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We were out of white bread again and with Lucy in the middle of her rye bread experiments, it didn’t look like we would get a chance to make one either.  But we built the rye levain for her and at the same time a whole wheat one for this bread and a YW one for some possible pizza - possibly tomorrow or Sunday.  Saturday is out since we are off to Tucson to finish moving my daughter back home.

This levain build was 3 stages, 4 hours each, levain build like the last one with the exception that, instead of an overnight 12 hour retard of the levain after the 3rd feeding, this one had a 36 hour retard after the 3rd feeding.  It was allowed to come to room temperature for 2 hours when it more than doubled.

That same 2 hours was used for the autolyse of the dry ingredients with the exception of the seeds and sprouts.  The liquid was the reserved soaking water from the sprouts for this bake and the soaking water from last one with some honey.

The dry included toadies, WW, Spelt, oats, corn, red and white malts, a small; amount of VWG, and some medium ground white and black sesame seeds with some golden and  brown flax seeds.

Once the autolyse was mixed with the small amount of levain, we did 10 minutes of slap and folds where the gluten developed very well.  We then did 3 sets of S&F’s where the remaining hemp, black, white and brown poppy seeds and the WW sprouts were incorporated on the first stretch and fold.

Once the S&F’s were completed we let the dough rest for 30 minutes before shaping it and placing it in a rice floured basket and then immediately retarding it for 15 hours.  The dough had doubled during the retard so when we pulled it out of the fridge in the morning we then fired up old Betsy to 500 F to bake the bread as soon as possible.

We used our usual Sylvia’s steaming pyrex pan with two towels and David’s, lava rock filled, CI 12” skillet both half full of water for the mega steam which was placed on the bottom rack when the temperature hot 425 F.  When Betsy beeped she was at 500F we set the timer for 15 minutes to allow the top and bottom stones to get to the 500 F and get the steam billowing.

We un-molded the bread from the basket, gently since it was an inch over the rim, and over turned it onto parchment paper on a peel.  We quickly scored it and placed it on the bottom stone and steamed it at 470 F for 15 minutes before removing the steam and turning the oven down to 435 F, convection this time.

The bread was rotated 90 degrees on the stone every 5 minutes to ensure even browning.   20 minutes after the steaming scheme came out of the oven, the bread was at 200 F.  We turned the oven off and left the bread on the stone with the door closed.  When the bread hit 205 F 5 minutes later, we opened the door and allowed the crust to further crisp on the stone till it hit 207 F.

Total baking time to 205 F was 40 minutes with an additional 5 minutes for the bread to crisp on the stone from 205 F to 207 F.  The crust was blistered with small hole, boldly baked to a mahogany color and quite crisp.  The crust went soft as it cooled.  We will have to wait for the crumb shots when we slice this bread for lunch.

The crumb is soft, moist and flavorful with a very nice nutty background and seedy crunch of the hemp and poppy seeds  This is another bread we like very much.  It may not look as delicious as it really is but that is because it is subtle and not to be taste bud trusted.  It grows on you .... and we will let it do so :-)   It is a welcomed treat to have so many good bakes of late and then have the baker at Sprouts give me a decent SFSD too!  Don't say anything but my apprentices breads are way better than Sprouts  but I am glad Sprouts is selling something decent for very little hard earned cash.  I saw a very small selection of  bread at Whole Foods that is baked in a small bakery in Coolidge . AZ.  I'm going to take a bike ride there and see what that bakery is all about.  Their bread looked very good on the outside and baked in a WFO!

