IceDemeter's blog

Apparently ‘tis the season for clan gatherings – and the associated baking.  Fortunately, the weather is pretty nice for it (I’d much rather be working in an 18 - 20 deg C kitchen instead of 30), and it gives me an opportunity to indulge my obsession without over-filling the freezer ;-)

 I started last Wednesday building up separate rye, oat, and durum levains, and doing a rough preliminary plan for what I wanted to bake.  We adored the shortie baggies that I’d made last week, and I most definitely need lots of practice on that shape, so those were a definite on the list (blogged separately here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/53875/oct-8-shortie-baggies-round-2  to make it easier for me to track my baguette-ish progress).  I’ve been quite caught up in the ongoing whole wheat challenge talked about here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/53708/wholewheat-sourdough-bread-doesnt-oven-spring, so wanted to do a small whole wheat loaf to confirm that what I was suggesting should actually work.  For the Thanksgiving dinner with the clan, I needed some dinner rolls, and my stash of my husband’s favourite was getting to critical low levels, so a bake of these http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52425/catching-myself-oat-kamut-rolls-july-7 with a mix of dinner roll size (45g) and small sandwich size (78g) seemed in order. 

 Since we would be hanging about with the clan all day, I needed some “nibbler” bakes, and my Father-in-Law requested a mix of muffins.  I had enough stashed in the freezer of banana / blueberry, chocolate / beet / cranberry, and durum / mixed berry muffins, but thought that some sourdough rye / carrot muffins would be a good addition that was suited to the season.  While the levains were doing their thing, I quickly threw these together:

 My overall idea was to get the loaf dough all mixed and starting to ferment on Thursday, with an overnight retard, and then shape and bake on Friday.  First up was the whole wheat:

 This dough was really quite lovely to play with, and I enjoyed paying close attention to how it felt, and just how much hydration it “wanted”.  I was actually surprised at how much higher I ended up going above my original plan of 75%, but the humidity was quite low that day and maybe I was feeling more brave than usual ;-)

 While the picture isn’t great, there were lots of bubbles obvious in the dough when I pulled it out of the fridge in the morning, both on the bottom / sides of the container and on top:

 I did let it over-proof a wee bit while the oven was heating up, but it still came out with a respectable oven spring (in my prejudiced opinion):

 The crumb actually ended up a bit more open than I usually aim for, but I’m going to attribute that to practicing the pre-shaping that I am liking for the baguettes (really nicely demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUeS2PSXtP8 ) combined with my favourite batard shaping (nicely demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEG1BjWroT0 ).  I was so focused on practicing the pre-shape and shaping that I neglected doing an even de-gassing of the dough, and so earned all of those extra over-sized holes for my sandwich condiments to leak through:

 Working around the whole wheat dough, I also put together dough for my shortie baggies.  We loved the flavour on them last week, but 4 was too many since the slices aren’t really ideal for our primary sandwich use, so I did a tiny scale up on the quantities for 2 x 350g shortie baggies along with 1 x 700g loaf (details will be in the baggie-blog).

 This loaf was just plain fun, and I have to admit to missing the de-gassing on purpose for this one (that’s what napkins are for, right?!?).  I wanted a different score than on the whole wheat, so figured that I’d give a double-score a try.  Well – it looks like I didn’t get them anywhere near even enough, so ended up with this:

 The crumb did end up quite moist and open and delicious, so we don’t mind the extra holes:

 It was interesting to see the difference in result on the 100% whole wheat loaf (which was a 9% smaller dough weight) and the 32% whole grain loaf.  The timing, temperatures, and handling were very similar, but all of that extra whole-wheat goodness sure seems to attract more gravity

 Somehow on Friday, before the dough all came out of the fridge, I got hit with a craving.  My Mother-in-Law had mentioned that she might end up just using a store-bought dessert, and apparently my twee little brain wasn’t happy with that idea and came up with a NEED for cheesecake.  Well, I have never made a cheesecake, and didn’t have a springform pan handy, so I randomly decided that I would make mini-cheesecake bites in muffin tins – and would do them as half pumpkin with cranberry filling and half plain with cranberry filling (since, well, why not?!)  Since that wasn’t enough extra work (especially trying to learn how to do it on the fly), I decided that these needed a gingersnap bottom crust (and I’d never made gingersnaps before, either).  So, in between bread loaves, I made some gingersnaps, whipped together some plain cheesecake filling, mixed some of that with a pumpkin custard recipe that I pulled out of thin air, cooked down some cranberries with raspberries for filling, and eventually put them all together in 2 dozen plain and 2 dozen pumpkin mini-cheesecake bites.  This is all that was left by the time we came home:

 Since the dessert idea wasn’t in the plan, I ended up missing my timing for doing my usual poolish for the oat kamut rolls.  Instead, I ended up “proving” about 2g of ADY in warmed milk and kamut (instead of the usual pinch for a poolish) and mixing it in to the levain and the rest of the dough after just a half hour.  This was at 8:00 Friday evening, so the dough got a couple of hours fermenting at room temp with some stretch-and-folds, and then was tossed in to the fridge for overnight.  I pulled it out when I got up at 6:30 Saturday morning, pre-shaped, rested, shaped, and baked them off when they were nicely proofed at 9:30.  It ended up as perfect timing to just cool enough to transport before we headed out for the dinner on Saturday.

 These rolls actually got me a very nice compliment from my Brother-in-Law.  He’s Armenian, with a whole-hearted passion for “white bread”, and he had stopped at his favourite bakery for fresh dinner rolls that he knew that he would enjoy.  He quite politely tried one of mine, and then ate 2 more of them, telling me how good they were and how he was surprised at me making a “white” roll when he knows how I like whole grains…  He took it really well finding out that my little “white” rolls were actually 55% whole grain --- and has asked me to bake some other breads for him to try.

 Phew!  What a bake – and so much fun!  Hope you all are finding time to play and experiment, and keep baking happy!

So – it seems that I have succumbed to the siren song of the baguette…

 Round 1 last week turned out better than I had expected, and the non-traditional blend of flours that I chose was both a treat to work with and absolutely delicious.  The spelt / durum / rye diluted the strong gluten of my Canadian AP flour, so the dough ended up wonderfully extensible, and quite fun to shape. 

 Round 2 this week is just for 2 shortie baggies, along with a loaf from the same dough (the loaf slices are more practical for sandwiches), but I kept the same flour blend and hydration.  There was a small increase in overall dough weight, and I changed the levain to be rye instead of durum:

 The biggest change was learning from last week that this dough proofs FAST, and to get it in to the fridge for the final proof, which I did.  I also went with 500 deg F baking temperature, instead of 480, and found that I liked the result of that.

 My Round 2 “challenge” ended up being an arthritis flare in my hands on baking day.  I was so incredibly focused on not dropping the Sylvia’s Steaming Towel (in a pyrex bread pan), and then on safely transferring the baguettes in to the oven, and covering the oven glass with a towel, and pouring in the boiling water…  Well, it wasn’t until the oven was safely closed and I was breathing a sigh of relief about no damage so far, that I realized that I had totally forgotten to score the baggies!  Ooops!

 So – I opened the oven door, pulled out the rack, scored as best I could at that odd angle without burning myself, and shoved them back in.  Whatcha gonna do, right?!

 I gotta say, I’m pretty impressed with how well that worked out!  They obviously didn’t open as evenly and well as I would have wanted, but I sure can’t complain.  Overall, the flavour was as outstanding as the first time, and the crumb --- well, I’ll let it speak for itself:

 There will be a Round 3, most likely this week, and then…  

 Is there some kind of therapy group for this?!?

Well, for last week I got to do a bigger bake than normal, since I was baking not just for ourselves but also to take a few things out to my In-laws for dinner on Friday (there were some East coast relatives in for a visit, so a clan dinner was in order).

 It ended up being a very mixed bake, with a lot of inspiration from missing-but-now-happily-returned posters, as well as the steadfast posters who always give me something to try…

 I was first reminded by Yippee’s pumpernickel bake that I was getting frighteningly low on my favourite dark rye --- and, of course, was reminded of just how many of dabrownman’s pumpernickels had added their influence to my base recipe.  I prepared some chocolate and red rye malt following his instructions, cranked up my levain following his NMNF build, and then put together this recipe (for 3 loaves) on Tuesday, to bake over to Wednesday morning (and be ready for slicing on Friday or Saturday):

While I normally would do a 24-hour bake at 225 deg F, I referenced the pumpernickel recipe here https://www.thebreadshebakes.com/2014/08/baking-traditional-real-german-pumpernickel-bread/  and followed her bake schedule of 1 hour at 300 deg F, 13 hours at 250 deg F, and then an hour cooling with the oven off.  The loaves turned out okay, but didn’t have the full flavour and caramelization that I am used to with the longer bake, so I’ll go back to my old ways next time my stash gets low…

