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July 13, 2019 - 10:43am
Benito's picture
Benito

40% Whole Red Fife Sourdough

I based my recipe on Maurizio’s Fifty-Fifty Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread.  I decided to lower the whole wheat just a bit.

For single loaf weight 750 grams 40% Red Fife

Weight

Ingredient

Baker’s Percentage 

151 g

Red Fife Stoneground

40%

227 g

White Bread Flour

60%

310 g

H2O @ 90ºF 

82%

9 g

Fine Sea Salt

2.3%

54 g

Mature Liquid Levain

14.14%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hold 50 g of water

 

Levain for single loaf weight 750 grams

Weight

Ingredient 

Baker’s Percentage

30 g

100% hydration starter

100%

15 g

Red Fife Flour

50%

15 g 

Bread Flour

50%

30 g

Water

100%

I started the Levain and autolyse at the same time.  With a room temperature of around 80ºF this ran for about 4.5 hours.

I then added the levain to the autolysed dough working it in using half of the hold back water.  Then sprinkled the salt on the dough and worked it in with the remaining hold back water.  

Next for 5 minutes I did slap and folds for the first time.  This was interesting to do and I think it might have been easier if I was making a larger loaf.

Bulk fermentation went for about 5 hours and I did 5 sets of stretch and folds during the first 2 hours or so.  

Once bulk was completed and the dough was bubbly I did an initial shaping.  After a bench rest of 20 minutes I shaped into a batard and placed in the banneton.  The banneton was put into a plastic bag and left on the counter for 30 minutes before placing it into the fridge for about a 16 hour cold fermentation.



After heating my cast iron Dutch oven in my oven for 1 hour at 500ºF I inverted the banneton onto a sheet of parchment and used a butter knife to remove excess rice flour.  I then spritzed the dough with some water and then scored the dough.  I quickly placed the dough into the Dutch oven and baked at 500ºF for 20 minutes.  I then removed the lid and dropped the oven temperature to 425ºF baking for a further 20 mins at which time I took the loaf out of the oven and placed on a baking rack.



This is the first loaf I have made that had any sort of ear, so I’m excited that maybe I’m getting a better handle on final shaping.  Hopefully I can build on this success and get even more tension on the skin of the dough to get even better oven spring and better ears in the future.

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July 13, 2019 - 9:23am
Isand66's picture
Isand66

Rose Wine Sour Cream Cherry Bread

I opened up a bottle of Rose wine from a local Long Island winery that I really enjoyed, so figured why not use it in my next bake.  I usually use a stronger full bodied red wine which also tends to add more color to the dough, but the lighter flavored Rose was a nice change of pace.

Cherries are nice and sweet from the market now, so instead of using dried cherries I pitted some fresh ones for this bake and cut them up into pieces to add to the dough.  The sour cream really help make this bread nice and moist.

Overall I was very happy with the outcome.  The crumb is moist and flavorful from the wine and sour cream.  The fresh milled spelt and whole wheat flours added plenty of flavor as well.  If you don't have any French Style flour, you can substitute bread flour or AP flour and this will come out just fine.

Here are the Zip files for the above BreadStorm files.

Levain Directions

Mix all the levain ingredients together  for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it sit at room temperature for around 7-8 hours or until the starter has doubled.  I used my proofer set at 83 degrees and it took about 4 hours.   You can use it immediately in the final dough or let it sit in your refrigerator overnight.

 Main Dough Procedure

Soak the cherries (if using dried) in the wine or water until soft and strain out.  If using fresh cherries, pit them and cut into pieces as desired.  Try to drain as much extra juice out as you can.  This dough was extremely hydrated from the sour cream and the extra moisture from the cherries.  You can easily cut back some of the water and wine to get an easier to manage dough depending on your comfort level.

Mix the flours  and the wine along with the water for about 1 minute.  Let the rough dough sit for about 20 minutes to an hour.  Next add the levain, sour cream and salt and mix on low for 4 minutes.  Add the cherries last and mix for about 30 seconds until incorporated.  Remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl or work surface and do several stretch and folds.  Let it rest covered for 10-15 minutes and then do another stretch and fold.  Let it rest another 10-15 minutes and do one additional stretch and fold.  After a total of 2 hours place your covered bowl in the refrigerator and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.  (Since I used my proofer I only let the dough sit out for 1.5 hours before refrigerating).

