Hi everyone, I'm new to the forums, but have been lurking around for a while.  I've been baking exclusively 100% whole grain bread for a couple of years now, and I'm very happy with my sandwich loaf, but I'm always tweaking my rustic boule (which I make with a sourdough starter).  I use Peter Reinhardt's forumula as a start for a boule/hearth bread from his Whole Grain Breads book.  This recipe calls for a pre-ferment + a soaker overnight, and when the final dough comes together, I do not add any fats (no oil or sugar), and I do not add any commercial yeast (I let the natural leavening starter do its thing).

I am happy with the rise, the crumb, and the flavor of my whole wheat sourdough bread, but I always wish the crust were harder.  The entire bread feels beautifully light on the inside (not the heavy/chewy door-stopper type of weight that a lot attribute to WW), but I think that the crust should be harder and maybe even thicker.  When searching hard or soft crust on this forum, it looks like the trend is how to get a softer cruster instead of harder... well, I need tips on harder crust.

I experiment baking two ways: 1) on parchment paper directly on a fibrament baking stone pre-heated for 1 hour to 550 deg F (temp reduced to 450 deg F after 2 minutes) with a steam pan and a spritz of water sprayed directly onto the boule; and 2) inside of a pre-heated cast-iron dutch (with parchment paper again for ease of transport) oven pre-heated to 550 degrees (lowered to 450 degrees after first 2 minutes), boule spritzed with water, and covered with a lid for about 75% of the baking time.  The results are somewhat similar, with the crust browning more on the stone (and maybe slightly tougher just on the bottom).

Recently I am scoring the loaf, and I'm happier with the oven spring, but look for your tips on a tougher and harder crust out of the oven.  I know that after a day or so in a plastic bag, the crust will soften, but I'm hopeful for the day 1 crust!

Thanks,
-Nico

This bread is often referred to as a pain de campagne or a pain au levain and it is certainly both of these things, though more specifically in the tradition of the Bordeaux region. So far, this is one of my favorite breads that I have made and I eat it literally every day. I finally made it today with a culture that I have been growing for a few weeks and I am extremely pleased with the result. It grew huge and crusty, and the score split nicely to form two strong grignes.

Stay with me here, as I have never tried to transition a commercial recipe (this one was for 12,000 grams of dough) for home use before, so this might be a bit on the rough side. The only thing that would complicate making this bread at home is that it requires a liquid levain, which requires a sourdough culture, which not too many non-breadheads keep around the house. If you happen to keep a culture around, I will explain (all the way at the bottom) how to build it so that it is ready for baking this recipe the next day. I will give the bakers' percentages first, with measurements in grams for a hand-mix batch listed thereafter. I recalculated the recipe to produce 1500 grams of dough, which makes two nicely sized batards or boules.

Levain Build
Flour: 100%
Water: 125%
Sourdough (levain) Culture: 10%

Final Dough
Bread or AP Flour: 90% (667 g)
Rye Flour (course if possible): 8% (59 g)
Whole Wheat Flour: 2% (14.8 g)
Water: 60% (444.6 g)
Salt: 2.4% (17.8 g)
Liquid Levain: 40% (296.4 g)
Fresh Yeast (a spike): .1%: (5 g)

First, assemble your mise en place. Scale out the water and the liquid levain in the same container (save the dishes!). They should both be somewhere in the neighborhood of room temperature. Scale out the flours and put them in a fairly large mixing bowl. Scale out the salt and the yeast and set them aside.

Form a small well in the flour and pour in about half of the liquids. Mix slowly using a wet hand or a bowl scraper. When those liquids are reasonably well incorporated, add the rest of the liquids and continue to mix until the dough is a fairly consistent texture.

Flip the dough out onto the counter. Form two little wells in the dough and place the salt and yeast in each one, respectively. Flip the bowl over to cover the dough and let it sit for about 15-30 minutes. This, friends, is your autolyse and it will save you a lot of kneading later on. Put the salt and yeast on top so you don't forget them, spill them, or add them to the wrong thing. This is not as much of a problem in a home kitchen. Just don't forget them.

When that time has elapsed, start with your bench knife, moving around the edges and bringing the dough up over the salt and yeast. Continue to use the bench knife to bring the edges over the top as much as possible. One note of caution is that, in general, what started as the bottom should be the bottom when you're finished. Throughout the process, it forms a sort of skin the protects the gluten network that you're working so hard to develop.

When the dough has become more smooth, we're going to start kneading. If you do this in a mixer, be careful not to overmix, which will create a more dense final product. On the counter, this doesn't take a ton of flour, but it's sticky stuff so you'll definitely need some. Less is always best. Remember, fold the dough toward you and use the heel of your hand to push down and away from your body. Rotate 90 degrees and repeat. And repeat until the dough is much stronger and smoother. You can try to make a window at the edge of the dough, though it's pretty hard to over-knead this by hand. I would say about eight minutes of solid kneading should do it.

Grease up your bowl, put the dough back in it, and cover it with plastic wrap. Now we're in bulk fermentation, which takes about two hours for this dough if the temperature of the dough is around 75 degrees. After one hour, fold the dough. Folding is the clever man's version of punching down. Fold the top two-thirds of the way down, repeat with the bottom, and then repeat with the sides. Flip the lump of dough over, cover, and continue with fermentation. Folding has multiple purposes: it strengthens the dough's structure, stabilizes the temperature of the dough, and redistributes the yeast and what it eats.

Divide the dough evenly in half. If you measured correctly, each half should weigh 750 grams. No preform is necessary for this dough, though if it's something you want to do, preform it to round and let it relax for about twenty minutes. The final shape is a batard approximately 10 inches long, and it should proof in a banneton/brotform if you have one available. As an alternative, it could proof on a couche or on a very-well-floured towel. Proof the dough until an indentation made with the finger springs back about 50%.

The oven should be set to about 470 degrees and a pizza stone is recommended though not ultimately necessary. Gently steam the oven, score the bread down the middle with a lame or a knife, and insert the bread into the oven. Steam the oven again after 30 seconds and again after 3o more seconds. Cook the bread until it is deep brown, almost burgundy, a color brought about by the non-white grains.

I have never made this in a home oven, but the cooking time should be in the neighborhood of 35-50 minutes. When you think it's done, crack the oven door to release any remaining steam and leave the bread in for five to ten more minutes. Remove the bread and cool completely.

On scoring: This bread takes a single long slash from end to end. When scoring, the knife or lame should never be vertical. Try slicing with the blade at a 45 degree angle to the top of the bread (__/__). This will get you a better grigne in the end.

On Levain: The recipe requires approximately 300 grams of developed levain. If you have a culture at home, this should be quite easy to build. You must feed your culture 24 hours before you plan to bake so that the yeast in the culture has time to develop and eat lots of sugars. The bakers' percentages are as follows:

Flour: 100%
Water: 125%
Culture: 10%
Total: 235%

So, to achieve 300 grams of levain, we need to calculate what one percent is. To do so, take the desired amount of product and divide it by the total percentages in the recipe. For the levain, we divide 300 by 235 to get 1.27. At this point, we multiply this number by the percentages of each ingredient. So, calculated out, the levain recipe is as follows:

Flour: 100% x 1.27 = 127.7 g
Cold Water: 125% x 1.27 = 158.75 g
Culture: 10% x 1.27 = 10.27 g

We can check our math by adding the calculated weights of each ingredient in the recipe and comparing that number to the amount we wanted to make. (127.7 + 158.75 + 10.27 = 296.72, which is close enough) So, with that done, mix these things together in a container and let them sit room temperature for 24 hours before you plan to bake. Don't forget to feed your culture so you can do this again. The best idea would be to build the levain in a separate container.

I need a little help here.  I'm a bit more skilled in the photography dept. than in baking, so I'm having issues getting the kind of crumb I want.  I'm getting there, but I think I'm deflating my breads a bit too much before the proofing stage.  I figured the whole grain+fruit_nut bread would have a crumb like I ended up with, but the white loaf on the bottom was really only shaped and slightly keaded before proofing.  I did the whole folding technique vs. punching down and solid 10 minute kneading.  I also made a poolish that sat out overnight.  It ended up more like a ciabatta and less like a boule texture wise.  Any advice?

I had great success with overnight retarding of my ciabatta dough.  The flavor was sweet and nutty, the crust turned to a beautiful golden brown, and I got great big holes.  I thought that trying an overnight stay in the fridge for my rustic bread would yield similar results.  But I tried it this Saturday and my dough ended up with small uniform air pockets, and lacked in the rich develoepd taste of the ciabatta.

So I'm wondering what's the secret to overnight retarding of dough?  How long does it need to warm back up?  Should you knead once then put in the fridge, or knead twice and form?  Should you use a poolish, as I did, or just mix all the ingredients and then retard the dough?

I think this method has a lot of promise, but I'm wondering how everyone else does it.  Many thanks!

-Peter

It's been a bit since I've baked. Bread has been bought at our house lately, which I'm not that happy with, and therefore I figured I should get in gear again. I wanted a bread that was relatively low fuss, so I decided on a reduced amount of yeast in a normal, slightly wetter dough.

I started with 2 cups of flour, 1/4 teaspoon of yeast, and 1 cup water. Those were mixed and left in my oven for 5 hours. By this time the mass had tripled and was looking quite good. I mixed in 1/2 cup more water and 1.5 teaspoons salt, then flour 1/2 a cup at a time until I came to the right consistency for me...ended up being about 3.75 cups. It was a rather wet, sticky mass. I kneaded it in the bowl until it formed itself into something vaguely resembling a ball and stashed it in my refrigerator until morning. Woke up, took it out, let it come to room temperature. Once there, I shaped the dough into as nice a ball as I could manage and placed it into a bowl bottom up. I let that double. Baked at 425 for 20 minutes covered, and then 10 minutes uncovered, until the middle reached 200 degrees. I think it needed a little longer in the oven, but it turned out pretty well.

I think the next time I make this I'll not do a preferment at all. I really don't think it changed anything. I'll just mix up the ingredients, knead for a little while, and then stash in the fridge for a long fermentation. It'll probably turn this into 36 hour bread, but that's quite fine with me if the results are this tasty.

The Fresh Loafers, This is the latest video where I'm working with some higher hydration (68%) doughs. Both of the breads are 'originals', and if you'd like to see the recipes you can probe around here for them or email me at the bakery. Anyway, I hope you like it. I decided to forego music this time and just add commentary. Nothing witty, strictly business.

-Mark
http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

Hey there everybody. Well about a month ago I asked for some advice in creating a 'Peasant Loaf', more specifically a Kalamata loaf, and I had lots of great suggestions and recipes. Anyways, this is what I came up with and it's derived mostly from the recipe AnnieT posted in the original thread (Dan Lepard's recipe), a recipe Bob (Oldcampcook) sent me, and my rustic white recipe that Eric (ehanner) blogged about not too long ago. Thanks so much everyone; I'll try to post the recipe as a PDF here so as not to clog up this thread too much.
EDIT: Unlike on the recipe, I now add the olive oil mixture at the beginning of the mixing at the same time as the water.  Also, I'm now baking this loaf and all of my other without bannetons - just shaped freeform on parchment paper.  Oh, and for you technical types, this is a description of the sequence pics below from left to right and top to bottom:
fold at 1 hour; fold at 2 hours
shaping; just placed in bannetons
after proofing for 80 minutes; scoring before baking
They were baked on the parchment/pan for 20 minutes, then removed w/ a peel and baked on the oven rack (with a pan below to catch any drips) for 15 minutes

-Mark

kalamata sequence

loaf

crumb

Well it's been since I first found TheFreshLoaf in 2006 that I posted to my bread blog. Up until recently I hadn't had much time or energy to do much baking. Couple that with my love of crusty breads and whole wheat and my wife likes non-crusty, white breads and all the married folk can understand how this variable can decrease the amount of bread time for Jason.

This is a new recipe I made from Daniel Leader’s book, Local Breads, for a Parisian loaf of

Country Sour