Pear Buckwheat Bread from ABAP
Hello, Here is an attempt at the Pear Buckwheat Bread from Advanced Bread and Pastry by Mr. Michel Suas.
What a wonderful book!!!!
The shaping instructions for this bread can be found here (thank you Susan!):
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2010/01/31/pear-buckwheat-bread/
This recipe requires dried pears. I tried drying diced pears in the oven and it worked out OK; with thanks to Eric Kastel, who writes about drying apples in his book Artisan Breads at Home (I just did the same thing with the pears):
Preheat oven to 400F or 380F convection; start with twice the weight of dried fruit you require; peel, core and dice (1/2-inch) fruit; spread on baking rack and set on top of parchment lined baking sheet; bake 15 or 20 minutes (may need to move diced fruit around so it dries/browns evenly); turn oven off and let fruit dry for a bit longer (I left the fruit in for another 20 minutes or so to let it dry a bit more). I stored the fruit in the fridge until I was ready to make the bread.
I poured a couple of Tablespoons of pear liqueur over the dried pears and let the fruit absorb the liqueur before mixing the bread, and used toasted hazelnuts instead of walnuts. Here's how it turned out!:
Happy baking everyone! This was a fun project. I don't have a crumb shot yet, but will be cutting into one of these loaves later today & will try to take a picture then. Regards, breadsong
Comments
YUM, breadsong, seems you did a nice job.
you treated youself to a neat book.
The pears in this bread are out-of-this-world good, and appeal to my sweet tooth.
Drying them in the oven concentrated their flavor and sweetness, and the extra little kick from the pear liqueur also contributed some good flavor. The formula in the book actually called to soak the pears in white wine; I'm sure this would be really good too but I had the pear liqueur so gave it a go. Advanced Bread and Pastry is a fabulous resource & I'm so glad I was able to get a copy of this book. Thanks! from breadsong
So creative! This looks amazing!
My experience with buckwheat flour is that a little goes a loooong way, both in terms of flavor, and disrupting the gluten network.
I love the flavor of toasted hazelnuts, wonder why we don't see them in bread more often.
Kudos!
I so appreciate you taking the time to write. I had never used buckwheat flour prior to making this bread so I appreciate you comments - I guess that's why there's only a bit of buckwheat flour used in the poolish. I love hazelnuts too and that reminds me...I want to try making an orange, cranberry & hazelnut bread next week...better get cracking (literally!).
Regards, breadsong
Another wonderful and creative bread. It must be those Canandian genes. (I learned to make bread from my Canadian neighbor when we were living in Quebec) I'm already trying to figure out how you made the pear outline.
Pam
Hello Pam, Thanks to the talents and instruction of those who have gone on before, it makes it possible for me to follow along. Susan's post on the wildyeastblog shows how to stencil and shape - this was so helpful. Regards, breadsong
Well, I thought this bread was so lovely and interesting that I made it for my company's holiday party. I didn't have buckwheat on hand, so I used whole-grain barley, along with a couple tablespoons of malt syrup. It made for a great presentation, although I thought the pear flavor was a bit too subtle. (I doubled the amount of pears called for in the recipe at the wild yeast blog, but next time I would at least quadruple it. The pears themselves, soaked in white wine, sugar, and Pear William eau-de-vie, were delicious!)
Matt, Your breads must have been a hit. I love the positive/negative stencilling!
You did such a nice job. Thanks for posting your photos! Wishing you the best of the season - from breadsong