Simple Spanish Food

An Andalusian Breakfast: pan tostado con aceite (toast with olive oil)

This is what I eat for breakfast when we're in Spain, and sometimes when we're here in the U.S., too. 

Take a good fresh roll (bollo) and slice it open.

Toast it.

Drizzle a good olive oil over it.

And enjoy.

 

Our Daily Bread: A Quicker No Knead Loaf

Bread is an essential part of any Spanish meal. I have never sat down to a comida in Spain when there wasn't a loaf of bread on the table.   If you order a tapa in just about any bar, it will come with bread.

   

So if you are planning a Spanish meal, or throwing a tapas party, good bread, along with wine and olives, should be the first thing on your to-do  list.  

I have written several easy recipes for Spanish-style breads. All of them are based on Mark Bittman's now-famous article for Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.

The recipes are simple.  They don't require a bread machine or heavy duty mixer. Their only disadvantage is that they require a long, slow 18-hour rise at seventy degrees.   If you can plan a day in advance and if you have the right temperature in your kitchen, I encourage you to use them. If your kitchen is hot, as ours here in Central Florida is much of the year, or if you must have the bread the same day, here's a variation that's both quicker and more forgiving of less-than-ideal temperatures.  It's based once again on a Mark Bittman recipe, Faster No-Knead Bread.  Bittman suggests using whole grain flours to make this quicker loaf, but it works equally well--actually better, in my experience--with a blend of white flour and whole wheat.

This is our daily bread for much of the year. I use a regular rectangular loaf pan most of the time, for pan de molde, which is great sliced for sandwiches, toast, or tapas.  But you can make this bread in round free-form country loaves or baguette-style just as easily. 

Here's the recipe

2 cups of all-purpose flour, or "bread flour"

1 cup of whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt

1 teaspoon of yeast

1 1/2 cups of water

Olive oil

Mix the dry ingredients.

Stir in the water to make a ragged dough.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise 3 to 4 hours (depending on the temperature in your kitchen: higher temps will make the dough rise more quickly).

If you're using a loaf pan, rub it down with olive oil.  Roll the dough in the pan to coat it with oil. Dust the dough generously on all sides with flour (whole wheat is fine). Place the oiled and flour-dusted dough in the oiled loaf pan. (All of this dusting and oiling prevents the loaf from sticking).

Cover it with plastic wrap (the same you used for the first rise will do fine). Let it rise an hour or two. Again the time depends on the temps in your kitchen.

Bake the loaf in a 425 degree oven for 20 minutes.  Take the loaf out of the pan. Be careful. It'll be hot.

Place the loaf back in the oven. Put it directly on the rack. (This allows the crust to develop on all sides). Let it bake at 425 for 10 minutes more.

After ten minutes, turn off the oven. Open the oven door part-way, but leave the loaf on the oven rack for ten minutes more. You can leave the bread in the open oven to slowly cool, if you like. When it's cool, it's ready to eat.

Again, this quicker no-knead bread can be made as a round country loaf or as a baguette just as easily. See my recipes for Spanish-style breads for more information.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Easy No-Knead Spanish-style Baguette (barra de pan)

While nearly every region in Spain has its own special breads, the Spanish-style baguette, or barra de pan, is the one type of bread that is baked all over the country.  In other words, it would be difficult finding, say, an authentic Galician rye bread (pan de centeno) outside of Galicia, but you can find a barra de pan just about anywhere.  If you're interested in trying these regional breads, check out La Tienda's selection of breads from Spain which only need 10 minutes finishing off in the oven.

Formerly, barra de pan--literally "bar of bread"--indicated mainly the shape of the loaf, not so much the type of bread.  Madrid, for example, had more compact barras de pan, while Galicia had light and airy ones. They only looked similar.  Now, with mass production, most barras de pan are much alike, though it is still possible to find quite a range of styles if you seek out independent bakeries and the better bars that use first rate breads for their tapas.

Most Spaniards buy fresh bread every day,  which is convenient, as you can hardly walk a block or two without passing a little shop selling fresh barras de pan (and often no other type of bread).  Larger bakeries and supermarkets sell a wide range of breads, including barras de pan.

Barras de pan are usually white, though nowadays there are whole wheat breads in Spain with a barra form. This will be the subject of a future post. For this recipe I use a blend of white and whole wheat flour (2 parts all purpose flour, 1 part whole wheat).   If you want an all-white bread, simply replace the whole wheat flour with all-purpose flour.

For this recipe I once again rely on Mark Bittman's now-famous article for Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.  Making this bread is simple and easy. It only needs time--nearly 24 hours--for the long slow rise.

Note: because no-knead dough is so wet and slack, it's necessary to use a French Bread Pan or baguette pan to give the barra de pan the appropriate cylindrical shape. (Otherwise your barra de pan will come out irregular and flat-bottomed, with a slightly different texture).  Avoid the perforated versions of the baguette pan: the dough will seep down into the holes and cause the loaf to stick.  

