Today I was planning to do a baking test (inspired by Varda) comparing a filone made with Atta and AP-flour against the way I usually make it; with AP and another durum flour that I have that is slightly coarser and pale yellow. The formula is based on Glezer's filone.

Did you ever measure out the water you needed for a formula and then left both measuring cups on the table during mis en place? You guessed it; by the time I got to combining the final dough for the "traditional" filone, I thoughtlessly poured in the wrong (way too much) water...

I decided to turn things around to save the situation so I dedicated the over hydrated dough to my Atta experiment and made another "traditional formula" filone.

The Atta that I added to the over hydrated dough became the main flour, together with a little AP and 250 grams of "fine durum" (by lack of a better term). I should have kept track of the numbers but I didn't... I went for roughly the same consistency as the normal filone.

And, as I was already messing up my initial test, I also gave both Atta's the Richard Bertinet-way of developing the dough a spin... or rather a SLAP (in this case by what must be the cutest baker in the western hemisphere).

I felt like I was boldly going where probably most of you have gone some time ago. It was a blast! I felt like a kid in a candy store.

Durum should of course be handled with care. But once I got going and felt the dough developing under my hands faster than I ever experienced before... I went for it! As a matter of fact I was so happily slapping it around I woke up half the house... but it worked so nicely I couldn't resist, even it is a Sunday...

As a matter of fact I decided to also give the traditional filone a slap. That turned out to be not so good a decision. As much as the Atta didn't really seem to care being slapped around, Glezer's filone didn't really benefit from it but rather suffered.

So, after breaking all the rules, and just doing things by good ole intuition, I ended up with this trio:

Number one and two are the Atta's and number three (as usual going all slug on me) the traditional formula for Filone, with black sesame as a variation. The first Atta is decorated with a seed mix pretty much similar to the one that goes onto the pain aux céréales and number two is, as you can see... plain.

The taste of the Atta blew me away!

The black sesame filone ended up a bit more yellow than I'm used to (or is it because it stands out so yellow against the Atta?):

My filone crumb usually has bigger holes and is bit more chewy, but I'm perfectly happy with this.

Lesson learnt:  This last durum definitely wants to be handled with care, whereas the Atta seems to be more tolerant to this method of handling.

And!

Don't leave water jugs you don't need on the table during mis en place...

Happy Baking

Freerk

Hi Everyone,  I've visited this site often for answers to bread questions but hadn't joined until I decided to make pretzels.  It was exciting to find a thread started in 2005 still being used and commented on so passionately more than 5 years later!  I'm a somewhat experienced bread baker who is a devotee of Peter Reinhart.  Richard Bertinet's Dough was my inspiration but, sadly, many of the recipes in his first American edition have errors.  I learned this after traveling to Bath for classes.  He's a wonderful baker and teacher but I hesitate to buy his books anymore.  Does anyone else have problems with his books?

For my second bake from Richard Bertinet's 'Crust' I wanted to try something with ingredients I've never used before. The recipe that caught my eye was his Breton Bread as it calls for sel-gris and buckwheat flour, neither of which I've had any experience with. For anyone not familiar with sel-gris, it's an unrefined sea salt from Brittany that's very course and gray coloured. It's flavour is a little sharp at first, but leaves a subtle aftertaste of minerals that's quite pleasant. I think I'll be using it in my future baking quite a bit, particularly for rustic breads. For more info on this salt and others, here's a link to a guide of the various types of salt available for cooking and baking.
 
http://www.saltworks.us/salt_info/si_gourmet_reference.asp

Buckwheat pancakes are my only previous experience with this grain, having had them when I was a kid at Scout camp, but never using it professionally or at home for any baking. Some of the breads I've seen since joining TFL that use buckwheat, spelt, kamut etc. have intrigued me enough that I felt I needed to branch out more and discover some new territory. Our friend Khalid, in particular, has been a great inspiration to me with all the beautiful grain breads that he's made over the last few months.
 
