I've been working hard to find the ideal rustic bread.  It seems I could build the flavor profile I liked but never got the crust and crumb like I wanted.  I recently made a starter and my first sourdough loaf was a revelation:  incredible crackly crust, huge holes, chewy crumb. 

It's not as sour as I'd like but I think I found my ideal rustic bread.  The questions is, does sourdough get most of its flavor from cold ferment?  Currently this bread is a 3-day build:  starter build from mother starter on the first day, dough mix and first proof on the second, overnight in the fridge, and 2nd proof and bake on the third.  Because of the long rise times, and since I work full time, I can't mix dough and proof twice before baking or I'd be up all night.  Is there a way to cut down on the time involved, or do I accept that good bread takes time?

Okay, one more pic.  Man, I love this bread!

-Peter

http://psoutowood.vox.com

I titled this post Bake Home as sort of a portmanteau of back and bake, as I am back home from Alaska and this is the first chance I've had to bake! My girlfriend and I had a little tradition going, I'd head down to her house and make bread on sunday to share with her and her sister's dog. Well, she's gone up in Alaska now, but I headed down to bake (and make sure her/her sister's dog got some bread too).

Today was a triple threat from Bread Baker's Apprentice, Italian Bread 2 ways (commercial yeast and sourdough) and Portuguese Sweet Bread.

I spaced out a bit when I was making the commercial yeast Italian Bread and added an extra cup of water (the recipe calls for 3/4 cup to 3/4 + 6 tablespoons... OOOPS). I didn't realize this until much later, so I added more flour in while mixing it, but I didn't want to add too much because I'd be WAY off the recipe (oh if I only knew...). So I tried to give it a number of folds hoping that'd make it pull together, it did a bit but it was still a very wet dough. I proofed the loaves using parchment as a couche (as well as a new brotform I got for my birthday!). Turned out I didn't flour the parchment quite enough so when I turned them over onto another parchment on the peel... they stuck. Was no big deal, I was able to pull it off without too much trouble, but it was becoming really obvious the hydration on the dough was higher than it should've been.

We used to buy a sourdough bread that had Jalapeno and Cheese in it that we really liked. When I saw in bread books formulas for Bacon and Cheese I thought why not Jalaneno, Bacon , and Cheese? I was right on track with that question as the bread really does taste great. Here is a picture of the finished bread.

And a picture of the crumb.

The bread got really good reviews at work. You can read how I made it here. http://oakflatsourdough.homeunix.com/index.php/2009/Bread/jalapeno-bacon-and-cheese.html

I recently made some sour rye bread using Mark's recipe from The Back Home Bakery. I posted the complete photo step-by-step on my blog here if you want all the dirty details, but here's the final product;

I'm not totally sure the crumb is as open as it should be, although it's about 36% rye to 64% AP and is a 63% hydration dough. It seems just a wee bit too tight, but maybe that's just me. I'm thoroughly happy with the taste (and pretty dang proud of finally getting good slashes!) so if this is indeed "pretty much spot on" then I've got no complaints.

Can anyone suggest what one might do if that isn't what the crumb texture is supposed to be? 

Hopefully even a word from Mark would be great but I assume he's got a day job that keeps him busy. And "day" is pretty subjective here, from what I've been seeing lately ;) 

Normally, I'd include the recipe but since Mark has taken them off his site after going into business full swing, I don't want to be giving away the shop secrets.

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Seeing as rye breads are all over this place nowdays I decided to share some loaves I have baked the last weeks. First up is the 80% rye with soaker from Bread. This bread is really great! I made two of these 850g breads and they lasted a week each, with some saved in the freezer for the next time I make the Horst bandel black pumpernickel.

This is how one of the loaves looked when ready for cutting. A little overfoured I have to admit..

I am really fond of the cracks that appear when you make properly proofed rye breads. When I cut the loaves open I found a much more open crumb than what I am used to when handling this kind of high percentage rye, to me the crumb looks more like a 60% rye than an 80%. This combined with a robust rye flavor made for great open face sandwiches with cream cheese and chives. Who whould say no to that?

I also baked some "american pumpernickel", I do not really know what classifies a bread as pumpernickel though. This loaf is a 40%rye made with finely ground rye flour with some ground up caraway and fennel added, the color is homemade caramel coloring. The tomato is a tomato..

OK I am pretty sure I can...  I do have a couple questions, (at the end)

So, I have been eyeballing the BBA Potato cheddar & chive recipe, as well as some sourdough recipes and beer & cherddar recipes from this site.  So, I am trying to combine all 3.  I got a Saranac Brown Ale, nice dark & hoppy flavor and mixed it with enough flour and inactive starter, now called "hoochie momma" to get the sourdough cultures going.  I keep Hoochie starved until I want to use her, she works harder for the food that way.  OH YEAH!!! but that's another story.

Everything is active and I plan on making the final dough/bread/rolls tomorrow.  At present, I have ....341g beer (all of my liquid),170g potatoes,250g flour.  It was nice and bubbly when I put it in the fridge tonight..

I figure I am shooting for 60-65% hydration dough, based on my ingredients(limited at 341g of beer), I will need 300-350g more flour, which is 530-575g total flour.  From the BBA formula which calls for (2.8%salt/130%flour)=3.64%salt/flour(overall) for formula.  I got 130% flour from 60% 100% hyd biga + 100% flour.  So based on ~550g flour, I need 20g salt?

So, questions are, Is 20g salt for 550g flour reasonable?  Is 60-65% hydration reasonable (BBA formula is ~63%).  Lastly, at what point should I add the cheese, tend to knead via slap & fold, then maybe a stretch and fold or two in the bowl.

Thanks in advance and pics to follow. 

Rick

Hi,
I usually bake a yummy buckwheat rye honeycake, but I would like to try a sourdough version. Does anyone have any tips or recipes for sourdough cake in general? Or specifically, honey? If it needs fat, I would prefer to use oil rather than butter or margarine.
Thanks,
CR

I've been a longtime reader (lurker) of the The Fresh Loaf and haven't really had the chance to bake for a while, oven use when it was hot out just wasn't working, I was really busy with work, etc. But I recently jump started myself back into it with the BBA Challenge, and the realization that my girlfriend didn't care about me using the oven at her house!

Last weekend I had a chance to show my Sister how to bake with a natural levain. She asked if I would bring some starter when we came to visit so I brought a batch of Pain Au Levain mixed per SteveB's post a while back. It has 90 grams of rye in the flour mix and I like the combination.

I built the levain the night before we left and the dough on that morning, mixing by hand. I had a chance to fold it after about 1 hour of fermenting and then it went into the cooler for the 3 hour drive. When we arrived, I placed the dough on the counter to warm back to room temp and folded again. It was showing signs of developing gluten but hadn't doubled yet.

At around 4 PM I shaped and left it to proof for 45 minutes. It was slashed and brushed with water and baked in a gas oven at 460 for 30 minutes. The spring was OK but the crust looked pale and maybe gray instead of the usual orange brown caramelized tone I usually get. It was the first time I have used a gas oven for bread.

So I am wondering if anyone who uses gas to bake in has had a similar experience? I didn't steam as I didn't have anything preheated to pour the water inn and I didn't want to toss water into the floor of my Sisters oven. LOL

I suppose it could be I just let this ferment so long that the sugars were consumed, hence the pale crust. Any takers on this?

The other reason I'm concerned about the gas possibility is that I am thinking about replacing my gas cook-top and electric wall oven with a gas stove/oven combination.

Thanks in advance.

Eric

Much of the bread you can buy in shops in Italy remains remarkably good. Some things, though, aren't available, at least not nearby. One of those is rye bread. So I resolved to make some this weekend, using a recipe for Heidelberg Rye from the 1973 edition of Bernard Clayton Jr's The Complete Book of Breads.

Conclusion: A fine loaf, but I do need to internalise that stuff about watching the loaf not the clock. If I can do it while the bread is in the oven, why not while it is rising?

More pictures here.

The first task was to convert Clayton's volume measurements to weights. Time consuming but worthwhile. My strong (Manitoba) flour averages 140 gm a (8 oz.) cup, the rye a little lighter, but I decided to use the same conversion factor. So here's the list of ingredients with my conversions.

1. 420 gm All-purpose or bread flour (3 cups) I actually used 345 gm, allowing for the flour in the starter.
2. 420 gm rye flour (3 cups) I used 100% rye, stoneground, biological, Demeter brand.
3. 2 packages dried yeast. I used 150 gm of my sourdough starter, freshly fed at 100% hydration, based on an approximation of 10% starter.
4. 20 gm cocoa (1/4 cup)
5. 1 tablespoon each salt and sugar (Didn't weigh. Used 15 ml measure, demerara sugar and fine table salt).
6. 1 tablespoon caraway seeds. (Small Italian dictionaries give comino for both cumin and caraway. The real thing is carvi.)
7. 480 ml hot tap water (2 cups). Bizarrely, my 1 cup measure is marked 250 ml, but contains 240 gm of water. I actually used 405 gm, allowing 75 gm from the 150 gm of starter.
8. 100 gm molasses (1/3 cup)
9. 2 tablespoons shortening. I used peanut oil.

Clayton says to mix half the flour with all the other ingredients for about 3 minutes "until the dough is a soft mass and is no longer wet and sticky". Got there using a wooden spoon, but it is a stiff dough even with only half the flour, and a pretty exhausting three minutes it was. Then adding the flours, white and rye, in 70 gm lots, trying to stir them in. After about 210 gm I switched to the spatula to cut the flour into the dough, and when I had about 70 gm of rye left I turned the dough out onto a wooden board to knead.

Slowly I worked the rest of the rye into the dough, kneading all the while, for about 8 minutes. Clayton says "finally it will become a soft velvety dough, a delight to work". That's possibly stretching it a bit (haha) but it did become soft, not sticky and OK to work, but it didn't have the elasticity of a pure wheat dough. Maybe that's because I used whole rye.

Now here's where things went off track. Clayton says to cover the dough and let it rest on the work surface for 20 minutes before shaping the loaves. I did, but it changed not one whit. He doesn't give any indication of doubling or anything in this recipe, not at this stage nor for the shaped loaves, and so I thought it best to leave the dough resting until it had at least risen somewhat. In the end, even after 3 hours at 29℃, it was very hard to see any movement at all, but my timetable required me to shape the loaves -- one round and one long one that I put in a parchment-paper loaf tin. Then into the fridge they went, brushed with olive oil and loosely covered with a plastic bag.

This morning I did as Clayton suggests, heating the oven to 400 ℉ (Gas Mark 6 on my oven) and bringing the loaves out of the fridge 10 minutes before they were to go in. Slashed them with a wet ceramic knife, and in they went.

I resisted the temptation to peek for the full 30 minutes, as advised, and when I did I was very pleasantly surprised by how well they had sprung. Too much, in fact, clear evidence of under-development, I think. Clayton says check after 30 minutes for that elusive "hard and hollow sound". I prefer a thermometer, and mine barely reached 150 ℉. I gave it another 10 minutes, then another, then a third, which was perhaps five minutes too long as the internal temperature had somehow climbed to just above 200 ℉. Out of the oven, onto the rack, and ready for their close-up.

Three hours later, lunchtime, and time to cut. Great smell of caraway, good fine crumb, moist, a hint of chocolate (which gives the lie to Clayton's claim that "the chocolate's contribution to taste is so slight as to go unnoticed) and a very definite molasses sweetness. All in all, a great success. A tad too sweet for my normal taste, although I think the molasses flavour is really good. I wonder, might it be a good idea to get rid of the tablespoon of sugar -- I mean what is it going to offer to the dough that 100 gm of molasses doesn't? The cocoa? I like the rich dark colour, but if it can barely be tasted, what's the point? And finally, it might be better if the dough sat in an oiled bowl, rather than on the counter, until it had doubled, or at least risen noticeably?

All good thoughts, which I may try when I repeat the recipe. I'll also be looking for a good caraway-rich light Jewish rye.