 My next need was a couple of small sandwich loaves, and I couldn’t help but basically just do a repeat of my last one, blogged about here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52920/sept-15-66-whole-grain-porridge-loaves  These both went out to the clan dinner, so no pics of the crumb, but I did grab a couple of pics of the loaves:

 Oh yeah – and along with them, are the rest of my bake of that day, something totally new for me: baguettes!  Well, short ones (I can only do max 15" long right now), but still:

You see, I had ended up re-watching Alfanso’s video on the Bouabsa double-hydration baguettes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYvORu_oLYc while responding to a post on the fora.  Since I had been avidly following kendalm’s responses to Restless Baker’s quest to learn baguettes, I suppose that the idea had been simmering away in the back of my mind.  While I can’t really get in to the fresh yeast / French flour works of art the kendalm is creating (totally intimidating!), Alfanso’s return reminded me that it can be a lot of fun to put your own twist on any recipe or technique. 

 So – I put together a quick formula that I figured should be nicely extensible (spelt is my friend), was a bit lower in whole grains than I normally go (just 30%), and with a fairly low level of pre-fermented flour (so that I’d have lots of leeway in using the fridge).

 I got this going a couple of hours after I had the porridge loaves happening:

 This dough was insanely active!  I was anticipating fermenting at room temperature (a rousing 18 deg C) for at least a few hours, but it just took off.  I remembered Alfanso’s advice to someone a few months back to shape directly out of the fridge and then to fully proof in the fridge, too.  Well, I kind of followed it, by pre-shaping directly out of the fridge, but then let them bench rest a bit too long and had a hard time getting them to NOT stretch out to proper baguette length (I only have space to bake 15” long).  Telling them to “stop that!” as they stretched every time I moved the dough only worked somewhat…;)  The proofing in the fridge worked on the ones that I delayed,  while the room temp proofed ones madly over-proofed, so more fridge will be the plan for the next round…

 Oh, and there WILL be many more rounds of these!  We kept the two over-proofed ones, and had one of them polished off a couple of hours after they had come out of the oven.  The two better proofed ones went to the clan dinner (so no crumb shot), and the final over-proofed one was sliced up and devoured today:

 Excuse the lousy photography and lighting – the crumb really wasn’t that odd mix of colours, but even grossly over-proofed and shaped with very little skill, it came out good enough to make me pretty darned happy.

 These aren’t a whole lot of good for meal-type sandwiches, but are absolutely perfect for every other use.  The flavour was outstanding, and it was just plain fun to try shaping these tricksy little beasts!

All together, it was a fun few days of prepping and baking, and left me looking forward to playing some more this week.  Hope you all have just as much fun, and keep baking happy!

There were a few things going on here this week, so I figured on keeping my bake pretty simple and straight-forward.  The only “extra” that was in the plan was to build up a bunch of both my rye and durum starters and get them spread out and dried to store as back-up, and to give to some family members who asked for some.

 With the drying in mind, I pulled out 10g each of the rye and durum starters, and started building them up over the course of Tuesday and Wednesday, then refrigerated Wednesday night.  My planned bake would only use the durum starter, since I was planning on a simple 1-2-3 with 40% AP / 20% durum / 20% kamut / 20% oats:

Plan was to get the dough mixed at some point on Thursday, bulk ferment in the fridge overnight, and then get it shaped and proofed and baked on Friday morning before heading off to an appointment early Friday afternoon.

 This is exactly what happened!  Well, except that…  the chat on the fora about my oat starter made me realize that I hadn’t ever used it by itself to raise a loaf – and had never done a direct comparison with it.  My planned bake seemed like the perfect opportunity to do this, so I made a last-second decision on Thursday morning to build up an oat levain from my oat starter, and put together a second loaf like this:

I started with 25g of the 80% hydrated oat starter at 7:45 a.m., mixed it up with more oats and water, and it looked like this:

4 hours later, it looked like this:

I added in more oats and water as a second stage of the build at 11:45 a.m., and it looked like this at the start, and then after 4 hours at 3:45 p.m.:

Now, I should have had the basic sense to let the levain mature at this point, but I already had the durum loaf mixed and fermenting, so figured that I might as well see what this totally immature oat levain could do (talk about asking a toddler to do an adult’s job!).  While it wouldn't rise past this point, the large cracks and holes (not really bubbles) would continue to expand if I left it to mature for another 4 to 8 hours, and the aroma would change as the yeast and LAB multiplied.  Instead, I mixed the dough, let it ferment at room temps for 3 hours with 4 sets of Stretch-and-Fold on the 30 minute marks, and then tucked it in to the fridge beside the durum levain dough to ferment overnight.

