Lazy Loafer's blog

Happy today - I baked my biggest single batch for the pre-order customers, and everything actually worked out! It was 13 loaves of Rye Sourdough using Peter Reinhart's recipe from Crust and Crumb (with a few minor modifications). Over 10 kg of sticky rye dough and Max (the 30 quart Univex mixer) handled it without a whimper or a wobble, even at almost speed 2 for six minutes. The dough was strong and elastic and I was SO glad I didn't have to mix all that by hand. I hate dealing with dough that has a high rye flour content; it's so sticky!

This recipe also has a very high percentage of pre-fermented dough. First stage is a rye sponge using only rye flour, water and starter, then bread flour is added after the first stage is bubbly to form a firm starter. This ferments in turn and is then retarded in the fridge overnight. Next day I mixed the dough, let it sit for around 3 hours in the cooler basement (we're having a little heat wave here on the West coast) then shaped it, put it in baskets and bannetons, then into plastic bags to sit again at basement temperature for another 2.5 to 3 hours. Into the fridge for the night.

Next morning (today) I heated the oven with granite stones to 475F, popped the loaves onto peels, scored then into the oven. Five minutes at 475F (with steam), then down to 450F for another 30 minutes. The loaves had an internal temperature of around 210F when finished. I even managed to bake one loaf just for us, so I'll post a crumb photo maybe tomorrow when I slice into it. But so far, very happy with every stage of this one!

I had to use nearly every basket and banneton I own for this big batch! This is the dough after spending the night in the fridge.

Beautiful dough - flecks of nigella and caraway seeds

Loaded on the peels, ready to go in the oven.

Scored and ready!

Part of the first batch, cooling. I can only just fit six of these round loaves on the stones at one time. If I baked them in the iron pots I could have done eight at once but would still have had to do two bakings. I like this bread better on the stones (not sure why).

Here's one of the basket-risen loaves. The one at the top of the post was proofed in a banneton. I like the shape of the banneton loaf better and, of course, the flour markings from the canes makes it look nice too.

Stay tuned for crumb shots! Wish I could post aroma... :)

I cut into the big loaf (the one I reserved just for us) today, and had a slice with lunch. It is wonderful! Very happy with this batch, for sure.

I tried the Rye Porridge bread from Tartine 3 the other day. I like this bread a lot - it provides a very nice sour-ish rye flavour with the texture of a good wheat levain. Very moist crumb and the bread benefits from sitting for 24 hours before slicing it. I followed the recipe but did not add any nuts or nut oil as Robertson makes them optional and I don't particularly like nuts in my bread. I also changed the method. I was not having much success with Robertson's methods (room temperature bulk ferment with a long shaped proof in the fridge; always over-proofed). Instead I bulk fermented at room temperature for 4-5 hours, then in the fridge overnight. In the morning I shaped and proofed the dough in bannetons for a couple of hours, then baked them on stones rather than in the cast iron pots. Very happy with the results!

I'll definitely make this one again. Much nicer texture than many part-rye flour sourdoughs.

The perfect opportunity presented itself this week for me to make no-measure bread. We're staying in a timeshare for a week (Lake Okanagan Resort, for those of you in BC Canada), and I was getting itchy (not baking for a week?!), plus we needed fresh bread. I wanted some fairly plain bread, nothing fancy but with a good crust and creamy open crumb, and good flavour.

So, let's see what we have on hand - an oven, mixing bowls, roasting pan, one glass measuring cup and a set of measuring spoons. Off to the grocery store to buy supplies:

AP flour, whole wheat flour and salt. Oh, and a strip of yeast packets.

I considered using some of the nice craft beer we had purchased earlier, but that was for drinking :) so on a whim I made a poolish with some leftover vanilla rooibos tea, AP flour and a pinch of yeast. Let that sit for 4-5 hours till bubbly.

I dissolved the poolish in some water (just eyeballing it), then stirred in enough WW flour for a thick batter. AP flour to turn it into what looked like an acceptable "rough shaggy mass", then worked in another pinch or two of yeast.

After an hour (it was going to be 30 minutes, but I was engrossed in the end of a good book - "The Girl on the Train" and lost track of time), work in the salt. Looks good!

Couple of stretch & folds over the next hour or two to develop and strengthen the dough -

Then in the fridge for 4 - 5 hours. I would have left it overnight but we wanted the bread for breakfast and I wasn't going to get up that early on holiday! Around 6 PM I pre-shaped, then shaped the boule. The dough felt nice, fairly slack and satiny but with enough body to work with. It did have quite a few large bubbles that needed popping and deflated a fair bit on the shape. After shaping I popped it into a Pyrex bowl lined with a floured dish cloth, then put the whole thing into a plastic bag to proof for a couple of hours, poking it every now and then. Dough was strong and rose well.

