JoshTheNeophyte's blog

Yesterday i moved one notch further on my journey through Hamelman, attempting his Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Grain.  Ambition got ahead of my scheduling ability: as soon as I had mixed the flour and water, I realized that i wasn't going to finish in time for my evening plans and this bread was going to be an experiment in extended fermentation.  Despite doubling the fermentation time from the recipe, the results were pretty, darn good.  If Forkish's times are far too long, are Hamelman's schedules too short?

I mixed the Levain around 7:30 am: 125% hydration all AP flour with 93F water.

i mixed 9 hours later, 3 short of the12-16 hour recommendation for mature levain:

662g AP (60g of "00" flour as I ran out of AP) [Edited]

153g Whole Grain Whole Wheat (Farmer Ground Whole Wheat Bread Flour)

407g Water, 87F

458g Levain

19g salt[EDITED]

I mixed everything but the salt and let it sit for a 1 hour autolyse.

5-8 minutes of hand knead till i could get a medium window and the dough appeared nice and smooth.

I came back from my evening plans around 11am and the dough had been fermenting for 5 hours (plus autolyse with the levain, so really 6+) and had roughly doubled in volume.  I don't think the dough was over-proofed at all.  I actually think the 2.5 hour version of the breads i had been making before were under-proofed.  Maybe my levain was not as mature as Hamelmans's?  If I had used a 12+ hour built starter would my bread have been over-proofed after 5 hours?  Tough to say.

I pre-shaped into boules followed by a 10 minute bench rest and then final shaping and placed them seam side up into bannetons.  Since I wasn't staying up any later, I put the loaves in the fridge for overnight proofing.

I baked the bread this morning around 11 am after 12 hours in the fridge.  I bake in 2 DOs with a pizza stone on the rack below.  I scored one of the loaves and my 13 year old daughter scored the other attempting to imprint the first initial of my 3 kids L, R and B.  This worked out better than you would expect.

The baking regime was as follows:

preheat, 500F, 30 minutes

covered, 475, 20 minutes

uncovered 460-5, 25 minutes

Results and lessons learned. The bread is pretty good.  The bake is a little uneven and I think this is because i forgot to rotate the DOs which I usually do.  The 2 DOs are wider than the pizza stone underneath so I think that leads to some uneven browning.  Also, the bottom is a little overcooked (by appearance, it didn't actually taste that way), so i need to work on my temperature schedule.  The crumb is not nearly as open as the higher hydration, FWSY country blonde (78%).  I think the higher degree of whole wheat also makes it a little heavier.  But for a bread with 15% whole grain, i think the bread has nice oven spring.  Still a long way to go on scoring (though my 13 year old seems to be doing better than me!).  I think it's about getting a consistent depth for the whole length of the cut and across all cuts.

Up next, the Hamelman Pain Au Levain with a stiff starter.  This will require converting my starter from 125% to 60% hydration.  I worked this out in a spreadsheet.  As always, the question is time -- not sure whether I will get to this during the week due to work, childcare and other pursuits.

Thanks,

Josh

NB I have a bunch of pictures I want to add but I can't get the media button to work.  When I click on the "library" tab, I get a blank panel.

OK.  The title is mis-leading.  I actually baked an FWSY country blonde but my intention is to work my way through Hamelman.  Why did I bake the FWSY?  I wasn't able to get home from work early enough to start the Hamelman Vermont Sourdough that I planned.  My starter was ready to go, so i needed to do an overnight bulk ferment.  FWSY recipes cater to that.

This is a 78% hydration dough and I've had trouble handling high-hydration doughs in the past.  I've made this bread several times and have had very uneven results.  Baking from Hamelman was a great relief for me as working with 65% hydration made everything much easier.  Some of Hamelman's breads use  125% hydration starter and the Vermont Sourdough calls for mixing the levain 12-16 hours after feeding.

So this bread is a hybrid: it uses Forkish's general formula but Hamelman's mature, 125% hydration starter.  I reduced the water in the formula to account for the higher hydration starter.

In general, Forkish's long fermentations don't seem to take nearly as long in my kitchen as they do in his.  i finished mixing last night around 9:40 PM.  When I got up at 7 am this morning the dough had tripled in volume and had lots of bubbles.  I think it was on the verge of being over-proofed.  My kitchen was probably 68-72 over night so not too hot but still the dough rose much faster then Forkish's 12-14 hours (<10h). Could the accelerated fermentation be the result of the more mature starter? FDT was in line with Forkish's -- 76F.

While shaping this fairly wet dough was hard, I think baking the 65% Hamelman breads over the last few weeks has given me more confidence in handling the dough -- having shaped lower hydration dough successfully, you learn howit's supposed to work and you can apply that knowledge to the higher hydration dough even if it much stickier. After shaping, i proofed for 3 hours (Forkish calls for 4-4.5).  I baked the bread in 2 dutch ovens (1 cast iron and one anodized aluminum) at 475 covered for 20 minutes followed by 25 minutes at 440. The one in the aluminum did not get as brown a crust.  

Scoring was a challenge.  The dough was very jiggly and loose when I scored and i don't think I acheived an even depth.

The taste: very nice custardy texture.  Crust is crunchy.  I would like it to be a bit chewier.  Acid is a bit too pronounced.

Would love to get any feedback on the result.