levain

To be honest, I hadn’t a clue what I felt like baking this weekend. My mind wandered over many possibilities. In the end my inspiration for this bake came from Nat. Though she is an avid admirer of all things bread, when I put the question to her about this weekend's bake, the answer came swiftly …

Olive bread!

Of course…

…  how could I have forgotten Nat the Rat’s most favoured of all loaves.

The strange thing is, I can’t remember the last time I made an olive bread …

I do however, remember the last time I ate olive bread. While we were on holidays in New South Wales, we took a day trip to a small town called Bellingen. In this beautiful little hideaway I tasted my first EVER woodfired sourdough. It was an olive bread, baked by a small organic bakery called Hearthfire …. It was the  most amazing olive bread I have ever tasted. A crumb that melted in your mouth, flecks of herbs throughout and large chunks of olives. We almost finished half of it with a spicy pumpkin hummos whilst picnicking by a small creek. On my return to Brisbane I even called the owner of the bakery to thank them for the amazing bread …

I think that delicious experience has scared me off making my own olive bread … until now.

When it came time to start prepping and sourcing ingredients to compliment the kalamata olives in my own bread, I needed to look no further than our front porch to find inspiration. Growing in small pots we have sage, rosemary, basil and thyme. Only a few hours later the dehydrator filled the kitchen with the aromas of drying herbs. Some lemon zest, (courtesy of the Tartine olive bread formula) and I had everything I needed.

Olive and Herb Levain

Formula

Method

   1. Autolyse flour and water 45 mins

   2. Add levain and knead 5-10 mins. Add salt and knead a further 5-10 mins. Gently mix in olives, herbs and lemon zest.

   3. Bulk ferment 2.5 hours with two stretch and folds at 30 mins in the first hour.

   4. Preshape and bench rest for 20 mins

   5. Shape and proof for 2.5 hours

   6. Bake in steamed oven for 10 mins at 250°C then 30 mins at 200°C

As you can imagine our kitchen smells heavenly this afternoon.

The crusts chorused loudly when they were removed from the oven while I fought the growing temptation to pick at protruding olives.

The crumb is soft and anything but chewy with olives nestled and peering out of every slice.

For me it won’t surpass the olive bread from our holidays but I am pretty sure I have made Nat’s weekend.

All the best,

Phil

I had some extra sourdough starter that I needed to use, and have been craving pizza for breakfast.  This recipe is extremely easy and the dough is very flavorful and has a light sour tang.  Enjoy!

Tim

Recipe
266g AP (+ 1 tbsp of whole wheat flour)
176g water
54g stiff SD starter at 50% hydration straight from fridge
6g Kosher salt
502g approx dough yield

Canned crushed tomatoes
Fresh mozzarella (sliced and or diced)
Whole milk ricotta cheese (strained)
Fontina (sliced)
Radicchio - washed and shredded
2 eggs

Method:
12:15am - Mix all ingredients by hand in a mixing bowl until you get a shaggy dough.  Cover and let rest.
12:35am - Knead dough for a few seconds until it is smooth.  cover and let rest.
1:05am - Turn dough (stretch and fold) in bowl, lightly coat dough with olive oil, cover and let rise on counter overnight.
8:30am - Place baking stone with longest side parallel to the oven in the center of the bottom rack, preheat oven to 650F (turn oven on convection to 550F and preheat for one hour).  Place oven thermometer on stone to you can see the actual temp of the stone.
9:30am - Take thermometer out of oven.  Turn oven off convection.  On a floured work surface, stretch dough out to the size of the pizza peel, lightly flour peel.  Place pizza dough directly on baking stone and bake for 2 minutes.  Then, take pizza  crust out of oven, spread crushed tomatoes to the farthest edges.  Then on 1/3rd of the pizza, arrange the radicchio and fontina, on another 3rd, place the mozzarella, the final 1/3rd, place the ricotta.  In the center break 2 eggs.  Place pizza back into oven close to the left side of the stone for 3 1/2 minutes.  Scoot pizza over to right side of stone, bake for another 3 to 3 1/2 minutes or until the egg is cooked to your liking (slightly runny yolks).  Take pizza out, let cool for a minute or so, cut and eat.

