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I've seen a few posts showcasing polenta sourdough breads lately, so here's my take on it.

I cooked more porridge than I needed for the dough because it's hard to cook less using my smallest pot. I added 30 g Bob's Red Mill polenta (corn grits) to 120 g boiling water and cooked it over low heat until the water was just absorbed. I let the porridge cool overnight in the refrigerator.

My polenta sourdough formula is loosely based on Hamelman's Vermont sourdough. Overall hydration was 70%. I included the levain in the calculation, but didn't include the cooked polenta.

Polenta Sourdough

Grams (Baker's Pct)

AP Flour 410g (88.17%)

Whole rye flour 55g (11.83%)

Water 305g (65.59%)

Salt 10g (2.15%)

Cooked polenta 80g (17.2%)

Levain 168g (36.13%)

Total 1018g

I made one batard and one boule. Final proof on the batard was 2.5 hrs at room temperature. Here's the batard's crumb:

The shaped boule was retarded in the refrigerator for 19 hours. Here's the boule's crumb:

The batard's crumb was definitely better than the boule's crumb. The boule was most likely overproofed, but it still tasted great. Live and learn!

I made my first gluten-free sourdough loaf, adapted from a recipe by Nicole Hunn in her book, Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread. (I've attached a link to her blog site below.)  I made a sourdough starter that was gluten-free, per her instructions in the book.  It doesn't work that well (probably my fault), so I may try and redo it, as I froze the liquid starter before I made the Mother starter.  Gluten-free bread is always such a disappointment compared to my regular sourdough, but this was the best I've made so far.  It's always heavy and has a real gluten-free taste to me, but it was OK. It does have a bit of the sourdough taste. I actually added a little yeast during the process because I didn't believe the starter was going to perform well.

The crumb was less dense than I have had with other gluten-free loaves I have made in the past.

I actually used King Arthur Ancient Grains and whole wheat gluten-free flours to make the bread (which deviated from her recipe), combined with the starter I made earlier. I'll have to try it again to see if I can improve each time.

http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/

After a long break I am back in my search for perfection - this time is a recipe for a perfect white loaf, and I have found it!! I have tried it in its true form and have tried to play around with the recipe, and it still stands - this IS perception in a loaf.

Full recipe on my blog here

Excuse the poor slicing photo - more photos coming on the blog soon

Susan and I have just returned from two weeks in Italy. We spent a week in Venice, a couple days in Lucca and 4 days in Liguria. We broke up our return trip with an overnight stay in Milan. I am happy to report that the bread we had was much superior to that of our last visit to Amelia-Romagna and Tuscany  three years ago. 

The bread we were served in restaurants was almost always made wholly with white flour.

Once, we had some bread that, from its color, I think had some durum flour in the mix. I did see a loaf called “Pane Altamura” in a bakery we walked into in Milan, and I saw “Pane Integrale” on another bakery’s list of its breads in Levanto (Liguria), but we didn’t taste any of those.  

 Industrially-produced bread was displayed in supermarkets, but so was a wider variety of flours for both bread and pizza-making. This was what I found in the largest grocery in Venice.

 There was a profusion of small, artisinal bakeries in all the towns we visited, as well as small produce markets, fish mongers, butchers and gelaterias.

My sense is that this was typical of small towns in Italy. I suspect it is less true in big cities, but even there, the neighborhood bakery is commonly encountered, at least everywhere I have been. 

 Pizza was originally associated with Naples and was unheard of in Northern Italy. Them days is gone forever. It is seen now on the menus of most restaurants except perhaps the spiffiest, but we didn’t go to any of those. Interestingly, in many restaurants, pizza is only served at dinner time. I wonder if this is related to a culture in which, at one time, the big meal of the day was served mid-day, not in the evening. I had low expectations of the pizza in the North, but was pleasantly surprised. It was pretty good in Lucca, although it was much, much better in Liguria. The typical local pizza was thin crusted. Most was baked in wood-fired ovens, but not all.

We most enjoyed what was most often called “Pizza vegetariana.”

This had some tomato sauce, cheese and slices of zucchini and eggplant. Some also had bell pepper. So, pizza was pretty ubiquitous.

I was not happy to find American fast food restaurants in the larger cities (Venice, Milan). I was a bit happier to see hamburgers on the menus of some restaurants and a bit happier yet to see “Pane da hamburger” displayed in a bakery window in Lucca. They looked pretty good, too.

 The specialties of the Ligurian coast are fish - especially anchovies -, pasta with shellfish and pasta or gnocchi with pesto. We ate very well. In the USA, when you say “anchovy,” people think of the salted anchovies most often used on pizza. In Liguria, the anchovy is called “The princess of the sea” and is prepared numerous ways - fried, “pickled” in lemon juice like ceviche, in a pasta sauce … I know I’ve forgotten some of the ways we saw anchovies prepared, and I’m certain there are others we didn’t encounter at all. 

Anchovies with potatoes, tomatoes and olives

Fried Anchovies

Taglierini verde with crab

We had a terrific time! I’ve focused here on the food, particularly bread and its “relatives,” but the areas we visited in Italy this trip were visually stunning. The art we saw was fabulous. And the people we encountered were delightful. I’m eager to return.

Manarola

David

When I was in the UK last week, I made David's excellent recipe below.  As I have done many times in the past, I prepared the dough and froze half of it to bake later.  I hadn't tried this with baguettes, so I was interested in how it would turn out.  I froze the dough for four days. On the first batch, I had a heck of a time moving them, as I didn't have all the tools I have in my home kitchen.  They got a bit flat as I moved them. For the second batch, I bought a metal baguette baker with tiny holes that I used for the final proof and baking, and this worked much better for me.

I defrosted the dough overnight in the fridge, and it was ready to go the next morning.  I followed the recipe instructions from there, placing the new baguette baker on a heated stone.

My husband really enjoyed these baguettes, as did our UK friends who tried them.  The taste was wonderful and the crumb fine. My husband loved the really crusty crust.

San Joaquin Sourdough Baguettes

9.2% of the flour is pre-fermented

Method

1. Mix the levain by dissolving the liquid starter in the water, then add the flours and mix well. Ferment at room temperature, covered tightly, until the surface is bubbly and wrinkled. (8-12 hours)
2. Dissolve the levain in the water, add the flours and mix to a shaggy mass. Cover and autolyse for 30 minutes.
3. Add the salt and mix to incorporate.
4. Transfer to a clean, lightly oiled bowl and cover tightly.
5. Bulk ferment for 3-4 hours with stretch and folds in the bowl every 30 minutes for the first 2 hours, then a stretch and fold on the board after 2.5 hours. The dough should have expanded by about 50% and be full of small bubbles.
6. Refrigerate the dough for 18-24 hours.
7. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and transfer it to a lightly floured board.
8. Divide the dough into 4 equal pieces and pre-shape as logs or round.
9. Cover the pieces and allow them to rest for 60 minutes.
10. Shape as baguettes and proof for 45 minutes, covered.
11. Pre-heat the oven to 500ºF with a baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.
12. Transfer the baguettes to your peel. Turn down the oven to 480ºF. Score the loaves and load them onto your baking stone.
13. Bake with steam for 10 minutes, then remove your steaming apparatus and continue to bake for another 10-12 minutes. (Note: After 10 minutes, I switched my oven to convection bake and turned the temperature down to 455ºF.)
14. Remove the loaves to a cooling rack, and cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

The recent posts from wassisname and limmitedbaking got me hankering to try this bread.

I used the formula here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34729/polenta-pepita-sourdough, but, as happens in the Hippie Kitchen, modified the method:

1. Mix flours, polenta and water, autolyse 30 min. I used KA Bread and WW flours.
2. Add levain, salt and pepitas; slap-and-fold until there is some gluten development.
3. Bulk ferment 3 hours, folding 3 times.
4. Scale, rest, shape.
5. Retard in fridge about 18 hours.

Then baked at 460F for 15 minutes with steam, then another 20 minutes at 460 F without steam, then 10 minutes at 410F convection.

It's really good. You wouldn't think such a little bit of polenta would make such a difference, but it does.

This was an experiment to make a loaf ideal for toasting and to have a lightness of commercially "improved" bread leavened with just sourdough.

Lievito madre bound for 12hrs @ 18-20C.

autolyse: 80% canadian wheat, 10% white spelt, 10% light rye. 55% hydration. 12hrs @ ~20C.

Bath lievito for 20 minutes in sweetened water @ 20-22C.
1st refresh: [1]:[1.5] ([lievito]:[flour]) 28C for 4 hours.

133g lievito refreshed
620g autolyse
58.6g water
15g oil
10g honey
9.7g salt

Bulk ferment for 90 minutes @ 28C. Proof @30C for 3-4 hours or until generously tripled.

I baked my fourth and fifth Tartine Basic (Whole Wheat) Country loaves this week, using freshly milled flour.  I used 100% whole wheat for the leaven and 70% Whole Wheat for the dough (which came to a 73% whole wheat for the total dough).

The flour that comes out of my Komo mill, was measuring at 105 degrees toward the end of the 700 gram grind, and the wheat berries were in the fridge for about 8 hours before grinding. 

The loaves came out nicely. I gave away the more distinctly patterned loaf to a family member and brought the other one with me for our weekend away, largely because I had a similar loaf in the freezer and wanted to see what this tasted like when it was fresh.

The bread was delicious and the crumb was very soft, moist and chewy.

I am starting to get more comfortable holding back some of the water because I have found that Robertson's formula and my flour (regardless of whether it is King Arthur or David Esq. brand), yields a dough that is too wet.  By "too wet" I simply mean a dough that seems "pasty" at the beginning and stays wet and sticky all the way through final proofing, and never really feels like "dough" at any point in the process.

Here is the heel of the bread:

Here is the crumb, though the white balance seems off in the first shot:

And here it is a few days later on my sandwich for today's lunch:

Overall, I am very pleased with the bread and think that I will try upping the grains for my next bake.  Ideally I want to see if I can get a 100% home-milled loaf that satisfies my wife and me -- not so much because I am bothered by having white flour in my bread, but because the fewer ingredients I need to make a delicious loaf of bread, the happier I am. Plus, there is a large degree of satisfaction involved in making everything from scratch, including the flour.

I have been baking so much lately and a lot of biscuits.  The tradition here is 7  types of   small biscuits served with coffee when people come over and I been a good hostess.

I have made    Duche de Leche ,   Toffee,  Dark chocolate  with white chocolate chunks and macademian nuts,  Toffee with  white chocolate chunks,  plain dark chocolate,  Peppermint chocolate  and vanilla.

Pew, I  need a rest.

And that is beside the 3 loafs  I been baking and cakes and home made icecream ( four flavours) and dinners for 3 guest...

But my  pridest moment must be this cake, isnt lovely and you can eat everything  except the stalk for the bulrush. 

Like everyone else around her, at least those who count, Lucy loves pizza just about more than she loves pumpernickel. It is a closer race than one might think.   We usually start off the weekend with grilled salmon on Friday night.

Then Saturday we do something Mexican, this year was grilled pork that was then made carnitas style by sautéing it with bacon fat in a cast iron skillet to really bring out the tastes of old Mexico.

Sunday night is reserved for pizza.  This year we made the crust a little bit different with some Desert Semolina from Hayden Mills, mixed with our favorite tortilla AP flour from La Fama with a combo levain of YW and Rye Sour.  Today is smoked ribs and chicken thighs in memory of those who died fighting to protect us and to let us do as we please today.

Don't forget breakfast and lunch.

.An added bonus, our daughter is off to Seattle and Vancouver to visit a sorority sister which leaves the cooking and baking field wide open this weekend to try something a new way.   You would think that being young you would be less set in your ways but our daughter likes her food made the traditional way she grew up loving - especially for holidays.

For the pizza, Lucy made a levain of 10 g of rye sour, 66 g of LaFama AP and 66 g of YW and let it sit out overnight for 8 hours.  it easily doubled over that time.  Then she mixed up 50 grams of Desert Durum and 350 g of LaFama with 260 g of water, 10 g each of salt and sugar and added them to the levain.   We let the shaggy mass let it sit for 30 minutes.  This gave us a 70% hydration dough.

Lucy then added 20 g of olive oil and did 3 sets of slap and folds on 5, 2 and 1 minute on 20 minute intervals and 3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points only - also on 20 minute intervals.  The dough was then refrigerated for 6 hours.  We warmed it up for 2 hours before forming 3 dough balls – freezing one for later ala Phyllis.

Once it warmed up the dough was formed into crusts on parchment easily, ala Ian, since we had planned on not doing a par bake of the crust  - also no rosemary, sun dried tomato or garlic in the dough and no mojo de ajo spread on top of the crust either so we are getting far a field from the taste an method of our regular pizza dough. 

The toppings were a little different.  Andouille sausage replaced the hot Italian one.  Store bough pepperoni replaced the home made one.  We caramelized the Andouiille first and then the red onion, crimini and button mushrooms all together, instead of separately, in the fat .  We didn’t caramelize the hot chili and pepper mix of yellow banana, Serrano, Poblano, Hatch green and jalapenos.  The green onion and the red bell pepper were left fresh.

We only used the standard 3 cheeses of mozzarella, Pecorino and Parmesan.  There was some fresh basil flowers from the back yard but we forgot to put them on.  We were very hungry and when hunger strikes around here we forget who we are… much less if there was basil to go on top.  I’m not sure Lucy remembers who she is even today.

We like our pizza crust very thin, as thin as a cheap paper plate and so crisp it doesn’t bend or fold like NY style pizza.  We want it to crunch when you bite into it even if it is cold.  We also like them loaded up which makes the crunch part tough and why we normally par bake the crust for 3 minutes.

In the smoker they go - can't wait for them to get done later today!.

This curst came out perfect even without the par baking but it took 8 minutes at 550 F to get it just right and not burn the crust - top or bottom.  My wife loved this pizza and I thought it was almost as good as Lucy can make it, except for out SD version that has the herbs garlic and sun dried tomato in it – and mojo de ajo on it.

Lucy says not to forget the salad!

Hopefully the ribs and chicken will turn out all right to cap off a fine Memorial Weekend.  Hope yours was just a good as Friday's sunset.