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This is a bit unusual. I saw smoked flour on the shelf of Waitrose in Kensington so had togive it a go. The flour is from Bacheldre watermill in Wales and is described as organic smoked stoneground malted blend flour. Their website says that malted wheat flakes are cold smoked over oak chippings for 18 hours in the smokehouse then mixed with organic stoneground malted blend flour. There's a gentle smoky aroma from the dry flour which becomes more assertive when it's wet.

I baked it as a sourdough made with a sponge (60g starter, 200g flour, 200g water) refrigerated overnight and left out for a couple of hours in the morning. Then I added 300g flour, 150g water, 12g salt (total 71% hydration), did a bit of stretching and folding, shaped it and let it prove at room temperature for a couple of hours or so then baked at 230°C for 20 minutes then 20 minutes at 185°C.

The result is less smoky than I expected, and the predominant flavour is still that of a malted loaf, but with a subtle, smoky background which adds interest and a distinctive character to the bread. It's certainly worth a try if you can get it, but apparently it's difficult to get it across the atlantic. I'll try it with a higher hydration next time.

I'm trying to make sourdough bread with Tartine's method, and I can't seem to get past the "make your leaven float" part. I've been maintaing a liquid starter for a month now, and a dry starter for a week, and I just can't even produce a leaven that will float, so I haven't even bothered to warm the oven yet. So lots of flour and water going into the recycling bin, lots of time spent trying to keep my  various colonies happy, and nary a loaf to even dislike. It's worse than bad bread. It's no bread. WTF do I do? I'm feeling exasperated. I've tried to track my leaven from start to finish, testing it regularly. It goes from sweet and floury to sour, seemingly without rising, and without every floting when put in a bowl of water. I fed my starter once a day for a while. Then I fed it twice a day. I've basically flushedd ten pounds of flour into my compost heap. Sweet.

I'm not a quitter, but I feel like I'm locked out of any gratification whatsoever from this bread thing. My garden is turning out lots of tasty treats. My cherry tree produced a dandy crop that's baking in the oven. We made the best home-made pasta-based lasagne you can imagine tonight.

But no bread for breakfast. Bummer. 

Maybe I should just put "Tartine Bread" in the shredder, and pretend I never looked into making bread.

I just received my new order from KAF the other day and was dying to try some of my new flours I ordered.  I wasn't too happy though when I received an email the day after it arrived telling me how excited I should be about the KAF 20% off sale!

Anyway I digress....I decided to try my new Sprouted Wheat Flour which was not milled by KAF but apparently they distribute this brand.  I also used another new interesting flour which was made from 100% oats.  Along with these 2 flours I added a large amount of French Style Flour which added to the silkiness of this dough.  I have used this flour many times before and it is great for baguettes or ciabatta but I also find it very nice for developing the nice open crumb I like.

I refreshed my standard AP white starter the night before and used most of it in this bake.  I have also included the ingredients to make the exact amount of starter needed from your seed starter.  Mine is kept at 65% hydration so adjust yours accordingly.

The final dough was a nice mild sourdough with a hint of nuttiness from the oat flour and sprouted wheat flour.  The crumb was not too moist and had a nice open crumb and overall this was a nice bread worth making again for sure.  I used it for a nice pastrami sandwich last night which I ate while tailgating at the Brad Paisley concert at Jones beach.  I am not a big fan of country music by I do have to say he puts on a great show.  Could have done without the rain storm and cold winds in June but we all had fun anyway.

Starter

71 grams Seed (Mine is 65% AP Flour Starter)

227 grams AP Flour

151 grams Water (85 - 90 degrees F.)

Mix seed with water to break up for a few seconds and then mix in flour until the starter form a smooth dough consistency.  Put it in a lightly oiled bowl and loosely cover and leave at room temperature for at least 10 hours.  The starter should double in volume.  Put the starter in the refrigerator for up to 1-2 days or use it immediately.

Main Dough

Ingredients

425 grams Starter from above (all of the starter)

200 grams French Style Flour

200 grams Sprouted Wheat Flour

167 grams Oat Flour

425 grams Water (90 degrees F.)

18 grams Sea Salt (or table salt)

Procedure

I mixed  the flours together with all the water except for 50 grams and let them autolyes for 1 hour.    After an hour  I added the levain and the water with the salt and mixed on speed #1 for 1 minute and #2 for 4 minutes.  I then did a stretch and fold, rested the dough uncovered for 10 minutes.  I then did another stretch and fold, covered the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.  I did one more stretch and fold and put it in a lightly oiled bowl for 1.5 hours.  I then put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day I let the dough sit out at room temperature for 1.5 hours.  After 1.5 hours I formed it into loaves and put them in floured bannetons and let them rise covered for 2 hours.  Score the loaves as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

I then baked on my oven stone with steam at 450 degrees until both loaves were golden brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 - 210 degrees F.

I got a nice bloom with my scoring, actually more than I expected.  One loaf I tried a curved scoring pattern which came out pretty nice.

It was so nice outside yesterday I decided to shoot the finished loaves outside in my garden.  The summer flours flowers are just starting to bloom in earnest making this one of my favorite times of the year.

This 40% whole grain bread is a combination YW and SD starter, seeded, multi-grain that does not have sprouts or a scald.  The hydration of 79% is not too much for a bread with so much whole Rye, WW, spelt and WWW.  There is also semolina in the starter and the dough as well.  There is a little potato flake, red and white rye malt, wheat germ and 6 kinds of seeds.  Sunflower-25 g, anise-3g, hemp-10g, coriander-2g and fennel-3g with only the flax seeds ground into a flour.  Since the bread was not retarded to bring out additional SD flavor it had a slight tang but the aromatic seeds really came through nicely.

Marking the fold lines.

Folded with knot roll added.

It’s not often we get to work on a new bread shape but one was needed for the 6 sided basket requiring the new shape.  Thomas Chacon came up with the unique way to fold the 6 flaps to the center so the bread could be loaded into the basket and this bread is named after him - he deserves it.  I added the knotted roll in the center to complete the loaf.  The hard part was flipping the whole thing into the basket after the shaping.  Instead of flipping I should have folded the bread on the peel with parchment under the dough, added the knotted roll, placed the same shaped basket on top and turned the whole thing over causing no damage to the Chacon shape.- Next time!

Flipped into teh basket.

Risen nicely. Can you find the poke test?

Since the skin couldn't be tightened like a normal loaf, and was just folded like an Altamura ‘Priests Hat’, we didn't know how the loaf would perform in holding in the gas and generating spring.  It proofed up nicely though and was amazing how well it filled in all the space from the end of the fold to the knot.  Spring wasn't what we had hoped but a different folding method could possibly cure some of that problem.  All in all it was a fun experiment that resulted in a nice looking loaf of bread.  It smelled great when it finished baking and was crisping on the stone with the oven off and door ajar.

The Chacon is nice looker even before baked.

The crust was deeply cracked (since there was no scoring) brown, and crisp - and it stayed crisp after cooling.  The basket left some nice flour marks too.  The Chacon was very nice looking overall on the outside but the spring would have been better if the loaf wasn't over proofed by an estimated 30 - 40 minutes.  When it passed the first poke test the oven was still cold – not a good thing and shows you need to be testing earlier than 2 hours after start of proof.  It is summer time and every bit of 112 F outside today.  A/C keeps it 80 F inside though.

Nicely cracked and we like what the knot roll did for the baked looks.

The crumb was nicely open for the amount of whole grains and the manhandling it took.  I'm still impressed with what the YW   can bring to a loaf of bread when it comes to moist and soft crumb - amazing really.  The bread tasted like a seeded rye loaf that had more rye than this did.  Maybe this was because of the seeds though.  I would be tempted to put some caraway in the seed mix next time.  This Chacon is hearty, tasty and visually stimulating.  Method and formula follow the Pix’s

The Chacon made a very nice taasting grilled chicken, queso fresco sandwich witha plate full of fruits and veggies. 

The Chacon Method

 The SD and YW levains were built over 3 stages of 4 hours each. The next stage is added to the previous one and all of the eventual 320g of levain is used in the final dough. After the 3rd stage was built, the levain went into the fridge for a 6 hour retard.  In the morning when the levain came out of the fridge to warm up the flours, malts, VWG and slalt were autolysed with the water for 2 hours on the counter.  The seeds and levain were the only things held out of the autolyse.

