Travelling bread

Delicious and durable 

Food is so intertwined with travel that it's hard to think of one without the other. Even if we don't travel, our food does. It's been estimated that the ingredients in an average American meal have traveled 1500 miles from farm to plate (http://www.worldwatch.org/globetrotting-food-will-travel-farther-ever-thanksgiving). 

Average distance from farm to an American dinner plate

Fortunately, some of my favourite travel destinations are places that have excellent local food. In Italy, I can eat locally while enjoying some of the best food in the world. However, I still have some food-related challenges even when my destination has great local cuisine. My problem always seems to start within a day of departure regardless of whether I'm driving or flying and usually has to do with missing my homemade bread or cereal - things that can't be found away from home. Italy is famous for their food but not for their healthy or filling breakfasts. My solution is to travel with food and that's where this bread comes in.

If I have the time to plan ahead, one of my favourite travelling breads is a heavy, grainy, healthy loaf like this one. It's loaded with nuts, fruit, veggies and flavour. Much of its flavour and dark colour comes from ground cinnamon which you'll want to buy in bulk if possible. If this loaf is sliced and dried, it will keep for weeks. It's heavy enough to make a good breakfast and if thinly sliced and dried to a crisp, even satisfies the munchies.

I like making bread with a long, slow ferment but this recipe can be speeded up by starting with warm water and using up to a full packet of instant yeast.

With walnuts, raisins, apples, flax seed and carrots, this bread is almost a balanced meal. 

Two loaves or two large flats of fermented travelling bread

3 cups water
1.5 cups whole wheat flour
1.5 cups grated carrots, microwaved until steamed
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup flax seed
2 cups grated apples
2 cups chopped walnuts
1/3 cup cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
Unbleached flour as needed, approximately 6 cups

On the first day, add 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast and the whole wheat flour to cool water and mix. Cover and let sit overnight.

On day two, add all the other ingredients except the salt and unbleached flour. Cover and let sit overnight.

On day three, add the salt and start blending in the unbleached flour until the dough can be turned out. Keep dusting the outside of the dough and the work surface while kneading until most of the stickiness is gone. Cover and let sit at room temperature for about two hours. This dough will not double in bulk.


Divide dough in two. For loaves, roll them out into two log shapes, place them on a flour or cornmeal dusted sheet and bake at 500 F for 30 minutes or until interior reads about 85 C with an instant read thermometer. For flatbreads, roll one of them out to a little smaller size than your large cookie sheet, transfer it to the dusted sheet, and tease it out to full size. Optionally, brush top with yogurt or egg yolk and sprinkle with seeds (e.g. sesame, sunflower) and/or coarse salt. Bake at 500 F for 7-8 minutes or until it looks done.  Repeat with other half of dough.

Cranberry focaccia

Also known as Cranberry Pizza

In the fall of 2015, I was at a market in Florence with Jane and saw an unusual flatbread topped with black grapes called "schiacciata all'uva" (pronounced ska-CHA-ta). I bought a piece because I'd heard of it but had never tasted it. It was intensely grape-y and delicious even with the slight crunch of seeds which were neither tough nor bitter. I learned later that this treat is found in Italy only in October when the right grapes are available.

Schiacciata all'uva at the Mercato Centrale in Florence. 

The idea of using fruit on pizza was in the back of my mind when fresh cranberries appeared in my grocery store around Christmas. I had wanted to make something inspired by "schiaccata all'uva" and cranberries seemed appropriate, if a bit unusual. Although not as sweet as grapes, they compensate with flavour AND they're grown here in BC.

It inspired this experiment using cranberry sauce. 

Canned cranberries might work for the sauce but I recommend using fresh. In fact, you could even put raw cranberries directly on the pizza dough, cover them with cheese and bake it that way but the berries will tend to roll off so it's better to make them into sauce first. I've made sauce by simmering fresh cranberries with a little water and sugar and I've simmered berries with a little maple syrup and no water. All have turned out great but if you're trying this the first time I would recommend simmering a 12 ounce package of berries with a cup of water and 1/2 cup sugar (enough for more than two 10" pizzas) until the berries pop. That's half the sugar suggested for cranberry sauce on the package.

I've made this without cheese but I prefer it with cheese. My favourite combination is with blue cheese and a little shredded mozzarella. The strong flavour of blue cheese goes really well with cranberries. In fact, it's delicious on other fruit pizzas as I will blog about later. I've used it with blueberries, peaches, nectarines, and black grapes.

This version has blue and mozzarella cheeses.  

