Time to share
Bogdan Krasnoperov Live on Zoom: Bogdan will join me for a brief conversation from 3-4 PM ET, Saturday, March 12. Michel Schröder (NL) and Peter Yuen (US), two of his teachers, will demonstrate bread and pastry, and Adam Lougue (GH) will demonstrate bread from Ghana in a tribute/fundraiser. Registration is free. Enroll. Donate if you can. A recording will be available within days. Registration is at this link.
I learned , from a third party, that “Bogdan” means “God given.” I could stop there.
I can no longer hide behind my apron and the façade of baking. It’s easy, perhaps reckless, to spew seemingly lofty prose about the virtues and lessons of life found in baking. Are they really there, or do I create them to assuage my insecurity? Have I used my safe place, baking, to avoid confronting the real reality? A friend in a country under fire is inspiring me to seek, or at least sense, some or all of the truth. Maybe I employ prose and baking metaphors as a coping mechanism to avoid the truth; maybe I use them to interpret it. At times like this, I find myself remembering and respecting the first axiom of baking, the one that makes it possible to learn, bake, and eventually share: Sharing. Still, I wonder: Am I baking to share or to escape? Do I hide behind baking and its teachings or do I engage with it to learn and share? From now on, it’s to share. No more questions; no more posing. Only baking. Until I think about it…
Though he has nothing, Bogdan is as unwavering in his generosity as he is in his resolve. Despite his current situation, his fundamental belief that recipes are to be shared is fixed. Recipes may appear prescriptive and regimented; however, among bakers, they are a dialogue with poetic and lyrical flow. Less restrictive than a blueprint, a recipe is a diagram that uses numbers, rather than lines, to suggest a foreseeable outcome. An experienced baker is married to the process, not the numbers that fluctuate with whim or necessity. A baker, can, and occasionally must improvise or adapt, not to the process, but with it. If a reed or stringed instrument were affected by humidity or pressure, a musician would apply their skills differently and accept/appreciate the organic results with slight, but appreciable variations. Curiosity, temperament, and experience obviate kowtowing to numbers. Numbers provide a starting point for fledgling bakers and for new ideas/formulations, and we must take them into consideration. With experience and its accrued knowledge, bakers use numbers as a guideline, not as a guiding principle.
Guarding recipes can stunt or imprison the ideas that spawned them. Ideas propagate more freely when shared. Baking’s raison d’ être is sharing, whether it’s bread, knowledge, or experience. The more complicated times become, the more comfort sharing provides. Devout, but fun, practice and serious, but irreverent reflection help a baker develop the confidence to manipulate formulas and processes, and to appreciate the iterations as lessons and time stamps, not sacrosanct commandments. With that understanding, sharing becomes autonomous.
Bogdan, who has nothing and asks for nothing, is sharing his spirit with us. The least we can do is bake. Maybe it’s the best thing we can do. Combine the ingredients. Touch the dough. Touch his spirit. Bake for Peace. Bake for Bogdan.
Until we bake again,
The recipes are exactly as Bogdan sent them. Photos will be on thermaldeathpoint138 Instagram.
Ukrainian style country loaf (1)
3000g wheat flour 600g whole wheat flour 400g whole rye flour 600 g roux
60 g liquid malt 120g honey 100 g salt
800 g bread crumbs 1200 sourdough 3200g water
Mix all ingredients 10-12min first speed 3 min second speed
Three times stretch&fold after each 45min
Bulk fermentation 3h. Then shape, put in the bread basket and then overnight fermentation.
Honey loaf without sourdough and yeast (2)
3000g wheat flour
300g whole wheat flour 45 g salt
150 honey
2040 water
Mix 5 min all the ingredients. 1 hour fermentation then 1 S&F Left for Bulk fermentation for 16h.
Sweet mustard bread (USSR Classic) (3)
For the dough:
1200 sourdough 3000g wheat flour 1320 water
Mix 5 min . Autolyse 1h Then we put :
60 g salt
240 sugar
60 butter
40 mustard
Mix 10 min first speed 2 min second speed 2 S&F after each hour. Bulk fermention 3h Preshape 30 min
Shape, then bulk fermentation 2,5 hour or overnight fermentation.
Rye Soviet Bread ( Borodino bread) (4)
For the sourdough 500 g whole rye flour 500 sourdough 500water
Mix all and leave for 6 h
Scalding
200 whole rye flour 100 dark malt powder 15 g ground coriander 800 hot water
When scalding is cool mixit with sourdough and give a rest for 3-4 hours
For the dough
All sourdough Whole rye flour 800g
Wheat flour 300
Salt 40
Honey 100
Sugar 120
Water 440
Mix 5 min first speed. BF 90min, then shape and again fermentation in prover 1h
Bake top 250 bottom 235 10 min then 200 top , bottom 190 45 min
Beetroot bread (Galician bread style) (5)
1200 sourdough
3000 wheat flour
2100 beetroot puree
400 water
Mix all ingredients 5 min first speed leave rest 40 min Then we add
60 salt
100 honey
210 prunes
Mix 8 in first speed. 2 S&F after each 60min .Then BF 2 H Shape 600 g
Nutrition bread with seeds (6)
1600 whole spelt
400 white spelt
1000 sourdough
400 seeds (linen, sunflower, pumkin etc) 100 honey
50 salt
1000 water
Mix flour and water do an autolyse for 45min. add starter and
Mix 5 min without salt, 5 min with salt first speed , 2 min second speed. Transfer dough into aplastic container and do the first fold, repeat two more fold every 45min. Leave 3h for BF
Croissants dough
3000g flour 75g salt 300 sugar
45 inverted sugar
150 yeast
750 butter
840 water
600 milk
Butter for lamination 1200
Salted caramel with dark beer
360 sugar
180 glucose syrop
60 water
220 dark beer
60 g cream
10 g salt
 | A guest post by
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Thanks Mitch!