The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

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gmabaking's picture
gmabaking

One of the top three entries in the Koshereye recipes trying out the Platinum yeast. Your 60 minute rolls are a hit with everyone, those folks must have good taste!

linder's picture
linder

Some days I don't know where my mind goes.  I was baking 2 loaves of New York Onion Rye Bread from Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice.  Everything was going smoothly.  The loaves were proofing in my make-shift proofer (microwave with cup of boiled water in it) but then disaster struck. 

I didn't pay attention to the bread as it was rising.  The recipe said 90 minutes to proof so I went with 90 minutes, oh so wrong!  Bread was proofed and I hadn't even started the oven!  In my tizzy, I set the oven 30F too cool and didn't realize it until 10 minutes or so into the bake. Bleh!  So I watched my two loaves of bread meet in the middle of the baking pan as they rose (sideways) on the baking sheet. Argh!!  No oven spring for me with that cool oven.  Here are the loaves as they look, cooling on the rack.  NEXT TIME - I'll check the bread about half way into the proof time. NEXT TIME I'll read the ENTIRE recipe through several times to get it straight in my head and not ASSUME anything.

 

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Continuing on with her Puff Paste adventure, my apprentice decided to do a take off on rugelach.  Rugelach has cream cheese in the dough and are just fantastic with any filling imaginable.  If you aren't making them for the Holidays then the Holidays where will be slightly less festive than they should be ;-)

While we love rugelach,we much prefer the ones my apprentice makes with puff pastry - by far!  They are so light and just plain overkill in a really decadent, if sinful, way.

We were trying out a new filling that has cocoa, brown and white sugar, chopped chocolate chips and chopped Heath Chocolate Toffee Bits.  Yummy!

Rugelach are supposed be rolled out as a circle before cutting them into triangle shapes with a pizza cutter.  We had square shapes of puff paste left over from our square snowflake  experiment yesterday.  No worries!  Just roll them out thinner, say a little less than 1/8", brush them with melted butter, sprinkle in he filling, cut them into 8 pie shaped pieces and roll them up, croissant like. from the large end to the point.

Brush them with an egg wash and sprinkle on some Turbinado sugar.  Bake at 400 F convection for 6 minutes, then turn the pan 180 degrees and bake for another 5 minutes or so until golden brown and puffed.  These weighed between 8 and 12 grams each after baking and were just as tasty as tasty could be for one bite.

yozzause's picture
yozzause

 

A touch of rye, i made this bread on the 4/12/2012 at work

1 kg wholemeal flour

500g rye meal (coarse)

2.5kg bakers flour

total flour  = 4000g     ( therefore 1% = 40g )                                                                  

80g salt  = 2%

dried yeast 40g = 1%

dry gluten 80g = 2%

light malt powder left over from brewing that had gone hard and then added hot water to melt 110ml

home brew stout and water 50/50   2.8L = 70%

 

 

 

This was a timed dough that i think took 2 hours to bulk ferment (must write these things down as you do them the memory is not what it was)

 the 2 loaves in the top right corner of the cooling rack were sour dough efforts with the throw away part of my sour dough culture from refrehment baked in a mini oven in our lunch room.

The touch of ryes were very good and stayed fresh for days i think that the light malt had a very  good effect on the dough and could be detected on the crust.

kind regards and merry christmas  to all of the TFL Community Yozza

 

varda's picture
varda

Recently Andy posted about some breads he baked with flours that his neighbors had brought him the Watermill on Little Salkeld.   One of the flours was Maslin described as a mix of wheat middlings and rye.    The Watermill used a bolting process which screened wheat into fine flour, middlings (described as a gray coarse flour) semolina, and bran.   My interest was piqued as I have just become fascinating with milling and sifting flour, so I decided to see if I could generate middlings from wheat berries and use it to create a Maslin flour loaf.   Andy posted very clear instructions which I followed as closely as possible altering only for differences in the flours and a retard to accommodate schedule.    I have not baked with flax seeds since I first started baking, and then just threw them into the bread without knowing that they benefited from a good soak.   Andy's formula included them (or linseed which I think is the British term) and thus so did mine.    My loaf had a great spring in the oven, and came out with a complex but subtle flavor that I think is a feature of combined rye and wheat breads, enhanced greatly by the flax seeds.   I may come to wish that I had easier access to this flour than hours of milling and sifting, as I would love to bake this loaf many times.   

It seems to me that this picture makes the bread look pretty dense but it really isn't.   I wouldn't even call it hearty.   The flavors are just too subtle.  

Of course middlings are supposed to be a byproduct of the milling process rather than the main event.    So as a result of screening out the middlings, I had a lot more of what I'll call Golden Flour.    This is the most refined flour I've been able to create with the technology at my disposal, and it is far from white, having a fair amount of very fine bran in it.    So I made a couple of loaves from that.   It has a lot of flavor, and is much more rustic than a white loaf despite the fineness of the flour.    I am guessing that this flour would be similar to the high extraction flour many people post about here.    Since I haven't tasted that, though, I can't be sure. 

 

Here are formulas and directions.

MASLIN LOAF

12/16/2012

     
      

Starter

     

Seed hydration

63%

    

KAAP

94%

    

Whole Rye

6%

    
      
  

5:00 PM

9:30 PM

  

Seed

40

    

KAAP

23

47

200

270

95%

Whole Rye

1

3

11

15

5%

Water

15

35

140

190

67%

    

476

11.6

Soaker 1

  

Soaker 2

  

Middlings

137

 

Flax seeds

30

 

Water

137

 

Water

90

 

Salt

4

    
      

12/17/2012

     
 

Final

Starter

Soaker

Total

Percent

KAAP

0

119

 

119

27%

Whole Rye

0

7

 

7

2%

Medium Rye

186

  

186

41%

Middlings

  

137

137

31%

Water

0

84

227

311

69%

Salt

4

 

4

8

1.8%

Flax seeds

  

30

30

7%

Starter

210

   

28%

    

798

178%

Starter factor

0.4

    
      

Make soakers at 5pm 12/16/2012

   

Water is cool from tap

    
      

Mix all at 8:30am (150g medium rye) - 5 minutes to incorporate

Then 10 minutes - speed 1 and 2

   

Add more Medium Rye to make dough cohere (36g)

 

Mix 8 more minutes

    

BF for two hours

    

Shape into fat batard, place in basket

  

with parchment sprinkled with bran across length (not sides)

and loaf floured

    

Place in refrigerator at 11:15

   

Remove at 3:30

    

Proof for 90 minutes

    

Place on peel, spritz, and slash

   

Bake at 450 for 20 minutes with steam

  

13 minutes without

    

 

GOLDEN LOAVES

 

Final

Starter

Total

Percent

KAAP

 

130

130

22%

Whole Rye

 

7

7

1%

Golden

460

 

460

77%

Water

315

92

407

68%

Salt

10

 

10

1.7%

Starter

230

  

23%

   

1015

170%

Starter factor

0.5

   
     
     
     

Starter from previous

   
     
     

Mix all ingredients for around 15 minutes speed 1 and 2

BF for 2.5 hours with 2 S&F on counter

 

Cut and preshape

   

Rest 15 minutes

   

Shape into batards

   

Place in refrigerator at 12:10

  

Remove at 3:40

   

Proof for 2 hours 20 minutes

  

Place on peel, spritz, and slash

  

Bake at 450 for 20 minutes with steam

 

14 minutes without

   

I decided to soak the middlings overnight, as they had been quite coarse in another bread.   This seemed to soften them up a bit.   I was going to do half and half middings and medium rye, but my milling and sifting process didn't cooperate so I used slightly more medium rye.    When I started mixing the dough came together immediately, but them fell apart completely and just stuck to the edges of the bowl.   After trying to pull it together, I finally added some more medium rye, which did the trick.  

