dabrownman's blog

I took 60 g of rye berries and soaked them for 5 hours in water.  Then, taking a metal sheet tray, I moistened a paper towel and placed it on the tray and spread the berries over the paper towel.  I then took two paper towels, moistened them, placed them over the berries, covered the sheet pan with plastic wrap and covered the whole shebang with a kitchen towel.. Every day I would move the berries around and spray the top of the paper towels a little water to keep them moist - not wet.  After 96 hours from start to finish the berries were ready to dry and looked like this.

The tray looked like this.

I then dried the berries in my table top Cuisinart convection oven.  The berries were stirred and the pan was rotated 18o degrees every 15 minutes.  I used a drying schedule of 30 minutes each at 175 F (convection), 225 F, 275 F and then 20 minutes at 325 F and they were done. Here are pictures at the end of each time and temperature.

175 F

225 F

275 F

325 F

After grinding the original 60 g of berries, it made 32 G of Red Rye Malt Powder.  The powder looked like this.

My daughter has a sorority sister in from CA staying with us this weekend and I wanted to make something she and my daughter  probably have never been fortunate to taste before.  This weeks ITJB bake is Babka so I thought I would give it a try - with a few twists and not just twisting the dough - which I also did.  This babka leans Polish but besides being leavened with minneola / apple yeast water,  in place of a coiled loaf - I used a Bundt pan.  In place of cake crumbs, I used a almond, vanilla, granola streusel.   I also added bourbon rehydrated dried fruits (apricots, cranberries, raisins), cocoa powder and chocolate chips to the filling.   Then I put a powdered sugar / vanilla drizzled glaze on top to finish it and anyone who eats it,  off.  This is a very flavorful breakfast bread that the yeast water really helps in its soft crumb and browning.  It is not as sweet as cinnamon rolls and it is twice a sophisticated.  We have a new breakfast favorite and special treat in  DaBrownman's house from now on.  It's just yummy! Recipe follows pix's.

Yeast Water,  Glazed, Spiced, Walnut, Bourbon Fruit, Chocolate Chip, Almond Granola Streusel Babka

 Dough Ingredients

1 T white sugar
1/6 C honey
1/4 stick butter (chopped in small pieces)
1/2 tsp salt
5/8 C scalded milk
1/3 C cold water
1 large egg beaten
2  C AP flour (If you use bread flour skip the vital gluten)

¾ C whole wheat pastry flour
1 T vital wheat gluten

200 g yeast water - entire levain build

 YW Levain Build

 Add 30 g flour to 30 g yeast water and mix well - let sit 4 hours.  Add 30 g flour and 30 g yeast water let sit 4 hours.  Add 60 g flour and 20 g yeast water and let sit 4 hours. It should be ready to go in 12 hours.

 Directions

 Put the first 5 ingredients into the mixer. Stir with a rubber spatula until the butter is incorporated.

Add the rest of the ingredients with the exception of salt. Mix with dough hook until well incorporated 1 minute and then let autolyse covered for 1 hour.  Spread salt onto top of dough and mix on KA 3 for 8 minutes until window pane is achieved.  Move to a covered oiled bowl.  Let rest for 15 minutes then do 4 S &F’s on a floured surface.   Place back in a covered oiled bowl and let rest 15 minutes. Do 4 S & F’s on a floured surface and return to covered oiled bowl. Let rest 30 minutes.  While dough rests make the filling and streusel.

Spray bundt pan with non stick cooking spray and set aside.

 After dough has rested 30 minutes after last S&F roll out dough on a floured surface to a12”x20”x 3/8”.  Brush top with softened butter and sprinkle filling over the top.  Roll up dough jelly roll style from the long side and pinch seams together to make sure they don’t come apart.  Twist the roll like you would to wring out a wash cloth making the roll into a twist.  The roll will get longer and double in length to nearly4’as you do this.

 Place 2/3 rds of the streusel mix into the bottom of the bundt pan.  Place twisted dough into the sprayed bundt pan.  It should go around the bundt pan twice to end up with an even top.  Cover the top with the remaining streusel.  Let rise in pan, covered in plastic wrap for 1 hour.  Place in refrigerator over night.  It will rise about 20% overnight.

Take out of the fridge 2 hours before you bake.  Preheat oven to325 Fand bake babka for 40 – 45 minutes until golden brown.  Remove from bundt pan and drizzle with a glaze of ½ C powdered sugar, 2 tsp milk and ½ tsp vanilla.  Let cool slightly and serve warm – Yummy!

