The Fresh Loaf

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dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

We have been working our way up to higher and higher percent whole grains using sourdough and trying to get an open crumb. So far 30 percent – no worries but Lucy can only eat so much white bread sourdough before she starts feeling guilty.

 

So we made a YW whole grain levain from the cast offs from feeding it and a small whit flour poolish to speed things along since this was not going to be a bread with a long overnight retard but one that we could get done in a day not including the 12 hour levain for the YW.

 

We came in at 43% whole grains, all in the YW levain, and we added some pistachios and walnuts in the mix to give it some taste since there was no sourdough tang to fall back on.

 

We did a large one build levain using half YW and half a mix of whole grain flours that we ground up in our trusty Krupp’s coffee grinder.  The multigrain mix was wheat, spelt, farro and rye in equal amounts. 

 

We did the usual slap and folds to develop the gluten and stretch and folds to incorporate the nuts but we then shaped the sough free form into a boule and dropped it on some parchment paper on a small Pyrex lid to proof on the heating pad.

 

We were again running out of time before this bread had to go into the oven and hoped that the poolish would eventually kick in to get the proof to 85% before hitting the heat but we only got 70% during the 3 hour final proof.

 

Then several weird things happened.  The bread would not slash with a razor, so Lucy thought about a pair of scissors but didn’t want to wash one more thing being deathly afraid of water that isn’t in her bowl.

 

Because the dough was under proofed and poorly slashed, the bottom blew out of this bread as it sprang in the oven without a hint of bloom.  No worries until the bread started to brown excessively and needed to be covered with foil for the last 10 minutes of baking.

 

We love biscuits and sausage country gravy.

Normally a bread on the small side would take about 27 minutes to get to 205 F on the inside in the mini oven but at 27 minutes it still had 10 more minutes to go - why this was so we no idea. 

 

Smoked; chicken, Anduouilli sausage and pulled pork etouffee is tough to beat.

 It did have some blisters due to (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups and it did spring 100% when it hit the heat, still, It isn’t much of a looker on the outside but the inside was also a surprise.  With that spring I though thought it would be more open but my daughter said it was more dense than usual - compared to a 25% white bread without any nuts.

 

A tasty honey goat cheese salad from the pot garden.

The girls liked the taste since there was no sour at all and the nuts really came through since they didn’t have to compete with 10 other ingredients.  It’s not my favorite kind of bread but it did taste great for a non SD white bread with nuts.

 

The wheat will be ready to harvest soon.

Tomorrow we will crank out a 50% whole grain SD and see if that fits the bill for our sour craving a little better.  Hope the holes are better too. 

 

Yeast Water BuildBuild 1Total%
Pinch of ADY   
Yeast Water13813842.33%
Whole Multigrain Mix13813842.33%
Water505015.34%
Total27627684.66%
    
Yeast Water & Pinch of ADY Poolish % 
Flour18857.67% 
Water18857.67% 
Starter Hydration100.00%  
Levain % of Total55.29%  
    
Dough Flour % 
AP13842.33% 
Total Dough Flour13842.33% 
    
Salt61.84% 
Potato Water8927.30% 
Dough Hydration w/o starter64.49%  
Tot. Hydration  w/ Starter 84.97%  
    
Total Flour326  
Potato Water 89, Water277  
    
Total Hydration with Adds84.13%  
Total Weight680  
    
Whole Grains42.33%  
    
Add - Ins % 
VWG82.45% 
Walnuts & Pistachios5516.87% 
Total7121.78% 

 

 

 

ElPanadero's picture
ElPanadero

My first bash at the "Tartine Style Loaf" from the weekendbakery.com site.

This is an adapted recipe tweaked for European flour with 70% hydration.  For added depth of flavour I used a rye starter here.  Recipe and method very simple to follow.  No kneading required just a short autolyse and a series of 6 stretch and folds interspaced by 30min intervals.

I confess that when I upturned the banetton to deposit the loaf onto my hot bread stone my heart sank and I pretty much wrote the whole thing off right there.  It eased itself out painfully slowly but thankfully didn't stick at all but nevertheless, "flolloped" onto the stone and immediately spread out into what I could only describe as a 1 inch high pizza !  I figured I had messed up the hydration level somewhere and resigned myself to producing some kind of Tartine flatbread or focaccia that would hopefully still taste good.   What a surprise then to look through the oven door 10mins later and see that it had sprung up brilliantly like a pitta bread !

Both the smell and taste were very pleasing.  It has a good depth of flavour with both malty and nutty elements, a nice chewy texture and a satisfying crusty exterior.  There were one or two crumb holes that were too big, a result  of my failure to thoroughly knock them out during shaping, but that will improve next time around.   Overall, a lovely recipe.

Crumb

Poolish  -  25g Wheat Flour, 25g WW Flour, 10g starter, 45g water

Dough   -  350g Wheat Flour, 40g WW Flour, 260g water, 6.5g salt

EP

CAphyl's picture
CAphyl

It is very exciting.  I have always wanted to bake a Tartine loaf and now I have done it. There certainly were trials along the way.  I weighed out the ingredients and just felt it was too much water.  The dough hydration seemed high, so I had to add some flour during the turn-and-folds.  It seemed to work out OK in the end.  I also did more turn-and-folds to get the dough to where I thought it would work. I am very anxious to see the crumb. I have to let it cool down, but can't wait to try it for lunch and see what rating my husband gives it.....I used the recipe below.

http://www.crumblycookie.net/2011/05/29/tartine-country-bread/

Mebake's picture
Mebake

This is my second take on Andy’s (ananda) Borodinsky Rye. My Last attempt yielded a fine bread, but lacked volume to fill the pan, and was somewhat over-hydrated. This time, I've lined my Pullman pan with parchment paper, reduced the hydration of the rye dough, slid the pan cover on, and baked with steam throughout the 4.5 hours baking time at 100C (The oven was preheated to 250C).

I was surprised at the cake like softness that the crust had after adding a steady steam source during the long baking hours. The bread cooked through quite well, and the picture shown is 12 hours into cooling time. The crust color, however, suffered as my previous take of this bread was steam less and resulted in a dark caramelized crust that I love. Also, as can be seen from the loaf’s top surface, 1.7 Kg. dough wasn't quite enough to fill my 13” X 4” pan, so there should be at least 1.75 – 1.8 Kg. of dough in there. The remainder of the recipe dough was baked into mini silicon cup cake moulds.

I've sliced the bread this morning, as I couldn't wait for additional 12 hours.  The bread was quite SOFT! moist, and very aromatic. I've chosen to exclude the coriander garnish to see how the flavor would be, and it was still very pleasant. 

Now, i think i need to either eliminate steam during the whole 4 hours, or do so after only 2 . What do you think?

Khalid

hanseata's picture
hanseata

A while ago I needed to add another book from my Amazon wish list to qualify for free shipping. More or less randomly, I picked Ken Forkish's: "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" - the price was right!

When I started leafing through the book, I was intrigued by his approach to kneading - or, better, not kneading the dough. From Dan Lepard's Pumpkin Whey Bread I knew that very brief kneading (30 seconds), followed by some folds, can be sufficient to process some doughs - but pinching?

Usually I don't mix my doughs by hand (my skin is very dry) so I used a large wooden spoon for stirring flour and water together. But Forkish is right, using your hands is much faster, and you have less cleanup afterwards.

My first take on Forkish's breads: Walnut Levain

During the pinching and folding process, the dough behaved exactly as it should: rising, then leveling out after each fold, calling for the next round. And getting more elastic and smoother after each turn!

Forkish's descriptions are precise, and detailed, but, nevertheless, there were stumbling blocks on the way, and it took more than one trial to finally master the whole process.

Why the waste? You are supposed to build a huge amount of levain, only to use a small percentage of it for your final dough - the rest goes in the trash. Sure, flour and water don't cost much, but this is definitely not my idea of frugality and environmental consciousness!

The rationale behind this waste? Beats me. The breads taste great, even when made without all this splurging. Does a loaf, made with just as much levain as needed, taste any different from one where the starter came out of a big bucket? Hard to believe!

Sticky wicket: if you don't flour the rising basket really, really well (whether lined, or not), this can happen:

Oh, nooooo!

Don't think you can ease the proofed bread with your usual gentle coaxing from the basket. Forget your good manners - your dough needs slapping! After the sticky wicket of breads that stubbornly clung, and then deflated in the extraction process, I finally checked YouTube.

Bread turned flounder (Overnight Brownie)

And there it was: I saw master baker Forkish slamming the banneton with gusto on the counter - brutal force did the trick! After this eye-opener I was less timid, and the breads finally let go.

