dabrownman's blog

It being summer in AZ, we are baking our pizzas on the gas grill outside.  We prefer the big old GE inside for pizzas but the gas grill does a half decent job with the pizza stone heated up.  One plus is that the gas grill can get to 650 F and the crust is super crispy, even though the top may not be browned enough.

See through pepperoni can go under the cheese adn still bake up well trapping that fat next to the sauce.

This dough had been in the fridge for 48 hours and was nice to work with and was tough but pliable when stretching over the knuckles.  The leaven for this was repeat of a three-peat - a pinch of yeast biga, yeast water, sourdough starter and flour – the same one used earlier this week for that fine crust on Lucy’s Fruit Stupid; a peach and plum and Nutella galette.

The girls split their pizza #1, each making half to their liking.

One thing we did different this time is to liberally dust the counter and the top of the dough with semolina when forming and to use whole wheat pastry flour for 25% of the flour mixed with AP and bread flour.  Semolina just sounds like Italy to me and it takes the tackiness out of the dough just as well as flour does when forming.

Pizza #2 was everything included for one low price that was flipped over after par baking.

 My shaping of these pies was a little fast which produced an odd shape but I could tell the monsoon was going to blow in right as the first pie was to go on the grill.  Poor Lucy had the be Jesus scared out of her with all the wind. lightening, thunder and rain.  Since she usually forms the pies and was beside herself, I tried my best. 

The poor grill was struggling to  keep the heat in so on the 2nd pie instead of par baking for 3 minutes and then taking it off and loading it up, we par baked it for 2 minutes, took it off and then flipped it over and loaded up the once stone side down with the toppings.

For this pie we didn’t brush Mojo de Ajo on the top until it had been par baked and flipped.  The first pie had Mojo de Ajo brushed on top before it went on the stone for par baking.  We did not put our normal rosemary, garlic and sun dried tomatoes in the dough this time.

The bottom was perfectly browned even after being flipped - very crispy and tasty.

The toppings were the usual home made sauce, mozzarella, parmesan and romano, red, jalapeno and poblamo peppers, green and caramelized onions, carmelized , king oyster, crimini and shiitake mushrooms, hot Italian sausage, grilled squash, steamed broccoli and pepperoni.  I put a little aged super sharp cheddar on mine too.

My pie was the 2md one and the crust was stupendously crispy and tasty.  It took 6 minutes after it went back on the stone after the par bake and loading it up.  It wasn’t the best looking pizza because it was flipped but it tasted fantastic.  I might start flipping them all the time even when made indoors.

Saturday morning’s breakfast was a home made English muffin with butter and caramelized medium Minneola marmalade, hot breakfast sausage, half a peach, half a mango, a slice of cantaloupe chopped up  and an omelet with hot pepper jack cheese.

The fruits and melon were all at their very best ripeness and made for a nice consolation after a stormy sunset that turned into some thing quite unexpected and beautiful.

How strange that this ugly storm….

turned into this Western facing sunset of orange rain coming down…… but looking East at the same time was a double rainbow.

Formula

We needed to come up with a white bread that had around 30% of home milled, whole grains that did't disappoint when it came to flavor and sour.   We have been developing 80% and higher whole grains with robust flavor and sour but, some folks just don’t like breads like that .....even though that should be against the bread laws :-)

My poor apprentice still thinks that, if it isn’t pumpernickel, it’s not even close to real bread and she should know being the determined German she looks like and claims to be.  But, the other girls in the family still like their mamby,  pamby, cotton candy, Oroweat, supposed whole wheat bread even though, it sure doesn’t look like any whole wheat I grind and bake – not even close.

Hopefully, Lucy will come up with a recipe that they actually prefer over their notion of what bread is supposed to be.   So, we took a flyer from toad.de.b and decided to do a bread that required double slap and folds.  Our 2nd set required double slaps to one fold as it was stiffer than normal!

After Tom’s great flavor enhancing invention that Lucy named 'Toadies' (short for Toady Tom's Toasted Tasty Tidbits), you just have to read his latest post on his summer bread experiments and incorporate what ever strikes your fancy into your methods -  like I made my apprentice over her scowls and growls.