Recipe

This is just a variation on my basic pizza recipe which you can download at

http://res.cloudinary.com/pat222teti/image/upload/v1497819235/Basic_Pizza_and_Focaccia_vtxvye.pdf

For a 10 inch cranberry pizza, I used the following topping:

• 150 gm cranberry sauce (e.g. according to a package direction or cranberries simmered with a bit of maple syrup as in the photo below)
• 60 gm blue cheese
• 60 gm shredded mozzarella

and baked it at 500 degrees F for 7 minutes.

I've baked pizza on solid sheets, sheets with punched holes, stones and screens. For everyday baking when I'm using a kitchen oven I prefer a simple mesh screen.

Is it pizza or focaccia? 

I used to think that pizza was any flatbread with tomatoes and cheese regardless of other ingredients and that focaccia was flatbread without tomatoes and cheese. However, on trips to Italy I've seen focaccia with tomato topping, I've seen flatbread without cheese labelled "pizza" and I've seen regional names like "schiachiata" used for something that I would have called "focaccia". Although confusing, this adds to the charm of being a food tourist. The variety of food and food names between Italian regions and even between towns is part of the fun.

Until someone comes up with a better name, it seems to me that since tomatoes are a fruit, it's not too much of a stretch to call any flatbread baked with fruit and cheese "pizza". An added justification is that the variety of fruit and cheese combinations I've tried have turned out delicious and worthy of the name.

Here are some steps in making what I call "cranberry pizza".

1) These cranberries were simmered with a little maple syrup and placed on dough. 2) Blue cheese and mozzarella were added. Edges were turned up to prevent overflow. 3) After baking at 500 F for 7 minutes. 

For more ideas, do a Google search for "schiaccata all'uva" or "cranberry pizza" and click the Images tab.  

The wood pizza oven you may already have

A regular kitchen oven can do a good job on a pizza if you turn it all the way up to 500 F, but there's nothing like pizza baked in a much hotter wood-fired oven - one of the reasons to go to a real pizzeria. 

I don't have a wood pizza oven but I've used them while travelling so I appreciate how great they work. They're common in southern Europe where they're the focal point of pizza parties. The disadvantages are that they have to be preheated for a few hours, they require a lot of firewood, and they're expensive. Fortunately, some of the desirable qualities of baking pizza in a wood oven can be achieved by other means. The simplest is re-heating leftover pizza over a campfire or wood coals. 

Reheating focaccia and pizza on a campfire

A few years after I discovered this, I realized that I could bake pizza indoors in a wood heating stove.

The wood-fired pizza oven you might already have in your house

Baking pizza in a wood heating stove

During the heating season when the wood heating stove is going, I bake pizza and other flatbreads as shown in the photo. I put the dough on an uncoated stainless steel pan sprinkled with cornmeal, add the toppings, place the pan on a pizza pan support (described below) and hold it in the back of the stove over hot coals. I pull the pizza out frequently to check the progress and rotate the pan as needed. It's done when the top starts to scorch. It doesn't take more than a few minutes and comes out as in the photo below. Of course, the baking has to be done with the stove door open but there's so much uniform heat coming from the stove that baking is very fast.  

If you're making more than one pizza, be sure to close the stove door (for safety of course) and leave it for a few minutes so the interior can re-heat.  

Wood stove pizza with corn, chopped beet tops, fresh mozzarella balls, and Parmigiano Reggiano

Based on my experience, there's not much difference between pizza baked this way and pizza baked in a real wood oven. The high temperature results in similarly charred edges and flavour. In theory, you might expect a proper wood-fired pizza oven to bake the bottom crust faster because the dough is in contact with preheated stone. However, if your pizza pan support is thin and perforated, the heat flow into the bottom of the pizza pan is sufficient to bake the bottom crust rapidly.

There are advantages and disadvantages to a real wood pizza oven and my wood stove method. You can't beat an outdoor wood oven as a focal point of gatherings but they're expensive, require lots of firewood, and hours to preheat. If you already have a wood heating stove with a sufficiently large interior, all you need is a way to support a steel pizza pan over the coals. 

The pizza pan support

I started with a folding campfire griddle made of perforated steel to which I had attached a four-foot wooden handle. The griddle originally had a non-stick coating which burned off after several seasons of use over a campfire. What was left of the griddle worked great for supporting a 12 inch stainless steel pizza pan as shown here. 