Notes: Placing the pizza close to the edges of the stone allow the crust to receive the maximum amount of heat radiating from the bottom of the oven, so it chars like a wood or coal fired oven.  Moving the pizza from each side allows both sides of the crust to char.

Prebaking the crust avoids the wet soggy crust under the toppings, and also makes the pizza easier to place into the oven without risking the dough sticking to the peel, or the sauce and toppings weighing down the crust.

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you probably my most successful attempt at baking a pandoro like bread to date.  I have tried baking this type of bread along with panettone with little success since college (15 years or so).  I sort of improvised this recipe so I can't vouch for the "authenticity" of it but I can assure you that this is the best tasting, best textured bread using lots of eggs, milk, butter and sugar that I have ever baked.  I have also opted to use only my stiff sourdough starter to leaven this thing, and have mixed everything by hand.  I probably should have done a better job documenting, but it's too late now.  I also used the paper panettone molds as I don't have the traditional star pandoro molds.  As a final note, this bread takes forever to make, and forever to rise.  Don't rush it.  It is ready when it's ready...

Enjoy!

Tim

Recipe
Sweet Starter
110g AP
46g egg (1 extra large egg)
16g sugar
50g stiff SD starter @ 50% hydration
222g approx starter yield

6/29/11
**Stiff SD starter should be fed 1 to 2 days before and kept in refrigerator.
10:45pm - In a bowl, mix all sweet starter ingredients, knead until well combined, cover and let rest 15 minutes.
11:00pm - Knead sweet starter for a minute or so until the dough is smooth, wrap in plastic wrap tightly and tie with a twist tie.  Please in a covered plastic container and place in refrigerator on top shelf (not in coldest part).  Go to bed.

Final Dough
500g AP
164g eggs (3 extra large eggs)
136g whole milk (scalded and cooled)
100g sugar
225g unsalted sweet cream butter (2 sticks) at room temp.
12g Kosher salt
12g honey
2 tsp vanilla extract
222g sweet starter
1372g approx dough yield

2 paper panettone molds 5" diameter, 3 3/4" tall

6/30/11
10:00pm - Weigh out all ingredients using a digital scale.  Scald milk and let cool.  Take out sweet starter out of fridge.  The starter should be well expanded, like a balloon.
11:00pm - Place all the flour into a large mixing bowl along with the salt, create a well in the center, add the eggs, milk, vanilla extract, honey, mix with a rubber spatula into a shaggy dough, then knead by hand in bowl for a few minutes until a relatively smooth dough has formed.  Cut sweet starter into a few pieces and knead into dough. This operation should take about 15 minutes.
11:15pm - 11:30pm - Cover and let rest.  Place entire bowl into a large plastic bag.
11:30pm - Knead in sugar by hand.  About 1/3rd of total amount at a time until all this sugar is added.  This should take about 10 minutes to do.  
11:40pm - 12:00am  - Cover and let rest.  Whip the butter with a wire whisk until fluffy.  Butter panettone molds and refrigerate.
7/1/11
12:00am - Knead in butter by hand.  About 1/3 of total amount at a time until all the butter is incorporated.  This part is particularly gross.  Add the butter, and squeeze the butter into the dough with your hands.  The dough will look like it's falling apart, but it will eventually come back together.  Do not worry about kneading the dough until it passes the windowpane test.  It just won't happen by hand, or with AP flour.  This should take about 15 to 20 minutes.
12:20am - Divide dough into 2 equal portions, shape into a boule, place in separate bowls, cover and let rest.
12:45am - Final shape, and place into butter molds, cover with plastic wrap, place on sheet pan and into large plastic bag and refrigerate overnight.  Dough should fill the mold about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way.  Go to bed.
7:30am - Take out of refrigerator and place on kitchen counter.  Let rise.  Go back to bed, or make some coffee...
9:30am - Have breakfast.
12:30pm - Go out and take a walk, do some shopping.
3:00pm - Come home to check on the pandoro.
4:00pm - Place oven rack on 2nd from the bottom.  Preheat to 400F.
5:00pm - When the pandoro domes slightly above the top of the mold, egg wash if you like, place them into the oven on a sheet pan, turn down oven to 350F and bake for 40-45 minutes or until the internal temp reaches 190F.  

