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Juergen Krauss

For some time I have been looking for German bread formulas, although not systematically. Some time ago I came across Meister Süpke's Blog about sourdough, and setting up a German group at my Son's school gave me finally the incentive to try out Mr Süpke's formulas for bread using the "Detmolder Einstufen-Führung" as I agreed to provide the bread.

Bread according to these formulas (see German Baking Day) can be made with various amounts of wheat and rye using a stiff rye starter at 80% hydration that has been refreshed with 5%-10% mature starter and kept at 24C to 28C for 12 to 18 hours. The Detmolder single step process uses a small amount of commercial yeast in the final dough.

The yeast content raised some questions: Is it necessary? Is the bread loosing sourdough characteristics? Are the bakers in Germany giving up quality in favor of quantity?

From Meister Süpke I got the answer that he could make the bread without yeast added, but in order to get through his schedule he has one hour for the final proof, which is being archieved by adding 1% yeast or less.

Another answer comes from Daniel DiMuzio's book Breadmaking: For some formulas he says one can add up to 0.7% of instant yeast without changing the character of the bread significantly, e.g. p.232, San Francisco Style Sourdough

Well, I wanted to know if the yeast does more than cutting the prooving times short, so I did some comparative baking.

First some pictures.

The 60% Rye loaves:

 

The 30% and 100% rye loaves:

 

Conclusion:

Quite surprisingly, there is hardly any noticeable difference in the appearance the bakes with and without yeast. The slightly higher volume of the loaves with altus are due to the additional amount of altus in the dough, I didn't scale those down to 500g.

The loaves with altus were also a bit chewier and tasted more earthy. There was a slight difference between the 60% rye with and without yeast, the sourdough only version being milder. And the 100% rye with yeast maintained a bit of the starter's fruity notes.

The only striking difference loies in the times for the final proof, as shown in the table with the formulas below.

This experiment would suggest that the yeast is not necessary, but it is a great tool to fit this type of bread into a production schedule without the loss of quality. I would be very interested to hear if anyone has different experiences.

Now to some details about the process:

Starters:

All the breads in this comparison call for a rye starter with 80% hydration. For the 60% rye batch I used wholegrain rye flour, for the others I used light rye flour (Type 997). I am maintaining a liquid wholegrain rye "mother" at 200% hydration, which is very reliable and worked well as a seed culture.

The starters were made in two elaborations (same process for wholegrain and light rye starters):

 1. 100% flour, 80% water, 10% mother fermented at 24C for 16 hours

2. 100% flour, 80% water, 10% starter from (1) fermented at 24C for 16 hours

This way the original liquid "mother" makes up just 1% of the starter - no worries about the wrong hydration or grain. The starters rose well to about four times their original volume, and had a nice tangy smell. The light rye starter developed a very nice fruity-flowery smell.

The altus (fresh "old bread", 80% rye) has been added to the water for the 2nd elaboration to soak. No aditional water added. There was very little difference in the starter consistency with and without altus.

Ingredient100% Rye100% Rye + Yeast60% Rye60% Rye + Yeast60% Rye + Altus60% Rye + Yeast + Altus30% Rye30% Rye + Yeast
Straight Formula, in baker's percent
Wholegrain Rye  60606060  
Light Rye100100    3030
Wholegrain Wheat  8888  
White Wheat  323232327070
Water7878747474747171
Salt22222222
Instant Yeast 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.3
Altus    1010  
Yield180180.3176176.3186186.3173173.3
Wholegrain Rye from starter  25252525  
Light Rye from starter3535    1818
Final Dough, in grams
Wholegrain Rye  186186186186  
Light Rye187187    3636
Wholegrain Wheat  25252525  
White Wheat  99999999209209
Water144144167167167167169169
Salt5.75.76.26.26.26.266
Instant Yeast 1 1 1 1
Altus    1010  
Starter1811811411411411419797
Timing in minutes,
Ambient Temperature28C28C27C27C27C27C24C28C
Bulk Rise4040404040404030
Final Proof65501037484569060
Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

At my son's school we are starting a German expat's learning group to give our children some idea of German culture, like watching Biene Maja, playing Mau Mau and .. of course... German supper, usually some bread with different toppings such as sausage and cheeses and cold meats.

This gave me the push to start investigating how to make tge breads I miss over here. It's not the multigrain ones - I have a craving for different kinds of "Mischbrot" - bread that is made up of (light) rye flour, and wheat flour. Usually it is leavened with a rye sourdough, and some yeast is added in the final mix.

The overall percentage of rye can  vary from 30 to 99% (100% would be a rye bread, "Roggenbrot") If there is more than 50% rye it's called Roggen-Mischbrot, if it's less than it's a Weizen-Mischbrot.

Meister Suepke gives in his Sourdough blog a general formula for the process called "Detmolder Einstufen-Fuehrung", bread made with sourdough which has been made in a single stage (as opposed to the intricate Detmolder 3 stage process), and he also gives hints how to scale this to different wheat contents.

I found that his formula corresponds very well with many of the rye formulas in Hamelman's "Bread", so I played a bit with the ratios and was very pleased with the outcome.

== Update 23/06/2011: Added some new photos and formulas at the end

== Update 12/05/2012: Added link to Google Docs spreadsheet

Enough words for now - here is a photo of what I made for the supper tomorrow: 80% rye with soaker according to Hamelman (tin loafs, could have baked a bit longer), 60% rye after Suepke (ovals) and 30% rye after Suepke (fendu)

Here the procedure:

All breads use the same sourdough:

100% wholemeal rye

80% water

5% ripe starter

The sourdough has fermented at 23-25C for 14 hours

The doughs (The percentages are in a table below):

Ingredient80% Rye60% Rye30% Rye
Wholegrain rye136  
Wholegrain rye from soaker111g  
Light rye 196g69g
Wheat flour110g226g402g
Water125g192g213g
Water from soaker111g  
Salt9.9g11.3g11.5g
Instant Yeast2.7g1.8g1.8g
Sourdough381g257g

186g

The procedure is roughly the same for all breads:

Mix and work the dough, rest for 30 minutes, shape, proof for 40 to 60 minutes, bake at 220C for 25 to 35 minutes (500g loaves)

The soaker for the 80%rye is prepared at the same time as the sourdough: pour boiling water over the flour, mix and cover.

The doughs with more wheat should show some gluten development.

/* Update */

On the evening of the bake I couldn't wait - I cut the breads and posted the crumbshots above.

And I tasted them - the lighter breads are very satisfactory - beautiful elastic crumb and a rich taste with a good level of acidity - this is what I wanted.

The 80% turned out lighter color than I expected - I think I baked a bit too early and not long enough, but the taste is very promising (this bread should be cut and eaten at least 24 hours after the bake, it will get darker by then).

For reference here is the table with the percentages following Suepke's formula. I scaled the water down to 70% for 20% rye Mischbrot which works well. Sourdough as above.

Rye

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

Wheat

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Water

78%

77%

76%

75%

74%

73%

72%

71%

70%

Salt

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

2%

Fresh yeast

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

1%

Fermented flour

28%

26%

24%

22%

20%

18%

16%

14%

12%

Yield

181%

180%

179%

178%

177%

176%

175%

174%

173%

 

Here is the aabove table in Google Docs:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkcYHhPxccKtdERlMzlWOEhBQ2Z5c1Z0MUZYRGVTZlE

You can export the spreadsheet as Excel (with all the formulas) and scale the dough according to your needs.

You can adjust the expected dough weight, hydration of starter, surplus amount of starter and scaling weight.

Happy Baking,

Juergen

Variations

Using the above percentages and procedures I made 3 different "Mischbrot" variations:

1. 30% Rye using wholegrain rye starter and flour and caraway (about 2%)

2. 50% Rye using light rye starter and flour, and  bread flour

3. 50% Rye using wholegrain rye and wholegrain wheat.  The flours for the final dough and the water have been mixed and left to soak overnight.

Here a photo:

The 30% rye is among the most delicious breads I've made so far. Light and hearty, and goes well even with jams, despite the caraway. (I get the feeling that I will have to bake lots of those in the coming weeks...)

The 50% mixes were inspired by my search for Kommissbrot (German army bread), which has been introduced during WW1, but found its way into the shops (and is still there). Originally it was - according to WiKi - a 50:50 wholegrain rye/wheat mix with sourdough and yeast.

The 50% rye with light flours is not bad, but a bit boring, but the wholegrain version certainly will stay in my repertoire: A very rich, complex taste with a strong wheat component and quite a bit of acid, like a mix between a 100% rye  and a levain with wholegrain. The crumb feels light and springy, despite its look. I'm very pleased.

 

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Juergen Krauss

WARNING - This post contains some disturbing bread images!

 

First of all - I trust my liquid rye starter. He hasn't got a name yet, but I trust him.

 

Last Sunday we were having some friends over, some with wheat intolerance, and I decided to make the 100% russian rye (from Bread Matters), that always works, I thought.

And I had made a few nice batches of Hamelman's levain with wholewheat, and somehow the Polish Rye we made on the baking course I recently visited felt not so far from that, and I could make it with my rye starter.

Great.

I took the starter out of the fridge the day before where it had been for some weeks, taste and smell OK, and made my pre-ferments.

 

The stiff pre-ferment for the levain was coming along a bit sluggishly, but the liquid one for the russian rye had some bubbles soon (although not enough bubbles, in retrospect).

I expected to make some levain loaves like these from an earlier batch:

good levain

Good oven spring, nice open crumb, delicious ...

 

Well, now come the images... You have been warned, I am not responsible for your bad dreams.

 

 

 

They all tasted delicious.

But ...

bad levain

This is the levain. The top loaf proved for 3.5 hours at 26C. Seriously underproofed.

I didn't trust my finger test!

I will use this one for experiments with old bread.

The bottom loaf prooved for 9 hours. Great taste, crumb not ideal.

With the Russian Rye I expected no problems, but it rose very slowly.

Well,

The photo speaks for itself ...

After 11 hours the dough had risen to a level I expected (usually it takes half that time) and I baked it.

bad russian rye

 

My starter was simply starved, and I didn't pay attention to the warning signs.

As I said, I trust my starter, still.

Currently he is being pampered with some fresh flour ...

 

Happy baking,

Juergen

 

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Juergen Krauss

My wife's christmas present was a baking course at the Lighthouse Bakery, a small bakery focussing on teaching and some wholesale.

We were 4 participants and made some wonderful breads out of 5 different doughs using biga, rye sourdough, sponge, poolish and pate fermentee.

The most surprising and spectacular of the breads we made was the pugliese, which is also the "signature" loaf of the Lighthouse Bakery.

Liz and Rachel, who run the bakery, are happy for the formula to be shared, so here it is:

finished loaf

This bread is made with strong flour, water, salt and yeast, and yet has a sweetish, creamy crumb. It keeps well and is still excellent as toast 4 days after baking (given it survives that long).

Here is the formula:

Biga

The biga can be stored in the fridge and keeps for a week.

Ingredient Weight(g) Percent
Strong White Flour 500 100
Water 350 70
Fresh yeast 4 0.8

Mix and ferment at room temperature for at least 1 hour (until the yeast gets going), then put it into the fridge overnight. It will expand further, so choose an appropriate bowl.

Here a picture of the biga after 1 night in the fridge (the surface scraped off):

biga

 

Dough

The given amounts make 1 loaf.

Ingredient Weight(g) Percent
Strong White Flour 500 100
Water 340 68
Biga 100 20
Salt 10 2
Fresh yeast 4.5 0.9

Mix and work the dough.

Our teachers recommend to use a mixer: 5min on medium speed and 5min on high speed.

I have no mixer; but I got great results with Bertinet's slap and fold technique.

Bulk ferment for about 3 hours (until trebled in size).

Preheat oven to 220C.

Shape into boule, be careful not to handle the dough too hard, it's quite sloppy at this stage.

Avoid using flour on the worktop.

Put the dough onto a baking parchament for the final proof (about 1 hour, check with the finger test).

