Sourdough

This chacon is a tribute to Eric Hanner.  His gifts to the world were many and his passion for balking was great.  His fine character attributes included his generosity that made him willing to help and teach others what he knew.  Eric’s legacies are many and this bake commemorates them.  He was a giant and this chacon is especially large to recognize his largess.

The white portion of the dough is a 6 strand zolablue SD Challah that we converted to a poolish from SD.  The 4 braided ends were not tucked in to give the chacon more of chance to crack making a pretty design on the top.

The dark portion is Eric’s Favorite SD Rye – his Jewish Deli Rye was used as a monster bialy to cover the braids of the challah in the bottom of the basket.  This is the largest bialy we have ever attempted and flipping it over was sight to be seen.

The 5 recipe changes I made to Eric's Favorite were minor ones.  First one was to use 95 g of the challah poolish in place of yeast in Eric’s dough.  We only had 2.5 g of caraway so I added a like amount of coriander.  We added 1 g each of red and white rye malts to improve enzymatic action, the rye flavor and color – while Eric wasn't looking.

My apprentice used caramelized onions and the water from it and the deglazed pan instead of re-hydrating minced onions as Eric recommended.  The flavor and color of caramelized onion should make this as exciting as Eric wrote about using onion and the water from it in this bread.  He wanted everyone to give this option a go!

I also didn’t have any first clear flour and have never seen any, so we tried to replicate it using David Snyder’s ideas on how to do so from another thread by using some WW mixed with AP and bread flour.  We don’t know what it should look like but David’s advice is usually spot on.  I don’t think Eric would have minded theses changes.

Method changes included using French slap and folds for both of the breads - for about 12 minutes.  Eric’s Favorite Rye was a two slaps and one fold process since the dough was so stiff and required the extra slap to stretch it out enough to fold over.  Eric was the one who got me doing French slap and folds and my breads have been greatly improved as a result.

2 sets of (4) S&Fs were also performed on 30 minute intervals for the first hour of development and then the dough was rested for an hour.  After shaping and putting the dough in the rice floured basket ,we let it proof for an hour before putting it into the fridge for a 15 hour retard.

This is not part of Eric’s method but we just ran out of time to bake it off and this was the best we could manage.  We fired up Old Betsy to preheat at 450 F with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming pans and a 12” iron skillet with lava rocks inside like David Snyder  sort of uses- while the dough warmed upon the counter for 40 minutes.  This is huge lump of dough, 3.8 pounds of it and it need lots of steam.

Once the dough went in and we threw a half a cup of water on the lava rocks as we shut the door and turned the temperature down to 370 F.  We decided to steam for 20 minutes instead of 10.  At the 10 minute mark the cracks had barely opened on the huge loaf and more steam was needed.

At the 20 minute mark, the steam was removed and the bread continued to bake at 370 F, convection this time, for an additional 26 minutes rotating it 70 degrees every 7 minutes until it registered 190 F in the center.  We left it on the stone for another 10 minutes with oven off and door ajar to crisp the skin before removing it to a cooling rack.

It browned up a dark mahogany color that was so nice I decided not to coat it with the corn starch and water mix.  Even the challah portion was the same color.  It blistered very well on the challah portion but not on the rye side for some reason?

It bloomed while cracking beautifully and at least looks the fitting tribute to Eric that we had hoped to achieve - at least on the outside.  Well, coundn't wait 24 hours to cut into it since showed promise and smelled tantalizing.  The crumb was soft nice and moist and medium open especially on the rye side. 

The taste would be straight Jekyll if there wasn't a Hyde Side.  One bite is a fine Jewish Rye with subtle caraway and coriander hints, the next a straight Shabot Challah and then comes a half and half combo bite.

Here are the formulas should you want to make a Chacon for Eric.  I sure enjoyed doing so and we learned much from this baking experience. It was great time to reflect, day dream a little and think about the past, present and future.

The sunset was very niuce the day we baked this bread.  I think someone really important knew a nice one for Eric was in order.

Eric’s Jewish Deli Rye – Eric’s Favorite Rye

After the difficult and tedious Not So Stollen bake earlier in the week, we decide to continue our Thanksgiving bake list with something much simpler, less stressful even if not as enjoyable.

After seeing Toady Tom’s fantastic large miche bake and the excellent crust he managed to put on it, we decided to do a large loaf too only using the chacon shape we love to make since it too can produce a beautiful crust if it naturally splits where we would like as it springs and blooms in the oven heat.

We also wanted to try out a toasted wheat germ, soft white wheat extract and oat bran component similar to Toad’s to see what it tasted and looked like in the chacon.  All but 10g went into the dark side.

Instead of using our recent 1  starter and 24 hour counter levain development we went back to our roughly 20% seed levain for the SD starter required for this bake.   One levain was Rye Desem combo SD for the heartier darker portion of the loaf that has 2all of the whole grains listed for the starter. 

The other levain was a YW one that was fed with cake meal, another new ingredient for bread making for us.  Many folks use this ground matzo altus for their lemon, poppy seed walnut cakes or possibly a chiffon cake of any number of possible flavors.  We decided to try it out in the whiter portion of this bread only to see what it tasted like and how it performed in two different kinds of bread.

The instant coffee and the cocoa were only used in the dark portion to, you guessed it, make it darker than the light colored portion.  We also used some yogurt whey water for some of the liquid in both portions with 2/3rds of it going into the dark side.  The sprouts were also split between the two sides in the same proportion as the whey water - 2/3rds to the dark. 

In order to finish the breakout, the white portion ended up being 500 g with 100 g of the AP and bread flour and 80 g of the whole grains in the bread flour and 10g of the toasted bits.  Total flour and toasted stuff was 290 g and the liquid was 210 g (42 g whey) for a little over 72.4% hydration not counting any of the 1/3 of the sprout total that went into it.

With the malts, oats, and potato flakes on in the dark side the hydration of it was 82%.

The fun part was putting together the largest chacon we have ever made.  The center knotted roll is made from the light side and the side going down into the basket is sprinkled with rice flour.  It was surrounded by a twisted rope from the dark side.   The 4 other knotted rolls, on the cardinal direction points, were made from equal portions of dark and light that were ropes twisted together to make one rope.  The 4 little balls between the 4 twisted knotted rolls were from the light side.  Remember to rice flour anything that will touch the basket so it doesn't stick - and don't rice flour anything else so it sticks together.

What was left over was two light ropes that were placed on the spread out remaining dark side.  The long sides of the dark were folded over the light ropes to encapsulate them making a long rectangle.  The shot sides of the rectangle were folded over to the middle making a near square where the corners were folded into the center making a circle that was quickly shaped as a boule.

This boule was pressed out gently into a large bialy with the center indentation equal in size to the circle of knotted rolls, ropes and balls already in the basket.  The large bialy was floured around the edge that would contact the basket with rice flour and flipped over so the indentation covered the knotted rolls and the assembly was basically flat on top when finished. 

We hope this assembly will make a very pleasing marbled look when the chacon is cut.  Otherwise it was a waste of time and effort…something every baker is well used to if they have been baking more than a couple of minutes with an apprentice that is nearly all paws, bark and ankle bite.

The levains were formed by mixing, letting them double over about 4 hours or so and then chucking them in the fridge for 24 hours to build the labs while suppressing the yeast.   The flours and toasted bits were autolysed with the liquids and the salt for 2 hours as the levains came back to room temperature a day later.

Once the autolye and the levain were combined for each, the gluten was developed with 15 minutes of French slap and folds.  Then 4 sets of S&F’s wee done fpor each where the sprouts were incorporated on the 3rd set.  The dough’s were allowed to develop for 1 ½ hours on the counter before being retarded in a36 F fridge for 15 hours.

They were allowed to warm up for 1 ½ hours before being formed into the chacon and the allowed to proof at room temperature for 2 hours before firing up old Betsy and her16”round stone,  to preheat at 500 F for 20 minutes before 2 of Sylvia’s steaming pans were added.

After 45 minute of total pre-heat the chacon was un-molded easily from the basket using parchment and peel.  It slid into the oven off the peel when a 1/2 C of water was thrown into the bottom of the oven for extra initial steam and the door closed.  The temperature was turned down to 450 F the steaming was done at the 20 minute mark when the pans were removed and the temperature turned down to 425 F, convection this time.

In another 20 minutes the bread was exactly 205 F in the middle and beautifully and evenly brown from rotating it 90 degrees on the stone every 5 minutes after the steam came out.  At the 40 minute total mark, we turned off the heat and left the oven door ajar as the chacon continued to crisp on the stone for another 10 minuets before removal to the cooling rack.

The chacon didn't spring all that much and might have been a little over proofed but it did bloom and crack as expected.  It is a very pretty large chacon and we can’t wait for it to cool down and rest for awhile before we cut it ....   and see if anything interesting happened inside.

Now that it is cut..... the light and dark did learn to play well together.  We are pleased that it is so pretty on the inside and fitting for such a gorgeous outside.   The crumb is fairly open for so many add ins and whole grains.  The dark is tangy sour while the white is a little sweet, maybe sue to the Cake meal, has no tang and is a little moister as YW tends to impart in crumbs everywhere.  A very nice combination of two tastes.  The toasted bits tend to come through more on the dark side and the millet crunch is prevalent throughout.  This bread will have to to to the top of the chacon list and into the top 15 of our all time top 5 favorites.  I'm glad we made a big one.

Formula

  10 g each of instant coffee and cocoa went into the dark side only.

In the beginning of the fall, I took my boys with me on a small trip to Vääksyn mylly, a small mill at about 150 kilometers from where I live. It's the mill of choice of Viipurilainen kotileipomo, the family run bakery I visited earlier this year (and featured in issue 2 of my magazine, Bread), and the owner of the mill is my friend on Facebook. 

The mill has a strong feel of old days. This is how buying flour must have been like in the past, I thought: friendly people asking you what kind of flour you had in mind, seeing where the flour comes from as you enter the shop. And apparently I'm not the only one impressed by what they do: when I said I had come from Helsinki, the mill's staff told me that it's not that far compared to some other customers. One customer had just visited from Lapland and brought big bags of flour with her. 

I bought 5 kilos of rye flour, 10 kg bread flour, some oats and "uutispuurojauho", a very coarse rye flour meant for porridge making and returned home eager to try the flours. 

I started by trying to make my regular white sourdough bread using the bread flour from the mill, and noticed that there was something very different about how the dough behaved. I knew the flour is strong in protein, but this was much stronger than I had expected. I worked the dough for a long time, until I got tired and gave up. Without a machine, making a dough with nothing but this flour seemed impossible. I think Dan Wing or Alan Scott talked about this in Bread Builders, saying that strong flour is not very good for sourdough bread... What surprised me however was that even a long autolyse didn't seem to help. 

After experimenting with different ratios of this bread flour and some organic white flour I had used before, I found a combination that works very well. Using just 200 grams of bread flour from Vääksy, 100 grams of coarse rye flour from the same mill, and 800 grams of the organic flour, I was able to create bread I really liked: 

At times, I was ready to give up, but I guess now I understand better than ever that if all flour is not created equal, and what is good for something (making dough with a mixer in this case) is not good for something else (mixing a dough by hand).

But at the same time, I'm still not quite sure about this: I had previously bought some of this same flour from a small local food shop near the mill and made bread with it quite succesfully, replacing only a small part of the flour with spelt... There could be differences in batches, or maybe some other factor in the environment or even my starter was affecting the results? 

--

The next step in my flour experiments came by surprise when I visited Eat & Joy Maatilatori, a local food market at the heart of Helsinki and found their flour mills! At the back of the store, I found a small room with about 10 different flour mills meant for home use. Next to the mills they have big bags of grains, a scale, and a note saying "feel free to use the mills to grind your own flour." I had found heaven!

So far, I have visited the shop twice, as it's always a bit of work to take my kids and go flour shopping in Helsinki. Last week, I bought some rye flour and full grain wheat from the shop. Here's the bread that came out of that visit. 50% of the flour used in the bread is stone ground wheat flour I milled myself at the shop and the remaining 50% regular organic white flour. It's quite dense but tastes delicious with a rather strong wheat flavor (it's amazing how much darker and more flavorful this bread is compared to bread I've made from regular, store bought full grain flour before).

I should really be experimenting with heat and oven improvements, but my head is bubbling with ideas for more flour experiments... Maybe next, I'll mill some more flour and try sifting it to a higher extraction level, or maybe I'll mix in some of the strong bread flour from Vääksyn mylly...

I based this recipe loosely on an old yeast based recipe I had created many years ago which always came out nice and light and moist.  I wanted to make a nice light and airy sourdough loaf using whipped egg whites and cream cheese for a nice flavorful texture.  I like to think my bread making is much more sophisticated now than 15 years ago when I first made this recipe.  Back then I was not into sourdough yet and had just graduated from the bread maker to a Kitchen Aid stand mixer.  Now, I prefer bread that has layers of flavor and a nice chewy crust.

In order to accomplish my goal of a light and airy bread but with a nice crust and layers of flavor I used wheat germ, malted wheat flakes and oat flour to give the finished product a nice nutty flavor.  I used a combination of French style flour and European style flour from KAF along with some white rye and potato flour as well as some raspberry balsamic vinegar.

I have to say the end result was exactly what I was hoping for and more.  The crust is perfect with a nice airy open crumb and the taste is nice and nutty but light.  The malted wheat flakes add a nice element in the crumb as well.

This is a perfect bread for just about anything so I hope you give it a try.

I used my standard 65% AP starter for this recipe.

Directions

AP Starter

227 grams AP Flour

71 grams AP Seed Starter

151 grams Water at Room Temperature (80-90 degrees F.)

Mix ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly combined.  Cover the bowl and let it sit at room temperature for around 8 hours.  The starter should almost double when ready to proceed.  You can either mix in final dough or put in refrigerator for at most 1 day before using.  If your kitchen is warmer than mine which is usually about 70-72 degrees with my air-conditioning you can proceed sooner.

Main Dough Ingredients

425 grams Refreshed AP Starter (65% hydration) from above

150 grams European Style Flour (KAF, you can substitute bread flour with a little whole wheat mixed in)

50 grams Wheat Germ

200 grams French Style Flour (KAF, you can substitute AP flour if necessary)

50 grams Oat Flour (KAF)

50 grams White Rye Flour (KAF)

65 grams Potato Flour

40 grams Malted Wheat Flakes

224 grams Softened Cream Cheese (1 Package)

132 grams Egg Whites (4 large eggs)

25 grams Raspberry Balsamic Vinegar

16 grams Seas Salt or Table Salt

343 grams Water at Room Temperature

Procedure

In the bowl of your mixer using your beater attachment whip the egg whites on the highest speed until stiff peaks are formed.  Set aside while you mix the main dough below.

Mix the flours, and malted wheat flakes and wheat germ with the water in your mixer or by hand for 1 minute.   Next fold in the egg whites by hand and let it rest covered in your bowl for 20-30  minutes.   Next cut the starter into small pieces and add to the flour mixture in the bowl and also add the oil, salt, cream cheese and vinegar.  Mix for 4 minute to incorporate all the ingredients. I mixed on speed #1 for 3 minutes and speed #2 for 1 minutes.   Note this is a very wet dough but resist the urge to add too much flour as you don't want the dough to become too stiff.

Next take the dough out of the bowl and place it in an oiled bowl or container.  Do a stretch and fold and rest the dough uncovered for 20 minutes.  After the rest do another stretch and fold and cover the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes.  Do one more stretch and fold and put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and let it sit at room temperature covered for 2 hours (if it is already in a bowl just make sure to cover it).   (Note: since this dough is very wet, I did 2 extra stretch and folds in the bold and one additional one right before putting it in the refrigerator).  After 2 hours you can put the dough into the refrigerator for 24 hours or up to 2 days before baking.    I baked the bread about 24 hours later.

The next day (or when ready to bake) let the dough sit out at room temperature for 2  hours.

Next, form the dough into your desired shape and put them in floured bannetons, bowls or on a baking sheet and let them rise covered for 2 hours or until they pass the poke test.  Just make sure to not let them over-rise.

I made one large boule and used a basket with a floured linen liner.

When read to bake, score the loaf as desired and prepare your oven for baking with steam.

Set your oven for 500 degrees F. at least 45 minutes before ready to bake.  When ready to bake place the loaves into your on  your oven stone with steam and lower the temperature immediately to 450 degrees.    When both loaves are golden brown and reached an internal temperature of 200 degrees F. you can remove them from the oven.  Since this was one large loaf it took about 55 minutes to bake.  (Note: since I made one large Miche I had to lower the temperature to around 425 degrees F. with about 20 minutes to go so the crust would not get too dark).

Let the loaves cool down for at least an 3 hours or so before eating as desired.

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 

Round one of this fight can be found at this blog post.

The problem I had the first time was insufficient hydration. I certainly solved that problem...

I changed a bunch of things around this time, resulting in a far superior flavor (IMO), but going completely overboard on hydration to the point that it was more like ciabatta than bread. Here's what I did:

• First, instead of the spelt poolish, I mixed 1 ounce of my KA New England sourdough starter at 1:3:3 with whole milled spelt. After that sat overnight, I fed it again roughly 1:1:1 to get the volume for my poolish.
   
• Second, I made a soaker with water, all of the durum flour, and 100g of the spelt flour that was called for in the final dough. I didn't sift any of it -- though I did sift to 85% the final addition of spelt the next day. The soaker sat on the counter overnight. I did add the yeast called for into the final dough, so it wasn't a 100% sourdough fermentation.
   
• Third, I added a bunch of extra water to get the hydration up. Too far up, as it turned out. As you'll see below, the dough just spread out after having stuck to the banneton...

The taste came out fantastic. I still have half a loaf of the first round I baked of this, so we could do side-by-side tasting. It's not as sour as something done without any commercial yeast, but the tang is still there. So, for round three, I'll repeat everything except the flood of water and see how it comes out.

To me, the pinnacle Panettone. Formula comes from Iginio Massari.

This is the most challenging formula for Panettone, hence why I have been so drawn to it. I rise to technical challenges. I followed the formula, timings and temperatures without compromise.

Iginio Massari’s formulas typically use only 25% natural yeast and cooler temps for the first dough. The result, more flavour… I can still recall that familiar aroma after the first rise. So aromatic!

Oven spring was huge. I didn’t know when it was going to stop… Lasting nearly 20mins.

The taste and texture was perfect. I made the choice to use super strong Canadian flour to get that fluffy character I was looking for. A clean taste, not a hint of acidity or sourness. Just sweet, light, fluffy goodness, natural and nutritious.

The volume increase from dough to finished product was about 6 fold. All that lift created by my natural yeast...
 
Here it floats in water fermenting away. Beloved lievito 2.0! 

-Michael