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Hi everybody, especially rye bread enthusiasts...  Just wanted to post some things that I have been working on:

12/7/13 - Danish Rye Bread

This one turned out really well for winging it.  It's a mix of a bunch of stuff, freshly cracked rye, spelt, wheat berries, rye flour, pumpkin/flax/sesame seeds, old bread, rye sourdough, spelt stiff levain, barley malt syrup, blackstrap molasses.

12/11/13 - Lithuanian Scalded Rye Bread

This one was inspired by this video with Paul Hollywood of the Karaway Bakery in London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2az4i_XP4Uc

http://karawaybakery.com/ourProducts/breads

and these blog posts: http://flourandleaven.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/lithuanian-scalded-rye/

http://www.clarkagency.co.uk/GreedyPiglet/the-dark-side-sourdough-scalded-rye-bread/

http://www.gourmantineblog.com/lithuanian-black-rye-bread/

and this page: http://ausis.gf.vu.lt/eka/food/bread.html

My attempt consisted of 95% rye flour, 5% AP flour, water, blackstrap molasses, barley malt, salt, caraway seeds.

Here is a photo of the nice side of the loaf.  I think it could have been proofed a little longer...  I will cut into it tomorrow to see what it looks like.  From the good side, it looks pretty good...

12/13/13 - Crumbshots and Breakfast

Until the next loaf...

Tim

Yes, it is a 5 C alliteration Holiday bread inspired by trailrunner’s chocolate cherry bread posted earlier this week found here Chocolate sourdough enhanced bread

Sometimes Lucy sees a post on TFL and just has to move her version of it to the top of the bake list – and this was one of those times.

Lucy cit the recipe in half, used weights instead of volume, used white whole wheat for about a third of the flour putting it all in the levain and poolish, used yeast water and a small 50 g pinch of ADY poolish for the leaven, Used the dried cherry re-hydration for part of liquid, increased the butter and chocolate chunk a bit, did an 18 hour retard of the shaped dough and formed it into a chacon to complete the special effects for Holidays.

Other than that, it was very close to trailrunner’s inspiration.  We love the chocolate and cherry combination and it made for a fine looking and working dough.   We used the KA mixer with dough hook, for the time in ages, to do the 10 minutes of kneading and then followed that with 3 stets of stretch and folds to get the gluten developed.

Part of the dough was then shaped into a knotted roll which was surrounded by 8 balls of 2 different sizes to make the design for the chacon.  The rest of the dough was formed into an oval bialy to place over the design in the oval basket.

The dough spent an hour in the heating pad before going into the fridge for a 18 hour retard.  While in the fridge the dough did absolutely nothing so, we took it out in the morning and put it on the heating pad for 7 hours to see if it would get to 85% proof.  It never really did much so we baked it off.

Sure enough the chacon bloomed and cracked where we thought it would and it turned out OK looking on the outside.  It sure smelled great baking its way to 205 F on the inside.   Can't wait to cut into it and give it a taste.  Well, it tastes great......the chocolate and cherries go so well together.  The crumb is soft moist and more open than we thought it would be too.  This is what Lucy calls a desert bread.  Toasted with butter is about as good as it gets! It is a fine Holiday bread for sure.  

Thanks trailrunner for the inspiration and your beautiful post of this bread. 

Cherry Chocolate Chunk French toast breakfast at dabrownman's per Ian's recommendation.

Formula

Great sweet potato rolls. I had more potatoes so upped the % of ingredients. The dough is lovely to work with. I  decreased the yeast as I wasn't going to bake them yesterday.  Substituted my whey for milk. The dough responded very well to a long slow rise on the counter and then retarded in the fridge.  Filled with bubbles. Very easy to shape when cold. I retarded 15 of them....50 oz of dough...in a 13x9 covered container. Today all I did was turn it over  on a lightly floured countertop and cut them with a dough blade and barely shape and placed in a greased 13x9 pan !  Easy. Rose for an hour brushed with butter and baked . These are delicious. Lovely rich flavor and slight sweet potato taste comes through We had them with curried butternut squash soup. I froze half. Will definitely make these again. 

risen and ready for oven: crumb:

finished:

We are always running out of white SD bread it seams even though there is an at least 30% whole grain in it.  The girls like it better than the heavier whole grains Lucy prefers so the lighter ones disappear faster.

This bread is 50% whole grain mix a little more than usual in hopes that we can all get along and like one bread - well not really…. but it sounds good.  In order not to put the bread over the edge for the girls, there is no additional scald, sprouts or other whole grains sneaking around on the inside making the bread a higher grain that specified as flour,

It really is a very plain Jane kind of bread for us with just some red and white malts, a dash of honey , some ground flax and sesame seeds and some VWG to give the AP flour  boost closer to bread flour.  So the 50% whole grains will be a blessing, with the lack of add ins.

We home milled the whole grains to a 75% extraction and put the sifted out portion of the barley, Kamut, spelt, rye and wheat mix in the levain to get it wet as long as we could to soften these hard bits as much as possible.

We threw the barley in because we really like it because it has the lowest GI of any grain we normally use plus Ian had some in his bake this week and we need to blame as many folks as we can, besides Lucy, in case something goes wrong.

The coarsely ground flax and sesame seeds gave a nice speckle to the crumb along with the bran bits.   For an extra kick and surprise we used the left over potato water from last Fridays bake in this one for part of the dough liquid.

We did an unusual levain build, starting on Tuesday for Friday’s bake, using 10 g of 66% hydration, rye starter that had been getting sour in the fridge for a week.  The first stage was a huge one that we let sit for 8 hours on the heating pad until it doubled and then we fed it for the 2nd stage and  let it rise 25% before refrigerating it for 24 hours. 

We autolysed everything else, including the salt sprinkled on top, for 4 hours after the levain came out of the fridge the next day and waiting for it to finish its belated 2nd doubling.  The hydration of this dough came it at 82% due to the thirsty 50% of home milled whole grains.

We did our usual 3 sets of slap and folds for 8, 2 and 1 minute this time followed by 2 sets of stretch and folds.  This dough developed very well so we skipped the 3rd set of stretch and folds.  It went into the lightly rive floured basket and immediately into the fridge for an 18 hour retard.

We took the dough out of the fridge 30 minutes before we fired up Big Old Betsy with a preheat setting of 550 F. When the oven got to temperature we slid the (2) Pyrex pans with lava rocks and half full of water into the GE to supply mega steam. The dough had proofed to about 80% in the fridge so we thought the extra time on the counter would get it to 85% - no baking right out of the fridge this time which has been our usual..

We un-molded the bread onto parchment paper on a peel and slashed the bread in a modified T-Rex and slid it onto the bottom stone 15 minutes after the temperature hit 550 F - by then the steam was billowing.

After 2 minutes we turned the oven down to 500 F and 4 minutes later we turned it down to 475 F and then, 6 minutes later, at the 12 minute mark we removed the steam and turned the oven down to 425 F, convection.   Every 5 minutes we rotated the bread 180 degrees on the stone until it read 205 F on the inside. It was done in 30 minutes total bake time.

Lunch with last Friday's Fine Fig Bread with pear, sweet potato, Japanese black rice, veggies, brie, salad, avocado, pickles and a new batch of CeciC's multi-grain flax and sesame crackers.

The bread browned up, sprang and bloomed nicely. It even had some blistering on the surface.  Overall, it was pretty handsome on the outside but not as handsome as Max according to Lucy.  We will have to wait on the crumb until after the loaf cools completely.  The crumb came out open,  moist and very tasty.   We like the bread a lot andevey bit as much as the fig or prune or walnut versions with scalds and sprouts.  All in all a very nice bread indeed. 

Formula

But I I'm putting it in my blog because I don't want to forget this day.

First, although, like most, if not all of you, I have a passion for baking. With such a passion, only a fool would not be a member of TFL.

My passion, however, spills over into other domains. I am an unabashed Foodie. For example, two days ago I tested a brine-cured ham I am preparing for Christmas. It was perfect: ready for smoking. I celebrated with a glass of our home-vinted 2009 Barolo.

Since finding TFL four years ago, I've searched the web for other food-related websites with the same flavor, the same sense of community evoking the same feelings of being among friends and neighbors. 

I'm still searching. 

Today I came close:

 http://www.saveur.com/article/blog/2013-Best-Food-Blog-Awards-Winners

At least checkout the top winner: http://notwithoutsalt.com/

I've not checked out any in depth, but I have perused the the first four winning blogs enough to suggest they are worth examining, and worth passing on to likeminded folk. They are as literary, or at least journalistic, as they are culinary. I'll check them all out before the first of the New Year.

David G

Kid #2 wanted something non-sourdough, so I decided to take  another shot at English Muffins.

Poolish:

100g AP flour

100g water

1 packet commercial yeast

Ferment for ~12 hours

Autolyse:

200g AP flour

150g water

Sit for 75 minutes

Final Dough:

All of the poolish

All of the autolysed flour

75g AP flour

25g WW flour

75g water

(I forgot to add salt (d'oh!!!))

Knead in Kitchen Aid (KA). Use a paddle to combine into a wet mass, then switch to a dough hook and knead at speed '3' for ~3 minutes. Let rest 10 minutes. Knead for 6-10 minutes at speed '6' (I saw a ciabatta video where this was done, and the dough "slaps" against the bowl at high speed).

Bulk ferment overnight (did this last night in my cold room (about 60F)).

This morning I did about 5 stretch and folds by hand with the dough in the KA bowl using a spatula. I then spread about 2/3s of the dough out on my cutting board which was dusted with cornmeal. I warmed the oven to 80+F and let the dough rise for about 30 minutes, then cut, then placed on a hot cast iron griddle.

