southern memories

Passport & Plate - wholemeal sourdough bread with summer taste

Portugal | Saturday, March 7, 2015 | 5 photos

Ingredients
Starter - sourdough
360 grs rye flour
450 grs water
time

bread with dry tomates and olives

215 grs white wheat flour
215 grs wholemeal wheat
250 grs water
220 grs of sourdough
50 grs of dry tomato ( cour de boeuf tomato its better)
50 grs pitted black olives
12 grs Salt ( Sea Salt)

This recipe stays with the savour of the place where it is done, the dough ferments with bacteria that are in the air. If done near the sea - will acquire the taste of the sea and the taste of population thoughts, if its done in the mountains will taste to trees and fireplaces- and so on....

I made my own with:
The tomato from Algarve and it tastes to the sea.
Flour and the olives from Alentejo - carry the flavour traditional cante Alentejano (Unesco - Intangible Cultural Heritage)
The portuguese salt that brings to the memory the discoveries and Fado music.

 

How to prepare this recipe
The starter

Start at a time of day that you always have free. Mixture into a glass bowl 120 g of rye flour with 150 grams of water. After mixing covered the bowl with a shower cap. Let stand in a corner of the kitchen if possible at a temperature of between 21/ 25 degrees.
In the next day, repeat the first step using 80 g of flour and 100 g of water. Its going to start appearing little holes like the head of a pin. Cover the bowl and let it stand at room temperature. Repeat it every day.
Observe the changes and smell it. We want the smell begins to turn acid. The starter is ready when dough as several little pin holes and smells slightly acid. Depending of the season this process can go from 4 to 6 days.

The bread

Add water to the sourdough and mix. Add flour and mix again. Let it rest for one hour.
Add salt, mix and dump the dough on the work surface. Knead until the dough is no longer sticky, but elastic and smooth.
Add the tomatos and olives, embedded them in the dough, cut and cover again and again until they are well distributed.
Place the dough in oiled bowl and cover with a shower cap. Let stand for 3 hours ( summer) or 5 hours (winter).
When the dough is ready (to check if the dough is ready, check if it is swollen and stretched), dump the dough on floured work surface. Fold the dough with your hands slightly moist and then form the form of the bread. Place in a floured baneton.
Put flour above the dough and cover it with the shower cap and cover film without making to much preasure.
One hour later preheat the oven to 230º. Home ovens produce a dry heat limiting expansion of bread. The ideal is to have a tray where the bread goes and under another tray with boiling water ( to create steam) Put the bread in the oven. After 10 minutes, lower the temperature to 200 and take the water. After 35 minutes check the temperature of your loaf.
When the loaf is ready, remove and it let cool. It is best not to cut it until it has cooled. Bom apetite!

 

The story behind this recipe
It was summer. A hot summer. This summer I was sent to my grandmother and my aunt to spend a week while my parents went on a travel to Spain. I had never been alone without my parents. Neither had been alone with my grandmother and aunt. They told me to behave well and give example to my younger brothers. Every morning after doing my holiday homework, I stood in the kitchen watching the two old ladies working. They made bread for the village. From flour and water, like wizards, they created numerous large loaves, which were the delight of all. But there was a special bread, a red bread with crispy crust and flavor to summer, sea and salt from Algarve. Only once in a while they use to make it, with the best olives harvested last season and tomato dry in the sun on top of the house. In my penultimate afternoon, I was lying in the sun, I did not want to continue to read my book, it was too hot, on my side my brothers played with the Roseta , the female mongrel dog who took care of home. When I started to hear a knock on the kitchen, so characteristic of kneading - Strange! I tought - the bread had been done in the morning. I went peeking and began to see a red dough with black spots to be wrapped into the big warm hands of my aunt. The dough dance in the air - it seems that wants to catch all the hot smell that hung in the air - and then it came back down causing a cloud of flour. It was like a mantra where time turbes into a continuum.
The next day when I woke up with the smell of bread in the air, but it was a distinct smell, it was a summer, olive groves, a sea smell
My grandmother gave me the bread inside a cloth bag - and we say goodbye. On the trip, every 10 km I put my hand into the bag to feel the warm bread. That summer was over when I ate the last piece of the red bread with black spots that reminde me the sea of Algarve.