When you are ready to bake remove the bowl from the refrigerator and let it set out at room temperature still covered for 1.5 to 2 hours.  (NOTE: this dough really proofed up in my refrigerator and the spelt may have been the reason.  I only let it sit out for about 30 minutes at room temperature and then shaped and proofed for an hour at 78 degrees.  You will have to judge your timing so you don't get an over-proofed loaf.). Remove the dough and shape as desired.

The dough will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on your room temperature and will only rise about 1/3 it's size at most.  Let the dough dictate when it is read to bake not the clock.

Around 45 minutes before ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 540 degrees F. and prepare it for steam.  I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.

Right before you are ready to put them in the oven, score as desired and then add 1 cup of boiling water to your steam pan or follow your own steam procedure.

Lower the temperature to 450 degrees.  Bake for 25-35 minutes until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 205 degrees.

Take the bread out of the oven when done and let it cool on a bakers rack before for at least 2 hours before eating.

Some photos from the gardens for your viewing pleasure :).

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July 10, 2019 - 8:36am
webmanoffesto's picture
webmanoffesto

Knish with Sourdough Wrapper?

Answering my own question (partially)

My tests today seem to tell me that minimizing the rolling so that I get one layer of dough with enough overlap to seal the edge matters more than whether or not I use sourdough or the simple flour-water-oil-salt-BakingSoda recipe. 

I'd still like to hear opinions from other people.

-------

Hi,

Can I make a thin-dough knish using sourdough? Or should I use a baking-soda-leavened dough, or a simple flour-water-salt-oil version? The recipes online are often leavened with baking powder and say that you have to put it in the stand-mixer, which I don't have; or give it a good 10-15 minute kneading by hand, which I don't want to do.  I'm confused about sourdough vs. dough-with-baking-power vs. dough-with-no-baking-powder. At this point I'm tempted to go with Joe Pastry's "Traditional Knish Dough" which does use baking powder but does not require kneading. Would you give me your opinion(s) on how to proceed and get that thin dough covering?

I have a sourdough starter and I'm baking tasty sourdough bread regularly. Since I'm handy with making sourdough, I love that I can easily make a batch of dough with no kneading. Now I decided to make knishes and rather than the baking-soda-leavened dough I used my sourdough dough. I did that and the knish had a thick bready wrapper, it was more like a bread roll with a potato filling in the center. I think that "authentic" knishes have a thin dough wrapper.

One possible solution, when I made the knish I rolled out all the dough, spooned all the filling onto the dough in a line, and then rolled it up. I may have rolled it too many times, maybe 2 rolls (layers) would have been plenty. Or I could make the knishes using only one layer of dough, by making individual dumpling style knishes.

Below are just a few of the knish dough recipes I found online. 

Serious Eats, Potato Knish Dough, with baking powder

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2013/03/potato-knish-recipe.html 

  • 2 1/2 cups (12 1/2 ounces) all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice from 1 lemon
  • 1/2 cup water

The Spruce Eats, Knish Dough, no baking powder, but uses cream cheese, and sour cream?

https://www.thespruceeats.com/jewish-meat-knishes-recipe-1136321

  • 8 ounces butter (unsalted, softened)
  • 8 ounces cream cheese (softened)
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • 3 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose)
  • 1 teaspoon salt

Joe Pastry, Traditional Knish Dough, does not use baking powder and says to just mix the ingredients together and "Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough sit for an hour at room temperature to relax and hydrate." https://joepastry.com/2009/traditional_knish_dough/

Here's a Torta di Patate recipe and the dough is only flour, salt, water, and olive oil. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14878/torta-di-patate

 

Recipe Lion, Knish Dough, no baking powder

Thin-dough covered knishes

 Let the comparison experiments begin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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July 9, 2019 - 7:57am
kika12's picture
kika12

This traditional Kenyan bread is truly paradise.

This bread has been my favourite since childhood, it can be eaten as a desert, like bread or even as food. You can literarily combine it with anything you want. This bread is called mandazi and is very easy to make.  Please watch this miraculous recipe on youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LKrZiRuz6k

My lovely grandmom used to make this and I would finish this off after coming from school during the evening. I now want to share this memory with every member on this site...

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July 7, 2019 - 5:08am
Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Honeyed Spelt and Kamut with Bulgur

I have quite a stock of Spelt and Kamut berries and need to use some of them up. While searching, I found this impromptu recipe that I made over the winter for my daughter so I scaled it for three loaves and tweaked the method.

 

Recipe

 

Makes 3 loaves

 

Soaker:

65 g Spelt flakes

65 g Kamut flakes

65 g Bulgur

65 g honey

260 g boiling water

 

Levain:

60 g trice refreshed sourdough starter

30 g strong bakers unbleached flour

30 g home milled rye flour

60 g of filtered water

 

Dough:

720 g strong bakers unbleached flour

155 g freshly milled Spelt flour

155 g freshly milled Kamut flour

716 g filtered water

23 g salt

30 g plain yogurt

180 g levain from above

 

The night before:

  1. Combine the ingredients for the soaker and cover overnight.
  2. Mill the individual amounts of Spelt, Kamut and Rye berries on the finest setting possible. Reserve separately. 
  3. Be sure that your starter has been refreshed a couple of times already and give it one more feeding. In the morning, you need a total of 60 g of starter.

Dough making day:

Levain

  1. Early in the morning, add the water and flours for the Levain to the starter and let sit for 4 hours.

Dough

  1. About an hour or more before the levain is ready, mix the dough flours and the water together in a stand mixer on the lowest speed for a minute or two, and then let autolyse for an hour or so.
  2. Add the salt, the yogurt, and the levain and mix for a minute on the lowest speed. Then mix on the next speed up for 9 minutes. 
  3. Then add the soaker. Mix until the soaker is well distributed. Cover the dough and let rise in a warm place. My dough temp was 77F. 
  4. After 30 minutes, give it a set of stretches and folds until it feels quite firm.  Repeat in 30 minutes. 
  5. 45 minutes after that, do another set. Then let rise until total bulk fermentation equals 4 hours. By then, I see some large bubbles on the top and the volume has expanded by about 50-60%. 
  6. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~835 g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and let rest 30 minutes on the counter. 
  7. Do a final shape by flouring the rounds and flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities. Finally stretch the two top corners and fold over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make as tight boule as you can. Note that I had to move pretty fast as the dough started to get sticky the more I touched it. 
  8. Place the dough seam side down in rice floured bannetons. Cover, then refrigerate overnight.

Baking Day:

  1. The next morning, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for an hour. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully but quickly place the dough seam side up inside. 
  2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 22 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205F or more.

For fun, after the dough was mixed I figured out the hydration including all ingredients (counted in Bulgur and flakes as part of the flour) except for the salt, allowing 80% water for the yogurt and 10 % water for the honey, and came up with 83.4% hydration! ?No wonder it felt borderline sticky when I was shaping! 

On another note, I have been using cooking spray to oil my Cambro tubs for the autolyse and bulk fermentation. It really makes a difference for me when I am moving dough in and out of tubs to put into the mixer. I am not fighting to get every little bit out and makes clean up a breeze. Wish I had thought of this years ago!

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July 5, 2019 - 6:13am
BreadLee's picture
BreadLee

French fougasse - 50% hydration?

I've been making this fougasse recipe (confessions of a french baker) for a while and never thought about its hydration much.  Until now.  It always turns out nicely,  but how does it accomplish it with only 50% hydration? I 

Other fougasse recipes I see use the usual 68-75% hydration amounts. 

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July 4, 2019 - 7:18am
ifs201's picture
ifs201

Chai and Chocolate Chip Sourdough from Hotbake

Hi,

 

I followed Hotbake's lovely recipe with my own process and I also increased some of the amounts to get a larger loaf (in the future I'll probably make the loaf even bigger)

 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/60618/chai-and-double-chocolate-chip-sourdough

 

340g bread flour

30g whole wheat

20g rye

325g chai concentrate

 

60g honey

60g salt

80g starter

 

Method

1. Mixed 26g starter/26g water/13g bread flour/13g whole wheat flour to make levain and let it sit for 4 hours at 85 degrees

2. Make the Chai concentrate

- 300g milk

- 100g water

- 1 cinnamon stick

-1 tbsp ground ginger

- 3 slices fresh ginger

-3 cardamom pods

-1 tsp vanilla

-2 English breakfast tea bags

-20g sugar, 1/8 tsp salt, black pepper

Put everything but the teabags together and bring to a simmer, turn off heat, add teabags and 60g honey, and cover for 1 hour

3. Autolyse the flour and chai concentrate for about 3 hours

4. Do 70 slap and folds, wait 30 minutes and do 40 slap and folds (incorporating chocolate chips and 1 tea bag), wait 30 minutes and do 10 slap and fold. Now do 3 sets of stretch and fold over the next 1.5 hours. Total bulk fermentation of 4 hours.

