There are two videos of Peter on Amazon in conjunction with his new book. One shows how to load loaves in the oven and steam them; the other, how to do stretch and fold with an 80% hydration dough.

http://www.amazon.com/Peter-Reinharts-Artisan-Breads-Every/dp/1580089984/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257007108&sr=8-1

--Pamela

Here is a link to PR's Thanksgiving Day recipes published in this month's Bon Appetite magazine.

http://www.bonappetit.com/search/query?contributorName=Peter%20Reinhart

I tested all of them and they're all winners.

--Pamela

I've been baking a lot of stuff out of PR's _Whole Grain Breads_. His 100% whole wheat sandwich bread is awesome. It calls for a soaker (made with ww and buttermilk and salt) and a biga (ww and water and yeast).

Through inattention (I blame Sportscenter), I tried a variant yesterday -- the soaker used water and the biga used buttermilk. I'm happy to report it came out just as good. :)

I would say it came out better -- I liked it better -- than the correct method, but I think that the fact that it used Agave nectar instead of honey had more to do with it. I may do some side-by-side tests.

Almost all the breads I bake are sourdoughs, but there are two non-sourdough breads I really like – Cinnamon-Raisin-Walnut bread and a hearty 100% Whole Wheat sandwich bread. Whole wheat bread is my bread of choice for tuna salad or egg salad sandwiches and for nut butter and jam sandwiches. It's one of my favorites, toasted, to accompany eggs, although it has stiff competition from San Francisco-style Sourdough bread and un-toasted Jewish Sourdough Pumpernickel (with cream cheese).

My favorite whole wheat bread has been the “100% Whole Wheat Bread” from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice.” It uses both a poolish and a soaker and is essentially identical to what Reinhart calls the “foundational bread” in his later-published “Whole Grain Baking” book. It incorporates what Reinhart calls “the epoxy method” in the later book.

These books are widely available, so I will not duplicate the formulas here. However, Reinhart offers a number of options, and I will tell you which I used for this bake.

The Poolish in Reinhart's BBA formula isn't really a poolish in the classic sense of a 100% hydration mix of flour and water with a little yeast. In the WGB book, he calls it a “barm,” and it's not really a barm either, as I understand the strict definition. I suppose you could call it a “sponge.”

The Soaker calls for “coarse whole wheat flour or other coarsely ground whole grains.” In the past, I've used bulghur (medium size). This time, I did have some coarse ground whole wheat flour on hand. I used 2 oz of the coarse whole wheat and 2.25 oz of bulghur, soaked overnight in 6 oz of buttermilk (One of Reinhart's options), rather than the water I had used before.

The final dough uses fine ground whole wheat flour, salt, honey and instant yeast. No additional water is added in the formula. An egg and 1 T of vegetable oil are optional. I used the egg but not the oil. The honey I used was Orange Blossom honey.

Using these ingredients, the dough was considerably drier than it had been when I had used water (rather than buttermilk) and all bulghur (rather than coarse ground WW and bulghur). I ended up adding about 3 T of additional water during mixing and still ended up with a rather stiff, barely tacky dough.

Fermentation to doubling and proofing to almost doubled took about 75% as long as the recipe specified. This was because my kitchen was 80F yesterday.

The dough made two 17 oz pan loaves which baked at 350F for 45 minutes.

This is a very flavorful, somewhat dense yet tender bread. The flavor of red whole wheat predominated, but the Orange Blossom honey flavor was very much “there,” too. If you pay attention, I think you can also taste a tangy overtone from the buttermilk. I tasted some just after it cooled and had more toasted with almond butter and strawberry jam for breakfast. It's still a favorite.

I am curious how I would like this bread made with white whole wheat, and I'll probably make it that way next time.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

This bread is based on the Italian Bread formula in Peter Reinhart's “Bread Baker's Apprentice.” I substituted a biga naturale (sourdough starter) for the biga made with instant yeast in Reinhart's formula. I still added the instant yeast to the final dough to provide more predictable fermentation and proofing times.

Reinhart recommends this formula for hoagie rolls. I divided the dough to make 4 rolls scaled to 4 ounces each and shaped the remainder of the dough into one large bâtard.

I also employed the “stretch and knead in the bowl” technique during bulk fermentation, even though I used a KitchenAid mixer for mixing beforehand.

Intermediate starter (Biga naturale)

Final Dough

Mix and ferment the biga.

Mix the biga naturale the evening before baking. Dissolve the starter in the water in a medium sized bowl, then add the flour and mix thoroughly to hydrate the flour and distribute the starter. Cover the bowl tightly and allow to ferment for 3-6 hours, until it doubles in volume. Refrigerate overnight.

The next day, remove the biga from the refrigerator and allow it to warm up for an hour or so. Alternately, mix the biga late at night and ferment at room temperature overnight.

Mix the dough

Mix the flour, salt, sugar, yeast and malt powder in a large bowl or the bowl of your mixer. Add the biga in pieces, olive oil and ¾ cups of tepid water and mix thoroughly. Adjust the dough consistency by adding small amounts of water or flour as necessary. The dough should be very slack at this point.

I mixed the dough with the dough hook in the KA mixer for 10 minutes then transferred it to an 8 cup/2 liter glass pitcher that had been lightly oiled.

Fermentation

I stretched and folded the dough in the pitcher with a rubber spatula then covered it tightly. I repeated the stretch and fold again 20 and 40 minutes later. I then left the dough to ferment until it was double the original volume (45-60 minutes more).

Divide and form

Divide into 2 pieces and pre-form as logs. Allow the dough to rest 5 minutes or more, then form into bâtards. To make rolls, divide into 4 ounce pieces and pre-shape into rounds, then shape into torpedos. If desired, spray or brush the loaves with water and sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Prepare a couche – either a floured piece of baker's linen or parchment paper sprinkled with semolina.

