breadbakingbassplayer's blog

Hey All,

I had a friend Russ in town from LA that I haven't seen since his wedding about 5 years ago...  He finally made it out to NYC, 13 years after we had first met in college...  Funny thing is that last Christmas, I send a loaf of bread to another friend Greg in LA that we both know.  Greg was raving about it to Russ and his wife...  Anyway, many months pass, Russ finally makes it out to NYC, and his wife jokingly asks him to bug me for some bread...  Of course as an obsessive baker, I don't turn down many opportunities to bake for my friends...  I have been baking Poilane style pain au levains for the past fiew weeks trying different things with levain, flour combinations, hydrations...  I've been playing around with 68% hydrations levels which was inspired by Dominique Saibron of Le Boulanger de Monge: http://www.leboulangerdemonge.com/

He says on his website that they use 68 parts of water: http://www.leboulangerdemonge.com/du-moulin-au-four/la-composition-du-pain.html

So here's recipe and process:

Ingredients:

1576g Total flour (5% Rye/10% WW/ 85% AP)

1072g Water

38g Kosher Salt

316g Liquid Levain (100% hydration fed night before and refrigerated.  I keep mine an ever changing mix of rye, ww, AP)

3000g Approx total dough yield

Method To Madness:

9/18/10

4:45pm - Place all ingredients in large mixing bowl in the following order: water, levain, flour, salt.  Mix with large rubber spatula until a shaggy dough is formed.  Mix with wet hands to ensure all lumps and dry bits are gone.  Place bowl in large plastic bag and let rest.

5:00pm - Rest

5:30pm - Turn dough, divide into 2 equal pieces (1500g), transfer to lightly oiled plastic tubs, cover, let rest.

5:45pm - Turn dough, cover let rest.

8:30pm - Turn dough.

10:00pm - Turn dough.

9/19/10

12:40am - Shape into boule, place in well floured linen lined banneton, flour top of dough, place kitchen towel over each banneton, place bannetons into large plastic bag, proof for approx 4+ hours.  (Be sure to flour the bannetons very well as this is a very long proof with a wet-ish dough.  I had to be very careful when turning the boules out as they did stick a little and I had to be very patient for the dough to unstick itself and drop...)

5:00am - Place 2 baking stones on 2 levels along with steam pan with lava rocks.  Place a few cups of water in steam pan.  Preheat oven to 500F with convection.

6:10am - Turn off convection.  Turn boules out onto well floured peel, slash as desired, place in oven directly on stone.  When last loaf is in, place 1 1/2 cups water in steam pan, close oven door.  Turn oven down to 450F, bake for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, remove steam pan, rotate loaves between stones, turn oven down to 425F, bake for another 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes are done, turn off oven and leave loaves in for another 10 minutes...

7:10am - Take loaves out of oven, check internal temp and weight.  Should be around 210F and 15-20% lighter than the prebaked weight.  Cool completely before cutting and eating...

These are by far the most open crumb that I have ever achieved using levain only...  I have no complaints here other than I should have used more levain to speed up the dough...  This was about 14 hours from start to finish...

Enjoy!

Tim

Hey All,

Me again.  This whole baking and blogging thing is a little nutty...  It's something one of those things that's fun, tedious and addictive...  Anyway, let's get on with this post...  How long can you cold bulk retard a dough and still have some good bread?  I've done 24 hours with good and bad results.  How about longer?  Why cold bulk retarding vs cold retarded proofing?  Well, from my experience, cold retarded proofing in a linen lined banneton seems to dry out the surface of the dough, so after baking, the crust becomes thick and tough...  This is my experience.  Also, I have a small under the counter refrigerator that has enough room to bulk retard maybe 4kg of dough in 2 X 4L plastic tubs.  So bulk retardation is my only option short of not sleeping if you've been following my baking schedule these days...

Here's my recipe:

Liquid Levain:

150g White Whole Wheat Flour

50g Rye Flour

50g Liquid Sourdough Storage Starter (100% hydration)

200g Water

450g Total Liquid Levain

 

Final Dough:

1000g AP

616g Water

30g Kosher Salt

450g Liquid Levain

2096g Approx Total Dough Yield

 

9/14/10

8:15pm - Mix liquid levain, cover and let rest on counter overnight.

