Blogs

After a long time I decide to experiment with tastes and colors. Right now the elderberry in our vicinity is getting mature and there is abundance of Hokkaido squashes on our home garden. I also decided to coat the bread and dust it with extra flour before scoring it to get some extra effects.

The squash puree was made at home by my usual procedure in a skillet and then pureed. The elderberries were removed from the stem, pureed as well, cooked for a while to get more thick paste. I compensated the sourness of the paste with a little bit of sugar.

I added the extra ingredients one hour into bulk fermentation. I used a pinch of  cinnamon to season the squash puree.

At he end I put the Hokkaido squash dough on top of the elderberries dough and roll it and coat it in a very thin dough made just from flour, water and salt (kind of a pastry dough). Underneath the skin I put some sesame seeds.

Flour use type 850, initial hydration 65%, with all added stuff estimated final hydration ~75%. Proofed in fridge and baked in a steam oven. I added about 40% (bakers %) of puree, and same amount of elderberry paste.

Result: extremely soft bread, with very even porosity, heavenly good. I had to make another batch of this bread a day after for my neighbors as they were so excited because of  so good taste. The rest of the procedure can be seen from the posted pictures..

Happy baking, Joze

Breaking this bread is tantamount to opening a holiday present. At least, it feels that way when I cut the bread. The abundant good eats: olives, walnuts, sunflower seeds, herbs de Provence, lemon zest, filled the interior to the rim, are what make this bread sing. 

This Tartine olive walnut bread uses a young leaven (20% of flour weight) and 10% whole wheat flour. Nothing out of the ordinary. However, the big winner is with all the add-ins, especially the olives. Since the dough is quite wet, series of stretch-and-fold help to strengthen it. I sprinkled more sunflower seeds around the proofing basket to prevent the dough from sticking. The dough was retarded in the fridge overnight. I made a full recipe (see the cheat sheet below for details) and baked two large loaves in Dutch ovens (one round, one oval) in a preheated 500°F oven. Lower the oven temperature to 475°F as the loaves are loaded. Finally, bake for 15 minutes with the cover on and 20-25 minutes uncovered.

All the olives, nuts, seeds and herbs make for quite a substantial bread. The bread stands on its own with its fairly loud flavors. Like all good breads, serve up with some fine cheese and wine, nothing can be better!

Adapted from Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson

https://www.everopensauce.com/tartine-olive-walnut-bread/

So I added some bread flour, reduced the rye flour and left the H2O the same. Net reduction in hydration.

Came out very well - taller loaf

not quite as dense as the previous loaf - acidentally left in in the oven about five minutes too long, so some crispy black edges on the top split crust wings

So here I am again- 8 years after the last post.  It's great to be back!  I see some old familiar names from the last decade.  I see more new members who, doubtless, will feel like old friends soon enough.

Like the last time, I am in the middle of a time-out" from corporate life, though this time self-imposed. The decision to walk away was swift and came as a big surprise to everyone, myself including. Three months after the fact, I see now why it had come with no regrets: my full energy had to be redirected to the things that are more important in life. And now that ground state has been re-established, I look forward to finishing grad school and starting my next act.

In the meantime, with one month to go before school starts and what looks to be a most challenging fall and winter quarter, I just have to indulge in a few bakes while I can, and so I turn, like the previous time, to this site. Thanks to andythebaker for answering my plea for a mature SD starter, and to http://www.wildyeastblog.com/pain-de-beaucaire/ , http://www.breadcetera.com/?tag=pain-de-beaucaire, and http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4200/sourdough-challah-photos-recipe for recipes.  Today's bakes yielded:

a Pain de Beaucaire

Not pretty since the one side appears to have collapsed (I think I know how to fix it next time), but the bread had good crunch, ok crumb (begging your indulgence; I'm feeling my way around) and slight tang.  The flavor was significantly enhanced by French butter from Camargue and excellent olive oil from Villa Manadoro.

I also managed Maggie Gleazer's SD Challah.

 Next time, I shall make it in freeform.  The crumbshot of the fruited loaf may look dense but the texture is just pillowy!  I used Acacia honey,  Apricot Mostarda, and very good olive oil- all from Eataly.  Next time, I will add the fruit to the entire dough mass for a more satisfying snacking bread.

Tomorrow, I weigh myself.

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!

I'm mostly down to one crutch or a cane, and moving around better, so thought that it would be a good week to re-stock the freezer with my husband's favourite (the oat kamut rolls from http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52425/catching-myself-oat-kamut-rolls-july-7), and a variation on my own favourite, which is 100% rye.

I was focusing on my own treat, so got lazy and duplicated the last bake on the rolls almost exactly.  The only change that I made was being TOO lazy and leaving a baking steel in the oven below the rolls, which actually made them take longer and not bake through as well since I had them in a pyrex dish.  For next time, I really need to remember to bake them at a higher temp (should go at least 375 if not 425), and to make sure to not block the heat from the element with a steel!

Still, they are tasty, and he enjoyed them for sandwiches on the weekend:

As for the rye, well - I still had some pumpkin puree around, and I kept seeing this on the sidebar here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35940/pumpkin-sourdough-rye-bbd-62

I wanted a 100% rye, had some 2-week-old rye sour hanging out in the fridge, had the pumpkin puree, so it just felt like a good time to try my version of this one. 

It SHOULD have been quite straight-forward, but I made the mistake of reading a post on one of the older starter threads where an "expert" stated that an older refrigerated sour wouldn't be strong enough to raise a loaf without mostly being discarded and refreshed with a good feed.  Well, I didn't feel like discarding any, and just had a "what would happen if..." mood, so I took the sour that I had, and just added a part of the flour and water from my planned recipe as a "feed", and left it to sit for a couple of hours to see whether it would do anything.

Well.  What it did was to grow like crazy, so obviously it would have been more than capable of raising the loaf directly from the fridge!  Instead, I ended up taking that now massive levain, mixing up the dough, and had it just keep going at top speed:

Mixed old levain / sour from fridge with 100 deg F water and dark rye flour at 9:45 a.m.  Covered and placed in oven with door open and light on for 30 minutes, then door closed and no light.  It doubled in volume in 2-1/2 hours.

Mixed up the final paste including levain, salt, malt, pumpkin puree, dark rye flour, and water at 12:45 p.m.  This is extremely wet (definitely more paste than dough), so basically just stirred with dampened heavy spatula in bowl.  Covered and let sit on the counter (room temp about 74 deg F).

Dough had almost doubled by 1:45 p.m., so moved it in to a heavily buttered bread tin, then bagged it and let it sit on the counter at room temp.

By 2:25 p.m., dough had just crested top of tin.  No surface bubbles, but just had the feeling it was time to bake, so fully docked it, smoothed the top with a wet spatula, and put it in a covered dark roasted in a cold oven set at 425 deg F for 25 minutes, then uncovered, rotated, and finished the bake at 400 deg F for 70 minutes, to internal temperature of 202 deg F.

By the end of the bake, it was obvious that I had over-fermented it at least a bit, but it didn't feel overly heavy or wet, so I let it cool uncovered on the rack for 8 hours, then put it in a plastic bag and let it sit until Saturday (about 40 hours total).

The side shows that it collapsed a bit instead of springing in the oven, and the top clearly shows the grey from the water not evaporating quickly enough due to me choosing a cold oven instead of preheating:

Fortunately, the flavour and the crumb still came out wonderfully:

This is a strongly flavoured bread that I adore, and will do again, but without the old sour experiment and with a pre-heated oven and higher bake temps.  It's not a taste that my husband enjoys, so all the more for me ;)

Upon request of some friends, I repeated the Cranberry Wild Rice version from a couple of weeks ago but with a few changes. I put in currants instead of raisins and pumpkin seeds instead of Pecans. 

I had tried a new method of blooming wild rice then but talking to my pottery instructor, she just puts the wild rice in water and keeps it warm in her dehydrator. I did the same but put it in the oven with the lights on and the door shut. The temperature hit 105F or so. I left it slightly more than 24 hours and it worked quite well. So now I have two methods of no cooking wild rice to get it ready for salads or for bread. 

So here is the recipe:

1. Bloom 75 g  wild rice and 10 g of buckwheat groats in plenty of water using the above method. Drain and refrigerate until needed. Bring to room temperature before using. 

2. Toast 60 g of pumpkin seeds. Soak them overnight with 70 g cranberries, and 50 g dried currants in 200 g water. In the morning, add 30 g honey. 

3. Autolyse all of the above with 550 g water, 550 g unbleached flour, 200 g fresh milled Kamut flour, 202 g multigrain flour and 59 g fresh ground flax seed. 

4. Mix in 40 g yogurt, 20 g salt and 266 g 80% levain. Pinch and fold to integrate well. 

5. Do 3 sets of folds and let rise till double. This took about 4.5 hours. 

6. Divide into 3 loaves, preshape, let rest 15 minutes and shape tightly into boules. Put into covered bannetons for and overnight proof in the fridge. 

7. The next morning, bake directly out of the fridge. Preheat oven and pots to 475 F. Load boules into pots that have circles of parchment paper to prevent sticking, drop temp to 450 F and bake covered for 25 minutes. Remove lids and bake for another 22 minutes at 425 F. 

Enjoy!

We've been away  visiting family in Switzerland (with a side trip to Ireland) for. the last couple of months.  While there I  couldn't resist having a try with Swiss flour etc.  So a niece had a rye starter that I was able to use.  I just used  30% rye flour and the rest the white bread flour.  just a basic 1:2:3 loaf. Funny baking in someone else's kitchen, using an unknown starter, unfamiliar flours and equipment and oven.  

I did a 30 minute autolyse, 4 stretch and folds and bulk ferment at room temperature.  I was late starting and would have preferred a slightly longer BF.   but it was getting late so shaped and as there was no rice flour, dusted teatowel with rolled oats and popped into the fridge over night. Next morning let it warm up as I thought it was not proofed enough.  I had bought a Baumalu cast iron roaster to bring home so baked using that, 15 mins lid on, 15 mins lid off.

the taste was a little stronger than my usual bread, but for a first try with such unknown ingredients etc I was happy.  Sister in law happy too!

Leslie

So, after baking 75 loaves of bread in the one week since we've been back from holiday, what do I do for a break? Bake bread, of course! :) I was making "What do I do with all these green beans from the garden" minestrone for dinner, and needed some bread to go with it. All I had on hand was multigrain sandwich bread which didn't seem quite right with minestrone, so I figured it was high time I finally tried the most-bookmarked bread on this site - Jason's Quick Cocodrillo Ciabatta.

I happen to have a large bag of Durum Atta flour (this is Canadian 100% whole durum flour, finer than semolina but not as fine as remilled durum flour) so I used 150 grams of this along with 350 grams of bread flour, 475 grams of water, 15 grams of salt and two teaspoons of yeast. I mixed it in the Ankarsrum with the dough hook, and let it run at medium high speed for about 30 minutes until it was climbing up the hook (as directed). Then I poured it into an oiled container. The recipe said to let it triple which happened fairly quickly in the warm summer heat. Good thing too, as the soup was going to be ready for six o'clock and I didn't want to be waiting until eight for dinner!

I poured the gloop out onto a floured counter (on reflection an oiled counter would have been much better, and used my plasterer's scraper to sort of letter fold the puddle, then cut it into three pieces and put them (with great difficulty and laughter) onto a floured piece of parchment on a baking sheet. Shaping consisted of scrunching the sides in a bit so they didn't run into each other or off the sides of the baking sheet.

I sort of poked them a bit to re-distribute the bubbles, as I wasn't even going to attempt to turn them over at this point. And I could have let them proof a bit longer but was getting impatient for dinner, so into a 500F oven they went. Ten minutes, turn and ten more (and by that time the atta flour on the parchment was burning so the smoke alarm went off when I opened the oven to turn the pan. Sigh...)

I only let this cool for about 15 minutes, then sliced up one loaf for dinner. The crumb is moist and glossy with a little bit of olive oil here and there from the oil that was in the container during the ferment. Crust is thin and delicate and the loaf is very squishy. Gorgeous yellow colour from the atta flour too.

This is so good, I ate about half a loaf with my soup. :)

And I've still got two more loaves. Not bad for 500 grams of flour. How can anyone pay money for rubbish supermarket bread when making bread is this cheap and easy!

I've recently decided to start baking rye breads and have jumped in this past weekend with Hamelmans 40% Caraway Rye recipe. I had the ingredients on hand, including a rye starter that seemed to be percolating, whole-rye flour and some high-gluten flour left over from a bagel bake.

It was my first time working with a dough that had more than 15% rye flour in it (or my first time in a very long time), and I was hand-kneading, so it was indeed a bit sticky though not unmanageable. I did wonder part way through if I should have gone with the mixer (I have a DLX--mix time suggestions and speeds welcome...) But I kept going, then let the dough sit for its bulk ferment, divided, shaped, gave it a final ferment for an hour, and baked.

A couple of thoughts:

-- Judging from the splits and burst, I'm thinking it was under-proofed at the end... I'm still not good a good judge of proofing. More rye seemed to make it more complicated.

-- I also think I should have kneaded it a bit more. I could feel the gluten developing as I went but was also a bit skittish about overkneading a rye (perhaps I was too cautious, though, with just a 40%...) I do know I was a degree short of the dough temperature of 78F that Hamelman mentions... I'm wondering if I could have gotten a bit more rise out of this loaf and a better crumb though. Still, I'm looking forward to the next loaf! It tasted quite good.

Here's the crumb, btw: