ph_kosel's blog

I went on a shopping trip today here in Sacramento, visiting some bakeries I've never been to before and fetching esoteric flours I can't get at my neighborhood grocery.

Here's what I bought where, and what I thought of it:

1.  A baguette from Freeport Bakery on Freeport Blvd (Tasted like day old bread made with cake flour, weightless squishy stuff, didn't care for it at all!)

2.  A loaf of Deli Rye with caraway seeds from The Bread Store on J Street (A beautiful nearly spherical loaf, chewy and delicious, loved it!)

3.  A loaf of Vollkornbrot 100% rye with sunflower seeds from Grateful Bread Co. on Fair Oaks Blvd (A nice, very dense rectangular loaf, very chewy and delicious, loved it!)

4.  Dark Rye Flour from the bulk foods section of Winco Foods on Sheldon Road (I use this because it's the cheapest rye flour I've found in Sacramento where rye flour isn't found in most grocery stores.  The only problem is Winco's plastic bags tend to leak.)

5. Golden Temple brand Durum Atta Flour from the import section back in the "vegetables" aisle of Food Maxx on Florin Road (Haven't used it yet, 10 bucks for a 20-lb sack is a great price and it smells delicious!)

I also stopped at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op on Alhambra Blvd at S Street.  The only rye flour they had was dark rye and their price was a tad higher than Winco's.

I'll try to post pictures of the loaves I bought tomorrow.

Peter Reinhart calls for malt powder in several recipes in Crust and Crumb so I ordered some diastatic malt from Amazon.  Yesterday was the first time I've tried it.  The stuff tastes quite sweet.  I threw together some dough, doubling up on the yeast and malt percentages Reinhart might call for just for jollies.  The stuff rose higher and faster than anything I can recall!!!  It was surprising, almost spooky!

Last night, sometime past midnight, I got a craving for sourdough rye bread.  I had dark rye flour and some starter I made from the same flour a couple weeks back, the first time I made my own starter instead of using commercial stuff from sourdo.com.

Also, I was looking for something to do with the bag of semolina I got at the bulk foods section of the local Winco Foods market, the same place I got the rye flour.  Found a post on TFL about a sandwich loaf made with semolina that got huge oven spring and decided to throw some in the mix.

Anyway, sometime past midnight and suffering from caffien-induced sleeplessness I whipped up a batch of dough as follows:

Ingredients:

50g Semolina (yellowish stuff, coarser than bread flour)

200g unbleached bread flour

250g dark rye flour

333g water (I suppose I could just use ml but I don't have a graduate like I used to use in chemistry class once upon a time)

1.5 teaspoon salt

~1 tablespoon of my homebrew rye starter from the fridge - sorta neglected, sour and hungry stuff

Procedure:

Mixed the dry ingredients in one bowl, the water and starter in another bowl, added the liquid to the dry stuff, and tried to make dough with my recently purchased Danish dough whisk that was actually made in Poland.  Found the dough was too thick to mix with the whisk so turned it out on the counter and kneaded it into submission - sticky stuff, but not as sticky as I recall similar dough with no semolina being. Made a log of the dough and plopped it in a breadpan lightly greased with olive oil, spritzed the top with oil, and covered it with plastic wrap.

Results (so far):

Got up around noon, found the stuff hadn't begun to rise noticeably.  At this hour (9PM my time) it has risen some but not enough to fill the bread pan.  More later, time to watch Hawaii 5 OH.

ingredients:

600gm unbleached bread flour

150gm dark rye flour

2.25 (14gm) teaspoon salt

2.25 (8gm) teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1.5 tablespoon each of brown sugar(19gm), dill seed(8gm), and dehydrated onion flakes(11gm)

500 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

NOTE: increased quantities by 50% and switched from dill weed to dill seed.

procedure:

Mixed dry flours,salt and yeast in kitchenaid mixer, added boiling water to sugar+dill+onion in separate bowl and let soak and cool, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured(rye flour this time), linen-lined brotform bowl to rise and covered with tea towel.  Let it rise 3  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 15 minutes again and checked browning when it went off.  Browned it a bit more and removed from oven.  Painted hot loaf top and bottom with cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in 1 cup cold water, nuked in microwave until it just boiled) and set on wire rack to cool.

Result:  Dough rose to fill the 10-inch brotform bowl.  Got some decent oven spring.  The glaze dried nice and shiny; using rye flour in the brotform and shaking out the excess prevented recurrance of the caked-white-flour problem.  I like the dill/onion flavor balance in this loaf better   The loaf is still not as tall/spherical as I wish, and this larger loaf lost a bit of crust when it stuck to my cover bowl, but it's great with corned beef.

Now let's see if I can upload some pictures.

^raw dough in brotform

risen dough in brotform^

slashed loaf on parchment^

raw loaf on pizza stone^

cover on pizza stone^

cover removed after 15 minutes^

loaf cooled and glazed^

time for corned beef^

Actually, I liked it with corned beef with or without mustard!  Had three sandwiches!

ingredients:

400gm unbleached bread flour

100gm dark rye flour

1.5 teaspoon salt

1.5 teaspoon active dry yeast (SAF brand)

1 tablespoon each of brown sugar, dill weed, and dehydrated onion flakes

333 gm very warm water (just cool enough to put a finger in and not whimper or yank it out)

procedure:

Mixed dry ingredients in kitchenaid mixer, added the very warm water, mixed on low until dough cleaned the sides of bowl, turned out on countertop, kneaded briefly, formed into ball, and plopped it into a floured, linen-lined brotform bowl to rise covered with tea towel.  Worked on income tax return for 3 or 4  hours.  Preheated oven with pizza stone to 450F.  Turned loaf out of brotform bowl onto parchment paper on inverted cookie sheet (in lieu of a peel). Slashed loaf, spritzed with water, and slid it onto the preheated pizza stone, parchment and all.  Covered with stainless bowl in lieu of playing "steam-the-oven".  Set timer for 15 minutes and removed the stainless bowl when it went off.  Set timer for 10 minutes and checked browning when it went off.  Decided to brown 5 more minutes and set timer again.  Whipped up cornstarch glaze (1.5 tablespoons cornstarch mixed in ~1/4 cup cold water, added hot water fill coffeecup, nuked in microwave until it just boiled).  Pulled loaf out of oven at about the 30-minute mark and glazed the top of the hot loaf with the thickened cornstarch soup using a basting brush.

Result:  Got some decent oven spring using the bowl-on-a-pizza-stone trick (at least it didn't shrink!).  The glaze dried nice and shiny on top but the bottom is caked with un-appetizing white flour from the brotform.  Bottom crust seems thicker than top, presumably from direct contact with preheated pizza stone.  I think I need a smaller brotform bowl to try to get a taller, more spherical loaf (any excuse to buy more toys). This loaf is pretty (on top, at least), a bit dense, and tastes pretty good although the onion dominates and masks the nuttiness of the rye.

I took pictures and will try to post them later.  Never played with this blogging interface before.