October 24, 2008 - 5:27am
sesame semolina la brea
i tried nancy silvertons la brea bakery sesame semolina reicpe yesterday is there i big typo in the book because it has a total of 36oz of flour and 5.5 oz of water and 6oz of sd starter i adjusted the water but its still not right a litle too late by the time i got the extra 10 oz into but it was still a little too dry any one else try this recipe?
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I have baked a number of recipes from Nancy Silverton's Breads From The La Brea Bakery but not the recipe you're referring to; Sesame - Semolina Sandwich Rolls. I made her starter and it was quite a production but produced a good starter.
That being said, I'm looking at the ratios of flour to liquid for this recipe and it just doesn't look right. If I add the water (5.5 oz.) and the starter (6.0 oz.) I'm only coming up with 11.5 oz. of liquid, including the starter. When I add the 3 flours (12.5 oz white flour, 14.0 oz. semolina and 10.0 oz. of durham) that comes to 36.5 oz. of flour. Unless I'm missing something that's something like less than a third hydration. No way that's going to work. I checked the Internet to see if there's a website for corrections to the book but couldn't find anything. I have had success with her Country White, Normandy Rye and Whole Wheat Bread but that's about it.
Do you have Hamelman's book Bread or Rienhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice? My overall favorite is Hamelman. Try some of their recipes. Sorry about that.
Howard
rxscyrus
i have tried several recipes from the la brea recipe im still adjustin the water to flour ratio havent quite got it yet i am goin to get the bba book soon but i tried the semolina recipe from amy's the bread bible it uses only durum flour and no semolina same thing just slightly different grain and it made a excellent semolina loaf she also has an amazing baguette recipe in the bible but a few too many steps thanks for the reply when i get the semolina recipe down fron la brea i will post it up for anyone to try thank you so much
Hello, I too noticed the water ratio seemed quite low for this recipe. Peter Reinhart's Pane Siciliano uses the same kinds of flour, so I used the same ratio of water in Peter's recipe for this La Brea recipe.
In Peter's recipe, it's 10 ounces of water by weight to 16 ounces of flour by weight.
In this La Brea recipe, for the 36.5 ounces by weight of flour, I used 23 ounces of water by weight and got a nice, soft, not too sticky dough.
rxscyrus
i also forgot to mention i did get the whole grains book by peter reinhart and have made a few of the recipes from there and im not really sure how i feel about his delayed fermenttion method (biga/soaker)day 1 and then final dough the next and some of the recipes are fully hydrated on the first day so on day 2 you just mix your biga/soake together with some flour,salt,yeast to make the final dough i think whole wheat has enough flavor without enhancing the sweetness of the wheat but then again whole grains is not my bag of chips maybe just maybe i can get into it more thanks
Nancy Silverton's La Brea book is what got me really interested in sourdough some ten years ago. Her book has been sort of eclipsed by some of the other methods for producing starter and bread; Reinhart, Hamelman, Glezer, etc.
I too have the Peter Reinhart Whole Grain book. I have read most of the book but haven't had time to bake anything from it yet. FWIW, I have been doing some experimenting, so to speak, with various starter/levain methods and have found the results interesting. What I've been doing with whole grain breads, of late, is to make my levain the night before, around 9 p.m. and at the same time mix the water with the final dough mixture, without the salt of yeast and refrigerate the final dough mix overnight. It seems to soften the bran in the whole wheat and rye, which if mixed straight in at the same time as the levain tends, I believe, to act like sharp shards and tear the gluten, somewhat, thus inhibiting the rising at both bulk and final fermentation. I've also made an extra effort not to overhandle and deflate the dough any more that necessary during final shaping. Anyway, that's my theory and I seems to be getting better results re: rise and I believe it enhances the flavor somewhat.
Please keep us posted on your baking endeavors and best of luck with "fixing" the Silverton recipe.
Howard
Hi Howard,
Good to talk to you again!
I was interested to see your post about pre-mixing the water and whole grain flour. It reminds me somewhat of the Pain a l'Ancienne of Reinhart/Gosselin, though of course yours is whole grain, and so it reminds me too of a high-percentage soaker.
Does it sweeten the flavor of the resulting bread?
When you mix in the levain and the salt, do you first cut up or tear up the pre-mixed dough, or does it easily accept and distribute the salt and levain?
David
My copy of Ms Silverton's book calls for 22 ounces of water for the Sesame-Semolina Sandwich rolls and 36.5 ounces flour. Hope this helps.
I must have the same printing as the poster does (1st Ed. 1996), as mine calls for 5.5 oz water / 6 oz white starter / 36.5 oz flour. I doubt it would work at such low hydration. And durum flour absorbs a lot of water, so I'm inclined to think it is a typo.
What edition do you have?
in a way.
It's obvious that the flour is for TWO loaves instead of ONE. Someone obviously got an order to 'double' everything or 'halve' everything in the recipe and missed one line of the calculations.
Lousy editing seems to be the "norm" for books published in English these days...but they're (comparatively) cheaper than they were 50 years ago. A hard-cover book for kids was about three times the price of a childrens' cinema ticket and exactly the price of the adult fare...and you ALWAYS got two movies and some cartoons...nowadays, you can sometimes get more laughs from Science books than you ever did from the cartoons! :-)
O tempora o mores...
copyu
I am sorry, but I can't tell. On the copyright page is:
The ISBN number is 679-40907-6.
Then there is the line 'Manufactured in the United States....'
On the next line is a single #9.
At the bottom of the barcode on the back paper cover is 9780679 40906, I think the 978 means I have a second edition?
Hope this helps.