The Fresh Loaf

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davidg618's picture
davidg618

Got this idea while watching Pizza Cuz on the Cooking channel. The two cousins visited a shop that sells only focaccia with toppings. It seemed to be a better rendition of Sicilian Pizza, distributed locally--Scranton, PA--and sold in Mom & Pop grocery stores when I was a kid. It was delivered in baking-sheet pans, and, as I recall, a 5-inch square sold for 5-cents. The crumb was like white bread, but chewy. The tomato sauce tasted like...tomatoes, with nothing but salt for seasoning.

I used sourdough focaccia dough (all Bread flour 72% hydration, 30% liquid levain), and made a tomato sauce with a 14 oz. can of diced tomatos, a 6 oz can of tomato paste, 4 oz of V8 juice seasoned with 4 minced garlic cloves, salt, pepper, basil and marjoram. I retarded the dough overnight at 54°F. I sprinkled a few fresh Globe Basil leaves on top immediately after baking.

My go-to pizza dough is a 50/50 mix of semolina and AP flours at 60% hydration, retarded overnight also. I roll it thin; we generally prefer thin-crust pizza. This is a nice change. The dough is particularly light, open and soft, and the bottom crust is crispy.

I made two. One is today's lunch, the second will be frozen. I will warm it up in a 375°F oven for a few minutes hoping to regain the bottom crust's crispiness.

David G

Floydm's picture
Floydm

I've been overloaded the past couple of weeks, so I've fallen a bit behind on my blogging and baking. 

Going back the furthest: BreadSong gave me a heads up about an Advanced Baking class being taught very close to where I live at the UBC Farm a few weeks ago.  The class was being taught by Florin Moldovan, an accomplished Vancouver-based baker who ran a popular bakery in the Kitsilano neighborhood here.  Sadly Florin closed the bakery right around the time I moved here before I had a chance to visit.

Florin's blog is definitely worth checking out.

There were about a dozen of us in the class.  In his intro class, Florin covers the basic steps in baking (mixing, fermenting, shaping, etc). In the advanced class, he introduces preferments, soakers, sourdough, baker's math, and other things that folks had questions about.

Everyone was asked to bring a large mixing bowl with them. 

Florin provided the ingredients and had the soakers and starter ready to go. At the end of class we each got to leave with a bowl full of dough.

The next day the dough we'd prepared baked up beautifully. My photo doesn't do it justice.

Florin is an extremely accomplished baker, but one thing that struck me about the class is you wouldn't have to be that good to teach a class like this: a lot of us could do it. Gear-wise, since everyone was asked to bring a bowl and none of the baking was done there, all you really need is space you can occupy (and get dirty) for a few hours and about twenty bucks of ingredients.  Pre-measure the ingredients, have them ready in plastic cups or bowls before the class starts, and hand out a couple of print outs about the basics of baking and some simple formulas. Good times, and a great way to introduce folks to baking or meet other bakers.

* * *

Last week was a travel week, down to Oregon to see friends and wrap up our final loose ends there.  The storage locker is empty now; we are now fully settled in Vancouver.

* * *

After returning, I baked a nice loaf using a soaker and starter similar to what we did in class.  

Starter

100g rye flour

100g water

20g starter

Soaker 1

130g cracked wheat

140g water

Soaker 2

100g whole wheat flour

120g water

Final dough

300g Robin Hood "best for bread multigrain blend" flour

400g all-purpose unbleached flour

20g salt

330g water

The starter and soakers

The exterior shot is at the top of this post.  Here is a crumb shot.

 

Song Of The Baker's picture
Song Of The Baker

I haven't baked in almost a month and my hands were starting to shake.  Withdrawl is no fun.

I decided to bake up a couple of staple loaves with some small tweaks to test my post vacation abilities.  Simple levain with whole wheat, bread, and rye flours.  Flax, barley, sunflower, cracked wheat, oats, and sesame seed packed.

Forgive me for going overboard with the photos.  I recently acquired some new gear and learned some new techniques on Photoshop.  A bit shutter happy since my trip to Arizona (668 photos!).

John

 

And now to go off on an Arizona prickly pear theme tangent.  This bread is a great excuse to use that up.

This one is dedicated to dabrownman.  Thought I would capture what that lucky bum gets every night of his life.

Mesa, AZ., my new favourite place to visit.

 

 

 

Fin fin's picture
Fin fin

For those days between baking, I always make my kids to have some food from my side (we are a mixed family^^~).  For these steamed pork/vegetable buns, are very healthy and delight!!  They can be the between after school or when the lazy days come over me, I just simply steam them in the bamboo steamer to bring back to puff in a short time!!  So, I always make a few dozens of buns and save in the freezer:)))))))

it uses to be plain, the white color; today I made them with pumpkin purée, so it's "sunny-yellow"!!! 

P.S: I am very new here... Still need some time to get used to all these functions... Sorry be very slow..\\^^"

Fin fin's picture
Fin fin

Sometimes, we do need this healthy looking bread as for sandwiches or little mid-night snacks... I like to add some different dried berries ( after over night soaking in the rum) and enfanced some nutty flavour - walnut^^~

A slice

 

 

Noah Erhun's picture
Noah Erhun

 

Thought it was time I join the yellow mellow bandwagon, at least with one yellow add-in, with little flavor impact. 

Leavin:

200g white starter (100% hydration)

400g flour     200g guisto's bakers choice 200g BRM spelt

400g water

11 hr RT ferment @ ~71F

Final dough:

1000g leavin (all of the above)

1240g cool water 

2000g guisto's bakers choice

50g salt

25g EVOO

25g poppy seeds

10g Turmeric

175g finely minced red onions 

45 min autolyse (flour water leavin and onions)

2 hours bulk with S/F every 30 min @ 73F

3 hour retard in the fridge @ 36F

Scaled, shaped and tranfered to proofing baskets.

19 hour cold ferment @ 36F 

Baked for 30 minutes with steam (THANK YOU Sylvia) @ 465F lowered to 450 for around 15-20 minutes. 

For steaming I used Sylvia's towel method with three loaf pans, producing a wondeful blistered crust.

Although well balanced, I think the flavor would have beinfited from twice as much onion and a few cloves of garlic along with 5-10% dark rye in the leavin. 

 I'm still working on/playing with different scoring, the simple single slashed loaf came out the best. 

 

-Noah

 

 

 

 

Fin fin's picture
Fin fin

We love pain de mie a lot, the kids specially.  Yogurt makes the bread even better as the second part of liquid after the poolish is added!

Fin fin's picture
Fin fin

This is the first time I post here... Just give it a try!  I've been baking for couple years and learning everything about baking online.  Here is the pain de mie by using the poolish Dough, my best love version!!

Szanter5339's picture
Szanter5339

Így sütöm a kenyeret. Formázás, mintázás.










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