This time we dropped the whole wheat from the whole grain mix and added whole oats to the usual rye, Kamut and spelt.  For liquid, we went with water this time instead of some part being yogurt whey.  This white bread should be less tangy than our normal loaf as a result but it should still be tangy enough.

Weonce again put the whole grain bits into the levain to get them wet as long as possible.   We hoped they would be softer that wasy and not cut the gluten strands too much when we went to develop it.  We also did a 48 hour retard after the 3rd stage build had risen 25%  to promote sour and lab reproduction over yeast reproduction.

When the levain came out of the fridge to finish it's 48 hour belated doubling, we started the autolyse with everything else except the ground seeds.  We only sprinkled the salt on top of the autolyse so we wouldn’t for get it later as we sometimes prone to do.

After 3 hours on the counter, the levain was ready by finishing its doubling.  We mixed it with the autolyse and then did 10 minutes of slap and folds.  After a 15 minute rest we did another 4 minutes of slap and folds before resting it again for 15 minutes.  The gluten was fully developed but we still did 2 sets of slap and folds on 15 minute intervals.  The ground sesame and flax seeds were incorporated on the first one and were evenly distributed by the 2nd set.

After another 15 minute rest we pre-shaped the dough into a boule and 10 minutes later shaped it for keeps and dropped it seam side up into a lightly rice floured basket.  A short 30 minute counter proof and into the fridge it went  We planned on a  retard per Toady Tom’s latest near death wait of 20 hours.  We hoped the low levain inoculation of 12% would be small enough so the dough didn't explode.  Low inoculations and long low temperature retards promote flavor and sour better than any other way.

We let the boule warm up for half an hour before starting the mini oven's  preheat to 500 F.  For steam, we used the overturned stainless steel bowl over the broiler pan that had ½ C of water in the bottom.

The boule was un-molded, quickly slashed in a square, covered with the stainless mixing bowl and placed into the mini oven for 14 minutes of steam.  At the 7 minute mark we turned the oven down to 475 F and at the 10 minute mark we turned it down to 450 F.  5 more minutes of steam would have been better but my apprentice forgets to add steaming time when covering with a cloche.

The steaming bottom of the broiler pan came out at 14 minutes and the temperature was turned down to 425 F, convection this time.  The bread didn’t spring much, spread a little and bloomed some under the steam.  A sure sign the bread was proofed over 85% and or not steamed long nough.  These long ferments can be tricky to time properly when you are sound asleep :-) 

We rotated the bread every 5 minutes to make sure it browned properly.  Oddly, as soon as the steam came out, the bread sprang nicely and puffed itself up pretty well.  After 15 minutes of dry heat, the bread registered 205 on the Fahrenheit scale.   It was then moved to the cooling rack all browned up and blistered with the mini oven’s typical crust.

Yesterday's white bread lunch  and this moring's white bread breakfast.

Will have to wait on the crumb shots but will have this bread for a late lunch as see how we like it.  But first a nice sunset.

Followed by today's lunch.

The crumb was open moist and soft.  The crust went softer as it cooled and became more chewy rather than crunchy.  If I have to eat white bread..... this is the one I want.  The seeds really come through and help make this bread flavorful and plenty tasty enough.  I was struck by the sour flavor and some of it must be because of the lowered levain amount to less than 12% and retarding of it for 48 hours.  Toady Tom's 20 hour retard of the dough didn't hurt either.  I could eat this bread all day without ever knowing it is a white bread.  We likie this bread a lot and now have to see what the girlsi think. 

Formula

We based this bun recipe on Ian’s and Cleo’s fine hamburger buns that can be found here: 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33946/hamburger-onion-parmesan-buns

We don’t have his flour combination but we tried out best to come at least a little close to them.   So, Lucy used some AP and white whole wheat instead of the spelt, European and durum flour that was Ian’s choice.  We called Ian’s hand by keeping the potato flakes, butter, honey, dehydrated onion, Parmesan cheese and a pinch of ADY.

We then raised Ian’s formula a pecorino cheese, some ground sesame and flax seeds,  red and white malt and Toadies while switching out the milk and replacing it with cream and some left over fig re-hydration water from the last bake.

