The Fresh Loaf

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MarieH's picture
MarieH

I have been taking a Peter Reinhart’s Artisan Bread class on Craftsy and these loaves are from the rustic bread lesson. Craftsy is an online learning platform for a wide range of subjects such as knitting, baking & cooking, weaving, crochet, quilting, and much more.

I am very impressed with the Craftsy student interface. Video lessons are well presented and can be viewed as many times as desired at any time. Instructors answer questions and class materials are available for downloading. My next class is a free class on knife skills. Just to be clear, I have no affiliation with Craftsy. I am just a very satisfied customer!

So back to the bread. I made 5 mini baguettes and 1 ciabatta. The dough is mixed and retarded overnight. The mini baguettes were fun to make – no shaping or slashing. Cut off a hunk of dough straight out of the fridge, stretch it a bit onto parchment and bake in a steamed oven. The ciabatta was shaped and proofed for 2 hours before baking.

Great flavor and texture and super simple. And Mr. Reinhart is a delightful and engaging teacher. Can’t wait till I get to the lesson on chocolate babka!

mycroft's picture
mycroft

So in tradition, to 'close the kitchen' for this year before the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations, I decided to bake two loaves of sourdough boules.

Straight forward recipe of starter, water, flour and salt. 12 hour fermentation, shaping and into the oven it went!

Pretty good close to the year right?

 

And also some other shots including some Dragon Cookies baked for the celebrations this weekend as well as some sourdough pancakes just for fun! :D

 

yozzause's picture
yozzause

Between sips of the left over home brewed stout, the Haloumi cheese cbes and diced onions were folded into the Turmeric douh over  three intervals of stretch and bench rests before being shaped and dropped into foil containers that allows for easy transportation as they were to be baked on our own the next day.

With drinks drained very quickly from the plastc cups, Derek then got busy with a quick rise white bread with black sesame  which was  eventually shaped into  numerous shapes and sprinkled with not only black sesame but white sesame and poppy seeds.

 

Smelling of earthy fresh baked bread ,we returned to the hotel renewed with energy and hope.

Here's a BIG thanks to Derek for his generosity and kindness. But more importantly for showing that when it comes to sourdough , you cant'  seem to be over-the -hill - it takes little strength and effort and it can be one of the most forgiving breads to make.

 Happy with the evenings work

------------------------------------------

So there we have it  a great time was had by all, a pleasure to meet and bake with a fellow TFL BAKER.

After closing up i was able to give the ladies a lift to the city and their hotel offering a few suggestions of places worth visiting and a couple of bakeries worthy of a visit i suggested that we might meet up in Fremantle for a quick lunch  at the Old Shanghai food hall on the friday which we duly did, i was able to give Betsy the loaf of Haloumi and spring onion bread that she had no facilities for back at the hotel that i did at the Institute.

I also arranged to pick them up from the hotel after chack out on Saturday morning and took them down to my daughters rural property where we had morning tea followed by a trip up into the Darling Ranges to a vineyard  where i was hoping to see some wild Kangaroos but unfortunately seeing as it was so hot they were all hiding in shady spots. We returned to the daughters property in time for some lunch after which it was time to head off to the airport and say good bye.

I have already got my invite to KL which is just over 5 hours away and intend to renew our aquaintence in the near future.

I am submitting this article at the request of Betsy and Penelope  who were having trouble posting themselves.

Thankyou ladies and thanks for the book you presented me with too. Kindest regards Derek

Isand66's picture
Isand66

  Ever since I received my new toy I've become obsessed with using freshly milled flour in my bread baking.  Since I was traveling last week for a job interview I didn't have any time to bake until this weekend so I refreshed my mother starter, created a levain using some of the refreshed starter and just to see what would happen, I added some sour cream in place of some of the water to make the levain.

I also used some additional sour cream in the main dough along with freshly ground Kamut, Rye, and Hard White Whole Wheat.  I have not been sifting any of the flour, just grinding it at the finest setting and using as is.

After suffering from bakers withdrawal I felt the creative juices ready to burst out so I threw in some grated white cheddar that I had bought at Whole Foods and some Tahitian Vanilla Balsamic Vinegar just because I bought it along with a bunch of other flavored vinegar and oils right before mixing this one up.

The final bread came out great with a nice open crumb for a high percentage whole grain bread.  The sour cream is about 73% water so it really bumped up the hydration of the final dough but it wasn't too hard to handle at all.  It actually made a nice silky smooth dough.

I had a nice meatloaf sandwich for lunch on this bread today and it was wonderful.

Closeup1

Formula

SourCream100%WholeGrain

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.

 Main Dough Procedure

Mix the flours, sour cream and water 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 balsamic vinegar and mix on low for 5 minutes.  Add the cheese and mix for another 1 minute 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.

ScoredCloseup

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.

Scored

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.

CrumbCloseup

Cleo
A bread fit for a Queen...Cleopatra approves....

Crumb

 

squarehead's picture
squarehead

Howdy y'all this is my first post on TFL but I've been following this site for almost a year now and it has helped a lot with my endeavors in yeast as I am very much still a novice. Anywho this is a 70 % hydration sourdough (If my math is correct) incorporating 36% whole wheat and a soaker composed of bran and flax seed meal. the taste is quite nice with the nuttiness of the soaker not overpowered by the sour despite an 18 hour retard. Here's the formula, I welcome any suggestions/advice.

315 g H2O room temp

162 g whole wheat flour

288 g artisan bread flour (central milling co.)

175 g ripe levain (mine was started off my mother at a 1/10/10 seed rate

12 g salt

Soaker:

50 g bran

50 g flax seed meal 

150 H20 (boiling)

1 g salt

Method:

Make soaker first by boiling water and adding 150g boiling water to bran/flax/salt mixture.

Dissolve levain in 315 g h20 with silicone spatula or by hand, add flours, mix and let rest for 30 minutes.

Add soaker and wait 30 more minutes for a total autolyze time of 1 hour.

Add salt, mix to combine.

In-bowl stretch and fold four sides to center and repeat every 30 min for a total of 5 stretch and folds over 2 1/2 hours.

Bulk rise for another 1 1/2 hours with no stretch n folds.

Remove from bowl onto floured work surface and preshape into round, cover with the bowl and bench rest for 30 minutes. Remove bowl and shape into round or batard, place seam side up in basket with liner dusted with rice flour.

Place in refrigerator with plastic bag covering the basket to keep dough from developing a skin. Retard 18 hours.

Bake cold from fridge: dust bottom with cornmeal, upend into cast iron dutch oven, score with razor, bake covered at 500 for 10 min, uncover, reduce to 450 for 10 minutes more, then reduce to 400 and bake for 15 minutes more. Remove and cool on wire rack for 2 hours before slicing. Enjoy!

CAphyl's picture
CAphyl

Had to make some muffins today to share with friends.  I usually make them with sourdough, but didn't today.  It's a good recipe; I added the toasted almonds to it because I always love muffins with both fruit and nuts. I got the blood oranges from the farmer's market on Sunday.

FrenchNyonya's picture
FrenchNyonya

Saw this video and thought i must share.. first time i see how a dough can be strech to cover the entire table!!

http://www.mercotte.fr/videos-cuisine-et-cuisiniers/

Happy Baking!

 

Joyofgluten's picture
Joyofgluten

I sliced a loaf from mondays bake in half and discovered a hole big enough to park the 2CV in. I was after large holes but not quite to this degree. I've since cut into another loaf from the batch, it was much tamer.

This is from a hybrid batch,12 loaves with a baked weight of approx. 550g.  The sour culture fed on home milled unsifted wholegrain rye (10% of total flour). A separate poolish was made with home milled unsifted wholewheat(12% of total flour), with a pea sized piece of fresh yeast. Both of these where at 100% hydration, the flour had been milled 3 days previously.

The main dough contained; Swiss Ruchmehl(high extraction wheat flour) at 53% and Swiss halbweissmehl(white bread flour approx type 750) at 25%
The salt was at 2.2%, fresh yeast in final dough 1%, total hydration 72%. dough temp., after mixing 22c. 

I gave it a bulk rest of 80 minutes with a stretch&fold at half way and a  50 minute final proof.                                                                                          

The loaves were pealed into a good hot 270c oven, given a good blast of steam, after 10min. the damper was opened and the temp. dailed down to 230c for the remainder of the 55min. bake. The crust was nicely carmalized the bottom had a bit of characoal development, just how i like it. The week got off to a reasonably good start.

cheers    

daniel

 

 

 

yozzause's picture
yozzause

Last year i had permission to hold a promotional class consisting of colleagues family and friends with the idea that fellow TFL member Ross (ROSS-N-ROLLER) would come along and do an article that we could submit to the local paper  prior to a November date for a class on Sour Dough.

Ross and his partner Janice  came along and we had a great evening together.

Ross's article follows 

                                                       Bred to Bake

i recently attended one of Derek Hughes' sourdough bread baking classes at Beaconsfield Challenger Institutes campus. There were 12 attendees in all, most with no bread-making experience. as a home baker of sourdough bread myself,i was struck by the depth of Derek's knowledge and his deft dough handling and shaping skills He was a pro baker for many years,and it shows .He even looks like a baker (see pic)

While Derek's retail bakery days are behind him,he has never stopped baking,enthusiastically passing on his knowledge to Hospitality students at the Institute, in between working on campus as a Supply Officer. He brings this same impassioned approach to his bread baking classes-It's infectious!

The classes take place over 3.5  jam-packed hours. Derek led us through sourdough breadmaking process:weighing and mixing the ingredients:stretching and folding the dough during fermentation;shaping and baking.

There is plenty of opportunity to get down and doughy,with Derek overseeing as mentor-and just as well,in the case of some devilishly naughty but easy to mangle cinnamon scrolls!

The highlight is the sampling the wares,which included a delicious black sesame seed sourdough Pre prepared by Derek  and baked during the class.

We were all given a dozen cinnamon scrolls to take home as well a dough fermented and shaped in class to be baked next day. This  night it was a delicious wholemeal sourdough featuring Derek,s home brew stout recipes are included.

a fun night well run,and outstanding value. ROSS ---------------------------------------------------

As the article didn't get a run in the local paper we had to cancel the proposed date, it was not long after this that i received an email from fellow TFL member Betsy Teo asking if i knew of any one that gave sourdough lessons as she would be visiting Perth and had hoped to book into a class with Yoke Mardewi of Wild Sourdough fame  who lives in Perth but alas was not holding any classes at that time. I said to her it was a pity as i was due to run a class but had to cancel due to no publicity.

Anyway i was able to gain permission to run another freeby for staff colleagues and friends and over seas visitor so emailed the details and to contact me when she got to Perth, which she duly did. i gave the details of where and when. and how to get there.

What follows is an account from Penelope, Betsy's daughter who accompanied her on this trip.    

Over the hill

Now that phrase can be rather misleading.

And this is something i had come to learn last November 2013 as i made my way by foot from the junction of South Tce and Sth St where the free blue cat bus service  had let me off (bus stand7) towards Challenger Institute of Technology.

Stopping every 500 metres or so , i was greeted with the same response ,"over the hill. to your right across the oval"

Well, what would have been helpful was if i had been told  that its a BIG hill - somehow the art of describing how strenuous and challenging the different hills one has to encounter on foot is something only the residents of San Francisco has it refined to the 'T'.

What's interesting is my mother has over the course of 5 years or so been trying to make the perfect San Francisco sourdough bread.

Having left the 'brick' stage some time back with the help of online forums,countless of hours spent on You Tube videos, and many.many guinea pigs  who has been or lived in San Francisco as testers the phase of inconsistent results of 'blisters','open crumbs' and 'ears '  continues to haunt her.

This resulted  first with amassing a collection of sourdough or levain publications  by the who's who  of baking, followed by stalking  self proclaimed  local artisan bakers, to eventually combing farmers markets of Europe and begging strange Swiss, Italian and French men covered in powdery white substances to Pilates professional moonlighting as organic artisan bakers for private lessons.

Almost giving up hope , a lovely Australian man  - Derek- responded to her email queries, agreeing to provide her with some lessons one fine day.

the respond was timely with a last minute  visit i had planned for  after receiving news of an old family friend who was terminally ill in Perth.

Needless to say our laborious hike up Sth Street was well worth the visit and the very fact that we  had travelled all the way from Kuala Lumpur gave us not only automatic access to the Challenger Institute of Technology premises after hours but an escorted  tour around by security personnel on duty.

Derek on first impression was unassuming  and friendly . While waiting  for the rest of the 'friends and family who would be joining the baking session that evening, i went about taking the roots off the spring onions  that were to be used latter, while he went about answering my mothers 'technical questions'

Betsy and Derek  

  With the party ensemble at the agreed upon time ,class started with Derk explaining the lesson  plan for the night and put a batch of flour , sourdough starter and other base ingredients  for a white bread with turmeric Haloumi cheese and spring onion sourdough: one of 3 breads that we would  make that evening into a larger mixing bowl.

Michael one of Challengers'  chefs adding cheese and spring onions into the last few folds

the dough pieces scaled off below

 

As the dough was getting a good work out in the industrial sized mixer , Derek  produced loaves  of risen 50%wholemeal  with Home brewed stout  and torrified wheat that he had made the previous day and went about describing the technique of slashing . Once we had all had our rounds of slashing 2 or 3 loaves each Derek went about preparing the loaves with a glaze before baking them.

Michael  the Hospitality Technician  prepares the loaves for washing slashing ready for the oven.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Lorilu2's picture
Lorilu2

Well I finally got around to baking this weekend. My starter was 2 weeks old last Friday and bubbling and growing faster than I can feed it or use it!

 I produced this loaf loosely based on the The Quest for San Francisco Sourdough, take 4 blog of dmsnyder. Primarily due to disorganization and distraction my fermentation times are all over the place, but seems it still produced a great tasting loaf and while I'm sure I'm biased, it's also kinda pretty. My starter is maintained at 100% and my levain fermented at room temp, about 65 in my house this time of year, for 21 hours. I dropped my autolyse time to 1 hour, I can't for the life of me remember why...maybe due to the dinner guests I had coming that night and realizing I had to get pizza dough rolling. I did follow the 4 hour room temp ferment time with s&f at 50 and 100 minutes. I pre-shaped into what was supposed to be a batard but more resembled an hour glass, I've got some work to do there, and proofed 2 hours at rm temp. My cold retard time was 17 hours, then just proofed 1 hour at room temp, (if there was anyplace that's 85 degrees within 500 miles of me right now I would have driven there to do that final proof) for an hour before baking. I used steam the first 10 minutes and baked until 208 degrees. 

Think it was slightly over proofed based on my poke test and I've got lots of scoring practice ahead of me, but not a bad first go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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