After 2 hours on the counter, the autolyse and Levin were mixed on KA 2 for 4 minutes and KA 3 for 2 minutes.  The dough was transferred to a well oiled bowl and allowed to rest covered with plastic wrap for 15 minutes

4 S&F’s were performed at 15 minute intervals in the bowl.  The 5th S& F was performed on a floured counter where the seeds were incorporated.  After the 6 S&F the dough was allowed to ferment and develop in the bowl for 1 ½ hours.   

The dough was then placed on a floured work surface, a small ball removed for the eventual knotted center. The remainder of the dough was gently jostled  into a1”thick circle that was 12 “ across –2”wider than the widest part of the Chacon 6 sided basket.   The basket was used to mark the dough to establish the 6 fold lines.  The dough was then folded to the center at the lines, leaving a 4” diameter open circle in the center.   The knotted roll is placed in the center of the Chacon to complete the loaf.  The entire loaf was then flipped over into the well rice floured 6 sided Chacon basket and allowed to final proof on the counter for 2 hours in a plastic bag where it doubled and passed the poke test.  Don't do this flip into the basket though.  Put some parchment on a peel, press out the circle of dough 1" past each of the points of the basket, mark the fold lines with the inverted basket, make the six folds, add the knotted roll and place the basket over the dough. Then just turn the whole assembly over removing the peel and parchment.

At 2 hours the oven was preheated at 500 F for 45 minutes with stone steam in place. Overturn basket onto parchment on a peel. No slashing is required for the Chacon.

Slide bread into the oven.  After 2 minutes, turn oven down to 450 F.  After 13 more minutes, remove steam and turn down oven to 4oo F convection this time. Turn Chacon 90 degrees every 5 minutes and bake until temperature in the middle of the bread is 205 F. Turn off oven and crack the door to allow the crust to crisp for 12 more minutes. Remove bread from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.

Hello everyone, 
Continuing to be inspired by Beth Hensperger’s beautiful book, Bread For All Seasons…
the next chapter begins with June and is titled ‘Sun Food’.

I’ve baked three breads of Italian origin over the last while, using ‘yellow-colored’ flours -
thinking about 'sun food' (sun bread), I wanted to call these breads ‘pane di sole’ :^)


Micca di enkir e buratto
A dear friend generously gave me some beautiful softly-yellow-colored Italian einkorn flour:
  
Searching on TFL yielded Giovanni’s amazing post about his visit to Mulino Marino, and finding einkorn (enkir) flour there.
(loved how Giovanni’s post featured six millers, whose names all began with the letter ‘f’ –
this group of men seemed like a brotherhood, or  fratellanza, to me :^)   )

                                                               

In place of buratto flour, I used 85% high-extraction flour, as one of Giovanni’s comments noted buratto flour might be comparable to a French T80 which may be a light whole wheat?
The einkorn levain was slower to ferment than the wheat levain, so I placed the einkorn levain in a warm ( 90F or so?) proofer for awhile, to let it catch up – I’m not sure if it was the warmer, wetter levain, or the einkorn flour, or both, but when baked, this bread was the sourest bread I’ve ever tasted – and I’m not complaining! It was amazing to taste - been meaning to bake this bread again, to see if I can re-create that flavor.

The crumb is not as astonishingly beautiful as with Giovanni’s loaf...
 
  ...but I was happy with the oven spring :^)

This bread was baked back in March, and I’m pretty sure at that time of the year, I was still dreaming of the sun. 
Many thanks to Giovanni, for his inspiring and informative post about these millers and their flours – and for baking that beautiful, perfect ‘micca’ – it was wonderful to see!

Focaccia al pomodori

This focaccia is based on Mr. Leader’s formula for Grape Harvest Focaccia in his lovely book, Local Breads.  
There are so many incredible, captivating photos in Mr. Leader’s book – including his photo of ‘Individual Focaccias with Cherry Tomatoes’ – the breads look like they’ve been wood-fired – gorgeous!
When I saw a colorful mix of hothouse tomatoes at the store – these breads came to mind.
After baking, these tomatoes were sweet and flavorful, almost beyond belief – it’s been many months since I’ve tasted tomatoes like these.
It’s as if they’d been vine-ripened in the sun, but it’s still too early here for that! The flavor was an amazing surprise :^)

In making the focaccia, I pre-fermented 21% of the flour in a 80% hydration sponge (used only all-purpose flour in the sponge), then used 40% all-purpose, 30% soft whole wheat, and 30% extra-fancy durum (nice and yellow) flour in the final dough, with 60% hydration overall.