Perforated campfire griddle, attachment of extension handle, and stainless steel pizza pan 

Cookware Canada has a perforated stainless steel griddle for sale online (Premium Pizza Pan, Item 420122C) and an extension handle could be attached to the one displayed there. If you use something like that, I strongly recommend placing your pizza on a non-perforated stainless steel pizza pan and then placing the pizza pan on the griddle. 

Later, I made a new pizza pan holder out of one-eighth inch by three-quarter inch steel, three-quarter inch plumber’s strapping, some one-quarter by 20 nuts and bolts, baling wire, and a wooden pole as shown below. Do not use aluminum because it might soften in the high temperature. Also make sure that the steel parts extend at least a foot back in the direction of the handle so that the wooden handle can be kept out of the stove interior.   

My improved pizza pan support. This supports a stainless steel pizza pan, not the pizza itself. 

Tips for baking pizza in a wood heating stove

• Build a large, hot fire in your stove, let the flames die down and spread the coals out evenly. I've baked 6 ten-inch pizzas on a load of Douglas fir.
• Do not use an aluminum pizza pan or aluminum in the pizza pan support. 
• Do not use any items with non-stick coating. Use a stainless steel pizza pan and steel for the pizza pan support.  
• Sprinkle cornmeal or flour on the pizza pan before placing the dough. It's OK if the cornmeal smokes or catches fire in the wood stove. It will burn off. 
• My stainless steel pizza pan got slightly warped by the high heat but is not otherwise damaged. 

"Wood stove pizzas" with tomatoes, black grapes, peaches, cranberries, onions, blue cheese, and mozzarella cheese

Venice, a-Maze-ing

An intense two and one-half weeks in Venice are over but I'm only blogging about it now that I'm in the quiet hills of Tuscany. It's not like I didn't have any time to blog while in Venice but I guess I wanted to explore, eat and sleep more than I wanted to blog.

I went to Venice for a two week Italian language class, arriving several days before it started and leaving a few days after it ended. Even so, I used my spare time seeing sights and museums, concerts, my first opera, and lots of exploring on foot (and a bit of homework). There are only two ways to get around Venice - on foot or by boat (gondola, water taxi or water bus). I took a water bus a couple times and walked a lot. Venice is fantastic if you like to walk but it's challenging. On one hand, there are no cars or motorcycles. Not even bicycles are practical on the main island of Venice. The streets are too narrow and there are too many pedestrians - so many in the main commercial areas and walking routes that it made me feel claustrophobic at times.

Last day of Italian class with our instructor Alberto on the left 

Another interesting thing about being a pedestrian in Venice is learning to navigate the narrow lanes ("calli") between buildings. There's almost no way to stay oriented other than learning individual streets, buildings and the signs that point in the direction of landmarks (Piazza San Marco, Rialto Market). Also, the layout of the calli is quite irregular and there are many cul-de-sacs. The streets are so narrow and the distances between intersections are so short that I found it difficult to find a destination even with a GPS. More than once, it took me 10 minutes or more to travel the last 50 metres toward a destination due to dead ends and canals. I wasn't able to reliably navigate the 25 minute walk between my homestay and my language school unaided until I'd been doing it for over a week. Inconvenience aside, I would put navigating on foot on the "plus" side of Venice. It's part of its charm and now I know what it's like to be a rat in a maze!

The Grand Canal, little canals, and in grey, the pedestrian lanes and foot bridges

A classic view of San Georgio Maggiore (neighboring island) from St. Mark's Square

In addition to the crowds, I'd add garbage and even dogs to the negative side. Venetians have a lot of dogs and in the absence of grassy open spaces, dogs pee and poo where they can, meaning urine stains on every outdoor wall and the occasional doo-doo on a narrow pedestrian lane. Another problem is that Venetians seem to be completely spoiled about garbage. There are NO recycling bins anywhere on the main island of Venice. In public, everything goes into undifferentiated garbage bins and on the ground. City workers are out in great numbers in the morning sweeping it up and taking it away (at least on work days) but the quantity and the lack of sorting is maddening! At my homestay, my family did a partial separation of waste (glass, plastic, paper - everything else) but it wasn't at all clear how it was dealt with at the curb. It was always just placed out in plastic shopping bags (often torn open by sea gulls). I have a feeling that a lot of manual separation and incineration get done on a large scale somewhere.

A less obvious gondola image. 

To end on a positive note, Venice is visually fascinating and loaded with iconic scenes. However, I'm not nearly as comfortable at street photography as I am with nature and landscapes. Fortunately, there are lots of things to photograph while remaining minimally invasive.

The nearby island of Burano is famous for its brightly painted houses. 

Bread with colour

In my last post I wrote about bread that was black as coal (charcoal added) and that got me thinking about other additives that could be used to colour bread. Three ingredients came to mind because they were already in my kitchen - spirulina (green), turmeric (yellow), and beet powder (red). The nice thing about these is that they are plants, not just colouring agents. Spirulina is an aquatic algae while turmeric and beets are roots. These three have claims of health benefits associated with them but suffice to say that they are food because they are plants. That's not a trivial statement these days with so many products in the centre aisles of supermarkets with unpronounceable ingredients.

This is what a tablespoon of spirulina, charcoal, turmeric, and beet power look like on 1 inch graph paper. The spirulina looks black in this photo but it is actually just a very dark green. The powdered charcoal is the messiest to deal with, creating little clouds of fine dust whenever it is handled.

Clockwise from upper left, charcoal, turmeric, powdered beet and spirulina

I made four loaves of a basic grainy bread (same recipe as my last post) with one tablespoon of additive in each. Here's what they looked like.

Loaves with charcoal, spirulina, turmeric and beet powder

So, how did they taste? Powdered charcoal seems to have virtually no affect on taste. Of the other three, I would say that powdered beet has the mildest flavour and spirulina is the strongest. If you want to try one, I would suggest powdered beet because it's mild and inexpensive at a health food store. You can also add it to virtually any recipe. If you like turmeric I would also recommend it in bread for the flavour as well as its antioxidant properties. Spirulina is available from a health food store and is the most expensive. However, I like to use it on popcorn (olive oil, engivita yeast, spirulina and salt). As far as I can tell, the only reasons for using powdered charcoal would be either for the health benefits (if you believe them) or for the novelty. I probably won't be using it in bread any more.

Happy experimenting!

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Michael Pollan

"Pane al carbone" (bread with charcoal)

Florence has a large and recently renovated "Mercato Centrale" where you can do all of your fresh food shopping, coffee drinking, and people watching under one roof. On our last day in Florence last month, Jane and I bought a small loaf of very black bread at a "panetteria" in that market - blacker than any bread I'd ever seen. It was very good bread with no burnt taste or any unusual flavour.

Pane carbone and panini being finished off at a departure gate

Back home, I found plenty of websites describing the use of powdered charcoal as a bread amendment. Some claim health benefits analogous to the use of activated charcoal for detoxifying air, water, and even digestive systems (after some kinds of accidental poisoning). Others talk about the pros and cons, pointing out that eating bread containing powdered charcoal could theoretically interfere with the absorption of some prescription drugs but that the amount of charcoal used in "pane al carbone" is probably too small to have much effect, either positive or negative. Regardless, I HAD to try it.

My local health food store only had activated charcoal in capsules so I picked some fir charcoal out of our wood stove, crushing and sieving it through a wire strainer. It was easy but messy, creating little clouds of fine black dust. Here's what four loaves of otherwise identical bread looked like with (clockwise from lower left) none, 1 teaspoon, 2 teaspoons, and 2 tablespoons.

Bread with cracked grain, sunflower seeds and 0 to 2 tablespoons of powdered charcoal

Conclusion

This bread is visually striking but as far as I can tell, charcoal adds virtually no flavour, health benefit, or hazard. That's not counting the fine black dust I inhaled while making my own! I'll probably make this bread only rarely. 

Without the charcoal, this bread is currently one of my favourite breads. It's grainy, healthy, and makes excellent toast.

Recipe for four large loaves of grainy fermented bread

6 c water
pinch yeast (about 1/8 t)
4 c mixed cracked grains, e.g. 7 grain cereal
2 c unbleached white flour
Cover and let stand at room temperature for up to 3 days. Less in warm weather, more in fridge.
The "biga" should be bubbly and have a distinctive fermented aroma on baking day.
Add up to 2 T powdered charcoal per loaf.
Add additional flour for kneading. I used 1 c whole wheat and 4 c unbleached white. Divide into four either before or after kneading. Allow to rise until volume increases by about 50%. This takes 1-4 hours depending on temperature. Gently shape into loaves and bake at 450F for 15 to 40 minutes depending on shape. e.g. One loaf teased out onto a full cookie sheet will be done in about 15 min. This is the easiest shape to bake just right because it's done when it looks done. In a round 9 inch cake pan, the above loaves baked for 25 minutes at 450 and then 15 minutes at 350. I use an instant read meat thermometer to help judge doneness.

Happy experimenting!