Here are my milling and sifting notes:

Mill coarse, Sift in #24

 

Mill leavings coarse, sift in #24

Mill leavings medium, sift in #24

Mill leavings fine, sift in #24

Remove leavings which are bran

Sift flour in #30

 

Remove leavings which are bran

Sift flour in #55

 

Mill leavings at medium

 

Sift in #55

 

Mill leavings at medium fine

Sift in #55

 

Mill leavings at fine

 

Sift in #55

 

Leavings are Middlings

 

Sifted flour is Golden

 
   

Berries

670

 

Golden

460

69%

Middlings

137

20%

Bran

51

8%

Loss

22

3%

I am guessing that my middlings are probably quite different than Watermill middlings.   I am unable to separate middlings and semolina and don't think I want to because then my quantities would be too small.    The term middlings, however, doesn't seem to be terribly precise:   see here.   So I am thinking I'm within my rights to call it such.    I was quite surprised to see that middlings are looked down on as a food source even though that's where the nutrients are.    The article says that they are being considered as a source of bio-fuels, because of course it's better to put the nutrients in our cars than our bodies.  

txfarmer's picture
txfarmer

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

 

Sourdough panettones have become holiday gift of choice from me to my friends, they are amazed by the look, the smell, the taste, and the labor/time that's involved, certinally leaves a long lasting impression ... until they ask for it again next Christmas! This year I was inspired by mwilson's post here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/30801/perfect-panettone. Many thanks!

This recipe is originally from Iginio Massari, which is very close to the one I made last year (here) in terms of butter/yolk/sugar ratio. However, there's a main differece in procedure: Francesco Elmi's formula last year has a lot more butter/yolk in the first dough, while Iginio Massari's version has most of butter/yolk in the second dough. This small change does lead to quite a bit of difference in fermentation timing and final taste.  Francesco Elmi's formula require a longer rise time for first dough (since it's richer, 14 hours for me), but the 2nd dough only took 5-6 hours; Iginio Massari's first dough took less time (it's leaner, 11 hours for me) and is easier to knead, however both rising and kneading for the 2nd dough took longer (8 hours for me). There's also a subtle difference in terms of flavor profile. If I remember correctly, last years's version is a tiny bit more tangy than this years. Both are decliciou and light, just ... slightly different.

For each batch I can only make two loaves since that's how many my ad hoc proof box would fit. In fact I have so far made 3 batches,  expecting to make at least one more -- that leaves 68 leftover egg whites! Just like last year post holiday days, a lot of angle food cakes are coming my way.

One thing make sourdough panettone great holiday gift is how long it keeps. I am mailing a couple to other cities (one is even on the way to Canada!), even after 5 days on the road, they would still be moist and fresh.

Light as air ... which leads to a question my friends always ask me: is it a cake or bread?

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

Now that the AZ weather has turned off the 6 month oven time bake, we can get back into puff pastry and other laminated dough like croissants – Yeaah!!

  

I took some paper and cut squares with scissors until I got a shape I liked.  You fold the square corner to corner first.  Then you make 4 cuts from the long folded edge toward the opposite point but don’t cut all the way.

 

Open the square back up.  You put your filling down the uncut middle from end to end.   Mine was chocolate chips dark brown sugar and cocoa.  Then  fold the inside square corners up to a triangle pointing skyward.

 

The take the inner most cut pieces and fold them over themselves to the opposite side.

 

Then fold the outermost cut pieces over themselves to the opposite side just like the inside ones.  This encapsulates the filling and after some egg glaze and turbinado sugar makes a weird puff paste shape like this.

I sprinkled turbinado sugar on mine.

I baked this one at 400 F in the mini oven until it was nice and golden. 

pmccool's picture
pmccool

The first week of December featured a lot of baking, in marked contrast to the prior week.  Having my hands in that much dough was a genuine pleasure.  Even better was the knowledge that most of it was for the benefit of others, rather than for myself.

On Saturday, December 1, I finished my shopping and dropped off the ingredients in preparation for a class at the Culinary Center of Kansas City.  I also prepared biga that evening for a batch of Stollen.  On Sunday afternoon, I prepared and baked the Stollen, three loaves worth, and two loaves of a Bohemian Christmas Braid.  Students who get to see what the finished product looks like, and enjoy eating it, in class go home happier than those who do not.  (And they did like the taste of these breads!)  On Monday evening, I prepped enough biga for 20 batches of Stollen. 

The Bohemian Christmas Braid, before and after glazing (it's easy to see why my wife handled braiding duties for our daughters' hair):

And the stollen, prior to basting with melted butter and blanketing in sugar:

The class on Tuesday evening ran from 6:30 to 9:00.  I arrived at the Center just after 4:30 and spent the next couple of hours prepping ingredients, portioning the biga, and prepping one batch each of Stollen and Braid dough so that they would be available for demonstrating shaping techniques.  Meanwhile, my assistant was setting out the required implements at the student workstations and taking care of other room preparations.  The students started rolling in as we were wrapping up our set-up steps, so we were able to start right on time. 

The students ranged from bread baking newbies to experienced bakers wanting to pick up some additional information about the specific breads being taught that evening.  For instance, one lady was curious about what adjustments she would need to make since she mills her own flour at home.  Regardless of their experience levels, they were a wonderful group to work with and I thoroughly enjoyed our time together.

It’s interesting how little things crop up.  We ran short of fruit peel for the Stollen because I made a mistake in my estimating.  However, we had more raisins and currants than required, which I had anticipated, and that allowed us to make up for the shortfall in the fruit peels.  It also gave a good opportunity to illustrate how to be flexible while baking, adapting to unforeseen circumstances.  I’m still scratching my head about the flour though.  Since I didn’t have the final count when I shopped, I assumed that all 20 places would be filled.  From what I calculated, we needed about 42 pounds of flour; therefore, I picked up a 50-pound sack at Costco.  We used up every bit of that flour and pulled some from the Center’s pantry!  Since I haven’t found an error in my calculations, it’s still a mystery to me how that much flour was used. 

On Friday, December 7, I baked 6 loaves of a Honey-Oatmeal Cinnamon Swirl Raisin Bread, adapted from the Honey-Oatmeal Sandwich Bread in the KAF Whole Grain Baking book.  Six, because that’s as many 9x5 bread pans as I have and because that’s as many as can easily fit in my oven.  Then on Saturday I made 4 more loaves.  We hosted the Christmas party for my wife’s colleagues on Sunday and the bread was for gifts for them and for some other friends.  And one for us, too!  In addition to making fabulous toast, this bread goes really well with ham and cheese.  Other baking that Saturday for the party included about 3 dozen Eggshell Rolls from Clayton’s Complete Book of Breads and Rye Rolls, source not recalled at the moment.  The Rye Rolls got a bit of a tweak when I substituted 1 teaspoon of caraway and ½ teaspoon each of coriander and fennel seeds, crushed, for the called-for 2 teaspoons of caraway. 

Honey-Oatmeal Cinnamon Swirl Raisin Bread dough:

Baked and bagged:

Eggshell Rolls:

Rye Rolls:

The  Honey-Oatmeal Cinnamon Swirl Raisin Bread also marked the first time I have used the Great River brand of whole wheat flour.  I had picked up a 10-pound bag at our local Costco, having seen it there for the first time.  I believe PostalGrunt mentioned it in a recent post of his, too.  Based on my experience, I like this flour.  The grind is quite fine.  I should buy some Wheat Montana flour again to see whether one has a finer grind than the other, or if their textures are approximately equal.  The bran flecks are the same size as the rest of the particles.  My first guess would have been that the flour is produced with roller mills but the Great River Milling site says it is stone-ground.  Although I couldn’t locate a precise analysis, GRM says that their bread flours are milled from hard red spring wheat and “we strive to purchase wheat that contains 14 percent protein and strong gluten content.”  From a purely empirical point of view, I’d say that they hit their target for the bag I purchased.  Not surprisingly, I had to increase the liquid content to achieve the desired dough consistency.  The resulting dough handled well and rose well, too.

