I was inspired by Eric's medieval bread and wanted to try something different with Hamelman's oatbread. I ended up with a medieval bread/Pain de Beaucaire hybrid... I first shaped two baguettes of the oatbread dough. The two vertical sides of the baguettes were brushed with water, and the outer edge dipped in rolled oats. The inner side was partly sprinkled with coarse rye flour, and the baguettes shaped as below:

The idea was to sprinkle coarse flour on the inner side to avoid the dough proofing/baking together. Also, avoid sprinkling flour on the very ends: You want some wet dough on each side so you can splice them together in the end.

Here's the baked loaves/baguettes:

Lots of flavourful crust, and it's fun to try something different :)

Everyone's got a little Holden Caulfield in them, I presume?

I thought I should put up some of the recent loaves I've baked, and first are two 40% rye boules that are loosely based on Hamelman's flaxseed rye with old bread soaker. David, Eric and myself loved the original recipe, and David put up a detailed breakdown of it on his blog (by the way, reading through David's blog entry again, I believe that the blog entry should list fresh yeast, not instant). This time, I wanted to combine the complex flavour of the stale bread soaker and acidity of the sourdough with something sweet. I have a hopeless, irrepairable sweet tooth, so that's why!

The sweetness I had in mind was something along the lines of the classic Borodinsky rye. I've made some Borodinskies before, and I've found a combination of coriander seeds, honey and barley malt extract to be truly divine. So, I started with Hamelman's recipe for the flaxseed rye, and a) omitted the flax altogether, and b) reduced the overall hydration to 70%. Then, c) added 1% coarsely crushed coriander seeds, and d) 3% honey and 3% barley malt extract. I also omitted the (optional) seed coating mentioned in Hamelman's formula.

I shaped two 1kg boules, and let one proof as usual in a brotform, and let the other proof seam side down. Due to honey and barley malt extract, I watched the dough carefully during final proof, and found that 45 - 50 mins. was sufficient for my dough. I also found that the crust quickly gained colour during the bake (also due to honey and the malt extract), so I reduced the temperature a bit quicker than usual. I ended up with 250dC the first 10 mins. (with steam) and then gradually lowered the temperature towards 205dC for 35 mins. more. Total baking time approx. 45 mins. I wanted a dark, thick crust, a deep, nutty brown colour, that will enhance the overall aroma of the loaves. So if you want to try it, don't shy away from giving it a full bake, but do watch it. You want nutty brown, not charcoal black :)

A friend of mine requested a Vollkornbrot, so I baked him the one from "Bread", shown on below on the right. No crumb shot unfortunately... but he said it satisfied his Vollkorn cravings, so I take that as a good sign. Below on the left is Hamelman's sourdough rye with raisins and walnuts. Sweet tooth again, I know...

I shaped it as a "viverais": This shape is shown in Suas' ABAP, and on p. 13 in this .pdf. You shape it into a batard and (yes, this step had me hesitating a few seconds - mangling that pretty batard...) divide it in seven pieces by cutting two X's in the dough. Pretty harsh treatment, I agree, but the loaf did recover some during final proof, and the separated pieces baked together nicely in the oven. It produced an appealing, rustic look, I think!

PS: A slice of this is a perfect match for goat cheese.

I remember rustic bread from "Bread" being a staple in my kitchen before I got started with levains and sourdough breads. It's a clean, wholesome bread, and it's over a year since I'd made his rustic bread, so the time was ripe for another attempt.

I wanted to try some different shapes as well, so I divided the dough in two, both weighing 750 gr. each. One was shaped as an ordinary batard, and the other piece was cut into smaller dough chunks, and shaped into mini-batards and the tabatiere and pain d'Aix shapes shown in ABAP.

