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Lucy worked hard, using Varda’s Tzitzel quest as a starting point, to do 3 takes on Tzitzel.  We liked take 2 of the 3 tries to date the best.  But it just wasn’t enough of a full bodied, deep flavored bread to stand up to the kind of smoky mats we like.

With Eric Hanner’s first anniversary of his passing upon us, I couldn’t help but make a stronger rye based on his died minced onions and soaker water we like so much in deli rye breads.

We upped the rye to 50% from 40%, upped the SD and YW levain to 30% of the total from 20% since we decided not to retard this load as we did the others.  Whole grains shot up to 55% a substantial increase too.   This bread was starting to make us happier that usually.

To put the top knot on the other knots, we decided to use Young’s Double Chocolate Stout for much of the dough liquid that wasn’t onion soaker water.  We had a bunch of whole wheat and white whole wheat in the mix too, so we added some VWG and upped the hydration to near 90% from 85% to compensate for the more thirsty whole grains.

The rye sour and YW levains were built separately and the white flour listed was for the YW levain.  Both were retarded for 24 hours at the same time even though the YW was a 1 build affair and the ryes sour was a 3 stage build.

Since we were going to make this bread in one day, we only had time for a 1 hour autolyse but we did do our usual 3 sets of slap and folds and 2 stretch and folds all 15 minutes apart.

We did a light chop on the caraway seeds in the coffee grinder and added them and the multigrain scald and overnight soak in the fridge sand which weighed 150 g wet, on the first set of S& F.  Both were completely incorporated at the end of the 2nd set of S& F’s.

This is a smoked pork carnitas quesidilla  style with caramelized mushrooms and onions, 2 cheeses, and killer home made red salsa...and lets not forget the smoked brisket taco for lunch

We then shaped the dough into and oval and immediately placed it seam side down in the rice floured basket.  The dough proofed for 4 hours before it was refrigerated for1 hour while Big Old Betsy was preheated to 550 F and the (2) lava rocks and water pans for steam were inserted at 525 F

15 minutes after the oven hit 550 F we un-molded the dough onto a peel that was covered in parchment, slashed 3 times and loaded onto the bottom of two stones.  After 5minutes of steam the oven was turned down to 525 F and 5minutes later it was turned down again to 500 F at the 15 minute mark the steam was removed and the oven was turned down to 425 F.

The bread was rotated 180 degrees on the stone every 5 minutes until the bread reached 205 F on the inside when it was removed to the cooling rack.  Total baking without steam was 13 minutes with 28 minutes of baking total.

The bread browned up a deep, brownish, mahogany color and bloomed OK.  It spread more than it sprang indicating it was too high in hydration and possibly slightly over proofed.

It smelled terrific in and out of the oven with the caraway and onions dominating.  Can’t wait to cut into this bread and taste it but we will wait for 24 hours before doing so.  Well, couldn't't wait for 24 hours as usual.  The crust had gone soft over 16 hours wrapped in plastic. The crumb was open soft and moist.  It was more open than I though it would be with so much whole grain rye and scalded berries.

Underneath the breakfast eggs is some white bread baked yesterday.

The flavor of the crust and crumb, the onion coming though so well, were just the way you want them for a bread begging for mustard. pickle and pastrami.   The little yellow flecks of the corn meal is a delight - thanks to Janet for the corn inclusion in the bread.  This is the best Jewish Deli Rye type bread, with a chew of scalded betries, we have managed to date.  Just delicious.  Thanks to Eric for the dried minced onions and re-hydration addition and the slap & fold push that changed my bread baking forever.

The 'mixed grains en pot' are now oer a foot tall! 

We've got 4 pots of tomatoes too.  Lucy says I've gone to pot and she might be right!  This bread made a very nice pepperjack melt, dijon mustard, dill pickle and pastrami sandwich for lunch with the usual salad, veggies and fruits on the side.

Formula

Hello everybody,

It has been long time to come here.

I hope that everybody is good and healthy, which is the most important for our lives, I wonder?

Well, I just started to challenge for a perfect baguette that I had been trying yesterday.

But I have had always a very weak oven.   I can't increase the temperature over 430F. :(

I am not satisfied with crust, neither scoring that I make.

I think that the crumb look fine. but I am really NOT happy with the crust and scoring.

I I can't afford to buy a new oven for sure.   Do you have any suggestions or ideas to make darker crust and have more oven spring? 

 All the best,

Akiko

It has been a long time since we have done any YW baking and it was time to refresh the YW after 4 weeks hiding in the fridge.  We decided at the last minute to do a test comparison bake. One with a YW/SD levain and one with just a SD levain.

