Recent Blog Entries

When 3 separate ideas rush over me at the same time, well I'm helpless to stop the resultant activity. Recently I saw Larry produce some beautiful baguettes and the Margaritta star shape. That got me thinking.

Then Proth5 (Pat) posts about her new Bear-Guettes. A dual yeast French mix that has the promise of wonderful taste.

The final thing that pushed me over the edge was receiving a bag of Central Milling's Organic Artisan Baker's Craft (Malted) from a friend who knows I will put it to good use. 

With all of these positive influences popping at once, I decided to join them and try a shape I had never made with flour I had never used in a formula I had never played with. Sounds like fun, right!

First, I love the Bear-Guettes recipe. I get no sense of tang what so ever. Very mild sightly nutty flavor with a nice crispy crust. Thank you Pat, I agree with your Chief Tester.

The Artisan Bakers Craft flour is wonderful. I had excellent development and a smooth silky dough using hand mixing and a few of Bertinet's slap and fold and just one S&F after 2 hours. Thanks to my flour fairy! You know who you are:>)

The shaping and creation of the star shapes "La margueritte" was fun. Not as hard as it looks if you can count to 6 lol. Thank you Larry for leading the way on this. The second batch which was retarded over night turned out better and were more symmetric

I'm convinced that I want to obtain a decent amount of the CM Artisan Bakers Craft for use in my French breads. You can tell it is a quality milled product by the silky nature of the dough in such a short time and in a hydration level fit for straight formulas. I like to use one flour and get comfortable with the characteristics of it so I know what to expect when I toss a batch together based on the percentages I have in my head. This is going to be my new flour.I like the creamy crumb color.

Eric

Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, damn!

Not the most open Baguette dough ever but considering the handling, not bad.

Levain

30g starter @ 100% hydration

60g whole wheat flour

60g water

Allow to ripen 8 - 12 hours.

Final Dough

150g levain

275g water

450g bread flour

80g dried longan

8g salt

Mix together levain, water and flour.  Autolyse 50 mins.  Knead in salt.  Finally knead in chopped dried longan.  Bulk ferment for about two and a half hours with folds at 50 and 100 mins respectively.  This turned out to be a strong dough and probably didn't need the second fold.  Divide in two. Preshape.  Rest 20 mins.  Shape into batards.  Final proof, two and a half to three hours.  Slash.  Bake with steam for 20 mins at 230C and without steam at 200C (convection) for another 20 mins.

Dried longans are expensive and I stinted on them.  I should have chopped them up finer, too.  As it was, not every slice had fruit in it or, at least not enough.  I love the taste of dried longan and more is better.  As a result the slices with not enough fruit were bland and now I am already planning the next attempt.  Next time, apart from adding more fruit, I will add some longan syrup to see if that will enhance the flavor even more.

Boule

150g ripe starter @ 100% hydration

300g water

80g sifted whole wheat

20g rye

350g bread flour

3g diastatic malt

Mix together and autolyse for 50 mins.  Now add:

10g salt

Knead until moderate gluten development. Bulk ferment two and a half hours with folds at 50 and 100 mins respectively.  Pre-shape. Rest 20 mins.  Shape into tight boule.  Allow to proof until three quarters risen.  Retard overnight.  Remove from fridge and allow to complete proof: one to two hours.  Bake on stone @ 230C with steam for 20 mins and @ 200C (convection) without steam for a further 30. Switch off oven, crack oven door open and allow to dry out for a further 5 mins.

No crumb shot for the boule, yet but will update with one tomorrow.  This is just my standard everyday bread, so I know how this one is going to taste.

Syd

Feb 22:  Crumb shot.

This is my first bread from Beth Hensperger's book Bread Bible: 300 favorite recipes. What I liked when I browsed the book was that every recipe had hand mix instructions, and they seem well-thoughtout and reliable. This was going to be my first time making wheat bread. I had a few tries with white bread, but nothing too serious.

The bread that caught my eye was the Italian whole wheat raisin walnut bread. I found that I have become increasingly drawn to the nuttiness of whole wheat and multi-grain breads. When made properly, they have a delightful chewiness and sweet, concentrated flavor that sets it apart from white breads. The raisin and walnut combination sounded perfect to me.

The process for this bread was straight forward. The recipe calls for poofing the yeast, kneading and giving the dough two rises. Because I decided to start this recipe at 11pm at night, I decided to not wait until 5 am to finish the kneading in one setting. Instead, after the first raise I put the dough in the back porch, which I rated at about 20F at night, and will continue the second stage when I return from work the next day. The second day after I kneaded the dough I decided once again to sleep first and wait until third day to bake the bread. I crossed my fingers and hoped the bread turned out ok and not into a pungent fermented sourdough.

I finally got around to baking the third day. Mostly because it was the infamous blizzard and I didn't have anywhere else to go. Given that I had let the dough sit for two days without adjusting the yeast called for in the original recipe, I was expecting something that tasted like breaded sourkraut.

Here is the picture of the bread, sliced:

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw how beautiful the bread looked when it came out. The crust was even and chewy. The interior was moist and dense. It was obvious that the bread was slightly overly fermented as the bread had a sour tang and the air pockets reminds me of the yogurt bread. However, it was still one of the bread I ever tasted. The balance between the sweet raisins and crunchy walnut set in whole wheat bread was just perfect. I circumvented the sour problem by topping the bread with honey. The only other issue that I noted, besides the slight over-fermentation, was that I had to add a lot of flour (+ 1/2-1 cup) during kneading to prevent the dough from sticking too much. This threw off the sugar and salt balance slightly, and the bread did feel like it needed a bit more salt and sugar. Next time I may add a little less water to start with, and tried to follow the time instructed!

Amy

http://fromtarotopotato.blogspot.com/

I baked in pans this weekend.  No, there’s nothing wrong with my baking stone.  I just have freezers full of baguettes, miches and other hearth breads.   Also, I was (and am always) craving scones (using Breadsong’s technique).  My wife was urging me to make another whole grain-y sandwich bread.  And I wanted a good accompaniment for Pollo Cacciatore.  So, it was scones, Hamelman’s Oatmeal Bread and Reinhart’s BBA Focaccia.

Lemony-Cranberry Flaky Scones

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Breadsong wrote about flaky scones a couple months ago (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21414/flaky-scones-flavor-variations).  I had done a couple variations before (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21496/people-who-live-glass-houses-shouldn039t-stow-scones).  This time, I wanted to try a tart and fruity variation.  I looked at some lemon scone recipes to see different approaches to getting lemon flavor in scones.  Some use lemon zest, some use lemon juice, and some use lemon extract.  I used all three. 

I also added some dried cranberries, soaked in water overnight. I squeezed out the excess water in a sieve, but the dough was still too moist.  So I added some flour in the mix.  Next time I’ll reduce the other liquids.  The scones came out with the same wonderful texture as before, moist on the inside and crispy on the outside.  But they didn’t rise up quite as much.  And they could have had a stronger lemon flavor.  So next time I’ll use more lemon zest, or maybe candied lemon peel.

I followed Breadsong’s technique.  Here’s the formula I recommend, with the adjustments I mentioned above:

1 cups (5 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour

½ Tbsp baking powder 

1/4 tsp kosher salt

scant 1/4 cup golden brown sugar

2 ½ Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes 

1/2 cup chopped dried cranberries (soaked overnight in water, excess water squeezed out)

1 teaspoon lemon zest

Just less than 1 cup heavy cream (185 grams)

 2  Teaspoons lemon juice

1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

Half-and-half (for brushing)

But even though they could be improved, these scones were dang good.

Hamelman’s Oatmeal Bread

Having enjoyed making –and eating-- AW’s whole wheat bread last week, I decided to try another partially whole grain sandwich bread.   I chose the Oatmeal Bread from Hamelman’s Bread: with 25% whole wheat flour and 75% KAF Sir Lancelot.  Believe it or not, I made this bread exactly per the formula, with no variations.  Believe it?  Well, ok…I did substitute molasses for 1/3 of the honey, just because we love the dark, rich flavor.

The dough was fermented for one hour after mixing and kneading, stretched and folded, then refrigerated.  It almost tripled by morning.   Seriously gassy! 

 It proofed about 2 ½ hours since it had to get to the temperature the yeasties like.   The home-baking formula for this bread in Bread made enough for two loaves in 9 x 5 pans and six 3-ounce rolls.  The bread has a wonderful tenderness and a wholesome oatey-wheaty flavor.  It was excellent for a dinner of turkey and cole slaw sandwiches. This is a real good sandwich bread and I’ll bake it again.

BBA Focaccia

Monday night we are having dinner at home with a friend of a friend, who is a writer for the New York Times, and a serious foodie.  In fact, she wrote a wonderful book about the history of Chinese food in the U.S., called The Fortune Cookie Chronicles.  I’ll be serving Pollo Cacciatore, my variation on an excellent recipe Brother David shared.  I think one needs Focaccia to sop up the delicious gravy.

Since we are traveling back to SF from our North Coast getaway on Monday, and since the Pollo Cacciatore is best re-heated the second day, I made both the chicken and a Rosemary-Garlic Focaccia Sunday.   Well, more accurately, the Focaccia dough was mixed, fermented, folded, shaped and slathered with garlic-rosemary oil Saturday evening, and retarded in the fridge overnight.

I looked at a lot of Focaccia recipes and the BBA formula seemed like a good place to start.  I figure, if I’ve got the book, I might as well use it.  This dough is a monster—sloppy and hard (but fun) to manage.  After the third fold and a one-hour rest, it was like a big jiggly pillow.  It easily expanded to fill the 17 x 12 sheet pan.  When it had warmed a couple hours the next morning, it had serious eruptions.

I’ve never seen bread bubbles quite so large.  Like volcanos.

The crumb is airy and tender and the flavor is outstanding with a strong, but not overpowering rosemary and garlic flavor.

We also made fresh pasta today to eat tomorrow with Pollo Cacciatore and re-heated Focaccia.  Gonna be good.

All in all, a good cooking and baking weekend.  We also got some good hikes in, and enjoyed the varied animal and bird life of the North Coast.  Including a rare sighting of a Flicker right on our meadow.

Happy Presidents’ Day to you all.

Glenn