Today, we mixed and baked ciabattas and challah, neither of them sourdough. We mixed and shaped olive bread, walnut raisin bread and miche to be retarded tonight and baked tomorrow. We also scaled ingredients and mixed pre-ferments for baguettes to make tomorrow. The baguettes will be made with two pre-ferments – a pâte fermentée and a liquid levain. The doughs for the ciabatta and for the miche were hand mixes, and all the levains were mixed by hand.

Scaling water for the miche mix

Hand mixing dough for the miches

Frank had us make 6-strand challah but he also demonstrated a variety of other braids. His challot are pictures of perfection. (Mine are pictures of squid who ate some special mushrooms.)

Challah pieces ready to be rolled into strands fro braiding

Frank's challot, ready to be egg washed prior to proofing

Frank's challot, baked

Challah crumb

My Ciabattas and Challot 

Stretch and fold

Dividing ciabatta dough

Placing ciabatta on the proofing board

Ciabatta baking in the deck oven

Ciabatta crumb

Both the ciabatta and the challah are delicious. I'm looking forward to the breads we are baking tomorrow.

We spent all day in the bakery and only were in the classroom to list our tasks for the day, first thing in the morning. Most of Frank's teaching dealt with dough handling issues, but I picked up a couple pearls worth sharing.

I asked him about how levain is calculated differently from other pre-ferments. (See my blog entry for Artisan II-Day 3.) Here's the answer: It's a matter of convention. Levain and other pre-ferments can be calculated either as a percent of dry flour weight in the final dough or in terms of the percent of pre-fermented flour in the total dough. No big deal. Your choice.

Frank also made two interesting comments as we were scaling and shaping the miches. The first was that long loaves like bâtards have a more open crumb structure than boules made with the same dough. I have found that to be true but attributed it to my shaping skills. The second was that the size of the loaf has a significant impact on flavor. I had also observed this with the miche from BBA which I made once as two 1.5 lb boules, which had a different flavor from the 3 lb miches I usually make. Again, I didn't generalize from that one experience at the time. Interesting, eh?

I am anxious to get home and practice some of the skills I've acquired before I lose them.

David

We have a persimmon tree and this year I thought I would make Persimmon bread from the fruit.  First I had to find a recipe that I liked and do a trial run to see how the bread tastes.  I found a recipe at this website that I used to make my bread.  http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/11/persimmon-bread.html The first one turned out very tasty but I thought that I should double the recipe and bake the bread in my panettone mold.

Recipe:

2 1/2 cups persimmon, mashed pulp.  I put mine in a blender and made a smoothie out of them.  There was a little extra that went into the bread also.

2 tablespoon lemon juice

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup plus 4 tbsp. sugar and 4 tbsp. water

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups bread wheat flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/2 teaspoon cloves

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup roasted almond pieces

Mix the persimmon lemon juice, olive oil, sugar, water, and vanilla extract together.  Then add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves.  Then mix until all the flour is moistened.  Add the almonds and raisins and mix them in.

Pour into what ever baking pan you are going to use and smooth the top out so it looks nice.

Preheat oven to 325°F then cook for 1 1/2 hours.  Let the bread cool completely before cutting.  The glaze was made by melting a thick slice of butter.  Then added a half tablespoon of fruit flavored brandy, an eighth of a teaspoon of Vanilla and Almond extract each.  The glaze is then thickened up by adding powdered sugar until I got the thickness that I wanted.  This glaze is just very wonderful all on its own.  I then placed some sliced Almonds on top of the glaze.  I love the wonderful flavor that the persimmons give to this bread.

Well, I finally got to use my new Lodge Combi Cooker... and compared it head to head with my cloches (and tested my steaming too!). I made three breads - Tartine  (my way - with more levain since mine is so mild), my normal sourdough boule, and my take on Eric Kayser's Pain aux Cereales. The three breads are shown in the photograph below in the clockwise order listed from the upper left.

These were actually made from two doughs. The Tartine dough was about 75% hydration and a bit too wet. This loaf was baked in the Combi Cooker on parchment. It is definitely glossier than the other breads suggesting that the Combi Cooker holds humidity better than the cloches or than I get steaming. Unfortunately it is a hair overproofed as I as a bit later getting home from my workout than planned. Still, a nice looking loaf that will taste good. This was the second Tartine loaf baked in the Combi Cooker today. The first was put on semolina and it glued itself to the cooker. It didn't burn but was fairly dark and what a mess. The crumb of the stuck loaf was pretty good though as shown in the photo below. Both loaves baked in the Combi Cooker were started in a cold cooker. Both had bottoms I consider too dark. The sticking was an interesting problem. Parchment worked well but... is a pain IMO. I baked two loaves in the cloche in the same oven and both came out a hair darker but not as glossy. And the bottoms were nicely browned instead of a bit charred. In round one I give the advantage to the cloche but it will take more experiments to make sure it isn't some other variation.

The crumb is coarser than it appears in this photo but was almost certainly affected by sticking to the banneton! My last batch of Tartine was at 72 % hydration and was much more manageable!

The boule to the right is my standard house boule. It is clearly a tad underproofed but has the look I like. It was at 72% hydration and was totally cooperative! It was baked in a cloche heated in a 500 degree oven and set to 450 once the bread was in the cloche. It and the Combi Cooker got 18 minutes closed and 28 minutes uncovered at 450.

The batard in the foreground is the same dough as my boule (but with about three tablespoons of seeds per loaf soaked in water added to the dough at the second folding. The dough is formed to a batard and was baked 12 minutes with steam at 440 F and 20 minutes at 390 with convection. All the loaves showed an internal temperature of 209 F when removed from the oven.

Here is a photo of the Combo Cooker (left) and Cloche (right) boules.

They are pretty similar but the Cloche loaf had slightly greater oven spring and rip.

Now to give them away!

Jay

Sourdough Rye with Seeds – cast iron bake

First, thanks to Eric Hanner for this post providing inspiration to explore covered cast iron cooking recently:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21006/my-combo-cooker-experiment.  This is my second bake with cast iron and I like the results!  Flavor and texture were awesome!

I already owned a 5 qt Wagner Dutch oven with a glass lid that has been in the family as long as I can remember.  The diameter is the same as the 3 qt. Lodge combi cooker - the higher capacity of the Wagner being due to taller height.  So I had vessels that would allow two similar sized loaves to be baked at once- albeit with one having glass and one having cast iron cover.  Both loaves came out identical

Sourdough Rye Recipe for two loaves (2,066gr or 2.3 lbs prior to baking)

Overall Formula:

60% bread flour (697gr)

25% fresh ground whole wheat (293gr)

10% fresh ground whole rye (114gr)

5% Oat bran (I tend to add to all of my breads for health reasons - 58gr)

23 grams sea salt

20 gr molasses (approx 2 tbs)

10 gr malted wheat powder (approx 2 tbs) – sprouted, dried and ground into flour (malted barley would substitute)

40 gr mixed seeds: Flax, charnushka/black caraway, sesame, poppy seeds (approx 4 tbs)

72% hydration ratio: 834gr water including starter build up.

Build Stages:

1.      Stage 1 - build rye starter (100% hydration) to 228 grams (11% of recipe).  This uses all of the rye flour.

2.      Stage 2 – add 293gr of whole wheat, 58gr oat bran, 38 gr white bread flour, all of the seeds, 389gr water.  This approximates 39% of the total formula.  When combined with Stage 1 equates to 50% of the total recipe.  Let proof 8 hours at 78° (oven off light on gets works well).

3.      6pm: incorporate remaining ingredients other than salt.  40 minute autolyse.

4.      Add salt, mix 6 minutes on low speed.

5.      Stretch and fold 3 times at 45 minute intervals.  Keep at 78° between folds.

6.      10:00 pm: Preshape loaves, rest 25 minutes, shape into final loaf and place in floured banneton (actually: $1.50 colander from the dollar store lined with a microfiber dinner napkin and lightly dusted with flour- micro fiber wicks away moisture and releases fine with modest dusting)

7.      Place in plastic bag, leave overnight in refrigerator.

8.      Preheat oven 1 hour at 500° - include Dutch ovens and lids

9.      Plop dough into hot vessels, spray with water, score, and cover.  In they go.

10.  Reduce heat to 450° after 5 minutes

11.  Remove cover after 30 minutes

12.  Baked another 5 or so minutes until internal temp is 195°.  Shut oven until internal bread temp was 202°. 

Note: While the loaves came out nice, the crust is not rock hard as Eric was striving for and as was pointed out in his post/link above.   While my crusts were not rock hard after a 30 minute cover, I am still happy with the outcome.  

Perhaps next time I will leave the temp higher and in the oven longer to see what impact that has on the crust. And not spray dough after putting into Dutch ovens?  Or perhaps shut the oven sooner and leave until 210° or so internal?  Any suggestions on that elusive crust would be appreciated!