 In between working with the dough, I also got the fully built-up and active rye and durum starters spread out in thin layers on parchment paper, and tucked safely away in a draft-free room to dry over the next few days.

 When I checked the dough at 6:00 a.m. Friday, the durum dough was perfectly fermented, but there was very little growth on the oat dough.  The outside and bottom showed the development of a lot of bubbles, though, so I figured that it was using the levain too early that was the issue (not enough wee-yeasties bred yet), and that all it needed was a bit more time at warmer temperatures to catch up.

 I pulled the durum levain dough out for pre-shape and bench rest, and put the tub with the oat levain dough in to the oven with the light on and the door propped open.  Sure enough, by the time I needed to start pre-heating the oven for the nicely proofing durum levain dough, the oat one was just about perfectly fermented --- billowy, light, beautifully domed, with tons of bubbles all over the outside.

 This led to an issue --- I had an unbreakable appointment early in the afternoon, so knew that there was no way that I could let that dough continue at room temperatures, or it would end up over-proofed for sure.  The solution was to pop it back in to the fridge, to be dealt with when I got home.  There was just enough time before I had to leave to get the durum levain dough in to the oven and baked.

 I got home around 3:00 p.m., pulled the oat levian dough out of the fridge, pre-shaped it and let it bench rest for an hour, then shaped it and let it proof on the counter for another 3 hours.  The extra fermentation time gave me a really bubbly dough to deal with, so I de-gassed it more firmly than I normally need to, and tried to seal the shaping even more than usual.  It was baked at 450 degrees covered for 25 minutes, and then uncovered for 25 minutes to an internal temp of 202 degrees.

 Once out of the oven, it joined the other loaf on the cooling rack for the night, waiting to be sliced up the next morning for sandwiches.

 The durum levain loaf came out like this:

The oat levain loaf came out like this:

The oat levain loaf suffered slightly in crumb from me not getting out as many of the larger fermentation bubbles as I would have liked, and both could have proofed slightly longer, but I was pretty happy with both the oat levain loaf (on the left) and the durum levain loaf (on the right):

 We had a taste-test when I first sliced the loaves, and agreed that we couldn’t really detect much difference in flavour, although there may be a bit less tang and more sweet in the oat levain dough (a hint, at most).  Not really a true comparison, since there were so many differences in the levain builds and timing, so I might just have to do a better job of planning it next time!

 Honestly, it never ceases to amaze me how forgiving sourdough baking is – and how adaptable bakes are when you remember that the fridge is your friend, and to always watch the dough and not the clock.  After a busy weekend in the back-country, these fun and yummy loaves are almost gone, and the starters are fully dried and crumbled and safely tucked away…

 Time to start thinking about what the next round should be – and hope that you all are baking happy!

Thanks to the influence of Isand66 and danni3ll3 and dabrownman (among others), I seem to have become somewhat hooked on the textures and flavours created by adding a cooked porridge made with toasted grains.  Since I wasn't sure how my "challenge" rolls would taste, I still wanted a moist and flavourful loaf for our sandwiches, and went with one of my favourite techniques:

LEVAIN: Use 8g of 65% hydration durum starter from fridge and do a 3-stage build up to highly active 162g of 80% hydration levain (90g of durum / 72g water). Plan to use shortly after peak on 3rd feed (refrigerate at peak and hold overnight)

PORRIDGE:
Toast 20g each of millet, steel-cut oats, oat bran, wheat germ, rye flakes, and barley flakes over medium heat.
Add 280g of boiling water to 40g of dry milk powder and 60g of sour cream. Whisk until fully blended. Set aside extra hot water.
Remove pan with grains from heat, and carefully pour in about 3/4 of the hot water mixture. Stir until it is fully absorbed. Add the rest of the liquid, and return pan to medium-low heat, cooking until reaches soft and creamy consistency. Remove from heat and set aside to cool to room temperature.

AUTOLYSE:
Mix together 105g of freshly milled whole hard red wheat, 150g of whole spelt, 105g of freshly milled whole durum, 300g AP flour, 7g diastatic rye malt, 7g red rye malt, and 400g of water in to a shaggy mass. Cover and let rest for 2 hours.

