Sourdough

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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.

After watching David Snyder develop his SFSD and baking it several times it tuned out to be as good as his San Joaquin and Pugliesi Capriosso.  All 3 are fine SD breads but each is a little light on whole grains that we love so much around here for taste, as well as, health reasons.  We would like to get to at least 25% whole grains in most of our breads.

The problem is that the more whole grains you put in, the more likely the big holes are going to disappear.  But Empress Ying has no problem getting big holes in her famous 36 Hour Baguettes - even with 40% whole grains.  Both David and Ying are amazing bakers - really!

So, we feel that with a little luck we should be able to get some decent holes in some SF style SD bread with up to 40% whole grains but, we realize that we won’t get the holes Ying or David manage to coax out their breads - at least not in this lifetime or even on this planet for that matter.

We decided to start with 15% whole grains made up of equal amounts of Spelt, WW and Rye and work our way up over time to 40% whole grains and see what happens.  We started out with 72% hydration on the initial bake and will up the percent as the whole grain increases.  We like the flavor that these 3 whole grains bring to SD breads.

We used 15 g of our Desem and Rye Sour starter and made one build to 175 G of levain over 6 hours.  The levain ended up being 20% of the total weight of the dough - a percent that we like to build to for a 12 hour 37 F retard.

We also did a 3 hour autolyse with the salt, water and flour.  After the levain was hand mixed into the autolyse, we did 10 minutes of French slap and folds and then allowed the dough to rest for 30 minutes in an oiled plastic covered bowl.  We then did 3 sets of S&F’s on half hour intervals.  We stopped each set when the dough started to resist the stretch.

The dough was then pre-shaped into a boule and allowed to rest for 10 minutes before final shaping and placing seam side up in a floured basket.  It was immediately placed in a trash can liner, end closed with a rubber band and placed into the fridge for a 12 hour retard. 

The next morning the basket and liner were removed from the fridge and allowed to come to room temperature and the finish proofing – about 3 hours total.  I’ve used this basket several times before, with much wetter dough but this time the dough pushed itself out through the lower set of  holes for some reason.

It made for a more difficult dough removal and I had to sort of rotate the dough and basket as I jiggled and pried the dough out gently.  It did deflate a little bit but I was surprised that it didn’t really deflate like a higher hydration dough surly would have.  We slashed it in a triangle shape with a non serrated paring knife and will never use a single edge razor blade again.  We tried a different method for each slash.  The first one was 30 degrees and ½” deep trying for an ear, the 2nd was 45 degrees a ¼” deep and the 3rd was 90 degrees and 1/8” deep trying to get bloom.  All 3 worked out great for once as the pictures show.

We chucked it with peel and parchment onto the stone in the 500 F preheated oven (45 minutes) with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming pans.  We also tossed in 1/2 C of water into the bottom of the oven as we shut the door.  We immediately turned the oven down to 450 F.

At the 12 minute mark we removed the steam, turned the oven down to 425 F convection and baked the bread for another 10 minutes turning it 180 degree on the stone every 5 minutes.  At the 22 minute mark it registered 208 degrees.

We turned the oven off and let the boule crisp on the stone for another 10 minutes with oven door ajar.  It hit 210 F while crisping.  We removed it to a cooling rack and let it sit for 1 ½ hours before slicing. 

This is the best looking inside and out and best testing SFSD bread we have ever manage to bake.  The spring was very good.  The crust went soft as it cooled, was well blistered and was a beautiful shade of reddish brown.  The crumb was open, soft and moist.  The taste was tangy sour but not overly so – just delicious.

Can’t wait to start the next bake upping the whole grains and hydration to see if we like it better but this bread will be hard to beat.  It is nice when a bake comes together so well.  Thanks goes out to David Snyder for his work on his fine SFSD version 4 that this bread was based on.

I know I've been slacking on the posting lately, so here's my pictures post of some recent breads I've done.

Dmsnyder's SF sourdough take IV (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27892/my-san-francisco-sourdough-quest-take-4)

Changes: replaced all flour for Central Milling's type 70 high extraction flour.  Bulk ferment pre-shape instead of post-shape.  Baked in a dutch oven.
This one turned out quite sour, not quite boudin-sour, but still very nice.

Monkey Bread:

Using my house sweet dough, balls of dough are dipped in butter then rolled into chopped walnuts and raw sugar.
Baked into a bunt pan covered in butter and sprinkled with sliced almonds.

xfarmer's sourdough Croissants: (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23342/croissant-sourdough-starter-txfarmer-vs-tx-summer)

They came out a bit toasty, my oven runs a tad hot.  Made a few into breakfast sanwiches.  Sharp cheddar with egg and ham, served with some nice coffee (dab of cream)

Yesterday when I woke up and saw Phil’s post on Word Bread Day I knew we had to get cracking in order to get some kind of bread at least started on this world wide day devoted to bread.  Phil’s and Ying’s fantastic posts this week using figs seemed like a good place to start - not that my attempt would add up to half of their masterpieces.

Phil’s had anise and Ying’s had hazelnuts top go with the figs.  We can’t find hazelnuts for sale locally but we did have pistachios - one of the most overlooked nuts to include in breads.

Method

We also like sprouts and got some rye, WW and spelt berries soaking for 3 hours first thing even before we got the SD levain started and then got them sprouting between paper towels covered in plastic wrap.

This levain was a Desem and Rye sour SD combo since we combined our seed for both into one 4 days ago.  The levain totaled 220 g and used whole rye, WW and whole spelt for the flours.   The levain was a single stage build of 4 hours when it doubled.  The levain was 18% of the total weight and 40% of the total flour weight – pretty much our recent standard.

While the levain was building we also did a 4 hour autolyse of the flours (whole rye, spelt, wheat and some AP), salt and the 2 malts with the liquids, in this case water and a little coffee.  The 35 g of coffee was left over from breakfast and we hate throwing anything away food or drink wise.  We can’t find any difference in the bread of when the salt goes in the autolyse - before or after - so we have been putting it in at the beginning or at the end if we forget to put it in the beginning.

Once the autolyse and the levian came together we did French slap and folds for 10 minutes before resting it for 30 minutes in an oiled Tupperware tub.  We then did (3) S&Fs on 30 minute intervals and incorporated the add ins during the last S&F.  We like combining the two gluten development methods when there is a higher percentage of whole grains, over 42% in this case and higher hydrations 83% here.

Once the 2 hour fermentation with S&F’s was complete we put in the fridge for a nice cool 37 F retard of 14 hours. In the morning we warmed it up for an hour before pre-shaping and final shaping it into a boule and placing it seam side up in a well floured basket.  This is a sticky dough so some flour on the hands really helps in this regard.

Once shaped and in a basket we bagged it in a trash can liner and let it final proof on the counter for 2 hours before firing up Old Betsy to 500 F for a 45 minute pre-heat with 2 of Sylvia’s steaming Pyrex loaf pans with water and towels in place.   Total final proof was 2 and ¾ hours and it had risen above the basket.  

When we went to un-mold the dough on a parchment covered peel the basket slipped and half the dough never made it to the peel.  We tried to lift the part that didn’t make the move with a scraper and slide it further on the peel while sliding another piece of parchment under it but the middle stuck to the peel.

The middle of the loaf deflated and we should have immediately turned it into a Fendu since the middle was the most severely disfigured.  We slashed it instead and tried our best to get it off the peel without doing further damage.  But alas, 2/3rds the height in the basket disappeared as it was pulled apart to spread faster than oil in a hot iron skillet.

Still, the bread managed to recover to half its basket height in spring while under steam for 15 minutes after turning the oven down to 450 F when the bread went in.  At the 15 minute mark the steam was removed and the oven turned down to 425 F - convection this time.

Every 5 minutes the mishap prone boule was turned 120 degrees every 5 minutes there after over the next 15 minutes until it read 208 F in the center when tested.  The boule was allowed to rest on the stone in the now off oven and the door ajar for 10 minutes to crisp the skin.  It was then removed an allowed to cool before being used a Frisbee by my apprentice and her buddies in the back yard, well she wanted to play with it .... 

This bread smells great, looks unusual and the crust is unique as a result of the harsh un-molding technique that we will definitely use more often to coax some individuality and character in out breads.  Plus we are already tired of having stuff turn out perfect every time now that peace and perfection have broken out in the world after Bread Day!  This bread plain tastes amazing.  The anise is subtle but comes through.   The sweet figs go so well with pistachios.   The crumb, even though the holes were 1/3rd what they should have been still is light and airyand it  just looks stunning with the contrast between the 2 kinds of figs and the green pistachios.  This is one of those breads we make over and over again.  Thanks to Phil and Empress Ying!  Well done you two!

We originally made this bread for the dentist but am now unsure how much more pain I sould suffer over this bread.   If it cuts well and has at least one hole bigger than a pea, then we will cut off the best part for the Pain Miester and take our chances.  So this bread is called Pain Maître douleur - Pain Master Bread.

 Formula

Just made the Rich Sourdough Barches from Inside The Jewish Bakery for the first time.

The dough is a bit wetter than I am used to for Challah, but still manageable.

The taste and texture are great!

Thank you, Stan and Norm!