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varda's picture
varda

 

Way back when, Sylvia posted a pugliese with a lighter than air crumb.   I baked it once and loved it, then forgot about it.  Browsing through old bread pictures the other day I came upon a photograph of my old pugliese, and decided to try it again.    However, I couldn't leave well enough alone and follow the recipe.    Instead,  I tweaked it just a little.   

The original formula calls for poolish, and yet, there was ripe starter sitting on the counter with no label other than discard.   Should I discard it or did it have a place in this little pugliese?    The problem with using starter for a bread like this is that it takes up too much of the flavor room and masks the delicate taste of the durum.   A baking error one might say.   Not wanting to fall into this trap, I decided to use some of the starter, but handle it very carefully to keep the flavor nice and balanced.     

I fed the starter with some fresh flour and let it ferment for just long enough for it to start expanding, but not long enough to build up a heady aroma.    At that point, I mixed everything up, and proceeded as directed.   

This dough was very wet and somewhat difficult to handle.   I developed the dough by mixing at speed 1, 2, 3, 4 (!) in my Bosch Compact for a total of 6 minutes.    By the end, it had cleared the bowl but was very wet and sticky, and spread out again as soon as I let it rest.   I did stretch and fold in the bowl twice at half hour intervals, and for the third S&F after 30 more minutes, got my hands very wet and picked the dough up and suspended it and rotated it.  

I "shaped" the dough into a boule, which is similar to saying that one shaped a water balloon - more like a little prod here and a poke there, dusted it with durum flour and proofed upside down in a ceramic bowl.    It swelled up over the sides of the bowl (doubling in size) in an hour at which point it went into the oven unscored, as there was just no point in poking at it. 

It came out nicely - self scoring along the way - and had the subtle flavor I had hoped for, with a light, tender crumb and a  crisp crust.   All in all, a  pleasant flavor variation from the original but still a pugliese at heart.

 

Formula and method:

 Note:  fixed formula error - reversed amounts of KAAP and Durum in final.

Poolish / Starter

 

Feeding

Total

 

Seed

65

   

KAAP

39

45

84

 

Water

26

40

66

79%

   

150

 
     
 

Final

Poolish

Total

Percent

KAAP

73

82

162

65%

KA Durum

85

 

85

35%

Water

134

64

198

83%

Salt

4

 

4

1.9%

Yeast

2

 

2

0.9%

Poolish

146

   
     

factor

0.97

   

Total Flour

240

   

Dough Weight

445

   

Final weight

354

   

Shrinkage

80%

   

Prefermented flour

16%

   

 

Mix poolish. Ripen for 3.5 hours

Mix ingredients 6 minutes, increase to speed 4

Dough cleans bowl but still wet and sticky

S&F in bowl every 1/2 hour 3 times - final in the air

BF total of 2 hours 45 minutes - dough will have expanded

Shape into boule on counter dusted with durum flour

It is very squishy like a balloon

Proof in dusted bowl for1 hour - dough doubles

Bake with steam for 5 minutes (oven preheated to 500 then turned off)

then at 450 for 35 minutes

laureejeankissack's picture
laureejeankissack

Hi Everyone!

I am desperate, the new place we moved into has a convection oven.  I am not used to cooking in an electric convection oven and have not been having good results with my bread baking.  

Is there some way to control things better so I can get good results?

Help! 

 

Naomiyoheved

pmccool's picture
pmccool

The past two weeks have been rather more demanding than usual.  We had gone to Colorado Springs to visit our youngest daughter's family for the Easter weekend.  We were just a few minutes away from their house when my brother-in-law called to let us know that he had taken my mother-in-law to ER; her cancer that had been diagnosed a year and a half previously was causing new complications.  We decided to cut our visit short and drive back to Kansas on Easter Sunday.  The following morning, April 1, my wife flew to Traverse City, MI, to be with her mother.  On Tuesday evening, April 2, my wife called to let me know that her mother had just died.  While we knew it was coming, the circumstances made it a surprise; even for, or perhaps especially for, her physicians.  I drove from KC to TC in a little more than 15 hours on Wednesday, April 3, to be with my wife and other members of her family.  The funeral was Saturday, April 6.

We had planned to be in Michigan this week to help my brother and sister clear out the family farmhouse / garage / shop to make the place ready for renters, since my dad moved into an assisted living facility at the beginning of the year.  Since I was already there, I stayed put to help with that process last week instead of making another trip home and back again.  Meanwhile, my wife and her family were working to close up her mother's apartment.  I flew back to KC on Saturday, leaving the car in Michigan for my wife.  She intends to stay until her mother's interment.  For those of you not acquainted with Michigan winters, sometimes the snow is too deep and the ground too frozen to permit the opening of a grave.  This is one of those years.

Today has been a catching up kind of day: laundry, ironing, yard work, and so on.  Thankfully, I needed bread.  The therapeutic value of the making is every bit as great as the nutritional value of the eating.

Since my starter was in need of some therapy of its own, and since time didn't really allow for extended pre-ferments, I wanted a yeasted, straight dough style bread that would fit in with the other tasks of the day.  That put me in mind of Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Breads, which has oodles of breads like that.  And since I wanted something with plenty of whole grains, I thumbed through the multi-grain breads section of the book until I happened upon Sennecbec Hill bread.  It's a bread I've made a number of times before, but probably not in the past 3-4 years.  It contains rolled oats, corn meal, rye flour, and whole wheat flour; along with enough bread flour to tie everything together.  It is fragrant with molasses, which also contributes to a rich brown crust and crumb.  It makes a dandy sandwich bread or toast.

The recipe in the book, and at this site, is written with volumetric measures.  Don't go bad-mouthing Mr. Clayton; at the time he wrote the book, American cooks and bakers weren't acquainted with the notion of using scales to weigh their ingredients.  For those of you who are still on the fence about transitioning from volume measurements to weight measurements, here's a gentle nudge.  All of the measurement items in the photo below were required for the recipe, as written.  All of them had to be washed afterward.  If the recipe was in weight measurements, you wouldn't have to use, or wash, any of them.  That's right, scales save dishwashing!  Even if you don't believe that using weight measurements will improve your baking experience (it will!), cutting down on the number of dishes to wash up should be a motivation to switch.

 

The process for this bread is dead simple: stir ingredients together as directed.  Mix in bread flour until you have a "firm" (Clayton's word) dough.  Knead.  That's the tricky part with this bread.  The molasses, oats, rye and whole wheat flours make for a sticky dough.  There's a tendency to want to keep adding flour until the stickies go away.  Don't.  Do.  That.  Leave it somewhat sticky.  Better to have gloopy hands while kneading (assuming that you hand knead) than a dry, crumbly brick of a loaf.  I switched from a traditional push-turn-fold-push form of kneading to slap and folds as a means of continuing kneading when I gauged that more flour would be too much but the dough was still sticking to the countertop.  The dough was a bit stiff for this method but wound up responding well.  The aforesaid rolled oats, rye, and cornmeal mean that you want to have the gluten structure well established in the dough so that it can stand up to those unhelpful constituents.

Park the kneaded dough in a greased and covered bowl until it doubles in volume; sort of like this:

 

Then tip the dough out of the bowl onto the countertop and gently degas it.  Shape into two loaves and place them in greased loaf pans.  I weighed the loaves to make sure that they were equally sized.  They each weighed 1 pound 13.5 ounces, which makes for a nice, full pan with 9x5 loaf pans.  This is how they looked at this stage:

 

After covering them with plastic wrap, I was off to mow the yard.  When I checked back in later, they were ready to bake:

 

The critical reviewer will no doubt notice that those loaves are more than doubled in volume; probably closer to tripled.  This is a sturdy dough and is able to stand up to that kind of expansion without collapsing.  Nevertheless, I was very gentle while placing the pans in the preheated oven.  The finished loaves did not exhibit any signifiicant oven spring; no surprise there.  Neither did they show any sign of collapse, which means that they hadn't gone across the line to overproofing.

 

Pictures of the crumb will have to wait until tomorrow.  The house smells wonderful and I anticipate tasty sandwiches for this week's lunches.

Paul

Update: Crumb pic.  Fairly open, considering the rolled oats, corn meal, whole wheat, and rye flour.  At the same time, a nice, even crumb that's great for sandwiches.

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

2013 The Fresh Loaf Dabrownman’s Blog

1/4/2013 - Panettone - The Last Bake of 2012

1/4/2013 - New Year's Day Pizza and Banana Bread Cupcakes

1/5/2012 - Hanseata’s Sausage Filled Puff Pastry with Cheese

1/7/2013 - Multi-grain Cream Cheese Sourdough with Multi-grain Scalded Soaker

1/11/2013 - Multi-grain Sourdough Chacon with Olives, Sun Dried Tomato, Garlic, Rosemary and 2 Cheeses

1/16/2013 - Multi-grain Sourdough with Sprouts, Scald, Seeds, Nuts and Prunes

1/17/2013 - Multigrain Yeast Water Bread with Sprouts, Scald, Seeds, Nuts and Prunes

1/23/2013 - White Whole Wheat with Combo YW, Poolish, SD Starter, Water Roux and Wheat Berry Scald

1/25/2013 - SD, YW, Biga, Rye, Spelt, Tang Zhong Bread with Scald, Seeds and Nuts

1/30/2013 - Practice YW Slash Bag

1/31/2013 - Origami Sourdough and Yeast Water Panettone

1/31/2013 - Another Batch of kjknits English Muffins – 12.5 % Whole Wheat

2/1/2013 - Fun With Short Crust and Puff Paste

2/1/2013 - Phil’s Savory Pumpkin and Feta Pie

2/2/2013 - A Born Loser Tells a Tale of Too Many Two’s and the Evil Twin

2/3/2013 - Superbowl Pizza – Great Pizza For a Lights Out, No longer a Blow Out Game

2/3/2013 - It's Been Exactly a Year Since Our First TFL Post - The Index

2/5/2013 - Multigrain SD/YW Brown Bread with Aromatic Seeds and Multi-Grain Scald

2/7/2013 - Big Combo Levain Whole Wheat Bread with Pumpkin & Sunflower Seeds

2/11/2013 - Not So Pink Valentine Vienna Chocolate Rose

2/13/2013 - Sourdough Pink Valentine Hamburger Buns

2/15/2013 - Yeast Water Cinnamon Rolls

2/18/2013 - Multigrain SD Altamura - Not The Priest's Hat

2/21/2013 - Banana Bread

2/26/2013 - Old Dough VS Levain Multigrain SD With Bulgar and Flax Seed Scald

2/28/2013 - 100 % Whole Grain Rye and Spelt YW SD with Scald and Seeds - The Altus Test

3/5/2013 - SD YW Durum, Ricotta Bread with Pistachio Nuts, Pumpkin & Millet Seeds

3/13/2013 - SD YW multi-grain Bagels

3/17/2013 - Enchanted Irish Lemon Curd Fairy Cakes

3/18/2013 - St. Paddy’s Day Feast, Sort of Ballymaloe 100% WW Brown Bread and Irish Ruben’s

3/20/2013 - If Ballymaloe Baked Sourdough Brown Bread with WW Scald & Guinness in a DO

3/23/2013 - WW SD YW Multi-Grain Pumpernickel

3/25/2013 - 50% Whole Wheat Matzoh

3/30/2013 - Hot Cross Buns - 25 % Whole Grain

3/31/2013 - Poolish & Y W Chocolate Walnut Easter Babka with Streusel & Snockered Fruits

4/2/2013 - 100 Percent Whole Multi-Grain Aroma Bread with 2 Soakers & 11 Seeds

4/4/2013 - Whole Grain DaPumpernickel Aroma Bread

4/8/2013 - Two Way 75% White Bread - DaPumperized with Scald and Seeds

4/12/2013 - Italian Tang Zhong, Fig, Hazelnut & Ricotta Cheese Sourdough Chacons

4.14.2013 - Dinner for 2 from the Pots

2012 The Fresh Loaf Dabrownman’s Blog

2/3/2012 - My first bread after joining TFL - DSnyder's San Joaquin

2/3/2012 - Brachflachen Mehrere Vollkombrot

2/3/2012 - Loaded Pizza

2/3/2012 - Pierre Nury meets DSnyders SFSD

2/3/2012 - Putting the Rye in Pierre Nury's rustic Light Rye

2/3/2012 - Too Many Red Pears and Blueberries

2/3/2012 - Make your own Greek yogurt

2/4/2012 - Minneola / Apple Yeast Water Semolina Bread

2/4/2012 - Raspberry SD Pancakes

2/4/2012- 1930's Magnalite Wagner Ware Roaster Used As Cloche for Multi-grain SD Challah

2/5/2014 - Sourdough English Muffins

2/5/2012 - Southwest Hummus Anyone?

2/5/2012 - I have some miscellaneous baking and foodie

2/7/2012 - Brachflachen Mehrere Vollkombrot - Version 4

2/7/2012 - Baked off PiPs (Phil's) new post on 40% Sourdough Rye w/ Caraway today

2/9/2012 - The Chellos - that don't play music.

2/9/2012 - PiP's 40% Rye w/ Caraway Meets Hanseata's Seeds and a Restless dabrownman

2/9/2012 - Whole Wheat Crusted Apple Caramel Galette w/ fresh ginger and assorted bourbon dried fruits.

2/9/2012 - Blueberry SD pancakes this time,

2/10/2012 - How to Make Yogurt - 'So Your Muffins Taste Betta'

2/10/2012 - isand66's SD Avocado Bread Meets Its Sunflower Seeded Guacamole Heart

2/11/2012- I Confess My Deepest Darkest Baking Secret

2/13/2012 - isand66's Bacon, SD, Potato, Onion with Cheddar Bread Meets Pork Jowls, Aged White Cheddar, Potato Flakes and Caramelized Onion

2/13/2012 - Shiao-Ping's Orange Turmeric Pain au Levain with Yeast Water

2/14/2012 - Happy Valentine Cupcakes w/ Strawberry Hearts

2/16/2012 - PiPs Walnut and Sage 100% Whole Wheat.

2/17/2012 - Let's Make Some Fresh Cheese

2/17/2012 - Birthday Chocolate Crusted Orange Cheese Cake with Ganache, Truffles and Chocolate Shavings

2/18/2012 - David Snyders' SD Pugliesi Capriccioso With Some WW and Rye

2/22/2012 - teketeke's Japanese Yeast Water White Sandwich Bread - 'This Bread Is Not Your Slimy Old White Slice'

2/23/2012 - Pips Vollkornbrot - Nearly 100% Rye with A Tiny Bit of Spelt

2/24/2012 - teketeke Bread

2/27/2012 - Rustique Pain Comté de San Francisco

3/1/2012 - Chad Robertson's Country SD - Modified

3/1/2012 - I've been working on a new home made Gas Regeneration BBQ /Smoker

3/3/2012 - Miscellaneous stuff at the end of the week

3/5/2012 - Pain Rustique au Levain du Sud-ouest

3/6/2012 - Pain Rustique au Levain du Sud-ouest - Retarded

3/7/2012 - Yeast Water, Rye, WW, Garlic Chive, Onion, Cheese and Chorizo Bialy’s

3/12/2012 - Tartine Everyday Rustic Country Sourdough

3/14/2012 - St Paddy's Day Dutch Oven Sourdough - Tartine Method

3/14/2012 - Corned Beef and Cabbage - 2 ways - possibly more

3/15/2012 - Just look at the pictures my new old camera takes!!

