Today is my niece's birthday, and part of my "gift" is to send her the link to this blog entry.
Background - years ago dabrownman christened me Donnie Baggs here on TFL. I had written this at some point in response to one of his comments. But decided to resurrect it here with updates.
I’ve been looking for purple sweet potatoes to make an interesting bread for months without any luck, so I finally decided I would try it with regular orange sweet potatoes. Yesterday after having roasted my sweet potato and with the levain build going I decided to go for a walk to Chinatown where I haven’t been recently. I went very early in the morning well before it gets busy at all. The first grocer I went to had a ton of purple sweet potatoes so I bough a few and next week I think I will use it for a sourdough bread.
The formula for this bake is based on Hamelman's Vermont sourdough, scaled to yield 3 Baguettes at 400 grams. The modus operandi, is as follows.
The day before:
12:00 PM - Levain build #1
6:00 PM - Levain build #2
The day of:
5:00 AM - 1 Hour fermntolyse (Flour, Water and Levain)
6:00 AM - Add in the salt, spin in the Bosch mixer ( 5 Minutes # 2) Rest in the Bosch bowl covered for 5 Minutes.
6:05 AM - Spin for 5 Minutes more at #2
This was a 100% whole wheat lean dough leavened with a poolish. I used my basic 100% whole wheat same-day sourdough method but substituted 150 grams of poolish for the sourdough starter. The flour is 440 grams of hard red, and 110 grams of spelt, twice milled, no sifting.
Weekly bread for my friends. Continuing the series of 100% red fife loaves. Hydration 78%, salt 2%. The reviews have been good. No crumb picture because they were all given away.
It's Sourdough of Spring.
This flower dough seems so beautiful. right?
Every spring, I had picked mugwort with my grandma in the childhood. How about you?
☆ 55% bread flour, 25% AP flour, 15% whole wheat flour, 20% levain, 1.8% pink salt, 2% mugwort, 2% flower
☆ 75% Total hydration
⚜️ autolyse 3 hours
⚜️ mix levain (rest in 30mins)
⚜️ mix salt (rest in 30mins)
⚜️ 1. S&F, 2 - 5. coil folding
⚜️ total bulk proof in 4.3 hours
⚜️ shape with flower and mugwort
⚜️ final proof in 45 mins
⚜️ scoring & bake
The quarantine bread bake diaries continue..
This loaf is an 80% whole wheat, 10% whole mystery flour, 10% AP using 20% levain and a same day bake. I had a small amount of whole flour but don't know if it was whole rye or whole spelt - probably spelt. I fed the starter Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and mixed the dough around 2pm. I baked it around 10pm. It moved fast given the high whole wheat content. I also added 2% gluten flour and home made diastolic malt. 80% water. I kept the dough at 74 degrees during bulk and proof.
Using this time to get back into baking. I've never really left baking to be honest but sometimes life 'retards' it a bit. These times are difficult for all and I feel incredibly fortunate that my wife and I both have jobs that can support full time work from home. My career is a bit more flexible than hers and thus it has provided me with ample time to bake. However with a run on flour and yeast that throws a big wrench into the mix. On top of that my wife and I can't (shouldn't) eat all of the bread and pastries that I want to bake. Some compromises were made.
In my search for real Pain de Campagne, I made various recipes for Poilane style bread a few times. They are good. (Fresh bread is good by its nature). However, my experience is that it is possible to make a better bread of that style than the recipes floating around the net produce:
