sd

We decided to take our 1% SD starter experiment to the dark side by using much more whole grains; mainly rye and add some yeast water into the mix to try to open the crumb.  Our previous YW experiments show that YW can open the crumb dramatically more than what SD seed can do on its own when it comes to high percent whole grain breads.

With Thanksgiving less than 2 weeks away we decided to make a small cocktail loaf of rye bread flavored with cocoa, coffee and caraway.  To bolster the flavor and texture of the medium rye bread further we added some scalded rye chops to the 82.5 % hydration mix.

Like Phil says - When it cracks it is ready to go in the oven.  In this case the bran flakes worked perfectly. 

We have no experience to go on using low amounts of SD and YW seeds and long counter top fermentation when using higher amounts of home milled grains.  So we made a wild guess at how long the process should take.  We decided to knock 5 hours off the total 24 hour time and to not add the 5 g YW to the mix until 5 hours after the fermentation started.

It was ready to pan up in 16 hours and it proofed, nearly doubling and cracking the bran sprinkled on top in 4 hours  We baked it with 2 of Sylvia's steaming cups in the mini oven at 450 F for 15 minute. The steam was removed and the temperature was turned down to 350 F and baked for another 10 minutes before being de-panned and baked for another 5 minutes after turning the bread 180 degrees on the oven rack. 

It was left in the off oven, door ajar for 10 minutes to continue to crisp the crust and then removed to he cooling rack.  From the outside the loaf has potential.  It smells beautiful and is quite attractive for a brown lump of a bread covered in bran.  We hope that the crumb is as open as the last rye bake that was 100% whole rye.  We await 24 hours to see if the yeast water worked its magic once again.

24 hours later and this bread turned out open, moist 1/4"slicing is no problem and best of all just plain delicious.  You don't taste the coffee and cocoa and even the caraway is subtle.  It is lovely plain, toasted, buttered and a nice coctail bread for the Holidays.

Formula 

Go to the bottom of the post to see the extension after the ************************************************

It sounds like an interesting experiment to do for SD starter. I can use up to 20g of stater making 200 g of 80% hydration levain over 12 hours in the winter time and kitchen temperatures around 60-65 F. That 200 g levain would normally go into 800 g of flour and 600 g of water and then developed over a couple of hours. In the winter time it could possibly ferment and proof 6-8 hours on the counter before needing to go in the oven.  With yeast water we have gone 12 hours.

 I suppose that if one would use 1 g of SD starter and mix it with the entire 900 g of flour and 675 g of water and 2% salt (no levain build) it would take a while for it to be ready to bake, How long we will have to find out - unless someone has already done this test. I'm not sure, perhaps someone here knows this too, but yeast only lives about 6 days or so before croaking.

No collapse after 24 hours,

So my apprentice took 1 g of starter and tried it out on 100 g of flour and 75 g of water, 2 g of salt to see what happens. She started at 9 AM, Oct 26, 68.2 F kitchen temp and level marked with a rubber band. Lets see how long it takes to double and make a couple knotted rolls out of it :-) Here is a pix exactly 24 hours later the levain had nearly tripled but had not collapsed. Amazing for 1 g of starter and 100 g of flour.

9 AM - Oct 26                                                                                      9 AM - Oct 27. 

Here is a picture of the top of the levain too. I've decided to eventually make some bagels out of some of this and a lower hydration will slow this train down some too. Also want to get some whole grains in the mix too. So we will divide the dough in half and add another 86 g of flour, 44 g of water to get the hydration down to 60% from 75% and a little less than 2 g of salt to each half.  One half got 86 g of whole grain flours (50%rye, 32% WW and 18% spelt).  The other half got 86 g of AP and 44 g of water and less than 2 g of salt - to keep the control of white flour intact.

10 AM - Oct 27 after the 24 hour mark split into two levains one has some Whole Grains now and one is still AP only.

This should perhaps get us from 24 to 48 hours on the counter. The temperature fell to 70 F this morning from a high yesterday of 81 F in the afternoon fall kitchen.

The whole grain levain on the left doubled again at the 32 hour mark and was put in the fridge for a 24 hour retard and the white flour levain doubled at the 36 hour mark and also went into the fridge for a 24 hour retard.  Looks like 36 hours is as far as we would want to go before refrigerating or using.  Retarding the starter should make the sour really come out.

