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Busy week here. Work, cleaning, and baking. My dad, 87, is here to spend most of the month. My domestic partner, Mark is returning home from a 6 month stay in Boise building a french fry factory and it's Super Bowl weekend. I have slider buns proofing for baking, cranked out a batch of brownies and getting ready to whip up some scones to freeze for a later date. But earlier this week, when it still just and peaceful, I decided to try baguettes for the first time. I followed Dave's SJSD baguette post for this and think they turned out fairly well. Unfortunately, before I thought to snap a photo of the crumb, my sister took 2 on the road to Alabama with her, Mark's mom took 1 and my neighbor just snagged up the other.  So, I guess I'll have to wait til I try it again to check that out or even know how they taste. 

Lori

Winter Market 2 for me (I've missed quite a few as I'm taking my weekend back for a bit).  Yet another variation on the Pane Maggiore that I so adore (rhymed)  This variation came out of necessity.  Instead of an 18 hour wheat levain at 1:10:10 I used two levains.  One a whole wheat 1:2:2 for 8 hours and an equal portion of ripe white starter.  Yet again a fantastic loaf.  this may be the best of the bunch but if I recall the one made with 1/2 rye sour and 1/2 white starter was also pretty darn fantastic.  The mix was ideal (except the loss of perfect temp due to chilly kitchen) but the fresh grains kept fermentation vibrant.  I really love this loaf and highly suggest it to all.  The base formula can be found in previous posts of the same loaf.  Of my favorite breads and its 40% whole grain!!!

 Also I'm gonna add some pics of the Pearled/Barley, Steel Cut Oat/Flax Porridge Bread with the T3 as inspiration (used half the porridge he does and my flour blend is 78white20wheat/2rye as I don't have any high extraction flour and didn't want to make it.  Pretty tasty loaf with great keeping quality. 

Pane Maggiore

And The Barley/Oat/Porridge 

Tartine 3 is really a fantastic book with great inspiration for utilizing whole grains and still attaining an open crumbed loaf of bread.  

Josh

It seems every year we have BBQ ribs for Super Bowl Sunday.  Some times we have these ribs, without the bones, on pizza showing how sick some folks can be when pressed or just left alone to their fate.  This year it is just smoked baby back ribs, potato salad, Cole slaw and brewskies.

In KCMO where I came from, The finest BBQ is served with Wonder Bread.  As hard as we try, even home made Yeast Water Japanese Water Roux Pain de Mie cannot duplicate this white bread adequately.   But, we still need a white bread for the BBQ so we came up with this one.

Since this is a one day affair, not including the SD levain build, where the dough is not retarded, the sour was weaker than out usual efforts.  But, we did refrigerate the levain overnight once the levain had risen 25% after the 3rd stage feeding to help the sour.  We also put all the whole grains in the levain to get them as wet for as long as possible.

We added in some home milled multi-grains and ground flax, sesame and chia seeds to improve the flavor some, put some specks of color in the crumb and make the bread a little mire healthy.  The whole multigrain mix was rye, spelt, Kamut and wheat.

We did a 30 minute autolyse and sprinkled the salt on top.  We used our usual 3 set of slap and folds of 6, 2 and 1 minutes done 15 minutes apart followed by 3 sets of stretch and folds, from the cardinal compass points, also on 15 minute intervals where the ground seeds were incorporated on the first one.

After 30 minute ferment we shaped the dough and 10 minutes later final shaped the dough into a ball and placed it into a nonstick sprayed and rice floured cereal bowl, seams side down, so we could bake the bread seam side up without slashing it.

The bread was slightly over proofed so it only cracked a little bit when put in to the 500 F mini oven covered by a stainless steel mixing bowl acting as a cloche.   We forgot to turn the oven down so, after 10 minutes, we removed the stainless cover and turned the oven down to 425 F convection this time.

5 minutes later rotated the bread 180 degrees and moved the bread up to the middle level from the bottom since the top was too far from the heating coils to brown as well as it should. 5 minute later we rotated it a\gain and then 5 minutes later it was deemed done with the inside temperature at 207 F.

The crust did finally brown well but the blisters the mini oven is famous for with retarded loaves under Sylvia’s mega steaming cups were missing.  The crust came out crisp but went soft.  The crumb was medium open, glossy, soft and moist with little black and brown flax and chia specks.

The taste was mildly sour and the flavor is not as deep as bread with more whole grains and flavorful add ins.  It really would have benefited with a dose of Toadies for sure.  As it is, you would have to say it is a slightly more flavorful SFSD with some specks in the crumb that will be a fine white bread for the Sunday BBQ.  It made some good toast for breakfast with butter and home made blackberry / strawberry combo jam this morning too. 

Formula

I've been making a lot of whole grain breads lately but I really felt the need for something completely opposite and not quite as healthy.  We were going to have some chicken burgers for dinner one night last week and they wouldn't have really worked on slices of 100% whole grain bread so some Challah rolls were needed.

This formula is based on one of Peter Reinhart's with a few modifications and ended up making some great rolls.

