Sunday, October 05, 2008
Five-Minute Bread: Broa
I had been eyeing the recipe for broa, a rustic Portuguese yeast-raised corn bread, in Artisan Baking in Five Minutes a Day for quite some time. Tonight, I baked my first loaf of it. Halfway into mixing the dough, I found out too late that I was about a cup of flour short. I almost ran out to the store for more flour (speaking of which, since when did Wal-Mart start carrying King Arthur all-purpose flour? Whoever is doing the buying for Wal-Mart is being slow but increasingly thorough in wooing my shopping dollars!), but when I was reading up about broa on Wikipedia, I found out that the bread is commonly made with rye flour. I have plenty of rye flour around here, so in went the missing 4.5 ounces of flour as rye instead of all-purpose. The bread turned out very good, one of the best I've made with the five-minute recipes. The flavor is very complex, and the texture looks like it will hold up well for making sandwiches. There isn't as much rise as with the regular boule, and the crumb is pretty tight. I think that because of this, I'll make this one a double loaf at a time on future batches. Next up, I think I'll do the challah, and make some French toast with it.
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3 comments:
We really need to get a copy of this book. :)
We've been challah-exclusive for French Toast since we first tried it at the original JP Pancake. Makes for awesome breakfast goodness. I'm just not sure my weaving skills are up to homemade challah. :)
Definitely get the book, it's fantastic. I tried making French toast with their brioche recipe and it was to die for. I'd imagine if you knew you were using the challah for French toast, you could just skip the braiding and make a loaf.
I too was looking to add rye to the broa recipe from the 5 minute bread recipe and stumbled on your posting. I added 1/2 cup of rye instead of some of the wheat. It turned out great, one of the best. I read that fennel is a common broa seasoning, so I'll probably experiment with that.
I discovered that you can take any of the loaf recipes from the 5 minute book and cook them the same way as the Jim Lahey recipe which is the recipe that the 5 minute people were basically ripping off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?_r=2&oref=login
I made the broa recipe by basically making a half recipe and using only 1/4 teaspoon yeast and then letting it ferment at room temp for 14 hours. and following the rest of the recipe as if it was the NY times recipe.
BY cooking it in a pot, you get the most awesome crunchy crackly crust that you just don't get by throwing water into a pan or spritzing or other techniques.
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