3/17/2012 - Yeast Water, Glazed, Spiced, Walnut, Bourbon Fruit, Chocolate Chip, Almond Granola Streusel Polish Babka

3/23/2012 - Making Red Rye Malt

3/24/2012 - Gingered, Tres Apple, Almond, Vanilla Granola Crisp with Bourbon Dried Fruit

3/29/2012 - A Blend of Seigle d’Auvergne and Borodinski

3/29/2012 - Jam and Bread Crust and Crumb Color

3/31/2012 - Revising isand66's Bacon, Potato, Onion with Cheddar Sourdough Bread

4/1/2012 - Getting Ready for Tomorrow's Sweetbird Buckwheat Apple SD Bake with Buckwheat SD Pancakes Today

4/2/2012 - Dabrownman Butchers Sweetbird’s Lovely Buckwheat, Apple and Apple Cider, Buckwheat Groat Bread with Insane Thoughts and Deeds

4/9/2012 - Super-grain Challah w/ Whey Water, Sprouts, Potato, Lentil, Sunflower Seeds and 2 Starters - SD and YW

4/10/2012 - Retarded Super-Grain Challah

4/14/2012 - Lemon Curd and Cream Cheese Puff Paste

4/14/2012 - Italian Corner - Cellos with Squash Lasagna and David Snyder's Pulgliese Capriosso

4/15/2012 - 20% Rye and WWW Potato SD Baggies Meet the Same Made with YW

4/15/2012 - Weekday Springtime Yeast Water Breakfast at Dabrownman's

4/17/2012 - Apple and Pear, Bourbon Dried Fruit, Ginger with Apple Jam Cream Cheese Puff Sleds

4/19/2012 - Sweetbird's Apple, Buckwheat with Groats, Insanely Modified, Makes for a Fine Toast or Lunch

4/20/2012 - SD Hemp Bags - txfarmer method with Hanseata's Seeds

4/20/2012 - Tired Monday's - YW 20% Whole Grain Bag Lunch

4/30/2012 - 50% Multigrain SD W/ Rye Scald, Rye Sprouts, Borodinski Altus and Pepitas, Caraway and Flax Seeds

5/2/2012 - Yeast Water Fake Pretzel Rolls

5/4/2012 - With Cinco de Mayo Yesterday - Hope You Had a Happy One! Cinco Sunset, Moon Rise and Dinner

5/8/2012 - Multi-grain SD w/ Multi Sprouts 2 Nuts and Seeds Somewhere

5/9/2012 - Yeast Water Hamburger Buns with Cinnamon Roll Same Dough Kicker

5/11/2012 - 1 - Day Multi-Grain Bread, Soft White Wheat, Spelt, Scald and Seeded with SD and YW Combo Starter

5/12/2012 - Banana Bread Cake

5/14/2012 - Mothers Day YW Apple, Pecan Buckwheat Pancakes with a Nice Chicken and Brie Sandwich for Lunch

5/15/2012 - Altamura Shaped Semolina Multi-Grain SD with Seeds and Sprouts

5/16/2012 - Having the daughter

5/18/2012 - Semolina, Rye, WWW Ciabatta w/ Chia Seeds, Herbs and Sun Dried Tomato

5/20/2012 - Apple Strawberry Ginger Crisp, Teriyaki and Lunch for Two

5/22/2012 - txfarmer's Croissant and Dainish Converted over to SD and YW - 3 Ways with Chia Seeds

5/24/2012 - Pretzel Roll P&J and Grilled Chicken Lunch with Pickles

5/25/2012 - Hanseata’s Wild Rice SD w/ Yeast Water, Multi Seeds, Prunes, Beer and Sprouts

5/26/2012 - Brown Plate Special with a Little Green, Brown Ale and Brown Bread

5/28/2012 - T-Rex Meets Floyd’s Sweet Potato Bread & Brownman’s SD & YW Combo Starter

5/29/2012 - Bread Baskets - A Serious Illness Revealed

5/31/2012 - Recent Breads for Lunch, Last Jacaranda Bloom and Desert

6/1/2012 - 40% Whole Multi-grain SD and YW Altamura Style Chacon

6/1/2012 - 24 Hours of Not Baking Bread

6/8/2012 - The SD / YW Chacon Revisited – 90% Whole Grain, Multigrain Sprouts, Walnut and Sage Paste, Pumpkin Seeds and Whey Water

6/9/2012 - Friday night P & P - Pizza and Pide

6/12/2012 - Let's Have Some Lunch and Other Stuff

6/15/2012 - Jasmine Tea, 50% Whole Multi-Grain SD & YW Durum Atta Bread with Wheat Germ, Flax and Chia Seeds

6/19/2012 - Buckwheat 60% Multi-grain YW / SD Bread with Walnuts, Sage, Flax, Wheat Germ, Apples, Prunes and Groats

6/21/2012 - Sourdough Durum Atta Bread – Pharaoh’s Mastaba Style

6/24/2-12 - Twisted Sisters Chacon : 67% Whole Rye & Wheat with Sprouts & Seeds.

6/28/2012 - Franko finally got to the top of the list

6/29/2012 - English Muffins - kjknits Converted to YW and SD Combo levain

6/29/2012 - Without Cheesecake For Desert - There May Be No Need for Bread

6/30/2012 - SD and YW Semolina Cheese Bread and Pizza with Sun Dried Tomato, Rosemary, Mojo de Ajo and Garlic

7/4/2012 - SD and YW Multigrain Bagels - The Stan Ginsberg Method

7/4/2012 - Catching up on some lunches and other stuff

7/4/2012 - Lunches and Other Stuff Continued - Happy Birthday America!

7/5/2012 - YW Naan with Paneer, Green Onion, Cilantro, Garam Masala and Garlic - Plus a Loaf - Added Lunch Shot

7/6/2012 - Joe Ortiz Pain de Champagne with Rye and WW Sprouts

7/10/2012 - Dinner in Houston

7/15/2012 - AZ Monsoon and Breakfast

7/17/2012 - Mocha Chocolate Chip Brownie Ice Cream Sandwiches.

7/20/2012 - What To Eat With That Rustic French Country Sourdough Bread -Smoked Etouffee!

7/22/2012 - SD YW English Muffins - Some Fried As Donuts Per gmabaking With Apricot, Nectarine Ginger Glaze

7/24/2012 - Herbed Bialy's – Multigrain, Caramelized Onion, Chorizo and 4 Cheeses

7/27/2012 - 50% Rye SD Knotted Rolls With Wheat Germ, Barley Scald, Caraway and Sunflower Seeds

7/27/2012 - hanseata's Wild Rice Bread Revisited - 'The Wild One' - w/ Beer, Sprouts, Seeds and Prunes

7/30/2012 - Parade of Sandwiches and Other Stuff

8/5/2012 - YW vs Desem SD - Caramelized Onion, Basil, Bacon, Parmesan Rolls

8/7/2012 - 15% Whole Wheat Bagels with YW and SD Desem Combo Starter

8/11/2012 -YW / SD Olive Bread with Rosemary and Bulgar Scald

8/17/2012 - 100% Whole Grain Rye with Rye Sprouts – YW & SD Combo Starter

7/19/2012 - 25% Whole Wheat English Muffins Revisited - Over and Over Again - kjknits

8/22/2012 - Chacon Catastrophes Moka - Ian’s Mocha Disaster Chacon

8/24/2012 - Multi-Grain SD & YW Combo with Chicken Stock, Soaker & Seeds

8/27/2012 - 35% Whole Grain YW & SD Semolina, Durum Atta White Bread with Soaker

8/29/2012 - Rewind - YW & SD Semolina, Durum Atta, W. Germ, Malts & Honey - Deja Vue

9/2/2012 - Spelt, Rye and Whole Wheat Soudough Boule with Flax Seed, Honey and Malts - A Simple but Tasty Bread

9/5/2012 - 100% Hydration, 100% Whole Grain Kamut Flat Boule with YW and SD Combo Starter

9/7/2012 - Andy’s Roasted Brazil Nut and Prune Bread - Sourdough Variation with WW Scald

9/9/2012 - 8 Hour SD YW Saturday Night Pizza and Friday Shrimp Kabobs

9/14/2012 - 100% Whole Spelt Sourdough at 100% Hydration

9/15/2012 - Happy Rosh Hashanah!

9/20/2012 - 17% Whole Multi-Grain SD / YW Bagels – The Stan Ginsberg Method

9/21/2012 - 57% Whole Grain Multi-grain SD with 20% Seeds and Whey

9/25/2012 -15% Multi-grain Bread With YW and SD Combo Levain

9/28/2012 - 15% WWW Fat Bag with Desem SD Starter ala Ian and Phil

9/28/2012 - English Muffins- YW and SD Levains - 16% Whole Wheat

9/28/2012 - Banana Nut Bread with Seeds, Chocolate and Bourbon Dried Fruits

10/2/2012 - Judy's 45 % Whole Multi-Grain Sandwich Bread

10/6/2012 - 16 % Whole Multi-grain SD Baguettes – txfarmer’s Method only 40 Hours

10/9/2012 - Name Change - Gussied Up Franz Joseph's Emperor Rolls With Seeds

10/13/2012 - Parade of Sandwiches and Other Stuff - Partola Uno

10/14/2012 - Parade de sandwichs et d'autres choses - partie 2

10/14/2012 - Parade of Sandwiches Continues - Part 3

10/15/2012 - Desfile de Sandwiches - Parte 4

10/15/2012 - Parade der Sandwiches - Teil 5

10/17/2012 - World Bread Day - SD Multigrain with Figs, Anise, Pistachios and Sprouts

10/18/2012 - Pierre Nury's Rustic Light Rye with Whole Grain Multi-grain YW / SD Levains and Coffee

10/24/2012 -Tuesday Pizza Night - Crust 3 Ways with 25% Whole Grains

10/25/2012 - San Franciso Sourdough - 15% Whole Grain

10/27/2012 - Extended - SD Starter Experiment - 24 hour Countertop SFSD and a Seeded, Fig and Pistacio

10/30/2012 - Two DO Chacons Couldn’t Be Any Different

11/2/2012 - Two Weeks of Food for Thought - Week one

11/2/2012 - Two Weeks of Food for Thought - Week Two

11/2/2012 - 26% Whole Grain YW / SD Bagels with Sprouts

11/5/2012 - 24 hour 10% Whole Grain SFSD & SD Seeded Fig Bread with Pistachios - 1 g of Starter - No Levain

11/9/2012 - 60% Whole Grain SD / YW Bread With Caraway, Rye Chops, Coffee and Cocoa

11/9/2012 - Prune & Brazil Nut Sourdough with Bulgar Scald, Pumpkin & Sunflower Seeds

11/14/2012 - Not So Stollen

11/16/2012 - Thanksgiving Multi-Grain Marble Chacon

11/20/2012 - SD Stuffing Bread

11/21/2012 - Poolish Stuffing Bread

11/23/2012 - Not So Stollen - Thanksgiving Take

11/23/2012 - Daughter Does French Slap and Folds for Her Poolish Thanksgiving Rolls

11/27/2012 - A Chacon for Eric

12/7/2012 - 75% Whole Grain YW / SD Caramelized Onion, Wild Rice, Sprouts & Baltika Porter Bread

12/14/2012 - Multigrain SD / YW Porter Bread with Roasted Onions, Sprouts, Malts and Seeds

12/17/2012 - Puff Paste Experiments

12/18/2012 - Puffy So Not Rugelach

12/21/2012 - Christmas Sourdough Chacon - Figs, Pistachios and Seeds

12/25/2012 - Christmas Bi-Color Rose - 30% Whole Grain, Pesto and Sun Dried Tomato

12/25/2012 - Not So Stollen - 6 Weeks later

12/29/2012 - 25% Whole Grain Multi-grain Bagels

 

 

 

Noah Erhun's picture
Noah Erhun

Another wonderful recipe from 

http://tartine-bread.blogspot.com/2013/03/siesta.html



*I used Ischia instead of a rye stater, WM brick mozzarella instead of asiago and substituted half of the AP for 00.
Amazingly tender flavorful loaves...couldn't eat it standing up.  

-Noah

 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

We love salads so it’s not unusual for us to grow our own when we can.  We grow them in pots which makes it easy.  For the two of us, we have two 12”  planters of red romaine, one 12” pot of spinach and one 24” planter for mescaline, arugla, and the green lettuces.  That is enough for us to have salad every night just by trimming off the larger leaves of each every night. 

 

The 14” pot of Swiss chard is included because it is going on its 3rd year of continuous production! There are 5 plants in the pot; 2 red, one yellow and 2 white.  It is the best producing pot of all time.  We put Swiss chard in everything since this pot is so prolific.

 

We also grow tomatoes in huge pots - 2 plants per pot.  Since we are not doing but one heirloom tomato this year we already have over 80 tomatoes on 6 plants with the heirloom only having 10.

 

If you live in AZ where the produce is so unbelievably cheap and where much of the winter veg for the US is grown, the rest of the salad fixings are a snap and inexpensive to boot.

 

Now with a very inexpensive two recycled food can pot smoker, you can smoke and grill some ungodly good BBQ chicken to go with the salad with some bakes steak sweet potato and russet fries and some BBQ baked beans out of the mini oven - a little slice of culinary heaven is yours for the taking.

It helps to have a bass playing garden frog to protect the veggies from insects and watch the sunsets with too!

 

MaximusTG's picture
MaximusTG

For this bread I took 300 grams of whole wheat flour and mixed it with 300 grams of water and 1/8 tsp of instant yeast. 

That was at midnight. Next morning I added 280 grams of flour, 1 tsp salt, some pumpkinseeds and some flax seeds. Also enough water to make the hydration 75%. Gave it a stir and then kneaded with mixer. Let rise for 1,5 hours. Then shaped into boule. Proofed for 2 hours in banneton. Baked for 50 minutes at 190 celsius with steam.

 

300

300

300

Floydm's picture
Floydm

As I've mentioned previously, I've been working for the past few months to upgrade TFL to a new version of the content management system it runs on, Drupal.  I'm also redesigning the interface a bit, mainly so it works better on tablets and phones.  

The new version of the site is close, really close, to being ready. The gap in projects I carved out for my recent vacation is quickly closing too, so I'd like to make the switch to the new version of the site soon and work out the remaining kinks once we're on the new system. It'd be a shame for this opportunity to make the switch pass and the upgrade not happen for another 6-8 months.

The new version of the site can now be found at: http://upgrade.thefreshloaf.com

This is a new server with more horsepower and better caching than the existing system.  I'll crank it up even higher before the new site goes live, so we should have fewer performance problems and less lag than we do now.

As before, if you want to log in and tinker around with test version of the new site, be my guest.  I'll be refreshing the database there again before the new site goes live for real, so anything you post there today will be disappear soon.  

Some of the site features like the email features are disabled because I don't want to accidentally spam folks while I'm working on the new site.  But it should be pretty much functional.

For the switch over, I'm thinking... next week?  Maybe Tuesday?  I'm going to continue tuning things the next few days, but the sooner we make the move the better, IMO.   

Of course I'll be backing everything up before the move so should anything go awry we can roll back to where we are before the switch, but I hope and expect it'll be a big step forward, that it'll work better for all of us and be easier for new folks to learn how to use, than the current site.   

Please give a shout, folks, share your feedback on the new site and let me know if you see any reason I shouldn't try to move this forward next week.  Otherwise, I'll try to do the flip and then make myself as available as I can to help folks learn the ins and outs of the new system or fix any issues that we didn't discover until after the switch.  

If I can do the switch on Tuesday, my hope would be that by the end of the week most (if not all) of the functionality would be restored and everyone could blog and chat as normal.  Fingers crossed, knock on wood, and all that. :)  

Cheers,

-Floyd

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

After our recent experiments with 100% whole grain bread, and DaPumperizing some of them, we found out that our limited supply of what we call white breads was exhausted.  These ‘white breads’ still have 20%-30% whole grains in them so they have some decent flavor and healthfulness.

  

We thought we would go Italian for this bake because of the sneaky ricotta, goat cheese and citrus cheese cake my apprentice baked while no one was looking.   It had also been awhile since we had done a chacon shape too.  We could have done an Italian shape like an Altamura but these shapes usually need some durum flour in hem and we are saving the last of Desert Durum for something else.

