Two Leavens, Some Wholegrain and a Commercial Mixer. Nigel's November Baking Day
Two Leavens, Some Wholegrain and a Commercial Mixer
I wanted to use my new [very old!] 20 Quart Hobart dough mixer as soon as possible, so made a dough from the flour I had available today, after building both my rye sourdough and wheat levain over a couple of good feeds.
I only had around 40g of each culture in stock, but built each one with a feed Tuesday and Wednesday evenings to give me a working amount to build a great final dough today, Thursday.
Details are given below:
Material | Formula [% flour] | Recipe [grams] |
1 a. Wheat Levain |
|
|
Marriage’s Organic Strong White Flour | 16.67 | 400 |
Water | 10 | 240 |
TOTAL | 26.67 | 640 |
|
|
|
1b. Rye Sourdough |
|
|
Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour | 8.75 | 210 |
Water | 14.58 | 350 |
TOTAL | 23.33 | 560 |
|
|
|
2. Final Dough |
|
|
Wheat Levain [from 1a.] | 26.67 | 640 |
Rye Sourdough [from 1b.] | 23.33 | 560 |
Marriage’s Organic Strong White Flour | 12.5 | 300 |
Carrs Special CC Flour | 16.67 | 400 |
Allinson’s Strong Wholemeal | 18.75 | 450 |
Gilchester’s Organic Pizza Flour | 25 | 600 |
Bacheldre Organic Dark Rye Flour | 1.66 | 40 |
Salt | 1.83 | 44 |
Water | 44.17 | 1060 |
TOTAL | 170.58 | 4094 |
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|
|
% pre-fermented flour | 25.42 | - |
% overall hydration | 68.75 | - |
% wholegrain flour | 29.16 | - |
FACTOR | 24 | - |
Method:
- Build the 2 leavens as described above
- Firstly deposit the rye sourdough into the mixing bowl. Add weighed and tempered water to this, then add all the remaining flours. Leave out the salt and wheat levain, and mix for 3 minutes on first speed, using the hook attachment. Scrape down the bowl half way through the mixing time. Allow to autolyse for 1 hour.
- Add the wheat levain and salt and mix for 1 minute on slow speed. Scrape down the bowl, add a pinch of flour as needed, and mix on 2nd speed for 5 minutes. DDT 24°C
- Bulk ferment for 2½ hours, with one set of bold S&Fs after 2 hours.
- Scale and divide as follows: 2 @ 480g, 1 @ 960g, 1 @ 700g and the remaining piece, just short of 1500g. Mould round. Rest and prepare 5 bannetons. Re-mould and set upside down in the bannetons for bulk proof.
- Bulk proof time between 3 and 6 hours to fit schedule
- Bake in an electric oven with steam and on a stone. Cut the dough surface just prior to loading. I loaded each loaf to an oven pre-heated for 1 hour to 280°C. I used steam by misting the dough surface with water, and adding boiling water to a pan of hot stones on the base of the oven. The first 10 minutes the oven setting was 250°C, with the fan off. After that I lowered the heat to 215°C and switched over to fan convection on full power, and baked out each loaf. The 2 small loaves were baked simultaneously.
- Cool on wires
No wood in stock, which was a bit of a pain, given I had 5 loaves to bake off the same dough. Some loaves were proved in front of the fire, and some were held in the fridge for an hour to ensure smooth production schedule…that worked.
The dough was splendid! The mixer is a joy, and, the even fermentation at 24°C with gentle, but excellent development and generous hydration produced results as good as I could have hoped for.
Plenty wholegrain too!
The taste? I really rate this bread very highly. Let’s see what other local people think now…
Nigel's November Baking Day
On Saturday I managed to get up early for a change, so I could pay a visit to my friend and long time baking colleague, Nigel. It is actually all down to him that I ever got involved in the food industry, and baking in particular. Both of us were founder-members of the Red Herring Worker's Co-op in Newcastle, a business which Nigel had pioneered single-handedly for a few years already before we came together to create it as a formal business entity. That was way back in 1987!
Fast forward to our current situations, and we both seem to have wood-fired ovens built at our homes, and ready to use as an integral part to our imagined future destiny. Nigel, thank you so much for helping me to get my oven built in the first place. Apologies for not getting on board to help build your own monster; at the time I seem to remember having to defer my MSc for a year as teaching commitments at Newcastle College just about pulled me under a very big wave indeed.
Nigel's oven is a very big beast indeed. It gave me several big lessons when I went to help out on Saturday morning. Firstly there was well in excess of 100 loaves to bake. We also made a range of sweet and savoury pasties. Nigel had fired the oven hard the previous evening, and again from early Saturday morning [05:00] I arrived at 09:00 [he lives over 40 miles south from my home], and the oven was sitting happily at just under 350*C. We started baking at 11:00, just as we finished off most of the pasties, and moulded up a second batch of unbleached white loaves.
Well, it was a great chance to catch up with a lot of old friends. Some folks I hadn't seen for around 20 years. Other fellow "Herrings" came along, so too, Katie [of "Stout and Flax Seed Bread" fame] along with her Dad. It was a lovely sunny day, and I managed to grab some photos of Nigel's burgeoning bakery den, and he kindly took some snaps as I had a chance to set his lovely loaves, and to pull them, baked, from his wonderful oven.
Here's a few photos; you can see more on my flickr site, here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24731237 [7]@N03/sets/72157627995705763/
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Very best wishes to you all
Andy