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pmccool's picture
pmccool

Since I had Friday off last weekend, and since the weather on Friday and Saturday was rainy, it seemed like a golden opportunity for baking some bread.  While perusing Hamelman's Bread, the Whole Wheat Levain was the one that I kept coming back to as I weighed the alternatives.  

The first step was to build the levain.  Since my kitchen temperature was several degrees cooler than Hamelman's reference temperature, I elected to increase the inoculation by about 20%. I also allowed the levain a longer time to develop, by perhaps 4 hours or so.  What greeted me on Saturday morning was a fully domed levain that was showing just the earliest hints of an impending collapse.  

The next step was to build the dough.  The formula directions are based on machine mixing; I did all mixing and kneading by hand.  It appears that the whole wheat flour that I used (Great River Milling) may have a higher protein content than Chef Hamelman's.  Now that I say that, it seems somewhat improbable, given that his formula is probably based on King Arthur flours.  Regardless, for the same hydration, my dough seemed a bit firmer than his description.  While soft, it was never "loose" and no bench flour was required during kneading.  

The dough was then set to bulk ferment at room temperature, with stretch and folds at the recommended intervals.  After the bulk ferment, I shaped the loaves into boules and put them in floured bannetons for the final fermentation, with plastic wrap shielding the exposed surfaces, also at room temperature.  When the loaves were perhaps 75% expanded, my wife suggested we run some errands, so I put the bannetons into the refrigerator to hold until we returned home.  That turned out to be 3 or 4 hours later, so it is very good that I didn't leave the loaves at room temperature in anticipation of an earlier return!

Upon returning, I set the loaves out on the counter to finish their final ferment.  When they appeared to be doubled, but before they felt wobbly, I preheated the oven and stone.  When all was up to temperature, the oven was steamed, the loaves were tipped from the bannetons and scored, then into the oven they went.  The dough was still cool enough that the steam immediately condensed on the loaves' surface, leaving them glistening for the first minute or two.  A peek throught the window a few minutes later revealed a healthy oven spring in progress.

I checked for doneness at the end of the recommended bake time and pulled the loaves from the oven.  This is how they looked:

Although not readily visible in this shot, there was a small amount of tearing at one slash on each loaf, suggesting that I could have allowed even further fermentation.

The crumb, while acceptable, seconds the notion that additional fermentation would have been optimal.  The bulge at the one slash is more evident:

That, or I should have kneaded less, allowing a more open crumb.  Or some of each.

The other thing that could have been done was to allow the loaves to stay in the oven a few minutes more.  While fully baked, more baking would have deepened the color (and flavor!) and dried the crumb somewhat.

But these are small matters, the difference between a good bread and a really good bread.  The crumb is moist, but not soggy; firm, but with a pleasing softness; and eminently suited for its primary role as sandwich material.  No spilled mustard from those holes!  The flavor is primarily wheat, with distant notes of hazelnut and caramel.  There's only the smallest hint of a sourdough tang; quite suprising, considering the extended fermentation of both levain and dough.  The fragrance tells you immediately that this is the real deal, not a tricked up wannabe.  

By contrast, when my wife and I were at the supermarket (one of the errands), we happened to walk down the bread aisle and it smelled disgusting.   That's never really struck me before, even though I've baked most of our bread for 30-mumble years.  I'm not sure which thing(s) in that "bread" I was smelling but it almost turned my stomach.  And no, it had nothing to do with a lack of cleanliness in the store; this was coming entirely from the product.  Yuck!

So, color me happy with my bread and thanks to Chef Hamelman for this specific bread.

Paul

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Mellow Yellow - by Donovan

I'm just mad about Saffron
Saffron's mad about me
I'm just mad about Saffron
She's just mad about me

{Refrain}
They call me mellow yellow

With the 3 GMA’s baking their fine cornbread I was all set to make one of my favorite ones with jalapeños, creamed corn, homemade apple and maple smoked bacon and who knows what kind of cheese but Donovan’s song kept spinning around in my apprentices tiny head.

I think sometimes folks just don’t trust their intuition as much as they should, especially left handed women whose intuition is almost never wrong.  Science has been baffled for some time why this might be so but, they, being scientists, are fairly sure it doesn’t have much of anything to do with bread baking even though Donovan’s song does, at least as far as Lucy goes, which isn’t very far due to short legs and her sleeping most of the time.

We have another corn bread recipe, not the sweet kind, that I really like to make to have cornbread for Thanksgiving stuffing, but it isn’t nearly as good as stand alone bread.  So Lucy thought, not that long or hard, that we should keep some corn flour in today’s recipe but, to really go with her intuition, by putting in every mellow yellow ingredient she could find in the pantry.  She gets like this sometimes, being a determined German and I’m pretty sure she is left pawed too.

She found 3 kinds of semolina flour, the little left over bit of that fine Desert Durum, some Golden Temple Durum Atta where I had sifted out most all of the atta to use in the last batch of Toadies and some semolina we had picked up out of Winco’s bins.

Although a dog’s color acuity is far less than their baking masters, they aren’t totally color blind either.  Still, I suspect my apprentice’s long and gifted nose helped her distinguish one color of flour from another and she managed to pick out the yellow ones quite easily.  I wonder what she could do with truffles?  Then she hit on the garbanzo flour in the freezer and those beautifully yellow quinoa seeds that she had me grind into flour– not too much of either though.

On the wet side, orange juice came to mind right away but she jumped right into the last home made bottle of limoncello and it was all I could do to keep her away from it but did manage to limit her to 1/2 shot for the bread.  She didn’t want the bread to be too acidic from the citrus so she whipped up a saffron soaker to really give the bread a yellow color and also fit the lyrics of the Donovan tune still driving her crazy.

Even though they are not all liquid, she found some yellow ingredients in the fridge; she dumped in an egg yolk, some butter (even though American butter isn’t nearly as yellow or tasty as Kerrygold brand from Ireland) and some very pale yellow ricotta cheese which really hit her Italian theme with the durum semolina.

A knotted roll in the center surrounded by 8 balls and a rope, then covered by a huge bialy.

But, she wasn’t done, hardly ever is really and is pretty full of it most always.   For add ins she grabbed some dried Turkish apricots that she re-hydrated and then used the left over yellow, sweet, soaking water for part of the dough liquid.  She had been hoarding a huge pile of tiny yellow millet seeds just for this occasion too.

Then, thinking the bread wasn’t yellow or mellow enough, the Turkish Apricots sparked the thought of a yellow spice used in Turkey – turmeric.   She remembered that Shaio-Ping and used it in conjunction with orange juice in her fine Turmeric and Orange Juice Bread so…..In went a 1/8 tsp of this subtle yet earthy spice to flavor and color the dough even more.   Whew!!

This bread made a fine breakfast with some mango, staw and black berries, a minneola and some fine minneola caramalized marmalade.

 

Being a nut herself, she eventually realized that there weren’t any in this bread.  Doing the unexpected last in a long line of fruit and nut breads (that we said we would not do again after the last one), without the nuts just isn’t done.   She looked everywhere for a yellow nut but came up paw empty.

I just couldn’t stand the look on her cute little face so I put my designer thinking Joaquin Sombrero on and told her she needed to have something to contrast and compliment all that Mellow Yellow and some green Pistachios were just the ticket, Turkish and just in time for Cinco de Mayo too – a three’fer if there ever was one.

David Snyder may have his famous San Joaquin bread but it doesn’t hold a candle to keeping the hot AZ sun..... de la cabeza.  Lucy wanted a very soft moist crumb feeling this was a much mellower option than a hard dry one, so she took 25 g of semolina and Tang Zhonged it with 100 g of water – instead of the usual 125 g.

Her last wishful addition was to throw in some small pieces of an old yellow kitchen sponge because she knew this dough would end up feeling (and this bake is really all about feeling) way more wet than its published 68% hydration.  I told her, me duele la cabeza, so she stopped pushing the sponge even though she can’t speak a lick of Spanish.

For the rise, we had a rye whole wheat SD leaven left over from last weeks bake that had peaked in the fridge and fell and inch.  We cut it in half and fed it 50 g of semolina and 50 g or water.  It was still plenty potent as it doubled again in 3 hours.  We also wanted a Italian side so we made a biga out of a pinch of ADY and 25 g each of semolina and water.  It too had risen nicely in 3 hours due to the AZ heat in the kitchen at 90 F.

We followed our usual method of late but only did a 2 hour autolyse for these yellow flours and 10 minutes of slap and folds.  Singing the Mellow Yellow song actually made the time fly and coordinating the slaps with the melody was…..soothing and quite mellow.

We did 3 sets of S&F’s 20 minutes apart and incorporated the apricots, pistachios and millet seeds on the very first one.  We covered the dough between the S&F's with my yellow straw Joaquin Sombrero.  By the end of the 3rd set these incorporations were well distributed and seemed happy enough.

After and hour of bulk ferment in our color coordinated, yellow topped, well oiled, plastic box we chucked it into the fridge for a 16 hour retard.  After warming up for an hour in the morning we decided to make a Chacon out of this dough since the original chacon shape came from our Italian Altamura shaping experiments and is probably named for a Spaniard of Turkish decent for all we know.

After 2 hours of final proof on the counter in a trash bag, it looked like Old Betsy needed to be fired up to 500 F with stones top and bottom.  A large size Sylvia’s Steaming Pan with 2 towels and a 12” CI skillet full of lava rocks - ala David Snyder - both filled half full of water supplied the steam for the first 15 minutes of the bake.  It went in over proofed by an inch or so but it was still mellow yellow to the core and not likely to fall if we put some hot spurs to her before she noticed.

Three minutes after the steam bath started, we turned the temperature down to 475 F for the next 12 minutes of steam.  At the 15 minute mark we removed the steam, turned the temperature down to 425 F, convection this time.  After being spun on the stone 120 degrees every 6 minutes, 3 times, it was done,.

 t smelled fantastic and looked splendid for such a mellow heritage…… Chaconing does that to bread nearly every time.  We turned the oven off at 203 F and left it on the stone with oven off to finish and hit 205 F at the 33 minute mark.  We then left the oven door ajar with the bread still on the stone to crisp the skin even more before removing it to a cooling rack after 8 minutes.

A nice salad already made for dinner.

It cracked and browned boldly as a chacon should but spread more than it sprang the usual thing for a wet, over proffed bread.  The basket we used was indented up on the bottom rather than a round bottomed round one, so the bread really has to spring just to get back to flat on top.  

The crumb came out moist, open and soft.  It has the sweetness that semolina brings to bread too.  I have to admit that semolina isn't my favorite flour by far but this bread isn't bad at all.   It made a great tasting sandwich for a late lunch and should sub nicely as a hamburger bun for dinner.  The crust stayed crunchy for a change as it cooled and it tasted as good as it looked.

Picked the first tomato today. Summer is here!

 

Formula

WW SD, YW and Rye Sour Levain

Build 1

Total

%

WW & RyeSD Starter

10

10

1.60%

Semolina

75

75

12.00%

Spelt

15

15

2.40%

Dark Rye

15

15

2.40%

Whole Wheat

15

15

2.40%

Water

120

120

19.20%

Total

250

250

40.04%

    
    

Levain Totals

 

%

 

Flour

125

20.00%

 

Water

125

20.00%

 

Hydration

100.00%

  
    

Levain % of Total

18.82%

  
    

Dough Flour

 

%

 

Semolina

275

44.00%

 

Chi Chi

25

4.00%

 

Whole Quinoa

25

4.00%

 

Corn Flour

25

4.00%

 

AP

150

24.00%

 

Dough Flour

500

80.00%

 
    

Salt

10

1.60%

 

OJ. 100, Saffron W. 100, Apricot W. 66

266

42.56%

 

Dough Hydration

53.2%

  
    

Total Flour

625

  

OJ. 100, Saffron W. 100, Apricot W. 66

391

  

T. Dough Hydration

62.56%

  

Whole Grain %

14.24%

  
    

Hydration w/ Adds

68.79%

  

Total Weight

1,330

  
    

Add - Ins

 

%

 

White Rye Malt

4

0.64%

 

Non Fat Dry Milk Powder

10

1.60%

 

Ricotta Cheese

50

8.00%

 

Egg Yolk

11

1.76%

 

Honey

10

1.60%

 

VW Gluten

10

1.60%

 

Millet

50

8.00%

 

Apricots

75

12.00%

 

Pistachios

75

12.00%

 

Total

320

51.20%

 
    

Weight of apricots is pre re-hydrated weight

  
    

The Tang Zhong was 25 g of dough semolina and

  

100 g of water.The water was not counted in hydration.

 

The TZ weighed 112 g when it went in the auolyse.