 Filling Ingredients

3/8 C packed brown sugar
1/4 C flour
1 T pumpkin pie spice (ginger, allspice, cinnamon, cloves)

1/2 C chopped walnuts

½ C dried fruit (cranberry, raisin, sultanas, apricot) reconstituted in bourbon.

1 T cocoa powder

1/3 C chocolate chips

¼ C butter softened to brush on rolled out dough before filling is sprinkled over it.

 Directions

 Mix dry ingredients together. Keep butter and reconstituted bourbon fruit separate from the dry.  Place in refrigerator until needed.

 Streusel

 1/2 C almond vanilla granola - crushed

¼ C flour

¼ C brown sugar

¼ C butter

1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

pinch salt

 Cut butter into other ingredients with finger tips and place in refrigerator until needed

 Alternate – no bundt pan

Instead of using a pan, on a piece of parchment paper, coil the dough around like a pinwheel creating a super large cinnamon roll, tucking the loose end of the dough under so it doesn't unravel. Brush dough very well with melted butter to prevent a skin from forming, cover with streusel and let dough rest for 10 minutes.

 Bake at 325° F for 40 minutes on a stone until the Babka is golden brown.

.Make a glaze out of powdered sugar, milk and a little vanilla. Drizzle this over the Babka and let it cool slightly.  Serve warm.  Yummy!

My daughter gave me her old Nikon and I figured out how to use it today. It has a photo setting called 'Food' that lets you take do some kind of macro. It also has a close up setting too. 12 MP, wide angle and image stabilization with a decent auto focus. Very cool.

For St Paddy's day I decided to not do a croissant bread or one shaped into an Irish Harp but one that was sort of shaped into a soccer ball (the national sport of Ireland by far) with alternating green and a white-ish patches.  Plus it had to have a bottle of Guinness as well  along with 10% WW and Rye for a well rounded flavor.  I won't have crumb shots till tomorrow but the crust turned out a deep brown with cracks, just like the last DO SD bread managed to exhibit.  The spring was about 3" or about 75%.  It started 1" blow the rim of the DO when it went in the oven and ended up 2 inches above it.  It is a fine looking loaf.  Here are some pix's and the recipe follows them.  Couldn't wait - here are some crumb shots.

St Paddy’s Day  Dutch Oven  Sourdough- Tartine Method

Yield: one 1065 g loaf.

Ingredients

Levain Build

125 g KA AP flour

50 g Whole wheat flour

50 g Whole rye flour

140 g water, cool (60 For so)

50 g active starter (75% hydration)

Final Dough (75% hydration, including levain)

30 g rye

225 g KA AP flour

225 g KA bread flour

340 g Guinness (1 -12 oz bottle)

50 g water

1 tsp barely malt syrup

10 g pink Himalayan sea salt (1.5%)

Directions

1. Levain : Make the final build 10-12 hours before the final mix.

2. Mix: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt. Mix just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary. Cover the bowl and let stand for an autolyse phase of 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and knead 8 minutes with dough hook on KA .

3. The dough should have a medium consistency and pass window pane. Divide in half and place ½ in an oiled bowl and cover.  Add green food coloring (about ½ tsp) to the remaining half and mix with dough hook on speed 3 until incorporated.  Move green dough to an oiled bowl and cover.

3. Ferment with S&F: 3 hours. Stretch and fold each dough in the bowl 4 strokes at 15 minute intervals 3 times. Stretch and fold again, 4 strokes, at the one hour mark folding each dough into a ball in lightly oiled bowl. Do 1 S &F two more times at 90 and 120 minutes. Form each dough ball into 8 smaller balls (about 75 g each) being sure to stretch the skin tight.  Arrange balls in DO (8” w x 4” tall) alternating colors using 7 balls on the bottom layer and 7 balls on the next layer making sure to alternate colors vertically too.  There will be 6 balls in a perimeter circle and1 inthe middle for each layer.  Place the remaining 2 balls on top near the center.  Wet palm of hand and press top of dough assembly flat.  Cover and let rise for 1 hour until the dough has risen 50%.

4. Retard for 8-20 hours in the refrigerator, depending on how much time you have and sour your taste.

5. Take DO out of refrigerator let it come to room temperature about 1 ½ hours

6. Ready to bake when poke test dictates.

7. Pre-heat: oven to 500 with steam apparatus in place - 45 minutes minimum. I use a loaf pan half full of water and a dry 12”cast iron skillet that go in the bottom rack of the oven at the beginning of pre heat and the stone on the rack above.

8. Bake: Do not slash loaf.  Place DO in a 500 F degree oven on the stone for 15 minutes.  Remove cover, turn down oven to 450 F and throw 1 cup of water in the iron skillet for additional steaming.  Bake an additional 10 minutes.   Turn down oven temperature to 425 F (convection this time) and remove steaming apparatus.  Also remove loaf from DO and place on the stone.  Bake about 30 minutes more, turning loaf every 8 minutes for browning evenness as necessary. When done (205 F internal temp), leave loaf on stone with oven door ajar, oven off for 12 minutes. Move to cooling rack until loaf is room temperature.

Here is an everyday Tartine method DO sourdough with 30% rye, WW, bulgar and farro in the levine, boilded soaker and dough.

This loaf was only retarded 4 hours.  The cold DO was placed in a 500 F oven.   The spring was about 75% in the DO after 20 minutes c0vered.  The bread was then baked at 425 F convection oven uncovered for 10 minutes and then the bread was taken out of the DO and placed on the stone and baked until the internal temperature was 205 F.  It was then left in the off oven with the door ajar for 12 minutes to further crisp the crust.  The crust was dark and crisp. The crumb came out light, airy, soft moist and moderately open with the cracked berries coming through.  The taste is its best quality with a medium sour note.  This will make a nice sandwich loaf.  Recipe follows Pix's

Everyday Rustic Country Sourdough

Yield: one 850 g Loaf

Ingredients

Levain Build

50 g KA AP flour

25 g Whole wheat flour

25 g Whole rye flour

75 g water, cool (60 For so)

25 g active starter (100% hydration)

Boiled Soaker

10 g rye berries cracked

10 g WW berries cracked

10 g farro

10 g bulgar

Final Dough (77% hydration, including levain excluding the soaker)

25 g rye

25 g whole wheat

15 g bulgar

15 g farro

170 g KA AP flour

170 g KA bread flour

325 g warm water (80 For so)

1 tsp barely malt syrup

8 gpink Himalayan sea salt (1.5%)

Boil and Soak – soaker ingredients in twice as much water by volume. Bring to a boil and turn off heat and let soak until cool.

Directions

1. Levain : Make the final build 10-12 hours before the final mix.

2. Mix: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt or the soaker. Mix just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary. Cover the bowl and let stand for an autolyse phase of 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and knead 8 minutes with dough hook on KA 3. The dough should have a medium consistency. Add the scalded and caramelized berries and mix on KA 3 for 1 minute

3. Ferment with S&F: 2 hours. Stretch and fold the dough in the bowl 4 strokes at  15 minute intervals for  1 hour. Stretch and fold again, 4 strokes, at the one hour mark folding it into a ball in lightly oiled bowl. Do 1 S &F two more times at 90 and 120 minutes. Form into ball stretching the skin tight and place in floured benetton or shape into a batard leave to ferment 1-2 more hours until the dough is at least 75% larger than when you started the ferment. Remove from bennetton and bake as below.

If doing DO Tartine method form into ball and place in DO for final rise and bake as below.

4. If retarding: do 1 S&F in the lightly oiled bowl forming the dough into a ball again. Refrigerate 8-20 hours, depending on how much time you have and sour your taste.

5. Take dough out of refrigerator and let it come to room temperature about 1 ½ hours.  Pre-shape, then shape into boules or batards 20 minutes later. OR, if doing Tartine method, form into ball and place into cast iron DO for final proof.  Bake as below.

6. Proof: Approximately 1.5 to 2.5 hours at 82 F. Ready when poke test dictates.

7. Pre-heat: oven to 500 with steam apparatus in place - 45 minutes minimum. I use a loaf pan half full of water and a dry 12”cast iron skillet that go in the bottom rack of the oven at the beginning of pre heat and the stone on the rack above. When the loaf goes in,  throw 1 cup of boiling water into the cast iron skillet right after loading the bread on the stone.

8. Bake: Do not slash loaf. Bake seam side up on stone at500 Ffor 5 minutes, turn down temperature to 450 F and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove steaming apparatus after 15 minutes. Turn down oven to425 Fconvection now and bake 15 minutes more, turning loaf every 5 minutes for browning evenness as necessary. When done (205 F internal temp), leave loaf on stone with oven door ajar, oven off for 10 minutes. Move to cooling rack until loaf is room temperature.

