The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Blogs

gary.turner's picture
gary.turner

Quote:
Ever wonder why supermarkets have bakeries close to the store entrance? Not only does the fragrance of just-baked bread signal freshness and comfort, but store managers know that when you smell bread you get hungry. Some supermarkets don’t even bother with actual bakeries. Rather, they pump the scent of (artificial) fresh-baked-bread through the ceiling vents.

I found the article interesting from a branding perspective, but the final paragraph was the killer app.

See http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2010/06/whats-the-most-recognizable-scent-in-the-world/

cheers,

gary

Isand66's picture
Isand66

I love the rich nutty flavor beer adds to a sourdough especially when there is a good hearty mix of whole grain flours and add-ins.

For this loaf I wanted a good hearty bread so I used some fresh milled spelt and hard white winter wheat in the starter along with some KAF French style flour and for the main dough I made a soaker with KAF Harvest Grains.  The Harvest Grains contain oat berries, rye flakes, millet, wheat flakes, poppy seeds, sesame seeds and sunflower seeds.  I let this soak in hot water overnight and drained the excess water before adding it to the final dough.  I counted the water that was absorbed in the hydration of the dough.

The main dough contains more French style flour along with spelt, hard white winter wheat (freshly milled) and some potato flour.

In the end this came out great with a nice deep nutty flavor with a bit of sweetness even though there is no sugar of any kind added.  I really love what the soaker added to this bake.  The bread just smells fantastic and this one is perfect for sandwiches or a good soup or stew.

Closeup1

Formula

MultigrainHarvestGrSoakerBe

Levain Directions

Mix all the Levain ingredients together for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it sit at room temperature for around 7-8 hours or until the starter has doubled.  I usually do this the night before.

Either use in the main dough immediately or refrigerate for up to 1 day before using.

Soaker Directions

Pour the boiling water over the Soaker ingredients and stir.  Cover with plastic wrap and let sit 7-8 hours at room temperature.  When ready to use drain excess water and add per directions below.

 Main Dough Procedure

Mix the flours, soaker and beer together in your mixer or by hand until it just starts to come together, maybe about 1 minute.  Let it rest in your work bowl covered for 20-30 minutes.  Next add the salt, starter (cut into about 7-8 pieces), and mix on low for 3 minutes.  Mix on medium for another 3 minutes and then remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl or work surface and do several stretch and folds.  Let it rest covered for 10-15 minutes and then do another stretch and fold.  Let it rest another 10-15 minutes and do one additional stretch and fold.  After a total of 2 hours place your covered bowl in the refrigerator and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.

When you are ready to bake remove the bowl from the refrigerator and let it set out at room temperature still covered for 1.5 to 2 hours.  Remove the dough and shape as desired.  I made 1 large boule shape.   Place your dough into your proofing basket(s) and cover with a moist tea towel or plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray.  The dough will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on your room temperature.  Let the dough dictate when it is read to bake not the clock.

Around 45 minutes before ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 550 degrees F. and prepare it for steam.  I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.

Right before you are ready to put them in the oven, score as desired and then add 1 cup of boiling water to your steam pan or follow your own steam procedure.

After 1 minute lower the temperature to 500 degrees and after another 3 minutes lower it to 450 degrees.  Bake for 35-50 minutes until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 210 degrees.

Take the bread out of the oven when done and let it cool on a bakers rack before for at least 2 hours before eating.

Crumb1

 Crumbcloseup

 
Andreea C's picture
Andreea C

history of bread

I have finally managed to translate in English this article I published in my Romanian blog about the history of bread and bakeries. My source was the book ”The History of Food” by Maguellone Toussaint-Samat. 

I hope you will find it useful.

The article is called "Snippets from Books :: The History of Bread :: A Kind of Abstract from ”The History of Food” by Maguellone Toussaint-Samat" and you may press it to read it. 

All best to you all!

ml's picture
ml

 Bordelaise, nothing special, surprisingly heavy, probably over-mixed. Good for soup.

Husband preferred Field Blend # 1( in the back) , less bitter than T3, but thought both were very good. There is a little more wheat in the T3, might be the difference.

At least I didn't chuck any to the birds :)

ml's picture
ml

Yesterday I baked 3 Rye breads from 3 different books.

 Lower left is Bordelaise from French Culinary Inst. 10% rye, 69% hydration, machine mixed.

2 on top are Field Blend #1 from FWSY, 25% whole grain, 75% hydration, hand mixed.

And! lower right is the 1st T3 bread that looks like bread:) Wheat-Rye 10%. I reduced the 50/50 blend of the high extraction to 25ww/75 ap, &, because I reduced the wheat I reduced to 80% hydration, hand mixed.

As soon as they all cool I will compare crumb & flavor.

 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

This bread is a different version of a formula that Lucy dreamt up back last May that we liked very much and can be found  here: 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/33480/dark-russian-jewish-deli-rye-porter-onion-sprouts-and-aromatic-seeds

 

We dropped; the rye spouts, cocoa and instant coffee, 6 grain cereal whole oat and white malt completely while adding; whole wheat, rolled oats, prunes, chia seeds and expensive mixed nuts (pecan, Brazil, hazelnut and almond).  The toadies changed in that they had; wheat and oat bran, wheat germ, 6 grain cereal and quinoa in them this time and the whole grain was dropped for 60% to 50%.


We upped the aromatic seeds this time too because they were too subtle last time and we have grown to like them more too.  Lucy hates just about everything bread wise except pumpernickel it seems but, she was at the Vet getting her teeth cleaned and one extracted - poor thing.  Thankfully, she whipped this formula up for me before she went to Apprentice Painville – poor thing.

 

Since we decided to do a longer retard of the dough than normal we cut the starter to 10 g, from out 15 gram normal for this size of bread  and the levain amount was cut to 13% of the flour and water total in the dough instead of our normal 20%.  This should allow us to get an 18 hour final proof retard in the fridge without over proofing - also the reason we dropped the white malt in trying to slow things down.

 

We built the levain as per our usual of late, 3 4 hour stages and refrigerating it for 24 hours after the 3rd stage feeding when it had risen 25%.   We took it out of the fridge to finish its doubling in volume.

 

While the levain as doing its final rise on the heating pad we autolysed the rest of the wet and dry with the exception of the prunes, nuts, salt and aromatic seeds and put it on the heating pad to keep warm for 2 hours.

 

Once the salt and levain was added to the autolyse we did 10minutes of slap and folds of 7, 2 and 1 minutes with 15 minutes.  We than did 3 sets of stretch and folds to get all the add its incorporated. All the slapping, stretching and folding was done on 15 minute intervals where the dough was left on the counter covered by a stainless steel mixing bowl.

 

Once the gluten development was finished, we all owed the dough to ferment in the bowl on the heating pad for 1 1/2 hours before pre-shaping and shaping into a longish batard and placing it in a basket lined with a rice floured kitchen tea towel.  It was immediately bagged and refrigerated 30 minutes later for 18 hours.

 

It proofed to 90% in the fridge and would be ready to bake after sitting on the counter for an hour and half, so we fired up BOB (odd name for Big Old Betsy) to 550 F 40 minutes unto that warm up   Last time we proofed and baked this bread in a cold enameled DO but this time we decided to bake it on a stone since it got too big for the Romertopf.

 

This one is too long for the 16 round stone and almost too big for the rectangular stone. We had to slide it in on a 45 degree angle after un-molding it onto parchment paper on a peel, also on a 45 degree angle, we slashed it with a serrated tomato knife.

 

Mega Steam was provided with a Pyrex pan half full of water and lava rocks on the lower rack with the baking stone right above and the other stone sandwiching the bread.  We baked the bread for 12 minutes with steam - minutes  at 500 F and 8 at 475 F.

