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I continued working through Ford's beautiful new book with a recipe better suited to my Azure "unifine process" hard red wheat flour. The result has a great sourness to it, and a relatively open crumb. My main disappointment was that I hoped it would rise more. 

After we demolished this loaf, I made a 95% whole wheat sourdough from Maurizio's site, using the Azure flour for the "high extraction" flour. This replaces his method of sifting out the bran and adding it in later. He has some good information in the recipe about the challenges of whole wheat baking. The result was much closer to my tastes, even achieving some of that custardy inside that I've previously only had with white flour. This time the primary flaw was that I managed to burn the loaf onto the baking tray and had to saw it off. A good excuse to give it a second try? :)

Photo of my (not yet) Perfect Loaf

Having a family gathering on the occasion of my sister in laws birthday, so i made the bread for the lunch, i decided on two loaves and would require 1500g of dough. I had some Sweet Potato that i had unearthed from my garden and thought that would be a good  inclusion, i also added a small carrot to make up the required weight which was to be 15%. The veg required cooking off and i thought i might just as well add the olive oil @ 2% to it and fry it off in a sauce pan with the lid on, once this was cooked i mashed it and added to the dough . 

The flour required was 785g and i elected to use 285g of wholemeal flour  and 500g of white. i added all the water to the wholemeal first and stirred it in. Water was first calculated @70% but i actually had to add more later so would recommend 75%  allowed this to soak for about 30 minutes while i weighed up other ingredients and cooked off the Sweet Potato. I added all the other ingredients salt @ 2%,  dried yeast @ 2%, and the white flour and formed the dough and then added the Sweet Potato and oil mash which was still quite warm, more water was added as previously stated,  mixed it by hand on the bench and formed a nice smooth dough.

This was then set aside for 2 hour BF.   The dough was taken and divided into two pieces following a 15 minute bench rest both  were shaped an placed into Bannetons for final proof  i used the longer banneton for a loaf that was destined to go into the Sassafras baker.                After an hour one was turned out onto a tray and scored and went straight into the oven with a steaming  tray and boiling water and towel. The other was turned out and scored and the placed into the sassafras and placed in the fridge as there was not going to be enough oven space to bake both at the same time. This worked well although i did get a bit of crust stick to the bottom of the clay baker, the first time this has occurred i might add. 

Happy with the bake and this morning we are blessed with a beautiful day  bright sunshine and a forecast 22 degrees here in Perth perfect for a birthday celebration!

kind regards Derek

We LOVED the blueberry rhubarb galette I made last week so much I had to make it as a double crust pie this week to bring to friends.  Because of the pandemic we haven’t seen our best friends since 2019.  We are allowed to have a bubble of 10 people but haven’t really taken advantage of this so far.  

I wanted to see if replacing half of the water in the Bravetart all butter crust would make it even more tender.  I used to make a vodka pastry that was half shortening and half butter.  I really didn’t like the idea of eating shortening with the transfers so I wanted to find another pastry recipe so started to use the Bravetart recipe.  I remember that pastry as being a bit more tender than the Bravetart all butter pastry.  I wonder if it is because of the vodka or not.  Supposedly the vodka interferes with gluten formation in the pastry, does anyone know if that is true?  Anyhow, I will know tomorrow when we get to eat this delicious pie.

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This is my second go at baking a 20% Kamut sourdough. I wanted to try an overnight levain build and saltolyse (autolyse with salt included) because it would allow me to get the bake done on the same day as the mix while still including a short cold retard.  I think this actually works out quite well and I may continue to do this int he future.  I once again used the aliquot jar and ended bulk fermentation when the aliquot jar showed a rise of 50% and after final shaping did a short bench rest of 15 minutes.

The formula was included in my last post of this sourdough so I won’t rewrite that here.

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1. To pair down a small surplus of Whole wheat flour, two loaves of approachable bread. "Wonder-Full bread"

2. Four Baguette formula. 

The fun begins tonight with W.W. levian build, and baguette dough. 

