Most adventures start out with one foot in ‘desperation’.  My desperation comes in the form of having a gigantic bag of spinach in the fridge that’s about to go bad.

Can you add spinach to bread? Earlier this week I tried, with very poor results. OK, I tried adding spinach and the bitter cooking water to 50% whole wheat bread. The results were less than stellar. Bitter, dry, and not very green.

This morning, facing the same bag of spinach, now definitely on its very last legs, I decided to try green bread again.

I start with my favourite rich and light and bright and eggy bread (Challah).  I steam a whack of spinach (200 g), let it cool, and then squish the water out.

And that’s how “Popeye” Bread was born …

Sweet and light.  Can’t taste the spinach.  Hey kids, eat your greens! This is going to be great breakfast toast …

All best, Shelley

Read Part 1 here.

So nothing much happens for a couple of days. You stir every few hours, as you remember, and by the end of the third day it’s looking like this:

Raisin Yeast Water (day 3)

Then you go to bed, and wake up on day 4, and in the morning it’s like magic angels have played with your jar overnight.

Because now the raisins are FLOATING. And there are little bubbles around them. If you put your ear close to the jar, it sounds like a glass of pop (like coke or pepsi!).

Raisin Yeast Water Day 4 (floating)

Can you see the bubbles?

So next up, we check the water to make SURE it’s strong enough to make bread.  That’ll be in Part 3.

So it turns out that you can grow yeast that’s strong enough to make bread out of raisins.

I kid you not.

Once I saw this picture online, I knew I had to figure out how to do it.

My first attempt didn’t go very well.  Neither did my second, third or fourth. I either had NO activity, or I grew mould.

I posted on Facebook and asked a few of my friends for their solutions, and finally I figured it out.

Here’s my first loaf of super-yummy bread made with yeast water:

Bread made with homemade raisin yeast water

Since then, I’ve been making a new kind every few days, experimenting with different yeast-water flavours, like orange, and smoky tea.

But the easiest one to start with by far is Raisin Yeast Water.

HOW TO MAKE RAISIN YEAST WATER

What you'll need to make Raisin Yeast Water

You’ll need a very clean jar with a lid (or you can put a saucer on top of the jar), natural honey, organic or natural raisins, pineapple juice, bottled water.

The key parts here are to use organic ingredients as much as possible, and bottled water, and to make sure that your jar is super-very clean. Anything ‘foreign’ or with ‘preservatives’ will prevent the yeast from growing. Also make sure the jar is big enough so that there’ll be space at the top once the ingredients have been added.

Also important is that your lid should NOT be put on tightly, as the mixture needs air to grow yeast. I’ve got a candy jar and we’ve removed the metal part of clasp for the lid, and so I just place the lid on top of the jar. You could use a saucer, or you could use a metal lid that is NOT screwed on properly. Just something to keep bugs and dust OUT, but allows air IN.

INGREDIENTS:

So into your jar, put 2 tablespoons of raisins, 1 tablespoon of honey (to help it grow faster), 2 tablespoons of pineapple juice (to even out the acid/pH of the water and help things grow), and 1.5 cups of bottled water.

Stir, put the top on loosely, and put your bottle on your counter in the kitchen in warm place. The warmest part of the kitchen right now (January) is on the counter near the stove, because we boil the kettle for tea about 5 times a day.

Raisin Yeast Water, mixed (Day 1)

Important: Using a clean spoon each time, lift the lid and stir your creation 3-5 times per day, as you remember. This helps aerate the mixture, and keeps yeasts that are growing ‘mixed in’ with the batch and not just sitting on top.

Now you have to wait. Patience is super important here.  It’s going to take 3-7 days before it starts to take action (faster in summer, longer in winter).

This is Day 1. Saturday afternoon at 2:30 pm. I’ll add more pictures in a few days to show you how it looks as it goes along.

I was thinking today about raisins. In Paris, they can be pretty expensive at the regular grocery store (Monoprix), and sometimes they’re hard to find. The raisins that I use for Paris Bread come from a great Lebanese store in the 15th, and they even stock different KINDS of raisins.

For example, for my Raisin Bread with Coconut Milk, I use a mixture of golden and sultana raisins, so that the bread comes out sort of speckled in colour.

1.

Let’s start with a triple-batch of raisin bread dough. I don’t add the raisins until after the first rising, because their sharp edges can apparently affect gluten development and prevent the bread from rising properly. Well, at least that’s what I read online …

2.

Now I put the raisins out on the counter, and start to knead the bread, slowly incorporating the 3 cups of mixed raisins.

3. 

It takes a while to get them all blended in.

4.

Next I divide the batch into three separate loaves, and I try to stretch the dough so that the raisins stay inside, otherwise they will burn and fall off in the oven, which makes for a smoky mess.

5.

And here’s the finished product.

Raisin Bread with Coconut Milk is on this week’s menu.

Have you ordered yet?

~ all best, Shelley

I’ve been doing lots of test baking over the past month or so, while perfecting the recipes for the Bakery. Because I have a small family of two, we can’t eat an entire loaf of bread before it goes stale. I also admit that I get bored of one flavour after a few days, so I like to have more variety.

What I do, is I put fresh bread into my freezer for later. For example, if I make a large loaf of raisin bread, I put it in a freezer bag, suck out the extra air with a straw, and then pop it in the freezer. You can also cut larger loaves into sections first before freezing, that way it’s easier to pull out a smaller chunk later.

If I have a banana loaf with chocolate for example (not that there’s usually any leftovers), it can be frozen the same way. Put it in a freezer bag (which are designed to be extra thick) or just double wrap it in leftover regular bags. I sometimes save my produce bags from the grocery store and then rinse them and reuse them, but since they’re not designed for the freezer I have to use two layers. You can also make up two layers by using plastic wrap + tinfoil, or plastic wrap and then a grocery bag, etc.

I’ve had great success freezing whole loaves of bread, rolls, small loaves, banana bread, cookies, and muffins. To defrost, just set your items out on the counter (still wrapped), and within a few hours it’ll be fully defrosted and ready to eat. You can use the microwave to defrost, but it tends to make bread hard, so I try to avoid it. If you’re rushed for time, you can put slices of frozen bread directly into the toaster – that works fine! (Just remember to slice your bread before you freeze it.)

For best results, try to eat all of your frozen goodies within 3 months for the best flavour.  That advice works for freezing meat and other things, too. Three months is best, 6 months is OK, and after that you start to have a reduction in both taste and texture.  That said, I’ve got a bag of frozen peas in my freezer that has been there for a year!

So the next time you taste some really great bread, be sure to get extra, and then stick in the freezer for a treat later. OK single thing in the universe will freeze fantastically… For example, cookies that are very fragile or that have icing or cakes with fresh fruit probably won’t freeze well.  BUT regular bread, cheese bread, quick breads like banana loaf, muffins and cookies are all OK.

Starting  this week, I will mark on the Bakery Menu the items that can be frozen. This week that would include the Cheese & Parmesan bread and buns, the Cinnamon Raisin bread, the soup, and the cookies. (I wouldn’t freeze the Peach cake because the peaches would go squishy – but they’re already cooked and squishy, so maybe they’d be fine!  I wouldn’t freeze the chicken sandwich because it has lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise, but you knew not to freeze lettuce, right?)

In fact, for dinner tonight, I am going to pull out two cheese buns from the bunch that I made and froze a few weeks ago. I’ll let them defrost on the counter, then I’ll cut them in half and toast them. Cheese buns toasted are the best because the cheese heats up a little bit …

<now i’m starving>

All best,
Shelley

The butter in Paris is pretty yummy. Lots of variety in flavours, you can get no-salt, demi-salt, crunchy-salt, and just about everything in between.

But for baking, do you want to use margarine or butter?

For the Paris Bread Co. (and for the Restaurant in my living room), I only use butter. But there’s a good reason why I chose to go all-out.

Butter is sexier.

I mean, who wants to buy fresh Raisin Bread, lovingly baked with coconut milk instead of regular milk (just because it’s fluffier and makes for more tender bread, you can’t taste the coconut) … where was I?  … who wants to buy bite into a slice of Raisin Bread slathered with margarine. I mean really. Not very sexy.

Butter also tastes better. Much better. But yes, it’s more expensive.

So here’s my honest two-part answer to the question about Butter or Margarine.

For the Bakery (and the Restaurant) I use butter in everything, even if it’s just for greasing the pans, it’s only butter.

When I’m baking just for André and I, and if butter is NOT the main ingredient, then I use margarine. Note that margarine in France is unsalted, and so that means I usually have to add about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon extra salt to a batch of banana bread, for example, if using margarine.  For us, I would use butter for shortbread cookies, and butter for Brioche … and margarine for everything else.

For the Bakery, I’m using only butter. Come on, it sounds sooo much better! Really, do you want to buy from the chick who says “I make all of this bread using the cheapest ingredients I can find to maximize my profits,” or do you want to come and and taste the cakes made by the girl who “uses only real ingredients, like butter and organic lemons, and I promise no preservatives, no artificial packaged junk, no pudding mix, no jello-o, no shortcuts, and no margarine.”