9/15/10

8:00am - Mix final dough (in large mixing bowl put in water first, then levain, flour, salt).  Mix with rubber spatula until shaggy dough forms.  Cover and let rest 20 minutes.

8:25am - Knead for few minutes with wet hands until relatively smooth dough forms, transfer to lightly oiled container at least 4L, cover and let rest.

8:45am - Turn dough in container (stretch and fold), cover, place into refrigerator (40F), go to work.

9/16/10

6:30pm - Come home and take the dough out of the refrigerator and find that it was working on escaping the container

Divide into 2 equal pieces, shape into boules and place into linen lined bannetons and proof for 3 hours.

8:40pm - Arrange 2 baking stones on 2 levels, put steam pan in oven, preheat to 500F with convection.

9:45pm - Take bannetons out of plastic bag, lightly flour and give poke test...

10:00pm - Turn off convection. 

Turn boule out onto a lightly floured peel, slash as desired and place into oven directly onto stone.  When last loaf is in, pour 1 1/2 cups water into steam pan, close oven door.  Turn oven down to 450F and bake for 50 minutes, rotating between stones half way.  Then turn off oven and leave loaves in for another 10 minutes.

Loaves are done when the internal temp reaches 205F or higher (210F preferred), and they weigh at least 15% lighter than their prebaked weight.  Mine were 1050g before baking, and around 870g after, which is about a 17% weight loss...

Cool completely before cutting and eating...  Crumbshots tomorrow morning...  I wonder it this is a less stressfull baking schedule...  You tell me...

Tim

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, and here's what I've come up with:

Sourdough: A device made from flour and water used for cultivating natural yeast.

Bread: A balloon like device made from usually wheat flour and water used for capturing "yeast farts". 

So based on this definition, bread is a "Yeast Fart Balloon".

Tim

Hi All,

So I was up really late waiting for some Pain au Levain to rise...  Maybe a little too late, which is why I don't feel so hot right now and should be getting to bed early...  Way, way before 2:00am like this morning...  Anyway, just wanted to share with you some Pain au Levain in a pan that I baked very late last night...  They turned out really well, but I should have used smaller loaf pans...  Enjoy!  Recipe and method will follow the pics and the obligatory crumbshot...  Also, this recipe was inspired by one of the Pain au Levain recipes in Le Pain, l'envers du decor by Frédéric Lalos.

Tim

Ingredients:

Final Dough:

1110g AP (KA)

555g Stiff Levain (63% hydration)

700g Water

38g Kosher salt

2400g Total Dough Yield (approx)

 

Stiff Levain

304g AP

192g Water

60g Sourdough Starter (I used a stiff one)

556g Total Stiff Levain Yield

 

Method to the Madness

9/12/10

3:50pm - Mix stiff levain, place in covered container, let rest on counter.

430pm - Place stiff levain in refrigerator.

9:13/10

6:50pm - Mix final dough in large bowl using a large rubber spatula, plastic scraper, wet hands.  Knead for 5-10 minutes.  Cover bowl, or place in plastic bag and let rest.

7:30pm - Knead dough for 2-3 minutes in bowl with wet hands.  Do not add any extra flour.  Cover and let rest.

7:45pm - Turn dough, cover and let rest.

8:45pm - Line loaf pans with parchment paper, or grease them if you like.  Divide into 3x800g pieces, and shape into loaves, place into pans, place pans into plastic bag, proof for 4 hours.

9/14/10

12:00am - Place baking stone and steam pan in oven, preheat to 500F with convection.

1:00am - Turn convection off.  Lightly dust loaves and slash as desired, place into oven on stone.  When all pans are in oven, pour 1 cup of water into the steam pan, close door.  Turn oven down to 450F and bake for 45 minutes.  Halfway through bake, remove loaves from pans and return to oven and place directly onto stone.  Turn oven down to 425F for remainder of bake.  At end of baking, check internal temp and weight loss.  Should reach 210F and lose approx 15% weight.  Turn oven off and put loaves back in for another 10 minutes.  Cool completely before cutting and eating...  Also, get some sleep...