 

Once the steam came out we continued baking at 427 F – fan on this time.  In 15 minutes the bread was done, reading 205 F on the inside.  We did rotate it on the stone every 5 minutes to ensure equal baking on the various 45 degree angles.

 

The crust browned up well as it bloomed and sprang while the kitchen smelled terrific.  The crumb was less open than we thought it would be but light soft and moist for a loaf with so much stuff inside.  The subtle aromatic seeds were especially nice and the nuts a fine addition.  Overall it is a nice looking loaf inside and out as well as a fine tasting one and guaranteed you won't find one on sale anywhere:-)  It made a fine pastrami, Munster and Dijon Sandwich with and apple, green bean, asparagus, broccoli, Brussels sprout and Mexican grey squash, blue and Camembert cheeses salad, carrot coins sweet and Yukon Gold potato wedges. - delicious!

 

Thanks to Mini Oven and hanseata (Karin) for the rye, nuts and aromatic seeds and to janetcook for the corn. These three Baking Ladies inspiration for this bread according to Lucy who is in bad shape after yesterday’s ordeal.

 

Formula

Rye Sour Levain

Build 1

Build 2

 Build 3

Total

%

WW, Spelt & RyeSD Starter

10

0

0

10

1.64%

Dark Rye

10

20

40

70

11.49%

Water

10

20

40

70

11.49%

Total

30

40

80

150

24.67%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Levain Totals

 

%

 

 

 

Dark Rye Flour

75

12.32%

 

 

 

Water

75

12.32%

 

 

 

Hydration

100.00%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Levain % of Total

13.16%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dough Flour

 

%

 

 

 

Dark rye

185

30.38%

 

 

 

Rolled Oat

10

1.64%

 

 

 

Potato Flakes

10

1.64%

 

 

 

Coarse Yellow Corn Grits

10

1.64%

 

 

 

Whole Wheat

25

4.11%

 

 

 

AP

294

48.28%

 

 

 

Dough Flour

534

87.68%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salt

11

1.81%

 

 

 

Porter 355 & Onion Water 92

447

73.40%

 

 

 

Dough Hydration

83.71%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total Flour

609

100.00%

 

 

 

Onion Soaker 75, Porter 370 & Water 75

522

 

 

 

 

T. Dough Hydration

85.71%

 

 

 

 

Whole Grain %

49.75%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hydration w/ Adds

83.05%

 

 

 

 

Total Weight

1,475

2.76

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add - Ins

 

%

 

 

 

Toadies

10

1.64%

 

 

 

Honey

14

2.30%

 

 

 

Prunes

100

16.42%

 

 

 

Red Rye Malt

8

1.31%

 

 

 

Chia Seeds

17

2.79%

 

 

 

Anise, Coriander, Fennel

8

1.31%

 

 

 

Caraway

8

1.31%

 

 

 

Pecan, Walnut, Hazelnut, Brazil

150

24.63%

 

 

 

VW Gluten

10

1.64%

 

 

 

Dried Minced Onion

8

1.31%

 

 

 

Total

333

54.68%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Weight of rehydrated onions was 18 g

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ml's picture
ml

A dear friend bought all the bread @ Tartine & is mailing some to me! 

More to follow :)

ml

ph_kosel's picture
ph_kosel

I decided to use up the last of my surplus eggnog and try to improve over the recipe in my previous post.

Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients

for the dough...

450 grams all purpose flour

450 grams eggnog (Southern Comfort brand)

1.5 teaspoons instant yeast

1.5 teaspoons salt

100 grams raisins

for the icing...

1 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons orange juice

0.5 teaspoons dried lemon peel

Procedure

I first warmed the eggnog to around room temperature.

I mixed the dry ingredients, added the eggnog, and mixed up the dough in my stand mixer.

I covered the mixing bowl and let the dough rise for about half an hour, then kneaded it to get good raisin distribution, and formed it into a braided loaf.

The dough wasn't very warm because I didn't want to heat up the eggnog in the microwave.  Consequently the dough rose slowly.