Soft skin vs. hot pot. Not afraid of third degree burns, Ken Forkish places the bread smoothly into the Dutch oven. Others, with less experience, might not be so lucky. But there is an easy way out: the paper sling!

Use parchment paper for a painless transfer (Overnight White)

This worked well for other DO  breads I baked, like Aroma Bread. Therefore, save your skin - use parchment for a painless transfer.

Once these snafus were overcome, every bread I made from "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast", plus my "à la Forkish" variations, turned out great. "Bold baked" crust, holey crumb, and extraordinary taste - my random pick to fill my shopping cart at Amazon became one of my favorite baking books!

A&B Naturals, my favorite food store (they sell my breads!) just started carrying Einkorn flour, and I love hazelnuts.

Combining both in a loaf à la Forkish, this is the bread I came up with: EINKORN HAZELNUT LEVAIN: Here you can find my formula and description to make this tasty bread - pinching instead of kneading!

Einkorn Hazelnut Levain - pinched instead of kneaded!

WoodenSpoon's picture
WoodenSpoon

hey yall, I made some sourdough with rye and its tasty as all get out. I made it with 455g KA bread flour, 195g freshly ground whole rye flour, 130g 100% hydration chef, 486g warm water and 14g of salt.

Yesterday, I dissolved the chef in the warm water and added it to the flour mixture, I mixed it gently with a dough scraper then a wooden spoon and set it to autolyse for 45 minutes. That completed I spread the salt over the counter and gave the ole rascal a series of slap and folds separated by a series of short rests, once the dough was pretty properly developed I gave it a stretch and fold and let it sit for around and hour and a half or so. During that time I gave it two additional relatively evenly spaced stretch and folds then I popped it in the fridge and gave it another stretch and fold an hour later and another an hourish later.

Today I took the dough out, let it sit at room temp for an hour and a half or so, shaped it and proofed it for around three hours, during the last 50 minutes or so of proofing I preheated my oven to 550, later on right before I scored it I splashed a bit of water on the preheated sheet pan I use for steaming, scored it, slid it on in and gave it another sizable splash of hot hot water. I baked it at 550 for around two minutes, then I turned it down to 475 for 15 minutes then 450 for another 20 or so. This is a large loaf so I tented it with some tinfoil after the first 15 minutes to allow the internals to catch up to the externals.

Nomad Bread's picture
Nomad Bread

Evening from sunny Britain..

Here's my second attempt with increased WW (about 15%) and increased hydration:

BP: flour 100%

water 76%

salt 2%

 

MisterTT's picture
MisterTT

It has been a long time since my first and so far only post, so I just thought to pop up and show how I bake my daily bread these days.

I've got a long rectangular-shaped dutch oven/baking dish, but I usually want to bake two smaller loaves rather than one huge batard, so, sacrificing shape, I put two smaller loaves separated by a small piece of parchment paper into the DO and bake them like that. To make all sides of the loaves brown evenly, you've got to take the separating parchment out when uncovering the DO, but I don't always do that, since the bread is fine either way.

Here's what it looks like out of the oven:

Loaves in DO

Ant the better loaf closer-up:

Better loaf

These are 70% hydration, 80% bread flour, 10% WW and 10% spelt sourdoughs with and added 10% cracked wheat scalded and soaked in an equal amount of water overnight. The levain was built up using three stages with feedings spaced close together, so you could call it a pretty "sweet" levain. The loaves were scaled at 630 g and scored using scissors like Chad Robertson seems to be fond of doing these days.

I know they're not perfect, but then at least there's always room for improvement! I saved another 630 g piece of dough to use as old dough later.

Here is the exact formula:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ajcq2xngz6tsdFNwdXhiRVlYZlMxaU9Qb0JxTFphS2c&usp=drive_web#gid=0

 

mycroft's picture
mycroft

Hello!

Am typing this out while I am munching on these rolls for lunch. Had them baked this morning.

Just wanted to experiment on feeding old bread crumbs to my starter yesterday and it went really well. Fed the crumbs to the starter in the morning and in the evening, used the starter for a 100% spelt roll recipe. The dough rose quickly and 4 hours later, chucked it into the fridge.

took it out this morning and divided into rolls and into the oven it went! the result is kinda amazing, extremely moist and soft, even though this only a starter, flour and salt recipe!

 

 

 

 

 

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