                                                           ...before baking

Sun shots :^)  



Pane tipo di Altamura

Franko embarked on a journey to bake pane tipo di Altamura last year – I haven’t forgotten the lovely bread he baked!
There have been so many other enticing bakes of this bread by Varda and others. Consistently, these 100% durum breads have had vibrant orange-colored crusts, and yellow crumb...
I was intimidated by this bread, and found the courage to try making a version of it this week, having some extra time and having just seen Jeremy’s post of a beautiful and bright-yellow semola remacinata bread. Jeremy included a link to his friend Ibán Yarza's blog where there was yet another beauty! of a bake.
I'm very grateful for the tips and guidance in these posts, including tips on how to build the levain (thanks!, codruta, for your question – if you see this).  I tried to keep the levain quantity  and hydration, and dough hydration to that recommended by Mr. Yarza, and do a multiple-stage durum levain build at varying hydrations (formula below). Mr. Yarza called the levain masa madre, but I wanted to call this levain pasta madre, in honor of durum flour, and Italy  :^)

 

I used 100% extra-fancy durum flour for this bake, so this bread might be a pane tipo di Altamura?
Whatever it’s called, it was one of the most delicious breads I’ve ever tasted, with a very moist and almost sweet, crumb –
a complex flavor I won’t forget, just like the image of that first beautiful Altamura bread Franko baked :^)

Here are some crumb shots (slices from the loaf on the right, the loaf on the left was given as a gift)


 
                                                                      close-up:

My adaptation of Mr. Yarza's formula:





Baker's %'s:







Just one last link - can't help thinking about Sofie’s absolutely beautiful ‘ray of sunshine’ French Country Bread!  :^)

 Wishing everyone a happy, and sunny!, month of June -
                                                                                  :^) breadsong


Submitted to Susan @ YeastSpotting

I decided to attempt Pain au Levain again, but this time with a few changes. 

1.) I added Flax meal, Corn meal, and Rye to make my own "Country" Pain au Levain. 

2.) I baked it as 1 huge boule instead of 2 smaller ones. 

3.) I proofed for 4 hrs BEFORE retarding in the fridge this time. 

4.) I had to significantly increase the baking time due to the size of the boule.

5.) I used the starter I had stored in the freezer because I managed to screw up the one I had going in the fridge. I refreshed it 2 times before using in this recipe. 

Ok, so now that I've stated the changes, let me say that this is the first time I've ever experimented with a loaf....and by that I mean alter the flour composition and types of flours used. I think this turned out better than my first loaves in that it's definitely prettier....but I'm not overly pleased with the crumb yet. The crust is also significantly better than my first attempt. 

The day before I mixed the dough, I cut my starter into 6 equal pieces (weighing a total of about 7oz). I kneaded in 1/3 c water with 4.5oz unbleached bread flour and let that develop for 4 hrs before refrigerating it overnight. 

The next day I made the final dough by cutting the starter into 6 equal pieces (about 11.5 - 12oz) with the flours, water and salt. Here are the percentages I used....

100% UnBleached Bread Flour (18 oz)

89% Water (16oz)

64% Starter (11.5 oz)

11% Rye (2oz)

11% Flax Meal (2oz)

11% Corn Meal (2oz)

1.7% Salt (0.3oz)

I hope I did my calculations right...please tell me if I didn't. The decimal demon still gives me problems every once in awhile. Ok...maybe all the time. 

I kneaded the dough and let it rise in a lightly oiled bowl for 3 hrs. It seemed to swell a little but I couldn't tell if it was a "flattening out" compared to a swelling. Before....

After....

But either way I continued on to shaping. Before I made my boule, though, I did do a few stretch and folds to help with structure because the dough was soft and a little wetter than my first attempt. I was nervous and decided it wouldn't hurt. So then I made my boule and put it back in my clean glass bowl to proof. I let this go for 4 hrs....I had made this at night so when I went to bed at 10pm I set my alarm for 2am to stick it in the fridge. 