I decided to bake the loaf around midnight.  I baked at 350F for 25 minutes, adding a cup of hot water to a pan to steam the oven when the loaf went in.

The icing I mixed up in a coffee cup before I baked.  

When the loaf came out of the oven I put it on a cooling rack and spooned icing over it.

Result

The loaf turned out rather pretty, thin crust, soft and a little dense on the inside, with a very rich flavor.  The citrus in the icing was a nice complement to the slightly eggy flavor of the bread.  A slice spread with cream cheese was totally decadent.  A good breakfast item, or even as a dessert.

The only thing wrong with this loaf is that it was a bit dense/heavy.  In the future it might be a good idea to warm the eggnog in the microwave and use SAF "gold" instant yeast instead of the SAF "red" that I used  to get a better, faster rise and produce a lighter, less dense crumb.  Of course starting earlier in the day to allow ample rise time would be reasonable too.

Cory_v's picture
Cory_v

The dough is from here. But I only had white four so... wasn´t really country dough. Made the sauce myself which turned out pretty good. Got the sauce recipe from here. I made a nasty mistake with the dough though. Lets just say the outside of the pie crust ended up much thicker then the middle. Live and learn I suppose. Also, I´m stuck with a gas stove which doesn´t get that hot to begin with, but also the door doesn´t completely close. Not ideal for pizza as you can imagine. No pizza stone either, just the bottom of a cookie sheet. Yummy pizza regardless! (Although I will not be getting that particular peppered salami again!)

Chausiubao's picture
Chausiubao

Gluten is the name for one of the two main structural components in any wheat dough or batter; the other being starch, something much more important in rye doughs.

It is a protein based material made from the bonding of two structural proteins in the wheat kernel, that I'll call G1 and G2.

In the presence of water G1 and G2 link up in a chemical bond that is both strong and stable, limited only by the amount of water available to G1 and G2.

In addition to water, the more a dough is agitated (mixed), the more links form between chains of G1-G2 (gluten), ultimately leading to a network, think power lines or traffic intersections

 

Knowing that gluten formation depends on water, leads us to a few conclusions

1.) Gluten formation can be prevented by greasing gluten with fats and oils

2.) Gluten formation can be maximized by giving gluten strands access to as much water as possible

 

Since fats and oils prevent gluten formation, you could conceivably make an extremely weak dough by preventing gluten formation. But, I have no idea why you'd want to do that.

Alternatively, recipes with lots of fat and oil in them like brioche (butter heavy to be sure), can produce strong gluten networks, all you have to do is develop the gluten first, then mix the butter in at the end.

 

On the flip side, removing all water-stealing ingredients from the mix (temporarily at least) can maximize the formation of gluten. This is the basis for the “autolyse” technique.

During an autolyse, flour and water are mixed and the flour is allowed to absorb the water fully (anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes). Despite limited agitation a strong network is formed due to the absorption of the water.

 

Similar to the autolyse and brioche methods of bread mixing is the concept of holding back sugar. Sugar, like salt, is a strongly water-stealing ingredient, and when added to a dough in large quantities will pull away water that might otherwise be used to help form gluten.

In any breads with these large quantities of sugar, some have taken to adding the sugar at the end of the mix, in the same manner as how butter is added at the end of the mix in a brioche dough.

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Now my preferred mixing method is to hand mix to the short stage, where the dough just comes together, and is still very rough in texture. Then over the course of 3 or 4 hours of slow bulk fermentation, give the dough the requisite folds it needs to become strong.

Folding a dough involves first stretching it (agitation) then folding it in on itself, usually as one might fold a letter (in thirds). Over time, the necessary strength will be a result of the stretching as well as in some small part to the acidity in the dough from the fermentation that is happening simultaneous to the folds.

 

That's gluten. It is not a protein, exactly. But it is definitely protein-like, and can be manipulated as such. There exist ways of convincing the gluten to behave in the way you want, depending on whether you want a dough with great elasticity, extensibility, or tolerance.  

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - blogs