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The idea of honest bread and its making found its way into my thinking over the weekend. I find myself slipping more and more into this way of baking. Using less but wanting more from it. I didn’t bake any differently to past weekends yet I felt more connected and relaxed throughout the process. The slightly cooler temperatures certainly helped both my peace of mind and the resulting bread. The kitchen felt less frantic.

 I haven’t been pushing the envelope. Just practising consistency while noticing and adapting to the subtle differences the change of seasons is bringing. Perhaps this might be seen as boring or lazy … nevertheless I enjoyed it thoroughly and it keeps us well fed.

I baked two small batches of 100 per cent whole-wheat desem bread and country breads on the weekend. This will feed the family during the week and left us with a loaf to take away on a picnic to a country market in the northern New South Wales town of Bangalow. We had the best handmade organic doughnuts while wandering through the markets. One of the country breads was given to Nat’s parents on our trip home to help ease their struggling brought on by home renovations.

I have been trying a new method of milling where the flour is constantly stirred and moved around in the bowl as it falls from the mill. I want to disperse the heat as quickly as possible and noticed a definite improvement in the time it took for the flour to cool. Whether this translates into the final bread I really have no idea. Any ideas? I sifted the wheat flour for the country bread as normal and retained the bran for coating the desem loaves.

Mixing the desem starter

Autolyse and desem starter

Squeezing in desem starter

Stretch-and-fold

100% Whole-wheat Desem

Formula

Method

1. Mix desem starter and leave to ferment for 10-12 hours at 18-20°C
2. Mill flour and allow to cool to room temperature before mixing with water (hold back 50 grams of water) and autolyse for a minimum of one hour.
3. Add levain to autolyse then knead (French fold) 5 mins. Return the dough to a bowl and add salt and remaining 50 grams of water and squeeze through bread to incorporate (dough will separate then come back together smoothly) then knead a further 10 mins.
4. Bulk ferment two and a half hours with three stretch-and-fold 30 mins apart.
5. Preshape. Bench rest 20 mins. Shape.
6. Final proof was for 1.5 hours at 24°C
7. Bake in a preheated dutch oven at 250°C for 10 mins then reduce temperature to 200°C and bake a further 10 mins. Remove bread from the dutch oven and continue to bake on a stone for a further 20mins to ensure even browning.

I am continuing to expand the desem starter with one build straight from the fridge and as the overnight temperature continues to cool the desem starter is achieving a more controlled fermentation and sweeter aroma by the following morning. I have been looking forward to this kind of weather all summer and it is so nice to not have sweating dough racing away from me into a sticky mess. I even had to increase proofing times by an extra half-an-hour for this bake.

For an aesthetic change to previous desem loaves I baked these without slashing in a dutch oven after coating them in bran sifted from the country breads. I was really surprised with the increased oven spring … quite possibly the best I have had with this form of bread.

Country bread baking

The most telling tale that the cooling temperatures are affecting the bread came with the cutting and tasting. Nat took a bite and then looked at me and asked quite seriously, ‘Have you added anything else to this … it tastes sweet?’ Not only does it taste sweet, but you can smell the sweetness in the kitchen while slicing through a loaf. The crust is delicate with the bran coating adding a crunchy contrast to the soft crumb within.

So far we have eaten it with Nat’s special ‘sick soup’, with honey and ricotta, toasted with peanut butter, with plum jam, with apricot jam … and the list goes on and on.

Happy baking all ...
Cheers
Phil

San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread with and without Walnuts

This weekend, I continued trying variations of my San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread. Those who have followed this little adventure will note changes in my starter fermentation, the length of the autolyse and the use of this dough for a Sourdough Walnut Bread.

I started with my stock refrigerated 50% starter that had been fed last weekend. This feeding consisted of 50 g active starter, 100 g water and 200 g starter feeding mix. My starter feeding mix is 70% AP, 20% WW and 10% whole rye flour.

I activated the starter with a feeding of 40 g stock starter, 100 g water and 100 g starter feeding mix. This was fermented at room temperature for 8 hours. The starter was very active. It had tripled in volume and was bubbling. I then mixed the stiff levain.

1. Dissolve the starter in the water. Add the flour and mix thoroughly until the flour has been completely incorporated and moistened.

2. Ferment at room temperature for 12 hours, then refrigerated overnight.

Note: For today's bake, I actually mixed two 1 kg batches of dough. For one, I added about 20% (baker's percentage), or 110 g of lightly toasted walnut pieces. This was mixed at slow speed for a couple minutes after Step 3., below.