The final change was to use the pinch of ADY with some apple cherry yeast waster and some SD starter in one poolish kind of double levain that should balance itself out with acid and sweetness to become more neutral - as most hamburger buns seem to end up being for some reason.

We did a one stage, 3 hour build to get the levain to double.  We took the dried onions and re-hydrated them in 30 g of water and the salt for 1 hour.  We autolysed everything else except the cheese with the liquids for a half hour and then added the salt, onion and water mix.

We squished this through the dough through our fingers and did 6 minutes of slap and folds before resting the dough for 10 minutes and then doing 4 mote minutes of slap and folds.

A beautiful open moist, soft and grilled crumb.  Jsuit delicious!

The gluten had developed very well.  After a 15 minute rest we did 1 more minute of slap and folds.  We then stretched the dough and incorporated the (2) cheeses with a set of S&F’s.  15 minutes later we did another S& F and then allowed the dough to rest for1 hour.

A bagel breakfast to get the day started.

We then pre-shaped the dough into 4 thin buns that we like so much and 2 hot dog buns.  10 minutes later we final shaped them and put then on parchment paper - on top of the the mini oven’s vented top portion of the broiler pan.  We then egg washed them and covered them in white and tan poppy seeds since we hadn’t used them at all.

 Nothing wrong with a Bologna sandwich and a grilled shrimp salad lunch to go with the mango,nectarine, peach, bread and butter pickles,  pickled eggplant, carrots cucumbers, celery, red and poblano peppers, pickled onion cucumber and tomato relish with a few extra cucumber slices on the side.

Others had a different breakfast and lunch with some stuff being the same.

The buns proofed on the counter in a used trash can liner for 2 hours.  They puffed themselves up nicely so we egg washed then again and placed them in the 425 F mini oven set on convection from the get go. No need for steam when the buns have egg on their face.

Don't forget the peach, nectarine, mango and plum crisp with pecan  and vanilla granola topping.

After 8 minutes, we turned the oven down to 400 F - convection.   In another 12 minutes the buns were deemed done and removed from the oven to cool on a rack.  They browned up well.  When they were still warm, we cut them and put them on the grill to toast.  These are some really fine tasting buns.  The flavor of the onions and cheeses come through well.  No complaints.  Cleo and Ian have a real winner just like trailrunner said when she made them.

We actually divided the levain in half and are using the other half for Thursday’s pizzas trying to follow David Snyder’s Pizza Bliss to some degree.

Formula

After seeing FlourChild’s, breadsong’s and David Snyder’s pizza posts where some of them were dessert pizzas, my apprentice just knew it wouldn’t be long before she had to try one.  But, instead of using traditional pizza dough, she used a slightly sweetened enriched dough like a hamburger bun.  We have no idea why she does these things but it is fun to watch.

David - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34452/pizza-bliss and Breadsong's post here - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34610/was-good-pizza and FlourChild’s post here - http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34626/pizza-levain-and-highextraction-flours

To jazz things up a little bit and having to get this bake done in 7 hours again, we used a 100g, 100% hydration poolish with a pinch of ADY and AP -  and a 100 g 100% hydration levain made with white whole wheat and some apple cherry yeast water.  We upped the percent of the leavens to 30% to make sure everything got fully proofed this time before hitting the mini oven.

There is a dessert bun made in Mexico where the filling is ripe plantain.  A very ripe near black plantain is sweet and similar in taste to a banana. I this case I had a couple of plantains like that 3 week ago when I put them in the fridge to get midnight no moon black, shriveled up and flavor packed.

To help the plantains out Lucy added some Nutella.   When mixed together it made an odd filling combination we have never tasted before and not likely to again as she is so absent minded and quirky.

She used this filling for the rolled up bagels but then added some mini chocolate chips and English toffee pieces to the fruit galette just to make it different thinking the fruit wouldn’t make it different enough as is was. She was pretty confident that the galette was plenty different enough when she got through messing around with it.  I call this concoction Lucy’s Fruit Stupid.

Oddly, the Stupid started out pretty smart - unlike Lucy herself.  The levain and poolish were made separately and left to do their thing on the counter for 2 1/2 hours.   We cut off the ends of the plantains and squeezed out the ripe insides like toothpaste – these were very ripe plantains indeed!

