in liquid for several hours (12-24 hours, in this case), the gluten gets a head start in development. The two proteins that make up gluten begin to join together, which makes the dough more malleable and cohesive. For another, soaking hydrates the bran and germ, which are the harder particles that can cut the gluten strands and sometimes prevent whole grain doughs from rising properly. And, very importantly, soaking flour initiates enzymatic activity. Enzymes convert complex starches into simple sugars, which feed the yeast, which rises the bread. The soaker gives a head start to this process. The enzymic action develops the umami flavor compounds in wheat flour to “ripen” the dough and develop its flavor.

When you are ready to make the final dough, you turn out the soaker on a floured board and cut it into 12 pieces:


Then you get out the refrigerated biga, which has fermented for at least 8 hours,



and cut it into 12 pieces, too.


(NOTE: Peter Reinhart says: "... The surface of the soakers and bigas will sometimes darken due to oxidation--no harm but if you want to avoid it, lay some plastic wrap directly on the surface of the dough to keep it from reacting to the air...")

Then you place them in your stand mixer with the other ingredients for the final dough (yeast [he uses instant yeast added with the flour-- I didn't have any, so I used ordinary dry active baking yeast dissolved in 1 tablespoon warm water-- you have to use about 1/3 more regular yeast than instant], salt, a little more whole wheat flour, olive oil, sweetener of your choice).


Then, knead it. The dough, once risen, can be refrigerated for up to 24 hours before use, and it can be frozen, too.



The dough was moist and easy to handle. (See an alternative way to stretch the dough at this post.) Although the instructions said to divide the dough into 5 parts, I divided it into 4, so that we could each have a good-sized individual pizza, and then freeze enough for 2 more.


I added the topping just before I baked each pizza.

IMPORTANT NOTE (this applies to any pizza dough): If you have a pretty moist dough (such as a no-knead dough) and you are making a thin crust pizza, letting it sit too long with the toppings on it may make the dough soggy and very difficult to get it off the peel! (As you can see in the photo, it is already on my custom-made 12"-wide Mini SuperPeel.  You can get the 14"-wide SuperPeel here.) Make sure to flour your peel (pizza paddle) and then sprinkle with plenty of cornmeal to make sure the dough will slide off nicely. If using a metal peel, or ordinary wooden (here's a 14" one and here's a 12" one) or bamboo (here's a 14" one and here's a 12" one)  peel or pizza paddle, place a piece of baking parchment over the peel. You can slide it off onto your hot stone or pan along with the parchment! You could also do this with the SuperPeel, if your dough is too soggy.)

BTW, here's a post I did about using a cast iron skillet instead of a pizza stone-- love it!



The verdict?

We liked it! It puffed up nicely on the edges and it had a nice flavor-- not "muddy", which is the only way I can describe some whole wheat crusts. I found the rim of the first pizza crust I baked a bit dry, so I sprayed the rim of the second pizza crust with a little oil from my pump-sprayer during the last few minutes of baking, and that really improved it (also in terms of how it looked-- more golden).

Reservations? It was still a bit coarse for my taste, though, but that might have been our home-ground flour. I want to try it with white whole wheat flour and see if that makes a difference. I would probably also add a bit more salt.

One whole pizza crust (1/4 of the dough) was 9.7 points. It was worth it (we had saved up points)! I didn't want a measly 2 little slices-- I wanted it to be my whole meal! I figured that if I try the recipe again with a white biga dough, and the rest whole wheat (maybe white whole wheat), it might come up to my expectations better. If I use 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil in the dough, instead of 2 tablespoons, then the points will be pretty much the same as the a 100% crust (actually, slightly less-- 9.2).

So, stay tuned for updates!

BTW, I can't reproduce the recipe here, since it's not online anywhere, so I don't think he wants it posted all over the 'Net. The book is worth buying (both of them, actually), anyway, if you are a serious baker, and a good price on amazon even for the hardcover version.

Enjoy!