If doing DO, Bake at 20 minutes at500 Fremove lid and turn down oven to 425 F convection and bake for 10 minutes.  Remove from DO and place on stone to bake until loaf is205 Fon the inside.  Turn off oven, keep door ajar and let loaf rest on the stone for 12 minutes before removing to cooling rack.

Sticking strictly to the Jewish bialy recipe by using onions, I strayed slightly from the rest of the traditional recipe and mixed it up into a Mexican / Japanese fusion sort of breakfast bread pizza thing that anyone would think is completely natural, if a little strange and weird, for the most part.  OK it is real strange and weird!

I also combined a nearly real Polish and a mostly fictitious Russian version of the bread dough with the standard Eastern European one with various modifications to it too.  But we won’t talk about that for fear that too much change may not be good for anyone in the long run.    These are just delicious.  The garlic chives comes through in the crumb and taste.  Onions and chorizo are very tasty with some onions and chorizo going crisp on top.  The spring was 100% - explosive, like yeast water breads tend to do.  The crumb was as good as one could expect for openness, soft, moist and chewy.  The crust was crispy but became chewy as it cooled.   Recipe follows the pictures.

Yeast Water, Rye, WW, Garlic Chive, Onion, Cheese and Chorizo Bialy’s

Levain Build

20 g KA AP flour

20 g milled Rye berries

25 g milled WW berries

65 g yeast water

Grind berries and combine with the yeast water and let sit on counter overnight – 12 hours.  Then add :

50 g KA AP flour

25 g milled rye berries

30 g milled WW berries

40 g yeast water

50 g water

Let sit for 4 – 6 hours until doubled, then add:

Dough

125 g KA unbleached bread flour

10 g instant potato flakes

65 g water

1 tsp each of molasses and barley malt syrup

1 T softened butter

1 T chopped fine garlic chives

5 g salt

Place all except salt and garlic chives into mixer bowl and knead with dough hook for 5 minutes and then cover and let sit  for 60 minutes.  Add salt and knead for 2 minutes.

Do 5 stretch and folds on a floured work surface where you incorporate the garlic chives.  Move to an oiled bowl and bulk ferment at 80 F for 1 hour - do 5 stretch and folds on a floured counter at 30 minutes and return to oiled bowl.  At 60 minutes divide into 6 balls and flatten into a 4-5 “ disk that is about  1/2” thick on parchment lined cookie sheet .  Place in a tall kitchen plastic trash can liner and let proof at 80 F for 1 hour.

Sauté 1/4 pound of home made Mexican chorizo in 1 tsp of olive oil until it just starts to caramelize.  Remove from pan and add 1 tsp of olive oil to the pan and sauté 1 medium red onion until caramelized.  Mix chorizo and onion together in a bowl.

Use back of wetted spoon to depress the middle of the dough disk to ¼” thick and dock the depression with a fork to persuade it not to rise.  Place 1 -2 T of onion and chorizo mix in the depression and cover with 2  cubes of pepper jack cheese.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and bake for 10 minutes until brown. Remove the parchment at the 5 minute mark.  Move to wire rack to cool.

Baked off the 20 hour retarded boule that was identical in every way to the non retarded one  baked yesterday.  The crust on this bread is even better than the non retarded one.  But the crumb is more airy on the non retarded one.  The taste is better on the retarded boule but the texture is better on the non retarded one.  I have to call this a draw.  Both have their strong points and both are very good SD breads.  It was a nice experiment to complete and not what was expected.  I though that the retarded loaf would win hands down but this was not the case.  Here are some pix's.

A nice grilled cheese w/ beer can chicken sandwich for lunch

I wanted to create a rustic rye, whole wheat, SD bread that was based on David Snyder's  technique for Pugliesi Capriccioso where it is baked upside down and no slashing is involved - since my slashing is primitive to say the least.  I also wanted to incorporate some rye, whole wheat and berries of each as as a boiled soaker to improve the taste, sour and texture of the SD bread while keeping the crumb open, soft and specked with brown bits.   The crust I wanted crunchy right out of the oven and turning to chewy as it cools and ages over 24 hours.  Well this it and it is named after the great Southwest of America - Rustic Southwest Sourdough Bread.   I am trying this with and without overnight retard to see which one I like better.  These pictures are from the none retarded bread that actually stuck to the benetton causing it's odd scar.  Wish I could do that every time.  This loaf also might have over proofed since I didn't get the oven heated in time to bake the bread when it was ready. It tastes terrific anyway.   The recipe follows the Pix's

