27/12/2023
por francis
0 comentários

Que farei com este blog?

Faz pouco mais de três anos que escrevi algo aqui nesse blog. A displicência é tamanha que o aniversário de 20 anos desse espaço passou completamente em branco. Em março de 2003 escrevi o meu primeiro blog no antigo maneblog.mgate.com.br, depois migrado para mane.blog.br.

Eu sinceramente não sei que rumo dar à esse blog (ou a qualquer coisa – não sou muito bom de rumo :). Esse blog me dá um pouco de vergonha alheia. Quer dizer, vergonha de mim mesmo. Não, é vergonha alheia mesmo – não me reconheço mais do no que escrevi. Eu mudei, o mundo mudou. Vinte anos… Nesses últimos vinte anos Lula foi presidente do Brasil pela primeira vez. Bem na época que eu mudava de casa. A internet ainda era discada quando esse blog começou. Lula se reelegeu, e eu finalmente me mudei para meu próprio apartamento (alugado).

Nesses anos, foram várias tentativas de usar esse blog para algo mais: tentei colocar receitas de pães durante a pandemia, podcasts, e artigos políticos.

Vinte anos depois, encontro-me do outro lado do mundo, já sem as antigas pretensões. Será que eu sonhava em ter uma grande audiência, ser famoso? Eu não consigo lembrar do que se passava pela minha cabeça quando criei esse blog. Imagina se, ao invés de um blog, eu tivesse criado algum produto fantástico e vendido depois por uma fortuna. Não, criei um blog que não me atrevo a ler.

Minha vontade é tirar do ar. Ao usar o blog hoje, percebo como tecnologias como WordPress envelheceram mal. Tudo é lento, tem que instalar mil plugins, etc. Também caí em uma esparrela: a falta de costume de escrever em português deixou-me ainda pior no trato com o idioma. Ou seja: virei um quase analfabeto em três línguas. Hoje tenho uma página pessoal/blog em inglês, e um blog em norueguês, que criei para poder despejar minhas opiniões impublicáveis em outros lados. Sem falar no Mastodon, Friendica ou Pixelfed, sites que hoje consomem minha atenção.

Eu tinha esperança de que este blog seria minha ponte com a minha casa. Mas as pontes são outras: Facebook e Folha de S. Paulo. A negligência com esse espaço fez com que eu tenha perdido um elo com aqueles que ainda checavam o que aqui se passava.

Mas talvez, apenas talvez, eu ainda não tenha desistido de escrever. Tenho ainda uma pequena ambição de voltar a dar palpite sobre tudo. Vou pensar direitinho, mas o mais provável é que eu arquive tudo, apague a luz e diga um “tchau” a fazer eco na sala vazia. Não sem quem vai vencer: a compulsão por nunca deletar nada ou a vergonha de, no juízo final, ser perguntado pelo que escrevi aqui. De repente, se eu apago, não encontram mais nada e passa despercebido…

Ou então, vou me despedir à brasileira, dizendo um “volto daqui a pouco”, bem tipo esse verso de Rui Veloso na canção “Postal dos correios”:

“Já não tenho mais assunto pra escrever
Cumprimentos ao nosso pessoal

Um abraço deste que tanto vos quer
Sou capaz de ir aí pelo Natal “

18/10/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Zé Raimundo

Estamos em época de campanha eleitoral, o que sempre me faz lembrar de uma campanha em especial, a de 2004.

Nessa campanha reencontrei Zé Raimundo, a quem conhecia desde criança por causa dos meus tios e o envolvimento deles todos na luta progressista.

Trabalhar na campanha de Zé foi algo tão importante pra mim que posso dizer que foi a partir daquela campanha que eu comecei a verdadeiramente gostar de advogar. Não, até àquele momento eu não gostava tanto assim da profissão. Porém aquela campanha foi especial: o cliente era muito bacana, a equipe publicitária valorizava o trabalho jurídico, e o judiciário à época respondia às demandas com agilidade. A advocacia geralmente é um trabalho lento e de resultados distantes, mas naquela campanha parecia saída de um seriado norteamericano de advogados, tipo Suits. O pulso era alto 24h por dia.

