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I’ve been raiding my freezer for slices of homemade bread lately and decided it was time to make some fresh loaves. There will never be a shortage of frozen homemade bread in this house but there are times when I just can’t stand it—I have to bake! I picked Glenn Snyder’s San Francisco Country Sourdough as my project and I’m so glad I did. It’s a lovely formula. Here is a link:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25402/sf-country-sourdough-%E2%80%93-my-best-ever%E2%80%A6not-sure-why.

I had made this once before with excellent results, but ended up making some minor changes both times. Not from any desire or need to improve the formula, but just because of “conditions on the ground” as the generals say in wartime.  First time around I had to refrigerate the dough after 1½ hours of the bulk ferment. I took it out in the morning, did a rough shape, bench rest and final shape and it came out beautifully.

Flours used were King Arthur AP, Central Milling organic whole wheat, Bob’s Red Mill dark rye. Also spring water and Celtic salt. My sourdough culture was at 100%, so I made a minor adjustment to the water to compensate (Glenn calls for 75% culture).

This time I decided to follow a kind of Tartine-style handling of the dough. After the autolyse I added the salt (in my case I used fine Celtic salt) along with a tiny bit of water (I had held a little back in the earlier stage) and did a rough mix by hand in the bowl, finishing up with quite a few stretch-and-folds. Since I hadn’t mixed it quite as thoroughly as the formula calls for, I changed the S & F schedule and did one every half hour for the first two hours of the bulk ferment, then I left it alone for the final hour. At the end of that time, it was lively and pillowy and it smelled of gentle wheaty fermentation.

I divided into two halves and pre-shaped, then left it to rest for about 45 minutes. Then shaped into two boules and placed into 8″ brotforms. I put one in the refrigerator and kept one out to rise and bake.

Since I was already in a Tartine frame of mind, I decided to bake the first loaf in my Dutch oven. Preheated the oven to 500°F with the Dutch oven on the lowest rack. Turned the boule out onto a rectangle of parchment paper lightly dusted with a 50/50 blend of AP flour and white rice flour, took hold of the corners and lowered it—carefully!—into the Dutch oven. Then I closed the lid and returned it to the oven, reducing the temperature to 450°F. Glenn calls for a reduction to 460°F but I though it best to go a little lower since I was using a blazing hot Dutch oven. As it turned out, I could have reduced it even a bit more; the lower crust was somewhat overdone.

That loaf was a wild thing, with explosive oven spring. It felt almost weightless when I removed it to the cooling rack. As with my Tartine loaves, this had gorgeous, deep caramelization. The flavor once it cooled was a real delight—a crust that crackled when I cut through it and released deep caramel-wheat flavor when I bit into it. The interior was sweet and somewhat moist. Not much sourdough tang. I assumed I would get more of that in the loaf that was resting in the refrigerator overnight, but that turned out to not really be the case.

I baked the second loaf the next morning in the more traditional way on a heated baking stone on the middle shelf, with steam for the first 12 minutes. It also had exuberant oven spring, but was a little more controlled. I had taken it out of the refrigerator for about a half hour before baking, as it seemed to need it. This was my favorite of the two loaves. An incredibly deep, blistery, crackly mahogany crust, loaded with flavor and texture, with a soft but substantial interior. I really loved this crust, as you can probably tell from the overabundance of pictures! This one also felt as light as a feather after baking (+ its 10 minute rest with the oven off and the door open).

This is a great sandwich or toasting bread, and last night I made croutons by roughly cubing up several slices, crust and all, and putting them in a hot cast iron frying pan with extra virgin olive oil, garlic, parsley and basil. These got sprinkled over a homemade escarole-bean soup and made for a memorable, comforting meal on a wintry day.

Thank you for the formula, Glenn!

All the best,  Janie

p.s., sending to Susan for yeastspotting http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting/

You know those drying butt-ends of sourdough bread from the previous bake that you leave sitting in a bag, in danger of being forgotten until it's too late? I hate wasting bread, so am always on the lookout for ways to use those leftover bits.

Cubed leftover bread makes great croutons, and of course you can keep yourself in good supply of bread crumbs using a food processor. I keep a bag of frozen bread crumbs in the freezer door, which I often top up.

One of my favourite uses for leftover sourdough, though, is in panzanella, a refreshing traditional Italian salad that is good all year round, but especially in summer. There are lots of variations, so don't hesitate to throw in any compatible ingredients you have on hand. The version that follows is one that has evolved over time in my kitchen. I think it's pretty close to qualifying as 'traditional'.