Pain Rustique au Levain du Sud-ouest

 Yield: Two 850 g Loaves

Ingredients

Levain Build

50 g KA AP flour

50 g Whole wheat flour

50 g Whole rye flour

150 g water, cool (60 For so)

25 g active starter (100% hydration)

Boiled Soaker

25 g rye berries cracked

25 g WW berries cracked

25 g 6 grain cereal

Final Dough  (77% hydration, including levain excluding the soaker)

600 g KA AP flour

300 g KA bread flour

645 g warm water (80 For so)

14 g pink Himalayan sea salt (1.5%)

325 g  Levain

Boil and Soak – soaker ingredients in twice as much water by volume.  Bring to a boil and turn off heat and let soak overnight covered with plastic wrap.  Drain any excess liquid off in the morning.

Directions

1. Levain : Make the final build 10-12 hours before the final mix.

2. Mix: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt or the soaker. Mix just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary. Cover the bowl and let stand for an autolyse phase of 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and knead 8 minutes with dough hook on KA 3. The dough should have a medium consistency. Add the scalded and caramelized berries and mix on KA 3 for 1 minute

3. Ferment with S&F: 2 hours. Stretch and fold the dough in the bowl 5 strokes at the 30minute mark. Stretch and fold again, 5 strokes, at the one hour mark folding it into a ball in lightly oiled bowl. Do 1 S &F two more times at 90 and 120 minutes.  Divide dough in two.  Form into ball stretching the skin tight and place in floured benetton or shape into batard leave to ferment 1-2 more hours until the dough is at least 75% larger than when you started the ferment.  Remove from benneton and bake as below.

4. If retarding: do 1 S&F in the lightly oiled bowl forming the dough into a ball again. Refrigerate 8-20 hours, depending on how much time you have and sour your taste.

5. Divide and Shape: take dough out of refrigerator and let it come to room temperature about 1 ½ hours. Divide the dough into what 2 pieces and pre-shape, then shape into boules or batards 20 minutes later.

6. Proof: Approximately 1.5 to 2.5 hours a t82 F. Ready when poke test dictates.

7. Pre-heat: oven to 500 with steam apparatus in place - 45 minutes minimum. I use a loaf pan half full of water and a dry12”cast iron skillet that go in the bottom rack of the oven at the beginning of pre heat and the stone on the rack above. When the loaves go in, I throw 1 cup of boiling water into the cast iron skillet right after loading the bread on the stone.

8. Bake: Do not slash loaves. Bake seam side up on stone at 500 F for 5 minutes, turn down temperature to 450 and bake for another 10 minutes. Remove steaming apparatus after 15 minutes. Turn down oven to 425 F convetion  now and bake 15 minutes more, turning loaf every 5 minutes for browning evenness as necessary. When done (205 F internal temp), leave loaves on stone with oven door ajar, oven off for 10 minutes. Move to cooling rack until loaf is room temperature.

Isand66 will love my 3 backpacking alcohol stoves that I made from beer cans.  They weigh virtually nothing and will each boil 2 cups of water in 6 minutes.  Then there is this weeks benetton find for 50 cents this time.  Next would e a very nice lunch with YW chai seed orange turmeric bread.  Today's new batch if aranchello.  Part of this weeks batch of marmalade, strawberry ginger apple jam and caramelized minneola marmalade.  Two mini BBQ / smokers made from tin cans and tea tins.  A nice  vegetarian lunch of failed hamburger buns made originally as a kaiser roll (that were too soft and disintegrated as hamburger buns) that were resurrected as a grilled pepperjack cheese sandwich, bean dip, chips, salad and little melon.  Even rejected failures can usually be used for something else like croutons, altus, bread crumbs.....

How do you like the pictures my newer, if still old, Sony webbie Video camera takes?

that I hope to eventually use to make pizza.  It's like a mini wood fired oven.  It's built out of huge hominy can and a 40-56 oz can of beans. It's the best BBQ and smoker I have ever owned and it was nearly free! I'm pretty sure I could get a small 12" stone for it and turn it into a pizza oven fairly easily. It works on a small pile of 1/4" twigs and 4 charcoal briquettes. Amazing heat from that beast.  Throw some wood chips on top you have a smoker that makes the best meat you have ever had.  I can see a Pizza oven too .......

MAde a very nice apple smoked chicken breast for dinner.  Just yummy, especially with the YW orange turmeric bread!