Here a picture of the boule after final proof, it spreads a bit, which is not a bad thing:

proofed

Then dust it with flour and dimple it with your fingertips - a bit like captain Nemo playing the organ in his submarine.

Here is the result, ready to go into the oven:

dimpled

Rather flat.

But the oven spring is quite amazing, and on the course when the oven door opened there was an astonished Ooooh in unison.

Bake for 35 to 40 minutes at 220C without steam.

The result is the first picture in this post, here a shot of the crumb:

crumb

It needs to rest a couple of hours after baking, the taste improves a lot and you are rewarded for your patience.

I hope you enjoy making this bread as much as I do,

Juergen

 

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

On our last visit to my parents in Germany I chatted with my sister-in-law who lives in Switzerland - about bread.

She tried to make the Zopf many families enjoy in Switzerland on Sundays, but she couldn't reproduce the flaky texture which is so typical.

After a bit of research I found a recipe on www.schweizerbrot.ch which worked very well for me, and this Zopf has become quite popular with friends and family.

It is essentially like a Challah without sugar and goes well with all sorts of sweet toppings, as well as cheeses.

As flour you can get a special Zopfmehl in Switzerland, which usually is a blend of white spelt (10% to 30%) with plain white flour.

I used 20% spelt.

Here the formula:

Ingredient Weight Percent
white plain flour 800g 80%
white spelt flour 200g 20%
milk 300g 30%
water 300g 30%
egg 60g (1 large) 6%
butter 120g 12%
fresh yeast 30g 3%
salt 20g 2%
yield 1830g 183%

Mix ingredients without butter first, and work until gluten is somewhat developed.

Add butter and work the dough until it is elastic, smooth and makes a nice windowpane test.

Let double in size (this took about 1 hour at 23C), fold and let rest for another 30 minutes.

Divide and shape into a braid (I usually make 2 braids from this amount of dough, the recipe source suggests one big 2-strand braid)

Put ther braid(s) onto baking perchament, apply eggwash, let rest for another 15-30 minutes, egg-wash again.

Bake on lower shelf in pre-heated oven at 200C for about 50 minutes (depending on size, my half-size braids need about 45 min).

Part of the bread got eaten before I could take a photo, here is part of the remains (Iwill post a better picture when available):

Butterzopf 1

The crumb is flaky as it should be when you tear the bread:

Enjoy,

Juergen

 

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Hi,

The famous "proof until double in size" is present in almost every recipe.

I remember seeing some photos somewhere, but I can't remember.

So, here is my experiment.

I made a white dough according to RB "Crumb" (100% Flour, 70% water, 2% salt, 2% yeast), divided it after gluten development and proofed one half in a cylindrical measuring cup, the other half in a transparent pudding bowl.

This way you can see what a doubling in size looks like in a non-cylindrical bowl.

Ambient temperature was between 22C and 24C, it took about 90 minutes to get the doubling in size.

Here are the pictures.

doubling 1

doubling 2

 

In this picture I simply combined the previous two, for comparison.

 

Thanks,

Juergen

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Hi,

In my blog entry Test Tube Baking [1]: White French Bread I investigated how the final proof  affects the outcome: Where does underproof end and where does overproof start, and what are the symptoms in the finished bread...

I chose to make batards proved seam-side up, and I think the choice of this method somewhat carmouflaged the effects of overproofing: Because the loaves had to be turned over onto a peel the fragile areas just under the skin collapsed, resulting in loaves with a surprisingly even texture. (this is my interpretation)

I wanted to see those big holes!

This time I decided to make 200g boules and avoid all handling during and after the final proof: after shaping I put them on buttered baking trays.

3 boules at 200g each, proved for 60, 120 and 160 minutes. The environment was slightly coolet than last time, about 22 to 24C.

At 60 minutes the boules seemed well risen and the poke test showed a slow response.

At 120min the remaining 2 boules had spread quite a bit, and when poking the dough it didn't resist any more.

boule raw 60 min

 

At 160 min the piece of dough which had been a boule looked more like a focacia, but it had all those bubbles. Poking the dough created bubbles places far away from the dent.

boule raw 160 min

A sad sight.

Here is a picture of the baked loaves:

boules

Observations:

Oven spring: the 60 min boule had good oven spring (30%), the 120 min boule had little oven spring, and the 160 min boule had no oven spring at all.

Blowouts: The 60min boule had a blowout near the base.

All loaves had fairly weak bottom crust due to them being baked on baking sheets, which were cold.

Some crumb shots:

crumb 60min

A big hole! at 60 min proof!

proof 120min

A different kind of a hole at 120 min. And quite a different crumb. Signs of gluten breakdown.

proof 160min

Total gluten breakdown at 160 min.

The crumb of this last specimen is more like the crumb I know from 100% hydration rye breads, just much dryer. The bubble structure of a bread at 60 min has turnted more into a complex structure with no distinct air pockets: everything is connected. There is no springiness, and the feeling in the mouth is more like cake, the taste a bit yeasty.

Here a direct comparison of the crumb:

 

The huge blowout at 60 min was a surprise, I attributed it to a lack of slashing.

So I made 2 more boules with 60 min final proof, on buttered cold baking trays, one slashed, the other not.

slash 1

 

Both had blowouts of some degree, and the area under the skin was still very weak in the slashed loaf, while the unslashed loaf had a big hole.

slash crumb

 

I attribute this crumb to the cold baking tray- when put in the oven the top of the boules start fermenting immediately while the bottom gets going only after the baking sheet gets hot.

So many things to consider.

Conclusion:

In this experiment I produced some overproofed loaves with visible effects of gluten breakdown.

The reference loaves proofed at "optimum" time showed blowouts and flying crust which (I think) are effects of not slashing, and using cold baking trays.

I hope you find my investigations useful.

My family found these experiments tasty, and you will be glad to hear nothing has been wasted.

Thanks,

Juergen

 

 

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Some time ago I had the idea to bake several loaves under exactly the same condition, with one parameter changed, be it flour type, hydration, timing ...

Due to my recent sourdough experiences I found it interesting to bake a series of loaves with different final proof times, to see, taste and document the effects of underproofing and overproofing.

The recipe used is Richard Bertinet's white dough, slightly modified: 100% bread flour, 70% water, 2% salt, 2% fresh yeast (I used 0.7% instant yeast)

I used the slap&fold technique to mix and develop gluten. Bulk proof 1 hour with folding after 15 and 30 min, then shaping into 200g batards and proofing seam-side up in a couche. Baking at 240C for 12 minutes, without steam.

Ambient temperature and dough temperature were 24C to 26C throughout.

I made 2 batches of dough of 1kg each.

The proofing times were in minutes: 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120, 140, 160

From the second batch I repeated the 60min and 100min proofs to assert the same behavior.

Here a picture of the baked loaves, I marked the 2nd batch with [2]

loaves 1

loaves 2

 

The results:

Oven spring:

The loaf proofed for 20 minutes has a major blowout. The 40min and 60min loaves opened nicely, with a good oven spring. Above 60min proof there is not much oven spring.

Crust:

It is obvious that the longer the proof the more sugars are present

Poke test:

This is difficult to document in a photo, but to my feeling the dough was perfect at about 60 to 70 minutes proof.

Crumb:

Crumbshots are added below. The 20 min loaf has big irregular holes and very dense areas in the crumb. The holes look like torn. Very rubbery and unpleasant to eat. Above 120 min proofing the crumb feels a bit fragile. Otherwise the crumb  looks and feels surprisingly similar.

Smell and taste:

Above 100 min proof slightly yeasty. The 20 min proof didn't taste of much. My personal choice for taste would be 80min proof.

Handling:

Above 100min the dough feels very fragile, at 140 min it collapsed when slashing.

collapsed

 

Conclusion:

The loaf at 20min and the loaves above 80min proof showed clear signs of over-and underproofing.

This particular formula seems to be quite forgiving when looking at crumb and taste development.

In my kitchen with those conditions I would probably aim at 70min proof, a matter of personal preference (My wife chose the 60min loaf as her favourite without knowing any of the background)

 

And here the crumb shots - please excuse the differences in lighting.

20min

40min

60min

80min

100min

120min

140min

160min

 

 

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