This mornings attempt at Jeffery Hamelman's 'Vermont Sourdough'. The dough was ever so sticky when kneading by hand, and since I didn't add any extra flour, it took all over 10 minutes by hand to get it to the right consistency. Something I always did before was add extra flour until I learned that was a 'no-no'.

I must admit, after having taken the Bake with Zing! class, I found out I am a hands on learner type of guy. My breads are starting to come together nicer since I figured out the stretch and fold method, kneading and baking skills through first hand experience from some great bakers. I guess reading the text could never get through to me well enough.

When the bread is cooled, I'll have pictures of the crumb.

After having successfully fed my starter from Zingermans last week, turned it into a chef and then a levain, I was finally able to start crafting my own Farm Loaf using Zingerman's Bakehouse recipe last night!

I started the bread last night by prepping the levain and letting it set for 12 hours. In the morning I started the mixing and crafting, mixing in bowl till combined...kneading for 12 minutes and so on. After letting it set for 3 hours with two stretch and folds...I proceeded to let it ferment again for 3 and a half hours more. One thing I've learned so far from Zingermans it all their recipes seem to take time...lots.

I preshaped the loaf around 2 o'clock, placed it in my banneton and by five o'clock, it was ready to bake! 18 hours of overall time it took for this bread, but from all the farm loaves I've tasted, it is worth it.

If this bread wasn't still so freshly baked, I would have pictures of the crumb, but I've learned to wait before slicing bread : )

Next week I will be attempting the Vermont Sourdough by Hamelman one more time since my last few attempts haven't been that great. Hopefully with my newly acquired knowledge I will be able to craft a nicer loaf though.

Also baked for the first time ever, Palmiers today!Turned out to be a bit 'overdone', but they still tasted yummy!

Having dealt with Zingerman's Bread and Pastries everyday now for a year, it finally is my chance to head on down to nearby Ann Arbor and take the 'Naturally Levained Bread Class' tomorrow morning. This is a class I've been wanting to take since I starter messing around with sourdough bread quite a few months back.

The class is a full day experience (8 till 5pm with a lunch by Zing) featuring how to make, keep and use a starter (take it home as well), make, shape, score (and so much more) also bake sourdough loaves featuring three of Zingerman's Breads! Those being; Better than San Fransico Sourdough, Farm Loaf and 8-Grain Three Seed bread. Of course we do not get to use the same starter Zingerman's uses, we do although get the recipes and get to bring home six loaves of bread which we bake in class in their wood fired oven. Since I received a very nice deal through there sales rep, I will be taking my fiance along for free meaning we will be bringing home 12 total loaves of bread...Damn, that's a lot!

Pretty excitied! I'll hopefully have numerous pictures by tomorrow evening!

Yeah! My Whole Wheat Pain au Levain turned out to be ever so delightful! I achieved some nice oven spring, a good color, and a decent scoring pattern! I do believe my patience is starting to pay off. Here is the crumb 11 hours after baking, the next morning.

And if your wondering, this is just a slightly modified version of The Whole wheat hearth bread from WGB, I just tweaked it to use 1 oz of medium dark rye in the soaker.

Thanks TFL'ers for helping me out with this wonderful (some times painful) experience known as bread baking!

...more to come soon of course!

Makes six 10 grain and then some seeds bagels!

Yeasty mixture
1/2 Tablespoons Natural cane sugar
3/4 to 1 Cup Warm Water
1 and a smidgen teaspoon of yeast

Combine all three of the above ingredients in a glass and stir. Leave till you have the dry mixture ready.

Dry Mix
1 Tablespoon Natural cane sugar
1 Cup All purpose flour
1 Cup White Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 Cup Mixture of Sesame Seeds, Flax Seeds and 10 grain cereal mixture
1 Tablespoon Vital Wheat Gluten
1 Teaspoon Sea salt, coarsely ground

Stir the dry mix till everything is well combined, then slowly add in the yeasty mixture while stirring with a wooden spatula till everything is combined and the dough is not dry and not overly tacky. Additional water may be needed depending on the amount of 10 grain mixture or seeds used. Everything should be off the walls of the mixing bowl and bottom when properly hydrated, it should all be collected on the dough ball when thoroughly mixed! Only slightly tacky, not sticky though.

Now flour a work surface and knead the dough for 10 minutes until you achieve a slightly tacky dough ball and proper gluten development. Adding more flour if needed as you go.
After the gluten is developed and the dough is ready, prepare a bowl by slightly oiling it and place the dough in the bowl covered with plastic wrap or a damp towel. Place in a warm area and allow to rise for one hour. The dough will not have risen the amount you would expect from a loaf of bread but it should have risen slightly after one hour in a moderately warm area. I placed mine under my sink, but if you have steam heat in your house (like mine), on the metal radiators would be an excellent place.

