As pretty as this loaf turned out, and as many hours as I put into this, this loaf did not taste better than plain white bread. I felt defeated when I tasted the first slice this morning, after it cooled all night on my rack. I had used a 9 hour cold final fermentation method for this loaf, a stiff starter of 50% that was raised off of my 125% starter that has been fed every single day for well over a month and a half now twice a day, and used at the peak of it's life point when it domed at the top. I also gave it a full three and a half hour bulk fermentation with two folds but still, this loaf, taste just like plain old bread, not really a hint of sour at all.

Fellow loafers, I ask you, what might have gone wrong during the process, or better yet, what should I enchance and work on when it comes to my methods. I had read over the cold fermentation post a while back, checked out the squeezing more sour faq numerous times, but today, something went awry.

Here's a bit more background. My liquid starter is the same style as Hamelman's from bread, 125% refreshed twice a day and has been around since September 9th of 2009. I spike it with rye about twice a week and also watch it carefully, it's a pet ya'know. The recipe was a basic pain au levain using a 50% levain. So I adapted my 125% to 50% and refreshed it overnight before using it in the recipe. The recipe is as follows;

562 grams of water

141 grams of levain

45 grams of whole wheat flour

27 grams of rye flour (medium or whole)

862 grams of Sir Galahad or other higher protein bread flour

22 grams of salt

I mixed everything together, fermented for an hour, one set of S&F, then another hour of fermenting till the next S&F. After that I let it sit for an hour and a half. I divided the loaf into two, one round, one batard, and let ferment in my bannetons at about 40-44 degrees for 9 hours. Baked for 40 minutes, at 450 after having on the counter for 1 hour after being pulled from retarding.

The crumb was much better on the round, but here is a sorta sketchy picture of the crumb on the batard.

Other than the information given what else I can offer is, I have had this loaf before, by a friend, and it had the wonderful, slightly tangy sensation I look for in my sourdough loaves. Mine, sadly did not. Is my starter reaching it ends? Is it 'too old'? Should I have refreshed the 50% a few times before using it, but if so, why? I had refreshed my 125% everyday for so long now, I figure it would be rather active.

Any thoughts would be wonderful! : )

Nothing to wild here this week. I didn't get any chances to bake except Sunday because of school and work but I have been refreshing my starter every single day and night without fail for a long while now and I am quite happy I can at least fit that into my schedule. Before I started this loaf, seen in Bread by Hamelman, I had refreshed my 125% starter with 1.0z of the flour being whole rye, four times prior to using it in this loaf. I also changed paces a little bit and wanted to experiment, so I used 50% Sir Galahad flour, 40% KAF WW and 10% local whole spelt flour for the ferment on Saturday night. Sunday I used the same ratio of whole wheat flour in the final loaf as well. The results were nice, a soft crumb, slightly open, and a taste of whole grain through and through-out the loaf. Next time I feel like I should do an overnight fermentation to achieve some more tang in the loaf. Although I feel that this was a nice success and I hope to try and 'mess around' with a few more formulas this week as well.

I also baked some cinnamon-sugar bites to curve my fiance's need for something 'buttery and covered in cinnamon and sugar' as she pronounced walking through our local coop Sunday. These were sort of like cupcakes, but turned out to look like muffins...since muffins and are just ugly cupcakes.

The recipe for these came from howtoeatacupcake.net

Pretty yummy warm out of the oven!

Earlier this week I baked six bagels following the recipe from Bread. I enjoyed one while I gave the other five to my co-workers at the bakery. One girl took a bite and promptly shouted, "This is the best thing that has been in my mouth ever!". She was so thrilled with the taste, she wanted to pay me weekly to make her bagels. I kindly declined the payment but I gladly accepted the challenge and what do you know, at 7 this morning, the first thing out of my oven was some everything bagels for her!

I made a make shift board as well out of an old baking sheet and it seemed to work fine for my home bagels. So I will continue using this method until one day I have a big enough home oven to use those nice big ole' bagel boards at the bakery...but for now, I think I'll settle.

The next morsel on the agenda was some magic brownies using the Zingerman's Bakehouse recipe. These brownies are absolutely mouth watering. Unforunately I still have them in the pan since I am waiting for my fiance to come home so I can slice them up, top with some raspberries and strawberries and finish it off with a homemade syrup to drizzle all over. But trust me, these brownies are; thick, dense, fudgy, bit cakey (but how can that be!?!), chocolately and filled with lots of "ooh's and ahh's". Not for the faint of heart or those on a diet.