Formula

Directions

Separate the egg yolks in a separate bowl.  Add the yeast to the water and stir briefly.  Next add the egg yolks, salt and oil and stir until thoroughly mixed.  Now add the flour and mix on low for 4 minutes and medium for another 2 minutes until you have a nice soft dough.

Take the dough out of your mixer and form it into a ball and place in a well oiled bowl or dough rising bucket.  Knead the dough by hand inside the bowl for a minute and then immediately place the dough in the refrigerator overnight for up to 2 days.

When ready to bake, take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it come to room temperature for about 1 - 1.5 hours.

Next gently deflate the dough and form into rolls and place on cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Cover with a moist towel or plastic wrap sprayed with cooking spray.  Let it sit at room temperature for about 1 hour or more until the rolls have almost doubled in size and pass the poke test.

Around 30 minutes before ready to bake the rolls, pre-heat your oven to 450 degrees and prepare your oven for steam as well.  I use a heavy-duty pan in the bottom shelf of my oven and pour 1 cup of boiling water in right before placing the rolls in the oven.

Right before you are ready to bake the rolls prepare an egg wash and paint your rolls and sprinkle on poppy seeds or your seed of choice.

Bake the rolls at 450 degrees for the first 5 minutes and lower the oven to 425 degrees until they are nice and brown.  These should take about 25 minutes to cook thoroughly.  When done  let them cool on wire rack for at least half an hour before digging in if you can wait that long.

Baked 2 loaves this week. Leader's Pain au Levain my staple plain bread and Hamelman's rye multigrain.

No pictures of the entire loaf of the Pain au Levain this time round but here's the crumb shot.

The addition of 22% whole wheat flour and 5% rye flour makes for a tasty loaf. I upped the hydration to 73% and soaked the flour overnight which I think contributes to a sweeter, more complex tasting loaf. The dough is very easy to manage with a few stretch and folds thrown in. Shaping is easy and the extra hydration contributes to a moderately open crumb which makes it a really flexible loaf to go with anything.

For the 2nd loaf of the week, I decided to go for a multigrain bread. Hamelman's rye multigrain is one of my favourite breads to make and eat. The mixture of flax, sunflower, cracked rye and oats gives it a delicious taste and bite. My favourite among the other multigrain variants in bread, I find the addition of a rye sourdough contributes to a nice complexity and sourness. Here's a picture of the loaves. Don't mind the dirty stone!

And here's the crumb shot, studded with seedy goodness!

It has been almost half a year since I baked this but after this bake its in my breads to bake again soon list.

-Tim

Well, it's been a while (about two years I think) since I last posted to my blog.  Lots of irrelevant reasons for that, but last night's bake from the first edition of Jeffrey Hamelman's book BREAD inspired me to return.  Time will tell if I can keep it up.

I baked this one "by the book" with only a longer final proof than prescribed because I undershot the desired dough temp by 5-6 degrees, and in my cool house the dough just never caught up.  The end result was, nonetheless, delicious.  We love this bread, and prefer it to the base Vermont Sourdough because of the extra flavor that the added whole wheat flour produces.  I used Guisto's Unbleached Artisan flour alongside my home-milled whole hard white wheat flour.  In this case the wheat was only milled a couple of days before the bake.

The crust shot is at the top, and here is the crumb.

The crumb is not as open as I like, but that is due to my less than excellent dough handling skills.  Thanks in part to the excellent qualities of the Guisto's flour this dough was a joy to handle, albeit poorly on my part, and the flavor was excellent.  The crust came out crackling crisp, and the crumb cool and creamy, wheaty sweet with a perfect (which for us means pretty mild) sour tang.  It wrapped the meatloaf sandwiches perfectly at lunch today.

Thanks for stopping by
OldWoodenSpoon

Lucy figured it was time to get back to baking the kind of bread that she likes but I reminded her we still have a couple of half loaves of SD pumpernickel in the freezer along with some white breads and who knows what else.

So we compromised by baking one of my favorite kind of breads - even though I like them all.  This one is a 60% mix of 8 whole grains, sourdough, has oat and potato in it along with home made red and white malts and sprouts, honey, pumpkin, sunflower, flax and sesame seeds.   The liquid is a mix of excess sprout soaker water but mainly yogurt whey.

Even though rye chits in 24 hours, the rest of the grains take 48 hours to chit when making sprouts so you need to start the sprouting at the same time as the SD levain if you want to have it ready when you mix the dough 48 hours later if you want to refrigerate the levain for 24 hours after the 3rd stage feeding.

We always have yogurt whey on hand since we regularly make our own but if you buy a quart of the cheapest plain yogurt at the store and drain it in the fridge for 4 hours, through a colander with a sheet of paper towel in the bottom, you will make really expensive Greek yogurt and have whey for your bread too.  A twofer if there ever was one.

Per our new normal using a heating pad in the winter, we made the SD levain over 3 stages from our whole multigrain 66% starter that had been undisturbed for 4 weeks in the fridge getting sourer by the day in the cold.  The first stage was 3 hours where it rose 25% and the 2nd stage was right at 4 hours before it doubled.

We then fed it the 3rd time and after it rose 25% after about an hour we then refrigerated it for 24 hours.  The next day it was placed back on the heating pad and allowed to double, which took about 3 hour,s while we autolysed the rest of the dry, less the seeds and salt.  We held back little bit of whey to dissolve the salt to add in later.

After out last bake that was too wet and the dough spread, we decided that this bread would be better at 81% hydration including the add ins.  After everything was mixed we let it sit for half and hour.  The dough certainly felt and performed better that the last bake and was still wet enough to do the 3 sets of slap and folds of 8, 1.and 1minutes  without difficulty.

3 sets of stretch and folds were done on 20 minute intervals where the ground sesame and flax, pumpkin and sunflower and sprouts were incorporated on the first 3 and evenly distributed by the 4th one.  Once everything was in the dough, we shaped it in to a ball and put it in the fridge for a 12 hour retard in bulk like Ian or Peter Reinhart would do.

By the next morning it had doubled in the fridge and we put the dough on the heating pad to warm up for 1 ½ hours before shaping it into a boule and putting it seam side down in a rice floured basket to final proof so that we could bake it upside down with out slashing and letting the bread crack at the seams as it sprang in the oven.

Yes ,it's a BLT - very special since we only have a couple a year.

After 1 3/4 hours we fired up Big Old Betsy and let it hit 500 F and stay there for 20 minutes to let the top and bottom stones catch up.  This time we decided to bake this bread on the bottom stone while covering it with or Goodwill $1 aluminum Dutch oven bottom as a cloche.

As soon as the bread was overturned onto parchment on a peel and slid into the oven and covered with hot preheated cloche, the temperature was turned down to 475 F for the 18 minutes the bread was steamed with its own steam.

Once the lid came off, the oven was turned down to 425 F convection this time and the inside hit 203 F right at 12 minutes later when the oven was turned off.  Total baking time was 30 minutes for this smallish loaf. 

Once the bread hit 205 F we opened the door of the oven, leaving it ajar and let bread sit on the hot stone till the bread hit 207 F on the inside when it was removed to the cooling rack.  It sprang and browned very well and cracked handsomely.  The crust was very crunchy when it came out of the oven too.  The crumb was fairly open for a bread so high in whole grains, sprouts and seeds.  It was a medium well for sour because of the whey and there are lots of bits in the crumb.  The crust stayed a little crisp and was boldly baked just the way we like it.  Between the fine flavor of the crust and crumb that is nutty, tangy and deep, there isn't much not to like about this fine bread.  It would be a fine candidate for Lucy's DaPumperizing method.

This dough was mixed in a KA K5SS stand mixer equipped with a replacement spiral hook for a KA 6 quart mixer. The preparatory sour was mixed by hand. This batch used 15 ounces (425g) of flour, yielding a 24 ounce (680g) boule.

Formula:

Preparatory Sour:

  6 2/3%     Dark Rye Flour

13 1/3%     Water

   0.12%     Instant Yeast

Time:24 hours    Temperature: 76°F (24°C)

Dough:

66 2/3%     Bread Flour

26 2/3%     Dark Rye Flour

  2 1/2%     Vital Wheat Gluten

  1 2/3%     Shortening

   0.19%     Granular Soy Lecithin

   0.82%     Instant Yeast

     1.2%     Ground Caraway Seed

      60%     Water

        2%      Salt

  3 1/3%     Sugar (added for crust color only)

Method:

The preparatory sour and all of the dough ingredients were placed in the mixer bowl and mixed at slow speed for 4 minutes. After a fermentation time of 2 hours 15 minutes, the salt and sugar were added. The dough was then re-mixed at speed 1 for 30 seconds, then at speed 2 for an additional 2 1/2 minutes. The dough was rounded and given a ten minute rest. The dough ball was then re-rounded and panned. Proof time: 1 hour.

Since this loaf was to be baked in a convection oven, a 9 inch round pie pan was chosen. The dough was quite slack, and it spread nearly to the edge of the pan. Slashing was performed with a Mafter lame that I had purchased a few hours before. With practice (and a less sticky dough), I anticipate better results next time.

Here a preview of my new bread. It has the exact same ingredients (As to flour, water, salt, spices) as my previous bread (Adrian's rustic whole rye bread with some spelt). But this time I used a different way of fermentation!

The sourdough leaven was 750g at 100% hydration, fermented for 16 hours. Compared to what I later added (390g of flour) it is a lot and the bread should have a stronger taste than last time.

This is how it looked like after 12 hours (4 hours before I used it):

If the crumb and taste is good (I can't wait until tomorrow morning), I'll post what I did in the forum section.

Adrian

I currently proof wholemeal sd loaves (approx weight 900gms) for between 4 and 6 hours in warm kitchen (22 degrees). What can I do to accelerate this slightly ? I look forward to hearing thoughts. 

With thanks