E Zé ganhou de virada, e eu fui convidado a integrar sua equipe de procuradores na sua bem-sucedida administração. Ganhei um dos melhores patrões que já tive, mas além disso, pude ser testemunha de seu zelo com a coisa pública. Em mais de uma ocasião vi o então prefeito tomar decisões difíceis, com prejuízo pessoal, a favor de beneficiar a população, quando seria cômodo optar pela auto-preservação. Sempre que me perguntam sobre Zé, lembro-me que essa característica, a de colocar a coisa pública acima de si próprio, é a que mais se ressaltou durante o período que trabalhamos juntos.

No Brasil esquisito de hoje em dia, ver a eleição de Zé Raimundo para prefeito de Conquista será um alívio no meio dessa barbárie toda.

15/10/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Vida sem Facebook e atualizações

Faz algum tempo que escrevi alguma coisa aqui, exceto receitas de pão em inglês. Parece coisa da ditadura – escrever receitas em jornais – mas, muito embora os tempos estejam sinistros, não foi essa a razão dos posts sobre pães.

Na verdade, fiquei com preguiça de criar um espaço próprio para os pães, e resolvi utilizar esse blog para documentar meu progresso (?) no preparo de pães. Sim, virei mais um dos que, durante o confinamento por causa da COVID-19, resolvi fazer pães, e viciei na coisa. Desde março não compro pão em casa. E, ainda que fazer pães não tome tanto tempo, só é compatível com uma vida normal se a pessoa trabalhar de casa, a não ser que só se faça pão no fim de semana. É que viciei no pão tipo sourdough, ou seja, feito com fermentação natural, o que precisa de constante atenção.

Mas deixando os pães de lado, outra mudança relativamente recente nos meus hábitos foi meu afastamento do Facebook. Já fazem duas semanas que desativei minha conta. Fez menos falta do que imaginei que faria, apesar de sentir falta de saber o que minha família e amigos estão fazendo. Sempre gostei de estar conectado, e esse auto imposto isolamento é um pouco estranho. Meus amigos ainda estão aí? Ainda tenho amigos? Alguém ainda se lembra de mim?

A principal razão é que smartphones em geral, e o aplicativo do Facebook em particular, se tornaram, mais que um hábito, um reflexo. Anda-se na rua, checa-se o Facebook. Está em uma fila? Checa o Facebook. Ônibus? Facebook. Eu sempre me orgulhei de ser acostumado a esperas. Desde pequeno tinha que enfrentar longas horas em salas de espera, principalmente de médicos, algo que me tornou – gosto de pensar – mais paciente. E creio que perdi algo dessa paciência com o constante preenchimento do tempo em “stand by” com o Facebook.

Outra razão foi a de que eu usava o Facebook demais, e sinto que esse reflexo prejudicava minha interação com minha filhinha, que acaba de fazer três anos. É um privilégio ter a atenção dela, e não é justo que eu jogue essa atenção fora com o Facebook. Preciso mais presente, e não menos.

Por último, a polarização no Facebook me incomoda. Incomoda ver o revisionismo histórico infundado que se vê nas redes sociais e que jamais se sustentaria em uma banca universitária. Essa onda revisionista e antiacadêmica é obscurantista, e eu não quero mais ficar gastando tempo discutindo premissas básicas. Não, não é que eu acredite que o conhecimento só é legítimo se vindo da universidade. Mas acredito que a metodologia científica ainda é a conquista humana mais importante, pois conta com mecanismos de validação de uma hipótese. Então, se um sujeito resolve escrever um artigo dizendo que a escravidão brasileira não era racista, contrariando a história oficial – sem se dar ao trabalho de seguir a trilha do suor e lágrimas de quem defende uma tese acadêmica (coisinhas básicas como citar fontes, por exemplo), e isso ser incensado por gente que deveria lutar contra esse obscurantismo – é porque a coisa é perigosa. Se as pessoas estão tão seguras das barbaridades que dizem, percebo que o ambiente das redes sociais se tornou insalubre.

Não sei se minha decisão é definitiva, mas por enquanto vou resistindo à vontade de voltar e ver meus amigos, ainda mais nesses tempos pandêmicos em que eles fazem muita falta. E é bom usar um pouco desse novo tempo para deixar o pensamento correr solto e voltar a curtir o privilégio de ter algum tempo sozinho comigo mesmo – ainda que seja na fila do correio ou em pé no ônibus.