Now comes the challenge - how to get a nice crust? I could have used the roasting pan for a steam tray, but decided to use the bottom of it as a baking tray and invert one of the Pyrex glass bowls over the top. Unfortunately, the oven spring was so good the dough filled the bowl after about 15 minutes! I needed to take the whole thing out of the oven and pry the bowl off the loaf, then put it back in to finish. Oh, original oven temperature was 475F, then down to 425F after five minutes for the rest of the bake. Total time was around 40 minutes (15 to 20 in the bowl, then another 20).

After baking, I was pretty happy with the 'sing' - the crust just crackled away merrily for about 5 minutes after taking it out of the oven! Really lovely crust, but no scoring (no good knife, plus jamming itself into the bowl negated any possible burst at the seams). Despite being distinctly bowl-shaped I was quite happy with it.

This morning we cut the loaf. It was excellent really - the crust was very crispy and the crumb moist and a bit gelatinized. Lovely flavour, though I must admit I had the first couple of slices with PBJ and then some more with cheese, so I probably missed any subtle flavour from the vanilla rooibos tea in the poolish. Maybe later. :)

All in all, I feel like a real baker now. Everything was by feel or 'eye', nothing measured or weighed and no taking of temperatures (just the old thump test). And it turned out very good!

I made Bag-End Levain for the bread shop yesterday. I did end up with one loaf left (it's in the freezer now) so if no one buys it I will slice it and post photos of the crumb (and comment on the taste). For now though, I'm happy the way it turned out. One never knows with dumping in whatever comes to hand!

This one had a blend of flours:

• about 50% bread flour
• about 30% a blend of whole spelt and sprouted spelt
• the rest a combination of 7-grain flour and whole coarse rye flour

and a porridge with cracked wheat, steel-cut oats, barley and black rice. Somewhere along the line I messed up my formula so not only was there about 80% water to flour, but the starter was 100% hydration and the porridge was wet (well, damp anyway), so the total hydration ended up pretty high!

After mixing in Max (the big mixer) for a bit, then stretching and folding a couple of times I was actually quite pleased with the reasonably firm dough structure, considering the hydration. Into the fridge for an overnight bulk ferment.

In the morning it shaped well into tight balls. I felt pretty good about it so after proofing for a couple of hours in lined baskets I even baked it on the stones (loaded with wooden peels) rather than in the cast iron pots. The loaves did spread pretty flat on the stones but had some spring and the burst to the crust was nice.

The baked loaves smelled very nice and would probably benefit from sitting for 24 hours before slicing, with the porridge content. Seemed nice and moist, and not too dense. I think I'll go fix my formula though - a little too hydrated for me!

Today I baked a couple loaves of the Overnight Whole Grain Sourdough from the Handbook recipe section. It certainly looks good, and smells divine! I'll cut it later (or tomorrow) to check the crumb, but happy so far! Bulk fermented overnight, then shaped and proofed for 2-3 hours in baskets. Onto peels, slashed and baked with steam on the granite slabs. The whole wheat starter smelled fairly sour and there's a good dollop of rye flour in the loaf so I'm interested to taste it!

Not a lot of oven spring but a decent burst at the scoring (and crispy looking ears!).

I'm having fun finding new, yummy add-ins for my standard Pain au Levain (see the Sage & Onion blog post for the formula). Today I made some loaves with roasted garlic, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes and a bit of chopped rosemary.

Last year's garlic is starting to sprout (and sadly, this year's won't be ready to harvest until July), so I'm using it up. The sun dried tomatoes were soaked in hot water for a few hours then chopped, and the rosemary was fresh out of the garden.

Lovely dough, as always, after a few stretch & folds:

These loaves were baked in the Italian bread pans on granite stones, with steam added to a pan on the lower shelf. The scoring burst nicely with good ears, leaving a crunchy crust singing softly as it cooled.

Unfortunately my customers snapped them all up so I don't have a crumb shot, but this formula always yields an open, creamy, chewy crumb. I've asked them to send me email feedback so I know how it tastes!

I'm having a bread-tasting open house on Sunday. This year the theme is "Fruits and Flours"; fitting as it is 'spring' here in beautiful Victoria. The "flours" part of that consists of a variety of breads using combinations of bread flour with whole wheat, whole rye and whole spelt, and/or wheat germ or wheat bran. Methods vary from same day mix and bake (with a starter or pre-ferment made the night before) to bulk retard, shape, rest, bake to bulk ferment with an overnight proof in bannetons. Some are made with dry yeast, some with levain and some with a combination of both.

I'm doing several of the recipes from FWSY plus a couple other ones, so folks can try them side by side and taste the difference the change of ratio (flours) makes as well as differences between various techniques. I'll post photos of the crumbs on Sunday (all the loaves are going in the freezer for now so I can get ready without being up all night Saturday).