DOUGH:
Add levain and 13g salt to the autolyse. Knead for about 10 minutes (minimal gluten development), then cover and let rest for 20 minutes.
Knead again (about 300 turns) up to medium gluten development, adding water if needed. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
Transfer dough to wet work surface, and do 2 full sets of stretch-and-fold. Roll in to tight ball, cover, and let rest for 30 minutes.
Weigh out the now cooled porridge to determine how much water was used. Spread out dough on wet work surface, and spread out the porridge over top as evenly as possible. Incorporate the porridge using a few sets of letter folds. Do a dozen or so slap-and-folds if needed to get it fully incorporated. Transfer to clear fermenting container, cover, and let rest for 30 minutes.
Do two more sets of stretch-and-fold in the container on 30 minute intervals, then transfer container to the refrigerator overnight.

PRE-SHAPE, SHAPE, PROOF, BAKE:

Once dough has fully fermented in the fridge, transfer it to a clean work surface, divide in to two equal sized pieces, and pre-shape both in to rough logs. Cover and allow to bench rest for 30-60 minutes.

Lightly dust work surface with flour, then flip, de-gas, and stitch / shape in to final loaf shapes. Transfer to bannetons, one covered in a damp towel and allowed to proof on the counter, and the other covered by a plastic bag and placed back in the fridge for an hour.  After the hour, put it on the counter to finish proofing as well.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees F with roaster inside.

Once dough is fully proofed, score then transfer to roaster. Bake covered at 450 degrees for 25 minutes, then uncovered at 425 degrees for 25 minutes (to internal temperature of 200-202 degrees). Transfer to cooling racks to cool completely, while returning roaster to oven and again pre-heating to 475 degrees F.  Repeat with second dough once it has fully proofed and oven is hot.

Do not cover loaves until fully cooled (at least 6 hours) and do not slice until next day.

On all previous bakes with this much dough, I have shaped and baked it as a single loaf.  With some conversations about shaping and scoring here in the fora recently, I decided to split this attempt in to two loaves, to see if it made any difference to the shaping and scoring.  Well - what a difference!  Getting a good shape, with a tight skin, is much easier with less dough --- and the scoring works better with that tighter skin.

I still wasn't feeling great, so didn't think about getting pictures of both loaves until the next day when I was slicing one up for sandwiches:

While I was very happy with the shaping and scoring, I was over the moon with our idea of a "perfect" crumb for sandwiches:

This loaf was first sliced on Saturday --- and I had the last slice from it this morning.  It was stored in a plastic bag on the counter, and it was so moist and fresh-tasting still this morning that I enjoyed it plain --- not toasted, and no toppings.  The second loaf came out just as good, and is more than 3/4 gone in sandwiches and nibbling.  The last bits are in the freezer, but I doubt that they'll be there for long...

For a few days when I wasn't feeling well, it sure was nice to have the bakes fall so nicely in to place.  Hoping that all of your bakes work out so well, too, and that you still manage to bake happy (even if a wee bit under the weather)...

A couple of weeks back, leslieruf posted another gorgeous bake http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/387329#comment-387329 , and in the conversation about it issued a challenge for a one-day bake – to see whether “good” flavour could be built that quickly. 

 Obviously, “good” flavour is a matter of opinion.  My personal preference is for a very strong sour (far more than most folks like), and I most often use a variety of whole grains to give a lot of depth to the flavour (so it’s not just sour).   My husband, on the other hand, prefers a sweeter note from the leaven.  I wasn’t too sure about my ability to build my preference in flavour so quickly, and I didn’t want our “daily bread” to be less flavourful than usual, so I decided to try the challenge with a couple of roll formulas that I had used before, and then do more “usual” porridge bread for our “daily”.

 The original roll recipes were for an oat khorasan (kamut) mix for my husband (see original blog here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52425/catching-myself-oat-kamut-rolls-july-7), and a rye pumpkin roll for me (see original blog here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52515/aug-4-rolls-can-be-baked-while-crutches). 

 The main changes on the oat khorasan rolls were to use my oat starter to create the oat levain (instead of the durum starter used the first time), and to change the timing so that the levain and poolish were both mixed at 7:00 a.m., and then were mixed in to the main dough around 12:30 p.m. --- and were in the oven by 3:30 p.m. (talk about quick!).

