I had a big baking day yesterday, with a couple pugliese loaves from BBA using mostly durum flour (made a fine breakfast with butter and honey this morning), the largest ciabatta I've ever made, and Dan Leader's Genzano Potato Pizza from Local Breads to come with me to a potluck.

I also thought I should introduce myself, since I haven't really posted much before. I live in Pennsylvania via Kentucky. I bake for fun, therapy, health, and the downright delicious results. I've cooked my whole life and started baking bread regularly about two years ago. I also make beer, cider, yogurt, and have tinkered with cheese, so am interested in all things fermentable.

The potato pizza formula is the same as for Genzano Country Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4417/genzano-country-bread-local-breads), but after fermentation it is coaxed into an oiled sheet pan and topped with lots of very thin potatoes, onions (red for me), fresh rosemary, and a bit of coarse salt.  It was a lot of fun working the enormous mass of wet dough into the pan.  I actually made Genzano Country Bread a few days ago, and trying to shape this wet beast of a dough into something like a boule and getting it safely into a proofing basket had me laughing like a crazy man.   

I used all KA organic bread flour.  Daniel recommends high-gluten, but I've found that Sir Lancelot is a lot stronger than I like unless I need to offset a lot of rye or similar.  The formula uses a biga naturale that I just made from my firm starter, and is spiked with instant yeast for a vigorous rise.  In the future I'd like to omit the instant yeast and give it a whirl with wild yeast alone.  The dough is pretty sloppy, and needed high speed mixing for about 12 minutes to come together suitably.  After about a 3 hour ferment, it was shaped, topped, and baked immediately at 500 for a shade over 30 minutes.  Sorry I don't have pictures of the whole thing, I cut it in half before removing it from the pan, but hopefully you can get the idea.  I called this one successful, the crust was crisp and delicious and the crumb was ideal.  I've never liked potato pizzas I've ordered out because the potatoes tend to come WAY undercooked, but these were much nicer because of the bake time, and some of those on the top were browned and crisp.  My only addition to this in the future would be garlic, and lots of it.

Logan

This recipe comes from Pierre Nury via Daniel Leader's Local Breads, this is the second recipe I've made from the book (and it went a lot better than the first, which I still need to write up). I picked this recipe because it looked like it would make cute little loaves, and one of my friends is a fan of blue cheese. It had also been a while since I made a bread with a significant amount of rye flour, and that one turned out a bit brick like. I had some trepidation starting this recipe because I had heard of many errors in the book (and experienced some of them in the first bread I made), but I didn't notice any glaring errors in this recipe.

This recipe is built on a stiff levain, which I definitely prefer, seem to get better results from it, and I already keep a stiff levain so no conversion needed. Once you have the starter build for the recipe you mix the bread flour (55%) and fine ground rye flour (45%) with the water and let the mixture autolyse for 20 minutes. After the autolyse the small portion of starter is incorporated into the dough and the salt sprinkled on top and kneaded in.

This was a dense and very sticky dough to knead, thanks mostly to the rye flour I would imagine. The new (large) cutting board I got to handle dough on seems to help make the sticky doughs easier to handle than the plastic mat I used previously though, I was able to get this dough kneaded well enough with minimal flour use. I wasn't expecting a huge rise with the dough, both from comments seen online and experience with how my starter likes to rise, and it was good I wasn't expecting much!

I couldn't find the cheese called for in the recipe locally so I picked out an interesting looking selection at my local Whole Foods, Hook's Cheese Company Blue Paradise:

It was a little tricky getting the 4 separate pieces of dough evenly sized because the dough was so sticky! A little dusting of flour to control that stickyness for weighing and I got my 4 roughly equal pieces, and preshaped them into little rectangles (it called for squares, but the dough didn't want to go that way). Each of the 4 got stuffed with cheese, rolled up into little loaves, and put in the loaf pans. I was initially surprised that this recipe calls for scoring before proofing, but I guess that helps it to open up a bit more to make a cavity for the cheese you place on top.

When it came time to bake, I changed up the instructions a bit. I preheated the oven to 500, used nearly boiling water instead of ice cubes, and then turned the heat down to the suggested temperature as soon as the loaves were in the oven (the ice cubes just don't work so well for me). These loaves smelled really great as they were baking!