  

Instead of out usual pesto, parmesan and sun dried tomato Italian bread that we like so much we decided to go in a different Italian direction by using figs, hazelnuts and ricotta cheese to go along with the 22% whole grain Rye, spelt and WW that was mainly used in the levains.

  

Yes, we had 2 levains for this bake but they were both of the SD variety instead of YW we usually use for 1 of them.  We used out Rye Sour and our Not Mini’s Ancient WW starters for this bake.  We love what both of them do for bread so why not combine them and see what happens.

 

So not to have enough to do for this bake we also decided to use whey water for some of the liquid and do a Tang Zhong with 25 g of the dough flour with an additional 125 g of water not included in the liquid amounts in the formula.

 

We thought about throw in some of our aromatic seed mix but the apprentice nixed that at the last minute wanting to know what was German about this bake anyway?  For being mainly nutzoid when it comes to breaking the bread mold, she can be traditional when you least expect it – usually right before doing a nose rip on you – which is also not expected.

 

These levains built themselves up to doubling in 4 hours so only one build was needed to get them full strength.  We did not retard the levains when built as is our usual practice of late but we did do a 4 hour autolyse of the dough flours with the malts, VWG and Toadies.  We kept the nuts, figs, cheese and salt out.  Usually we put the salt in the autolyse so we don’t forget it but thought we try to have Lucy remember to put it in later.

After the 2 levains, the Tang Zhong, ricotta cheese and autolyse came together, we mixed it withy a spoon for 1 minute and then did 4 minutes of slap and folds before adding the salt.  This dough feels much wetter that the just short of the 69% total hydration with the add ins.  This is due to the Thang Zhong and the cheese. 

After the salt went in, we did another 8 minutes of slap and folds before the dough finally came together fore a 20 minute rest.  We then did (3) sets of S&F’s on 15 minute intervals and incorporated the nuts and re-hydrated figs in the 2nd one and by the 3rd one they were well distributed.   The wet figs also added some more unaccounted liquid to the mix. 

 

After a hours worth of ferment on the counter the dough was bulk retarded for 12 hours, ala Ian’s typical retard mastering.  In the cold it had risen to the rime of the bowl and after 1 ¾ hours on the counter the next morning it has risen above the rim of the bowl .

We then divided it and shaped the knotted rolls; one each for the bottom of each basket, and shaped the twisted rope in addition of the oval basket so these Chacons wouldn’t end up looking too similar after baking.   So no braids, balls or other intricate shapes and designs in the bottom of the basket were used in keeping with this simple Italian bake.

After 2 hours of final proof on the counter in a plastic bag, they were ready for Big old Betsy that had bee preheated to 500 F with one of David Snyder’s lava rocks in a large cast Iron skillet along with a large size one of Sylvia’s steaming pans with 2 rolled up towels in it.  Both were put into the oven half full of water when the 40 minute preheat started and they supplied their usual mega steam.  We also used top and bottom stones as we always do since they never come out of the oven.

My apprentice thought that the loaves were over proofed again when the came out of the bag since the dough jiggled like jello or a croissant and the dough had risen above the rim of the baskets.   But, since Chacons do not need to be slashed, they went straight into the oven on the bottom stone after un-molding onto parchment paper and peel.  They still managed to spring nicely anyway and my apprentice’s over proofing fear was as unfounded as her legal immigration status.

After 2 minutes the temperature was turned down to 460 F and then after a total of 12 minutes the steaming apparatus came out of the oven and the temperature was turned down to 425 F , convection this time.  The loaves were rotated on the stone every 5 minutes for 15 minutes when they tested 205 F and were removed from the oven to a cooling rack.

The loaves cracked well on top as they should and they ended up being nicely browned,  crisp but un-blistered despite the long retard and mega steam.  They are awfully nice looking loaves none the less and we can’t wait to cut into one to see what the crumb looks like.

The crumb turned out fairly open, glossy and super soft.  The Tang Zhong really came through as it always does.   I like to use it on whole grain, multi-grain breads since we discovered that it does the same thing for these breads as it does for white breads.  Now we know it isn't just the YW that makes the crumb soft.  We like this bread very much and it is worth the extra effort required to pull it off. 

Formula

WW and Rye Sour Levain

Build 1

Total

%

WW SD Starter

25

25

3.79%

Rye Sour Starter

25

25

4.67%

Spelt

25

25

4.67%

Whole Wheat

50

50

9.35%

Dark Rye

25

25

4.67%

Water

100

50

9.35%

Total

250

200

37.38%

 

 

 

 

Levain Totals

 

%

 

Flour

125

23.36%

 

Water

125

23.36%

 

Hydration

100.00%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Levain % of Total

17.82%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dough Flour

 

%

 

Whole spelt

5

0.93%

 

Dark Rye

5

0.93%

 

AP

525

98.13%

 

Dough Flour

535

100.00%

 

 

 

 

 

Salt

10

1.52%

 

Whey 200 Water100

300

56.07%

 

Dough Hydration

56.07%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Total Flour

660

 

 

Soaker Water 300 & Water

425

 

 

T. Dough Hydration

64.39%

 

 

Whole Grain %

22.27%

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hydration w/ Adds

68.92%

 

 

Total Weight

1,403

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add - Ins

 

%

 

White Rye Malt

3

0.56%

 

Red Rye Malt

3

0.56%

 

Toadies

6

1.12%

 

VW Gluten

10

1.87%

 

Ricotta Cheese

100

18.69%

 

Adriatic & Mission Figs

115

21.50%

 

Hazelnuts

71

13.27%

 

Total

308

57.57%

 

 

 

 

 

Weight of figs is pre re-hydrated weight

 

 

 

d_a_kelly's picture
d_a_kelly

Hi bakers everywhere!