Here's how to do it:

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon yeast

1 1/2 cups water

olive oil

semolina flour or cornmeal

To make the dough:

Mix the flour, salt, and yeast together in a large bowl.  Add the water. Stir to make a ragged dough.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a clean towel.  Put the bowl in place that stays about 70 degrees and allow it to rise for 18 hours.  The temperature is extremely important. If your kitchen is much warmer than 70, please see my post on how to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees.

When the dough has risen it will look very wet and bubbly.

Rub the baguette pan with olive oil. Dust it with semolina or corn meal. 

Wet your hands (this keeps the dough from sticking so much). Deflate the dough. Divide it into two equal parts.   Shape each piece of dough into a "rope" and place them in the troughs of the baguette pan.

Let the dough rise 1-2 hours (depending on the temps of your kitchen).

Preheat your oven to 550.  Put the loaves in the oven. Turn down the heat to 400.  Bake the loaves for 30 minutes (Turn on the oven light and keep an eye on them towards the end). Remove the loaves from the pan, and unless they're already deeply browned, return them to the oven for 5-10 minutes more.  The idea is to toast the crust as much as possible without burning it.

Remove the loaves from the oven. Cool them on racks. 

 

How to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees during the long (18 hour) rise

Most of the bread recipes I write about here at Simple Spanish Food are variations on Mark Bittman's/Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.  This method of making bread is easy, simple, and it produces really good bread, very much like the best breads we've had in Spain.

But to succeed with no-knead bread, it is essential to keep the temperature of the dough at (or at least near) 70 degrees during the long, 18-hour rise.   This can be difficult in hot climates (like ours) or in an overheated kitchen.

Here's a variation of a trick I learned from Julia Child's recipe for French bread in her classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  (Home beer brewers use a similar technique). Basically you place the bowl in which the dough is rising into a larger container partially filled with cool water and you keep the water cool, by replacing it or adding ice of some kind.  You're basically improvising a makeshift cellar.

I use a large inexpensive stock pot.

To keep the water cool, I drop in freez paks or blue ice. (Small plastic bottles partially filled with water and frozen would work too).

I put 3-4  inches of water in the stockpot, along with the bowl that contains the dough (covered with plastic wrap), 2 or 3 freez paks, and a thermometer.

I usually replace the ice packs about 3 times during the 18-hour rise.  (I always keep a bunch of freez paks in the freezer).

Click HERE to see my recipes for Spanish style breads.

 

 

An Easy Recipe for No-Knead Spanish Rye Bread (pan de centeno)

Galicia, the region in the northwest of Spain, has some fabulous breads, and one of our favorites is Galician rye bread or pan de centeno. 

To make a truly authentic Galician rye bread would be a complicated, many-stepped process, involving a starter and a wood burning oven. (Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers has a difficult recipe for "naturally leavened" rye bread if you'd like to give it a shot). But by using the no-knead method described in Mark Bittman's now-famous article for Jim Lahey's no-knead bread, it's easy to make a fantastic rye very much like the best pan de centeno of Galicia. All it needs is time--about 24 hours--and a fairly steady temperature of 70 degrees for the slow, eighteen-hour  rise.

This recipe is just like that for my Galician country bread (pan de Cea) except the cup of whole wheat flour is replaced with whole grain rye flour. 

Ingredients:

2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole grain rye flour

1/4 teaspoon dry yeast

1  1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt

1 1/2 cups of water

semolina flour or cornmeal for dusting

a little olive oil

Here's how to do it:

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add the water. Stir. A ragged dough should form. 

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a towel.  Place it in a spot that stays around 70 degrees.   The temperature is important. If your kitchen is warmer than 70 degrees, see my post on how to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees.  Let the dough rise for 18 hours.

Put a piece of parchment on a large inverted baking sheet (this serves as your peel or baker's paddle).  Sprinkle it with semolina flour or cornmeal.  Wet your hands (It's much easier to work with this sticky dough with wet hands).  "Punch" the dough down and shape it into a rough ball.  Dust it with flour.  Place it on the prepared parchment

Cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap rubbed with olive oil, and cover it with a towel.

Let the dough rise an hour or two, depending on the temps of your kitchen.

Now heat up your oven to 550, with a baking stone or pizza stone in the oven. If you don't have a stone, a large cast iron skillet works well.    If you're using a kamado (Big Green Egg), even better: heat it up to 600 with the baking stone in it. 

Carefully slide the dough, parchment and all, onto the hot stone (or into the hot skillet). Be careful.  Shut the oven and turn down the temperature to 400.  Bake it from 45 minutes to 1 hour. Keep an eye on the bread,  especially towards the  end.  The idea is to bake it as much as possible  without burning it.  It should turn a deep toasty brown.