After they had cooled a little bit, I brought one out to show the person I had baked them for more intending just that he could see and smell it, but it must've smelled really good because he took a big bite out of it! It was really good warm out of the oven like that, I also made a few slices into crostini the other day, topped them with pesto and chicken!

I decided to order two english bread books to my uncle's home, who will come and visit us in a couple weeks. Books are probably everywhere cheaper than in Switzerland, this way I will be able to save around 30 Dollars, which is a lot for a student like me.

Now, question: which books? I decided to order for at least 25 $, because otherwise I'd have to pay for the shipping anyway. I rather spend my money for books only. ;)

I've already got Reinhart's BBA and Hamelman's Bread.

I was thinking about one Whole Grain book, either Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads or Laurel's Kitchen Bread book. I'm not sure which one I should take. I'm looking for a good book with interesting formulas. not only american style pan loaves. I do like hearth breads as well. It seems to me that Laurel's Book includes more formulae, but I don't know what kind of bread they are. I don't mind a couple enriched, sandwich style loaves, but I'd like to have some lean doughs as well. Do I find this in Laurel's book? Reinhart's on the other hand seems to have less theory and less formulae, but a section with hearth breads. is it worth it?

Secondly, I'd like to buy a book which includes formulae which consist out of a variety of grains, not only white flour, some sourdough . . . They can be time consuming, but please, not only! I don't want to have three day-projects all the time. A preferment - fine, sourdough - fine, but to fussy recipes don't fit into my schedule. I was thinking about Leader's Local Breads. I know about the errors in the recipes, but I think it wouldn't matter to much for me as I mostly use weight measurements? And I've already got quite some experience with baking, so I hope that I'd be able to correct errors if I find some?

Any other propositions?

I'd be very happy about some help to make my decision. And I promise to post about my baking which will result out of these books. ;)

Salome

Last bread for the day - Polish Cottage Rye from Leader's "Local Breads." This is another of my personal favorites. Today, I made it with a rye sour fed with whole rye rather than the white rye Leader calls for. I like it both ways.

David

This was a delicious bread! It was everything I hoped for (thank you David!). This massive loaf had a delightful sourness with a nice rye flavor, a well-developed structure without any hint of heaviness, and a wonderful aroma. I would definitely make it again.

This was a three-build bread: I made the German rye sourdough Thursday night and the rye sourdough Friday night. I used KA bread flour and home-ground unsifted rye (the formula called for white rye so this was a substitution). Everything ticked along exactly as expected. I put the final dough mixture together Saturday morning and mixed it in my Kitchen Aid on speed 4 for 14 minutes (again, thanks for your help on this David!), scraping the sides down twice. After I literally poured the mixture into a dough bucket, I let it ferment at room temperature for about 2 1/4 hours. Meanwhile I scoured the house for an appropriately sized proofing basket for my 2 1/2 pounds of dough finally turning up a basket from a closet.

After rubbing a considerable amount of rye flour into a flour-sack couche, I emptied--again almost poured--the dough into its center. The dough was too slack to shape, so I just lifted the whole thing into the basket, covered it with plastic wrap, and let it proof for another 1 3/4 hours during which time it nearly doubled. I then placed a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet, sprayed it with PAM, placed it over the basket, flipped it over and watched the dough come tumbling out.

After three quick scores about 1/2-inch deep, I slid the spreading mass onto a preheated oven stone on the middle rack, plopped 3/4 cup of ice cubes in a skillet beneath the stone for steaming, shut the door, and hoped for the best. As I watched through the oven window I was delighted to see a lot of oven spring. The dough expanded both upwards and sideways increasing in volume nearly 50%. I was very pleased and hopeful. I threw a piece of foil over the loaf after 20 minutes because I worried that it was getting brown to quickly and then checked it to see if it was done at 40 minutes. It registered 96º C. so I removed it to a cooling rack. I was very happy to feel that the loaf was wonderfully light. I knew I had a winner.

Notes: I used the rye sour from Leader's book. It had sat in the refrigerator un-refreshed for a month but seemed to perform just fine after only one feeding and 12 hours on the counter (actually, I let it sit on the counter for 24 hours before using it); no doubt, this is a testimonial to the rehabilitation properties of rye flour.

You can see the hole in the top of the loaf where I injected the helium.


I took some more pictures but didn't have the CF card in the camera so I'll post more tomorrow.

Here are some more pictures. Vodka is the traditional accompaniment.





This is a picture of about one-third of the loaf in its proofing basket; I'm including it so you can see how really large this massive loaf was.

After our dinner of sausages, grilled red peppers, and sautéed onion relish, we enjoyed a fre$h cherry pie. The pie's crust was perfectly flakey and delicious owing to the incorporation of a small amount of solid Crisco with the butter (as usual, I promised myself that this was absolutely the last time I would use the white stuff!).

--Pamela

Baker Beware!

I'm making a blog entry to document my experience with Leader's Corn-Rye Rounds from Local Breads. The recipe was simple enough and the little rounds seemed to turn out as described by the recipe, but they tasted just awful. I was so disappointed that I didn't even take a picture of these little round rock-like things with a very odd and inharmonious taste of corn and rye. I threw them all in the trash.

--Pamela

This is a very tasty bread with a light crumb and nice crunch from the soaked seeds. I would make it again. In spite of the German rye sourdough incorporated in it, which was very sour tasting, I don't really taste any sour. It is a lovely, soft sandwich-type bread with only a hint of rye flavor. I can't imagine anyone, including children, disliking it. There are a number of errors in the recipe. I have pointed those out below, and indicated my experience when making this recipe in case someone else wants to try it.

This sunflower-crusted rye gets great chew from the flax, sesame, and sunflower seeds inside. Flax isn't familiar to most people, but it is one of my favorite bread-baking ingredients. The glossy, tiny golden brown seeds have a wonderful sweet nuttiness. Until I saw this bread at Tobias Maurer's bakery in Stuttgart, I wouldn't have believed it was possible to put so many seeds into one loaf. I had seen how an abundance of seeds can draw moisture from dough, drying out the bread as it bakes. Tobias showed me how an overnight soak softens the seeds, turning them into a gelatinous mass that does the opposite, moistening the dough as it bakes (Local Breads, p. 282).

From Leader's Local Breads:

50 g German rye sourdough

28 g flax seeds

28 g raw, white sesame seeds

28 g raw sunflower seeds

525 g water* (I will probably either reduce the water by 50 g the next time I make the bread)

5 g instant yeast

300 g unbleached bread flour (I used KA Bread flour)

200 g whole grain rye flour (I ground my own)

10 g salt

Topping: 28 g raw sunflower seeds

Soak seeds, except topping, in 175 g water and make German rye sourdough 12 to 24 hours before mixing dough. (I did not find that these formed a gelatinous mass after soaking overnight, but whatever they formed seemed to work perfectly.)

On baking day: Pour remaining 350 g water in mixer bowl and stir in yeast, soaked seeds, bread flour, rye flour, salt, and German rye sourdough. Using the dough hook, knead the dough on speed 2 for 8 minutes, let rest in bowl for 10 minutes, resume kneading for another 8 minutes. I had to incorporate a substantial amount of extra bread flour during the final kneading time owing perhaps to errors in the amount of water* specified in Leader's recipe, which is different in the ingredients column than in the text.

Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled container with a lid and let rise until double, about 2 hours.

Divide the dough in half, shape, and place in two 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 inch pans. (I got two, 1-1/2 pound loaves out of the recipe, but Leader indicates there would be two 17 ounce loaves.) Mist the loaves with water or brush with egg wash and sprinkle with remaining sunflower seeds. Cover loosely and let proof for about an hour until nearly double (mine were doming the pans).

Preheat the oven to 400º twenty minutes before baking and place the oven rack at the lower middle position.

Bake the loaves for about 35 minutes. (I got a lot of oven spring.)

German rye-sourdough: mix 50 g liquid levain, 100 g water, and 75 g rye flour. Let stand at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours. It is ready when it has doubled and tastes very tangy. It is alright to use if it has deflated (this was the case with me). This makes more sourdough than you need. According to the recipe, you can store the unused portion in the fridge until you are ready to use it again.

I haven't baked the Polish Cottage Rye from Daniel Leaders "Local Breads" for a year! In the past, I have used First Clear Flour or another high extraction flour as a substitute for the bread flour called for in Leader's formula. This time, I followed the formula exactly.

The dough was very wet and sticky, even with very good gluten development. I actually enjoyed working with this dough, which must indicate I've reached a new level of comfort with slack doughs. In spite of the slackness, it had enough integrity to take my slashes without any dragging. I think proofing the loaf in a linen-lined banneton resulted in just enough drying of the surface.

The resulting bread was similar in profile to the Polish Cottage Ryes I had made before, but the crumb was much more open and chewy. I attribute this to the flour I used, in large part, but also to the better gluten development.

This is a "sourdough rye." There is no added yeast. It is made with a rye sour. I made my sour from my usual starter by giving it two feedings with whole rye flour. All the rye in the dough is from the rye sour.

Polish Cottage Rye -2-1/2 pound boule

As you can see, this bread has a rather low profile. The slack dough spreads once it is dumped from the banneton onto the peel. It has only moderate oven spring. I should have put a ruler on the cutting board to provide a sense of scale, but this bread is just about 11" across. 

Polish Cottage Rye - Crumb close-up

As with most sourdough rye breads, this one benefits from deferring slicing until at least 12 hours after it has baked. I am so proud of myself! This is the first time I actually had the self-control to leave the bread uncut for 12 hours!

The flavor of this bread is marvelous. It is moderately sour with a complex flavor. The rye flavor is very much "there," but it does not dominate. 

I recommend this bread to any rye-lover who wants to explore beyond "Deli Rye" but isn't quite ready for the 70-100% ryes. Because it has a high percentage of bread flour, the dough acts like a "regular" sourdough, not like the sticky dough of a high-percentage rye. I also recommend it to any sourdough lover. There are so many things to be said about adding some rye flour to a "white" sourdough, the topic deserves it's own entry.  For now, I'll just leave it at, "Try it! You'll like it!"

David

Today's bake was Daniel Leader's Whole Wheat Genzano Country Bread, from his Local Breads book.  This bread combines a biga naturale for flavor with yeast for shorter, more predictable fermentation times.

The formula is straight-forward: the biga, water, equal parts whole wheat and bread flours, salt and yeast.  Final hydration works out to about 77%.  Based on Leader's description of the dough, I was expecting something almost in the ciabatta realm.  It turned out to be less gloppy than a ciabatta dough, perhaps because of the extra absorbency of the whole wheat flour.  Still, it was definitely better handled by the mixer than by hand.  I'm a little leery of his mixing directions, though.  First, he recommends an 10-minute run at speed 8 on a Kitchen Aid, followed by an 8-10 minute run at speed 10.  I didn't run it quite that long, or quite that fast, since I was seeing good gluten development.  Plus, the dough was clearing the sides of the bowl, even though it was very sticky.  The directions indicated that it probably cause the mixer to walk.  Hah!  I had to hold it down, what with the ball of dough slapping and releasing from the sides of the bowl.

After the mixing/kneading stage, the dough is dumped into an oiled container for 1-1.5 hours until it doubles.  It is then treated to a series of stretch and folds in the container (I used a plastic bowl scraper for this exercise), then allowed to double again.  Having finished bulk fermentation, the dough is scraped out onto a floured counter, divided in two, and (very gently) shaped into rough, rectangular loaves that are placed on bran-strewn pieces of parchment paper for their final rise.  The risen loaves go onto stone in a preheated oven, with steam.  The initial temperature is 450 F, which is dropped to 400 F for the second part of the bake.  Oven-spring was good.  The crust color is a deep brown, but not the near-black color promised in the formula.

The finished bread looks like this:

The crust is thin and crackly, although I expect it will soften because of the internal moisture.  The flavor is very good; closer to that of a yeasted bread than to a sourdough but with some complexity that isn't usually present in a straight dough.  There doesn't seem to be the bitterness that sometimes shows up in whole wheat breads.  The crumb is moderately open, though nothing like the big holes of a ciabatta.  That's not bad, since this will be used primarily for sandwiches.  The breads are relatively light in weight for their size, another indicator of an open crumb.  I'll have to get a crumb shot, later.

I will definitely make this again, although I may experiment with leaving out the yeast.  That should swing the flavor profile in a whole 'nother direction.  Before getting to that, though, I have my eye on a couple of different rye recipes from Local Breads.

Paul

I'm getting worried about my Méteils au Blue. The dough was suppose to double in 4 hours. It's been almost 4 hours and it's only risen a tiny bit. Should I just give it more time?

--Pamela