Formula

It is hard to keep up on the forum lately. So many innovative techniques being used . I decided to combine several things that I have wanted to try . So far noone else has done this particular set of combinations so hopefully it will be informative. First I made a sourdough focaccia. I used my kefir whey for all of the liquid. I added some sun dried tomatoes and topped with dried orgeano and New Orleans olive salad from our favorite place Central Grocery. It was wonderful. The crust top and bottom was crisp and browned...oweing in part to the black steel pan . We had it with Conchiglie tutto Giardino..and ate in the garden too . The only thing I will change next time is increase the liquid to perhaps get a more open crumb. 200 g starter 590 g "00" flour 300 g kefir whey or water ( I will add more next time) 10 g salt mix,autolyse 30 min. Knead gently 5 min. Fold q 30 min x 2 hrs . add in 50 g sundried tomatoes coarsley chopped. Press into greased 15x10 pan. Let rise 3 hrs. brush with olive oil and top as desired. I used 100g olive salad drained and dried oregano. Bake at 450 for 30 min Next I started with Ian's tang zhong roll formula and changed it up some. I used 1/2 white and 1/2 rye starter. I used all "00" flour for the white flour. I subbed semolina for the rye. When I made the tang I used 20g durum and 30g white with 250 g whey/potato water. I cooked the potatoes in the whey and then drained and cooled and added. I didn't add any onions so the rolls could be used in more ways. 426g starter 417 g "00" flour 50g spelt 50g semolina 16 g salt 150 g 2% milk 25 g olive oil cook tang zhong using 20g semolina, 30g "00" and 250 g whey potato water 125 g mashed potatoes cooked in whey I autolyse flours, milk, tang zhong, starter and olive oil. Let it all set for about an hour. I then added the salt and the potatoes. I followed Ian's advice on mixer times. Beat the heck out of it like a ciabatta ! It is a very soft dough. Did the s and f's for about a half dozen on a lightly floured counter. Brushed off any extra flour but it makes it come together much better , I think. Rest covered 1 hr and then into fridge overnight. Take out next AM and shape while cold. I never shape at room temp. Much easier when cold . Now only need to rise for 1 1/2 hr and then bake. Great oven spring ! Wonderful crust...I brushed with beaten egg white and topped with roasted sesame seeds. I will use only egg white from now on. Much nicer crust and tastes better too. I spray water into oven a couple times and find that is plenty of steam . Preheated at 500 and lowered to 460 baked for 20 min to 210 degrees. The crumb is more open and the texture is soft...but...they are more like bread...chewier and the crumb is cool tasting. I can't say that I am as fond of theses rolls as I am the other ones. sourdough buns. These the the ones I have made before that Ian also posted. I made them this time with all whey and I also only used my kefir cheese. I doubled the recipe. I used 1/2 rye and 1/2 white starter. Otherwise I used the same method as above. Autolyse...mix with the salt. s and f's and then in the fridge...shape cold and rise 1 1/2 hrs. Bake with a couple mists. Brushed with egg white and sesame seeds. SUPERIOR ..these are like fine pastry. Amazing. even better than the last time I made them. The whey makes them smell and taste like they are full of butter :) But they aren't..only 100 grams for 2 doz rolls. note the finer texture: yum..lunch by the pool ! clematis and jasmine more jasmine and roses...the fragrance is amazing ! more jasmine :

Sourdough honey whole wheat multi-grain ciabatta rolls and boule

May 11, 2013

After last week's San Francisco-style Sourdough with 30% whole wheat, I considered a number of modifications of the formula. The leading candidates were 1) increasing the whole wheat to 50%; 2) adding some honey or other sweetener; 3) adding a mixed grain/seed soaker. In the background but not very far back was my wife's request that I make her some soft sandwich rolls that were low profile. When she gets a rather spherical roll, she cuts a horizontal section out of the middle.

 So, starting with the my San Francisco-style Sourdough formula, I attempted to accomplish all of the above in one swell foop.

I increased the whole wheat to 50% of the total flour. That was the easy part. I had bought a mix of grains and seeds called “Harvest Blend” from KAF and decided to use that as a multi-grain soaker. I planned to add this at 18% of the total flour weight. I had no clue as to the appropriate amount of water to use for the soaker, so I used 125% of the weight of the Harvest Blend, which is what some similar multi-grain soaker's in Hamelman's Bread calls for. I added 4% honey, on a similar basis.

This all seemed quite reasonable to me. I thought this new formula ought to make a pretty tasty loaf and also good sandwich rolls, if I could figure out how to make them as flat as my wife wanted.

What's the saying? “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” Or is it, “No guts, no glory?” Or maybe it's Pat's, “Sometimes you gets the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.” Well, there were times when I thought I felt the hot breath of that bear on the back of my neck.

After letting the levain ferment overnight and the soaker soak, they both looked very good in the morning. So I mixed the flours and water and let them autolyse for 30 minutes. I then added the salt and levain. I decided to hold back the soaker until the dough had pretty good gluten development. As I mixed, I thought the dough was on the dry side, so I added some water - maybe 30 cc's. After mixing for 6-7 minutes, I added the soaker. Yikes! There was 20 to 30 cc's of free water hiding underneath the soaked grains and seeds. When I turned the mixer back on, my dough was severely goopy. As I continued mixing, the dough was looking like 90+% hydration rather than the 78-80% hydration I had intended. So, my plans for the dough changed.

Rather than fermenting for 2-3 hours with a couple stretch and folds, then shaping and retarding to bake the next day, which is what I had planned, I treated the dough more like a San Joaquin Sourdough. I did S&F's in the bowl every 30 minutes for 2 hours then retarded the dough. The next day, I preheated the oven and divided the dough into one 500 g piece, which I shaped into a boule and retarded to bake the following day. The rest I scaled to 4 oz and “shaped” as ciabatta rolls, which is to say, by simply folding the pieces like envelopes.

Rolls proofing

I proofed the rolls for about 50 minutes, as the oven was heating. I then baked them at 480ºF with steam for 10 minutes and then for another 5 minutes at 455ºF/Convection bake in a dry oven.

After a night in the refrigerator, the boule was warmed at room temperature for a couple hours while my wife roasted some beets and my baking stone pre-heated. I baked the boule at 460ºF with steam for 15 minutes then for another 15 minutes at 435ºF/convection in a dry oven. The loaf remained on the baking stone with the oven off and the door ajar for another 20 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. I let the loaf cool for several hours before slicing, thinking that this very wet dough need some “curing” time like a high-hydration, high-percentage rye bread does.

For both the rolls and the boule, the crust was soft and chewy. The crumb was very moist and almost gummy, but not really. The aroma and flavor were very assertive. Whole wheat predominated with very apparent poppy seed and less apparent sunflower seed flavors. There was a definite honey flavor to me, but my wife did not find it too strong. We made toscano salami sandwiches with the rolls and had slices of the boule with sweet butter with a dinner of salmon cakes and a salad.

The boule was placed in a plastic bakery bag, and slices were eaten both toasted and un-toasted over the following 4 days. The bread stayed moist but became less sticky. The flavor became more mellow and balanced, to my taste, over time. I enjoyed it more (un-toasted with Cotswold cheese) on day 4 than when “fresh.”

I thought both the rolls and bread were pretty good and improved after the first day – definitely worth making again with some modifications. The thing is, my wife thought they were fabulous. She absolutely loved the flavor.

The next steps will be to decrease the hydration and either eliminate the honey or substitute another sweetener.

David

My apprentice, Lucy, has been on a quest to make some rye breads that really pack the flavor of what she thinks a rye should taste like.  Her last bake really came out well with a 40% rye and I thought for sure she wouldn’t try to improve on it any time soon but, she fooled me again.

Her reasoning this time was that how can she call a bread, rye bread, when only 30% to 40% of the flour is rye?  To her, this is a white bread with twice as much wheat flour in it as rye that it should be called 60 to 70% wheat bread instead.  So she wanted to rectify this by having at least 50% whole rye flour in the mix.

She also wanted to get the whole grains over 60% while keeping some coarse grounds corn in the mix.  The hydration ended up at 85%.   Lucy recently found out that part of my wife’s family came from Odessa, Russia and they love dark rye breads there.  So she used a dark Russian Baltika Porter for the majority of the liquid.

To get the bread leaning more to the dark side she used some barley malt syrup, molasses, instant coffee and cocoa to bring out the color.  She put in some Toadies, oats, potato flakes and 6 grain cereal to help round out and deepen the flavor.  We loved the Eric Hanner dried minced onion inclusion in the last bake so much that we took his tip to use the soaker water from them this time too.

Lucy put the usual red and white malts and little VWG to boost the white unbleached  AP and bread flour’s gluten content since these are bin flours from Winco and not much over 10% protein.  The aromatic seeds are the usual caraway, fennel, anise and fennel with the emphasis on caraway.  This time she used 100 dry grams of wheat berries that she soaked for 3 hours before sprouting them for an additional 25 hours until they chitted.

Unglazed crust.

Rather tan baking this as a free form loaf in the MagnaWare Turkey Roaster, she decided to proof and bake this in the small enameled, cast iron DO and bake it to 200 F.  We used our usual levain build for the rye sour but this time only used 10 g of seed.  It was built over 3 stages of 4 hours each but it was refrigerated after the 3rd feeding overnight to develop the sour.

Glazed Crust

When the levain came out of the fridge the next morning for its 3rd 4 hour build we started the autolyse with all the dry except the salt, sprouts and seeds along with the dough porter and onion water liquid.  After 4 hours the salt went in with the levain and we did 10 minutes of slap and folds and 3 sets of S&F on 15 minute intervals.

The seeds, sprouts and re-hydrated onions went in on the first S&F and were evenly distributed by the 3rd set.   After resting for 1 hour we shaped the dough and placed it in an oil sprayed DO and put it in the fridge for a 15 hour cold retard. 

By the next morning it had doubled and we allowed it to warm up on the counter for an hour.  We fired up Big Old Betsy to 450 F and after she came to temperature we allowed the top and bottom stone to come up to the same temp 15 minutes later.  We T-Rex slashed the dough and placed it, lid on, in the oven for 17 minutes of steam.  We then took off the lid and turned down the oven to 425 F, convection this time and continued to bake for 8 minutes.  At this point we took the bread out of the DO and it tested 129 F on the inside.

We continued to bake the bread on the oven rack between the stones for an additional 20 minutes until it read 200 F.  At that point we turned off the oven but left the bread in it until it reached 202 F 5 minutes later.  Total baking time was 50 minutes.  We removed the bread to the cooling rack ad glazed it with a corn starch glaze to make it shine.

It didn’t spring much but didn’t fall either and was at or near 100% proof.  The bread baked up dark brown and very crusty as was expected.  We hope the corn starch glaze and the 24 hour’s it will be wrapped in a cotton towel will soften the crust.  If it tastes half as good as it smells, Lucy has another winner on her paws.   Will have to wait to cut it and get a peek at the crumb so will get back to this post then.

We were not disappointed with the crumb.  Open, moist, soft, tasty; plain, tosted or as a sandwich This delicious sammy was an Irish Swiss and home grown tomato grilled cheese.  This bread is every bit as good as Lucy'e 40% Jewish Deli Rye adn this one is darker, mysterious, full of flavor and lovey to eat.  I didnlt thin that Lucy woulf do another Rye so soon but I am glad she did.  Now I Have to talk her into a Tzitzel so Varda di=oesnlt think we have forgotten the quest entirely:-)

Formula

baked another SD pineapple enzyme(home made) Kamut, pumpkin sourdough bread with maple roasted bacon and celery ..

little changes to the first one i did.http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33434/sprouted-spelt-pumpkin-sourdough-maple-roasted-bacon-bits

no sprouted spelt .. substitute with Kamut flour and a little whole wheat. added 2 tablespoon of pineapple enzyme which my friend gave me (matured 30days) just experimenting.

check out this site http://huichun.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/fruit-enzyme-diy/

ran out of samolina flour for dusting.. used sunflower seeds n flour little messy.

i did add celery this time!

baked 3 loaves, all given away.reserved one slice for myself, toasted and this was my lunch today. it was very good indeed. 

the crumb had a different texture not chewy but soft with bites. might be the enzyme made it different. will try one more time to confirm. 

evon :)

Levain :

20 gr  Rye Starter

100 gr H20

100 gr flour ( 50% Wheat Flour tipo 2 + 50 % Whole Wheat flour )

Left at room temperature for 12 H  ( 23 ° )

Final Dough :

200 gr White Rye Flour

200 gr Wheta Flour tipo 2

500 gr Whole Wheat  flour

650 + 50 gr H20

18 gr Salt

5 gr Malt

Method

-         when levain is ready

-         take the 650gr H20 and mix the malt

-         mix water and levain together and rest for 15 min

-         add the salt and the 5o gr of  water and rest  for 1 H

-         2 H bulk fermentation every 30 min S & F

-         1 H Bulk fermentation with only 1 S& F

-         1 H rest

-         Preshape  and bench rest 20 min

-         shape and bannetto for 1 ½  2 H

-         Preheat the oven at 250 °

-         15 min with steam at 250°

-         25 min No steam at 250°

-         15 min at 200 ° with the oven door slightly open

For TWO loaves 

http://freebakery.blogspot.it/

Michele

My sourdough loaf came out really nice today.

I used a firmer starter than I usually do. I believe it was 30 grams starter, 50 grams water, 50 grams rye flour that I left out overnight.  In the AM I added 500 grams bread flour, 370 grams water, and 10 grams salt.  Folded 3-4 times over 3-4 hours, shaped it, baked it in a pot for 45 minutes.

We'll be slicing it shortly.

I made baguettes with no wheat and it was good. Like, really good. Better than I could ever have hoped. I know that some of the processes I follow aren't ideal when it comes to traditional bread-making, but without gluten it seems that everything changes.

Despite being gluten-free, these have a great holey crumb and are lighter even than the ciabattas I used to make with wheat. The flavour was lovely and tangy from the sourness.

Recipe

150g 100% hydration white rice & red teff starter
175g white rice flour
175g potato starch
25g psyllium husks
420g water
12g salt

• Mix together the water and psyllium, stirring until a gel forms.
• Incorperate all of the ingrediens, except the salt, with the gel.
• Form a ball and leave to rise in a covered bowl at room temp for aprox. 2 hours.
• Add salt and knead to thoughroughly incorperate.
• Recover and transfer to the fridge - leave for around 12 hours.
• Remove from the fridge and leave to come up to room temp for about 2 hours.
• Divide and shape into 4 baguettes.
• Cover and prove at room temp for a further hour.
• Brush with water, dust with rice flour and slash.
• Bake at 235c for 30+ mins with steam for the first 10 mins (until nicely browned)

There were so many wonderful looking breads with lots of stuff in them posted in the last week that I decided I wanted to play too.

I had picked up a bag of spelt berries and ground some into flour to use when I was trying to get a whole wheat starter starting.  The bag and the leftover flour have been just sitting in the pantry and when I saw a couple of posts using "toadies", I thought that maybe the spelt berries would work out well like that.  I dry toasted spelt berries, which was really cool - they popped in the pan!  And then toasted some rolled oats, and some pecans, and sesame seeds. 

I made a poolish with rye flour, left out overnight.  I had been putting rye starter discards into my everyday bread in place of a poolish, but I did not have any discards, so I thought that a rye poolish would impart some of that rich flavor to the bread.  I tried breaking down the toasted spelt berries in my small food processor, but that did not work, so into my Krup coffee grinder for a few spins around.  I tossed the oats and the pecans into the food processor and buzzed them around a bit as well.  All of that went into the bowl with AP flour, WW flour, some spelt flour, the toasted sesame seeds, water, honey and yeast. 

The bread is very tasty, but I am not sure that I like the feel of the spelt berries.  They have a great flavor, but they are a bit clunky in the bread.  Maybe I could try soaking or scalding them next time.

I think that this bread should grill up really fine - so far its tasty just as it is.

Theresa

Lazy Sundays call for fresh home made bagels – I couldn’t decide which ones to make “Jalapeno and Cheddar” or “Cinnamon and Raisin” – so I made both :)

A link to full recipe on my blog here