A Busy Weekend of Baking
Many loaves for friends this weekend! My most consuming experiments were with 1) loooooong room temperature autolyse, and 2) pate fermentee as all of the leaven in a loaf. Unfortunately, I don't have crumb pictures for all loaves. The plight of the gifted loaf.
For this dark chocolate chunk levain, I did a 12-hour autolyse of only flour and water, added levain at 5% of the total weight, carried out a 12-hour room-temperature bulk fermentation, retarded for 12 more hours, shaped and proofed in the refrigerator for another 10 hours:
Much shorter autolyse for this olive and herb levain:
For these (my first-ever pointy/torpedo batards!) I mixed a full dough and then added a chunk of old dough about equal to 1/2 the weight of the flour in the recipe. In this case, that was 400 grams of old dough added to a recipe of 440 grams of flour, total. I have baked with pate fermentee 5-6 times now, and I've always been so, so happy with the speed of fermentation and the ultimate result.
And I can't stop finding opportunities to practice various approaches to batard-shaping (and various batard styles). So...here's a very long walnut and golden raisin sourdough torpedo I baked for a friend this morning, also having used the long room temperature autolyse (in this case, 6 hours). She's always great about sending pictures of the crumb:
Batards have a certain mystique to them. Pate fermentee does too. Gotta keep exploring!
Comments
Some very pretty loaves indeed ! Always a pleasure to see your progress.
What kind of hydration percentage are you working with ? Looks like you've got a great open crumb, and if that's from high hydration or just your gentle touch.
Congrats !
Oh wow looks amazing! Great job! I just baked bread too turned out excellent( just simple bread sandwich) I want to get different types of flours to do it like yours, here where we live in Korea they don't have that kind of flours ( so i have to order them here ... anyway what kind of flour are you using in your breads ?
Thanks to both of you!
lepainSamidien, I've been mostly working between 76% and 82% hydration (the more whole grains, the higher I try to go). The walnut and golden raisin loaf was 80% hydration, with about 20% whole wheat.
Zarina, I really have not explored nearly the range of flours others on this forum have (and do, on a weekly basis!). I work with KAF all-purpose as my base, and then use KAF whole wheat, Arrowhead Mills sprouted whole wheat, Bob's Red Mill rye, and Whole Foods whole wheat pastry flour. That is the extent of my flour experimentation to this point.
There is wonderful new-ish North Carolina mill called Carolina Ground, and I hope to order some flour from them in the near future. I'm baking such a volume that I really have to only use specialty flours as "character-builders" for my loaves, or I'll end up without money to pay my other bills!
Love the long cold bulk ferment and proof.experiment. The shaping is coming right along too. Well done all the way around and
Happy baking
As all have said these are really beautiful loaves. Seem like fun experiments and I can imagine some great flavor! Thanks for sharing.
What wonderful patterns, outstanding flavors and fantastic crumb. You really outdid yourself on your weekend bakes. Congratulations and continue to share. Best, Phyllis