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Today's SD batard included about 2% toasted wheat germ as 'toadies.'  These add a really nice and subtle, nutty flavour enhancer and you can definitely taste the toadies in the finish. 

I baked this at 75% hydration, autolysing the flour and water over night, mixed and developed the dough as per my previous post.  I baked this in the new Lodge combo cooker for 8 minutes covered @ 500F and surprisingly 12 minutes 450F convection.  Next bake I will go 10 minutes covered and then judge.  A pretty satisfying small loaf.

I received Ken Forkish's book WFSY from out library system today and have been waiting all summer for it. A most interesting read and a very interesting take on life and baking!  I will be baking 2 or or 3 of his recipes shortly and may actually have to drive into the big city for some Caputo 00 for the pizza dough . . .

My most interesting take is his target of 78F for the autolyse and his opinion that the temperature of your autolyse has a big impact on the bread flavour.  Okay, this one is a totally unique take on an eye opener! I can't wait to try his techniques.

I have a batch of SD cinnamon buns going from this interesting site provided here by another poster, can't find the link or I would shout out:

http://sourdoughsurprises.blogspot.ca/2013/07/sourdough-cinnamon-rolls.html

Happy baking!  Brian

We went with another multigrain white bread this week but instead of putting ground sesame and flax seeds in it we went with the 3 P’s: pistachios, prunes and pumpkin seeds.   This bread is the equivalent of 38% whole grains due to the Toadies and malts.

We decided to go with our multigrain sourdough starter instead of the SD, YW and poolish combo starter from last week and we went for the dour too by refreshing the stiff starter and then refrigerating it for 3 days before building levain and then refrigerating it for 24 hours.

The levain was a 3 stage build of: 3 hours, 3 hours till it doubled, and then 1 hour where it rose 25% before refrigerating.  The levain was allowed to come to room temperature and finish doubling, about 3 hours before it was used.  The levain came in at 20% of the total weight.

While the levain was finishing its final doubling on the counter, we began the autolyse the flour with the fig water, extra water, Toadies and malts – with the salt placed on top.  The fig water was left over from re-hydrating the figs for a bake a couple of weeks ago.  This week we have prune water for a future bake left over from re-hydrating the prunes from this bake.

Looks a little over proofed to me.

Once everything came together with a spoon at a little over 74% hydration, we did 5 minutes of slap and folds to get the gluten development started before resting the dough for 15 minutes and doing 1 more minute of slap and folds.  Normally we would do at lea1t 20 minutes of slap and folds over two sessions of 6 and 4 minutes

We decided to go with less slap and folds and 3 S&F’s to see if it opened the crumb.  We don’t think it will with all the add-ins for this bread but you never know when your apprentice gets her paws into stuff when you aren’t looking,.  The pistachios, pumpkin seeds and prunes were added at the beginning of the first and 2nd set of S&F’s. 

By the end f the 3rd set the add-ins were thoroughly incorporated.  We allowed the bread to bulk ferment for 1 hour before dividing the dough into the pieces required for the Chacon design: a central knotted roll, 4 balls and 4 snails surrounding the roll.

This bread makes fin toast with half of; a mango, nectarine and peach, some bacon, black grapes and raspberries - yummy!

After these pieces were placed in the bottom of a lightly rice floured basket I forgot to put the pumpkin seeds in first which would cause a mistake trying to glue them on later.  The remaining bulk of the dough was air shaped into a huge bialy to cover the design.  The basket was immediately placed into a used trash can liner and placed in the fridge for an 18 hour cold retard.

The dough rose well in the cold and after a peek, Lucy decided to let the dough warm up for an hour before baking it off in the mini oven at 500F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups and 1/4 C of water tossed into the bottom of the oven for instant steam.

We glued the forgotten seeds on with egg wash, per my apprentice’s recommendation but we should have used water as the egg wash browned much darker than the rest of the crust.  Oh well, I really could care less and I know Lucy doesn’t care a lick either!

The lunch sandwich today was an aged white cheddar, pastrami, spicy brown mustard with caramelized; onions, mushrooms and hot peppers all melted together in the micro wave to make a fine pastrami melt.  Yummy!

After 4 minutes we turned the heat down to 475 F and at the 8 minute mark we turned it down to 450 F.  At the 15 minute mark we removed the steam and turned the oven down to 425 F, convection this time.  12 minutes later the bread hit 205 F and was deemed done and removed to the cooling rack.

The bread sprang weakly but well enough for the Chacon design to show itself and it browned up with the little blisters the mini oven is famous for putting on crusts.  But that egg wash was a mistake.  The crust didn't lose all of it's crispiness as is cooled. The crumb was open, soft, glossy and moist. It was slightly sweet and sour due to the SD, fig water and prunes.  The pistachios and pumpkin seeds were a nice chew foil to the soft crumb.  We like this bread and will have no problem devouring it. 