Bertinet's formula for Breton Bread calls for using a pate fermentee as well as bakers yeast as it's leaveners but I thought I'd like to do it using a rye levain instead. Reason being, I had my rye sour going great guns, tripling in volume every 5-6 hours or so and thought it'd be a waste to not use it while it was so active. Late in the afternoon the day before mixing, I made the stiff levain but using rye starter as my base . By next morning the levain had doubled and domed so I went ahead and mixed all the other ingredients in the formula, adding the levain in chunks during the last part of the mix. Because the sel-gris is quite course, Bertinet advises dissolving it in a portion of the overall hydration, which is 69.8% (not counting the stiff levain).The dough was mixed on low speed for 8-9 minutes, then on 2nd for five. The dough came off the hook somewhat sticky but uniform and then was worked for about 5 minutes till it came clean off the counter. It rested for 1hr. at 73F, then stretched and folded and given another hour and another fold. After 30 minutes more of rest I molded it into a boule and put it into a heavily floured banneton, covered it with linen and put it in the fridge to rise. Four and half hours and 18 holes of golf later the loaf went into a 500F oven for 8 minutes with normal steam, then reduced to 440 for the remaining bake of 22 minutes. The loaf seems a bit over proofed to me but compared to the photos of it in the book it's quite a bit higher. It opened up much more along the slashes than I thought it would since it was a nice tight boule before going in the oven, so I'm wondering if this is perhaps a possible effect of the buckwheat flour content which was at 26%. I wouldn't call it a disaster by any means as the flavour of this bread more than compensates for any proofing or slashing errors on my part, but maybe next time I'll just give it a 9 hole proofing time. This is a really tasty bread, full of big flavours and aroma, the rye sour just adding another layer of flavour to it. My colleagues at the bake shop, who also serve as my tasting panel, all agreed that it was one of the more flavourful ones I've brought in for them to try. A few photos of it below. Please excuse the picture quality. My wife is visiting relatives back east and she decided to take the camera with her... for some reason, so I had to use my cell phone cam.

Franko

This past Sunday I was in the book store browsing...where else.. but through the cooking section. One of the books that interested me the most was Richard Bertinet's 'Crust', in particular for some of the unique recipes in it. It also included a DVD of Bertinet demonstrating his techniques for hand mixing and kneading brioche and levain. The book has some very good photography as well and the price was reasonable so I went for it. Mr. Bertinet has been mentioned a fair bit lately on TFL so I was curious to see what I could learn from him. While the book is not particularly technical, primarily being meant for an advanced home baker I think, his methods are that of an expert baker who has a clear and easy style of explaining a formula or procedure.

When I mentioned in a thread on Sunday http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19547/richard-bertinet-wins-major-uk-award that I'd picked up the book a couple of members replied mentioning that they had it as well and thought it was a good one to have, although they both thought the hydration for his Ciabatta formula was too low. I looked at it and didn't think it seemed out of range but decided to try it for myself and see. Now normally I'm not a real stickler for being exact when it comes to scaling water, but going more for the feel of the dough as described by the author or any included photos. This time though I weighed out all the ingredients right to the specified gram and followed his times and oven temps fairly close as well. Of the half dozen or so ciabattas I've made over the last eight months I think this is one of the better ones. It may be partially due to having used a lower protein flour (10%) for this one than I have in the past or maybe because I spent more time developing it by hand than I normally do, but whatever the reason it made a good loaf. The crust is fairly thin and splintery and the crumb while being a bit more open than I prefer, has a good chew to it for an all white bread. The flavour is just what I expect a ciabatta to taste like, wheaty, toasty, with a bit of richness from the extra virgin olive oil coming through. Very tasty!

Franko

Richard Bertinet operates a bakery as well as a cookery school from his premises in Bath and his sourdough loaf has just been awarded the UK organic (the Soil Association) food organisation's 2010 award for baked goods.  I have tried his sourdough and I enjoyed it far more than the Poilane offering.

www.soilassociation.org/Default.aspx?TabId=682

Ruralidle

Yesterday, I decided to tackle Richard Bertinet's "slap and fold" method of hand kneading after watching his video on Gourmet Magazine's website.  I was extremely inspired.  His motions and his hands make it look easy and in fact, overall, I found that it wasn't difficult to master.