The YW / SD version had 4% more whole grains.  We wanted to weigh it down a little more than the SD version and we added a multi-grain scald to both since we love whole berry scalds in breads almost as much as w love sprouts.  The YW version was 22% while grain and the SD version was 18%.

Both are a little light on the whole grain side but we also need some croutons for Thanksgiving stuffing too and these loaves should fit the bill well.  The levains were built over 3 stages and then refrigerated for 24 hours after they had risen 255 after the 3rd stage feeding.

Since these were white breads we did a 1 hour autolyse this time.  We did up the hydration a couple of points on the YW version to account for more while grains.  We did follow our usual method of 3 sets of slap and folds (7, 3 and 1minute) and 2 sets of stretch and folds all 15 minutes apart. As soon as the folding was comp, ete the dough was pre-shaped and then shaped into a boule and an oval for the SD/YW version.

Some of this year's lettuce crop in pots

We put the dough seam side down in the baskets hoping to get a natural cracking at the seams when the dough hit the heat and steam the next day ala Ski’s Forkish and David Snyder’s Pugliesi.  The dough was then retarded in the fridge for 16 hours - 4 hours more than we would have liked but that is life.

The dough nearly proofed 100% in the fridge because of the extra 4 hours.  No worries since we had planned to bake it cold right out of the fridge and not to slash it so the stiff cold dough wouldn’t collapse due to any over-proofing.

The dough was un-molded and placed into Big Old Betsy 20 minutes after the oven hit 525 F and the oven had further climbed to 550 F.  It was sandwiched between 2 stones and the mega steam was supplied with two Pyrex pans filled with lava rocks and half full of water that were placed in the oven when it hit 525 F

The bread steamed for 5 minutes at 550 F, 5 minutes at 500 F and 5 minutes at 475 F. After 15 minutes the steam was removed from the oven as it was turned down to 425 F, convection this time.  We rotated the bread 180 degrees every 5 minutes until the bread registered 205 F on the inside - exactly 15 minutes after the steam came out and 30 minutes total baking time.

The bread browned beautifully with huge blisters on the outside of both but more so on the YW / SD oval.  The bread did spring but it was contained within the crust which didn’t crack because it was 100% proofed.  So these are totally unblemished crusts but still very attractive!  The YW/SD appears to have puffed itself up a little more than the SD  boule.

The crumb of the YW / SD was open, soft and moist with a SD tang that was somewhat muted but not missing either.  It is a delicious bread.  We didn't cut into the SD version and froze it whole for Thanksgiving.  This bread made for a nice cotto salami and aged cheddar cheese sandwich for today's lunch. This bread reminds me of Tartine only it has more chew due to the scald.

YW / SD Formula

SD Formula

Lucy got her shots today so she wanted her ears rubbed!

This loaf was proofed seam side doen again, Forkish style and baked seam side up. Though I took great pains to seal the seams in both the pre and shape, it looked like they would bloom open and they bloomed open beautifully!

I once again used 25 grams of sweet levain and 25 grams of yeast water levain, 300 grams flour and 231 grams water total. I used 30 grams durham semolina for flavour and colour boost.

I had an old friend over for dinner last night I hadn't seen in two years - before I started baking bread. He gave this loaf the best endorsement a baker can get! He ate most of it, repeatedly going to the cutting board and slicing off large chunks he wolfed down with his chili. There is barely enough left for toast this morning.

Now that I bake in a cast iron covered DO, my pizza stone gets little use, so I thought, why not place it on a rack above the DO to provide some radiant heat from the top to go with the radiant for the cast iron and the hot air convection bake. Baked 12 minutes covered, 10 minutes uncovered, turning often. Bake setup:

Time to get busy again.

Happy baking!  Brian

Hi everyone!

It has been a while since my last visit to TFL.  I have been quite sick and bedridden for a few weeks. My sister has to take care of Blossom (my seed starter) until I feel better. We miss her so much! I was so happy to have her home last week, healthy and happy.

Summer is around the corner in Melbourne but the weather is still quite cold.  I decided to bake a few country loaves today. Two loaves are to give away as thank you gifts to our good friends who have helped out and sent me so much food.

When I was sitting down to work out the amount of levain for 3 loaves, I suddenly remembered what I read not long ago in Graham Prichard’s blog of sourdough.com. This is one of Graham’s methods at the Companion Bakery in Tasmania.  A stiff starter is built at 15C for 20 hours then turn into a warm liquid starter in the second build.  The liquid starter should be kept at 28C to 33C and it is ready to use in around 2 to 4 hours.  The idea of this method is essentially to give the starter a warm and wet condition to favor the lactic acid production.  I decided to give his method a go this time to see if my country bread to taste differently from my last loaves.