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Now that we know it takes 24 hours for our 1g of our Desem /Rye SD starter  tpo double 100g of flour at 75% hydration, we are going to extend the experiment to see if we can do a 36 hour bread on the counter top.

We mixed 7 g of 67% hydro starter with 50 g of water to thin it out and liquefy it.  We then added 22 g each of home ground whole: spelt,  rye and wheat along with 2 g each of white and red malts made from the same flours and mixed it up well.  We then added another  455 g of water and mixed again before adding 315 g each of bread and AP flour and mixing again.  This gave us a 72% hydration dough that has 10% whole grains and 1% SD starter. 

We let the dough autolyse for 30 minutes before adding 11 g of salt and starting 15 minutes of  French Slap and folds.  We expect to let the dough ferment for 24 hours before  letting it rise again for 12 hours before baking.  The gluten was well developed after the slap and folds and the dough ball looked like this:

Michael Wilson has had a positive effect on my dough balls!  Can't wait to try out his panettone !

11 AM  11/04/2012                                                                                 7 PM 11/04/2012  +- 10% increase in volume

11 PM  11/04/2012   +-20% increase in volume                               3 AM  11/05/2012  +- 30 %increase in volume

7 AM  + 100% increase in volume

It only took 20 hours to double in volume starting with 1% starter to flour ratio.  Time to split it up and and proof a loaf of fig, pistachio, sunflower and pumpkin seed bread and one plain old SFSF - and see how long they take to double.  The round is SFSD.

The reality was that the dough had doubled again in 4 hours and was ready for Big Old Betsy to bake up so we did.  At our hot kitchen temp of nearly 79 F  Doc.Dough spreadsheet said we would ne ready to bake in less time but we might have over proofed it a little too.

Here they are proofed.  24 hours on the counter from mixing the dough to baking it off worked for this starter, flour and hydration combination.

I will do another post to cover the bread itself which baked up very well.

We never have pizza night on a Tuesday so it seemed like the perfect time to have one.  We wanted to test out a new multi-grain pizza dough made 3 ways - Yeast water, Sourdough and a YW / SD combo starter to see which one we liked the best.  My wife played her part as taste tester with me this time since my apprentice never gets pizza of any kind for taste testing as she wolfs it down - faster than a shark.

This was a new formula of ingredients that included corn meal, Chi Ch flour, whole wheat, oat flour, whole soft white wheat, instant potato flakes and AP.  It turned out not to be our favorite crust.  It was good but not our favorite.

Our commercial yeasted version of Focaccia Romana remains our favorite pizza dough even though we no longer stock commercial yeast at home.  We continue to search for as good a replacement crust using natural yeast as we can find or develop and will not stop till we do.  It’s more fun searching and looking than having sometimes.

In this case we tried 3 versions of the same dough by making one sourdough, one yeast water and one a combination of the two.  We did this by building the single stage levains separately over 6 hours and splitting the autolysed flours after 3 hours.  Half the dough was mixed with the rye and Desem SD seed and AP levain and the other half mixed with the yeast water and AP levain.

Once the first 4 minutes of French slap and folds were complete for the 2 variations, 1/3 of each was taken from each and combined to make the 3rd combo YW / SD levain.  Then 4 more minutes of slap and folds were completed for all 3 variations followed by a 30 minute rest in an oiled bowl.

Then 3 sets of stretch and folds were done on 30 minute intervals. Once the final S & F was done the dough was refrigerated at 37 F in an oiled, plastic covered bowl and allowed to ferment and develop in the cold for 18 hours. An hour and half before being made into pizzas, we pulled the dough out of the fridge and allowed it to come to room temperature and relax.

The SD version had risen the most in the fridge, more than doubling, the SD / YW combo was 2nd with a double and YW was 3rd with not quite a double being held at first base.   So with a triple, double and a single at World Series time we spread each out by hand to between 1/16’ and 1/8”thick since we like out pizzas as thin and crispy as possible.

