hungryscholar's blog

Anybody have a handy cheat sheet for calculating hydration when adding ingredients like pumpkin? The Internet is full of recipes for sweet pumpkin quick bread, and the last time I forgot to account for the water content in pumpkin puree I got soup, not bread. I had a hunch that TFL would come through, and sure enough, big thanks to Karin's post here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34842/dan-lepards-pumpkin-whey-bread, and to Dan Lepard's original recipe.

I didn't use pumpkin seeds as I somehow never got around to toasting them. And, rather than whey, what I had hanging around is what I could politely call a pint of homebrewed English Bitter- but it was the first pint, so actually a yeasty delight better suited for bread than drinking- hence my version of the recipe:

500g KA All Purpose

250g Libby Pumpkin Puree

250g beer

10g salt

25g olive oil

1/4 tsp yeast

I mixed this around 10:30 PM and got up at around 6:30 to find it threatening to escape the bowl- as I said, a lot of yeast in that first pull- the added yeast may have been largely superfluous. Shaped into two loaves, proofed for an hour and they were ready to pull from the oven by the time I got back from dropping my daughter off at school. It appears my notes are sparse here, but I think 450 F for around 40 minutes total.

I'm just popping in here to make a note so I'll hopefully remember this so I can make it again. (And keep tweaking the recipe, of course). Anyhow, I was reading local breads this morning and contemplating making some olive rolls from it, couldn't find oil cured olives in the grocery store, but the final dusting with cornmeal stuck with me to this afternoon. Once again a case where I intended to make sub rolls, but my hands decided I needed more practice with baguettes (which I clearly do). But what I'm really trying to leave myself a note about it to sub organic molasses for honey again sometime- love that malty sweetness it seemed to lend to the finished bread. It's great in a dark beer too, so I shouldn't be surprised.

500 g AP

150 g milk

175 g water

28 g

11 g Salt

1  1/2 tsp yeast (or as appropriate for the time available /sourdough, etc.)

As it happened this was bulk ferment for about an hour, shaped and then it rose for around 20 minutes when I stuck the loaves in the refrigerator for another 90 minutes or so as the weather got nice and we went to the lake.

Bake at 450 for around 30 minutes.

But really, it was all about the molasses- not too sweet, but combined with the milk made for a soft roll that still had some nice crunch from the cornmeal.

If you have thought about getting a sourdough culture going but don't feel up for a lot of watching and waiting, I highly recommend the method outlined by Ian on his now rather empty Ars Pistorica blog. I nearly posted yesterday, because it sure looked like sourdough starter and tasted like it, and had lots of little bubbles. But, I feel, the proof is in the pudding, or my old friend, sourdough bread. So, here I am Sunday morning with two little loaves that managed to surprise me with some solid oven spring 10 hours after bulk fermentation start.

And here's how I built the starter, Ian's method more or less to a T:

Wenesday, 10 PM, 20g Bob's Red Mil Dark Rye + 240g tap water(warm, around 77 F, possibly filtered) both weighed into a ziploc baggie, mixed and then the sealed baggie placed in a plastic container of warm water and that placed in my proofer set at 99 F. I know it is starting to sound a bit like I am making a turducken here, but bear with me. Anyway, that sat in the proofer for around 18 hours, at which point the proofer had lots of condensation and the water in the container the ziploc bag was in was a toasty 108 degrees. And there was clearly lots of activity inside the bag with active bubbles. Which takes me to...

Thursday, 4PM, Open ziploc briefly to add a premeasured 100 g of Whole Wheat Bread flour, from Great River Milling. I do note some less than pleasant smell at this point, hence the quick open of the bag to add the fresh flour. Then back it goes into the plastic container, now emptied of its water, and the proofer set down to 88 F. 20 hours later...

Friday 12 Noon. Into a new container, measure out 45 g water + 100 g more of the Great River flour and then take 30 g of the mixture from the baggie, where again there were plenty of bubbles. I knead this into a lump of dough and return it in its container to the proofer now set down to 80 F and wait another 20 hours or so...

Saturday 8:30 AM At this point the lump of dough shows all signs of looking like and quacking like the sourdough starter which I know and love, so I take some and use it to bake my approximation of SF Sourdough by way of my interpretation of some very helpful posts around these parts on the Larraburu Brothers Bakery...

Saturday Noon- I get around to feeding some of the remaining new starter, 1 part starter: 1 part water : 1 part AP : 1 part Whole Wheat.

Saturday 9:30 PM, Bake.

Sunday, 9:17 AM, Eat.

Is a baguette a formula, or a shape? That's the question I found myself asking by the time I was done with this one. It's clear from Tartine Bread that Chad feels that it's the formula that makes a baguette, not the shape, when he talks about using his country bread dough and the result being elongated country bread. While inspiration for the 15% garbanzo flour I used here was reading that there's a limit to the amount of bean flour a French baguette can contain, I suspect is that percentage is far above what most self-respecting baguettes contain. The rest of the flour was KA AP. But if baguette is formula and not shape, then what's the term for long bread- submarine?

In any case, sometimes I am trying to put together flavors I think will go well together, and sometimes I just have lots of different things I want to try and they wind up together in the same bread so I'm not constantly baking. And that's why this bread has15% cooked red quinoa. And shaping as a "submarine"? That was because my wife had made some tasty meatballs the night before and I had a meatball sandwich in mind. That and I try to intervene before my hands automatically shape the dough into a boule. Once they learned that trick there's been no stopping them.

Similarly, the bread has an extra 25g of water, because I can tend to add the salt at the beginning of the mix on autopilot, and this time I remembered I wanted to autolyze. So I held back the salt, but added all the water initially had in mind.

In other words, probably not a baguette, but a good example of how baking day tends to go around here- and a fine vehicle for meatball subs, and a few other sandwiches thereafter.

I've been fascinated with the fougasse shape ever since reading about it in one bread book or another, but I finally got to see some examples "in the wild" when visiting Nice earlier this Spring, where it seemed like there was a loaf of bread I couldn't resist at nearly every turn in the maze of narrow streets inVieux Nice. And then there was the socca and pissaladière, but I digress. Here are a couple examples from the market in Nice, one plain, and one filled:

I have a few herbs growing in pots in front of the house and I've been trimming off the blossoms and had a pile of flowering lemon thyme and sage blossoms that I wanted to use that are mixed in the dough which is about 15% medium rye and the rest All Purpose, 70% hydration Lahey style with 1/4 tsp yeast over 10 hours bulk fermentation.

I've made fougasse before but this time tried the shaping technique demonstrated by Ciril Hitz in this video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSv4nGAuhig

Basically you make the cuts in the dough with a dough blade and then pick up the dough to stretch it out and place on a baking sheet. I love the shapes the cuts take on as a result. That's one thing I find fascinating watching different shaping videos is the sheer variety of different ways to shape even the most fundamental shape such as a boule.

This time I also tried brushing the dough with olive oil & thyme right after I pulled it from the oven. This bread didn't disappear quite as fast as the earlier focaccia, but it still didn't last long.

Now to contemplate the filled fougasse, or maybe a sweet version. There are just too many possible variations!

It's not hot here, not yet, but I am dreading the season of too hot to bake. What we have now is the sort of weather that has me firing up the grill only to have to call the whole thing off due to rain. So I am crossing my fingers for today, Memorial day.

In any case, I've made something resembling pizza on the stovetop with my cast iron grill pan and this week expanded to focaccia and something shaped reasonably like ciabatta, but lacking in the sort of holes I was hoping for, which I think means it's time to toss the last of that batch of yeast.

The focaccia was 70% hydration with about 5 % olive oil, and the "ciabatta" was 80% hydration with again about 5% oil. Both were made with King Arthur AP flour. I shaped them on a parchment to fit in my grill pan and put the dough, parchment paper and all, into the preheated grill pan with the burner at medium. The dough was in the pan for about 5 minutes and once the bottom cooked sufficiently I removed the parchment. Then it went under the broiler on low for another 5 minutes or so. It's not the way to go if you want an even crust color, but I'm rather pleased with the result and the lack of a long preheat for the oven.

I really have to pony up and get some honest to goodness first clear flour, I keep trying other substitutes, but not the real thing. Of course, I seem to recall reading that it was originally used in deli rye because of cost, and now it looks like I'd have to special order it for a higher cost per pound then good old AP. Go figure. Anyhow, this attempt is around 25% pumpernickel rye and the rest Great River Milling "Unbleached Wheat Flour" which has 80% of the bran removed but otherwise is more or less whole wheat flour. Which means I probably could have gone higher with the hydration- I'm happy with the crumb, but kneading the dough felt quite stiff. But then again, whole wheat and rye both still have a way of throwing me for a loop in that regard. I kept waiting for the rise and end up giving it 6 hours before I had to put it in the oven so it I wouldn't be up past my bedtime. I love fennel seeds in rye and this time decided to throw in a couple of other seeds I had on hand.

3 Seed 25% Rye

211g Water

45g stiff levain

82g pumpernickel rye

225g GR Wheat Flour

6g salt

2 tsp each fennel, chia, and black sesame seeds

Mixed everything together and kneaded for a few minutes initially and then some kneading every so often for the first couple of hours. Shaped after three hours proofing at 82 F and let rise at 86 F for another 3 before baking in a Dutch oven preheated to 500 F and baked at 425 F.

 Lapsang Souchong iced tea with a splash of tart cherry juice is one of my favorite drinks. I think the smoky tea and the cherry play very nicely together. This bread is my first attempt at recreating that combination in bread form. I guess I'm on a bit of tea bread kick....

Cherry Lapsang Souchong Sourdough

225g Water

1 Tablespoon Lapsang Souchong

51g Stiff Levain

300g AP Flour

75 g Dried Tart Cherries

6 g Salt

I ground the tea in a mortar and pestle and then mixed it with warm water and the levain. I tried letting it "steep" for 5 minutes, but I don't think the water was hot enough. Next time I might use tea + cherry juice for the liquid, I'm not sure. Anyway, I added the rest of the ingredients and did stretch and folds every 30 minutes for the first two hours and let it bulk ferment for a total of 3 hours at 82 F. Then I shaped as a batard and let it rise for 2 hours at 82F in a towel lined paper basket that once held tomatoes. I've been meaning to get an oval banneton but haven't got a round toit yet.

I preheated the oven to 500 F and baked at 450 for 35 minutes with a stainless steel bowl covering the loaf for the first 20 minutes.

The cherries are just right and I get just a whisper of the smokiness which I think I'd want to boost with the next iteration, but overall I really like the flavor of this one.

Submitted to Susan's YeastSpotting

We broke bread and the rules last night. I know we were meant to let this kind of bread rest for 12-24 hrs before cutting, but we wanted something to go with the soup and it was just sitting there on the cutting board, calling to us. So this is one of those times when I didn't get a chance to take a picture before quite a bit of the loaf was devoured. The slightly sweet, wheaty taste of the Great River Milling "bread" flour(really closer to a high extraction type of flour, the germ is retained and 80%of the bran sifted out) goes well with the bittersweet flavor of the green tea powder. I've tried baking with it before and the flavor didn't really come through, so this time I upped the amount to a full tablespoon and got just what I was looking for. Next time I think I would increase the amount of levain I use to decrease rising time a bit. As it was this was about 6 hours from mixing to start of the bake.

I've been experimenting with beer bread and granary style bread. For this round I used a doppelbock along with some stuff labeled malt powder that I got at my local Korean grocery store. I tried it with WW flour as is included in a lot of recipes, but I felt like it was competing with the malt powder, so this one is just AP flour, plus what's in my starter.

I think this was 9 hours from mix to start of bake. I kneaded it for about 5 minutes after I mixed it and then let it bulk ferment for around 3 hrs at ~86F, shaped as a boule and let it proof in a towel lined bowl for another 6 hrs at 86F again before slashing and baking at 450 F for 40-45 min. The big revelation for me on this bread was using a lame to make the slashes. Up until now I've been using various knives and the difference blew me away, hence the crazy pattern- I was just enjoying the ease with which I could make the cuts.

Submitted to YeastSpotting

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