The rest of lunch.

Formula

So I thought I would mix up a batch of Pita Bread for dinner. I put ground cardamon in the dough for a change of flavor.

Getting ready to mix the spiced Meat 

Skewers ready

Bake off the Pita

Keep warm

Spicy Chickpeas

time for the Hibachi

 and eat

Cheers,

Wingnut

I have only been seriously baking sourdough bread for about six months now with my sourdough starter which I built from scratch in January this year. Although I used to cook professionally and have worked with many bakers and pastry chefs for years, I never really make time (which I don't really have much) to explore artisan bread. Until recently, I really want my family to enjoy top quality bread every day and also for my children to know how good breads are made. I named my starter Blossom. My kids are fascinated when I let them feed my “pet” for baking, and knowing it can do “tricks” such as to make holes in a loaf of bread and to make the bread tasty.  They also know that most of the time Blossom likes to “sleep” in the fridge. :)

I’ve baked many different loaves from different books and formulas from here in the past months and my favorite bread is pain de campagne.  I was so inspired by the Overnight Country Brown of FWSY book posted by David of dmsnyder that I have to bake one right away after I’ve read about it.  I don’t have FWSY book and my local library doesn’t have it either so I just made up a formula based on David’s notes.  It worked out really well.

This loaf was intended for sandwiches so I chose 75% for dough hydration with 20% preferment flour.

 Levain @ 75% hydration

50g white starter @ 100% hydration

75g rye flour

50ml water

Mix all together and leave for 12 hours at room temperature of 17oC

Final Dough

175g rye levain

75g Australia’s Four Leaf whole wheat flour

325g Australia’s Laucke organic plain flour (11.5% protein)

300g water

5g salt

Mix two types of flours together with cold water, save 50g of water for a second hydration, and leave to autolyse for 12 hours at room temperature of 17oC. 

When the levain is domed, add to the dough along with salt and the rest of the water. Mix for a few minutes until the dough is smooth and make sure levain is evenly mixed through the dough. Bulk fermentation for 5 hours at 19oC room temperature with three double letter folds at 60, 120 and 180 minutes.  Shape and leave the dough for another two hours before pop it in the fridge to retard for 12 hours.

Preheat oven to 250oC. Score and bake the dough straight from the fridge in a Dutch oven (I baked this loaf in a Schlemmertopf). Immediately turn the oven down to 230oC and bake 25 minutes with the lid on and another 20 minutes with the lid off.

Although the method seemed to take a long time from start to finish, it suits my schedule very well.  I built the levain and mixed flour with water before bed time and left to autolyse overnight. They were all ready for dough mixing at noon. The shaped dough was ready to go to the fridge for retarding overnight at 5pm. The dough then baked off the first thing in the morning at 5.30 am (I set the timer for oven to be on at 4.45 am so it is preheated and ready for baking). I sliced the loaf for breakfast at 7.30 and packed sandwiches for lunch boxes too.  The whole loaf was consumed by dinner so I have no idea what it would taste like the next day. It was a very tasty loaf. The crust was thin and crunchy, the crumb was moist and soft. It tastes creamy and sweet as if I’ve added sugar to it with no hint of sourness at all. Very delicious bread indeed!

I dedicate this loaf to all the talented bakers here at TFL for their efforts to share the knowledge and experience in artisan bread making. Also I’d like thank Floyd for creating and hosting this wonderful website.

Happy baking everyone!

Annie

Hello,

It shouldn't matter much, but in case any of my old bread baker friends was wondering, a few months ago Floyd agreed to change my online name to Sam (my name), instead of 'gvz', which was a reference to the pink floyd track of the grand vizier's garden party in ummagumma.    Anyway, I wanted to be me instead of some alias.   So I am Sam.  Nice to meet you.   Maybe some day I will put my picture on here.

After two years of keeping my liquid SD culture fed every day, a year ago, due to various reasons I ended up killing it.    It is sad, but it happened.  Life has been challenging but I'm keeping my chin up and I hope to make some breads again, but maybe without the SD.  

Cheers!

-Sam

I purchased several sprouted products from here. I have made my granola recipe for almost 30 years. Reluctant to try anything new I broke out the bowls and pans and did it anyway !  What a treat. I will never use plain rolled oats again. This is the perfect texture crunchy and chewy both. A wonderful complex flavor and for some reason the coconut taste comes through more in every bite also. A win-win in my book .  

2# bag sprouted oats( 8 c ) 1 1/4 c coconut ribbons, 1 1/4 c chopped nuts ( I use pecans) , 1 1/4 c sunflower seeds, 1 1/4 c toasted sesame seeds. Combine. coating : 1 c smooth peanut butter heated with 1 c local honey, 1/4 c water, 1 1/2 tsp Kosher salt, 1 Tbsp cinnamon. Add heated product to above dried mix right before putting in oven . Do not let it set and soak in. Bake at 300 on sheet pans stirring q 30 min and then as it browns q 20 min and q 15 min. Bake to desired color. Cool and store in the freezer.

I finally got around to purchasing a container of food grade lye . I had tried to find info on lye baths for bagels but there is very little out there and the percent of lye to water that was used seemed way off. I am glad that I pursued this and have some data that I hope will help others. I purchased the lye on Amazon  here . Will likely last me a good long while. I used 5 grams in 1 gallon of filtered tap water. This is approx. 12-12.5 % alkalinity. Baking soda is only 9 if fully saturated  so can't get the water where I wanted it to optimize the crust . I will  use a bit more next time and get it up to the full 14% that is possible if fully saturated. . I am VERY pleased with how these came out. I added the lye to the cold water and brought it to a boil. Just to be on the safe side ( my husband is a chemist and insisted) I wore goggles and had some vinegar in a dish off to the side to neutralize any splash on the skin. I had no problems. 

I bathed the bagels for 10 seconds on a side...lifted out and drained, replaced on the sheet pan dusted with semolina where they had retarded. I baked them as always in 400 degree oven approx 22 min. rotated pans at the 1/2. Formula I use is here. I used whey instead of water as I had a lot from my kefir cheese making. I also used half white and half rye starter. 

The crust is amazing. So crisp. Beautiful blisters and a nice glow to the crust. Perfect chewy crumb. Lovely fragrance. Any residue of lye is  hydrolyzed by the proteins in the bagel dough and is neutralized so you don't need to worry about rinsing the bagels after dipping. 

Here are some pics. 

note the difference in the boiled vs unboiled bagels: baked : crumb ( small flaw from rolling/shaping )

We have been trying out various versions of buns for hot dogs and hamburgers.   This time we went back to basics and looked for a whole wheat bun on the King Arthur website.  We found their 100% WW one for hot dogs and their white bread one for hamburgers.

Since we were going to do a 35% whole wheat one, we decided to combine the two, replace the sugar with honey, drop the commercial yeast and replace it with yeast water, up the hydration  to 75% and add some cream cheese to mix like Ian does on so many of his bun bakes.

We were needing to refresh the cherry YW anyway so did so, with only apples this time, and used the remainder to make a 1 stage, 100% hydration, levain over 300g that sat out at room temperature for 8 hours before we refrigerated it overnight after it had risen 75% in volume.

The next morning we let the YW levain finish its last 25% of rise on the counter.  When it had doubled we through everything together and did 5 minutes of slap and folds and then let the dough rest for 10 minutes before doing another 5 minutes of slap and folds.

After a 15 minute rest we did 2 sets of S&F’s on 15 minute intervals before allowing the dough to ferment on the counter for an hour.  We then pieced out the dough into (8) 110 g pieces and pre-shaped 4 of them into  hot dog buns and 4 into balls for hamburger thins.

10 minutes later we final shaped the buns putting the hot dog buns into a small Pyrex pan to proof and the hamburger thins on parchment on the top lid of the mini oven’s broiler pan.  The buns were allowed to proof for 5 hours on the counter.

The hot dog buns were brushed with an egg wash and were the first to go into the mini oven at 425 F after 8 minutes of baking the oven was turned down to 375 F convection this time.  After 8 minutes with the fan the hot dog buns were deemed done and the hamburger thins then received the identical treatment.

The buns blistered up like the mini usually seems to manage every time.  They were brown and shiny.  Wow!  These buns sprang 3 times their pre mini oven height!  Yes 3 times higher - only yeast water can do that according to my bread baking experience. These bins were very open, light, airy and moist – the buns we have ever manages to date.

Yes, there is some hotnpeppers, cheese adn bacon in those beef patties.

Today's lunch with that fine Taztzel and I bet there is some pastrami in there too!

 They were tasty too but not sour at all.  Lucy was especially happy that her sister, our daughter was accepted into PA school.  Yeah.  We are all so happy for her.  She requested tacos (Pibil, carnitas, grouper, chicken and carne asada) with guacamole, red and green hot sauces, pico de gillo, smoked pork necks in beans and Mexican green rice last night for dinner.

 Tonight she got hamburgers, caramelized onion, mushrooms and various hot peppers with sweet and regular grilled potato wedges.    She even liked the buns!  Congrats to Molly!

Formula

 A fine breakfast for the PA girl too!

Following up on Wingnut's pizza post, here are a few shots of our pesto pizza from last night.

I used an overnight poolish for the crust, made the dough in the early AM and baked in the evening.

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Pretty decent char on the crust for standard home oven.

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Good stuff!