 I decided to change up the flours and hydration a bit on the pumpkin rye rolls (they were nasty to work with even after a cold retard with the original formula), and came up with this:

It worked out that I had chosen a good time for this experiment, since our temps were finally down to a reasonable 22 deg C. and there even was some humidity. Unfortunately, I ended up starting to not feel well as the last rolls went in to the oven.  The best-of-all-husbands stepped in to take them out of the oven, get them cooled over the evening, and then split and wrapped them and got them in to the freezer…  well – except for the 4 of the oat khorasan ones that he had for dinner!

 He unfortunately didn’t take any pics for me (all I have is one that I thought of at the last minute when I was making sandwiches a couple of days later):

I still had a couple of each roll recipe in the freezer from the original versions that I had baked, so we were able to compare the flavours directly.  We found no difference in the overall flavour, or texture (actually, slightly improved on the pumpkin rye, likely from a more suitable hydration), and I found it quite nice to not have to find refrigerator space for a change!  I was pleasantly surprised that there was still enough sour from the quick levain build to be tasted even with all of the other flavours in the pumpkin rye rolls, since I was positive that my usual 3-stage build with a cold retard of the levain and of the dough would be needed to build enough sour to be noticed.  It’s sometimes quite nice to prove yourself wrong!

 Thanks so much for the “challenge”, Leslie – we both enjoyed the results!

Last week was another busy week with a high need for sandwich bread and not a lot of time to make it.  It was also still stupidly hot (27 deg C or more), and continuously hazy / smoky from all of the fires off to the west and south.  We don’t have air-conditioning, and opening the windows was questionable, so I needed to plan leaven amounts and refrigeration for best bake timing.

To keep things simple, I planned on a couple of very straight-forward low hydration loaves, both at 70% whole grain, with timing balanced around our chores and coolest temps.  The first was a mix of durum and khorasan (kamut), and the second was a hard red wheat / spelt / rye mix.

I started out last Wednesday by pulling out 4g each of my 65% hydration NMNF rye and durum starters, and did a gradual build-up over 3 feeds for each to be 80% hydration with 85g prefermented flour.  The final feed was around midnight, and I left them out at room temperature for the night.

 On last Thursday, I stirred the levains in the morning, but left them out until I was ready to use them.  I started both mixes with an autolyse (flour and water) for 2 hours, then added the salt and levain, and kneaded for 200 turns.

After a 20 minute rest, I kneaded again, and turned out in to fermenting containers.  I kept them at room temperature (27 deg C) while doing 4 sets of stretch-and-fold on the half-hours for a total room temp fermentation time of 3 hours, and then refrigerated them for 17-18 hours to be ready for a morning bake.

 At a ridiculously early hour, I pulled the first dough from the fridge, pre-shaped it, and let it rest on the counter (covered with a damp towel) for an hour.  I then did the final shape and placed it in a banneton with the damp towel over it to proof for another hour while the oven pre-heated to 480 deg F / 250 deg C.

I then pulled the next dough from the fridge and pre-shaped it to let it rest for an hour.  Once the first loaf was in the oven, the second was final shaped and left to proof in a covered banneton.

I was rushing too much when I decided to put the first loaf in to the oven, so it went in somewhat under-proofed.  It baked for 25 minutes covered at 450 deg F / 230 deg C, and then 35 minutes uncovered at 425 deg F / 220 deg C until it hit internal temperature of 200 deg F / 93 deg C.  The dough had developed a bit too much of a skin for a smooth oven-spring, so it ended up with some crazy cracking all over, but overall it came out with a great flavour and crumb for our sandwiches. 

The second loaf proofed a bit longer (about 100 minutes after final shaping) and didn’t seem to dry out so much.  I baked the same timing and it came out without all of the crazy cracks, a lovely flavour, and the same crumb.

 All in all, I was really happy with how they came out.  It is even hotter here this week, and our out-of-town chores have slowed down, so I’m not planning a bread bake this week.  We’ve got just enough odds and ends from previous bakes in the freezer for our needs this week, and I’m craving sweets for a change, so it’s oatmeal cookies today, and likely some fruit scones and muffins tomorrow (unless, of course, I change my mind…)

I'm just looking at these and laughing at myself from a few months back, when I couldn't even imagine getting this kind of oven-spring and lightness of crumb with a 70% whole grain, relatively low hydration dough...  Who knew that just a little experience would make this seem a "quick and easy" style loaf!