Each was topped with some combination of home made; sauce and sausage, store bought pepperoni, yellow and red peppers, caramelized; onions and mushrooms, fresh basil, mozzarella and Parmesan.  Even though we cut up some black olives we forgot to get them out of the fridge some now we have olives for tonight’s salad.  I did sneak some goat cheese on one pizza while my apprentice and wife weren’t looking.

We always put a little minced, sun dried tomato, rosemary and garlic in the crust and par bake it for 3 - 4 minutes at 500F, on a stone - once it is formed, docked and brushed with Mojo de Ajo.

All 3 baked up equally well, nicely browned; on the bottom, the edges and cheese.  Each was thin, crispy and would not bend when sliced no matter how heavily topped.  This isn’t your soggy, wimpy, foldable, bendable 3 times too thick crust pizza that New Yorkers think is real pizza to die for.    Each crust edge puffed up nicely, with large holes too.  The soft white wheat and the garbanzo bean flour made the dough really nice to spread by hand and get really thin without tearing.

My wife said they all tasted the same which is why she won’t be taste testing anything else any time soon.  But for me they all tasted different.  All were very good but different.  The SD was the best followed by the SD /YW combo with YW bringing up the rear – no question about it.   Now we have to covert our favorite Focaccia Romana formula to SD and see if it can be as good as the original.

Formula

It's been 10 weeks since our last parade so we will cut out about half the sandwiches and other stuff we would normally post.  We want to promote good, well balanced lunches just like the ones we had in grade school 50 years ago but we don't want to go so overboard that they compete with or are nearly as good as the ones kids enjoy in public schools today.  There might be some other stuff that sneaks in there now and again.

These rolls are SD / YW, caramelized onion, sun dried tomato, bacon, parmesan cheese Emperor Rolls with Seeds so they are pretty much not Kaiser rolls or semmels any more.  We forgot to put in the basil but left it in the formula.

We were reading a post on another unmentioned site on how to make your own sun dried tomatoes.  Tomatoe are 25 cents a pound for Roma ones this week so no time like the present  to dry them.  Sun dried tomatoes have become increasingly more expensive in the store and are very easy to make at home.  I prefer mine roasted slowly with a little salt and Herbs de Provence packed in olive oil so that you get flavored oil too.

After finishing the tomato drying project we were looking around for a new way to use them besides in our standard pizza dough.  We also needed some hamburger buns for our monthly hamburger dinner.

We usually make these no fancy do shaped buns, with parmesan cheese, basil and apple wood smoked bacon but thought that a few minced sun dried tomatoes wouldn’t hurt them any – unlike what FedEx might do to your next package.

This time the apprentice thought we might give Emperor Roll shaping a try for these rolls and stick some; white and black poppy, white and black sesame, basil and nigella seeds on them with egg.  The (2) multi-seeded ones also had kosher salt and chia seeds in the mix.  We recently found some oregano seeds but forgot to use them on purpose - just to be consistent in forgetting stuff we would have liked to put in our recipes .

We also wanted to enrich our last dough for rolls with an egg to go along with the butter, NF milk and olive oil.  They ended up being 75% hydration our recent norm for white breads.

Kaiser rolls are always plain instead of having seeds on them and oddly they have nothing to do with the Kaiser either.  Odd how things get named isn’t it?  Kaiser rolls originate from Vienna, Austria and were supposedly named after the Emperor Franz Joseph but they are never called Emperor rolls.  So we ended up naming these Franz Joeseph's Emperor Rolls with Seeds.  We can understand how Empress Ying would have every right to be miffed bout this.

We shaped the rolls like they do here:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2008/02/28/all-tied-up-shaping-kaiser-rolls/

And not the way Norm does here:

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=kaiser+roll+shaping&mid=B286163E82FA4DA942DEB286163E82FA4DA942DE&view=detail&FORM=VIRE5

Had we known it was Norm at the time, we would have shaped them the authentic way.  Next time for sure.

These Emperor Rolls with Seeds came out nicely brown and went soft as summer rolls tend to do in AZ.   Kaiser Rolls should be crusty and hard for NY authentic ones.

Method

We built the YW and SD levains separately over a 6 hour build with equal amounts of flour for each and 69% hydration.   The dough flours were autolysed with the milk for 4 hours.   When the levains and the dough flours came together we added the egg, oil softened butter, salt and malts and squeezed the dough through our fingers until incorporated.