The next night, I turned my loaf onto a cookie sheet dusted with cornmeal and scored it, topped it with a little Flax meal and popped it in the oven.

I baked it at 475 degrees with a pan of hot water for 2 min., spritzed the oven and loaf with water and then lowered the temp to 450 for 30 min. At this point I could already tell I was a step closer to getting the loaf I want because of the oven spring (even if it wasn't as much as I would have liked to see it was still there). I kept increasing the baking time by 10 min. until the loaf registered 195 degrees. This took about 1hr 35 min.

I left it to cool until the next morning.

The crust was "crustier" and more crackly than last time (MUCH BETTER!) and the taste was great....I was able to get the mild flavor of sourdough with the nutty flax.

However, this bread is still pretty dense and I noticed it was more moist than the first loaves I made. A little more than I'd like. I'm guessing I should cut back on the hydration? As far as getting a softer/lighter crumb....should I let it proof longer? Add some instant yeast for added boost? Knead it longer? Make a better/more active starter even though when I was refreshing it, it tripled in volume within 8 hrs each time? I'm not sure what to do or what to try next so any suggestions would be very helpful!

Sending this toYeastspotting.
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Haven't been blogging much lately, but actually baking a lot. Ever since I started making laminated breads, they have become my signature gifts to people. This batch is for some family friends. Since they are Chinese, I thought it would be nice to add some Asian elements -- mixed matcha powder into the dough, and used red bean filling for some.

Matcha Croissant with Sourdough Starter(Adapted from ABAP)
Note: for details and tips on making croissants, please see this post & this post.
Note: this recipe makes about 12 large danishes.

-levain
starter (100%), 35g
water, 59g
bread flour, 105g

1. mix and leave at room temp for 12 hours.

-final dough
bread flour, 422g
water, 148g
milk, 128g
sugar, 68g
salt, 10g
instant yeast, 7g
butter, 21g, softened
matcha powder, 16g
levain, all
roll-in butter, 287g

1. Mix everything but the rolling butter, knead until medium gluten developement. Then follow the steps here.

Lately I got some question in terms of the "right" dough consistency of laminated breads. I have said in a few prior posts that "drier dough yields better crumb". Now I would like to emphasize 2 conditions for that statement:

1. "Better crumb" in my mind is honeycomb like crumb with open large holes of even size. Walls of holes should be crisp and thin, clearly defined. If a different kind of crumb is desired, then this technique obviously would not apply.

2. Drier dough yields better crumb IF IT CAN BE ROLLED OUT WITHOUT BUTTER LEAKAGE. Butter leakage here means butter being smeared into dough layers. In the most extreme case, one can see butter layer being exposed. More often, the dough seems fine from outside, but there's still butter leakage inside due to warm weather, or improper handling. A sheeter can roll out doughs easily in a short amount of time, so it can handle very dry doughs. We as human with limited arm strength and varied experience in lamination would need to find a balance point: the dough is not so dry that it can't be successfully rolled out, yet it should be as dry as one can handle to achieve the most optimal crumb.

For this batch, I used 148g of water (in addition to milk). The crumb turned out very well, however, observing closely, you can see the walls being on the thicker side -- some layers are stuck together.

For 2nd batch, I used only 128g of water (with no filling this time). Now the walls are thinner, however, since it's dryer and harder to roll out, the holes are less even.

I realize that I might be splitting hairs at this point, but it's a well known fact that I am a type A obsessed lamination fool. :P For the plain ones with no filling, I smeared them with homemade kumquat marmalade, a pairing I highly recommend.

Some recent bread made into lunches , the last bloom of the jackaranda and a blueberry, blackberry, chocolate cheese cake.

Sweet Tader Toast with caramelized minneola marmelade

Since I started bread baking last year I've been aiming mainly at sourdough and have made some reasonably good loaves at the weekend but it has been a challenge to fit it into the week's work schedule. The comparatively long rise of approx. 4 hours means I'd be baking at 22:50 if I made the loaf on getting home from work. Letting it rise in the fridge while I'm at work seems a pretty good solution to this, and here's how I've worked it so far.