Earlier this week I had attempted to make my own formula, it was a disaster! I have been able to make my own brownie formula before, cookies and scones but I have never been able to make a decent bread recipe. So I tried to redeem myself by baking something I knew I could, unfortunately it is nothing new to me, but the results were some of the best yet. The loaves sang quite a while after leaving the oven and the spring was in my mind was rather nice. Crumb pictures should be coming soon, but these came out of the oven a bit more than an hour ago. So, here is Pain au levain with whole wheat.

The batard loaf and then the round, which achieved some nice crackling on the crust, something I hardly ever manage to pull off.

And since the day isn't over, I plan on making a mushroom & dill frittata for dinner...I just love baking, it's to much fun.

Today I attempted the Baguettes with a pate fermentee from Bread by Hamelman. This was my second shot at baguettes at home and I still am having a bit of a difficult time creating enough steam in my oven to create some nicer definition to my scoring pattern. Typically I now bake all my loaves in a dutch oven to create enough steam and spring since my baking stone broke a few months back, but I attempted to create enough steam by placing a tray on the bottom of the oven with water in it before loading the bread in and then steaming the bread twice in the first few moments as well. The baguette turned out alright, but I still have a lot left to work for I feel. So I am looking for some tips from the few who consider themselves pretty decent at baking baguettes at home with proper steaming.

If it helps, my oven was preheated to 500, then lowered to 460. I had placed on the very bottom of the oven a used old pie dish which I filled with water about 5 minutes prior to loading the oven. When I loaded the oven I sprayed the loaves and tossed in a few cubes of ice. After three minutes, I sprayed the loaves and walls again then let the bread go for a full bake. In the end my loaf had a nice crust to it, but a slim profile, not what I would call great spring any means.

The crumb though was very nice and creamy and I'll admit, my fiance and I did finish the baguette for dinner, so flavor wasn't lacking.

Also, I noticed the top left burner of my oven seems to be a heat vent for my oven. Does anyone else bake in an oven similar to mine that has this feature? If so, do you plug it while baking, and how?

After the baguettes were done, I turned down the oven and baked a cake...a Devil's Food Cake! With a chocolate mousse frosting. And yes, my frosting skills do leave alot to be desired I know, but it tasted damn good : )

It says C+A by the way in the heart  (rolling my eyes, I know, I know...) But I love her.

Baker seeking Baker,

Looking for a steamy good time in the oven for about 25 minutes.

Willing to get wet and create some magic from flour to bread power.

Perhaps you can help.

Does it need an introduction? I highly doubt it. So here we have the Gerard Rubaud Pain Au Levain I baked yesterday morning at home. I followed dmsnyder's wonderful write up found here, Rubaud Levain. The dough was extra hydrated and took a moment before I gathered myself and started to shape the loaf without fear. I ended up baking two small (I should have read how much this weighs in the end, two small loaves!), one a batard and one a round, which I promptly sliced in half last night, topped with chevre, onions and portabellos and roasted, delicious!

The taste was great, aroma was robust and the crumb moist and superb!

I think next time when I make this, I may up the spelt, since I love the flavor of spelt, and downsize the amount of whole wheat flour. We bake a 100% spelt loaf at work that has a great taste, and I think that this loaf could really bring out some more of the spelt flavor, so I am interested in seeing what I can do.

I baked a few other goodies as well, like revisiting palmiers again!

And my take on the San Francisco sourdough, using 191 grams of water and 191 grams of firm 50% sourdough in the final loaf to create a pretty tangy crumb.

All in all it was a successful week last week, and I can't wait to see what I can do this week though between mid-terms and being extra, extra busy at the bakery in prep for Valentine's Day, I am hoping I can bake a few things at home in middle of it all!

Using the 9 grain mix from work and some poppy, sesame and flax seeds from home I created this tasty 'good for you' loaf I learned from Zingermans. A mixture of Sir Galahad, Brown Rice Flour and Buckwheat flour, buckwheat honey, 9 grain mix, and 50% firm white starter, this dough became something very aromatic after just about 5 minutes of hand mixing.

Almost to stiff to work with at times though, after 10 minutes of hand mixing, I gave it 2 stretch and folds at one hour intervals with a full 3 hour fermentation. My next attempt at this loaf will include only one stretch and fold since I felt the final dough was a bit tough. After the bulk fermentation, I pre-shaped the dough, let it rest for 15, then shaped it into a batard (my batard shaping skills still need some touching up). And proceeded to give this loaf a two and a half hour final fermentation before a nice long 45 minute bake at 460 to make the house smell like a delicious bowl of warm cereal.

I also made some bagels out of the extra dough as well!

I boiled these in water mixed with baking soda as prescribed by Reinhart in WGB, for the whole wheat bagels. The chewy, earthy taste of these was just exceptional with fresh goat cheese.