Following on from the good result that i had with the 50% W/M Raw Red Onion and Poppy Seed loaf  that i really enjoyed i had another go this time it was 50% W/M  Raw Red Onion with Black Sesame Seed S/D Baguettes Oh and i used full cream milk as well and again very very tasty indeed. Dough started at 8 this morning and  all don and dusted  at 8 in the evening.

This is set number 15 of my baguette trials and tribulations and in some ways one of the most successful baguette bakes I’ve had where I figured something out that has turned out to be critical to my baguettes.  I have been stumped by the lack of ears and grigne on my baguettes, but happy with the crumb.  Well in this bake I reduced bulk fermentation aiming for only a 25% rise in bulk and then eliminated bench room temperature proofing of the shaped dough instead putting the baguettes into the fridge after final shaping.

For three baguettes about 280 g (to account for aliquot jar)

Fermentolyse

Dissolve diastatic malt powder, IDY and levain in water.  Then add flour and mix.

20 mins later add salt with wet hands and work in with dimpling and pinching.  then Rubaud kneading for up to 4-5 mins.  Remove 30-50 g of dough and place in aliquot jar and keep with the dough.

Rest 50 mins then Coil Fold.

Rest 50 mins then Coil Fold

Once aliquot jar reaches 25% rise then place dough into refrigerator 2ºC overnight and up to 24 hours.

Remove dough from fridge and divide into 3 equal weight doughs and pre-shape lightly as loose rolls.  Bench rest 20 mins.  Shape baguettes and place in floured couche and then into refrigerator for 1 hour.

Next, set oven up for steaming with Sylvia towel and cast iron skillet and temperature set to 500ºF.  In fact I now wait for 30 mins after oven is turned on and then place the Sylvia towel loaf pan filled with boiling water from kettle into oven.  This time I tried pre-heating oven and baking with steam at 525ºF but ended up with slightly burnt bottom crust so will go back to 500ºF. 

Using transfer board place each baguette on a parchment lined peel.  Brush excess flour off each baguette.  Score.  I didn’t brush water on the baguettes this time and still had some blisters.

Transfer baguettes onto baking steel using the peel and parchment.  Pour boiling water into icast iron skillet.  Bake with steam for 13 mins then remove Sylvia towel and cast iron skillet. 

Drop temperature of oven to 500ºF and turn on convection (I forgot to turn on convection which leads to more uneven browning).  After 5 mins turn and rotate baguettes.  Check for done ness in another 5 mins, if not fully browned then rotate and turn again.  Remove once crust is nicely browned.

Although it's more of an Everything-I-Craved focaccia!

I wanted einkorn bread, garlic onion bread, something cheesy, something spicy and everything bagels!

So I winged an einkorn focaccia with jalapeno, green onion, garlic olive oil, cheddar,  black pepper and everything seasoning 🤦‍♀️

It ended up pretty good tho! 

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Reading through some of the Baguette CB posts I noticed that alfanso had made Hamelman's Sourdough Seeded Bread and when I was deciding what to make this week I decided to have a go at this.  

Monday I refreshed my starter and then before I went to bed I mixed up the soaker & the levain

Soaker: 27 g flaxseed & 81 g room temperature water. Covered and left overnight

Levain: 12 g starter + 73 g water + 57 g flour mixed, covered and left overnight. 

Tuesday 9 am Dry toasted 23 g sesame seed & 46 g sunflower seed in skillet as I didn't want to heat the oven just for this.

9:30 am Instructions were to mix all ingredients together.  I decided to add the toasted seed mix later during bulk ferment so mixed together all of the soaker + 136 g water + all levain.  This was then added to 294 g flour + 1 g diastatic malt + 31 g rye flour + 8.8 g salt. I felt dough was a little dry so I added 2 tspn water.  I did fewer slap & folds than usual then rested dough for 40 mins. 

