Alan.H's blog

I have never tried to bake ciabatta before but encouraged by this community bake I thought I would spend a morning on YouTube to watch a bundle of videos on the subject to see how it is done. I eventually settled on John Kirkwood's Sourdough Ciabatta Bread  largely because it uses a sourdough poolish which I have often used before.

So with the poolish it became a fairly leisurely process over two days. On day one the poolish was put together late in the evening by mixing 200g each of flour, water and active starter and letting it sit at room temperature overnight. (I used 85% Dove's strong white flour with 15% home milled wheat flour).

Next day mid morning with the poolish bubbling away strongly

The remaining 140g water was stirred in and then 250g flour and 8g salt and machine mixed for 10 minutes. (Well I had to justify the purchase of that shiny new Ankarsrum mixer during lockdown).

I did not have the recommended couche to hold the divided and shaped dough but I had found a clever alternative in a video by Buzzby Bakes who lays a sheet of baking parchment in a roasting tin and after spacing out the divided dough on it pulls up a fold between each piece exactly as you would do with a linen couche. The big advantage of using parchment paper is that at the end of proofing you just stretch out the folds to separate the loaves/rolls which can then be baked in the same roasting tin on the parchment paper and without handling them. I was able to cover the tin closely with a baking sheet to keep the steam in for the first 15 minutes. 

My own feelings are, not bad for a first try. the crumb could more open with a longer bulk ferment but I am anxious now to have a go at ciabatta bake 2.

I was poking around in the back of the drinks cupboard, as you do, and came across this bottle of Saltaire Triple Chocoholic stout, a long forgotten thoughtful gift from Jane, my daughter,

It seemed a pity to drink it all at once when I could enjoy it for a lot longer, one slice at a time, so it became the large part of the liquid in a pair of loaves of 40% wholewheat bread.

Here's the breakdown:

Marriage's strong white flour           720g      60%

Home milled Skyfall wheat              480g      40%

Saltaire Triple Chocoholic stout      470g       42%

Water                                               400g      33%

Salt                                                    24g         2%

Levain @ 100% hyd.                       240g       20%

Final hydration including levain                       75%.

Flour in levain was 50% each of Strong white and whole grain.

The triple choc stout should have been 500g but I couldn't resist having a swig.

Day 1   Levain build.  8am      5g+10+10

                                  1pm     25g+30+30

                                   6pm     85g+83+83      Into fridge @ 11pm

All flour water and salt mixed together@ 10pm and into fridge at 11pm.

Day 2     8am    Autolyse and levain out of fridge to warm to room temp.

              12.30pm  Levain added to dough and mixed in.

Bulk ferment completed after 5hrs. including five stretch and folds in first 2 1/2 hours.

              5.30pm  dough divided.  6pm  final shape and into fridge @ 6.30pm.

Day 3    12 noon  Dough baked in dutch oven straight from fridge.

So thank you Jane, the bread is delicious and any time you feel the urge to buy your old dad some more chocoholic stout, don't resist!

San Francisco Sourdough has always been a sort of holy grail for me, based entirely on its reputation. I have only previously tasted my own few attempts to bake it, drawn from the many SFSD recipes available online and in books and I have judged the results  to have varied between "OK" and "not too bad", so I was delighted to see David Snyder's blog entry on 7th March 2019 and his SFSD formula which is fairly closely derived from that of the original bakers. I had to try it.

I followed David's adaptation with just a couple of tweaks. I doubled the volume to make two loaves and  reduced the percentage of whole wheat flour from 25% to 20%. I was also concerned that the  60% hydration was rather too low for a formula which included whole wheat so I upped it to 65%. In fact when I came to mix the final dough it felt far too dry so I added another 50g of water which raised the hydration to 69%.

I usually then develop the dough by hand but on this occasion I decided to save a little time by using my KA mixer, which with 2kg+ of dough turned out to be a bad idea. The dough immediately climbed up the dough hook and started to entomb the whole mixer.

15 minutes later after I had scraped the dough back down into the bowl I carried on with a series of s & f's and then with half hourly s & f's for three hours before leaving it in peace at room temperature for a further five hours.  Dividing and shaping was followed by one further hour at room temperature followed by about 14 hours in the fridge.