Hope all are safely out of harm's way from fire or water or wind, and are happily baking their own "quick and easy" or wild and fun experiments!

Along with my play-time (the Eclipse experiments), I also needed a basic sandwich loaf for the week.  We've had hot, dry weather, bringing on the need for an early harvest, so not much time at home right now and a need for much portable food!

For our sandwiches this week, I wanted to use up the last of my older durum and kamut berries (since I had stocked up again), use up the rest of the rye levain that I had built, and keep it fairly high in whole grains. 

This dough is a joy to work with, and all went according to original plan of 2 hour autolyse, 2-1/2 hours of mixing and room temp fermentation with stretch and folds, and then 15 hours in the fridge.  It was pre-shaped straight from the fridge, rested for 1 hour, shaped, then proofed for 2 hours before baking at 450 deg covered for 25 minutes / 425 degrees uncovered for 25 minutes.

Since it is fairly low hydration, and I firmly de-gassed it during shaping, it came out with my ideal sandwich crumb, and a lovely delicate yellow tinge from the durum / kamut mix.

The best part about it is that it got a “good bread” review from the husband – which is the highest praise from him. 

 Getting ready to make up some sandwiches looked a bit like "day and night", and we really enjoyed having the variety in the flavours

The sandwich loaf is done, but I got to finish up the last of the "night" loaf with breakfast this morning (topped with some cream cheese and the awesome prune-butter from Hanseata's blog: http://hanseata.blogspot.ca/2015/02/ex-pats-pflaumenmus-ersatz-plum-butter.html)

No time for baking this week, so I'm awfully glad that the freezer still has some stock from past bakes. 

Bon appétit and keep baking happy!

  With Mini Oven’s Eclipse Bread challenge in mind, and the need to get my “mother” durum starter built back up, I started last week by pulling out 10g each of my 65% hydration rye and durum starters and starting with 3-stage levain builds, getting them both up to 80% hydration, and shooting for about 270g total of each levain.

 The rye (which had the “mother’ re-built the previous week) was more than perky, and had doubled less than 3 hours after the first feed.  The durum showed its age, and just barely doubled in 8 hours – definitely time for the “mother” to be built back up!

 The first loaf that I thought of to go with the Eclipse Challenge would be my “darkness” impression.  I wanted a really moist and dark bread, heavy on the rye, but still enough of a “white” bread that my husband would enjoy it, too (he’s not as much of a fan of the dark stuff as I am).  For the moistness and darkness, I decided on a porridge with lots of chocolate rye malt, and I used a mix of dark brewed coffee and Earl Grey tea for the liquid (an accidental mixture made by my husband helpfully saving some left-over coffee for me to have as iced coffee --- but adding it in to the container in the fridge that I used for left-over tea).  I added in some sour cream and mashed bananas to keep the whole thing very soft, and just a touch of millet to be the “stars” in the darkness.

 It is still far too warm here (was 30 deg C that day), and this dough ended up as dementedly sticky.  It actually got worse as it fermented, so for the first time ever I ended up adding a bit more flour (75g total) and doing 300 slap-and-folds to incorporate it about 2 hours in to the ferment. 

 That was still not enough to make it shape-able, so I bunged it in to a heavily buttered tin. 

While it was a devilish dough to work with, the result is moist and tender and delicious --- so worth it!

The next part of the bake was also intended for the Eclipse challenge --- a bright and sunny yellow dough (durum mixed with corn flour and a cornmeal porridge) with a streak of blueberry raspberry “moon shadow” running through it.

 Well – I had intended on doing 100% whole grain, but the dough just didn’t want to hold together after I added the levain.  I just didn't have enough "dough" to hold the amount of cornmeal porridge, so I ended up grabbing a couple of hundred grams of the already mixed dough from our sandwich loaf and incorporating it in order to get some kind of cohesion.  That did help, but the dough stayed really soft throughout fermentation, and didn’t seem to want to hold together after being flattened and rolled around the fillings.  I proofed it on a parchment covered baking sheet, covered with a damp towel, and tossed it in to the oven quite under-proofed in the hope that it would stay together. 

 Well, it’s not pretty, but it is tasty --- and it did work out with the banana rye for the look that I had in mind for the Eclipse Challenge.

Bon appétit and keep baking happy!

While I was putting together our "treats" (rolls for the man and rye for me), I still wanted to bake some day-to-day sandwich bread that we both would enjoy.  I hadn't done any high-percentage whole durum for a while, so I put together a dough with 55% durum on the Thursday, and it ended up in the fridge to ferment overnight.

