Finally I am finding (or rather taking) the time to post about my recent baking activities. And since I am still on vacation, but the semester starts next week, I'd better not rely on having more leisure then...

I have baked quite a bit with my sourdough starter (which is now about 4 months old, but has already spent five weeks straight in the fridge when I was in Switzerland - seems to have survived it well) and we all love the resulting breads. Here are some examples:

The classic Vermont Sourdough (Hamelman):

Susan from San Diego's "Original Sourdough":

Sourdough Walnut and Sultana Bread (recipe by Shiao-Ping):

This bread was absolutely delightful. I put all kinds of dried fruit (the big black spots you see are prunes). The only change I will make next time is to include a tiny amount of sweetness, a spoon or two of honey probably.

Pain de Provence (Floyd's recipe; herb bread, no sourdough):

Delicious! I made it with all sorts of fresh herbs from the garden, chopped very finely.

King Arthur's Monkey Bread (no sourdough):

By the time I got the camera, the kids with the visiting neighbour kids had already torn into it ...

And for good measure, two desserts.

Blueberry Pie with fresh Michigan berries:

And finally, Eclairs filled with Vanilla Pudding and fresh strawberries. They certainly didn't last long!

As I said in my introduction, I LOVE a certain Swiss bread and have been trying to recreate some kind of copy of the patented original. I'll do a separate post on how that is coming along.

It's been quite some time since I posted, but I wanted to share with you my new blog (about 6 weeks old only!) - I hope it is ok to post a link to it? If it is not, please let me know and I will remove this thread.

I started blogging because of he Bread Baker's Challenge that I joined in a moment of lunacy  :-)

Actually, I am loving it - and my baby blog will have a lot of bread in it, but not only bread. I just made a post on my favorite bread of all times, which is Hamelman's Vermont sourdough, we have it almost every weekend. I also have the breads from the challenge done so far, 10 of them, number 11 should come up on Wednesday or Thursday. Life is busy 

for those interested, stop by

http://bewitchingkitchen.wordpress.com

and the link to Hamelman's

http://bewitchingkitchen.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/the-bread-we-love/

This bread worked great for me. I used the starter from WGB instead of Hamelman's. I started the levain yesterday afternoon and this morning it looked and smelled just like it was suppose to. I was out of bread, so I finished the recipe, baked one loaf today and have one left that I retarded at noon in the refrigerator. (Let's see now, it's suppose to be good for 18 hours in the fridge at 42ºF. Now that was really good planning on my part because now I've got to get up at 5 am!)

I'm very pleased with the results. I did 2 stretch and folds and let the loaf proof for 3 hours, then baked it under a cloche on a stone for 10 minutes. It took 30 minutes total. I got a lot of oven spring, it has a nice open crumb structure and a pleasant sourdough flavor. I'm hoping tomorrow's loaf will be a little more tangy because I enjoy the sour taste.

--Pamela

I know many TFLers have made Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough, but this will be my 1st time. I've owned Hamelman's book for less than a month and the only thing I've tried so far was the Irish Soda Bread. I'm going to use one of my Reinhart starters, both of which are made according the the formula in WGB (one is WW the is white)--LindyD thought that would work fine. But Hamelman's methods are a little confusing to me, so I thought I'd put this post out for comment on and/or correction!

I'm going to make the liquid levain this afternoon and let it stand overnight.

Tomorrow, will be mixing. I'll add the levain to the remaining ingredients, mix it together briefly, and let it undergo autolyse for about an hour, put in the salt, and mix again.

All the above seems fairly straightforward, but the bulk fermentation phase is a little confusing. So everything is mixed up and then right away I do one stretch & fold, wait 50 minutes, do another stretch and fold, and then wait until 2 1/2 hours is up?

Then I shape and do the final fermentation in the refrigerator for up to 18 hours.

Baking: It goes straight from the refrigerator to the oven? No wake up time?

Thanks, in advance, for any help.

--Pamela

Yeah, it's been a fair while. Not that I haven't made bread, I have, numerous batches in fact. But they were really mostly "sandwich" bread and all basic yeast things; specifically "Susan's Farmhouse White Sandwhich Bead" but using part whole wheat. Not as tasteless as store bought "Wonder" type stuff (which they were meant to replace) but not terribly exciting, either. On the up side, these numerous plain breads allowed me to play with the oven's temp a bit and I think I have it tweaked to be pretty accurate now so things don't burn too much. So let's get on with today's bake.

Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough

"Today" is a bit of a misnomer, of course. I started this batch three days prior after feeding Audrey 2 and Carl out of a two week stint in the fridge. By their third feed they were back to bouncy and fluffy within 8 hours (I was off at work, so I don't really know how quickly they doubled). So this has been a few days process. The pre-build took a while - but thats' expected - then the fermentation period took the better part of a day and the final proof took over 16 hours of fridge time. This recipe is the Hamelman Vermont Sourdough which I got off here.

This time around, the dough was decidedly stiffer than the Norwich Sourdough I'd made which is a take off from this one. Not exceedingly stiff but stiff enough that when I slashed, it didn't all just collapse and make flat brad as the others I have previously made. (This is decidedly my fault for not yet knowing what the dough should be like and adjusting.) 

The crust is also more solid although it looks like it may have been a bit overdone here. The recipe says 460ºF for 40 minutes but I pulled it out at 30 as it was already rather dark. Looking at the bottom, it's a tiny bit burned, though just a small black stripe along the center. So the oven is still not 100% accurate. But the loaves' insides had reached 200ºF therefore it was done enough already.

I picked Audrey 2 as the starter for this one simply because as I was feeding the two starters, she seemed to bulk up the most - maybe 3 times vs Carl's 2.5 times. So both would have worked well. In fact, Carl seems to have a slightly stronger smell and taste. So maybe I'll give that one a try next in this recipe.

And here's the crumb. Nice mid-sized holes, not too fine or too big, the loaf shape is decidedly oval as opposed to pancake so we're good here. The flavour is nice although not terribly sourdough-ish. Perhaps it will develop a little over the next day or so. Although I expect the loaf may not survive long enough to see. The other one needs to go in the freezer as there are already a couple of types of bread on the counter.

All in all, this one is a success. We'll be making Hamelman's Vermont again.

Hi all,

I'll be making Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough again this weekend.  Is anyone interested in joining me and comparing notes?

You can find the recipe here: http://ostwestwind.twoday.net/stories/3707371/

I made this loaf for the first time last weekend and I finally feel like my bread starting to turn out pretty good.  I'll be concentrating on this bread for awhile, in an attempt to improve my skills.

I think the things that helped me out the most the first time I made this bread was I had refreshed the starter twice in the 24 hours before making the bread, instead of once in 12 hours.  I also followed Hamelman's instructions very closely and used a scale.

This time around, I'll be making the full home sized batch and one of the loafs will be a batard.  I've pretty much stuck will boules, but I'd like to improve my shaping skills. 

Please join me in making this delicious bread.  I really learn alot from reading other people's experience with the same recipe.

 Tonya

Hi,

I've been reading this site for a couple of months and have learned a ton. Thanks everyone for sharing.

I have a question about Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough. I recently got a scale and this was my first attempt at following a recipe with percentages.

I only wanted to make one loaf, so I converted the home recipe to grams and halved it:

My question is...from the threads I read about this dough is that it should be fairly stiff and mine isn't. It's pretty gloppy. After autolyse (45 min) and mixing in the kitchen aid on speed 2 for 3 or 4 minutes, I could see the gluten strands and it did change texture and cleaned the sides of the bowl, but it never really stiffened up. I had to scrape it out of the bowl and after letting it bulk ferment for about an hour and a half, I had to scrape it out again for the folding. It was pretty sticky.

I used KA AP Organic flour and Hodgson Mill's Rye flour. I'm just trying learn how the bread should feel and if this is stiff...wow.

That said, this is my best loaf to date and I finally got some oven spring, I think due to slowing down while following all the steps. I was trying to rush the part from slashing to in the oven because I was afraid it would deflate. I guess as long as it's not over proofed, it will be fine.