5:45pm - take out of oven, check internal temp.  Cool on wire rack and let rest for at least 12 hours.  Try not to cut into them before they have cooled completely...

Here's the crumbshot:

The question I had is what would happen if you fed a Blueberry Yeast Water/Bread Flour levain additional Blueberry Yeast water, using seeds from previous levain builds.  Namely, what is the effect of increasing population of blueberry yeast over a series of builds while holding the overall volume constant.  Would there be an improvement or degradation in rise times or volumes?  Would there emerge a limit as to how quickly a doubling or peaking would occur?  Would it explode into a new black hole? These were the questions that I just had to answer for myself.

Methodology

I started with 10g blueberry yeast water (BYW) and 10g Bread Flour (BF). This was left to rise to its maximum height and plateau, whereupon it was chilled for the night.  The next morning 7 grams of this levain was fed 7g BYW and BF, and again left to rise to it’s maximum height and plateau, then chilled or refreshed.  Using time-lapse photography (thank you RonRay), I was able to track the level of growth for each build on 15- minute intervals. I intended to continue this refreshment pattern and observe the action until the growth/plateau cycle was found to closely resemble the previous builds or something else happened to draw my attention away. 

 Findings

 The following graph shows the results. 

Just looking at the doubling times, clearly the more iterations of builds shortens the time required for the levain to double.  R1 took almost 7 hours to double, whereas R2 took 5 hours, and R3 took 2.5.  Most of the trials R3-R7 in this 2-2.5 hour range to double. By far the fastest doubler was R8, at just 1.5 hours.

There is also interesting phenomena with respect to the period of growth before plateauing.  R1 took about three hours take off, presumably adjusting to the new food/environment, and didn't fall off until almost 8 hours after the first feed (5 hours of active growth).  R2 took an hour get going, but fell off an hour quicker than R1, (six hours of active growth.  R3 didn't lag at all. It grew from the time that it was fed and continued steadily for almost 6 hours.  R4-R6 all took off from the get-go, and enjoyed a solid 4-4.5 hour growth stage before plateauing.  The standouts were R7 and R8, which both not only took off from the start, but also, grew for an astonishing 6 hours before exhaustion.  So something about more yeast in the culture allowed for a longer growth stage, despite a finite and constant supply of food.

The peak volumes also varied with the yeast concentrations.  The lowest amount of yeast, R1 was barely able to double (2.3X) before giving up.  R2 was slightly better at 2.5X. R3 and R4 made it just to 3X. R5 and R6 got to 3.5X, but again, look at R7 and R8. They got to an impressive 4X! It took them a long time, but they never lagged, they just kept going, and going and going.

From a temperature perspective, there is apparently an outside, uncontrolled effect.  As we can see, the cycles R3-R8 closely track each other.  The cycles of R7 is very similar to R5, both of which were started first in the day, from seed chilled overnight in the refrigerator.  R8 proves to track closely with R6, indicating a typical afternoon pattern. So there may be a distinct positive effect from room temperature (it gets hot in the afternoon here now (86*F+).

In conclusion, I believe a YW builds should be fed subsequent builds with more active YW until a doubling can be achieved within about 2 hours and the capacity of growth is around 3x or more, usually by the third build.  Given the time and desire for even stronger levains, subsequent builds using active yeast waters will not have a detrimental effect on your doughs, although some care should be taken to avoid overproofing.

An aside... In a separate experiment, I discovered that this Blueberry Yeast Water is the least effective of my collection, bested by far by the Cherry Yeast Water.  I intend to repeat this analysis using the Cherry Yeast Water instead.

Again Stay Tuned...

-Pamela

Apricot Yeast Water Test Loaf  [Update:110530-1000] 

   If you are unfamilar with Yeast Waters, and wild yeast, you may wish to view

Yeast Water & Other Wee Beastie Bubbles (No Math)

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23441/yeast-water-amp-other-wee-beastie-bubbles-no-math

This was my first chance to test Apricot Yeast Water. I have intend to for a while, but wanted to wait for fresh fruit to be available. I did find some this week and started a culture with 3 of the small fresh apricots, jump-started the culture with a bit of my Apple YW.

I have heard that the dark dried apricots make a very strong levain – the more common dried fruit that are a yellowish orange have been treated with sulfur-containing compounds to keep their color (and kill the WBBs). So, the only dried apricots to use are the dark brown unsulfured fruit. Not wishing to waste time and effort, I wanted fresh, organic apricots, which start being available May through August in the northern hemisphere.

I was impressed with how fast the culture became active, and equally surprised how fast the activity ended. I tasted the YW to see if, somehow , it had gotten too alcoholic so fast. All I detected was no noticeable sweetness, and decided it must be a lack of sugar. I dropped in a sugar cube and within a very short time it became very active – so much so, that I feared the foamy head might fill the remaining air space in the glass container. It did not take long before the activity decreased nearly as fast as it had restarted.

It only took a few trials to conclude the apricot WBBs have a real thing about sugars. So, I decided to do a test of the leavening strength of the new culture. I took a small quantity of just the water, about 20g and mixed it with an equal amount of AP flour. I set this up with a clock beside it, and in front of a time lapse digital video recorded. You can see the results on YouTube, Link:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23719/time-lapse-video-apricot-yw-levain

The result was a doubling in about 2 hours. Certainly a good showing for a brand new YW culture. So, a test loaf seemed quite justified.

I started the Apricot Yeast Water Levain (AYWL) builds. Details of my standard test loaf can be found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23694/standard-kiss-loaf-or-keep-it-simple-smiley

Details of this loaf are in the table below:

A copy of my personal test log can be found at Google Doc Link:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B_MScoZfDZkwMTIyM2E1ZjQtYWFlMi00Y2I5LWFiYTktMWI5ZGMzYTgzMzgw&hl=en_US

I had some surprises in store, however. I generally, hold each of my chosen 3-build levain developments to a 24 hour period. Instead, a late afternoon to early evening completed Builds-#1, and #2 with #3 started and placed in retard at 40ºF/4.4ºC for an overnight. Details can be found in the log.

The next morning, I did the shaping that basically matches the pan bread version detailed by txframer here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20669/sourdough-pan-de-mie-how-make-quotshreddablyquot-soft-bread

The dough pan was covered with food cap and place in the proof box at 82ºF/27.8ºC. Most loaves that I do, which are similar to these conditions, will need a 6 hour final proof. I was rather shocked when at 4½ hours I found it was as high as any “normal” fully proofed dough. I did a rapid catch-up and dough was in the DO, with the cup of boiling water, and into the oven, within a 5 minute period. Again, details can be found in the PDF log.

From a cold oven start and oven set to max (450ºF/232ºC) in the DO it was steamed for 20 minutes. Lid removed at 20 minutes and the temperature dropped to 400ºF/204ºC with a total of 45 minutes for the baking.

The finished loaf had an internal 207.7ºF/97.6ºC and a hot weight of 437g – down 8% during the baking. The loaf was cooled on wire for over an hour, before cutting.

The loaf had a very nice aroma, but neither taste, nor smell indicated the apricot components in the loaf. The crumb color was softly off-white in the orange-brown range, but only in a small degree. Texture was moist and softer than my general SD loaves. A pleasantly fruity, slightly sweetish flavor. The top crust portion was chewier than I would have expected, but quite acceptable.