 

5. Preshape, wait 20 minutes and did final shaping and put in fridge overnight (7 hours)

6. 1 hour fermentation on counter in the AM

7. 25 minutes at 450 degrees with lid on (on parchment paper on cornmeal as per the recommendation) followed by 20 minutes without lid and with dutch oven on a baking sheet

 

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July 4, 2019 - 5:56am
ifs201's picture
ifs201

fennel, apricot, cranberry, walnut levain

Hi,

 

I took inspiration from this fig and anise levain, but then swapped out the mix-ins and followed

my own process:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30486/comfort-food-%E2%80%93-fig-anise-levain-meringues

 

Levain

50g starter

58g water

100g flour (50/50 whole wheat and bread) 

 

Final dough

208g levain

787g bread flour

138g whole wheat flour

375g Mix of dried cranberry/golden raisin, apricot/walnut

15g fennel

712g water

50g schnapps used to soak dried fruit

20g sea salt

 

Method

1. Cut up fruit and soak in 50g of peach schnapps. Toast the walnuts. 

2. Mix levain and let ferment for 4 hours at 85 degrees

3. Mix flour and water and let autolyse over the same 4 hour period

4. Use pincer method to combine the flour, salt, and levain

5. Do 70 slap and folds, wait 30 minutes and do 40 slap and folds (incorporating fruit and nuts at this point), wait 30 minutes and do 10 slap and fold. Now do 3 sets of stretch and fold over the next 1.5 hours. Total bulk fermentation of 4 hours.

6. Preshape, wait 20 minutes and did final shaping and put in fridge overnight (7 hours)

7. 1 hour fermentation on counter in the AM

8. 25 minute bake at 450 degrees followed by 15 minutes without steam 

 

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June 30, 2019 - 2:07pm
Et480hawn's picture
Et480hawn

Sourdough Trouble

Long time lurker, first time poster. I've been attempting sourdough since December of 2018 with very few good results. I've read books and spent hours online and for the life of me I can't figure out what's going on. My levain is active and passes the float test prior to baking. I typically go for 75% hydration, 10 % whole wheat and about 1.8% salt. I have tried adding more and less lavain. I bulk ferment between 3-5 hrs and cold proof for 12 hrs. I bake in a ditch oven at 475F for 30 mins covered and 15-25 uncovered depending on how it looks. The past 3 weekends I am.having the same problem. The loaves rise unevenly...have a tight dense crumb and usually one big hole in them. Like a big pocket of gas expanded and left a crater. 

 

Am I underproofing? Overproofing? Is it my shaping? I will try and post a picture but honestly I just uncovered a loaf and threw it in the trash in frustration. My new years resolution was to bake bread or try to and this is the longest resolution I've kept up! But I am getting to the point where I feel like giving up. Baking has always been my Achilles heel. I can cook well and have worked in restaurants professionally but baking has always intimidated me. 

 

I used Ken forkish's book as a baseline btw. 

 

Any help would be appreciated greatly!

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June 27, 2019 - 11:12am
TwoCats's picture
TwoCats

Finally getting consistent batards with decent bloom, good caramelization, and open crumb

After years of experimentation, I think I'm finally starting to understand how to get the results I'm looking for.

Both of these doughs were prepared similarly:

  • 586g Central Milling ABC+
  • 53g semolina (Bob's Red Mill)
  • 53g whole wheat (Giusto)
  • 53g khorasan (Central Milling)

Autolyse this mix with 582g water for about 3 hours.

Hand mix in 150g mature levain (dome not yet deflated) and then do French folds on countertop. Let hang out for 45 minutes.

Add 18g salt and do French folds. Let hang out for 30 minutes.

Do 4-stretch and fold in bowl.

For every hour for the next 3 hours, do stretch and fold in bowl.

About 90 minutes after the last S&F, shape and put into the fridge and retard anywhere between 12 and 20 hours.

Take out next day, slash, and bake on pizza stone for 20 minutes at 485F, then lower to 450 and bake for another 20 minutes.

Interesting how these two doughs had different blooms given that they were the same dough.

The height of the dough that appeared to have less of a bloom on the first photo actually had a better spring, at nearly 4.5 inches.

I'm still working on shaping on the ends of the batard. They're always sloped this way. I'm not sure how to fix it, other than more tension.

Super happy with my open crumb, but not too open as to let butter slip through every nook and cranny.

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