The loaf at the top of the post is a multi-grain levain with bread flour, whole wheat flour, whole spelt flour and whole rye flour. A nice bold bake, this one!

This next one is Forkish's Field Blend #2, with mostly bread flour with a smaller amount of whole wheat and whole rye. This is mostly levain with a tiny bit of dry yeast. It's proofed in baskets overnight and baked cold, in the cast iron pots. I was surprised it didn't burst at all, even though I put it seam side up. Very wet dough.

This morning I baked the 75% Whole Wheat, another hybrid with 75% whole wheat and 25% bread flour. Again, this was proofed overnight and baked cold. I tried to score one of the loaves but the dough was very slack. Again, no burst in the iron pots which quite surprised me as the Country Blonde and Country Brown I baked previously burst beautifully.

I also baked the Harvest bread from FWSY - this is an 80/20 blend of bread flour and whole wheat flour, with added wheat germ and wheat bran. It's made with an overnight poolish, then the dough is mixed, rested, shaped, proofed and baked the next day. I didn't take a picture of this one (too busy!), but it will be in the taste test.

Many slightly different breads - it will be interesting to see the subtle differences (or not!).

And here are crumb shots of some of the breads on bread tasting day -

One of the highest rated was Forkish's Harvest bread; the one I didn't get a picture of. But I'm baking that for customers tomorrow and will post a couple of shots then.

This morning I baked Ken Forkish's 40% Whole Wheat Overnight bread in loaf pans, just to try it out. I did this for a couple of reasons - it's a great bread for market because you can bake it right out of the fridge in the morning without warming it, and the oven heats up to 475 much more quickly without the stones or iron pots in it. So I can bake for an early market without getting up at a stupid time of day!

I haven't sliced it yet (it's for the shop), but here is a shot of the crumb of the same bread baked in iron pots.

Well, I am excited. For the first time I created a recipe from scratch, not from a published recipe or modified from anyone else's recipe. I created it in a spreadsheet based on my own experience gained over the last year of intensive baking (knowledge of hydration, percentages, flour performance, etc.) and then went ahead and mixed. I only made one small change during mixing and the whole thing was a great success!

So here it is - The Lazy Loafer's Barley Apple bread:

Starter:

• Bread flour - 25 g (50%)
• Whole wheat flour - 25g (50%)
• Apple cider - 40g (80%)
• Kombucha - 10g (20%)
• Active dry yeast - about 1/8th tsp

Dough:

• Bread flour - 325g (81%)
• Barley flour - 75g (19%)
• Barley - 50g (13%)
• Apple cider - 150g (38%)
• Water - 270g (68%)
• Dried apples, chopped - 100g (25%)
• Honey - 30g (8%)
• Yeast - about 1/8th tsp per loaf
• Salt - 9g (2%)
• Starter - 100g (25%)

Method:

Prepare starter. Let ripen at room temperature overnight or until active and bubbly. Add barley and chopped apples to warm cider. Let sit overnight.

Mix starter, water, yeast and honey to soften starter. Add the flours; mix until well-blended and shaggy. Let rest (autolyze) for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, add salt and soaked mix. Mix (by hand or stand mixer) until ingredients are incorporated and soft dough forms.

Put dough into a large, lightly oiled bowl. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Stretch and fold. Let rest for 15 minutes, then repeat 2 more times. After last stretch & fold, let dough rise at room temperature for about another hour, then put in the fridge for at least 6 hours or overnight.

Remove the dough from the fridge 1.5 to 2 hours before baking time. Shape & rise. Preheat oven with stones or iron pots to 475 degrees. Bake with steam – 5 minutes at 475, 15 min. at 425, turn and bake another 20 min. until internal temperature of 190 at least. Or in iron pots – 25 min. with lid on; another 20 with lid off.

I baked it last night, and cut a couple of slices this morning, having one with butter and the other one toasted, also just with butter. It has a lovely mild sweet taste. I was impressed how the apple cider aroma permeated the dough during all stages and came through in the final bread as well. Some of the apple bits and barley grains on the surface of the loaves were a bit crunchy but did not seem to detract from the flavour. Definitely a keeper!

I baked my Rye sourdough in the iron pots the other day for the first time. I've been using Ken Forkish's method of forming the boules, proofing them seam-side down then baking them seam-side up, letting them bloom naturally. However, when I did this batch I mistakenly put on in the pot smooth-side up. The difference is amazing! No bloom on the mistaken one, though it did split a bit on one side. The others all rose higher and are much more attractive.

Here is the same bread baked on stones, with regular scoring before baking:

Here is the one baked seam-side up in the pot, with the natural bloom:

And here is the poor little smooth ball!

 Still good bread, but appearance is so much part of the goodness, no? :)