Cher504's blog

Wishing all you bakers out there a healthy and sweet New Year. This year for Rosh Hashanah I made Maggie Glezer's Pan de Calabaza. This recipe is in her book "A Blessing of Bread" which is so interesting. It tells the back stories (and  the formulas, of course) for all kinds of traditional Jewish breads from all over the world. There's babkas, pita, challahs, Lithuanian, Greek and Ethiopian breads. If you're looking for the Pan de Calabaza formula, it's been posted at least twice on this site. Here's one by Dolf with inventive shaping like a jack o'lantern: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4659/happy-halloween-double-pumpkin-bread

And another version using sweet potato and whole wheat here on rubato456's blog: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8847/sweet-potato-whole-wheat-challot

I love the color of the crumb and the very subtle flavors of pumpkin, ginger and cardamom. Also this formula is very adaptable - I've done it using sourdough, with and without raisins, substituting mashed butternut or delicata squash for the pumpkin - they're all good! Plus everybody knows that any kind of challah makes superlative french toast. 

And who can resist a little blueberry pie?

Now that the summer heat has gone, it's nice to be firing up the oven again.

Happy baking and cheers!

Cherie

Several weeks ago, I started a new rye sour - Lucy's way [http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/43019/really-dark-old-school-sprouted-pumpernickel-–-memory-barbra]

This starter is so potent! Thanks DAB -  it's the gift that keeps on giving. Since using it for the dark pumpernickels, I've been on a rye kick - trying out all different kinds of rye breads. 

My usual pumpernickel raisin with chia seeds (thanks Mini)

This one uses a double stout beer in place of water

Swedish Limpa Rye

This is the Horst Bandel black pumpernickel from "Bread"

Spiced Rye from Dan Lepard. Clearly I need to do a better job of mixing the rye roux into the other flours here - but the taste is something special!

This is my favorite Korn Rye with 'everything' topping. 

Other rye breads on my short list: Mini's favorite 100% rye with chia and pine nuts; Apple Cider Sour Rye and Finnish Rye from Susan's wildyeast blog, and someday soon I want to tackle a Borodinsky rye. 

So far it's been a summer of rye heaven!

Cheers and happy baking,

Cherie

This Sweetie Pie is basically a Tartine style loaf employing 100% hydration rye sourdough with added raisins, pecans and mashed sweet potato - yum! I found the recipe here:

http://girlmeetsrye.blogspot.com/2014/04/sweetie-pie.html

And my ongoing quest for pumpernickel raisin - this one came out quite to my liking! 

Thanks to Mini for many suggestions to improve my rye skills. 

Cheers and Happy baking!

Cherie

    This week two more versions of Raisin Pumpernickel were added to the odyssey. One round - using rye/yeast water levain and one in a loaf pan - that one used only instant yeast for leavening. I'm getting closer; both breads are great tasting but I still have a ways to go with my rye skills - shaping, transferring from basket to peel, and judging when they're proofed enough and ready to go into the oven. 

The loaf on the left is an oatmeal raisin from "Bread" made with the leftover rye yeast water levain (I just can't throw anything away! ;-). Really tasty - that one. Those Hamelman formulas never disappoint.

The round on the right is the raisin pump. I started with the recipe from ITJB, but used a levain made from grape yeast water and whole rye flour - hoping to diminish the sour note and open the crumb a bit. Then for the final build I used coarse rye meal instead of the flour. Other tweaks: Added 1/2 C altus from a previous raisin pump effort, used black coffee instead of water in the final dough, baked it in a DO at a higher temp (460dF) than recipe states. Was that too high? I based it on rye baking temps in "Bread"

It looked great after the bulk ferment. Maybe I should have degassed more? Shaped loaf was placed in a wheat bran dusted basket and final proof was around 50 min. A finger poke bounced back very slowly. Maybe too rough transferring from basket to parchment to DO? The loaf baked covered for 15 min. and uncovered for another 40ish minutes - with the oven temps turned down little by little - until a thump on the bottom sounded right and internal temp was 205. 

Here's the crumb:

There is some decent aeration, but no height ;-/ What would help here? Vital Wheat gluten? I was using KABF today - First Clear flour is on order. Or maybe this is 'as good as it gets' with so much coarse meal in the works? If anybody can help me here I'd love some direction...

The yeasted loaf pan version was also really tasty. I found the recipe here: http://germanfood.about.com/od/bread/r/pumpernickel1.htm

I did make two changes: I swapped out 2T of whole rye flour and put in 2T coarse rye meal, and used Guinness for all the water. It's delicious!! Tho' it's a little like Pumpernickel 'lite' - I'd like to try adapting this version using a rye sour.

More adventures in the kitchen! To be continued...

I've been searching for Hodgson Mills Graham Flour since reading about Zolablue's Grandmother's Brown Bread. 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2630/memos-brown-bread   

I love that story and how ZB was able to reinvent a lost recipe and recapture the sweet memory of her grandmother who had passed away 25 years before. It really shows how bread is so much more than just food and the story's a reminder that we all stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Anyway....I finally found the flour! I had to ask a merchant who carried Hodgson Mills other products to order it for me and voila! You have to look really hard to see the word "Graham"

(Still haven't figured out how to turn photos around)

I made Memo's Brown Bread and weighed everything as I went along, so here is Zolablue's recipe with weights in grams instead of cups. 

Ingredients:

• 1 small potato @140g (size of a medium onion) cooked in boiling water
• 5g instant yeast (@1.5 teaspoons)
• 60g warm water
• 57g shortening (I used room temp, unsalted butter)
• 40g sugar
• 18g salt
• 437-562g AP flour
• 202g Hodgson Mills Graham Flour 

Zolablue's method from here on out with any changes/modifications of mine in parentheses. 

Peel and slice, very thinly, one small potato and boil in 4 cups of water until very well done – usually takes about 15 minutes because of the size of the slices.  Then mash the potato in the water and usually the remaining water with the potato leaves the exact amount of liquid you need for the recipe – (586g) the 2 1/2 cups.  If you need to, add a bit more water if you don’t have enough. 

Sprinkle yeast on (60g)1/4 cup warm water.  Stir to dissolve and set aside. 

  Place sugar, salt, and shortening in mixing bowl and pour hot spud water over this and cool. The potato water should be about the temp of a baby’s bottle, warm to the wrist, otherwise it can kill the yeast. 

 By Hand:  Stir (312g) 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour into bowl containing salt, sugar & potato/potato water to make a thin batter. Add yeast and beat well. Then add (202g) 1 1/2 cups graham flour and mix well.  Stir in remaining all-purpose flour - 1 to 2 cups – until it can be handled on a floured board or counter. Knead in more flour until you have a smooth ball that no longer sticks to counter.

  By Stand Mixer:  Stir 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour into bowl containing salt, sugar & potato/potato water to make a thin batter. Add yeast and beat well. Then add 1 1/2 cups graham flour and mix well.

Stir in remaining all-purpose flour - (125 to 250g) 1 to 2 cups - to make a dough that leaves the sides of the bowl.  Knead/mix until smooth and elastic, about 7 - 10 minutes. (I wound up using all of the extra AP flour)

Place in greased bowl; turn dough over to grease top.  (Due to an unforeseen chore, I had to put the dough in the refrigerator for 2 hours right after mixing, it still turned out great) Cover and let rise in warm place until it doubles, about 1 1/2 hours. 

  Punch down.  Turn onto board and divide in half; round up each half to make a ball. (Or divide into 4 even balls) Cover and let rest 10 minutes.

  Shape into loaves and place in 2 greased loaf pans.  Cover with cloth or sheet of plastic wrap and let rise until dough reaches top of pan on sides and the top of loaf is well rounded above pan, about 1 1/4 hours. (My final rise was closer to 2 hours - maybe because of the refrigerator rest)

  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, rotating half-way through if necessary.  Cover loosely with sheet of foil the last 20 minutes, if necessary, to prevent excessive browning.  Makes 2 loaves.

It's delicious! The graham flour really is the secret ingredient; faintly reminiscent of graham crackers. It's heavenly as toast, makes great french toast. It would be good as small dinner rolls, hot dog or hamburger rolls, maybe as the basis for a cinnamon raisin pan loaf or a seeded multigrain. I'd like to try it using my sourdough to leaven, or yeast water/SD combo.

Thank you Memo and Zolablue, wherever you are - your efforts are still being savored!

 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair….”

 And here in the northeast, winter 2015 just didn’t know when to quit! Don’t get me wrong, winter is not my season of discontent; I love the snow and bracing winds. But at some point, enough is enough! I’m ready for spring and flowers. I've spent a good part of this winter trying recreate a loaf that comes close to my recollection of the Raisin pumpernickel bread from my youth…not to put it on a pedestal or anything. Here’s a few pix of the first several tries.

This was from Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker.

 This one's from the Silver Palate Cookbook, and there was a no-knead version...Something just wasn't right, and I'm continually misjudging the fermenting time - usually too short...

I even did some research; here’s a few slices from a well-known bakery across town. It looks great, but...

it doesn't taste much like rye at all. It’s very light; in fact you can actually see right through the crumb. That’s not the pumpernickel I remember. My ideal is a dark, chocolate brown, a little dense and chewy, studded with raisins. Deciding I needed a heftier rye flour to continue on this quest, I ordered of bag of coarse pumpernickel meal (from nybakers.com). It's even coarser than I expected.

After setting it to ferment, I took a walk in the park. It was the first day of spring.

               Central park is really lovely in the snow.

     The next day I mixed the coarse rye sour with the final dough ingredients. Basically I followed the formula from ITJB, using the coarse rye meal for the final build of the rye sour, (first build was medium rye). I added 1T each of molasses, espresso powder and cocoa powder in lieu of the caramel color, otherwise I followed the formula as is. The dough seemed a bit dry, but I figured the coarse meal was just thirstier…so I went with it. All seemed to be going well…the loaf expanded nicely in bulk ferment and in the final proof. Although, to be honest I find it tricky to judge whether it’s double or triple it’s size, still I was hopeful. After the loaf came out of the oven I went for another walk. All the snow from the day before had melted and lo and behold…

Finally, the first harbinger of spring. I felt like she was smiling at me! Unfortunately, the change of seasons did not cause the pumpernickel raisin gods to smile upon me. ;-( 

My loaf was too dense - although I loved the texture of the coarse meal and I thought the flavor was very nice.

I then stumbled upon an errata sheet for ITJB (didn’t know about that..) and discovered that I should have added another 1/2 C of water - sigh! Teaches me to trust my instincts when the dough seems too dry. Oh well, looking on the bright side, I’m one step closer, I’ve got some old slices ready to be added as altus on the next try. And…the squirrels really like my breads. I think they’re getting to know me.

If any of you trouble-shooters out there can give me some advice I’d be very appreciative. I’m wondering if I should soak (or scald?) the coarse meal before using it in the rye sour. And if so, how much water? how long to soak and do I drain it afterwards? Would some yeast water open up the crumb in this type of bread?  Also,with regard to the coarse rye meal, do I have to keep it in the freezer? If I use it up in say, 3 months, can it remain in a room temp cupboard?

Thanks and happy spring to those of you in the northern hemisphere!

Cherie

Intrigued by the idea of grape skin flour (purple bread!?) I took the bait and ordered a flour made from cabernet sauvignon grapes. Looks like cocoa powder...          

According to my reading, this gluten-free flour adds antioxidants, great grape (wine) flavor and beautiful color. They say for breads, it should be 3 to 8% of the flour weight. I made a 100% hydration levain from my grape yeast water and made a very simple 1,2,3 loaf with 5% grape skin flour. 

You can't tell from the photo, but there is a purplish hue to the crumb and faint smell of grape - but maybe that's from the grape yeast water which I used for all the water in the levain and the final dough. I can't say I really taste any grape or wine flavor...

     I think next time I'll try adding some walnuts and dried fruit - maybe figs or raisins. And I wonder what the results would be if I upped the percentage of grapeskin flour?

I've also seen some "cabernet" chocolate chip cookie recipes - might have to give those a whirl. If anybody has some experience with grapeskin flour, I'd love to hear about it.

Cheers!

Cherie

I baked Eric's Favorite rye for the first time today, on account of there might be some corned beef in my near future. After only 35 minutes proofing, my finger poke test revealed one loaf seemed really ready to be baked and I was worried about waiting for the other one to catch up since they were proofing on the same piece of parchment. The kitchen was quite warm as the oven was on full tilt. As you can see in the photos, the one one the right had a pretty explosive reaction to the steaming oven...that was the one that seemed like it wanted to wait another 15 minutes. 

I know a lot of TFLers have baked and loved this formula, so if anyone can give me some pointers on what I could improve on, I'd really appreciate it. Is the shaping or slashing problematic? Or should I have just been more patient?

To me it looks like the top 2/3 of the loaf is much more holey and the bottom third looks more dense. Am I being too picky, or is that a sign that it should have proofed longer? In hind-sight I realized I could've cut the parchment paper in half and put one guy in the fridge while the first one baked. Any other ideas?

Thanks for any constructive comments!

Sour Cherry

Strawberry Rhubarb

We celebrate Pi Day at work with a festival of pies. I've got to bake one more this morning, so my guys at home don't feel left out. This year we have an epic Pi Day because today's date 3.14.15 gives us not just the first three digits (as in most years) but the first five digits of pi, the famous irrational number  3.14159265359.... that expresses the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. And it's also Albert Einstein's birthday!

I thought I’d share some quotes about pie. Because pie is an American metaphor. Pecan Pie. Blueberry Pie. Apple Pie. It’s been a metaphor since someone coined the phrase, “As American as…”

 “Pie is the American synonym of prosperity, and its varying contents the calendar of the changing seasons.” ~ NY Times, 1902

 “We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.” ~ David Mamet

 “Pie is the food of the heroic. No pie eating nation can ever be vanquished.”  ~NY Times

 “We resort, frankly, to pies, which is a comedy staple that’s gone back, I guess, to since the first pie was ever baked.” ~Johnny Carson

 “When you die, if you get a choice between going to regular heaven or pie heaven, choose pie heaven. It might be a trick, but if it’s not, mmmmmmmm, boy.” ~ Jack Handy

 “You like pie? I like pie.” ~ Barack Obama

Cheers!

Cherie

PS - Tomorrow, back to baking bread!

      Today I'm documenting this sour rye bread so I can remember what I did and not have to look back thru multiple threads to find my way. My last sour rye came out really well, but today I wanted to add in a few more ideas culled from various posters. From ehanner: using water from rehydrating onions as part of the dough water. From Norm: going all the way to 100% with the rye sour component, and bulk fermenting in a wet wooden box (well, I used a salad bowl). From dmsnyder: most of the method, plus baking at a higher temp for crispier crust and using medium rye rather than light.

          I made one fatal mistake - I did a 20 minute autolyse of the white flour and water (I had a few errands to do). Disaster! I was using high-gluten flour (I'm out of first clear) and it turned into a web of indestructible gluten strands which took a lot of patience to incorporate when I mixed the final dough. And the crumb shot reveals that I wasn't completely successful either. [Crumb shot has been replaced by a more recent loaf - with no white blobs this time!]  Thankfully, it came together flavor-wise despite the little blobs of white...

Everything Rye 

With the glaze

Crumb shot. 

1. Stage 1 sour: From refrigerated stock add 1/2 C water, stir to dissolve and aerate. Stir in 3/4 C medium rye to a thick paste. Sprinkle 1/4 C meduim rye on top. Ferment at room temp ‘til risen and ‘cracked‘ into contintents. If not ready to continue, refrigerate overnight.            
2. Stage 2 sour: Add to the stage 1 mixture 1/2 C water, stir to dissolve and aerate. Stir in 3/4 C medium rye to a thick paste. Sprinkle 1/4 C medium rye on top. Ferment at room temp ‘til risen and cracked into continents. Again, OK to put in fridge for a while.
3. Stage 3 sour: (Mix this stage before bed, let it ferment overnight) Add to the stage 2 mixture 1/2 C water, stir to dissolve and aerate. Stir in 3/4 C medium rye to a thick paste. Sprinkle 1/4 C medium rye on top. Ferment at room temp ‘til risen and cracked into continents. Should have at least 17 oz. by now - enough to make one loaf.
4. Rehydrate handful of dried onions with boiling water - (save water!)
5. Measure 1 generous T caraway seeds. Grind 1/2 T, reserve rest for topping
6. Prepare 1 C altus -(save the water) if using.
7. Mix final dough. 

WATER ________________________________________ 227g (8oz) 

                   add enough additional water (to H2o from onions and altus) to make 227g

RYE SOUR _____________________________________454g (16 oz)

FIRST CLEAR (or high gluten) FLOUR______________454g (16 oz)

ALTUS _________________________________________@125g

KOSHER SALT___________________________________7g (.25 oz)

INSTANT YEAST__________________________________5g (.2 oz)

GROUND CARAWAY SEEDS_______________________5g (.2 oz)

NIGELLA SEEDS__________________________________8g (a heaping T)

 I hand mixed all 10 min, then rested 5 min, and did some slap and folds on a floured  counter for another 10 min...what a mess!

8. Bulk ferment [AND PREHEAT OVEN NOW to 475F with D.O. inside] - about 30 min. total. Put dough in large, wooden salad bowl moistened with water. Cover with another large bowl. With very wet hands, do 2 sets of stretch and folds every 5 minutes. Then just let it rest. The dough became puffed, but it did not double.

9. Shape, top, score - with very wet hands, gently shape a boule by cupping hands underneath the dough - do it right in the salad bowl. Slide dough onto parchment paper generously dusted with cornmeal. spray loaf with water and top with the rehydrated onions, poppy seeds, rest of caraway seeds a little bagel salt and some cornmeal. 3 slashes. NO FINAL RISE! Load into the D.O. - parchment paper and all.

10. Bake - turn oven down to 450. Bake covered for 20 min. Uncover, (whee! nice oven spring) and bake 25 more min until internal temp reaches 205. Make cornstarch glaze

11. Take loaf out of DO, turn oven off and put bread back in for 10 more min. to get more crispy. Glaze with cornstarch.

The flavor was great - not overly sour, surprisingly. The crumb was very moist with little jolts of nigella and caraway seed flavor. The crust was chewy, and all those seeds and onions added some crispiness too. 

 NEXT TIME: DO NOT AUTOLYSE!! Try loosening the rye sour with the water first and then add the rest of the ingredients. Get the clear flour - tastes much better - really missed it this time. Add extra 25% nigella seeds - those are flavorful!