Remove the bread from the oven. Slide it onto a cooling rack.  It's best to wait for it to cool before slicing.

This bread is great with caldo gallego.

 

 

A Simple Recipe for Galician Country Bread (pan de Cea)

In Spain, to eat a meal, or even a tapa, without bread is almost unthinkable. Even Chinese restaurants serve bread. It doesn't go very well with stir fried rice, but many Spaniards just don't feel comfortable without bread on the table.

 I would much rather leave bread to professional bakers, as most Spaniards do. Unfortunately, unlike most Spaniards, I don't have a pretty good bakery just around the corner. So if I want to cook Spanish, I must bake bread.

 I've tried serious bread baking books like Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers and I always go wrong at some point during the many-staged recipes.  I worked my way through the famous 14-page (or was it 20?) recipe for French bread in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and made a pretty good baguette, but it was a lot of work--far too much work for day-to-day bread.

So I was very pleased when a friend, who is a serious baker, sent me a link to Mark Bittman's now-famous article for Jim Lahey's no-knead bread.  Since then I rarely bake any other kind of bread. (The one exception is a 100% whole wheat bread, for which I use a recipe from Elizabeth David's classic  English Bread and Yeast Cookery --the best whole wheat bread recipe I've found so far.)

The Bittman-Lahey recipe is simple and easy. It does require time--24 hours, in fact--but very little work.   Mark Bittman later wrote a recipe for Faster No-Knead Bread, which can be made in less than half the time. The flavor isn't the same, but it's a good recipe when you need bread in a hurry.

Over the last couple of years I've simplified things even more. I don't bake the bread in a covered Dutch oven anymore, as the original recipe tells me to.  I always managed to burn myself while handling a heavy, 500+ degree pot, and besides it made the crust different than the Spanish country breads I'm trying for. I no longer wrap the dough in a floured cloth, which always made a mess in the kitchen.

I do complicate the original recipe in one way: I  go to some lengths to keep the temperature a steady 65-70 degrees during the long rise time.  I live in a hot climate--Central Florida--and I have found that keeping the temperature at or just below 70 degrees is  extremely important. If it's too warm in the kitchen, the dough will rise too quickly, and the bread will suffer.  So if your kitchen is much warmer than 70 degrees, see my post on how to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees.

Is this the authentic Galician country bread called pan de cea? No, but the resulting bread is as close as any we've tried to the best country breads in Spain, and short of ordering some of the pre-baked Spanish breads from La Tienda, which only need 10 minutes finishing off in the oven, nothing could be easier. The crust comes out toasted deep brown, thick, crunchy, and even (by American standards) a little hard. The crumb (the inside of the bread) is firm, irregular, buttery (though the bread has no butter in it), with a slight sheen to it.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 cup of whole wheat flour

1/4 teaspoon of yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons of kosher salt

1 and 1/2 cups of cool water

olive oil

In a large bowl, mix the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon.  Add the water and stir to make a ragged dough.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it sit in a cool dark place, around 70 degrees, for 18  hours. (I have let it sit up to 24 hours without problems, so long as the temperature stays  around 70.)  Again, see my post on how to keep no-knead bread dough at 70 degrees if your kitchen is warm.

Place a piece of parchment paper on an inverted baking sheet.  Rub it down with olive oil.  Fold the dough a couple of times. Shape it into a ball. Rub it with a little olive oil, and place it on the oiled parchment. Cover it with an oiled piece of plastic wrap (the same one you used for covering the bowl will do). Cover it with a clean towel. Let the dough rise for 1-2 hours--depending on how  warm your kitchen is.

 

This bread is fantastic cooked in a kamado oven (Big Green Egg).

But it's quite good in a regular oven, especially if you use a baking stone or pizza stone, and even if you don't have a baking stone, it's very good.  Regardless of what type of oven you use, preheat it, with a baking stone in it if you have one, to 550 degrees. (You could preheat a Big Green Egg/Kamado oven to 600+).  Slide the dough, parchment and all, onto the hot stone. Yes, the paper will burn around the edges. It doesn't matter (though if you're using an indoor oven you'll probably want to trim the edges of the paper so there won't be too much smoke).

If you have no baking stone, just bake it on the sheet pan.

Immediately turn the temperature down to 400 and bake for 1 hour, or even up to fifteen minutes longer.  The first few times you bake this bread, keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn. You may have to turn down the temperature some, depending on your oven.   For pan de cea the goal is a long bake and a deep brown crust.

Remove the bread from the oven and let it cool on a rack.

Allow the bread to cool at least 2 hours before slicing it. It's even better the next day, and still great the day after that. Like true pan de cea, the flavor and texture of this bread actually improves for the first few days. It's still great for toast after that.

While typical of Galicia in the northwest of Spain, this bread is fine for all sorts of Spanish meals and tapas.