I made this a few weeks ago but have only had the chance to post it now. I took the recipe from Cresci, by Massari and Zoia. In the book it's for a panettone but I thought I'd try to make it in the form of a colomba because it was around Easter and I still had a few colomba cases left to use :)

This is a very unusual panettone recipe in the all the flour goes into the first dough. The traditional method is to split the flour between the two stages. I'm not quite sure what the benefits of this are (allowing for more autolysis) but there are a few recipes in the book where this happens. I'm pretty certain that these "non-traditional" formulae are associated with Achille Zoia. I've been working on his panettone paradiso (another flour-all-in-one recipe) on-and-off now for over a month and I kid you not, I've only made it work once, despite about 15 attempts!! Fool that I am, the one time it worked I didn't take any photos, but the crumb was the softest and moistest of any panettone I've ever had, so I'm determined to persever. But back to the colomba...

The recipe calls for hazelnut paste and gianduia amara. I bought the hazelnut paste online (very expensive) because I don't have the equipment to make a truly smooth paste at home. The gianduia I made myself, using the following recipe (in grams). I took amara here to mean the use of dark chocolate rather than milk. I used Amedei toscano black - a really delicious, and Italian, chocolate.

hazelnut paste 50

dark chocolate 70% 20

cacao butter 6

icing sugar 50

melt the chocolate and cacao butter together and then blend in the icing sugar and paste. It's important to stir constantly and drop the temp as quickly as possible to 26C to prevent it from separating. I took this recipe from Valrhona's cooking with chocolate book.

I made the first impasto at about 10pm so that I could go to bed and rise the next day with it ready.

sugar 79

water 177

hazelnut paste 32

very strong flour 316

Italian sweet starter 63

butter 63

I left the flour, sugar and water to autolyse for half an hour and then added the other ingredients, working it until the dough was stringy.

The next morning it had tripled in volume (12 hours precisely) so I reworked it with the following:

sugar 47

honey 32

butter 47

gianduia (melted) 47

hazelnut paste 32

yolk 73

salt 2.5

vanilla quarter of a pod

water 9

milk chocolate 62

dark chocolate 47

 

take 991 of the  impasto and add chocolate pieces. For the milk choc I used Valrhona's Jivara, and a mix of Amedei toscano black and Valrhona's Manjari for the dark. 

My last attempt at forming a colomba hadn't been a success, so taking inspiration from thefreshloaf, I decided to fold and stretch it repeatedly until I had a nice tight ball. I let this rest for an hour and then repeated the process, before putting it into the shape. I was much happier with the shaping this time, the dough had a better, tighter skin on it.

I had just enough dough left over to make a "panettoncino" of about 85g. 

About 6 hours later (held at c. 30C) it was ready to go in the oven. I glazed it, covered it was sugar granules and almonds, and then dusted it was icing sugar.

My glaze this time was a little thicker than I've made it before - too thick I think, even though I followed my usual recipe. I should have added a tiny bit more egg white. It was just a tad too thick to be easily spreadable. In the oven then for 50 minutes at 170C. I didn't bother with steam because I was worried about the icing sugar. I'm not sure it made any difference.

Oven spring was enormous. The top photo doesn't really do it justice. I doesn't show just how much over the edge of the form it is. I slightly crushed it with my hand when I was turning it upside down (idiot!!!) but apart from a crack on the surface, it popped right back out when it was hanging during cooling. 

The colomba itself was a present, so the only crumb shot I have is from the panettoncino. I think there was just a little too much impasto in the pirottino... BakeryBits.co.uk markets them as 100g cases, but I think even 80g is too much if you are using them for a panettone. I think perhaps 70g might have been better. 

Well, my conclusions...

I tasted both the baby panettone and the colomba and I was very... disappointed!!! There was zero(!!) taste of hazelnut from it. Zero!!! The hazelnut paste I used was professional quality (it certainly had a professional price) but it didn't even leave a trace of flavour in the finished product. The photo in Cresci implies a deep brown crumb, but my crumb looks more beige. I didn't know what industrial strength paste Zoia must be using to achieve any flavour or colour on this one. The crumb itself, although very shreddy, as it should be, was also quite dry. The driest of all the panettone I've made so far. All I can say is thank God I used good quality chocoalte, because otherwise the entire thing would have been very uninteresting. 

It's a great shame, because I'd been looking at the recipe for ages, thinking it would be great. Where is the hazelnut flavour?!?!? Another thing I've noticed is the how much growth in the colomba is lost to sideways motion. The circular shape of the panettone form is very strong, so all the growth is directed upwards. The colomba seems structurally weaker, you can see how the sides have bulged out and become distored. 

I need a break from panettone making for the moment... the repeated disasters with the panettone paradiso have knocked my confidence terribly. Hopefully a break will allow me to... what? I'm not giving up on it though. I refuse to be beaten by a bit of flour, butter and egg!


David

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