Ingredients:
leftover sourdough or other bread (traditionally, ciabatta is used)
4 medium tomatoes
2 trimmed celery stalks, cut in diagonals
1 Lebanese cucumber
1 medium red onion
60ml red wine vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
125ml extra virgin olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/4 cup or more fresh-picked basil leaves, shredded or torn

Method:
Thin-slice onion and let soak in vinegar in salad bowl while you prepare rest of ingredients
Cut tomatoes into coarse wedges or cubes, add to bowl, sprinkle over sugar, grind over pepper, salt to taste
Cut bread into approx 2cm cubes
Cut celery into strips lengthways, then slice obliquely across in diagonals
Add bread and celery to bowl
Combine remaining ingredients in screw-top jar, shake well, pour over salad, and toss gently.

That's it! So quick and simple, and just delicious. Using top quality organic tomatoes, homegrown if possible, makes a big difference to the end result.

Cheers all
Ross

Tzitzel is to Borodinsky as Comfort Zone is to Total Lack of Comfort Zone.   But still, it's out there.   It has a cool name.   I like rye.   So why not.  I followed Andy's Borodinsky formula here as much as possible given different flours and malt.    To make myself feel more comfortable I made Tzitzel at the same time.   In making what is for me a very complex formula,  I felt similar to how I felt the first time I made Hamelman's Pain Au Levain - over my head.   Yesterday when I was making the rye sour for Tzitzel, a different rye sour for Borodinsky and my first time ever scald, I got everything built and put together.  Then I happened to glance at Andy's formula and realized that I had misread the amount of rye sour, by looking at the result of his first build instead of his second.  This necessitated a lengthy interaction with my spreadsheet, while I tried to figure out how to make the necessary adjustments.   Bottom line was I had enough sour for only 40% of the scald.   I'm glad I caught it in time before I mixed more than twice as much scald as required in with the sour.    I thought that I would be able to mix the scald and sour together last night to make the sponge before I went to bed, but I was waiting for the rye sour to froth - see Juergen's excellent picture here.   I know from having made Russian Rye that if you don't wait for the froth, you might as well just use the result for its cementatious properties, instead of wasting the energy to bake it.   So I let it go overnight, and then mixed the sour and scald in the morning.    Since I had a fairly small quantity of paste (this stuff is not dough)  relative to the pan, the result after baking for over an hour looked like a brick, and of course nothing like Andy's beautiful samples.   However, it did not taste like a brick.   To go back to my years of absorbing ad copy through the ether, I would say that this bread is BURSTING WITH FLAVOR (Juicy Fruit Gum - circa 1967).   No really, absolutely bursting with flavor.   I would hope to be able to make more photogenic loaves as time goes on, but for now, I'll be consoled by the taste.  I ate a piece of this with peanut butter for dinner.   Nothing else required. 

Crumb shots:   Tzitzel and Borodinsky

Tzitzel Rye Sour just before mixing the dough:

Borodinsky sponge just before mixing:

I used whole rye for the Borodinsky and for the small amount of wheat flour used Sir Lancelot high gluten because I ran out of KA Bread Flour while mixing up the Tzitzel.    I used malt syrup to replace Red Malt - best I could do for now.  I followed ITJB Old School Jewish Deli Rye as modified for Tzitzel (page 74.)  

I didn't want to cut into it. Not then. I thought that there might be something purple or green or both inside. It could easily have been a purple people eater or even something much, much worse. I had to wait until the morning light - didn't want to be crippled by darkness if it was something horrible ........and emerged very hungry. I would have needed every advantage to escape if it had attacked. I contained it in a brown paper bag so it stayed nice and comfy, unperturbed...... and had no reason to attack anyone ......until it was too late......and the bread knife struck when it was least expected. Sleep well my friends in bread. We dealt with this purple menace on the morrow.  We lived through the night.

The brown bag containment field worked overnight I am pleased to say and once under the bread knife, it was purple after all!!! The cell phone camera just doesn't do it justice. This is one handsome round of bread and the smell is unique but nice as well. Even when using the home ground whole meal wheat berries, the crumb is not dense, but slightly open, soft and moist too. The home grown sage comes through well and the walnuts, which I thought would be too many and too much, are also very tasty and in balance. What a great concoction Phil has pulled from his Hulking bag of tricks!  Have had it plain, toasted and with goat cheese this morning and it just grows on you subtely. Before you know it - its nearly gone - but I did freeze half of it. I cut your formula in half and got a small round. It didn't spring as much as I thought it would in the cast iron enameled pot I used but I think the pot was too big and I should have used a smaller one. It did rise well in the basket during final proof. I did let it go 1 and 3/4 hours instead of the 1 hour in Phils formula until it passed the poke test. This is a sophisticated, fined and elegant yet rustic kind of bread that is in a new class - the purple one.....a bread that people want to eat. Very nice indeed Phil.

I was in a creative mood the other day and decided to try something different.  I have made semolina bread before but this time I decided to convert the starter over to a semolina based concoction along with a little whole wheat flour as well.  My wife had bought a nice ball of fresh mozzarella so I figured why not incorporate some cheese and throw in some roasted peppers and roasted potatoes as well.

The dough ended up very wet due to the roasted red peppers I used from a jar had a very high water content, so you may choose to add some additional flour as you are preparing the final dough.

The final bread came out excellent with a nice reddish tint and a great open and crispy crumb.  You could really taste the roasted peppers and the dough had an excellent sour tang.   The only thing I would change would be to fold the cheese in before shaping the final dough rather than before putting it in the fridge for its overnight rest.

Starter

3.7 ounces White Starter, 68% hydration

8 ounces Extra Fancy Durum Semolina  Flour (do not use the course grade)

2.5 ounces Whole Wheat Flour

8 ounces Water (room temperature)

Final Dough

16 oz. Starter from above (you will have extra starter so you need to weigh this)

11 oz. Water (90 degrees F)

13 ounces French Style Flour (from King Arthur Flour-this has a 11.5% Protein level but if you don't have you can substitute with All Purpose Flour)

5 ounces  Extra Fancy Durum Semolina  Flour

2 1/2 Tsp. Salt (sea salt or table salt)

1.6 oz. Roasted Red Peppers

6.2 oz. Fresh Mozzarella

5 oz. Potatoes (I had some left-over roasted potatoes, but you can use left over mashed potatoes or make some fresh or use the equivalent instant potato flakes)

Directions

Make the Starter by adding the water to your existing starter amount and mix for a minute to break it up.  Add the flours and mix for 1 to 2 minutes until thoroughly mixed.  Put in a lightly oiled bowl and loosely cover.  Keep at room temperature for 5-6 hours until the starter becomes bubbly and doubles in size (I usually do this the night before and let it sit overnight).  You can either use the starter right away, or cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to use.  If you don't plan on using it that day, you will have to refresh the new starter before using in the final dough.

For the final dough, using your stand mixer or by hand, mix the water with the new starter to break it up.

Add the flour, potatoes, salt, red peppers (chop them up into small pieces) and mix on the lowest speed for 2 minutes.  Let rest for 5 minutes.

Mix for 4 minutes more on medium speed, adding more flour if necessary to produce a slightly sticky ball of dough.

Remove dough to your lightly floured work surface and need for 1 minute and form into a ball.  Flatten into a rectangle and add the cheese and form dough into a ball.  (You can also skip this part and add the cheese when you are ready to form the final loaves.)

Leave uncovered for 15 minutes.

Do a stretch and fold and form into a ball again and cover with a clean moist cloth or oiled plastic wrap.

After another 10 minutes do another stretch and fold and let it rest again for another 10 - 15 minutes.  Do one last stretch and fold and then put it  into a lightly oiled bowl that has enough room so the dough can double overnight.

Let the dough sit in your bowl for 2 hours at room temperature.  It should only rise slightly at this point.  After the 2 hours are up put in your refrigerator for at least 12 hours or up to 3 days.

When ready to bake the bread take your bowl out of the refrigerator and let it sit at room temperature for around 2 hours.  After 2 hours shape the dough as desired being careful not to handle the dough too roughly so you don't de-gas it.

Place it in your bowl, banneton or shape into baguettes.

Let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours covered with oiled plastic wrap or a moist cloth.

Pre-heat oven with baking stone (I use one on bottom and one on top shelf of my oven), to 500 degrees F.

Slash loaves as desired and place empty pan in bottom shelf of oven.

Pour 1 cup of very hot water into pan and place loaves into oven.

Lower oven to 450 Degrees and bake for 25 - 35 minutes until bread is golden brown and internal temperature reaches 200 degrees.

Shut the oven off and leave the bread inside with the door slightly open for 10 minutes.  This will help dry the loaves out and keep the crust crunchy.

Let cool on cooling rack and enjoy!

This post has been submitted to the Yeast Spotting Site here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/category/yeastspotting

Please visit my other blog at www.mookielovesbread.wordpress.com for some of my older recipes.

Was it my childish resistance against praying with St. Jeffrey's faithful congregation, or an unconscious dislike of dealing with a tome - so far I haven't baked a lot from Hamelman's "Bread". Though one bread, the wonderful "5-Grain Sourdough with Rye Sourdough", made it straight into Karin's Bread Hall of Fame, and his "Rye Sourdough with Walnuts" formula I used for testing a 1-step versus a 3-step starter (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19814/interesting-experiment-sourdough-starters).

For my "Equal Opportunity Challenge" I wanted kill two birds with one stone, giving "Bread" another chance, and finding a vehicle for the chia seeds I had just purchased for a bargain price. Therefore I chose a simple white loaf, one of the first formulas of the book: "Country Bread".