We mashed them with a fork and then added a couple of scoops of Nutella to it and mixed it well.  When the leavens met the rest of the dough ingredients we did 8 minutes of slap and folds to get the gluten develops and then let the dough rest for 12 minutes before doing the first of 2  S&F’s on 20 minute intervals.

 Breakfast on bake day.

The dough then fermented on the counter for another hour getting us to the 4 hour mark.  We then divided the dough in half and then one half into 3 pieces of 107 g each to make the roll up bagels – the other half would be used for galette crust.  Once the three pieces we rolled out into rectangles the Nutella / plantain mix went on and they were rolled up jelly roll style from the long side and then formed into a circle that looked like a bagel.

 Lunch on bake day.

After stretching the other half of the dough into a pizza shape and placing it in the ceramic tart dish, we then added the mini chocolate chips and English toffee pieces to the Nutella / plantain mix and spread this out on the crust bottom after docking it.  The plum slices were places around the perimeter ad the peach slices were placed in the center as a pinwheel with a strawberry in the middle.

The chocolate bagelish thingies were egg washed, turbanado sugar sprinkled and baked in the mini oven - first at 375 F for 8 minutes and then 10 minutes at 350 F, convection this time.  They browned up well and we brushed them with skim milk as they came out of the oven to keep the crust soft.

Then Lucy’s Fruit Stupid went in the heat after having the crust rim brushed with egg wash the top sprinkled with turbanado sugar.  We started the bake at 400 F convection and baked it for 8 minutes.  We then rotated the galette 120 degrees and turned the oven down to 350 F.  After 8 more minutes we rotated the galette 120 degrees again. After 24 minutes the crust rim was brown and we deemed it done.

A dinner salad is a nice foil for the dessert.

The bagels were a little on the bland side when compared to Lucy’s Fruit Stupid.  The Stupid was stupendous.  I asked Lucy why she didn’t make two of her fine Stupids instead of wasting half the bake on not nearly as nice Nutella and plantain roll up bagels. 

Her comment was that next time the rollups would have fruits mini chocolate chips and English toffee added to them and they would be great too.  You never know what will work better until you try them out and know for sure. 

This morning's breakfast.

Formula

We took last week's more tame bake and decided to gussie it up some.  There is just no way to hold my apprentice back when it comes to gussieness.  She decided to add some walnuts and re-hydrated black mission figs (one of our favorite combinations for fruit and nuts in bread) and some pumpkin and sunflowers seeds

These new additions went along with last week’s ground sesame and flax seeds, Toadies, red and white malts and VWG.  We cut back on some of the whey and white whole wheat flour and replaced them with more water and our special mix of 75% extraction home ground flour consisting of 25% rye, 25% spelt and 25% Kamut and 25% farro.

Since we again used the 25% sifted out bran portion to feed a smaller levain, we ended up with 85% whole grain bread instead of 100% like last week.  With all the fruit, nut and seed additions, I didn’t honk that Lucy would notice that some of the whole grain was missing.  We need some sifted bran and middlings for the next batch of Toadies.

Even though the 85% hydration was the same as last week’s bake the dough felt more wet and sticky.  This was probably due to some of the whole gain missing and that the re-hydrated figs may have carried some extra water with them.  In any even the dough was more slack for sure and hopefully this will open the crumb some more and still provide proper lift.

We followed a similar method to last week with one exception. We built the levain on Tuesday instead of Wednesday so that it could sit in the fridge for 48 hours to get more sour.  Since all of the whole grain bits were in the levain we autolysed the dough flours for 3 hours while the levain was warming up and finishing in final doubling.  The levain was refrigerated when it showed a 25% volume increase after the 3rd feeding.

We did 12 minutes of slap and folds since the dough felt slacker.  We incorporated the ground sesame and flax seeds, along with pumpkin and sunflower seeds, during the first set of (3) S&F’s that were performed 20 minutes apart.  The figs and the walnuts went in on the 2nd set and by the end of the 3rd set everything was well distributed.

After a short 15 minute rest the dough was pre-shaped and then shaped into a short squat batard to fit our oval basket and then it was placed into a used trash can liner and immediately retarded in the fridge for 20 1/2 hours.  It wasn’t quite were we wanted it when it came out of the fridge so we let it warm upon the counter an hour.