Results were ok. Crumb was exactly where I wanted it to be, but the muffins were a bit thin because based on the last batch of muffins I thought it would be good to roll them thinner and then let them rise. I had one with breakfast, and it was very tasty after being toasted. These were pretty close to Thomas' ... I think to get even closer I would reduce the hydration, add salt (d'oh!), and roll them out a little thicker.

The remaining dough I made into a small loaf. In the pic the teeny 'loaf' (more like a large roll) is sitting on the knife handle so as to illustrate the crumb. The oven spring was amazingly good, the crust was nice, and the flavor excellent. I try to eat low carb during the week (and eat carbs during the weekend) but this little guy was tasty and I lopped off 2 slices and ate them with butter. I think I'll try Jason's Ciabatta next.

After getting my levain into some warmer temps it has finally gotten strong enough to bake with and the acetone smell is gone. I mixed it 70% hydration and let it ferment for 12 hours then made a loaf. Loaf is 1 kilo at 65% hydration, 20% levain and 2% kosher salt. I did not account for the levain hydration in the final dough total hydration. Just go with it. Results were great.

I thought it might be interesting to try The Weekend Bakery's version of tartine.

I deviated from the recipe in many ways. First, I mixed the "Water 1" with the flour and let it autolyse overnight while the poolish fermented (I did this on Monday night 12-9-2013). The second deviation was that I only performed 4 stretch and fold sessions. Third deviation was that I used my silicone spatula and stretch/folded the dough in the KA mixing bowl ... each S&F session included 100 folds. Fourth deviation was that I shaped the dough ball into a boule and let it rest for 15 minutes, then shaped it into a batard. Final deviation was that the final rise was 75 minutes and not 150.

When I shaped the dough into a boule, I floured my work surface with WW flour (cleans up more easily) and used my hands to work the dough. It did seem to tighten up a bit, but when I formed the dough into the final batard it flattened upon itself. I'm not sure how y'all are getting "surface tension" with these higher hydration doughs.

Got a nice oven spring, the crumb looks pretty good, and the taste is nice. Kid #1 had a piece with breakfast and thought it was good.

Seems to be a better result, but I am still puzzled as to how I can get surface tension, good oven spring, super open crumb, and a nice cut on the surface. Seems I can get some of these results but not all.

-Dave

I was quite a bit more patient this time, letting the dough tell me when it was ready and this is the best pulla I have ever baked! I topped it with the egg wash, sprinkled liberally with sugar, ground almond and slivered almonds. I totally forgot I was going to bake this as a chacon and went in to auto pilot and divided the dough into 2 balls then one ball into 3 for braids . . . Next time I will try a chacon pulla! A skibum moment!

I scaled this recipe to 2/3 my grandmothers recipe posted in varda's Pulla post, with weights.

280 grams milk scalded

6 cardamom pods, hulls removed and seeds ground, infuse in hot milk

140g sugar

188g strong bread flour, next time I will mix AP and BF, just to see

1 egg, 50g

50g sweet levain

50g YW levain

The levains were fed a day before and left on the counter to double or more and collapse.

When the milk has cooled to 80F make a sponge with the above ingredients and let it go for a couple of hours or more until nice and bubbly.

Next add 1 cup, 135g flour and mix until smooth.

2/3 tsp coarse sea salt, forgot to weigh

80g melted butter, beat the dough until it is smooth and glossy and all the butter has been combined.

175g or more flour, gradually add this until you have a firm dough that is not sticky.

Rest 10 minutes once all the flour is combined. Knead 4 minutes, rest 10 and knead 4 minutes.

The first bulk rise took about 6 hours and it more than doubled, nearly 21/2. Degassed and did a couple of S&F's, then bulked it a hour on the counter then into the fridge for 16 hours at which point it was again 21/2 times bulk.

After an hour on the counter to warm up, I divided the dough into 2 batches, one for pulla and one for cinnamon buns. After pre-shaping, resting rolling out the dough and braiding the loaf, I let it proof for about 2 hours and baked 20 minutes 400F convection, turning once and finished at 400F no convection for 4 minutes turning once.

I had this apre ski with beer and can't wait to have it for breakfast with strong coffee! Great pulla! I think my granny is smiling right now.

Happy baking, Brian

Hello! 

My name is Aaron and I am a brand new bread enthusiast  Sure, I have enjoyed eating delicious bread my whole life, 31 years, but never baking! Until now.  i have been reading so many books and sites regarding bread making I finally gave it a try. Three nights ago I made my first brick, I mean loaf of bread. Tasteless, dense and downright terrible. So last night I tried again. Slightly more success but still the wrong density and no flavor. 

Now I am not one to give up so just a short while ago I tried again. Started with a nice yeast, bread flour, water, salt, honey, egg, oil and next thing I know, I have a dough that looks sort of like what I have been dreaming about. 

It is currently in the first rise. I put it in my oven, turned off of course, with a bowl of warm water to get the temperature up to 75 degrees. 

I am so excited to see how it looks after this rise. I will let it double, plus a bit more then do a second rise in a baguette shape. 

if it is a success I will post my victory pictures!  If not, back to the drawing board