Method

1. In a stand mixer, mix the flour and water at low speed until it forms a shaggy mass.

2. Cover and autolyse for 20 minutes

3. Add the salt and levain and mix at low speed for 1-2 minutes, then increase the speed to medium (Speed 2 in a KitchenAid) and mix for 5 minutes. Add flour and water as needed. The dough should be rather slack. It should clean the sides of the bowl but not the bottom.

4. Transfer to a lightly floured board and do a stretch and fold and form a ball.

5. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover tightly.

6. Ferment at 76º F for 31/2 to 4 hours with a stretch and fold at 50 and 100 minutes.

7. Divide the walnut bread dough into two equal pieces. Leave the other dough in one piece.

8. Pre-shape as rounds and rest, covered, for 10 minutes.

9. Shape as boules or bâtards and place in bannetons. Place bannetons in plastic bags.

10. Proof at room temperature (68-70º F) for 1-2 hours.

11. Cold retard the loaves overnight.

12. The next morning, proof the loaves at 85º F for 3-4 hours. (If you can't create a moist, 85 degree F environment, at least try to create one warmer than “room temperature.” For this bake, I took two loaves out of the fridge and started proofing them. I took the third loaf out about an hour later and stacked it balanced on top of the other two. I did one bake with the two loaves of walnut bread and a second bake with the third loaf.)

13. 45-60 minutes before baking, pre-heat the oven to 500º F with a baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.

14. Transfer the loaves to a peel. Score the loaves as desired, turn down the oven to 460º F for the smaller loaves or 450ºF for the larger one, steam the oven, and transfer the loaves to the baking stone.

15. After 15 minutes, remove the steaming apparatus, and turn down the oven to 430º F/Convection. (If you don't have a convection oven, leave the temperature at 460º F.)

16. Bake for another 15 minutes for the smaller loaves or 25 minutes for the larger loaf.

17. Turn off the oven, and leave the loaves on the stone, with the oven door ajar, for another 15 minutes.

18. Transfer the loaves to a cooling rack, and cool thoroughly before slicing.

 One of my personal objectives in making this bread for so many weeks running has been, first of all, to develop a formula and procedures that produce a particular style of bread, and secondly to see if I could make small changes that accommodate to my other needs without changing the end product too much.

The bread without walnuts was very similar to the last San Francisco-style Sourdough Bread I had baked. The crust was crunchy and nutty-flavored. The crumb was chewy-tender with a moderate sourdough tang and excellent, balanced flavor.

The bread with walnuts was just delicious. I love the flavor of toasted walnuts in sourdough bread. I don't know why I had waited so long to make it again.

Tonight we'll have an appetizer of sourdough walnut bread with an interesting Spanish goat cheese followed by roasted herbed chicken/gruyere panini and a green salad.

David

Hello,

This time I decided to try out 100% whole wheat rolls, and added more butter + honey + milk than my previous white rolls.  The home-milled whole-wheat is pretty thirsty, so I increased hydration.  I estimated this around 78% hydration.  The dough was a little bit sticky, but easily manageable.   Overall, I am happy with the outcome, these are quite tasty w.w. sweet rolls.   :-)

Yields about 1200 grams of dough.

Milk poolish:

222g ww flour

308g milk

0.4g instant yeast

Final:

All Poolish

452g ww flour

135g eggs

101g butter

101g unfiltered honey

67g whole cane sugar

88g milk

30g instant yeast

13g salt

Procedure:

1) Make the poolish, ferment until ripe.

2) Cream the butter + sugar

3)  Mix everything except for salt+yeast, let rest/autolyse for 30 mins.

4)  Add salt+yeast, mix in thoroughly, then develop to near-full gluten development.

5)  Bulk ferment 1 - 1.5 hrs

6)  Shape, final ferment of 1 - 1.5 hrs

7)  Brush with standard eggwash (water+egg), bake at 350F for 30-40 mins.

Started with the hard red spring wheat berries..

Milled it on the finest setting..

The ripened poolish:

Get all the goodies ready!

The dough after mixing/development:

A diversion..  

Spring has arrived in my corner of the world, and while it's been raining a lot lately, today the sun peeked out for a couple hours this afternoon.  While the dough was fermenting, I checked out some of the new sprouts in the backyard.

After the ferment, I shaped the rolls, and had some leftover for a small loaf:

Here are the happy rolls, ready to bake!

The result.  Yum!

Tears off easily..

Happy baking!

(edited to correct milk weight for poolish)