Well, of course I got on here that evening, and had yet another stunning example from Kendalm of wonderful and tempting and oh-so-intimidating baguettes.  I know my (lack of) skill level well enough to realize that I am nowhere near capable of shaping a proper baguette, but started thinking that the dough in the fridge might be a good one to try shaping in a shorter, fatter version.  The hydration level was pretty low, and the dough wasn't sticky and was quite extensible thanks to the durum, so I decided to give it a go...

 Levain: Build up 80% hydration levain ending up with 288g total (160g durum and 128g water). Allow to peak, then refrigerate until ready to use. Used up the left-overs from two or three weeks ago, so pulled from the fridge to come up to room temp when mixed the autolyse.

Toasties: Toast 13g each of raw wheat germ and raw oat bran in open pan until darkened and aromatic. Allow to cool to room temp or refrigerate until ready to use. Used up left-overs from a couple of weeks ago, so pulled from the fridge to come up to room temp just before mixing the autolyse.

Autolyse: Mix together 300g of AP, 180g of durum, 26g of toasties, and 5g of diastatic white rye malt with 319g of water in to a shaggy mass. Cover and let rest for up to 2 hours. Mixed at 11:20 a.m.

Dough Mix: Add the salt and levain to the autolyse, and mix in completely using pinch and fold method. Cover and let rest for 20 minutes. Levain in at 1:00 p.m.

First Knead: Knead dough until it feels smooth and cohesive (pausing if gluten starts pulling), then cover and let rest for 20-30 minutes. Did 200 turns from 1:20-1:30 p.m. Dough felt really good, so transferred to bulk ferment container.

Stretch and fold: Do in bowl every 30 minutes for first two hours of bulk ferment, then refrigerate for balance of fermentation. SF done at 2:00, 2:30, 3:00, and 3:30 and the dough went in to the fridge.

Pre-shape, shape, and bake: Pull dough out of fridge and make sure fully fermented. If not, then allow to come to room temp in the container and finish fermenting. If ready, then remove dough from container, divide, and pre-shape in to rough logs. Cover with damp cloth and allow to rest for 60 minutes. Dough had more than doubled when pulled out at 9:00 a.m., so divided in to 2 x 563g and put one back in fridge and pre-shaped and covered the other. Changed mind 10 minutes later, so pulled out other piece and pre-shaped and covered it as well. Allowed to rest until 10:00 a.m., then used very lightly floured board and hands to shape both pieces in to long baguette-like shapes. Placed on parchment lined sheet pan and covered with damp cloth to proof.

Pre-heat oven with baking stone or steel or large sheet pan and large roaster cover to 475 deg F (250 deg C), and prep for steam.  Pre-steam with 1/2 cup boiling water before loading loaves.

Cover oven window with towel, remove roaster cover from sheet pan, transfer loaves on parchment paper to heated sheet, cover with roaster, add 1 cup of boiling water to steam pan, and bake for 18 minutes.  Remove steam pan and roaster cover, rotate loaves, drop temp to 450 deg F (230 deg C) and bake for another 12-15 minutes to an internal temp of 200 deg F (93.3 deg C).

Turn oven off, open door, and let loaves rest inside for another 5 to 10 minutes.  Cool completely on rack before slicing.

These seemed fully proofed by about 11:15, so were scored and in to the oven by 11:20.  Internal temp after 18 + 15 minutes was 202 deg F (94.4 deg C)

The final loaves are quite heavy (not surprisingly, with lots of whole wheat and low hydration) and are approximately 14-1/2” long x 2-1/2” high x 3-1/2” across (37 cm x 6 cm x 9 cm). 

This was my first try at this type of shape, and I was a bit nervous about whether I had gotten enough tautness for a solid shape and score, but it turned out okay:

I was still shooting for more of a tight crumb suitable for some teeny-tiny sandwiches, and was really happy with how it came out:

They basically make half-sized sandwiches (which is great, since I usually cut sandwiches in half anyways), and both the husband and I loved the flavour of this.  We usually wait 24 hours before slicing in to a sourdough, but this one was sliced and we were half-way through one of the bats (what else would you call them?  They're not a baguette, they're not a batard --- but they DO look like a potential weapon!) within a few hours of them coming out of the oven.

All in all, another fun and happy bake.

Hope you all keep baking happy, too!