The only problem I encountered was watching the video a few times and then using Gourmets web link to the recipe.  This truly was user error, but I assumed the recipe was going to follow the dough video precisely, and the recipe on the website is modified from the video, so use caution.   In Richards video it shows him using 4 whole eggs, so before I began mixing, I cracked four eggs to let them come to room temperature as I gathered the remainder of my ingredients. 

As soon as I started mixing, I realized my dough was more like a very thick pancake batter, and even though in his video he warns that the dough is wet, it is NOT that wet!! So, unfortunately, I had to more flour in addition to the 3.5 cups that the recipe called for (and yes, I did weigh).  I'd approximate that I added nearly 1.5 cups, or about 7 ounces.

The result after about 15 minutes was nothing short of lovely.  The method of slapping and folding wasn't hard and once I got used to the sticky dough all over my hands that didn't seem to want to come off until the last few minutes of the knead, I was doing well.  It's been a long time since I've felt dough transform with my hands and it truly was a lovely experience.

The dough was great to work with.  I could tell when my dough was kneaded enough.  I noticed good sized bubbles began to appear under the surface, so I tightened up the dough and let it rise.  It rose beautifully after an hour.  I didn't have the fresh yeast his recipe called for, so I used Active Dry and warmed my milk in the mircrowave to around lukewarm.  Not as warm as suggested in the recipe.  Another oversight, but it had no effect on the outcome.

As you can see, I packed them in pretty good.  This was after about a 40 minute rise.  I gave them 20 more minutes as I preheated the oven to 375 F

I decided to make some cinnamon rolls.  We like them slightly gooey on the top, so I not only filled my rolls with butter, cinnamon and brown sugar, but I also melted butter and brown sugar together in the bottom of my pan before filling the pan with rolls. 

Buttery, carmelization that was slightly crispy, not wet or too gooey

The cinnamon rolls were AMAZING and absolutely breathtaking!  The crumb was feathery light, ethereal and by far, the very best cinnamon roll I have ever had.  I almost made doughnuts using this recipe and next time, I think I will - that is, when I have a crowd.  It makes ALOT of doughnuts, so you could do have in rolls or freeze it.  I was inspired by this blog and her doughnuts using this recipe.  Check them out!

Hello, I'm brand new to these forums, so sorry if I mess up on any form-etiquette.  I've just used Richard Bertinet's sourdough recipe from CRUST.  Unfortunately with his recipes, I've found that almost all of them require 15 to 20% more water than he calls for.  I emailed him directly to be sure I wasn't crazy and he confirmed that American flours are often "stronger" and absorb more water.

Anyway, his sourdough is the only exception to that rule and I'm not sure why.  I don't have to add any water because it's plenty sticky as-is.  I "work" it like he shows (and I've become pretty decent at this) for about 15 minutes, then add salt, and continue until it's nice and cohesive.

However, when all is said and done and the loaf is finished - it tends to have a few large holes rather than evenly-spaced, smaller holes throughout where the bread puffs up.  It also seems a bit wet-ish or soft sort of in the middle.  Either I'm just too new to know that sourdough is supposed to be that way, or I'm doing something wrong.  I did 2 loaves today and one came out with large bubbles as I described above.  But then the second loaf came out with a huge cavern.  I mean, it just is hollow and all the actual dough is at the top or bottom of the crust with a huge hole.

I read a previous post that suggested this is due to improper shaping.  But I wonder if it's related to my wet-ish problem -- and the fact that unfortunately CRUST isn't well suited for the types of flour I'm using.  I love Bertinet's method and find it theraputic to work the dough -- it's my favorite part.  But it's tiring to feel like I have to test every recipe 10 times before I am sure of how to get it right.  And even then, I'm inexperienced so I'm not sure what is really "right".

Thanks for any advice!!!

Richard Bertinet has a very interesting kneading technique that I really like. It is similar to the technique that Maggie Glezer describes in her book "Artisan Baking".

Bertinet's method is initially a little difficult to understand from the words alone, but the book is accompanied by a DVD that makes the method very clear. 

Today I found a wonderful video online showing Richard Bertinet mixing a sweet dough. It is an excellent video, showing Bertinet's kneading technique. Here is the link to it: