Living in southern Japan, where even the most basic of ovens, beloved from childhood , are rare and extraordinarily expensive makes a baker's life challenging, and a home baker's more than just a bit frustrating. In need of crusty, heavy, unsweet breads, my sweetheart of a husband purchased  an 'oven' for me quite a few years ago. At least he thought it was an oven. Really its internal measurements are about double of an oven toaster, and it can- microwave, top and bottom electrically heat, convection heat but only if the round microwave ceramic plate is used, top toast, grill, heat sake to the exact temperature required, proof bread, and yes, talk to you. I never would have believed then how comfortable and devoted to this bizarre machine I have become. Together, we have baked as many as 20 loaves in a day, a therapeutic response to having left my work in Europe and wanting to keep my skills on par, I sent my spouse to work with paperbags full of breads almost every week for months .

And then I found them, after weeks and months and constant vigilence lest they close suddenly; bakeries making quite good baguettes, whole grain malt breads, rye breads. The sad part was they closed often, unable to find a wide enough market willing to part from supersoft, superwhite supersquare 'bread'. Those that did not close modified their recipes to meet the taste and texture that would sell better and in some cases, simply stopped making the breads I craved. I special ordered one bread in particular- Pan d'Fruilli was their name, pronounced as padufrui.And I experimented at home, until I got it almost exactly as remembered,but not perfect. And then, one day, I went to order and they had closed. In its place was a German bakery, which often made one or two very nice creations but! not my rye bread that barely rises and is filled with chopped nuts, cherries, peel and spices.

Unable to give up my morning ritual of thinly sliced and toasted bread with butter and a cup of tea, I set out to recreate it once again, only half the standard size so it might fit inside my oven. I searched recipes high and low, Laurel's Kitchen, Rustic European Breads to name a few of many,  and hours on the internet. I even wrote my fellow bakers overseas,and finally I sat down with my very first bread book I ever used, Tassajara's Bread Book and significantly modified their recipe . I cut the measurements in half so it would fit in my little oven and waiting for the results. After much tampering with the recipe, and allowing for vast variations in the supplies of flour and ingredients  that were available, I am happy to say, I now have my bread and tea again.

•  3c.warm water            
• 1tsp yeast
• 1/4c.corn syrup/honey mixture
• 1/4c. dry milk powder
• 2-5 cups unbleached white flour
• 2-4 cups rye flour
• 1/4 cup melted butter or oil

• extra white and rye flour for kneading
• 1 cup dried marinated mixed fruits(cherries, raisins, orange and lemon peel)
• 1/2 cup chopped nuts-walnuts
• orange liquer/rum as soaking agent for fruit
• cinnamon
• 1tsp salt

Dissolve the yeast in water. Stir in sweetener and dry milk. Stir in enough white flour  mixed with salt until a thick batter is formed. Beat well (I use the kitchenaid mixer).Let rise 60 minutes until frothy and spongey.

Fold in salt and oil and additional flour-rye, until it comes away from the bowl. Knead in machine or on a board until smooth. Alternatively, the throwing method works well. Let rise until double,about 50 minutes. Punch down.

take 3/4 of the bread and flatten, mix fruits and nuts with cinnamon, spread on dough and roll up. Make a round shape and wrap remaining dough around it.

Let rise about  until 2/3rds about 25 minutes.

Bake at 175 c.350f. Bake until hollow sound and hard tapping, nicely browned, about one hour.

rest and cool.

I'm interested in adding onions to my sourdough bread and/or noknead bread recipes. I live in the Boston area, and a number of high end restaurants serve delicious, big hole artisan breads with onions. It's clear the onions are cooked with fairly large pieces. When do you think these are added, and how are they cooked? Any ideas out there?

In response to a prior post where I mentioned my recent experience at King Arthur Flour, David (dmsynder) kindly suggested a fuller account of the class, and was even kind enough (at my urging) to provide a list of topics I should include. I've attempted in what follows to touch on all of them, if in revised (and perhaps stream-of-consciousness) order.

From July 9th through July 11th I experienced a second childhood of sorts: I spent three days at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont working to master classic french breads with twelve other bread aficionados (about an even split between professional bakers and amateurs of varying skill levels) under the tutelage of the center's director and master baker, Jeffrey Hamelman, and James MacGuire, author and master baker.

The course was entitled "From Miche to Levain to Baguette: A Survey of Classic French Breads." The title succinctly captures the course content in terms of the breads we worked with.

For the miche, we did two separate bakes - both miche pointe-a-calliere recipes of James. Both utilized 20% pre-ferments and were built in three stages: refresher, levain and final dough. The one used high extraction flour, while the other was built from 67% whole wheat and 33% sir galahad flour from KAF.

(Below: miche pointe-a-calliere.  All photos courtesy of Chris Henke)

We also did two bakes of batard-shaped pain au levain - one using 100% sir galahad flour, and the second with 15% whole wheat along with a pre-ferment of 12.2%.

(Hamelman removing pain au levain from KAF's production oven)

For the baguettes we did three bakes - a baguette de tradition with a hydration of 76%, one built from a poolish with 67% hydration, and the third an "intensive" french bread recipe. "Intensive" in this case refers to an intentional over mixing of ingredients to demonstrate how the resultant oxidation destroys the carotenoids which contribute so much to the flavor, color and nutritional value of bread. (It was, in short, an exercise in how not to bake bread.)

(Below, from l-r: intensive mix, poolish, de tradition, no-knead.  Note the utter whiteness of the intensive mix.  Its flavor was mainly from the salt (at 2.5%!)

Finally, James demonstrated an un-knead six-fold baguette with a hydration of 73%, that involved a bulk fermentation of three hours, with folding accomplished by 20 to 25 quick strokes of a scraper at 30 minute intervals.

(Both Hamelman and MacGuire are of the school of ‘less is more' with respect to mixing. Since all mixing causes oxidation, and oxidation degrades the flour, the ideal circumstance would involve combining all the ingredients without any mixing - something that very hydrated doughs utilizing autolyse come about as close to as humanly possible).

Ok, so that covers what we baked. But there was so much more to the course than simply these three classic french breads!

It seemed to me that inherent in everything Hamelman and MacGuire demonstrated, two themes were present: First, bread baking is about learning how to control various factors and processes that occur within certain timeframes, so that you, the baker, determine the schedule, rather than having it dictated by the bread.

For example, Jeffrey pointed out that in production baking of baguettes, those baguettes which are initially shaped are done loosely, because they will be going into the oven in the first bake(s). Ones which will be baked later in the day are pre-shaped more tightly, allowing for more expansion over time since they have a more lengthy rest period.

The second, and to my mind, overarching theme, however, was that in every aspect of the baking process - from initial mixing to proofing to determining whether a loaf is fully baked - the baker must learn to rely on his/her senses, all of them, to determine if the processes and end results are as they should be.

I discovered this unwritten theme the second day when we were getting ready to put our first loaves of pain au levain into KAF's production oven. I asked, innocently enough, "So, how long do they bake." Jeffrey stared at me, and with straight-face replied: "Until they are done." (I had provided him unwittingly with the proverbial slow pitch over the middle of the plate. He went on to explain how we learn when "done" is done).

Done, as it turns out, is only approximately determined by bake times. The real test involves handling the loaf - and with the batard-shaped levains and the baguettes - squeezing them to see if the crust gives way with a distinct snap, while looking at the ears to see if they were turned a golden-brown (fully baked) or were still whitish (under baked).

(Hamelman's one injunction when it came to determining doneness was that you never, ever stick a thermometer into a loaf!)

Jeffrey would constantly ask of us after a mix, "So, has the gluten developed sufficiently?" The answer, we learned, involves thrusting your hand down into the dough and giving it a good tug. If the gluten is insufficiently developed, it will be shaggy and tear. But if it is well developed it will be elastic and extensible with good strength. (We would do this after an autolyse, for example, as a way to determine whether the final mixing needed to go a full two minutes, or perhaps only a minute and a half.)

"Have the loaves proofed sufficiently, or are they under- or over-proofed?" he would ask. And again, the answer did not involve looking at the recommended proofing time, but actually pressing down on the dough.

His point is that ultimately the baker should be able to tell by touch and feel, taste, smell and sound, whether a loaf or a stage in baking is complete. (In one of our mixings, we accidentally over-hydrated the dough. The cure was the addition of more flour. But this then led to a question with respect to salt - more? How much more? Jeffrey's approach was direct: pinch off a bit of the dough and taste it. Salty enough? Not salty enough?

So the lesson I took away is this: good bakers are empiricists par excellence!

From James we learned much about the history of bread in France, especially during the twentieth-century. Those who haven't read his excellent essay, "The Baguette," written in 2006 for The Art of Eating can order it here. There was much discussion of how the culture of bread baking in France altered radically during the 1950s, leading to almost complete automation and inferior breads (this occurred while we were in the process of making the awful intensive mix pain). This in turn led to a discussion of how the art of bread-baking migrated to Japan, where many of the finest bakers in the world may now be found.

And he talked at some length about Raymond Calvel (who trained many of the Japanese bakers) and how he ‘rediscovered' autolyse in the 1970s. (The French had developed the technique just after WWII, when they had to rely on flour from the United States that had a higher protein content than their native flour, but then seemed to have forgotten about it).

The one very specific learning regarding autolyse we took away is that with rare exception, neither salt nor yeast should be added during the autolyse repos, since both will cause the dough to contract, whereas the goal of autolyse is to allow the dough to relax (hence repos).

As far as techniques we learned and practiced, in addition to the constant requirement to consult our senses, we focused on folding (both by emptying the dough onto a floured table, and, as James demonstrated, by leaving the dough in its container and reaching down to make the folds - a technique that works well with very hydrated doughs. We also practiced mixing, pre-shaping and final shaping involving boules, batards and baguettes, and scoring using lames.

(Below: James MacGuire demonstrates a fold within a container)

(Jeffrey Hamelman demonstrating a fold on table)

Finally, there were the two instructors: world class bakers who have been friends for many years and whose routines at times called to mind Penn and Teller (in equal parts humorous and magical in the effortless way they worked with dough). The class was fascinating not only for what we learned and practiced, but because the two were constantly entertaining, even when the instruction was serious. Each morning we would gather at 8:30, before class began, to eat freshly baked pastries from their production bakery, and each day around noon we would pause to have a communal lunch that involved wonderful local cheeses, the breads we baked, and at one lunch, magnificent pizzas created using baguette dough.

KAF offers a variety of classes on a regular basis. A link to their education center is located here.

I would do this again in a heartbeat! As I emailed Jeffrey and James afterwards, this was like summer camp for adults who love to play with dough.

Hi all:  I've been out of internet contact for a while, and it's nice to be back.

Two quick things:  First, I made the Panettone from BBA, and YUM!  I made 4 of them, gave 2 away, and sliced one up to put in the freezer which gave me weeks of heavenly toast for breakfast!

But here is the second thing.  I haven't baked a loaf in a week or so, so my husband decided to pick up a "Sourdough Boule" (which was labeled an "Artisan Bread") at Trader Joe's.  I expected a mediocre loaf, but it was downright abominable.  Has anyone else been entirely ruined by baking at home, and then not being able to handle a commercial loaf?

Happy New Year all!

KP

I've been doing quite a bit of baking this weekend. In addition to the Grape Harvest Focaccia I've blogged about yesterday, today I made the potato pizza from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking". The recipe calls for a very wet dough -- more water than flour, actually. You knead the dough using the paddle on your stand mixer for 20 whole minutes. In the process it miraculously transforms from this:

Still working on the nuances of oven temperature. It’s really a comedy of timing between two ancient processes—bread making and fire building. It seem like if I get it over 600 degrees at the start, it takes a good 45 minutes to reach a more comfortable 550 for bread baking, but then it holds the temps nicely for hours. Handy if you have multiple batches, less handy if you were hoping to cook your dinner at 350 degrees anytime soon. I do crack the door to bring the temp down a bit quicker.

I'm posting this recipe for discussion as we have been talking about it on the Glezer firm starter thread.  I have made this bread often with variations because I did not have the high-extraction flour yet.  I recently purchased the Golden Buffalo flour from Heartland Mill in Kansas and it was superb.  I didn’t take photos of those so will next time I make it.

 Hi Y'all:

I love to Artisan bake.  Hence, I signed up and am sharing my direct method Biove receipe with you all. 

After many starts and stops in bread making, I have found a passle of information in the community of The Fresh Loaf.  In less than a week of perusing bakers postings, I have confirmed that my softer doughs do indeed perform better and for good reason.  I have figured out how to keep my sourdough alive and kicking and am inspired to grow another using rye flour and fresh grapefruit juice.  I've read through all of the baking lessons and chosen to start with the last lesson and see where that goes!

I’m finally getting around to posting Maggie Glezer’s firm sourdough starter recipe.  For those of you having problems with your starters you might wish to give this a try.  Most people here are using batter-style starters so it might be interesting to see if there is any discussion on firm starters.  Plus I need help in learning to convert properly for use in recipes which don’t use a firm starter and there are always questions that come up.