The dough was then un-molded on the parchment covered mini broiler top, slashed and  placed into the 500 F preheated mini oven that was steaming with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming cups and a ¼ cup of water thrown into the bottom of the mini oven as the door was closed.  Three minutes later we turned the oven own to 475 F.

We let the bread steam for 16 minutes before removing Sylvia’s steam generators and turning the oven down to 425 F, convection.   We rotated the bread every 5 minutes and in 25 minutes the bread tested 203 F when it was removed to a cooling rack.  So, this time the total bake was 41 minutes.

The bread bloomed OK but didn’t spring that much.  It might have been over proofed a little bit. It must have been that extra half and hour in the cold.  It browned well and had the crust that the mini oven puts on bread nearly every time but without the blisters.  The kitchen smelled like bake day for sure even without any aromatic seeds in the mix  - I knew my apprentice forgot something!

This bread is one that you won't forget.  Earthy, nutty, seedy, with a hint of sweet figs.... just plain tasty.  The crust is boldly baked, thick and it stayed crunchy too.  the crumb is soft moist and fairly open for a near whole grain bread with lots of stuff in it.  If you are all alone on a deserted island, this is the bread you want to have in your knapsack.  It made one of the tastiest grilled chicken sandwiches with the typical fruits and veggies, some pickled veg from the sausages last night and a slice of brie - Yummy!

Formula

Brunch with this bread the next morning.  Delicious!

We decided at lunch time to have sausages for dinner and needed some buns.  I went to the KA web site to get a recipe for some that would be ready in 6 hours max.  I found a no knead recipe to use as a basis but decided to make a poolish with a pinch of ADY.  We put the whole wheat in the poolish to get it wet as long as possible and put half the honey in the polish too.

After 2 hours we mixed everything else in and did 10 minutes of slap and folds.  This is pretty wet dough at over 82% hydration.  It eventually came together so it was not sticking on the counter.  We did 2 sets of S& F’s at 15 minute intervals and then let the dough rest for 20 minutes before shaping into 4 hot dog buns and 2 thin hamburger buns.

We let them proof or 2 3/4 hours on the counter on parchment, on the mini oven’s vented top of the broiler pan, in a trash can liner.  We mixed melted bitter with cream to brush on top and into the 350 F mini oven they went ready or not.

We baked them for 9 minutes on the bottom and then moved them to the top and rotated them while turning the temperature down to 325 F, convection this time.   They didn’t brown as much as we though they would but they tested done at 200 F so we took them out and brushed them with the creams butter mixture again..

I didn’t get any pictures of them coming out of the oven because the girls were starving but I did get a picture of the left over Boudin sausage left over and the 2 hamburger buns.  These could have proofed about an hour longer but dinner had to be served.  The buns were soft and moist and tasted great though.  No one complained which is unusual around here.

The hamburger buns didn't go to waste.  Yummy with grilled fries, some veg and a salad!

With English muffins and bagels out of the way this week and breakfast taken care of for several weeks, we moved on to our normal Friday bread bake.  We wanted to stick to our 100% whole grain recent theme, this time 99.89% while getting back to some of favorite add ins and return of the neglected; Toadies,  ground flax and sesame seeds.

Lucy wanted to shy away from the chewy bits in the crumb this week so, no sprouts or  scalded whole berries were used but, to make up for the missing, we added yogurt whey that we had frozen from the last batch of NF yogurt we made.  The protein will be kicked up and notch with the whey making this even healthier than it looks.

With the whey for dough liquid we were really going for the sour so we decided to pump it up some with a new levain retard schedule where we took out our stiff 66% hydration whole wheat and rye starter that has been in the fridge for a week and retarded the levain for 24 hours after the 2nd and 3rd stages rather than our usual retard after the 3rd stage only.

We fed the levain the 25% portion of bran that we had sifted out of our home milling of rye, spelt, farro and wheat.  We had 101 g left so it went into the levain in stages to make a 100% hydration leaven.

This put most of the whole grain equivalent into the levain so it would soak and soften for a as long as possible.  The rest of the whole grain equivalents; malts and Toadies, went into the 2 hour autolyse with the King Arthur white whole wheat.