If you like to read more, here is the link: http://sourdough.com/blog/companion-bakery-tasmania-how-we-make-sourdough

Here is my formula:

Country Bread

3 loaves (about 900g each)

Levain 17% preferment flour

1st build @ 60% hydration

 50g white starter @ 100% hydration

50g whole wheat flour

20g cold water

Mix all together and leave for 12 hours at room temperature of 18oC

2nd build @ 125% hydration

 120g stiff starter @ 60% hydration

125g whole wheat flour

230g warm water

Add water slowly to the starter ball and stir until the mixture is smooth. Add whole wheat flour and stir well together.  Make sure the starter is at around 28C to 30C and should be matured in about 2 hours to 4 hours.

When I started my second build, my liquid starter was at 30C and I couldn’t maintain this temperature as my room temperature at the time was only 16C.  It took 10 hours to mature.

Final Dough  @ 78% hydration

475g levain @ 125% hydration

75g organic whole rye flour

50g organic whole wheat flour

150g organic whole spelt flour

1025g Australia’s Laucke organic plain flour (11.5% protein)

900g cold water

15g salt

I mixed the flours and water until all well hydrated. The autolysis period was 10 hours at room temperature of 16oC.

Levain and salt were added in to the autolyse.  It was quite messy when mixing a liquid levain into the autolyse by hand. With a large dough to mix by hand this time and since I don’t use slap-and-fold method, I thought I better give it a few extra letter folds. Room temperature was 16C so bulk fermentation was 6 hours in total. There were 5 double-letter folds every 45 minutes. The dough was divided, shaped and final proof for another two hours then retarded for 18 hours.  I intended to bake those loaves off at 6am in this morning on but I slept in until 8!

The oven was preheated to 250C with the Dutch ovens. I baked straight from the fridge then immediately I turned the oven down to 230C when all loaded into the oven. It was 25 minutes with the lid on and another 20 minutes with the lid off.

Lucky there were no harm done after 18 hours in the fridge …. Phew!

Crumb of the boule

After a few hours of cooling, here is the crumb of the boule.  The crust is sweet and crunchy, the crumb is tender and moist, nutty and complex. There are definitely acidic notes in the background but it is a very soft tang. I think may be the dough had a bit long retarding period.

In all and all, I started to understand better Jeffrey Hamelman’s sourdough recipes in his Bread book after this bake.  This time I couldn’t maintain the final build of starter in a warmer environment as Graham suggested, I definitely will try this method again in summer time to see whether the bread flavour is different.  But for now, I think I should be off and do some catch-up readings here.

It is great to be able to bake again. Hope you all are well and happy baking.

Annie

I've made English Muffins in the past and I thought it was time to try them again but with a few twists.

I've been craving some bacon lately and I had some left over sautéed onions from our dinner the other night so I figured these would go well in this new formula.  I wanted to see how mashed potatoes would work in this concoction as well.  I've been on a maple syrup kick since our trip to Vermont a few weeks ago, so that went in the cauldron in place of the sugar.  Of course some mixed cheese with Parmesan, Asiago and Fontina needed to be added as well as the Greek style yogurt which accounts for around 74% of the additional water in the recipe.

Oh, and I forgot to mention I used my Yeast Water to make the starter and added some Spelt flour and 00 Italian style flour just to make it interesting.

The end result was as good as I hoped for and I wish you could taste these toasted for yourself.  You almost don't need anything on them they smell and taste so good.

Enjoy!

FORMULA

Directions

Mix flour, starter, water, sautéed onions (chopped in to small pieces) and yogurt in your mixing bowl and mix for 1-2 minutes to combine.

Cover the bowl and let it sit out at room temperature overnight or for at least 9-10 hours.

The next morning add the rest of the ingredients and mix for a minute.  Knead the dough either with your mixer or by hand for around 4 minutes, adding additional flour if necessary.  Next roll out the dough to about 3/4" thickness on your work surface.  You will have to put some bench flour on the work surface to prevent the dough from sticking.  Using  4" biscuit cutter or can, cut the muffins out and place on a pan lined with parchment paper dusted with corn meal or semolina flour.  You should end up with 5-6 muffins.  If necessary you can combine the scraps and roll out again but you may need to let it rest before rolling.

Cover the muffins with a clean misted or floured towel and let rest for 1 hour at room temperature.

Heat your griddle or heavy skillet to medium or around 350 degrees  and when ready to cook spray some cooking spray on the cooking surface before placing the English Muffins in the pan.

Cover the pan to create some steam and let cook for around 5 minutes or until the bottoms are nice and brown.  Flip and cook another 5 minutes and remove to a baking rack to cool.

It's a "cheap thrill." 

I don't seem to habituate to the high from taking a beautiful loaf (or two, or four) out of the oven.

"Overnight Country Brown" loaves from FWYS

I finally remembered not to seal my seams too well and to proof the boules seam-side down in the bannetons! 

The crust is crunchy and chewy. The crumb is quite chewy. The flavor 4 hours after baking was mildly sour with a prominent whole wheat flavor. Typically, the flavor of my mixed flour breads meld and mellow by the second day. This is very nice now, but I expect it to be even better tomorrow.

David

I've had bagels on my mind for quite some time now, and since i never tasted one before, i decided to create  some at home. I've searched TFL for other members' posts on the subject, and many were extremely useful and pointed me in the right direction. I've decided to try Hamelman's version, but without the malt extract, which i substituted with a Tbl. of brown sugar and a Tbl of Baking soda. I know that this wasn't authentic, but i had lye, nor malt extract. The stiff dough was kneaded in my mixer, and was retarded in bulk for 9 hours, as opposed to Hamelman's retarded shaped bagels. I also realized the importance of Mise en place for making bagels, and decided to prepare baking trays, toppings, and boiling water. Oh, and chilled water to cool things down as suggested by Hamelman.

Poached, chilled ,and garnished bagels waiting to be baked

My first impression when i sliced a still warm bagel, and had the first bite: wow those are crunchy! the unique aroma of the baked bagels were slowly permeating the house.They had an unmistakable fragrance hard to describe, but i think that the toasted sesame seeds played some part in the overall aroma.

As they cooled the aroma was more pronounced, and was very sweet. As expected, the bagels quickly became chewy two hours from the oven. I had my first slices with butter and another with feta cheese infused with olive oil, and i enjoyed them both while crunchy. I've toasted a slice, and it retained its crunchiness almost immediately.  I have frozen the remaining bagels, and have yet to thaw some for later assessment. My intial assessment is: really aromatic white bread with a lovely chew.

Aside from cream cheese and smoked fish, what do you guys think is the best way to enjoy bagels?

Thanks in advance!

-Khalid

Perfect on this winter stormy night!

Last week, my breads had a more or less "command performance" in the Italian language class my wife and I are taking. I've been a bit uncomfortable taking food since the class meets in  a deli/cafe/wine bar. Anyway, I decided to let it be on the teacher's head. I took a large wicker basket with half slices of 3 breads - a seeded sourdough Italian bread with 20% durum flour, a walnut-dried fig bread based on my San Francisco-style sourdough and a "Overnight Country Brown" from Ken Forkish.

Everyone seemed to enjoy all the breads. I was most delighted by the reactions of a fellow student who is a professor of art at the local State University. He was munching on the Forkish bread and carrying on about how even the local "French Bakery" (which is pretty good) puts "too much air" in their breads. He was talking, I'm sure, about the fluffiness you get when you spike sourdough breads with yeast. He thought the Country Brown was a lot like the breads he had had in France. (It is very similar to some pain de compagne I've had in the Dordogne Valley.  And we had a "guest" sitting in, which we often do. Clara is a native Italian -  an older woman who was the cook/owner of an Italian Restaurant/Pizzaria that is now closed. I understand she still has her old commercial mixer at home and bakes her own bread and makes pizzas and calzones. Her compliments meant a lot to me. 

Speaking of Forkish's breads, Fresno is now in our version of "Fall." My kitchen temperature is running right around 70 dF. I've made a couple FWSY formulas in the past 2 weeks - one is fermenting now - and they are keeping to the timings in the book more closely. I'm still not able to let an "overnight" dough bulk ferment at room temperature overnight.  I'm not too unhappy about this. The cold retardation makes the breads more sour, which i don't mind.

The breads at the head of this blog entry are some San Joaquin Sourdough baguettes and San Francisco-style Sourdoughs with 20% whole wheat I baked yesterday. 

We're having Thanksgiving at our house for the first time in several years. Our sons and their families and one of my sisters and her son will be with us.  I'm looking forward to it. It's time to start planning baking for the holiday weekend. Some breads for stuffing, some for morning toast and sandwich rolls for sure. 

David