10:30 am The dough felt really quite strong and Hamelman suggests only 1 fold after an hour and a quarter.  I felt this was too long to wait to incorporate the sesame & sunflower seeds so I gently pulled the dough out as much as it would allow then sprinkled the seed mix over, folded the sides in then folded the dough bottom to middle then top down and left to rest for another 45 minutes. 

11:15 am At this point the dough was very strong but I did manage one gentle coil fold to ensure the seed mix was evenly distributed. I left the dough to ferment for 3 more hours.  

2:15 pm Shape dough, place in banneton and leave on bench.  At 3:45 pm I had to go out so I popped dough in the fridge until the next morning.  I could see there was some slight increase in volume but it wasn't big during final proof or bulk ferment. 

I saw a post by Gavinc who had also made this formula and felt his final proof should have gone longer (if I remember correctly).  This was why I gave the dough a 90 minute bench proof before retarding. 

The other bread I made was also a new formula & method for me.  I made fullproofbaking's 50% wholewheat sourdough, and I followed her method as much as I could - it is very different to anything I have done before.

I did a second refresh of my starter Monday night, feeding it 50:50 white:wholewheat flour. Yesterday morning early I built the levain and kept it in the microwave at about 27 deg C until it was ready to use.  Because I don't trust the flour here in NZ to perform well with an extended autolyse, I only did a 2 hour rather than 4 hour autolyse for the wholewheat portion.  It was really wet.  The white flour had its own autolyse and once again I shortened it to just 1 hour.  

Once the levain was ready, I added the starter to each autolyse and mixed for several minutes.  In the end I gave the white flour dough 50 SLAFs and the wholewheat I mixed with a spoon as it was too wet and showed very little evidence of gluten development.  After resting for 45 minutes, I added salt to each dough and mixed again as before.  The doughs were rested another 45 minutes and then combined by way of lamination.  The combined dough was soft but seemed ok. 

I managed another 3 sets of coil folds then left dough to ferment.  Instructions said 2 hours so I thought sweet! I have to go out but should be back in time.  Room temperature (and dough temperature) were lower than fullproofbaking"s so I thought all will be well.

Oh dear, I came home to pancake.  It was close to the indicated time and dough had spread and puffed up a bit so I shaped as well as I could and put it in the fridge to retard overnight. 

BAKING

This morning I baked both loaves in DO at 250 deg C for 15 minutes, lid off and another 15 minutes at 230 deg C.  The 50% wholewheat loaf was done so I removed it from the oven but had to put the Seeded sourdough loaf back for another 10 minutes until internal temperature was 205 deg F.

What a contrast.

Seeded sourdough - the back loaf in the lead photo

Here is the crumb

I think it could have done with a bit more on the bench before retarding but whilst firm it isn't actually too dense.  The addition of the diastatic malt (thank you Albacore!) has meant I finally have some decent caramelisation of the crust!! The taste is really good so I will make this again, possibly adding a bit more water given how strong this dough was.  I wonder if an autolyse would have made this more extensible

50% wholewheat - oh dear:(

It's pretty flat! Quite disappointed.  

Crumb shot

Ok, so the profile is pretty flat, but the crumb isn't too bad.  It tastes really good.     

I used the same white bread flour in both these bakes and whilst the strength of the seeded sourdough was more than I thought it would be, this flour does seem to be strong and my bakes have shown that.  It was a bit of a surprise that the 50% wholewheat dough was so slack, I can only think that this was mostly to do with the wholewheat.  I will have to try again, but next time I will reduce the length of the autolyse  and the hydration especially in the wholewheat.   I will also incorporate a lot more slap and folds to build strength 

Leslie

Hello friends.

 At some point during the week of October 19th, I will be making my interpretation of Julia Childs Cranberry walnut pumpkin bread. this enriched "brioche" type bread has become a Pie king tradition! Maybe it will become a tradition around your way too! 

 What do you say? Take a break from sticks, I look forward to seeing all of your creations!