We held back 36 g of water to squish the higher than normal salt though the autolyse when it had finished as we added the levain.  Normally we would have 1 or 2 g less of salt but with the whey in the mix we decided a little over 2% with the whole grains might slow things down a little bit and keep the dough from exploding while in the fridge.

We did our normal 10 minutes of slap and folds which was 2 slaps and 1 fold as the dough was on the stiff side even though it was at 85% hydration.  90% or more probably would have been better in hindsight but ti eventually smoothes out.  We rested the dough for 20 minutes before the first of (3) sets of S& F’s were dome on 20 minute intervals

After a 20 minute rest following the last S&F, we pre-shaped the dough into a boule and then 10 minutes later finished the job.   We put it into one of our favorite baskets, retrieved from the garage, which we had not used for a while.  Since the basket was well used it didn’t take much rice flour to get it back into bread shape before the dough went in.

A grilled cheese and chicken Tzitzel lunch on shaping day.

We then got out a new trash can liner and placed the basket inside before sealing with a rubber band and placing it into the fridge for an118 hour retard.  We liked what the long 20 hour cold did for the bagels earlier this week so we thought this bread would do well at 18 hours - even with the whey as liquid.  Luckily there wasn’t too much spelt bran in the mix

After 20 hours, we were a little shocked that the dough wasn’t fully proofed so that we could bake it straight out of the fridge.   So, on the counter it went for proofing until it had risen 90%.  We de-basketed it onto the parchment lined vented top of the mini oven’s broiler pan and styled it with Ian’s T-Rex slash.

We decided to do a cloche with a stainless steel mixing bowl for steaming instead of our normal (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups.  The bottom of the broiler pan was preheated to 500 F in the mini oven.   Before the stainless covered bread went into the heat we tossed a quarter cup of water into hot broiler pan bottom and then covered it with the vented top holding the cloched bread above the water for a new kind of mega steam technique – under the dome.

 After 2 minutes we tuned the oven down to 475 F and continued to steam for another 13 minutes before removing the bottom of the broiler and the steam with it.  E then turned the oven down to 425 F, convection this time and baked the bread for another 10 minutes rotating it 180 degrees every 5 minutes until it read 205 F on the inside with the probe thermometer.

The bread sprang, bloomed and browned as my apprentice expected.  She sometimes reminds me of ancient Grecian oracles of note who could see the future as easily as Lucy can see the long nose on her face. 

What a great sunset last night to go along with today's lunch.  Just a delicious sandwich bread .

The crumb was soft, open, moist and very sour - just the way we like it.  Tomorrow we hope it is even more sour - and it likely will be.  The crust stayed crispy as it cooled  and was the tastiest part by far.  We like this bread a lot.

Formula

These aren’t your normal whole grain bagels - not that whole grain ones are at all normal much less made with SD and YW.  What we did was take the 25% of the sifted out portion of home milled grains and used that to feed the SD starter where the liquid for it was yeast water.

We love using the sifted out bran and endosperm portion to feed the levain.  This gets all the hard bits in the wet for the longest period of time to soften them especially if you retard the levain after the 2nd and 3rd feeding for 24 hours each time like we did.

When mixed back into white dough flour at a 25% portion this turns the dough into a 100% whole grain one and makes the bagels very tasty indeed.   In this case the whole grains were rye, wheat, farro, kamut and spelt.   So we got a nice mix grains which also makes for great flavor.

The YW has a tendency to mute the sour flavor somewhat, so the retarding of the levain twice and the dough for 20 hours was an attempt to get the sour back.   It was somewhat successful but the YW also makes the crumb moist and soft too.

The initial hydration was 58% but we kept adding more water to the mix just to get it to the point where we could knead it for 20 minutes .  If we were making bread with this flour mix, we would be at 85% -90% hydration using fresh milled flour.  So the 63% hydration of this dough is misleading.  In reality it was the hardest bagel dough to knead of all time and we have baked plenty of bagels over the years to know.  It felt like 50% hydration

We shaped the bagels two ways; the over the knuckle and roll to seal and the poke a hole in the center of the ball and enlarge methods.  We also boiled the 3 batches of 3 bagels each for different times, 30 seconds, 60 seconds and 90 seconds to see if there was a difference.  The (9) bagels weighed in at 108 each and we made a dough ball for the float test with the left over.