After the dough had rested for 15 minutes, we did the first of (4) sets of S&F’s on 30 minute intervals.  The first one was (16) ¼ turns reducing by 4 turns each successive set.  The dough rested in a plastic covered oiled bowl in between sets.  After the last set the dough was retarded for 12 hours in the 38 F fridge in the oiled plastic covered bowl.

After the retard was complete we let the dough sit out for 1 hour on the counter to warm up.  We then weighed out (10) 112 g pieces and shaped them into balls.  After a 10 minute rest under plastic on the counter, we rolled out the balls into 14”ropes.

After another 10 minute rest they were shaped into Kaiser rolls and placed on parchment paper on cookie sheets to final proof covered in a plastic trash can liner for 2 hours.  The tops wee brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with the seeds.

Big Betsy was fired up to 450 F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming bread pans with wet towels in them.  After 45minutes the rolls were ready to bake with additional steam provided by the ½ C of water we tossed into the bottom of the oven.

After 2 minutes the temperature was turned down to 425 F and then down to 375 F when the steam came out at the 10 minute mark. The rolls were rotated 180 degrees every 5 minutes after the steam was removed to ensure even browning.  They were removed from the oven when they reached 205 F internal temperature about 25 minutes including the steam.  We didn’t brush the tops with milk to keep them soft when they came out of the oven like we normally do since we thought they would go oft enough on their own

Formula

It has been a while since we did our Hemp Bag take on Empress Ying’s 36 hour baguettes.  The last time the hemp seeds made for some pretty dopey baking according to Hanseata.  She is rarely wrong when it comes to seeds and especially  ….eeerrrr…. baking with them.   They were delicious baguettes but lacked full depth of flavor and tasty character of a bread that has at least 15% whole grains in it.

Luckily EY (Empress Ying) has already set the standard for multi-grain baguettes here like she has for 36 hour baguettes galaxy wide here:  They are terrific!

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21809/36-hours-sourdough-baguette-increased-whole-grain-how-much-too-much#comment-230831

 Of course I didn't find her perfect post until after my bake was done so all of the good things I learned from it were not used :-)  Her experiment starts at 20% whole grain and moves up to 40% and she increases her hydration as the whole grain rise with 80% hydro for her 20% whole grain version.

I kept my hydration at 75% for this 16% version but would have used 78% had I thought properly even without her post.  I know it sounds like a lot to expect from a doofus like me but my apprentice has been testy of late and asleep at the oven much of the time.

My whole grains were different than txfarmer’s too.  We used spelt, rye and whole wheat.  Our 36 hours was different than hers too and wasn't even 36 hours either.   We just can’t seem to stick to any kind of schedule since we retired.  Instead of a 12 hour autolyse, we did a 6 hour room temperature one with the salt.

After the mix of levain and autolyse came together, we did 8 minutes of French slap and folds because my apprentice loves the sound of the dough smacking the marble - makes her go insane and start barking very loudly until things quiet down.  After a 15 minute rest we continued on with (3) S&F’s every 30 minutes for the next hour and a half.   We allowed the dough to ferment for an hour before we retarded it for 20 hours instead of 24.  We then took it out of the fridge with the intent of baking it but after 1 hour of warm up, pre-shape, final shape (16” long) and into a rice floured basket for final proof, we only let it proof for an hour and then chucked it into a plastic trash can liner and into the fridge for another 14 hours of retard. 

EY said that she thought it could stand some more hours of retard and Ian just gave it 30 so we though a total of 34 hours of retard instead of 24 might be OK if the bread gods were too drunk on godliness to notice. 

After the 2nd retard was done we let the dough, still inside the trash can liner sit on the counter for 3 hours before firing up Old Betsy at 500 F for a 45 minute pre-heat with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming bread pans on the bottom rack with the stone on the rack above.

The baguettes were upturned onto the parchment lined peel, poorly slashed 4 times each, this type of massacre should be illegal by the way,  and slid onto the stone with a ½ cup of water thrown into the bottom of the oven as we closed to door to make sure the steam was maximized. We immediately turned the oven down to 450 F and let the bread steam for 10 minutes.

The steam was removed, the oven turned down to 425 F convection this time, and the baguettes were baked for another 15 minutes.  The baguettes were turned 180 degrees every 5 minutes for the last 15 minutes to make sure they baked evenly.