Below are two shots of the bakes: Front left are some mini-batards rolled in flax, sesame and oat bran. To the right, at the very back is the tabatiere, and in front of that, the pain d'Aix shape. Fun to make, and nice to mix things up a bit :)

I had certainly forgotten how nice this formula is. I think it more or less equals many pain au levain recipes - absolutely delicious with a thin layer of honey and a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

Jan Hedh, the Swedish bread, pastry and chocolate master, has recently put out his second bread book; the new one is titled "Bröd & kaffebröd" ("Bread and pastries"). I've just picked it up, and baked the first loaf from that book this weekend. It's an inspiring book, written in a style similar to his first bread book, but this one's filled with even more gorgeous photos. Hedh is passionate about bread, and provides detailed recipes for several European style hearth loaves and for breakfast pastries (mostly croissant, Danish and sweet dough oriented stuff).

I decided to try his "country bread from Bayern" first, mostly because of the lovely photo of it in his book :) Hedh doesn't provide any bakers %, so I used a spreadsheet to get the figures. I decided to adjust the recipe a bit (it looked awfully dry, and slightly heavy on caraway seeds), so I ended up with something like: 50% whole spelt flour, 20% whole rye, 30% AP flour. The original hydration was at approx. 62%, so I increased that to 70%. It could've been even higher, I think. I used approx. 1% caraway seeds, and put the whole rye flour in a rye sourdough. I baked it this morning together with some croissants and other pastries shaped from the croissant dough:

I think the loaf turned out alright - it rose nicely in the oven, and smelled deliciously of caraway and earthy wheat/spelt. The flavour is similar to that of a mostly whole-wheat bread, but the rye and caraway makes it a bit more exciting. Filling and delicious with hard cheese!

The mandatory crumbshot (I know people get upset if there's no shot of the crumb, so here you go!) reveals a pretty dense crumb, so next time I'll increase the hydration further and perhaps see what a poolish+rye sourdough can do to loosen it up a bit.

Here are some of the breads baked over the last couple of weeks:

First is a pain au levain with whole-wheat (p. 160 in "Bread"):

The original formula is great and it's a very nice dough for practicing folding, shaping and different slashes. It's a pleasure to see the cuts open up and bloom during oven spring, and the subtle flavour works well with just about anything. One of my all-time favourite loaves that I keep making often!

Below is a photo of a levain stuffed with dark raisins:

The loaf is based on the formula for "Golden Raisin Bread" in Hamelman's book (p. 172), but I made this without commercial yeast, and with 25% prefermented flour from the levain instead. I found a 2hr. bulk ferment and an overnight retardation to work well, and I soaked the raisins in water prior to mixing, so they should not rob moisture from the dough. I like the addition of rolled oats in the formula, which works great with the raisins.

Finally, yesterday I made a flax seed rye with an old bread soaker (click here for Hamelman's recipe). It's a 40% whole-rye loaf, with a healthy dose of flax seeds. I omitted the commercial yeast here as well, and instead lengthened the final proof to 1 hr 45 mins. I would also like to add that my sourdough was fully ripe after approx. 12 hrs, so I did not let it go the full 16 hrs as suggested in the formula. I also had to add some water to get the desired degree of stickiness - I'm guessing an 82 - 83% overall hydration is right for my flour. After final shaping, the loaf was rolled in a mix of sesame, flax and caraway seeds, and placed with the seam side down (i.e. seed side up) in a brotform. Below is a photo of just after final shape (left) and just prior to baking (right):

Here's the loaf just after pulling it from the oven - once again baked with the seam side up (seeded side down):

... and here's the crumb:

I think it's a very nice formula that produces a loaf with a deep flavour and a slight sour tang. It keeps for days due to the high hydration, and is a solid every-day sort of bread. Recommended!

Finally, two fruit desserts this week: A galette (using cream cheese pie dough) with nectarines and blueberries:

... and a charlotte with raspberry bavarian cream (and the remaining blueberries):

The cover of "Bread" and plate 21 "Assorted Rye Breads from Chapter 6" depict a delicious, rustic looking rye bread that's not slashed. I love the look of this dark, "lava rock" with deep fissures running in random lines along the top of the bread. I wanted to bake a loaf with similar cracks on top, so I prepared the dough for my favourite 70% rye. I'm using medium rye flour, and pre-ferment half of the rye in a sourdough. The remaining 30% is AP flour. I do not put any commercial yeast in this one, so it's important that the rye sourdough is ripe before mixing the final dough. I try to keep this one pretty wet, and usually aim for a hydration around 75%. I mix it very gently in the mixer, approx. 3 mins. on 1st speed followed by 1.5 mins. to 2 mins. on 2nd speed. The dough has some strength to it, although it's more like a thick paste than a "proper" dough at this stage.

Without commercial yeast, I've found 1hr. bulk and 2 hr. final proof to work well for this dough. You know your sour best, however, so these times might be too long or too short for your culture. So: Poke before loading :)

To get the fissures on top, I did the final proof with the seam side down in the brotform. Here's the dough just after final shaping:

And here are two snaps of the final loaf after 60 mins. in the oven - first 15 mins @ 250dC then 45 mins at temperature gradually falling to 205dC.

I really like the way the loaf turned out. There's some rustic, unique look to it that I love. As I mentioned, this is probably my favourite rye formula as well - a very simple recipe that has a clean taste and a notable sour due to the longer proofing time, and a loaf that keeps very well with the relatively high hydration. It's a bit tricky to work with, but the crumb and flavour make it worth the extra effort.

Added Sep. 13th:

Craving more, yesterday I baked the sourdough rye with walnuts from "Bread". This is a 50% whole-rye flour recipe with a substantial amount of walnuts - the walnuts weigh in at 25% of the overall flour weight. I had some lovely chevre already in the fridge, so there was really no excuse not to bake the walnut rye. Five minutes prior to mixing, however, I realised that I was just slightly short on walnuts. I added some pine nuts to get the desired 25% weight. The nuts were lightly toasted, and I followed the procedure for the 70% rye loaf above: a) AP flour instead of high-gluten flour, b) made away with the commercial yeast and increased final proof to 2 hrs., and c) increased the overall hydration from 68% to 75%. Initially I thought 68% would be terribly dry for this kind of dough, so I aimed at 72% at first. Even that didn't cut it, so I gradually mixed in more water until I reached 75% hydration and the desired stickiness. Once again, baked seams side up:

The crumb was nice and tender, and the whole-rye flour provides a more notable rye taste than if medium rye would've been used.

The pain au levain with whole-wheat from "Bread" that I blogged about a few weeks ago, is quickly becoming one of my favourite levain breads. Here's one that I baked yesterday afternoon:

I'm always amazed by the fact that these levain breads only contain three ingredients: Flour, water and salt. It's fascinating how three so simple ingredients come together and, given enough time, produce delicious loaves. This loaf has a subtle and mild taste, and I usually eat it plain in order to fully enjoy the flavour.

In my last post, I wrote about a new rye starter that I made. The initial motivation to get a new one going, was to see whether there would be any significant difference in flavour compared to the stiff, white starter that I've had for about a year. The rye starter is incredibly active, and I've been keeping it on a 1:10:10 (starter:flour:water) diet, with feedings spaced roughly 12 hours apart. The resulting loaves taste pretty much like those leavened with the white starter, so I guess one of them will eventually be cut loose... We'll see. Anyways, below is a multigrain sourdough that I baked with the rye starter (no commercial yeast):

It's approx. 20% whole-rye (all from starter), 10% buckwheat and the rest bread flour. Multigrain soaker contains the usual suspects (i.e. flaxseeds, quinoa seeds, oat bran, rye chops, sunflower seeds). I gave the dough a 2 hr. bulk followed by proof overnight in the fridge.

I also baked some croissants over the weekend:

It's been a long time since I had a go at these, and I've definitely felt the cravings for buttery, flaky croissants for a while. I used the straight dough version from Suas' ABAP, and let the dough ferment 45 mins. at room tempertaure before I degassed and retarded the dough in the fridge overnight. Lamination (three single folds) the following morning, and makeup and final proof the following afternoon. A nice evening snack and splendid petit dejeuner the next morning :) They turned out alright, but rolling and shaping still need practice.

Finally, a humble carrot cake:

A very moist, soft carrot sponge and cream cheese filling made this an enjoyable dessert! Three pretty large, shredded carrots went into the sponge batter (baked in a 15 cm cake ring), but I think even more could go in there to give it a stronger flavour of carrots. The most enjoyable bit was actually making small, cute marzipan carrots :)

My trusted sourdough starter is a firm white one, that I've had for just under a year now. We got off to a shaky start, but it's become amazingly reliable and flexible. It seems to respond very quickly to feedings and has a great leavening capacity. My only minor complaint would be that it's very mild in flavour, and imparts only a slight tanginess to the loaves. So, as an experiment, I decided to start a new rye starter from scratch, and see if this would result in more sour breads. I had lots of rye flour on hand, and rye starters are said to be among the easiest to get going (in addition to e.g. spelt starters or rice starters). I used the recipe in "Bread": Equal weights of whole rye flour and water, mix and let sit 24 hrs. I went with 50 gr. each of flour and water:

After 24 hrs., keep 50 gr. of the original mix, and add 50 gr. each of flour and water. Let sit another 24 hrs., and then continue this regimen, but with 12 hr. intervals instead of 24.

Nothing much happened the first 24 hours, but on the second day I got hit pretty badly with leuconostoc. The mix had tripled in volume, looked dark brown with hints of green, it was very runny and smelled rather pungent. *yuck* Well, soldier on, I say. The activity dropped markedly during day 3, and the odour became a lot milder, and smelled more of yogurt than of the leuconostoc madness. Nothing much happened in volume until the end of day 4, when the mix all of a sudden started tripling again! Phew! The culture started to smell healthy, looked greyish in colour (as I expected it should), and had a fragile, but not runny consistency when ripe and ready for new feeding. Below is a photo taken sometime during day 5. You can see some small patches of rye flour on the top - I usually sprinkle rye flour over the mix after each feeding, so that it's easy to gauge the level of activity:

I followed Hamelman's directions, and kept feeding out day 6, and then two more days to ensure that things are stabilized and healthy.

Today I decided to try it out, and devised a simple multigrain loaf for it. This one's approx. 33% whole rye, the rest bread flour, with a soaker of oat bran, flax, sunflower seeds and rye chops. I used equal amounts water and yogurt in the final dough, and added a tiny spoon of honey for good measure. I didn't use any commerical yeast, but prefermented 25% of the flour (new rye starter). I went with a 2 hr. bulk ferment (fold after 1 hr.) and retarded in fridge for 8 hrs. It could probably have gone a bit further in the fridge for the final proof, but I got scared with a third rye in there. It kept up well, and rose remarkably during baking:

It was a lovely loaf, and I must admit, slightly tangier in taste than what I get with my firm white starter. A bit more sour, not overwhelmingly so, but pleasantly tangy. I think I'll keep both for the time being, and see how the new born develops in flavour as the weeks go on. In the meantime I need to come up with a name for it... I'm thinking about Aladdin, but it's far from settled yet.

To celebrate the new starter and nice tasting multigrain, I decided to have a go at a caramel cake from Friberg's second pastry book. It's a delicious concoction of a thin shortdough bottom, and two sponge cake layers sandwiching a rich caramel cream. Here I'm folding caramel sauce into the cream:

And below is the cake before icing. It looks pretty cool if you ask me: You make one almond sponge and one cocoa almond sponge. After they've cooled, you use a cookie cutter to cut out the middle of each sponge, and interchange the middle cut outs. You only use half of each sponge in this assembly, so the remaining sponge layers can be frozen. Lovely thick caramel cream in the middle:

The caramel cream is set with some gelatin, so after a few hours in the fridge, you're set to ice it. Cut the protruding shortdough bottom, then ice with whipped cream. Decorate with some chocolate shavings on top:

And here's the first slice:

The taste is absolute caramel heaven! I really like the unusual look given by the two sponges, and the shortdough bottom gives a nice constrasting crunch to the creamy rest of the cake.

I loved the deep wheaty taste of the whole-wheat levain that I posted about last time, and I feel the preferment itself (a wet whole-wheat preferment) added a tangy, earthy flavour to the loaf. It'll be interesting to experiment with different flours in future preferments, as it could be an easy way to "extract" more of the flavour and aroma characteristics of the flour that is used.

I baked another whole-wheat levain yesterday, but added toasted nuts and rum soaked prunes. For the loaf below, I used pine nuts and sunflower seeds, and let the toasted nuts soak in dark rum together with prunes overnight. I think this gave the nuts a soft, almost buttery mouthfeel. Other than that, the whole-wheat levain formula from "Bread" was followed, with a final proof in the fridge overnight. Here's the loaf:

The toasted nuts and sweetness from the prunes go very well with the slightly bitter flavour of whole-wheat. The combined weight of nuts and prunes is about 30% of the total flour weight.

OK, I know you're thinking that Tour de France is over and all that (so what if I'm not a sports freak??), but that didn't prevent me from making some Paris-Brest pastries over the weekend! I've made these once before, and I've had a craving for more ever since... Below is a photo of the unbaked (left) and baked (right) choux wheels:

I used the recipe for choux pastry from Suas' book, and both times I've used it, I've ended up adding more eggs than in the recipe in order to get the right consistency. Perhaps I'm cooking the paste a bit too long before adding eggs? Anyways, the more eggs the merrier, right? They piped nicely, and sprung up quite good in the oven.

So much about the choux - let's be honest: The choux wheel is merely a...*ehem*... vehicle for the filling, if you ask me. The real star of the show is the Crème Paris-Brest; the luxurious, artery-clogging cream that is sandwiched between two halves of choux.

May I trouble you with a bit of choux, Madame?

Finally, for a truly ship-sinking cookie, here's my take on Friberg's Florentina surprise. They're pretty elaborate as far as "cookies" are concerned, but if you happen to have some buttercream and shortdough in your freezer (I mean, who doesn't, right? ;), this is a great way to use it all up. The florentina surprise is a shortdough bottom layer, topped with hazelnut flavoured buttercream and a mound of rum flavoured ganache, dark coating chocolate and a thin florentina cookie on top. Below are photos of the florentina and shourtdough components (left) and shortdough with filling piped on top (right):

After the buttercream is set, the cookie is dipped in dark coating chocolate, and the florentina cookie is pressed on top:

The "surprise" part of the name comes from the rum flavoured ganache in the centre of the filling - it's a mouthwatering combination of flavours: Sandy shortdough, buttery hazelnut, crisp caramel-almond taste from the florentina and a great kick from the rum-spiked ganache. Ship-sinking stuff!

Hi all,

This is a brief follow-up to my last post about Hamelman's whole-wheat pain au levain. I was very pleased with the creamy, light crumb of the loaf and wondered how an increase in whole-wheat flour would affect it. To gauge things, I decided to bake the whole-wheat levain from the same book, thereby doubling the whole-grain flour content.

Some initial remarks: The pain au levain with whole-wheat contains 25% whole-grain flour, is made with a stiff white starter, an autolyse and a very brief initial mixing (1 - 2 mins.). Click here for the more complete write-up. The whole-wheat levain contains 50% whole-wheat flour, is made with a liquid whole-wheat starter, and does not call for any autolyse, but slightly longer initial mixing. Despite these differences, I figured that Hamelman probably have "optimized" the procedure for each loaf, so I closed my eyes to the slightly different dough preparations, and went with his formulas as they are in the book.

Considering the pain au levain is well consumed by now, we'll have to settle for a photo comparison. I tried to snap photos of the whole-wheat levain from the same angles as I did for the pain au levain (again, click here for those).

Here's the just baked whole-wheat levain:

It turned out pretty much identical to the pain au levain, with perhaps slightly darker crust colour and slightly less open grigne. That could be blamed on incompetent and different slashing, though. Again, notice that flourless "rim" along the bottom side of the grigne - once again I experienced a two-stage oven spring, like Steve noticed on the previous pain au levain.

Here's a crumb shot of the whole-wheat levain:

...and a straight comparison between pain au levain with whole wheat (left) and whole-wheat levain (right) below:

The crumb is slightly more open in the pain au levain, as you can see. From the top crust, you can also see how the pain au levain opened up a bit more during oven spring than the whole-wheat levain. Apart from that, they're like pretty identical twins to me ;) The flavour of the whole-wheat levain is a bit more intense, and the mouthfeel of the loaf is not as creamy as for the pain au levain. Given a blind test, it would be difficult to spot the difference!