We also had several toppings, white sesame, black sesame, W&B sesame, white poppy, black poppy, white and black poppy and then made 3 all in that included the sesame and poppy varieties as well as oregano, basil, caraway and kosher salt.

Normally the mini oven would put some nice large blisters in the bagels using (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups but this time they were very small ones instead - probably due to the 100% whole grains and lower relative hydration than our usual 58% hydration of the 30% whole grain bagels.  Einstein was right - its all relative and probably why he is famous for cake like non NY Style bagels today.

The dough ball floated to the top of water glass in a split second so the cold proof worked well indeed.  The boiling liquid was a dark tea color of barley malt syrup and a teaspoon of baking soda.  The bagels were briefly put flat side down on the towel to remove excess liquid from that side before being overturned into the seeds. They were then placed flat side down onto parchment that lined the vented top cover of the mini’s broiler pan.

The steaming cups were added and the assembly was placed into the mini at 500 F with a ¼ C splash of water into the bottom of the oven as the door was closed.  After 2 minutes, the temperature was turned down to 475 F for an additional 6 minutes of steam.  After 8 minutes of steam the cups were removed and the temperature turned down to 425 F, convection this time. After 8 more minutes, 16 total, that bagels were done and they were removed to the cooling rack.

Tzitzel grilled cheese sandwich with all the normal fixings on bagel shaping day.

These bagels browned up nicely and no difference could be detected between those that took a longer bath than others.  Small holes but they were very crispy with glass like crust  - just what we want.  The crumb was more open than we expected and it was also very soft, moist and chewy too – another plus.

How did those truffles get in there?

These are such awful nice bagels you forget they are 100% whole grain and healthy too.   They are our new favorite bagel and by far and away everything we are looking for in that elusive NY bagel.

We had them toasted with a schmear of CC and the dough ball was buttered and red raspberry jammed – delicious.  Can’t wait for Saturday’s smoked salmon dressing the top of these fine bagels – a topping we got for last Saturday and our 26th anniversary – but forgot it when I realized there wasn’t a decent bagel in the house.

Who took a bite out of that smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel?  Thank goodness the bacon, brie, butter, minneola marmalade and egg half is still untouched!  Had to wait for Saturday brunch to taste these bagels properly:-)

Formula

master baker at work even if you have seen it before.  The picture is a take on David Snyder's Pugliesi Caprioccio (sp?)and the video is Chad Robertson not baking with a DO :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5kKeKSfyOE

Happy baking

We haven’t made English Muffins for a while and wanted to up the whole grains and use YW for the leaven.   We used the 25% sifted out portion of our whole grain milling to feed the YW levain so this has the effect of being 4 times that amount being whole grain for calculations.  Thee grains milled were rye, whole wheat, spelt, farro and Kamut.

We did a 2 stage levain build that took 12 hours and then added it to the dough four and milk at 9 PM the night before - less the salt, sugar, baking soda and vinegar.  We mixed it with a spoon and left it on the counter overnight until 6 AM the next morning.

The rest of the ingredients were added the next morning and distributed thoroughly with 4 minutes of kneading.  We added the vingar to activate the baking soda since there was no SD acid to do so.  We rolled the dough out to a little less than ½” and cut out the muffins with a plastic glass.

The EM’s were places on parchment sprinkled with semolina, semolina was sprinkled on top of the EM’s and then they were covered with Plastic and allowed to proof for 45 minutes.

An electric fry pan was heated to 340 F and the EM’s were grilled on both sides for 5 minutes each side until brown and then they were moved to a cooling rack.  These came out well puffed up, with decent holes but no sour taste.  A perfect recipe match  for those who want a healthy, non sour, English muffin.  We liked them right out of the pan with butter and jam or toasted.

Oregon Red Raspberry Jam seemed to work OK.  Yummy!

Breakfast EM Sandwiches - toasted EM's with medium caramelized minneola marmalade, Apple wood smoked and maple cured bacon, a mushroom omelet with habanero jack cheese inside and Co-jack on the outside.  Surrounded with sliced peach, strawberries, red raspberries and sweet cantaloupe.

Formula