08:00 Tuesday: mixed 50g starter with 50g wholemeal rye flour and 50g water (the starter is 50% hydrated wholemeal rye and lives in the fridge all the time. It's pretty active despite this). Left it at room temperature, went to work.

18:00 Tuesday: home from work; added 50g strong white organic flour and 50g water. Still at room temperature.

22:00 Tuesday: added 100g white flour and 100g water, still at room temperature.

07:00 Wednesday: added 300g strong white flour, 100g water, 11g salt, a glug of olive oil; mixed, a little bit of folding and stretching, formed a round, left whilst showering, dressing, breakfasting.

07:50 Wednesday: a bit more stretching, folding, gentle kneading and it's looking good. Shaped into a stubby cylinder, into the banneton, bagged, in the fridge. Off to work.

17:30 Wednesday: home from work, dough looks ready. Oven on, 230°C, baking stone in. Oven ready, baking stone out, turned loaf onto stone, dusted with wholemeal rye, slashed, into the oven, 300g boiling water into a hot baking tray for steam. Baked for 20 min at 230°C then 25 min at 190°C. It needs longer baking due to going into the oven fridge-cold.

Result: pretty good. Nice, crunchy crust; moderately airy, moist crumb; reasonably good sourdough tang. For such a relatively small amount of wholemeal rye, it has a surprising amount of wholemeal flavour. I'm not sure where to take it next to get a lighter, airier crumb, but I think I might experiment with leaving it out of the fridge a bit longer before baking in order to let it warm up a bit and do some more rising.

The overall hydration is about 62%. The starter came from a training day at e5 Bakehouse with a reputed 200 year trans-European pedigree and seemed better than my own home-grown starter. I always feed it with equal amounts of wholemeal rye and filtered water and keep it in the fridge.

I've caught the bread bug! After making the sourdough (and not being completely satisfied with the results) I had the urge to make some more bread. However, I was having issues with my starter and being the impatient person I am, decided to make something that wouldn't require days upon days of refreshments and monitoring. Since my first attempt at Portuguese Sweet Bread was a disaster I thought I'd revisit this recipe and see if I could correct my mistakes. I don't have a picture of my last attempt because it was THAT bad. Yes, yes it was I'm embarrassed to say. Dense, tough, mottled crust.....not my better baking moments. This time, however, I think I got it right. Or at least I'm stepping in the right direction for the perfect loaf. 

After mixing the sponge I only had to wait about 30min before it became so bubbly that I deemed it ready to use.

So I mixed up the final dough and began kneading....and kneading....and kneading. I followed the recipe in Peter Reinharts book The Bread Baker's Apprentice and he suggests adding up to 6 tablespoons of water if needed for the dough. He also has 1/4c (I think...I don't have the book in front of me right now) powdered milk in the recipe. Both the powdered milk and the water were never added to my dough and I'm not sure they were even needed or would have made a huge difference in the final loaf. 

With the first loaf, I was pretty sure I didn't knead the dough long enough because it never did rise, and it was dense and tough and bumpy. THIS loaf I knew after the first rise that I kneaded it enough because during shaping, one loaf had a little balloon of gas poking out...almost like my loaf was trying to blow a bubble.

After shaping the boules (which I definitely need practice), I popped them in the fridge overnight. 

The next day, I took them out to proof on the counter before work and when I got home they were ready to bake. Another hint that I was on the right track.....they went from this....

to this....

So I threw some eggwash over them (I need to be more thorough in the application I think), and baked them for 30min. However, my loaves reached above 190 degrees after 35 minutes so I'm pretty sure they were done at 30min. They definitely would have been ruined had I baked them at the recommended 50-60min.

After resting and cooling I couldn't wait until morning to cut into and try a slice.

Significantly better than my first attempt and so far this is the lightest crumb I've ever achieved. The loaves are soft like they should be, the cumb is moist and light and the taste delicious! I think part of my success is the use of filtered, bottled water instead of tap. I've used tap water for as long as I can remember and New Orleans water is pretty rough. I don't know why it didn't dawn on me that the tap water could be preventing my little yeasties to do their thing. I'm not sure if that's what helped this time or not but I'm going with it!

To anyone who has made Portuguese Sweet Bread before...how did I do? Be honest please!