I know I strayed away from Hamelman's Bread this time, but I will be baking the olive levain this week as well being my next dough from Bread. Slowly working through to my goal!

Up next on my ever so enjoyable quest through the levain section of Hamelman's Bread comes the pain au levain with mixed starters!

Creamy, soft crumb, wonderful aroma wafting through the house....versatility of uses from eggs in a basket to a nice baked teriyaki tofu sandwich, pain au levains can handle it. And there's something to be said about that! The only down side I noted about this bread was that the rye sour didn't shine through as much as I would have liked when it came to flavor. Still delectable, but I was expecting a bit more deeper rye flavor. Perhaps it is my fault and I should thoroughly refresh my rye build at least a few times before implementing it into this formula the next time around. Live and learn, at least no one was injured in this mistake, hehe.

Still though, there is something to be said about pain au levains....

And perhaps I can find the words while I am not at work on the laptop.

: )

'

Bear with the crumby pictures (no pun intended) but I present my two most recent bakes in my quest of completing the levain section of Bread by Hamelman. Today's bake included the Mixed Flour Miche, which can be seen in back. I halved the recipe though since it would just be me eating this and I knew I would want to bake again this week instead of munching on the same loaf. Also the 40% caraway rye bread as well.

The crumb turned out well on the miche I thought and the taste was very...complex. It had depth of rye flour, a bit mellow taste from the Sir Galahad and the earthy feel/weight of whole wheat on the tongue, a complete winner in my book. It went well with Organic Vanilla Almond butter and even better with Mango and Ginger Stilton smoothly touched along the top!

As you can see I also baked Hamelman's 40% Light Caraway rye from the rye section of the book. Unfortunately I am still working with rye and as promising as this loaf looked going into the oven, after ten minutes in it seemed to burst at the sides as if it was underproofed. I believe I should have docked the loaf before I placed it in the oven to prevent this. I had let the loaf sit for the hour bulk ferment and the full hour of final fermentation which in turn let the loaf pass the poke test and nearly double in size in my banneton. I guess I just need to practice some more though, my last 50% rye also seemed to burst as well when it felt ever so ready for the heat.

And of course what day off would be complete without...

Honey and Ginger cookies! Mmm...these made the house smell sooooo nice.

Even on my days off from the bakery, I still love to bake. Goodness, it's an addiction.

Up next...perhaps normandy apple bread?

The next bread on my attempt at creating some more interesting loaves from Hamelman's Bread comes the Oatmeal Raisin Bread from the levain section. I know I was supposed to use golden raisins, but this is what I had on hand, organic thompson seedless, and other than that, this loaf remained true to the formula. I used Sir Galahad, KAF WW and did one S&F after one hour with a full bulk fermentation of two hours. A  55 minute final fermentation and a bake of 45 minutes at 460 degrees, the first ten being under a la cloche.

I sliced it this morning about 8 hours later, before class and to my surprise, wasn't that impressed with the flavor of the loaf. That really disapointed me too. It tasted pretty...well...basic.No defined yummy fermentated wheat taste, wasn't that smooth, no wheaty flavor either. So perhaps if I revisit this loaf, I'll throw in some cinnamon and maybe a bit of honey but then again I would just be tasting those ingredients and not the actual bread itself, which is why I like so many of Hamelman's formulas, you taste the wonderful flavor and texture of the flours themselves.

I did though bake a French apple tart that tasted pretty scrumptious!

But until next time, stay warm and have fun baking!

I just can't get enough baking! It's an addiction, and it satisfys my hunger as a young man! Not to mention I have a 50 pound bag of KAF Sir Galahad in my kitchen that needs to be used to take up less counter space. In turn, constant refreshing of my starter, seemingly endless supply of pizza crusts in my freezer and the quest to bake all the tasty loaves in the first two sections of Bread by Hamelman are the current conundrums I face.

What was up next on the list was a loaf I've baked before but really wanted to revisit; Pain au levain with whole wheat. Since I did not have a firm starter I adapted the recipe to use my liquid starter and ended up 'over hydrating' the loaf. During the final mixing stage the loaf needed to be slapped down on the counter and ever so quickly kneaded with flicks of the wrist to make sure neither my hands or the counter stayed in contact with the loaf to long. What was all of an 8 minute struggle ended up giving me a very tasty, ever so moist loaf that screams for cheese to be layed across the top.

Mmhmm, this loaf was worth it.

I do not know what loaf I will be baking next, since I like to flip flop around, but I have a feeling I'll be revisiting one of the miches this week.

In the mean time, happy baking everyone!

-Arlo