Pre-heat the oven to 500F with a baking stone on the middle shelf. Make preparations for steaming the oven.

Place the loaves in the couche, cover with plastic or a towel and allow to proof until 1-1/2 times their original size (about 40 minutes).

Baking

Score the loaves and transfer them to the baking stone. Bake with steam, using your favorite method. After loading the loaves and steaming, turn the over down to 450F and bake until done (about 20 minutes for a bâtard, 15 mnutes for rolls.). If you want a thicker crust, use a lower temperature and bake for longer.

Cooling

Allow to cool before slicing, if you can.

Sourdough Italian Roll

Sourdough Italian Roll crumb

We had a couple of the rolls for lunch. They were very nice. The crust is chewy, not crunchy, and the crumb is also chewy. This is not your fluffy, cottony roll that seems standard in most sub shops and, unfortunately, most Italian delis.

I am pretty sure this is the roll I would choose for a meatball sandwich, oozing mozzarella and dripping marinara sauce. I don't think this roll would be the usual soggy mess after the first 20 seconds. However, in the interest of Science, I will volunteer to test this hypothesis. Of course, if additional volunteers were to pool their data with mine, we can be more confident of our conclusions.

David

Submitted to Yeast Spotting on Susan FNP's marvelous Wild Yeast blog

Peter Reinhart's recipe for San Francisco Sourdough Bread in "Crust&Crumb" is one I keep coming back to. I have enjoyed many French-style levains with a more subtle sourness, but I still prefer the assertively sour San Francisco-style Sourdough. Reinhart's formula in C&C is the one with which he won the James Beard Award, and it is a winner in my book too.

I generally make three 1.5 lb boules from this formula, but I had wanted to make a sourdough walnut bread again for quite a while. So, I made two of my usual boules and one batârd with walnuts. The walnuts were lightly toasted (15 minutes at 350F) and kneaded into 1.5 lbs of the mixed dough before bulk fermentation. 

I think this bread has the most beautiful crust! Can't you just hear the crunch when you imagine biting into a slice?

And for the crumb aficionados ...

The crumb is not as open as usual. Maybe the white whole wheat (10%) was thirstier than I thought.

David

Robin Sheeves' stay-at-home-mom blogs about finding eco-friendly food options

Why are hundreds of people taking up the challenge to bake every loaf in the Bread Baker's Apprentice? The challenges organizer has some thoughts.

http://www.mnn.com/food/cooking-recipes/blogs/interview-with-an-inspiring-baker

--Pamela

I tried to include a picture, but I'm not adept enough with my photo editor and the online host.  Maybe another time.  But, trust me, they look and taste good.

They're the Four-Seed Snack Crackers on page 122 of Brother Juniper's Bread Book by Peter Reinhart.

Grind 1 cup each sunflower and pumpkin seeds into a flour in the blender.  Also grind 1/2 cup flax seeds in the coffee grinder.  He has you grinding all three seeds together, but the flax seeds did not break down properly.  Mix with 3-1/2 cups ww flour (or ap if you must), 1 cup sesame seeds, 1 teaspoon salt, 5 tablespoons honey, and 1/2 cup oil; add 6-8 ounces of water as needed to make a ball of dough. Knead about 10 minutes "until smooth, firm, but elastic, satiny rather than tacky" about 10 minutes.  Then place in an oiled bowl covered with plastic wrap for at least 10 minutes (I left it overnight).**

Divide into six pieces.  I rolled each piece into a ball and flattened it.  Then I placed five of the flattened balls on a cookie sheet in the freezer for a few hours before placing them in a freezer bag.  They'll keep up to three months.  Roll today's dough out to about 1/8 inch thick.  (It was still stiff from the refrigerator, so I nuked it for a few seconds before rolling.)  I found that my Sil-Pat (little brother to the Roul-Pat) was adequate because the dough was oily enough, but he warns that you should re-flour as needed.  Then he has you use a biscuit cutter or a pizza roller knife to cut out round or diamond shapes, but I used a plastic dough scraper - gently - on my Sil-Pat and cut out random shapes.  I just wanted crackers and wasn't trying to impress the bridge club.

Finally, you can mist the top of the crackers with water and sprinkle with more sesame seeds or other toppings, but I didn't.  I just baked in a 340-degree F oven for 20-25 minutes until they're light golden brown.  You're warned to let them cool for at least 20 minutes so that they'll crisp up.

My first batch is now almost gone.  When I'm ready, I'll pull out another piece of dough, defrost it, and repeat.  I can keep the crackers coming with just a little effort.

Rosalie

**EDIT:  PLACE IN REFRIGERATOR - Details! Details!

I have tried PR's basic whole wheat loaf from his whole grains bread book three times and love it. I am following the instructions exactly but I have questions that I feel he doesn't explain or I can't find clearly written on the website.

1. The soaker oxidizes and turns grey. I wrapped it completely in cling wrap so no air could get to it and it still turned. Would a vacuum sealer/container stop this from happening or is there something else I can do?

2. When I mix the soaker, biga, and other ingredients together, is there a method for properly mixing the yeast, honey, and oil where they do not combine first before being kneaded together or does it matter?

3. When finally kneading the dough, I have to keep adding water to my hands (like every third or fourth knead) so they won't get gummy from the sticky dough and then I have to add more flour to adjust for the water. All PR mentions is putting water on hands but for me it seems like a lot of water and flour adjustments from the original recipe. Is my dough not adjusted properly to begin with or is this normal?

Thank you for your help.

http://www.chezus.com/video/omnivore-books/peter-reinhart/video.html

--Pamela