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Another winning recipe I adapted from "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book" - my main change is to use SD starter instead of dry yeast, changed fermentation schedule accordingly, and used more water. This my first time baking with bulgur, why did I wait for so long? They are fragrant, full of flavor/nutrients, AND easy to work with. Do note that bulgur is different from cracked wheat, the former has been par-cooked, and the latter has not, which means they require different method of cooking. To make it more confusing, stores often label bulgur as "cracked wheat".

Sourdough 100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread with Bulgur(Adapted from "Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book")

Note: 15% of the flour is in levain

Note: total flour is 415g, fit a 8X4 loaf pan. For my Chinese small-ish pullman pan (shown in picture), I used 385g total flour. For mini loaf pans in the picture, I used 138g of flour each.

- levain

ww starter (100%), 17g

water, 29g

ww bread flour, 54g

1. Mix and let fermentation at room temp (73F) for 12 hours.

- soaker

bulgur, 64g

water, 90g

molasses, 17g

2. Mix and bring to boil, set aside before start mixing the dough. By the time it's incorporated into the dough, it would've been soaked for at least two hours.

- final dough

ww flour, 353g (I used KAF)

water, 121g

butter, 17g, softened

salt, 5g

milk, 150g

honey, 17g

all levain

all soaker

3. Mix together flour, water, milk, honey, butter, salt and all levain, autolyse for 40-60min. Knead until the gluten has just been developed. More kneading will be done later, so do not fully develope the gluten network now.

4. Rise at room temp (74F) for 2 hours. Punch down, add soaker, and knead until the dough is very developed. This intensive kneading s the key to a soft crumb, and proper volume. The windowpane will be thin and speckled with bulgur grains, but NOT as strong as one would get form a white flour dough. For more info on intensive kneading, see here.

5. Put in fridge overnight.

6. Take out dough, punch down, divide and rest for one hour.

7. Shape into sandwich loaves, the goal here is to get rid of all air bubles in the dough, and shape them very tightly and uniformly, this way the crumb of final breads would be even and velvety, with no unsightly holes. For different ways to shape (rolling once or twice, i.e. 3 piecing etc) see here.

8. Proof until the dough reaches one inch higher than the tin (for 8X4 inch tin), or 80% full (for pullman pan). About 4 hours at 74F.

9. Bake at 375F for 40-45min for the big loaves, only 30min for the mini ones. Brush with butter when it's warm.

Don't be fooled by all the visible grains, the bread is NOT tough, nor dry, nor hard

It's soft and full of flavor

I live it lightly toasted, so fragrant! Still got enough bulgur left to play with, cant wait.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

I've been out of the loop for sometime now, and indeed, this may be a brief 'coming up for air.'  I have a new job baking at a restaurant which provides the breads for itself, its sister restaurant, and another adjacent restaurant.  Right now we mix and bake about 600 - 800 lbs of dough per day, but that will increase as summer nears.  In addition, our restaurant group is planning on opening two new locations in the area between now and September, so our production requirements will increase substantially in the coming months.

Our major doughs are ciabatta (we'll bake 250- 300 lbs of 1 lb loaves per day, plus a couple hundred small 'ciabattinis'); pain au lait which is used for hamburger, slider and lobster rolls; English muffins; loaf breads (rye, white, multigrain), and a line of hearth breads we're just in the process of rolling out for retail sale at the restaurant.  And then there's homemade biscuits and cinnamon buns for Sunday brunch.

So I'm finding myself both overjoyed at the opportunity (we may be getting our own bakery built toward year's end) and overwhelmed by all that's happening.

Today, on my day off I practiced a bake of a new biscuit recipe.  And then decided to keep some long-neglected promises to provide croissants and pain au chocolat to my doctor's office (which has, over many years, provided 'no charge' treatment and advice on occasion) and the head chef at my local pub who provided my last 50# of KA Sir Galahad gratis.  It is a good thing to repay debts - particularly debts of kindness.

The recipe I used can be found here.  It's an adaptation of Dan DiMuzio's in his excellent textbook (as opposed to cookbook), Bread Baking. My only deviation was to up the butter content by 5% (it was convenience, not conviction).

The dough I made last night, and this morning I incorporated the butter block.  I gave the dough two series of single-folds, followed by a double-fold.  It was refrigerated for 20 minutes between the butter block incorporation, two-single folds and double (book) fold.  I then placed it in the refrigerator for 3 hours to chill well, before my final manipulation.

After 3 hours I removed the dough, which measured about 7"x 16" and cut it in two unequal parts, leaving me with one piece 7" x 10" long and one 7" x 6" approximately.  One I returned the the fridge and the other I proceeded to roll out to a rectangle about 14" high by 21" long.  After lightly flouring the surface I folded the dough top to bottom, to form a rectangle 7" x 21".  From this I cut out triangles of 4 1/2" width. 

The first batch of dough yielded 14 croissants.  The second piece I rolled out to a height of 8" and a length of 18".  I again folded it width-wise and cut in into 3 1/2" lengths, yielding 10 rectangles for the pain au chocolat.

Proofing was 3 1/2 hours, which is fairly lengthy, but my house temperature was at about 70 degrees F, so I allowed it to proceed at its own pace.  I covered the croissants and pain au chocolats with plastic wrap during final proof, but did not apply eggwash until just before placing them in the oven.

Bake was, following DonD's recommendation, 15 minutes: 5 min at 425F, 5 min at 400F, and 5 min at 375F.

In future bakes, I want to up the recipe amount: I think my current dough yields croissants that are a wee bit smaller than I'd like them to be.

Ok, bedtime at 8pm for risetime at 3am.

Best to all-

Larry

My wife and I are beginning to learn the techniques involved in baking bread. So many new terms to learn, so many steps to master. We appreciate this forum as the readers here have already helped us tremendously.

Our question now is the difference between starter and preferment. We were advised to use a preferment to create more flavor and possibly larger holes in our foccacia loaves. While reading about preferments we came across the term "starter" which we had heard before. We thought starter was only used in sourdough bread.

Can someone describe these two aspects, and point us to literature or websites that would be helpful in our journey to the percfect loaf?

Another weekend baking with 20% rye bread. This time I made the bread using white starter. I still continued retarding the shaped loaved overnight. I was aiming to reduce the sour flavour in the bread I made last weekend (same 20% rye and retardation, but with rye sourdough starter).

I also added chia seeds into the dough. Chia seed was turned into gel after they were soaked, and the gel turned into liquid when baked (I believe). This made the bread really moist and chewy. The bread turned out nicely with good oven spring. I was happy with the taste using white starter. It didn't have the same strong sour flavour as last week's.

I baked two loaves, one in pan and the other as a free-standing loaf. They were both baked at the same time, same temperature. It's widely recommended to bake the bread in loaf pan at slightly lower temperature (to get the softer crust and not to overbrowning them, perhaps). However, baking the loaf-pan at the same temperature as a hearth bread worked fine for me as well. The crust was soft with a good oven bloom. The crumb was also relatively open and moist. I believe it worked as the bread is lean bread, without sugar or fat. So, it didn't have any overbrowning issues as a result.

I also tried new steaming method from Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread book. This steaming method was in the baguette baking section. He suggested this method as the baguette won't fit into the combo cooker. Soaking wet towels were place in the tray while the oven is preheated. The wet towels are removed after 15 mins of baking. I combined this method with my usual, boiling water in cast iron pan. This method had created a lots, lots of steam. So much so that my smoke alarm went off, and kept going off everytime I opened the oven. It also gave a nice shiny crust, shinier than usual for me.

For a full post and recipe, you can find it here.

 Sue

http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com