  

 

Floydm's picture
Floydm

I only recently discovered that one thing that doesn't appear to be available in Canada is Hawaiian Sweet Bread.  At least on the West Coast in the US, King's Hawaiian bread is easy to find at most any grocery store.  It's something I grew up with and that I associate with being a kid and snacking on in the car.  We certainly fed it to our kids a number of times on road trips.

I've tried making Hawaiian sweet bread a couple of times in the past.  While the flavour was right, I've never been able to get close on texture. 

The other day it dawned on me that the Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong was quite similar to Hawaiian Sweet Bread, both in flavour and texture.  With a few tweaks to that recipe, I got as close to Hawaiian Sweet Bread as I've ever come in the past.

 

Hawaiian Sweet Bread

 

makes 3 loaves

Tangzhong

2/3 cup pineapple juice

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup all purpose flour

Final dough

800g (around 5 C) all purpose flour

1/2 C sugar

50g (1/2 C) milk powder

1/2 C half and half

3/4 C milk

2 eggs

4 T butter

4 t instant yeast

1 t salt

1 t vanilla extract (optional)

1 t lemon extract or some lemon zest (optional)

1 t orange extract or some orange zest (optional)

all of the tangzhong

1 more egg, beaten, for the eggwash

 The tangzhong I made the same as the previous time: 1 cup of liquid (milk or water or juice) to 1/3 cup flour, or a 5 to 1 liquid to solid ratio (so 250g liquid to 50g flour) and mix it together in a pan.  Heat the pan while stirring constantly.  Initially it will remain a liquid, but as you approach 65C it will undergo a change and thicken to an almost pudding like consistency.  Here is a video I made of it undergoing that change.

Let the tangzhong cool for at least a half an hour, then combine it and the rest of the ingredients.  Mix it very well, for 10-15 minutes with a standmixer.  Cover and let rise until doubled in size, approximately an hour.

Hawaiian Sweet Bread

Divide the dough into three even pieces.  Place them in greased pans, cover loosely, and let them rise for 45 minutes to an hour until they are approaching twice their original size.  Glaze them with eggwash before putting them in the oven.

Bake at 350 for approximately 45 minutes.  If you can, cover the loaves with a pan or foil for the first ten minutes to trap some of the steam in with the loaf and to keep them from browning too quickly.  I acually used a large metal mixing bowl which I inverted over each loaf when placing them in the oven.

Hawaiian Sweet Bread

I like the way the loaves puckered as they cooled (compare this photo with the top most photo), just like King's Hawaiian Sweet Bread. This is definitely the closest I've gotten to making Hawaiian Sweet Bread at home.

Dror50's picture
Dror50

Hi 

 

This weekend we have celebrated my son's first birthday. for the occasion I have prepared three breads:

 

- Baguette's (which did not came out that good...) - Jeffrey Hamelman's Baguettes with poolish

- Golden Raisin and Walnut Bread - again from Hamelman's. which was a huge success, 

always is.

- "Mixed-Flours Olives Bread" - my development. which it's formula i will list here.

 

But first some photos:

 

  Before:

After:

Mixed-Flours Olives Bread Crumb:

 

And my One year old Son!

 

Mixed-Flours Olives Bread

 

Formula: 

For the Pre-Ferments (Poolish)

100g Bread Flour

100g Whole Wheat Flour

100g Whole Rye Flour

300g water

A pinch of Instant yeast

 

For the final dough:

200g Bread Flour

60g water

2g  Instant yeast (half a Teaspoon )

10g Salt

100g Kalamata olives 

 

Technique:

1.Mix all of the poolish's ingredients until smooth. Place in a lidded plastic container and et stand for 12 to 16 hours. 

2.Add all of the ingredients (except of the olives ) of the final dough to the bowl of a stand mixer. mix on the first speed for 2 minutes until a uniform dough is from.

3.Knead the  dough for 5-7 minuets on the second speed.

4.Proof the dough for 40 minuets in a sealed container  - fold.

5.Proof for another 40 minuets - fold.

6.Proof for another 40 minuets - shape.

7.Proof for 60-75 minutes.

8.Bake in a 230° oven for 50 minutes - apply steam in the first 10 minutes.

 

maojn's picture
maojn

This is my other version of ciabatta. A very holy version.
I find it very speical and different in texture. 

