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I haven't been here in a while. Life has been busy..hectic..sometimes tiring..

But, I am not here to complain, but to tell you about the good things that happened:

I took a bread baking course at the E5 Bakehouse in London and loved it! That's why I went back and wrote an article about them for the amazing Bread Magazine - the August issue.

I didn't do much baking after the course, unfortunately, but I did visit an English institution: Shipton Mill, one of the last traditional mills in the country and wrote another article about them for the October issue of Bread Magazine.

I loved the visit and most of all I love the fact that I bought some amazing flours and two of them I used in the making of this loaf, that is now our favourite: Canadian Strong White Bread Flour and Seeded White Organic Flour.

Sooo, here it is all about the loaf.

Time schedule:

Day 1: Make the preferment, leave for 12 hours at room temperature to mature. I don’t know exactly what the temperature in my kitchen was over night, I guess not above 21C, so I've left mine for about 13 hours and a half. I usually leave my preferment for around 12 hours until it’s nice and bubbly and has not sunk. You can test if it’s ready by putting a spoon of it in a bowl of water, if it floats it’s ready, otherwise it needs more time.

Day 2: Make the bread

• Mix the preferment with the water and flour.
• Leave to rest for 30mins (autolyse)
• Add the salt and mix for 3 minutes on low speed and another 2 minutes on medium speed
• Leave to rest for 50mins
• Perform 1st stretch and fold
• Leave to rest for 50mins
• Perform 2nd stretch and fold
• Leave to rest for 50mins
• Preshape the bread
• Leave to rest for 15 minutes
• Shape the bread
• Proof it for 110mins
• I've baked the bread on a pre-heated baking stone at 230C for 5 minutes then reduced to around 215C for the next 40 minutes - this is because my oven is very small and the bread is too close to the heat.

Sourdough culture: For this bread I used a 100% hydration, 100% white sourdough culture.

Recipe for 1 loaf (aprox. 67% hydration):

Flour: For this loaf I used Canadian Strong White Bread Flour and Seeded White Organic Flour. from Shipton Mill.

Ingredients for the preferment:

Make it 12 hours before you want to start on your bread.

Method for the preferment:

Dissolve the starter in the water. Add the flour and mix until well combined. Cover tightly with cling film and leave it to rest at room temperature for about 12 hours or as I said above: until it’s bubbly and floats.

Ingredients for the bread:

Final baker’s percentage (including preferment):

Seed mix: I bought a seed mix from Waitrose and used that one to seed the bread on the exterior. Not sure exactly how much I've used probably around 100gr.

Method for the bread

I dissolved the preferment in  the water and then added the flour. Mix until you have quite a weird and not smooth mass of wet flour coming together. Do NOT add the salt at this point. I covered the bowl and left it to rest for 30 minutes for the autolyse. When the 30 minutes are up add the salt and mix for around 3 minutes on low speed and another 2 minutes on medium speed. I use a Kitchen Aid with hook attachment for this. If you want to knead it by hand do it for about 10-15 minutes. Transfer the dough to a clean greased bowl (I used an oil spray to grease the bowl), cover it with cling film and leave it to rest for 50 minutes.I use shower caps for this ;).

When the 50 minutes are up you are ready for your first stretch and fold.

I did my stretch and folds directly in the bowl, but you can either tip the dough onto a lightly floured surface or you can initially place your dough in a large rectangular container so you can do them directly in there.

Now cover the bowl again and leave to rest for another 50 minutes. Do another stretch and fold (the last one) and again leave to rest for 50 minutes.

After this final rest you need to preshape your bread. I preshaped it as a boule and left it to rest on my counter covered with a kitchen towel for 15 minutes. Then I shaped it as a batard. 

I've rolled the battard on a wet kitchen towel, to make sure the seeds will stick to it and then rolled one side (the smooth one) on a bed of seeds (I've just sprinkled the seeds generously on a different kitchen towel).

I then moved it in a floured banneton, seeds side down, placed it in a plastic bag that I closed tightly and left it to proof for 1hour and 50minutes. You can find here a clip on shaping and scoring a batard.

You will need your oven to reach 250C so start pre-heating sometime after the proofing period has started, depending on your oven.

To bake the bread I use a 3cm thick granite baking stone, that I've left in the oven for 2 hours at 250C, to heat up properly.

So, after 1 hour and 50minutes of proofing, I tipped my bread on a baking sheet scored it with a long score and put it in the oven.

I also keep in the oven one of the trays, while it is pre-heating, so it gets hot hot. Then, immediately after transferring the bread on the stone, I add a cup of hot water to the tray below to create some steam and shut the door quickly.

Take the water tray out of the oven after first 20 minutes, otherwise the crust will not form properly.

You will need to bake this bread for 45 minutes at 230C. For me the baking was 5 minutes at 250C and then, because I have a really small oven, I reduced the temperature to 210C for the rest of the 45 minutes. To get a nice crust I've opened the oven door 5 minutes before the baking time is up, to release some of the steam and then left the bread in the oven for another 5 minutes oven turned off and door closed.

Resulting bread:

Amazing! Rich nutty flavour, a good crust improved by the crunchy seeds and a lovely buttery crumb.

Well was if worth the extra effort?????? All that extra effort of chopping fresh chives and parsley?

No not really. The fresh chives and parsley did nothing to improve what was already a super tasting loaf. Let me hasten to add they did not detract from the flavour but nor did they add any distinctive nuance either. Maybe dried herbs would bring their flavour across but fresh did not cope with the process very well. So I have come to the conclusion that you can't fix something that is not broken, so leave it alone! 

As usual I did my 75% hydration in a pot and I seem to have this recipe down pat now so I'm not going to change it..... just maybe focus on the 95% which is a bit of a challenge. All that is needed is a variation in baking time. 

Just to practice my new posting skills - I'm posting the photo's of this loaf. 

After the 3X stretch and fold. Ready to proof.

Proofed and scored. Ready for the pot.

The result cooling. I love the texture. Fresh with butter and a good bowl of hot soup......... Mmmm.

Happy Baking!

I started a dough last night that was somewhere between Ken Forkish's Poolish Pizza Dough and Peter Reinhart's Neo-Neopolitian Dough. 

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Not bad.  Using AP flour, it was nice and extensible, but I'm not getting as much crunch on the crust as I was when I used a stronger flour.  I'm not sure if there is much I can do about that, but I'll keep tinkering.

I made Peter Reinhart's Pain Au Levain, an overnight ferment, and then let the boules rise in the fridge all day.

Then, when they were on the peel ready to be placed in the oven, they slid off the peel and became totally flat!

I scooped up the sad deflated loaves and stuck them in the oven anyway, and here they are.

Kind of misshapen. :(

Here is the crumb: It is kind of dense because the loaves got all degassed when they crashed.

Made a few loaves of Sourdough with Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour again. One loaf the rolls were for a small Dinner Party with a few of my Wife's workmates.

This one has Dried Cherries in it….

and the rolls…….

Pork Belly rubbed with brown sugar, toasted ground fennel seed, and ancho chili powder. Then it is briased in beer for a few hours, good stuff.

Everyone have a safe and happy Candy Day.

Cheers,

Wingnut

Jack o'lantern is made with arranged Fougasse dough (with mashed pumpkin)

Ghost is made with basic milk bread dough but with mashed purple yam,

(they came out very very fluffy!)

Everyone, have a happy halloween!

Teketeke Bread

teketeke got me going with my YW a couple of years ago and I have helped quite a few others, as she helped me, to get theirs going. Here is what I basically sent them but fixing all the spelling and grammar errors I could find.  Hope this will help all who want give YW a shot – it is so worth having another child in the kitchen.

 teketeke's post on YW is a good one if you scroll down far enough when the pictures start to appear again - way down. She is a great YW baker from Japan and I bugged the heck out of her to get my YW going.  Worked first time too - and she is a master and I named my first original YW concoction after her as thanks!

The idea is to get a slightly acidic base to start from, be a little on the warm side temperature wise, don't use any sugar - use honey instead, use bottled water, open the lid often, right before shaking and get some fresh air in the jar by fanning it with a piece of paper, shake the container often and be patient - like starting any other wild yeast

The fruit you start with matters. I started mine with orange and tangelos from the back yard because they are acidic, I left the skins on the pieces for one day to inoculate the water with the wild yeast on the skins and then replaced the fruit with skinned oranges and tangelos because the skin can be a little toxic to the yeast. - but I would do it differently today.

Teketeke's Japanese White Sandwich Bread

You want to make sure the fruit you use is organic thus no fungicides and herbicides on the skins and it has to have the skin on. What you want to do is get an organic apple and some organic raisins. People have their own opinions as to which ones work best but using both is really the cat's meow. Don't wash the apple or the raisins since the yeast you want is on the skin. I use a plastic 14 oz re-purposed peanut butter jar for my YW container but anything with a screw top lid will work.

Take 20 raisins and mash half of them. Take half an apple, leave the skin on, take the stem and base off and core the seeds out. Chop the 1/2 apple into 1/4 inch cubes. Mash half the apple pieces. Save the other half of apple by rubbing the cut side with lemon, lime or orange juice and refrigerate it.

Place all the 1/2 apple and raisins in the jar including the mashed portions. Add 1 T of orange juice. Fill jar 3/4 of the way up with bottled mineral or reverse osmosis water that is absolutely chlorine free. If you are using other tap water then pour it into an uncovered container 24 hours ahead of time so the chlorine can dissipate.  Do not add any honey at this point.

Keep the jar warm around 78 -80 F. I used a heating pad with kitchen towels folded on top till I got the right temperature and then covered the whole shebang with another towel to keep the heat in.

For the first 2 days, every couple of hours, open the jar fan some new air in it, close the lid shake the jar vigorously, loosen the lid a tad to let CO2 out and let it sit on the heating pad that way till you do it all again.

Yeasr Water Babka

On the 3rd day add 1 tsp of honey.  Keep up the fanning, shaking, loosening the lid till day 4. By that time, after you shake, the mix should bubble, easily be visible and remain for awhile. The jar lid should hiss as compresses CO2 escapes when you open the lid after shaking it.

After a week or so you should have some nice YW to bake with. To know if it is ready just make a levain with 50 g or the yeast water and 50 g of flour and see if can double in volume in 6-12 hours.

YW/SD multigrain bagels

Each week after the beginning week, strain everything out of the jar. Put 3 T of old YW back in the jar with a few pieces of old fruit say 4 raisins and 4 pieces of apple. Add more fresh raisins and half a diced apple you put in the fridge (you don't have to mash them up anymore).

Add 1 T of honey and fill 3/4th full with water. Leave on the counter. The next day it will be ready to build a levain with again. After it settles itself in, after a couple or three weeks, you can then refrigerate it 4 hours after feeding it and it will be ready and peaked to make bread after 2-3 days in the fridge. I now feed mine every 3 weeks and keep it in the fridge all the time

YW/ SD combo levain multi-grain with scald and seeds - YW will open the crumb of any usually heavy crumb.

You can replace any SD levain with YW.  If the recipe calls for 220 g of levain just use 110 g of YW and 110 of flour to make it. When it doubles it is ready to go about 6 hours or so. If you bake a lot like Janet does, or a little like me, when you use the YW just replace it with new bottled water and a little honey shake it up and leave it on the counter for a couple of hours before refrigerating.

 Happy YW baking.

YW/ SD Durum Ricotta with pistachio pumpkin and millet seeds.

Well I got a successful yeast water culture going and it is bubbling and fizzing like a can of Vernor's ginger ale! A big shout out to dabrownman for pmi'ng me detailed instructions, followed to the tee. I baked this exactly as the last sd boule only using YW to build the levain. The dough felt immediately different -- more extensible and felt nearly fully developed after the second set of S&F's. Nice volume, nice open crumb and very mild flavour and great chew - almost too mild, so I guess I have come to appreciate the flavour profile of my sweet levain!

I think this is some of the nicest looking crumb I have baked. Anyhow here is my new tool in the kitchen, a nice healthy fizzing yeast water!

Thanks again dab!  You are DMAN!!!

Happy baking folks! Brian

This is the same 675 AP and  125 WW Pain de Campagne I have been making.  However, this dough had a different feel all together.  Again, never throw out what could be a disaster.  This was proofed in a regular bowl instead of my standard banneton.  I am not used to a bowl I suppose.  The dough was more stiff than usual and appeared a little lumpy.  The proof looked weird.  It did not have a nice rounded bump when I removed it from the fridge.  It rose and does have spring.  Perhaps, this is me learning and being overly thoughtful!

Last loaf of the day, haven't cut it to check the crumb, but will post pic when I do!