Hi All,

Just wanted to share with you some rustic baguettes au levain that I made this morning...  I'll work on posting the recipe a little later...  Enjoy!

Tim

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you a loaf that I made for my friend Frankie.  Hopefully he will send me some nice crumbshots next week that I can post...  Enjoy!

Tim

Hi All,

I seem to be baking a lot these days...  It's still hot though here in NYC so things are rising fast around here...  Last night I was reading Local Breads by Dan Leader, page 105 which talks about the Poilane bakery loading their breads into the oven every 2 hours...  I wanted to see how quickly I could make a pain au levain, assuming the levain was ripe and ready...  Also, a have recently converted my storage sourdough starter from liquid to very stiff (50% hydration).  Here's what happened:

Stiff Levain Recipe:

400g Stone Ground White Whole Wheat Flour (King Arthur)

200g Water

80g Stiff Sourdough Starter (50% hydration)

680g Total Stiff Levain

 

Final Dough Recipe:

1374g AP (King Arthur)

926g Water

32g Kosher Salt

680g Stiff White Whole Wheat Levain (approx 50% hydration)

3012g Total Dough Yield

 

Method of Madness:

9/6/10

5:30pm - Mix stiff levain, knead into ball, cover and let rest.

5:45pm - Knead stiff a few times until smooth, lightly coat with extra virgin olive oil, place in covered plastic tub, refrigerate at 40F 23-36 hrs.  If you are going to make the dough within 12-16 hours, and it's not too hot, then you can probably leave it out on the kitchen counter...

9/7/10

6:35pm - Come home from work, get settled, take stiff levain out of fridge, measure out all ingredients using a digital scale.

6:55pm - In a large mixing bowl, pour in exact amount of water, then cut up the stiff levain into small golf ball sized pieces and place it into the bowl in the water.  Then add all the flour on top, then the salt.  Start mixing with a large rubber spatula until a shaggy dough forms.  Then using wet hands, squish the dough until the levain is well combined, knead for about 10 minutes.  Do all kneading in the bowl without adding any extra flour.  If your hands get sticky, use a plastic scraper to scrape the dough off your hands, then dip your hands in water and continue kneading.

7:10pm to 7:30pm - cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

7:30pm - Turn dough in bowl, and knead for about 15-20 seconds, cover and let rest.

8:00pm - Turn dough in bowl, and knead for about 15-20 seconds, cover and let rest.

8:30pm - Turn dough, cover and let rest.

9:00pm to 9:10pm - Divide dough into 4 pieces, preshape into boules, place them seam side down on a proofing board with no extra flour.  Cover and let rest for 20 minutes.

9:30pm - Final shape into batards, place them seam side up in a very lighty floured couche, cover with tea towels and plastic bag, proof for approx 1 hr and 30 minutes.

10:20pm - Place 2 baking stones in oven on 2 different levels along with steam pan, preheat to 550F with convection.

11:10pm - Turn off convection.  Turn out loaves onto peel/flipping board, slash as desired, place into oven directly on stone.  When all the loaves are in, place 1 1/2 cups water into steam pan, close door, turn oven down to 450F, bake for 45 minutes rotating batards halfway through the bake between stones.  After 45 minutes, check weight and internal temp.  They should be about 15% lighter than their pre-baked weight, and the internal temp should be between 205F to 210F.  I prefer 210F.  Turn oven off, and place batards back into oven for 5 minutes.  After this, let batards cool completely before cutting...

12:00am - Done...  Time for sleep...  Pics up tomorrow sometime...

8:50am - Upload pics...

 

 

Tim

 

 

 

 

 

Hi All,

Just wanted to share with you my bake from Monday, 9/5/10...  I had some friends in from San Francisco, who have never had my bread, so I wanted to make them something special to take home with them after brunch...