 

Poolish KA organic bread flour 33%
water 33%
SAF GOLD instant yeast (I am out of the red one) 0.1%

Main Dough
KA organic bread flour 67%
Himalaya pink salt 2%
ice water 40%
olive oli 5.8%
SAF GOLD instant yeast 0.2%

Steps:﹕
1. poolish mix until no dry flour, about 30 second, Room Temp until full of bubbles but not collapse back yet, about 6 hours
2. Refrigerated > 12 hours
3. Mix in 80% of water and flour, yeast using mixer. Add olive oil, salt and left 20% water when a ball forms. Keep kneading until the dough show very very thin membrane when doing the windowpane test, like below. The temperature of the dough should not exceed 22C at the end of mixing. So ice water was used. The dough should not show wetness on surface now.
 

4. Room Temp rise until 2.5-3 times in volume﹐ Transfer to refrigerator for > 12 hours. The 2 containers I used are like this below, I would avoid using large area, shallow containers.
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/cambro-34cw135-clear-camwear-4-deep-one-third-size-food-pan/21434CWCL.html

5. Take dough out of refrigerator, The dough is about to the top of the container. Leave it at room temperature for 5 hours

6. Now the dough is over the edge of the container and the lids are being pushed open. Pour the dough very careful not to degas it onto a well floured surface. Try to shape the dough from under it into a rectangular shape. Each container dough I divid to 6 parts (about 10cm x 10cm each). flour them well and transfer to couche.

7. Room temp 5 hours again. (My room temp is about 20C)

8. Preheat oven to 260C for over an hour to make sure the stone temp is up enough.

9. Flip the dough right before bake, I made steam using lava stones in cast iron griddle. Drop temp to 230C, turn convection bake off. Take stones/griddle out after 10 minutes, turn convection back on, and continue bake for 12 minutes.

I tried to think of as much details as possible here. question welcomed! ^^ 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Oven Steam Venting










Many of us get rather, well, steamed, about our inability to produce steam in our home ovens.  Some good techniques have been posted here on TFL.  While I doubt that any of us will be able to produce anything close to the blast of steam that commercial ovens can provide, we may be able to do better than we think we can.

The few seconds of video, above, show steam venting from my electric oven.  From all appearances, nothing much was going on inside the oven.  From the outside, it is evident that quite a bit of steam is present as it hits the room-temperature air, cools, condenses, and becomes visible.  Despite the apparent velocity of the steam exiting the vent, the oven fan is not turned on.  The background noise is the fan in the vent hood above the oven, which has no effect on the rate of steam production or egress from the oven.

My steaming set-up is extremely low tech: a broiler pan on a shelf below the baking stone.  It is preheated along with the oven and stone.  When I'm ready to load the bread, I pour a cup of boiling water into the pan.  A lot of the water flashes instantly to steam.  (I stay well out of the way of the erupting steam!)  The bread is loaded as quickly as possible and the oven door is closed.  Within seconds, I start seeing the steam wafting out of the oven vent.  Needless to say, I won't be blocking the vent; I don't want that steam finding its way into the electronics.

So, nothing new here, really; just an observation that confirms both steam generation and steam venting.  

Paul

Tedmonkey's picture
Tedmonkey

These are some of my recent breads. I've just bought dan lepards book, so hope to have lots of fun with the recipes.

Catherine

Wingnut's picture
Wingnut

Interesting read, I think I will make some Baguettes.

http://parisbymouth.com/behind-the-scenes-at-paris-best-baguette-competition/

Cheers,

Wingnut

evonlim's picture
evonlim

hello.. i like to share a sourdough bread baked by my lovely friend HK. i did mentioned and shared one of her loaf she made the last time. proud to say that i shared my starter with her. i can't remember how long ago, 6 months maybe. and she is baking marvelous bread since. one day, she asked me to recommend some bread books to buy. and i mentioned Ken Forkish and Peter Rainheart. i myself did not owned any but would love to one day. i did went through the reviews of the books at Amazon. and i liked both. any opinions or feedback about this bread book by Ken Forkish? 

this is the exact words she said: Just baked, my house smell like roast pork , hahaha!  

 

and she asked: You think the top burnt ? 

i replied no.. 

what do you think ?

to me, it is just lovely ...

evon

kevinnoe's picture
kevinnoe

Another pic of my first real success with the new method. Fresh ground Whole Wheat and Rye starter married with Pain a l'ancienne techniques to make a wonderful and unique loaf.

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