Now, preheat your oven to 425 degrees and bowl a large pot of water. While the water is boiling, make six balls of dough from the original dough and place on a cooking sheet with parchment paper on top. Take one ball of dough at a time and either; roll the dough into a snake shape long enough to fit over the palm of your hand and overlap the other end of the dough by an inch and half and proceeded to roll the dough on a moist surface till the bagel is connected at the joint. Then place the bagel on the parchment paper covered with a towel and repeat until all six bagels are formed. Or alternatively, take a dough ball and slowly poke a hole in the middle of the dough. Now using your thumb and index finger work out the hole by stretching and gently pulling the dough to form a larger hole thus creating a traditional bagel shape. Either way, repeat until all bagels are formed.

Once the water is boiling and the bagels are shaped, place two bagels in the pot and boil for about one minute then flip each bagel over and boil for an additional minute. Carefully remove the bagels with a slotted spoon and place on the baking sheet, at this time feel free to add a topping to the bagel by sprinkling, well, on the top. Cover with the towel and repeat for the remaining bagels.

After the bagels are boiled and topped if desired, load them into the heated oven and cook for 25-30 minutes paying attention to make sure they do not burn. The bagels will be done when the reach a light brown color around the tops. You will most likely be cooking near the whole time.

So, I must confess, I never meant for this loaf to become a ciabatta...in fact this was meant to be a boule, but things got a little too 'hydrated' and I had to leave the house for school. But in the end, I guess things turned out alright!

It all started with wanting to hop on the Susan's Simple Sourdough bandwagon last night. I thought it would be a great attempt to work on my sourdough skills, since I am becoming pretty decent at Whole Grain Breads with a biga and soaker, but I always seem to have a hard time with my attempts at any of Hamelman's recipes. So I thought this looks simple enough (hence the title right?), why not try it? The thing was, I do not have a firm starter, I actually have a liquid levain starter (from Bread), and I started the seed culture from Whole Grain Bread the other day, so I seemed a bit out of luck, until I thought, "Why not just use a tablespoon of my liquid starter with Susan's formula for her starter?". I ended up taking one part liquid levain starter, 1 part water and 3 parts flour. I mixed this muck up into a really sticky, yet firmer starter than what I previously had, let it sit overnight and then got back to it this morning.

When I awoke the starter was filled with nice bubbles and looked ready, so I went ahead and followed Susan's formula the best I could (no scale at the moment so I converted everything to cups and tablespoons the best I could) and ended up with something so sticky even after a thirty minute rest and a stretch and fold. I attempted a S&F again and tossed it back in the bowl this gooeyness came from. I referred back to the recipe and saw it called for two more stretch and folds at an hour each. I didn't have the time, and it really looked like it could use some for S&F love, so after another thirty minutes, I gently patted the dough down, S&F and then repeated thirty minutes later.

I left the dough covered while I went to class and had a quick lunch, I came back two hours later and low and behold, the dough hardly risen and really looked like it could use a S&F session, but I held off, instead I got a little frustrated and thought, "Maybe I am not meant for sourdough...should just stick to WGB"...but then I took another look at the dough, folded and covered in flour on the counter and said, "Damn, that looks like ciabatta!". So I shuffled through my bread books, read on how to shape ciabatta, bake it and then realized I should give it a shot, why not?

After shaping very gently, I let it rise (if you can call it that) for 40 minutes and placed it on my preheated stone at 450 for 40 minutes with steaming and rotating once half way through. End results? A ciabatta loaf!

What was shocking was the dough was maybe a bit under half and inch in height before it hit the stone. So the oven spring was great!

I guess the lesson I learned here was, you can always learn (or make) something useful out of a mistake, just be persistant!

And I will post crumb shots soon enough when I cut it tomorrow for lunch!

As some of you may have seen in my last few entries, I have been working on whole grain breads and particularly working on when I can tell when my loaf is ready for the oven. My last whole wheat loaf turned out to be a bit over proofed, and the time before, my whole wheat levain was underproofed. But I did not get discouraged, in fact, I made an agreement to keep on baking a loaf minimum each week, whether it is a sourdough whole wheat bread or a overnight autolyse expedition from Reinhart.

This time I went with the Multigrain Straun from Whole Grain Bread. Nothing seperates this from the formula in the book, I followed it closely, substituted the honey for agave though, mixed, let it rise, shaped and preheated the oven and stone and carefully, carefully, paid attention to the bread to find out when it was ready for the oven.

I pushed my clock aside this time and watched it on and off while studying assuring myself I would catch the loaf at it's prime and place it in the oven then! So I poked it at 30 minutes, it didn't really do much, so I went back to studying. About ten minutes later I poked it, it sprung back a bit, so I decieded to check back in five, and sure enough, the loaf sprung back about half way. So, being frantic I hastily scored the top of the loaf (resulting in what I thought to be a poor score pattern) and placed it on the stone, steamed and baked.

The end result...a loaf I am quite pleased with! And look - No finger indentations this time!

And then the crumb...

And now with my skills just a bit more sharpened when it comes to proofed dough, I think this coming week I will try my hand again at Hamelman's Whole Wheat Levain, hopefully resulting in a wonderful loaf with much better scoring.

Oh, and I managed to bake a blueberry coffee cake with a cinnamon streusel topping, delicious!

Last week I baked one of my favorite recipes, Hamelman's Whole Wheat Levain from Bread. The bake turned out successful I would say, especially since I finally was able to use my two week old liquid levain starter and achieve a delightful tang when the bread was sliced and eaten. One thing though is my batard (and boule) seemed to explode in the oven! Was this because of an unsuccessful scoring? Or did I let it rise to long? Any help would be appreciated in this manner, though I do kind of like the looks of it.

And then the crumb...

And finally the boule, sorry no crumb shot, though I will say it turned out a bit tighter then I would have liked.

So what might I have done wrong in this bake? Any help would be appreciated since I am always open to advice and will always be baking weekly hoping to only improve my methods and results!

My next bake is going to be Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough with increased Whole Wheat. I will be attempting this tomorrow (hopefully) and pictures will follow soon!

This morning I woke up and decided, why some bread? Why not some bagels! And that is all it took to start my bagel baking!

Now I was rather excitied with how these turned out! Especially since I created my own recipe seeking out a nice, chewy, multi-grain bagel in the end.

To start with;

I combined in a large bowl - 1 and a half cups of luke warm water, a packet of yeast and 1 tablespoon of organic cane sugar and then set it aside while I continued on with the other ingredients.

I proceeded to mix together 2 tablespoons of organic cane sugar, 2 teaspoons of sea salt, 2 table spoons of organic vital wheat gluten, 1 cup of KAF Organic Flour, 2/3 Cups KAF White Whole wheat flour and 1/3 cup mix of 10 grain cereal until well mixed.

Then I poured in the yeast mixture and proceeded to mix the dough adding a bit of water until it came together into a nice semi-shaggy mass which I then in turn promptly floured my counter and proceeded to kneed the dough for 8 minutes until I achieved a slighty tacky dough.

Once the gluten was developed to what I felt was sufficient, I gave it an hour rest covered with plastic wrap in a oiled bowl.

After the rest I pre-heated my oven to 425 f and also started boiling a large pot of water with a pinch of salt and moved onto forming tweleve balls of dough out of the original bagel dough making sure to cover them with a damp towel after they were formed.

Then onto the bagel shaping and boiling! By taking an individual piece of dough I proceeded to poke my thumb gently through the middle until I made a slight hole. When this happened I started to have fun by placing the dough ring on my index finger and twirling it around until the hole was almost the size of a 50 cent piece. Once all the bagel were shaped I placed them (3 at a time) in the boiling water and boiled them for 1 minute, then flipping for another minute and placing them on my baking sheet and covering with sesame or poppy seeds then a towel until all were ready to bake.

After all of the fun the bagels were ready to bake and I proceeded to bake them for 20 minutes in batches of six. The end result was exactly what I wanted!

I also attempted my first strudel today using some organic whole wheat phillo dough, unforunately it looks sloppy, but it did taste excellent for lunch as dessert! And I know I will be attempting to 'strudel' again.

It was filled with fresh strawberries coated in powdered sugar, delicious!

Recently since college started up again I've been having little time to get all the baking in that I would like to! Work's keeping me busy as well and it's driving me insane having to look at those artisan loaves and pastries by Zingermans every single day, but between work and school I did manage to refresh my starter and give it a whirl with my now favorite loaf, Hamelman's Whole wheat levain from Bread.

I followed the recipe almost exactly but instead of using standard whole wheat bread flour by KAF, I used KAF White Whole Wheat flour and proofed it in my banneton with AP flour. The result was one of my best loaves yet, since I believe I am finally figuring out my archaic oven and maybe, just maybe figuring out the stretch and fold method as well.

And then just this morning before work I baked my version of Reinharts Whole wheat sandwich bread from the Whole Grain Bread book.

Results were wonderful!

All in all I think I am learning to key to my archaic oven.