The loaves were removed from the fridge and left uncovered at room temperature for an hour while the oven heated. This was just to dry out the surface after an overnight proof with a shower cap on.

 And the crumb.

 Strangely although the two loaves were baked at the same time in the same oven, the one below has a more opem crumb!

Well although I have never tasted San Francisco Sourdough this comes as close to my expectations as I could have hoped. It has a delicious complex flavour and an impressive sour tang. Better still toasted.

So . Thank you David for introducing me to this formula. I see that your next bake will be based on your conversation with Ramon Padilla and I look forward to that.

Alan

I have a nostalgic childhood memory of a black or near black bread that used to appear on the table at family get togethers in the East End of London just before and after the war. Once in a while that memory returns strongly enough to encourage me to start yet another futile unsuccessful search to discover what this exotic bread was…….. futile that is until last month when I came across  This video on YouTube under the name rus brot.

 It is in Russian with English subtitles and it was the opening shot of the finished loaf which stirred those old memories. However I was surprised to see that the bread was actually Borodinsky bread created using a 1940 recipe, a bread I am familiar with from other recipes and from Stanley Ginsberg’s “The Rye Baker”, but always shown as a tinned loaf and a rather lighter colour. None of those had previously given me that Eureka moment that said “this is it”.

 So of course I had to bake one for myself. It is quite a complex recipe requiring a two stage levain build, a scald which has to be kept at 63-65°C for five hours, a pre dough and a final dough mix but my first problem was getting hold of the 50g of red rye malt flour called for in the recipe, which as others have found is rarer than hens’ teeth. But I happen to have some rye grain and my new toy, a Mockmill 100, so how difficult could it be to malt it myself?  A quick search on this site resulted in an entry from dabrownman dated March 2012 which gives the method complete with ample photographs, so thank you for that Dab.

After that I just followed the recipe using my own milled rye flour and Marriages Strong white instead of the 150g of first clear wheat flour called for which is unobtainable in the UK (unless someone tells me otherwise) and here is the result.

It is quite delicious although not quite as open crumbed as I would like even for a wholegrain rye loaf.

So having had my “Eureka” moment the doubts are starting to set in. I have now seen other loaves on the rus brot channel which might also have qualified as my childhood black bread and my own attempt turned out to be more mahogany than black so if anyone out there can suggest or guess at what bread might have been baked and sold to the largely Jewish immigrant families of London’s East end before, during and after the second world war I would be more than pleased to hear.

As a post script, for anyone interested, rus brot has a collection of 15 videos of Russian and German bread recipes including the Borodinsky which are in Russian with English subtitles.   They can be found Here

A long time ago, before I had ever baked so much as a crumb I had a sudden urge to make a loaf of bread, so equipped with the unshakeable confidence of the totally inexperienced, I bought a pack of whole-wheat flour. I read the instructions on the paper bag and followed them meticulously and baked a .................brick!

It wasn't a total failure though.  As members of this community know, in baking there can be many disappointments but very few truly inedible disasters.. This brick could, in polite company be called a hearty eat and it was certainly tasty and my family actually loved it and asked for more. So for a while I carried on producing what became affectionately known as "Al's bricks". By this time the bug had bitten and I started on the long process of learning more about bread making and developing some skills and knowledge.

I did though miss the flavour of  100% wholewheat bread as did  my family so I was really pleased to come across Maurizio's "100% wholewheat sourdough" in his "Perfect Loaf" website     https://www.theperfectloaf.com/100-whole-wheat-sourdough/  in which amongst other things he tackles the main problem of using 100% wholewheat, that of the bran damaging the gluten structure. He separates the bran from the flour and softens it with boiling water followed by a lengthy autolyse before adding it back again at a later stage. So thought I would have a go and this is the result.

I am quite pleased with this first attempt and hope to be able to get a slightly more open crumb next time. So thank you Maurizio for opening this door for me although I would guess that my family will still prefer the "bricks".

By the way, in order to get a bit more rise and less width in my bread I often use this useful trick, placing an appropriately sized cake tin without its base inside the dutch oven. It probably only works if the dough is proofed in and stays in a baking parchment lining when it is lifted into the dutch oven.