vermont sourdough

Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Grain

I felt like baking something new this weekend, but I like the breads I make most often. That's why I bake them most often. So, I wanted something I would really like as much as those, but different. I settled on the Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Grain from Hamelman's “Bread.”

In the sidebar of this recipe, Hamelman talks about the “two small changes” in this formula compared to the “regular” Vermont Sourdough resulting in “surprisingly large” effects. The two changes are an increase in the whole grain flour from 10 to 15% and in the pre-fermented flour from 15 to 20%. These changes result in “a sharper tang and more or a whole-grain taste.” Well, that sounded terrific.

Then, I recalled the errata sheet for “Bread” that Paul (rainbowz) got from Jeff Hamelman and shared with us. I consulted it and found that the corrections decreased the pre-fermented flour which seemed in conflict with the description in the sidebar. Not having a clear sense of how to deal with this discrepancy, I ended up using the ingredient amounts as printed, resulting in a larger batch of dough than that printed in the book.

The Vermont Sourdough with Additional Whole Grain was made with KAF Bread Flour and 15% KAF Medium Rye Flour. It had 20% pre-fermented flour in the form of a 125% hydration starter fed with a mix of 70% AP, 20% WW and 10% whole rye flour. The total dough was 65% hydration. The loaves were scaled to 810 gms and shaped as boules.

The oven was pre-heated to 500ºF on convection bake for 60 minutes, with a baking stone on the middle shelf, pushed to the left, and a 7 inch cast iron skillet filled with lava rocks at the right front of the lower shelf. The oven was pre-steamed by pouring about 1/3 cup of boiling water over the lava rocks. The loaves were then transferred to a peel, scored and loaded onto the stone. Another ½ cup of water was poured over the lava rocks and the oven door quickly closed. The oven was immediately turned down to 460ºF, conventional bake. The skillet was removed after 15 minutes, and the oven was re-set to 435ºF, convection bake. The loaves were baked for an additional 25 minutes. Then, the oven was turned off, and the loaves were left on the stone with the oven door ajar for another 7 minutes before being transferred to a cooling rack.

I baked this bread as part of an experiment to see if I could reliably produce a crackly crust. My results were most satisfactory. (See Consistent Crackly Crust Conundrum Conquered?)

Crackly Crust

The crumb was fully aerated but without huge holes - good for a 65% hydration sourdough.

The crust was crunchy with a caramel-like nutty sweetness. The crumb was tender-chewy. The flavor had both a sweetness and a moderately assertive sourness. This is a bread that is quite sour, but there is a lot of complexity that also comes through. I'll have to make it again, but based on today's bake, I prefer it to the "regular" Vermont Sourdough.

 

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

 

Two old friends ...

Vermont Sourdough

My scoring was inspired by Shiao-Ping's most recent miche.

Vermont Sourdough Crumb

San Joaquin Sourdough

San Joaquin Sourdough crumb

Now, the difficult decision: Which to use for our dungeness crab sandwiches for dinner. Aha! My wife has spoken: "Both!"

David

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.

 

 

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

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.