The Fresh Loaf

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davidlaplante's picture
davidlaplante

Capture 1 (4-17-2013 6-38 PM)










I made this sourdough at home and made this little video
Floydm's picture
Floydm

Things are finally starting to settle down a bit.  I baked today the first time since kicking off the site move, another batch of the Hokkaido Milk Bread with Tangzhong.

Man is it good and easy to make.  The only difficulty is it is so sticky that I spend half the mixing time scraping the dough off the hook and back into the bowl.  This is the first bread in a long time that has me seriously contemplating a mixer upgrade at some point. 

I'm continuing to fix things and chip away at the wishlist, as well as just generally be active on the site and "eat my own dogfood."  Now that we're geting settled into this new environment, it is much easier for me to make changes. Well... not all changes, but many things that I didn't have easy access to I do now.  So things should keep getting better.

FYI for tracker junkies: you may have seen (or will see soon) a bunch of updates to old content.  That was me. First I was editing them by just switching input format because I was trying to fix the issue with some posts blanking out, which I have now fixed.  I'm now editing some older posts to attach one of the images already in the post to the new "Image" field at the top.  Having that image lets me do all kinds of cool tricks like auto-generate thumbnail images for posts in search results or in list, which I'll start to do once more posts have images attached like that.  I am not editing folks's content in any way.

-Floyd

breadforfun's picture
breadforfun

There has been lots of discussion here and elsewhere (notably Ken Forkish in FWSY and Ian in his Ars Pistorica blog) on the benefits of long autolyse.  I thought I would do a side by side comparison to see what the difference in taste is, since, after all, that's the main reason we all bake so much.  Just for fun, I also wanted to try a more complex levain.  I have been using a simple straight wheat levain that I maintain at around 100% hydration.  After reading posts by Tom (Toad.de.b) and MC (Farine) on the mixed flour blend used by Gérard Rubaud, it seemed this would be a place to start in order to get a better flavor.  I adjusted the levain flour blend to the same as in the final dough. For the autolyse, I used only the wheat flours (AP, bread and whole wheat), mixing in the rye and spelt together with the levain because I am not sure if the additional enzymatic activity would make the dough too slack (aha, another experiment!).

The loaves baked very much like other levain loaves that i have made with similar hydrations (about 72-73%) with nice blooms and singing crusts. 

The comparison loaves were made with the same formula except for using a 30 min. autolyse instead of the overnight refrigerated autolyse, and I did deviate slightly by shaping them into 500g loaves instead of the 1000g ones above.

The flavor was definitely more intense on the loaves that were autolysed for around 16 hours.  Compared to breads I made in the past using a straight wheat levain with the same flour blend, the flavors were  more nutty and wheaty.  Also, the texture was much more creamy on the longer autolysed loaves and the crumb highly gelatinized (the photo doesn't do it justice). 

This is all consistent with what others have been saying.  I've been just a little slow on the uptake here.

The formula, which is scaled to two 1000g loaves after baking, is below:

I'm very happy with these loaves, and I plan to try them again upping the hydration to around 78%.  The other questions that still need to be answered are whether long autolyse with rye and spelt negatively affect the dough, and what is the difference between the refrigerated and room temperature autolyse used as an enzymatic preferment.

-Brad

 [Edit: Replace formula panel because some lines in Method were incomplete.]

Szanter5339's picture
Szanter5339

         

Mebake's picture
Mebake

At long last, I got around to baking David’s favorite staple bread:  His San Joaquin.

The bread was fabulous! I loved it, and I will be baking it again in the future, no doubt.  

Thanks a lot David for sharing your lovely formula :)

- Khalid

 

 

Janetcook's picture
Janetcook

Back again with a loaf I can't resist writing about because of the aromas the ingredients filled my house with while it was being prepared.

The corn meal used in this loaf was cooked in the morning along with part of the water, all of the molasses and all of the coconut oil.  It was left to sit out and cool all day.  The fragrance from the pot was intoxicating.

The results were a loaf with a beautiful dark golden crust and a very soft crumb.  

 

                                                                      

 

 

   Coconut oil was solid at the onset but soon turned to liquid when added the the corn meal 'porridge'.

 

The molasses added a sweetness, color and bouquet which turned the whole pot into something that someone might label 'ambrosia'.  This surprised me because I am not a big fan of molasses...or at least haven't been but now I must re-think my former bias.

   

                   

 

 

The original recipe was from Laurel Robertson's 'The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book'.

I took great liberties by converting it to using a WY leaven and retarding the dough overnight.

The book describes this dough as being a tough one to knead when the cooked corn meal is added.  She kneads by hand.  I don't  so the mixing presented no problems and was added after the gluten was pretty well developed.

FORMULA

Flour           100%

Corn             20%   (Coarsely ground)

Water          105%   (5% of the water is yeast water and is used in the leaven)

Salt               2.8% 

IY                   .1%

Coconut Oil   10%

Molasses      13%

 

15% of the flour is used in the leaven.   38% of the water is used in the corn meal 'porridge'.

Oven   Pre-heat 425°.  Lower to 350° when bread is loaded.  Bake until internal temp. reaches 200°.  (Lower to 325° if crust gets too dark.)

This is a loaf I will be baking again and again.

 

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