   I should, also mention, I could detect no tang at all. I had expected a bit from the apricot flavor itself. But, any tang vanished along with any apricot specific flavor.

The crumb was exactly as expected, given the 60% HL (hydration level) and the highly developed windowpane test it was kneaded to.

Based upon this single test loaf, apricot WBBs develop much stronger levain than any I have seen before. The Apricot YW rise times are somewhere between 25% faster, or if you are one of  the half empty glass types, the other Yeast Waters are 33% slower ;-)

Ron

Simple Multi Levain Builds for SD &or YW

 [Updated: 110519-0940]

A great deal has been written about methods to build, or refresh, leavains. It is not the purpose of this posting to say here is a “better way”. The sole purpose here is to say here is a very simple way, if you want to build any desired amount of levain for a loaf you wish to try.

I have given out free calculators to work out any mix combinations I can think anyone would ever really want. I still give such things out, however, many people seem to panic if faced with a spreadsheet, still they do use a computer, which is far more complicated. The world is filled with many mysteries that I have given up hopes of ever understanding. So, here are a few basic steps to figure out your builds.

Limits:

1/ Only 100%HL (hydration levels) are considered.

2/ Only White Sourdough ( WSD ) or Yeast Water ( YW ) are considered.

3/ Only 1, 2, or 3 Builds are considered.

4/ Only Ratios of 1:1:1 ( Seed:Flour:Liquid ) are considered.

5/ You must know how much Levain you want to end with.

6/ You must already have a SD Seed amount, or a YW Seed amount to start with.

Start by writing down the Amount Desired.

Example: AD = 200g

Decide how many Builds you want – limit is 1, 2, or 3.

Sourdough Only:

Rule: Divide the AD to find initial Seed required:

1-Build, Divide the AD by 3

2-Build, Divide the AD by 9

3-Build, Divide the AD by 27

Example: AD = 200g

1-Build, 200 / 3 = 66.666 round the up to 67g.

You will need 67g of Seed to mix with 67g of flour and 67g of water for a total of 201g of levain.

Example: AD = 200g

2-Build, 200 / 9 = 22.222 round the up to 23g.

Build-#1 = 23g of Seed to mix with 23g of flour and 23g of water for a total of 69g of levain.

Build-#2 = 69g from B-#1 to mix with 69g of flour and 69g of water for a total of 207g of levain.

Example: AD = 200g

3-Build, 200 / 27 = 7.401 round the up to 8g.

Build-#1 = 8g of Seed to mix with 8g of flour and 8g of water for a total of 24g of levain.

Build-#2 = 23g from B-#1 to mix with 23g of flour and 23g of water for a total of 69g of levain.

Build-#3 = 69g from B-#2 to mix with 69g of flour and 69g of water for a total of 207g of levain.

Yeast Water Only – Note Well: Everywhere you find “Liquid*” below, you can use YW, or H2O, or a mix.

Rule: Divide the AD to find initial Seed required:

1-Build, Divide the AD by 2

2-Build, Divide the AD by 6

3-Build, Divide the AD by 18

Example: AD = 200g

1-Build, 200 / 2 = 100g

You will need 100g of YW as Seed to mix with 100g of flour for a total of 200g of levain.

Example: AD = 200g

2-Build, 200 / 6 = 33.333 round the up to 34g.

Build-#1 = 34g of YW as Seed to mix with 34g of flour for a total of 68g of levain.

Build-#2 = 68g from B-#1 to mix with 68g of flour and 68g of Liquid* for a total of 204g of levain.

Example: AD = 200g

3-Build, 200 / 18 =11.111 round the up to 12g.

Build-#1 = 12g of YW as Seed to mix with 12g of flour for a total of 24g of levain.

Build-#2 = 23g from B-#1 to mix with 23g of flour and 23g of Liquid* for a total of 69g of levain.

Build-#3 = 69g from B-#2 to mix with 69g of flour and 69g of Liquid* for a total of 207g of levain.

I hope that is of some help...

Ron