SFBI

Most of the breads we baked in the Artisan II workshop at the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI) are found in Michel Suas' “Advanced Bread & Pastry” (AB&P) textbook. A couple of the breads I and the other students enjoyed the most are not, and one of them was a delicious Walnut Raisin bread made with a firm levain and a small amount of instant yeast.

The following is my scaled down version which made two loaves of 563 gms each. (The 26 g by which the dough exceeded the ingredient weights must be due to water absorbed by the raisins.) I incorporated an autolyse in the procedure which we did not use at the SFBI.

1. Mix all ingredients until well incorporated.

2. Ferment 12 hrs at room temperature.

    

Procedure

1. Mix the flours and the water to a shaggy mass. Cover tightly and autolyse for 20-60 minutes.

2. Toast the walnuts, broken into large pieces, for 15 minutes at 325ºF. (Can be done ahead of time)

3. Soak the raisins in cold water. (Can be done ahead of time)

4. Add the salt and the levain and mix at Speed 1 until well incorporated (about 2 minutes).

5. Mix at Speed 2 to moderate gluten development (about 8 minutes).

6. Add the nuts and raisins (well-drained) and mix at Speed 1 until they are well-distributed in the dough.

7. Transfer to a lightly floured board and knead/fold a few times if necessary to better distribute the nuts and raisins.

8. Round up the dough and transfer to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover tightly.

9. Ferment for 2 hours at 80ºF.

10. Divide the dough into two equal pieces. Pre-shape as boules. Let the pieces relax for 20-30 minutes, covered.

11. Shape as bâtards or boules and place, seam side up. In bannetons or en couche. Cover well.

12. Proof for 1.5 to 2 hours.

13. An hour before baking, pre-heat oven to 500ºF with baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.

14. Transfer the loaves to a peel. Score them. Transfer to the baking stone.

15. Turn the oven down to 450ºF and bake for 15 minutes with steam, then another 15 minutes in a dry oven. (Boules may take a few more minutes to bake than bâtards.)

16. When the loaves are done, turn off the oven but leave the loaves on the baking stone with the oven door ajar for another 8-10 minutes.

17. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack.

18. Cool completely before slicing.

Notes

Because of the water in the soaked raisins, The dough was wetter than expected from the 67% hydration given for the total dough. It felt more like a 70-72% hydration dough.

The crust was thinner and got soft faster with this bake than that done in the deck oven at SFBI. I might try baking at 460ºF and also leaving the loaves in the turned off oven for longer. Perhaps a shorter period baking with steam would help get the crunchier crust I would like with this bread.

This bread has a delicious flavor which is exceptionally well-balance between the grains, nuts and raisins. There is a very mild sourdough tang. Definitely a bread I'll be baking frequently.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

Today, we mixed and baked ciabattas and challah, neither of them sourdough. We mixed and shaped olive bread, walnut raisin bread and miche to be retarded tonight and baked tomorrow. We also scaled ingredients and mixed pre-ferments for baguettes to make tomorrow. The baguettes will be made with two pre-ferments – a pâte fermentée and a liquid levain. The doughs for the ciabatta and for the miche were hand mixes, and all the levains were mixed by hand.

Scaling water for the miche mix

Hand mixing dough for the miches

Frank had us make 6-strand challah but he also demonstrated a variety of other braids. His challot are pictures of perfection. (Mine are pictures of squid who ate some special mushrooms.)

Challah pieces ready to be rolled into strands fro braiding

Frank's challot, ready to be egg washed prior to proofing

Frank's challot, baked

Challah crumb

My Ciabattas and Challot 

Stretch and fold

Dividing ciabatta dough

Placing ciabatta on the proofing board

Ciabatta baking in the deck oven

Ciabatta crumb

Both the ciabatta and the challah are delicious. I'm looking forward to the breads we are baking tomorrow.

We spent all day in the bakery and only were in the classroom to list our tasks for the day, first thing in the morning. Most of Frank's teaching dealt with dough handling issues, but I picked up a couple pearls worth sharing.

I asked him about how levain is calculated differently from other pre-ferments. (See my blog entry for Artisan II-Day 3.) Here's the answer: It's a matter of convention. Levain and other pre-ferments can be calculated either as a percent of dry flour weight in the final dough or in terms of the percent of pre-fermented flour in the total dough. No big deal. Your choice.

Frank also made two interesting comments as we were scaling and shaping the miches. The first was that long loaves like bâtards have a more open crumb structure than boules made with the same dough. I have found that to be true but attributed it to my shaping skills. The second was that the size of the loaf has a significant impact on flavor. I had also observed this with the miche from BBA which I made once as two 1.5 lb boules, which had a different flavor from the 3 lb miches I usually make. Again, I didn't generalize from that one experience at the time. Interesting, eh?

I am anxious to get home and practice some of the skills I've acquired before I lose them.

David

Today, we mixed and baked four types of bread – whole wheat, rye, multi-grain and semolina. We also scaled ingredients for tomorrow's breads – ciabatta, challah (non-sourdough), olive, raisin-walnut and miche, some of which will be retarded overnight and baked Friday.

The educational goal of today's bakes was to demonstrate the impact of different ingredients such as whole grains and seeds on fermentation rates, dough consistency, crumb structure, etc.

Some of my breads from today's bakes

Personally, I found the sourdough whole wheat and rye rather un-exceptional. The multi-grain made with levain was much superior to the one we made with commercial yeast in Artisan I. (It's going to be my breakfast bread tomorrow.) The semolina bread was difficult to handle – a very slack, sticky dough that fermented and proofed really fast – but was the best bread of this type I've tasted. It was very similar to the semolina bread in Maggie Glezer's “Artisan Breads,” for those of you familiar with that wonderful bread.

In the classroom, most of the time was spent discussing retardation of the 3 types covered in AB&P – basically, retardation during bulk fermentation, retardation of formed loaves and retardation and proofing in a cabinet which allows you to warm the product after a period of cold retardation. The advantages and disadvantages of each were covered, as was the types of breads for which each is best suited.

I think I learned the most in the bakery today. The highlights for me were a better grasp on a way to shape bâtards and how to make a chevron cut correctly, two techniques of which I had a poor understanding, in retrospect.

Frank's breads. He made these to demonstrate pre-shaping and shaping. At the end of the day, we sliced one of each type for our tasting and discussion.

Some of the other students' ryes with creative scoring patterns, on the loader ready to bake.

Frank's rye breads, with various scoring. (The rye breads were scored prior to the final proof.)

The whole wheat breads were dusted with flour prior to scoring. Some had a cooling rack placed over them as a sort of template before dusting which makes an pleasing design on the loaves.

Frank also discussed more about using baker's math with levains and spoke to a question that Pat raised in a reply to my blog of yesterday. He said that, when you work with preferments like poolish, you think in terms of the percent of prefermented flour in a formula. When working with levains, you think of the levain as a percent of the final dough's dry flour. He didn't go into detail regarding the reason for this difference. I could speculate, but I'd rather try to get him to explain his reasons tomorrow.

David

The Artisan II Workshop at The San Francisco Baking Institute is all about sourdough bread. The first day of the SFBI Artisan II workshop is spent mostly in the classroom. The instructor reviewed the content of the Artisan I workshop and then introduced basic concepts of sourdough baking with emphasis on starter elaboration and maintenance. At the end of the first day, there is a quick review of baker's math.

In the bakery, we started elaborating a new sourdough culture with which we will be making bread on Friday. We also scaled the dry ingredients and mixed the levains for 4 different breads we will be making on Day 2

Our instructor for Artisan II is Frank Sally. My classmates are a different mix from that of the Artisan I workshop I attended in August. This group is almost entirely professional bakers who have come from Australia, New Zealand and New Jersey, among other exotic places.

Frank (in the center) and some of my classmates

A couple of my bench mates, both professional bakers from Australia (on the left) and New Zealand (on the right)

Mixing levains and scaling dry ingredients for mixing final doughs tomorrow

Our scaled ingredients awaiting tomorrows mixes

Much of the material presented today was familiar, but Frank touched on a few concepts which, while not completely new to me, I'd never thought much about.

He spoke of the “mass effect,” which occurs during bulk fermentation. He could not tell us the mechanism, but said that there is improved flavor development when the dough weighs more than 2 kg. Most of us home bakers generally work with batches of dough smaller than this most of the time. Evidently, we are missing out on some flavor enhancements by doing so.

Frank described the differing rates of growth of homofermentative and heterofermentative bacteria during sourdough elaboration. The former develop earlier. Moreover, it takes longer for the acetic characteristics to develop in the starter due to the greater volatility of acetic acid compared to lactic acid. This is a factor in the well-known improvement in flavor complexity as a new starter is fed over the first weeks. It takes about 3 weeks for a good stable balance of yeast and the various lactobacilli to develop

These differences also effect the balance of acetic versus lactic acid one can manipulate through differences in feeding schedules. More frequent feedings result favor lactic acid production. So a once a day feeding schedule yields a more tangy starter than a twice a day schedule.

The first set of breads we will be baking will provide comparisons between 1) once a day versus twice a day levain feedings, 2) liquid versus firm starters and 3) breads made with different proportions of starter (relative to the amount of dry flour in the final dough).

Stay tuned!

David

A birthday present and long time no baking: had to use the present and bake some!

Suas' Cinnamon Rolls

Ever since I started baking, now about 2 years ago, I hated our tile counter tops which are not suitable for working dough etc. I had worked on a marble slab since, but it was small and got me into trouble with larger batches, or longer breads (like large challah). Yesterday my solution arrived (two day early father's day/birthday present) in the form of a maple countertop, standard depth (25"), 48" wide and 1.5" thick. You can see it in the background of the photo above. While meant to be an actual counter top, I put some rubber feet under it to prevent sliding, and put it on top of the counter. Heavy lifting, but solid and immobile (might leave it on permanently). Wonderful! Now I needed to make/bake something.

I got Suas's book (Advanced Bread and Pastry) a while ago and read almost the whole thing (the technical stuff, not all formulas) in just a few days. I really like this book. This weekend I finally had time to make something from it (work has been incredibly busy, so little baking happened in the last few months, except the routine sandwich bread). The choice was actually from the Viennoisserie section, page 360/361: Cinnamon Rolls made with "Sweet Roll Dough", and  "Sticky Bun Glaze" (p. 394) on the bottom and "Flat Icing" (p. 646) on top. Although not in the recipe, but apparently present in the photographed version, and consistent with that, I added golden raisins.

Suas' Cinnamon Rolls Inside 

Of course, and as fairly typical for me diving into formulas in books, I found an error in the "Sweet Roll Dough" formula right away. I found this because I use my Dough Calculator spreadsheet and it comes up with different answers. In this case the conversion from metric to US decimal was wrong in the formula on the line for Cake Flour, and as a result, the fractional representation of the decimal was wrong as well. In the formula, as presented, cake flour is 0.748 pounds, or 0.424 kg. That is incorrect. The correct number: 0.935 pounds (which is indeed 424 g). Also, the lbs & oz number, given as 12 should be 15 oz. Here is the formula I used (with different numbers because it was scaled down to produce 2 lbs of dough):

Suas' Cinnamon Rolls (12 rolls)

I did not have milk powder, so I used the Dough Calculator to convert to "real" milk (and presented above). Although the formula does not describe it here (but does in the book), I used SAF Osmotolerant Instant Dry yeast (available from King Arthur's Catalog). The high sugar content of the dough can make life a little difficult for regular IDY but OT IDY can handle this better. Fear not if you do not have it. You can use just a little more regular IDY and allocate a little more time for the proof and you should be fine. A similar comment applies to the use of cake flour. The texture will be better with it, but if you don't have it, try AP flour instead. 

The instructions for making the dough are pretty standard. This dough should come out of the mixer fairly cold (72F) so you may need to use cold(er) milk. You can see the calculation for my case in the formula above, where I had to use 42F milk. My fridge happens to be set at 40F, so I used it straight from the fridge. Put all dry ingredients in a bowl, and mix well. Add wet ingredients, except butter and mix at second speed (even 3rd on KA mixers) until full gluten development, adding the butter in small batches starting about 2/3 of the way through mixing. Dough should clear the bowl and be fairly stuff, although supple because of the butter. If you desire raisins, knead them in by hand at this point (I used about 100 g).  Let proof on the counter for about 1 hr and then refrigerate overnight.

One of the problems with this book (in particular for the home baker) is that it provides formulas  (of course using baker's percent) for both large amounts (typically a 10lbs dough) and "test" amounts, but does not specify the yield for either. My prior baking experience told me to make a 2lbs dough to get about 12 rolls (I actually got 13). Likewise it talks about using the "Sticky Bun Glaze", but does not tell you how much you need, nor does it say how much cinnamon sugar and icing you need. I guessed the cinnamon sugar wrong, but here is how to make the right amount (prepare whenever, and store in moisture tight container):

Next morning, take the dough out of the refrigerator about 1-2 hours and let it warm up. While it warms up, prepare the "Stickly Bun Glaze" (optional) from the formula below. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth, then add the remaining ingredients and set aside. Alternatively you can heat everything up in a pan until the sugar is dissolved and then let things cool down.

Degas the dough and roll out into a rectangle about twice as wide as it is long, about 1/8" thick. Brush the whole rectangle with water and sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar mixture, making sure to leave a 1" strip at the far (wide) end uncovered so the dough can stick. If you didn't do the raisins already, you could add them here (I prefer to do them earlier so the dough absorbs the raisin flavor). Roll up the dough somewhat tight, starting at the wide, sprinkled end, and ending at the other wide end, where a little pressure will "glue" things shut.

Prepare a baking sheet by covering it with parchment paper and spreading the "Sticky Bun Glaze" evenly on top of the paper. The glaze will melt and be absorbed in the bottom of the rolls and cover the bottom. Take a wet and sharp knife and cut 1" pieces of the rolled up dough and place sideways on the sheet. Leave room between the rolls for expansion. Twelve rolls, evenly spread out, will be about the right spacing on a standard home oven baking sheet. Let proof until about 1.5 to 2 times size. Pre heat the oven to 350F and bake on middle rack. You may want to consider putting another baking sheet immediately under it, to prevent the bottoms from burning. The rolls will be ready in about 15-18 minutes.

Now comes a tricky move. Take the sheet pan out of the oven, place a cooling rack on top, and then, without pressing, flip the whole deal over and place on a surface where you can deal with the dripping glaze. Remove sheet pan and parchment paper. If you used the paper this will be extremely easy! Now, to prevent too much glaze from covering the sides and top of the rolls, use a second cooling rack and invert again. Now let cool. This seems convoluted, but you do not want to handle the hot rolls with your hands: they're really hot, very sticky, and very fragile! Meanwhile prepare the "Flat Icing": 

Mix this together with spatula and try to not incorporate any air in the mixture. If you desire it thinner, add more water. This was just about right though, I think. Now, when the rolls are still somewhat warm, but not hot, put the icing in a piping bag with fine tip, or if you don't have fancy equipment, use a plastic baggy (sandwich size or so), and cut just the tiniest piece of a corner. Drizzle the icing over the rolls in the desired amount and let the icing set (a few minutes). Then, get set and eat!

Cinnamon Roll Sample

See my My Bread Adventures in pictures