Here is a pain au levain, that I will call my 5/10/20 pain au levain...  It was inspired by JT's 85x3 bread that Farine blogged about here: http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/04/jts-85x3.html

I did not have any T85 flour, but I could make 3 starters...  This bread is basically 95% AP (king arthur) 5% rye (hodgson mill), approx 66% hydration, 2.4% kosher salt.

Starter 1 (Rye Sour): All of the rye flour (5% of total flour) prefermented at 83% hydration for 24hrs at room temp.  Use 4% sourdough starter.

Starter 2 (Liquid Levain): 10% of total flour (AP) prefermented at 100% hydration for 1 hour at room temp, and 23 hours at 40F.  Use 20% sourdough starter.

Starter 3 (Stiff levain): 20% of total flour (AP) prefermented at 55% hyrdation for 1 hour at room temp, and 23 hrs at 40F.  Use 20% sourdough starter.

I'll continue this if anybody is interested...  The result I think speaks for itself...

This is the walnut raisin pain au levain using the same dough as above but adding buttermilk powder, a little sugar, butter, toasted walnuts and raisins...  I think it turned out really good...  Note to self: Mix this dough separately...  Trying to knead in powdered buttermilk is an excercise in futility.  Some of it combined OK, but the stuff that didn't clumped in the dough, and I had to spend about 15 minutes kneading and picking out the clumps before kneading in the butter, walnuts and raisins...

Cheers!

Tim

This experiment was inspired by Farine's post on her blog about the Meteorite...  http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/07/meteorite.html

No process pics or anything as I probably screwed this thing up totally along the way...  This dough is "impossibly" wet...  I even decreased the hyration to 95%...  It's like trying to bake poolish...

So here's the question...

Is it a meteorite or a cow pattie?  You be the judge...

Crumb shots tomorrow...

Tim

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you a project that I am working on...  So on 8/30/10, I took delivery of 75lbs of flour from King Arthur which I ordered because they were having a free shipping on certain items.  This included their AP flour along with their WW and White WW.  What to do, what to do...  So, I baked my first full sourdough bread without adding any yeast not too long ago: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19389/83010-sourdough-progress with great success as far as open crumb, and crackling crust...  The flavor was very good, but there was one person who thought it wasn't salty enough or something...  Anyways, back to this project...

The previous sourdough bread was based on a liquid levain (100% hydration) which is also the hydration of my storage starter...  So my bright idea was to convert my liquid starter to a partially whole grain stiff starter at around 55% hydration...

On 9/1/10 at around 10:20pm, I threw out about half of my liquid starter, kept a small portion of it and mixed it as follows:

200g AP (King Arthur)

100g WW (King Arthur

150g Water

100g liquid sourdough storage starter (100% hydration)

550g total stiff starter yield

10:20pm - Mix all, place in covered container, let rest on counter.

12:20am - Place in refrigerator

 

9/2/10 - Feed Stiff Levain Again (Starter Build #2)

200g AP

100g WW

150g Water

550g All of starter from the evening before.

1000g total stiff starter yield

9:00am - Mix all, knead into ball, place into covered container, place in refrigerator.

 

9/3/10 - Final Dough

600g AP

200g WW

200g White WW (KA)

700g Water

24g Kosher Salt

600g Stiff Levain

2324g Total dough yield

6:18pm - Take stiff levain out of refrigerator and let rest on counter.  Give the levain the float test.  Measure out all ingredients.

Stiff levain out of refrigerator.  Notice the bubbles.

With a wet spoon, cut out a piece of the stiff levain and place it in some water to see if it floats...  If it does, it's ready to use.  For more on the float test, please check out this link: http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/01/building-levain-la-gerard-steps-2-3-and.html  Note point A3.

Cut up levain into pieces, place in large mixing bowl along with the measured amount of water required for the recipe.

Premeasured flours.  Note that on the bottom is the AP flour, and on the top the WW flours.

Kosher salt

All the ingredients in the bowl.  Notice that on the bottom is the water and stiff levain.  Then the whole wheat flours, the AP flour, then last on top is the Kosher salt.  This sequence is very important, and will prevent the formation of lumps or dry clumps, and dry bits stuck to the side of the bowl.

Beginning the mixing at 6:57pm.  I am using a large plastic/rubber spatula.  This is the initial mixing which takes about 30 seconds.  You can pretty much keep the spatula stationary and move the bowl at this stage.  It is just to mix the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.

This is probably about 1 minute of mixing.

A little more mixing.

Done mixing with rubber spatula... Now time to get wet and dirty with hands and water...

This is the dough after the following: make sure you have a bowl of water next to you...  Wet your hands and squish the dough in order to work out any lumps...  Then slap fold and roll two times.  This technique that I use is a hybrid of what Richard Bertinet does with in his sweet dough video, except I prefer to do it all in my mixing bowl to prevent getting my kitchen counter sticky and messy: http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough

1.  Take the ball of dough by one end, let it stretch down using gravity.

2.  slap the bottom part of the dough into the bottom of the bowl.

3.  Fold the top part that you are holding into the center, and roll it into a ball in one forward motion.

4.  Rotate bowl 90 degrees and repeat.

Place entire bowl into large plastic bag, autolyse (rest) for 30 minutes...  Have a cup of coffee, tea, or beer...  I'm having beer...  Just as a note, these series of steps lasted from 6:57pm to 7:02pm, which is about 5 minutes out of your life...

Dough after 30 minute autolyse.

7:40pm - Dough after 2 slap, fold, and rolls...  Sorry for the blurry pictures.  Notice how much smoother the dough is...

Dough after about 10-15 slap, fold, and rolls...  Notice the dough tear at the bottom.  At this point when this happens, stop handling the dough, place it in plastic bag and wait for about 20-30 minutes.

8:00pm - This is the dough after the 20 minute rest, and 6 additional slap, fold, and rolls...  Place bowl in plastic bag, let rest for another 20 minutes.

8:20pm - This is the dough after the 20 minute rest.  Notice how it has spread out...

This is the dough after 2 slap, fold, and rolls...

Transfer to plastic tub lightly oiled with extra virgin olive oil.  I'm sure any sort of neutral cooking oil would work.  My tub is a 4L tub, which is the smallest tub you would probaby want to use for the amount of dough this recipe makes...

Top view.  Sorry for blurry...

Added plastic wrap before putting on top.  My containers don't seal all that great.  Plus, it's insurance if the dough pops the top in the fridge...

Place in to fridge...  40F to 45F...

9:25pm - Turn dough, return to fridge...

9/3/10 - The moment of truth...

I was at work for longer than I had intended today...  Argh!

5:00pm - Do I have magical dough, or a dough explosion?

Dough Explosion!!!

Release my cornichons!!!

Dough texture shot...  Looks well fermented...  Fingers crossed...

5:00pm - After I cut off the dried bit from the exploded part, I divided the dough and shaped them into boules weighing approx 1100g.  The dough shaped nicely without tearing...  More fingers crossed...  Now for proofing for about 2 hours...

Bannettons in plastic...

5:50pm - It's pretty warm right now... 85F in the kitchen...  Proofing going well.  Turned on oven with 2 stones, steam pan.  Preheat to 550F with convection for 45 minutes to 1 hr...

7:10pm - Take the baskets out of the plastic, give it the poke test, take the thermometer out of the oven, prepare one cup of water, locate oven mitt, lame, peel, cup of flour, turn convection off...

Slash as desired...

Peel directly on to baking stone, put oven mitt on, carefully pour one cup of water in steam pan, snap picture, close oven door, turn down to 450F without convection.  Bake 50 minutes, rotating half way...

This is one of them halfway through the bake.  I rotated them, and shifted them between the upper and lower stones...  25 more minutes of baking, and then a weight and temp check...  I'm shooting for 935g or less after bake weight which puts it at a 15% weight loss, which is good...

8:00pm - Weight and temp check...  Weight around 980g, and internal temp is around 200F...  I'm looking for 210F...  Bake for another 10 minutes...

Will post crumbshots tomorrow...  Enjoy!

Tim