28/08/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Dutch oven: don’t bake without one

Ok, the title might sound like an exaggeration, but let me tell you this: it was the single most important thing that helped me getting nice, rising and great bread.

I’ve started baking sourdough just four months ago. I had to fight to get spring oven. My dough would sometimes become a frisbee in the oven, or it would rise ridiculously low.

Then two days ago I received a dutch oven I bought online. It was a small model from Holm, but it was on sale and I didn’t want to spend so much money before I knew this would fix my baking. Holm has a good reputation for having good products, and the cast iron pan has a flat lid that I thought would be ideal to bake in. In other words, I’d put the pan upside down so that the dough could bake on the lid and be covered by the pan.

It was a coincidence that I was going to bake that day – I didn’t expect the pan to arrive so fast. Perfect timing – I washed it, warmed it in the oven and baking I went.

After twenty minutes, I removed the pan, ie., the part of the pan that was covering the bread, and I got this shock: I’ve never got bread that rose that high, and was so round and nice. It was simply amazing!

I baked another one right away, as I had two doughs since I had a friend from work who came so we could do something work related, and the second bread didn’t rise as much, but that was my fault as the oven cooled a bit and the bread also over proofed clearly. Still, the taste was amazing, the bread got very good air distribution and the crust was great.

Yesterday when I came back from work I started preparing some dough so it could go to the fridge at night. For this dough – a 75% hydrated one – I increased the amount of whole wheat and put some linseeds (which stole some of the hydration, sadly). I also put way too much starter as I wanted a faster fermentation.

I started to work on something really exciting and forgot about the bread, so it got a too long bulk fermentation. I formed it right away and to the fridge it went. This morning it went right to the oven, and, again, a wonderful, wonderful bread.

So three bread (I’m only showing the picture of the first and the third loaves), three absolutely great tasting loaves. I feel I still can go higher on the loaf’s height, but suddenly it doesn’t really matter because the bread got really nice airy, soft crumb, that was delicious.

The dutch oven was not just about the oven spring, but also about a dough that expanded uniformly, thus rendering a loaf that has more taste, was less wet when done, and remained with a fresh taste and texture over time.

I know that there are certainly lots of people that are baking amazing bread without a dutch oven. I couldn’t. Maybe it was my oven that wouldn’t retain steam? I don’t know.

So if your dough is not having a proper oven spring and you have tried every piece of advice on the book, try the dutch oven. I was about to quit baking, but now had my motivation renewed.

12/08/2020
por francis
0 comentários

It’s the proofing time, stupid!

Ok, this week I really tried to be patient with my bread making and decided to experiment a bit.

I was successful with getting a better rise for my loaf, as described here. What I did was to reduce the hydration and increase the proofing time. It worked well.

Now I tested what was the main factor for rising: a less hydrated dough or a longer proofing time. So I decided to bake a specially wet dough:

Ingredients:

  • 150g levain: 50g starter, 50g Pivetti Tipo 1 flour, 50g water
  • 50g Pivetti Integrale 
  • 50g Tipo 00 flour
  • 120g Pivetti Tipo 1 flour
  • 30g Møllerens rye
  • 100g Regal spelt
  • 250g water

It was a 70% hydration dough, but if you look closely you will see that 90% was white dough, so it was a pretty wet dough.

I let it in the fridge for 18 hours, and to be honest I think it should have stayed a bit longer. I did the poking test, and I think. it could have waited to go to the oven, but I decided to bake it anyway. No autolyse (shame), 2h of stretch-and-folds, another 2 hour for bulk fermentation (total of 4h), pre-shaping, 30min, and then shaping+fridge proofing.

I am not happy with the height, though, but I am not sure this test was conclusive, as I got the feeling it could have proofed longer. I will try the same recipe with longer proofing to see if I get a better oven spring.

But oh boy, the taste was amongst the best I ever had…

And look at this crumb:

10/08/2020
por francis
1 Comentário

Eureka!

Ok, finally I got a result I am happy with and that shows I might be learning something after all.

As I have said many times, I am trying to get a bread loaf that grows enough so that I can end up with one of those beautiful, round loaves.

Today I got one that was way taller than what I have achieved so far, and that is really exciting!

Ingredients:

  • Levain: 50g Pivetti Tipo 1, 50g water, 50g starter
  • 50g Sammalt emmer
  • 100g Pivetti Farina Integrale Bio
  • 170g Pivetti Bio Tipo 1
  • 30g Rye
  • 233g water

It was supposed to be a 70% bread, but the water wasn’t enough to make the dough completely wet during autolyse, so I had to add a bit more water, which made me end up with a 72% bread.

Things I did different this time:

  • I really reduced the hydration of this bread to something I felt comfortable with. The dough was pretty manageable when stretching and folding, and pre-shaping wasn’t very hard. I could feel that by the consistency this dough had a good chance to stay firm. Had I skipped autolyse I could have even less hydration (as the levain ends up adding enough hydration).
  • It was on the fridge for around 17h.

I have no clue what was the biggest factor here. I will make other tests, one where I increase the hydration and leave it at the same time on the fridge, and another where I keep the same proportions and take it off the fridge sooner.

I wasn’t expecting the result to be so good, as emmer is a difficult flour to work with, and also because I didn’t feel that much gluten being developed. But hell it worked fine.

07/08/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Baguette friday!

Saturday is my fried eggs day, and I need some nice white bread to eat with them. Therefore I am trying to make some nice white bread rolls/baguettes. Far from perfect, but lately the results have improved.

I really worked a bit harder on this dough to get it strong enough, since baguettes have a tendency to flatten out when putting them on the oven tray. So I went by the book and used a towel to make small slots/trails they could rest on.

Ingredients:

  • Pre-ferment: 150g Pivetti type 1 flour, 150g water, 50g sourdough starter
  • 100g Pivetti Bio Tipo 1 flour
  • 40g Møllerens rye
  • 90g Pivetti Tipo 00 flour
  • 120g Regal Spelt
  • 100g Pivetti Manitoba tipo 0
  • 270g water
  • 8g sea salt

Process:

I had around 30m autolyse with just flour and water, then I added the pre-ferment and salt. After that, I used the kitchen machine and wouldn’t turn it off until the dough was super smooth. Well, it never got there, but I was afraid to break the machine, so stopped after about 10 min. It got pretty smooth, and I don’t think I have ever got such a strong dough that would hold up its shape like this one.

I did two hours of stretch-and-folds, and then I let it rest for around 2h15m. It had grown considerably, so I pre-shaped them, dividing the dough in 3.

After 20m of rest, I shaped the baguettes, put them on the towel, and after 40 minutes scored them (in a very lousy way) and to the oven with around 240º C with steam. After that, lowered the temps to around 210º C for 20 more minutes.

They taste good, these baguettes… 😀

05/08/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Living and learning

I think today represents a big shift in my learning path of how to bake bread. I am still doing a lot of things wrong, which is basically the way I work: I need to experiment a lot until I find the way to do things right.

It stuck me that I was doing these things wrong:

  • I was leaving my bread for too long during both bulk fermentation and proofing
  • I was using too much sourdough starter

The taste of my bread was great, don’t get me wrong, but I was searching for good appearance as well. I am a member of a sourdough group on Facebook (in Norwegian), and also got some hints of some colleagues that I might have been using too much time on my risings.

So I halved my starter and cut lots of rising times to test if that would give me a better oven spring. And it did! It is still far from ideal, but I feel I am finally on my right path.

My goals are mainly to make good bread without waiting two/three days. I am ok if the bread doesn’t have a huge sour taste. I just want breadmaking that fits my lifestyle, and not having to quit working just to bake… 😀

Let’s see what I did:

Ingredients:

  • Pre-ferment: 50g Pivetti tipo 1 Bio flour, 50g water, 50g starter (100% hydration)
  • 100g Pivetti Bio Farina Integrale (whole wheat flour)
  • 200g Halländsk lantvete (some sort of local and old type of wheat from Sweden that has 14g of protein!)
  • 50g Regal rye
  • 6g salt (could have used a bit more)
  • 243g water (75% hydration)

Process:

I made the pre-ferment the day before, around 4 o’clock, and let it rest on my kitchen bench for around 2.5h. Then I put it on the fridge.

On the next day, I mixed the flour and water for a quick 30m autolyse that started around 6:30, then I mixed it all together and used a kitchen machine for kneading. At 7:30 I did my first stretch-and-fold, and did around 4-5 for the next 2 hours.

At 9:30 I let the dough rest, and at 11:00 I did my pre-shaping after seing a few bubbles on the surface and a bit of rise on the dough. Thinking in retrospect I could have waited a bit more. I guess the sweet spot is around 1:30-2:00h.

After 20m I shaped it and put it on a proofing basket. My biggest mistake was using a too long basket, which resulted in a speading dough, reducing what could have been a great oven spring.

Finally I got a great rise, higher than what I was achieving lately. The only disappointing thing was the crumb, which probably could have been a bit more uniform. Next time I will wait a bit more with the proofing:

03/08/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Baking on vacation

I was looking for my holidays so I could experiment a bit with baking. It was great on my first week when I was home and alone and trying a lot of stuff. I could finally try new flours, other hydrations, etc.

But then I travelled, and thought I could bake while away from home. Boy, how disappointing.

I have the feeling that while baking sourdough bread has room for improvisation, it still requires a delicate balance. I was really progressing when baking bread at home, but on vacation I got only bad bread despite trying to bake 4 times.

Things that went wrong:

  • using flour I wasn’t used to: this is a problem. Flour has different characteristics, so what works with some flour doesn’t necessarily work with others.
  • Lack of equipment: I realize that using the right equipment is essential for someone clumsy as I am. Not having a dough scraper, a proofing basket or a kitchen machine these days is a no-go for me. I can’t manipulate wet dough without a scraper. The dough will not shape well without the proofing basket. And I can’t – no way – knead the dough by hand. I know lots of people love doing it by hand, but I am not one of them. I use a kitchen machine, and I got pretty comfortable judging if the dough is good or not while the machine is doing its job.
  • My sourdough starter simply didn’t work that well. I took a few spoons of my starter with me, but it took days to be healthy again. It seems it didn’t tackle the long journey that well. When it finally got strong again, it was on time for my last bread, which got ruined by a sticky form that ripped the dough apart.

I was happy to get back home and try baking again, and had a wonderful loaf to start with. My sourdough starter seems to need feeding only twice a month now. I have the feeling that my dough is getting too wet during the autolyse phase, and that under 70% hydration – I wonder if I was calculating something wrong or if physics changed while I was gone! So weird! UPDATE: My dough was getting too wet, but that’s because I was using different flours than what I usually put on my dough. The Norwegian whole wheat flour doesn’t soak water that well. Besides, the use of 00 flour, as well as spelt, didn’t help.

I did this bread yesterday (70% hydration):

Ingredients:

  • Pre-ferment: 150g Pivetti type 1 flour, 150g water, 50g sourdough starter
  • 100g Møllerens fibra (whole wheat)
  • 50g Møllerens rye
  • 100g Regal spelt
  • 50g Pivetti type 00 wheat
  • 50g Pivetti type 1 wheat
  • 200g water

Amazing texture, when shaping, but unfortunately I rushed it into the oven.

Great taste, ok crumb, nice crust, but still could be softer and more homogenous. I am trying a variation today to see how it goes.

22/07/2020
por francis
0 comentários

Test: Another go, and finally a (little) ear!

As I said, I am attempting to bake “taller” loaves, and I tried now to lower the hydration and increased a bit the amount of whole flour. I am not super happy with the results – I guess it’s no secret that higher hydration = better crumb, so my point was to see if I could get something taller and more stable.

Ingredients:

  • Pre-ferment: 200g (100g Pivetti type 1 flour) plus 50g sourdough starter
  • 150g Pivetti Manitoba flour
  • 100g Møllerens Fibra (whole wheat flour)
  • 50g Regal rye
  • 10g salt (it became overly salt, 30% less would do)

The good part is that I got to get an ear (a little one, though), which I was trying to do for a while. So it’s true, folks: creating tension when pre-shaping really does magic.

I assume I should probably use tighter bannetons from now on, since I guess the dough ends up getting a bit too loose on those I have.

I wasn’t impressed by the crumb: I think it could have been longer in the oven. But it’s ok, living and learning.