The Great River flour bag:

This past weekend I made a batch of Cromarty Cob from Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters. Having blogged about this bread previously, here, I won’t go through a blow-by-blow account this time.  I made two deviations from Mr. Whitley’s formula and process.  First, I increased amounts by 50% to produce two medium-size loaves, rather than one large loaf.  Second, I let fermentation proceed at ambient temperatures in my kitchen, which ranged from 65-68F, instead of the recommended 82F temperature.  As a result, fermentation times for the levain and for the final dough were in the 12-hour range, each.  With the whole-wheat content being approximately 50%, this yielded a bread with a noticeable sourdough tang.  The wheaty flavors that were masked by the cinnamon and raisins in the Honey-Oatmeal Cinnamon Swirl Raisin Bread get to shine in this loaf, too.  I expect that using a higher fermentation temperature would lead to a bread with a more subtle sourness and, therefore, a more wheat-forward flavor and fragrance.  As it is, I’m every bit as happy with this bread as I was the first time I made it.  And I’m happy to have found another high-quality whole wheat flour to work with that doesn’t inflict exorbitant shipping costs.

Since odds are pretty good that I won’t post any new blog entries between now and Christmas, please let me wish each of you a blessed and merry Christmas.

greedybread's picture
greedybread

Bready for Rewena??

 Yep, NZ Bread.

I can hear you non NZer’s going ‘what’ ??????? What is Rewena ?

It is yeasty beasty people, a NZ bread.

We call it Maori bread or Paraoa bread.

It is made with a starter like sourdough or an Italian Biga but it is made out of Potatoes and flour………..My uncles used to make it and they used to make fried bread too but I can’t remember if the fried bread was made from the rewena, I think not, I can remember a very sticky dough in the fry pan……….. and I will do that one another day.

Rewena has an almost sour tang to it because there is a fermentation period, similar to sour dough.I have heard of people keeping it like a sourdough starter but I am not 100% sure about this, I would have thought it would go rotten!! Now 2 of the recipes below have a touch of yeast and one is yeast free.

 

SO WHAT ARE WE AIMING FOR???

Rewena Bread

My recipe is an old family one so I am unable to share it but there is two very good recipes below that will give you similar if not exact results:)

Sorry, I can share the bread, the process and the photo’s but not the recipe as its not mine to give!!

As I have said in prior posts, Dean Brettschneider, a NZ baker also makes one and his recipe is in his book “Global Baker”.

http://amessykitchen.blogspot.co.nz/2011/03/bbb-rewena-paraoa-maori-bread.html

http://curiouskai.blogspot.co.nz/2007/01/rewena-bread-beginning.html

http://www.kaitime.co.nz/index.php/recipes/desertsabreads/150-paraoa-parai–rewena-bread    (Yeast free)

 LETS LOOK ATHE PHOTOS!! Gorgeous!! and the taste……..

Start with this!!

Ready for first rise.

top

Ready for last rise…

Kiwi Template

Ready to eat!!

mmmmmmm

yummmmmmm

One more for luck

And you know what I am going to say now!!!

Enjoy, Enjoy, Enjoy!!or  as we say in NZ , SWEET AS!!

Will start hunting down the fry bread recipe:)

GSnyde's picture
GSnyde

If youda told me that the fluffiest bread I ever made would be 40% whole wheat, I woulda called you a liar.  But now I believe!

I’ve been making more whole grain breads lately.  But cold roast chicken sandwiches need Challah.  So, I started looking through my books for a whole wheat Challah.  Glezer?  Nope.   Hensperger?  Uh-uh.  Reinhart?   Not in the books I have (I know there’s such a formula in Whole Grain Breads, but I ain’t got.  Hey, Santa!  Hannukah’s almost over!).  So, whaddya know?  Inside the Jewish Bakery has this Honey Whole Wheat Challah formula!  So I gave it a whirl.  Floyd posted the formula here (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/honeywholewheatchallah).

This is a very rich bread.  Lots of oil and eggs and honey.  But it’s got whole wheat, so it’s nutritious.  The dough behaved very nicely.  Good moist texture, easy to handle.  I followed the instructions, except I used the Glezer strand-shaping method (roll out each piece into a flat circle, then roll up into a cylinder). 

 The loaves expanded hugely, both in the proofing and in the oven.  These are LARGE Challot.  And very airy and melt-in-your-mouth tender.  And deliciously eggy and wheaty. Never had sliced chicken found a happier place!

I highly recommend this formula.  Would be good for rolls, too.

Glenn

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