Working with the recipe wasn't very difficult. I refrigerated the mature pre-ferment overnight, and upped the amount of water in the dough a bit to accomodate the chia seeds (I didn't soak them, since, according to the description on the tag, "you can eat them directly out of the package"). The dough was slightly sticky, as intended, and I gave it an extra Stretch & Fold right away, and let it ferment for an additional 50 minutes after the last fold.

The result was a very pretty loaf, with a pleasant, slightly nutty taste - for people who don't care too much for sourdough tang. Unfortunately, the Andersons do not belong to these mild mannered goodie-two-shoes, we like our yeasts wild and free!

Therefore, this gentle bread will have to find another home, even jazzed up with chia seeds it is a bit too tame for us.

Country Bread - with chia seeds

I finally got a day to bake last week and commitments led me to bake a variation of Peter Reinharts Struan and Hamelman's Black Rye.

I didn't have the proper grains so I used rye flakes, wheat flakes, barley flakes, oat flakes, sunflower seeds, and a bit of flax. The results came out pretty much as expected and was pretty popular with friends.

The Black Rye was made by following Hamelman's recipe in Bread exactly. This is a good example of a learning loaf. I expected it to be "blacker" and ended up overbaking it a bit as I expected it to darken more. My time was at Hamelman's shorter times - my oven thermostat is pretty dependable so I can usually follow baking times - and I generally prefer my breads baked more than less. In this case his time was too much. I also felt the dough was a bit dry as I mixed it and the crumb supports that conclusion as well, I think. Next time I will add a couple of percent hydration and shorten the bake. Really good, complex, earthy flavor!

As you can see in the bottom image the crust is pretty thick - and the loaf is a bit dryer than most ryes I have made so...live and learn!

Bake On!

Jay

I take my standard Banana Nut Bread recipe and add, bourbon soaked dried fruits (cranberry, sultana,raisin, apricot) and chocolate chips.  The cupcake is topped with cream cheese icing, shaved chocolate and a half a strawberry in the shape of a heart.

Very romantic, sweet and delicious for the ones you love.

Hello,
This bread is from Beth Hensperger’s book, Bread For All Seasons.
Each ‘season’ in the book has a marvelous introduction discussing breads baked to celebrate various holidays
and occasions, in different countries.
Browsing through the book, I found Ciambella Mandorlata, an almond ring bread; it was noted the French call
a ring-shaped bread la baisure, or ‘kissing crust’ – this seemed like a perfectly sweet thing to bake for Valentine’s Day! :^)



Instead of shaping round rings, for each bread, two tapered batards were curved, and joined at the ends, to form each heart (stopped worrying about the less than perfect surface of this dough, remembering the sugared almond topping the bread would be covered with!):

The bread is has about 15% sugar which we didn’t find too sweet, with soft crumb and tasty crust from the roasted almond, caramelized turbinado sugar and cinnamon topping.
This bread was made with approximately 50% bread flour and 50% soft whole wheat flour (that had a bit of spelt mixed in with in when it was milled). 
Here is a crumb shot:



We enjoyed this bread topped with a little bit of good butter, and apricot jelly (so tasty with the almond) –
and a wonderful cup of El Corazón (‘the heart’) coffee!  (so good to have on Valentine's Day - thanks, K! :^)   )

With many thanks to Beth Hensperger for her lovely book (interesting reading and beautiful breads!)

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!
:^) from breadsong

I love the smell of this bread. This is what makes it so alluring and eventually delicious. Stunning toasted. I cut the recipe in half.  My Mandarin, Minneola, Apple Yeast Water (don't ask) was used to build the levain over 2 days with 12 hour feedings.  It was eventually ready at 250 g and I used a like weight of flours but added 5% WW and 5% spelt to the 5% rye and lowered the white flour a like amount.  I had a 5 hour bulk ferment with 3 S&F's at each of the first 3 hours and a 9 hour retard with a 4 hour final proof.  The bulk and final proofs could have each been 2 hours longer but I got impatient and the rise was not a high as it could have been.  This is a very fine bread with open crumb, chewy texture, aromatic and  delicious.  The varied citrus YWwent went well with the Minneola juice that was part of the liquid for the dough.  It was great to be able to find a bread where the YW was so perfectly matched to it.  Lucky indeed.  I will make this bread often - and be more patient....... since patience comes to those who wait ........a long long time.

My lentil soup used homemade chicken stock and the leftover caramelized onion and smoke pork jowl from isand66's bacon, cheese and onion bread I baked this morning. I also added some whole Thai chilies for heat. No chicken required because of the hog jowl.. The soup was so simple and delicious. A perfect foil for the beautiful yellow bread. A very fine combination. Thanks Shiao-Ping