When we test them for temperature they were already at 210 F so we took then out of the oven and put them on the cooling rack.  They were very crispy (and stayed that way), blistered, nicely browned and we could hold them up by the ears – well at least 1 of the 2 we could.  The slashing was still primitive - practice isn't helping much  -  but no giving up is allowed :-)

What surprised us was the crumb was not as open as we wanted and thought we would get after our last baguette bake and the even our last boule bake for that matter.  Well you can’t have everything, every time like Empresses do unless you know what you are doing and do it :-)  Maybe starting off with 8 minutes of French Slap and folds was not the right thing to do. 

Do you think it would help if we followed txfarmer’s directions exactly?  Possibly!  Well, tell that to my apprentice!These baguettes do taste great, much better than plain white ones or even ones with hemp seeds in them with our taste buds.  Can’t wait to have some bruschetta tonight.

We ran out of English muffins and once again used a variation fop the one at KAF.  We use YW in conjunction with a SD Desem starter to make EM;s that are very similar to Wofferman’s but 16% whole wheat.  They are light, fluffy, airy and just plain delicious.  We make them all the time and never want to run out of them in the freezer

After 8 hours the dough had more than doubled and stuck to the plastic cover to reveal the airy structure beneath. 

The method is simple enough.  Build the SD and YW levains over 6 hours in one stage each.  After the levains have doubled, mix everything except the salt, sugar and baking soda together and let sit out overnight or for 8 hours on the counter.  Make sure the bowl is covered in plastic and well oiled and at least 3 times the size of the dough ball.

See the 2 free form ones made after cutting out 7 on the first pass?

After the overnight proofing add the remaining salt, sugar and BP and knead on a floured work surface for 4-5 minutes.  Let rest for 10 minutes and then press out into a circle that is ¾ “ thick.  No need for a rolling pin.  Use a cutter to make 3”-4” rounds – I used a plastic drinking cup.  Move to a corn meal or semolina sprinkled parchment paper covered cookie sheet and cover with plastic to final proof 45 minutes on the counter.

We managed 9 large ones but you could get a dozen smaller ones.  Dry fry in a seasoned cast iron skillet on medium low heat about 4-5 minutes per side until golden brown.  Move to a cooling rack.  Eat while warm with butter and jam.  Yummy!

Here we go with the second attempt to make baggies inspired by Ian but using Phil’s ingredients and method.  We also didn’t want to slash the dough like Pierre Nury doesn’t with his Rustic style.  But we did slash it, quite poorly, in the end.  If you don’t practice you won’t get any better right?

This bread rose nicely in the fridge and in the oven.  It baked up nice and brown and crunchy and went softer as the bread cooled on the rack.   The crumb was nice and open, and glossy.  I don’t think we will ever get Phil’s holes but we keep trying.  Not as many blisters this time since we were not baking in the mini oven where blisters are cheap and easy.

We like the taste of this bread very much, even though it is more ‘Guedo” than Brownmen usually like  better.   But, it tastes so good I just keep putting butter on it and wolfing it down.  A little variety isn’t all bad now and again.    

Method

We more closely followed Phil’s recipe and method using Desem SD starter only built over 6 hours – no yeast water this time.  We used white whole wheat flour and AP since we can’t get Lauche Wallaby unless we swim very far and we are totally out of spelt.  Still we kept the sifted whole wheat to 15% of the flour and we reduced the levain to 10% instead of using 20% like last time.  The hydration was kept at 75%.  We autolysed the flours and water, less 30 g, for nearly 6 hours.

We love doing slap and folds and enjoyed kneading the dough this way for 3 minutes.  We held back 30 g of water and diluted the salt in it before adding it into the dough before the 2nd set of French slap and folds also lasting 3 minutes.  The extra water and salt were worked into the dough by squeezing the dough through the fingers until the dough came back together.  We rested the dough for 4 hours on the counter.

The dough was still quite sticky but we resisted adding any flour.  We pre-shaped and final shaped 10 minutes later into a 16” long ‘Fat Bag’ shape as best we could manage. The shaped dough was put into a rice floured and cloth lined  ‘fat baguette’ basket to proof for another 1 1.2 hours before being retarded in the fridge in a plastic trash bag.

12 hours later we took it out of the fridge and noticed that it had risen nicely while resting at 38F.  The hour that the dough took to come to room temperature we used to fire up Old Betsy and get her up to 500 F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming pans half full of water with kitchen towels rolled up in them.   We also put our 12” cast iron skillet in the bottom as well to throw some water in when we loaded the ‘Fat Bag’ which sounds pretty kinky.

We streamed bread for 10 minutes at 482 F (250C) and removed the steaming apparatus and baked at 392 F convection this time until the bread registered 205 F inside.  We rotated the loaves 90 degrees every 5 minutes to ensure even browning.  In 15 minutes (25 minutes total) the bread was done and we turned off the oven and left the door ajar with the bread on the stone for an additional 10 minutes to crisp the crust.

This bread originally started out to be baguettes along the line of the one Ian (isand66) baked this last week only with the addition of SD to his YW only levain.

 I was going to do a Pierre Nury take, no slash, Rustic Light Rye approach to it where you just cut a 10” square proofed dough into (2) 5”x10” rectangles,  stretch the dough to 12”and just let it plop on the parchment - no slashing required and then right into the oven it goes.  But then, my wife needs sandwich bread too?

The SD /YW combo levain was under way when Pip’s (Phil) latest fabulous bread hid TFL.   I decided to change the dough flours around to match his 15 % of fresh milled whole grains even though we used a multigrain approach, since they were already ground earlier in the day, which was different than Phil’s spelt. Both Ian and Phil used 75% hydration so we went with that.   

We cut Phil’s recipe to 1,200 g from 3,600.   We also decided to use Phil’s method of 6 hour levain build, long autolyse (5-6 hours) holding back some water, 3 minutes French fold (I used French Slap and Folds thinking they might be the same thing and we like doing them), add in the salt and the rest of water and squeezing the dough through the fingers until it come back together, another 3 minutes of French slap and folds, and a 4 hour bulk rise with no touching – no stretch and folds.

We pre-shaped and shaped going into a basket for 2 hours of proof on the counter, then into the fridge for a 12 hour retard.  It came out of the fridge in the morning nicely risen for another hour of warm up before going into the steaming mini oven oven at 500 F, steaming for 12 minutes with oven turned down to 450 F after 2 minutes.

Since my levain was already 21% of the final dough weight instead of the 10% that Phil used, I decided to cut the 4 hour bulk ferment in half to 2 hours undisturbed and the final proof from 2 hours to 1 hour before going into the fridge.  The rest of Phil’s method was not modified other than we went with a boule instead of a batard and used Ian’s signature T-Rex scoring since we skipped his baggies but we will do them soon.

Somehow Pierre Nury’s cut and stretch Rustic Method was not incorporated and he deserves better than that so we will use it next time.  It is odd how things can change based on a really good bread posted on TFL – like Phil’s.  Mine won’t come out as nice as Phil’s but, just the thought that it might, is worth the doing. 

The scoring went well as my apprentice modified, (bent), our single side razor blade into a gentle curve like a lame blade.  The boule puffed itself up very well during the 12 minute steaming using a combination of (1) of Sylvia’s steaming cups and  our latest bake’ bottom broiler pan with ½ C of water,  covered with the vented top of the broiler pan where the parchment and bread bakes.

After the steam came out, we baked the bread at 400 F, convection this time, for an additional 16 minutes (28 minutes overall) turning the boule 90 degrees every 4 minutes.  When the center hit 205 F we turned off the oven, left the door ajar and allowed the boule to cool in the oven for an additional 12 minutes.  The temperature rose to 209 F while resting in the off mini oven.

The bread sprang so much it was little close to the top elements and got a little dark on the top but, no worries, it wasn’t burnt and should add a little extra yumminess to the crust.  The mini (and steam) provided its signature blisters to the crust.  It came out crunchy crisp and shattered and cracked where it got the hottest as it cooled.  The crust softened as it cooled to become chewy.

The bottom wasn’t as brown as usual.  This has to be due to the water in the lower half of the broiler pan that was less than an1” from the bread.  Even though the spring was great with blisters we will go back to either Sylvia’s steam alone or covering the bread with a stainless steel bowl which will also keep the top from browning too much and still give us dark brown bottom crust and blisters.

This is also the largest boule we can possibly put in the mini oven.  It stuck to steaming cup and the side of the broiler pan as it was.  We think a loaf that was 200 g less in size would be more prudent.

The crumb came out fairly open but nearly as much as Phil’s did.   This because he is such a fine baker and my apprentice is not.   Plus, we used YW and cut the counter development time by about 2 hours or so to take into account we used twice as much levain.

But the crumb was glossy, moist, airy and light like our recent YW.SD bakes have been.   We will follow Phil’s methods more closely next time.   The taste is very good  Just what my wife will like for her lunch sandwich bread.   

We just love the authentic, taste texture and chew of Stan Ginsberg’s Favorite Bagels that are authentic and just plain delicious any way you want to eat them.  We keep messing with the grains and starters to get what we want in our favorite bagels.

 All the whole grains are in the starter, a new thing we are trying out lately.  The grains were home milled rye, WW and Kamut and make up 17% of the total flours.  We also included a little less than 10% of roasted potato left over from Beer Can Chicken. 

 As usual with out take on bagels, there is some barley malt, red and white malts were included to improve the color and taste of the bagels along with adding the enzymes that break down carbohydrates and starch into sugars that the yeast and bacteria can use to do their thing gas and sour wise.

 We have been using a combo YW and SD starter to build the levains for recent bagels and we did so again this time.  We get a nice moist open crumb with a slight SD tang using a combo starter.

From left to right front - Chia seeds, Sesame, white sesame and Multi - all the prvious plus, black sesame, kosher salt, basil and  nigella seeds.

 We used exactly the same method as last time and baked the bagels off in the mini oven using Sylvia’s steam developed for it.  Our change from Stan’s method is to proof the bagels after forming for 1 hour before refrigerating and we retard them for 24 hours before boiling them.

 These are now our favorite go to bagel and have now met our taste, texture, chew and color criteria.  They are just delicious.  Now there is not reason to go to NY for bagels anymore and it sure is cheaper too.

 Method

We built the YW and SD levain together over (2) 3 hour and (1) 2 hour build and then refrigerated them for 48 hours. Home ground whole wheat berries were used for the starter and accounted for all the whole grains in the final dough.

The flours, salt, mashed potatoes and malts were autolysed for 3 hours and hand mixed into the levain. The stiff dough was kneaded for 10 minutes by hand and then allowed to rest, ferment and develop for a whopping 15 minutes covered with plastic wrap on the counter.

The dough was them divided into (10) 122g pieces, folded into balls and then into 12” tapered, from middle to end, ropes. The ropes were rested for 10 minutes and then formed into bagels by the ‘over the knuckles’ method where the ends were rolled on the counter to seal them together.

The bagels were placed onto a parchment covered and corn meal sprinkled cookie sheet, covered in plastic wrap and refrigerated for 24 hours.

Latest $2 Goodwill purchase yesterday at half price.  It's a 901 - just perfect for an oval shape bread or nice baked chicken. 

After removing the bagels from the fridge, they were immediately simmered for 30 seconds a side in 1 gallon of water with 1 T of barley malt syrup and 1 tsp of baking soda. The wet bagel bottoms were placed on a kitchen towel for 5 seconds after coming out of the water, dunked in the topping of choice and then placed on parchment paper sprinkled with semolina which was on the top cover of the mini ovens broiler.

The mini oven was preheated to 45o F with the rack on the bottom. A 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup with a rolled up dish rag, half full of water, was micro waved until the water boiled. Sylvia’s steaming method was then placed in the middle of the parchment paper between (4) bagels at the corners.

The bagels were steamed for 8 minutes with the heat being turned down to 450 F. At the 8 minute mark the steam was removed, the bagels turned upside down and the rack rotated 180 degrees. The Mini Oven was also turned down to 425 F, convection this time,  at the 8 minute mark too.  After an additional 4 minutes, the bagels were turned 18o degrees on the parchment – still upside down..

At 16 minutes total baking time the bagels were deemed done. They were nicely browned top and bottom and sounded like a drum when tapped on the bottom. They were moved to wire cooling racks until cooled.

Formula