The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

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venkitac's picture
venkitac

Use whole wheat flour in preferment or final dough? Why?

1. If I want to make a 50% whole wheat bread with a yeasted preferment, I'd think I should preferment all or most of the whole wheat. The reason being that the white flour is stronger, and using the white flour in the final dough gets you stronger dough and thus more volume. I could almost swear I have heard this chain of reasoning from some authority, possibly Didier Rosada, but I'm not sure:) (Most Rye breads with nontrivial percentage of Rye have Rye in the preferment, Rye has little gluten and so it makes sense that you save up as much of the white flour for the final dough to get strength). Same logic applies? Does this sound right?

2. Does sourdough change the equation? ie would you preferment white flour and use whole wheat in the final dough, if you are using an SD starter?

NZBaked's picture
NZBaked

Coconut Bread

Here is my quick yet delicious sweet coconut dough recipe.

White bread flour 75%

Dessicated Coconut 25%

Water 35%

Coconut cream 35%

Sugar 7%

Compressed Baker's yeast 2.5%

Butter 2.5%

Salt 1.2%

Improver/Softener optional

1. Add all ingredients to your mixer and mix until well developed.

2. Place dough on bench and divide into desired dough pieces and round.

3. 5min rest.

4. Flatten out dough pieces and shape into desired shapes.

5. Proof to height.

6. Bake @ 180degrees celsius

7. Glaze with sugar water as soon as removed from oven.

8. Icing as desired.

For scrolls I use a vanilla butter icing and raisins as a filling.

 

Elsie_iu's picture
Elsie_iu

Chocolate Goat Cheese Sourdough with Cashews (+Tom’s Alt Altus)

No. You didn’t read it wrong.

It’s goat cheese with milk chocolate. Not in their chucky form but melted into the dough. Confession: I absolutely hate the idea of chocolate cheesecake. I mean, both of them are heavenly food on their own but when combined together? Neither of them can be tasted. Well, to me at least. Many of you would disagree. Still, I’m not changing my mind. Then what’s up with this bread? The thing is, the thought of making chocolate bread came to my mind again yet I didn’t want to include any dried fruits (because I dislike the combo of chocolate and dried fruits as well…). Using nuts only seems a bit boring. Therefore a quick research was conducted and the goat cheese chocolate truffles caught my attention. I figured that the strong flavour of goat cheese might go well with the sweetness of milk chocolate so this bread is born.

 

 

Chocolate Goat Cheese Sourdough with Cashews 

 

Dough flour:

210g      70%       Whole spelt flour

90g        30%       Freshly milled oat flour

 

For leaven:

10g       3.3%       Starter

20g       6.7%       Bran shifted out from dough flour

20g       6.7%       Water

 

For chocolate-goat-cheese mixture:

68g        22.7%      Soft goat cheese  

33g           11%       Milk chocolate

 

For dough:

280g     93.3%       Dough flour excluding bran for leaven

116g     38.7%       Chocolate-goat-cheese mixture

196g     65.3%       Water

49g       16.3%       Whey

50g       16.7%       Leaven

15g           5%       Tom’s Alt Altus, powdered

9g             3%       Vital Wheat Gluten

5g          1.7%       Salt

 

Add-ins:

30g        10%      Toasted Cashews

___________

305g      100%       Whole grain

270g      88.5%      Total hydration (the chocolate-goat-cheese mixture should have added a significant amount of                                                               moisture as well)

 

Shift out the coarse bran from the dough flour, reserve 20g for leaven. Mix the rest back into the dough flour or soak them in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients for a minimum of 4 hours.

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until doubled, about 6 hours.

Bring a shallow pot of water to a boil. Turn off the heat. Cut the goat cheese and chocolate into small pieces and put them into a bowl covered by cling wrap. Place the bowl into the pot. Put on the lid and let steam until the chocolate and cheese are melted, about 10 minutes. Stir until smooth then set aside until needed.

Roughly combine all dough ingredients. No autolyse since it’s mostly spelt. Let it ferment for 6 hours. 

Fold in the cashews and let the dough rest for 20 minutes. Stretch and fold for a few times and let it rest for 20 more minutes. Shape the dough and put in into a banneton. Leave it on the counter for 20 minutes before retarding for 10 hours.

Take the dough out of the fridge and let it rest on the counter for 30 minutes. At the same time, preheat the oven at 250°C/480°F and pre-steam at the last ten minutes. 

Score the dough and bake at 250°C/480°F with steam for 15 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 205°F. Let cool for at least 2 hours before slicing.

There’s little oven spring as the dough is already fully proofed out of the fridge. The crust is very crackly and has a rather matt colour. I suspect that it has something to do with that uncommon addition of melted goat cheese and chocolate. The scoring is far from perfect but it’s already one of my better scores.

I failed once at making Tom’s Alt Altus: it was burnt completely. This time, the starter dilution was skipped so that I was left with a thicker paste. Also, the oven temperature was turned down to 300°F. And what’s the result? A great success! Thanks Tom for the brilliant idea! It surely added some toastiness and depth to this loaf.

This bread smelled divine when it’s baking. You can definitely taste the goat cheese so it is not one for goat cheese haters. It’s noticeably tangy but with a subtle sweetness from the chocolate. Unexpectedly, this closed-crumb loaf has a very crumby but also a porridge-bread-like texture. It’s something I’ve never had before.

 _______

Some pretzels made with a baked baking soda bath.

Ru007's picture
Ru007

(Mostly) White SD

 

Hello friends! 

Nothing fancy happening here today. I really like white sourdough bread, but, adding a bit of whole grains makes it taste better to me. So I figured if nothing fancy is happening inside the loaf, I would challenge some of the habits I had developed when making bread. Just try something new and see what happens, right?

 

 I reduced the levain that I would normally use in a loaf like this to 12% prefermented flour. I was trying to slow down the bulk fermentation and see what that did to the taste. I’m very happy with how this loaf tastes. Result!! 

 

 I tried a different shaping technique, from Trevor J Wilson's how to make tartine style country bread video. I enjoyed the process. Normally, I wouldn’t dare rolling up my dough like that and would go for less a aggressive shaping technique, but I did it and the sun still rose today!! I just need to practice getting the right balance between getting enough surface tension and being gentle with the dough. 

 

 Oh and I decided to get a little creative with the scoring, see the little forest on the side?! Okay, it wasn't really my idea. I got the idea from instagram (@brooklynsourdough). 

Considering that getting the dough out of the bowl was a bit of a disaster, I’m happy with the crumb. In hindsight I think I should have let the bulk fermentation go for another hour or so or maybe left the shaped dough out at room temp for a little while longer.

 

 

Here’s the whole formula:

 

 

 

 

Weight (g)

Final dough

%

Levain (80% hydration)

            93

 

 

Water

278

320

76%

 

 

 

 

Flour

370

421

100%

Unbleached white bread flour

295

              295

70%

Whole wheat flour

 75

                  117

28%

Rye flour

 

                9

2%

 

 

 

 

Salt

9

9

2%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total dough weight

            750

              750

 

 

 The method was pretty simple:

1. 1 stage 12 hour levain build. 20 g NMNF rye starter plus 50 whole wheat flour and 40g water2.

2. “Pre mix” the dough i.e. all the flour, water and salt is mixed the night before mixing chilled in the fridge for a few hours and set out to come to room temperature overnight.

3. I spent about 30 mins mixing the dough initially and then I did 4 set of stretch and folds, not quite hourly but they were done within the first 5 hours of the bulk fermentation. Then another 2.75 hours bulk fermentation (yes, things were slow because its cold here!)

4. Pre shape and let the dough rest for 30mins.

5. Shape and let the dough sit in the basket for about an hour before refrigerating overnight.

6. Baked at 250 dC for 20mins with steam and then at 230 dC for another 25mins.

Happy baking everyone! 

 

 

kneadvt's picture
kneadvt

Using a Commercial Deck Oven with a Steam System

I know, steam is a huge topic on TFL. To the best of my abilities I've searched the archives but have not found any discussion on steam usage in a commercial deck oven with a steam rig.

I have an ABS gas deck oven with individual steam units for each deck. Each steam unit has an internal allen bradley timer to determine how much steam is released when the button is depressed. The factory setting is about five seconds. There are also two temperature controls on each steam unit in the back which I believe to be boiler temp?

How long and at what intervals are people steaming for? I know this can be dependent on the loaf but is there any general sense folks have?

Thanks!

Our Crumb's picture
Our Crumb

Latest on nonceliac gluten sensitivity

Report in this week's Science magazine on a recent conference held at Columbia U.

Some researchers believe it's an immune response while others have data implicating poorly metabolized FODMAPS.

Illustration provided by supreme.co.za? :-)

Tom

 

digikid's picture
digikid

Spar 800 planetary mixer

I recently started using the SPAR 800 (7 quart) to knead wholewheat dough. Any other users doing wholewheat in a stand mixer can share their experiences. I use the sponge method.

 

Ittayd's picture
Ittayd

How to create levain that will ripe after 13 hours

I want to prepare the levain when I wake up and start making the bread after getting back from work. The average temperature is 28 Celsius at home (average, actually more like 30 for 6 hours and then 26 as the air condition is used). 
What should be the percentage of starter to flour ? What should be the hydration? (if possible, in numbers, to get 300g levain, so there's no mixup of what percentages mean, )

Anonymous baker's picture
Anonymous baker (not verified)

Ciabatta

BIGA:

  • 26g rye starter @ 100% hydration

  • 97g water

  • 127g flour (durum/bread flour mix)

 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 250g flour (225g durum/bread flour mix, 25g whole wheat flour)

  • 202g water

  • 7.8g salt

  • All of Biga

 

This was the final recipe I've adapted for a sourdough "biga" preferment (yes, I know it's not technically a biga but it was adapted from a yeasted recipe).

Picked up a lovely pasta flour by Dove's Farm which is a bread flour and durum flour mix. It's still very yellow so the durum percentage must be very high. The protein percentage of this flour mix is 14.3%. If anyone who lives in the UK finds it difficult getting hold of durum flour but has access to Doves Farm flour then this would be the next best thing.

The final hydration came to 80% and perhaps it's the flour, me or both but I developed the gluten so well I could grab hold of the dough and lift the whole thing up. 80% hydration with a very high percentage non wholegrain flour is well into the range of handling issues but it seems to be getting easier. It's all in the developing of the gluten. If developed well it behaves better. Still sticky but not impossible.

Made a makeshift couche with a kitchen towel and when finished proofing I flipped it over onto some foil. I made two and baked them one after the other. The first one (pictured) I accidently folded the ciabatta slightly when flipping it over. Wasn't sure how to go about it and it was my "practice run". The second one I flipped it over perfectly but it was over proofed. I should have refrigerated it but my makeshift couche made it difficult to pick up and manoeuvre.

While not perfect the taste is excellent. Lovely toasted (ignore the burnt bit in the photo). This as a recipe for ciabatta is a keeper. I might even try this as a loaf of bread.

Thank you to everyone in my first post for helping me on my way.

Elsie_iu's picture
Elsie_iu

(Not) Ian’s Cream Cheese Rolls

Apparently, these are inspired by Ian aka the King of Buns as referred to by dabrownman. As I can never allow myself to follow a recipe exactly, of course I have changed things up to show my own character. Unlike Ian, who blended the cream cheese with the dough, I put in chunks of cream cheese. Also, candied orange peels and sunflower seeds are incorporated to make the rolls more interesting. Rye flours are usually used along with orange and earl grey, yet to break the tradition, I chose to use barley flour (which resembles more of Ian’s rolls as well).

 

Earl grey cream cheese rolls with orange and sunflower seeds

 

Dough flour:

90g       30%       Freshly milled pearl barley flour

75g       25%       Whole spelt flour      

75g       25%       Whole red wheat flour

60g       20%       Freshly milled sprouted white wheat flour

 

For leaven:

10g       3.3%       Starter

13g       4.3%       Bran shifted out from dough flour

13g       4.3%       Water

 

For dough:

287g     95.7%       Dough flour excluding bran for leaven 

207g     68.9%       Water

52g       17.3%       Whey

36g         12%        Leaven

9g             3%        Vital Wheat Gluten

5g          1.7%        Salt

1g        0.33%        Ground earl grey tea leaves

 

Add-ins:

90g         30%       Cream cheese (I used 1/3 less fat)

30g         10%       Toasted sunflower seeds

21g           7%       Candied orange peels

___________

215g       70.5%      Whole grain

277g       90.8%      Total hydration 

 

Shift out the coarse bran from the dough flour, reserve 13g for leaven. Mix the rest back into the dough flour or soak them in equal amount of whey taken from dough ingredients for a minimum of 4 hours.

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until doubled, about 6-8 hours. Soak the candied orange peel in a little hot water to rehydrate.

Freeze the cream cheese for 1 hour. Cut into cubes and return to the freezer until needed.

Reserve 10g of the liquid and roughly combine all dough ingredients except for the leaven and salt. Autolyse for 30 minutes. Combine the reserved liquid with the leaven. Knead it into the dough along with the salt. Let it ferment for 10 hours.

Fold in the sunflower seeds and orange peels and let the dough rest for 20 minutes. Divide the dough into 6 equal portions. Fold the frozen cream cheese into the dough and shape them tightly into tiny boules. Leave it on the counter for 1 hour or until fully proofed. At the same time, preheat the oven at 250°C/480°F and pre-steam at the last ten minutes.

Score the dough and bake at 250°C/480°F with steam for 10 minutes then without steam for 15 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 205°F. Let cool for 1 hour before serving.

These rolls have chewy and moist crumb but a crispy crust when toasted. The crumb is not very open probably due to over-proofing (the oven was occupied so I couldn’t heat it up in time for the rolls!) but acceptable to me for rolls.

I adore the taste of these rolls! They taste mildly sweet thanks to barley, spelt and sprouted white wheat. Cream cheese, orange, sunflower and earl grey are such a killer combo! You get sweetness from cream cheese and orange, tanginess from cream cheese, toasty nuttiness from the sunflower seeds and whatever aromatic scent from the earl grey. 

 

Thanks Ian for inspiring such delicious rolls!

 

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