After seeing some nice bakes based on the Pain de Campagne in Martin Philip's post, Don't be a bread hostage at the KAF website, I decided to give it a try. It seems in keeping with my recent effort to simplify my baking. Besides, after all the more neutral pan breads I've been making lately, I was in the mood for a sourdough.
We had some friends over for dinner and had to have some nice soft rolls to go with my chicken with artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes. I decided that I wanted something with rosemary since the chicken dish has rosemary in it. So I prepared a mashed Russet potato and added rosemary and black pepper to taste.
I am still trying to get used to our oven down here in Florida. For this bake, I wanted to see how I might add steam to a bake. I wanted some more sandwich bread, but thought I’d make a loaf that used a tangzhong with milk but without milk in the mix or butter in the dough. I decided to use olive oil instead for the enrichment. To add some flavour there is King Arthur whole wheat in the dough and the three types of sesame seeds on the crust.
This recipe was brought to my attention in a recent post here with a link to the King Arthur blog post.
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2020/04/06/dont-be-a-bread-hostage
Found the CB page on ciabatta over the weekend, thought the Biga recipe from mwilson looked interesting. In the past my ciabatta was all over the place, the flour I was baking with was inconsistent. Slightly adapted, wanted to see how much water the flour could take, could have probably pushed it slightly more, but this is one of the better ciabatta I have made, definitely the softest. Ended with a very strong dough if I understand correctly this if from the large portion of Biga.
Could have probably proofed it for an extra hour, but was getting late.
We're (finally) getting settled in our new home, and I have mostly figured out what needs doing for a successful bake at 6,000 ft. My starter had been on (to borrow a medical term) "comfort measures only" for about 4-5 months. It was fed just often enough to prevent death by neglect, but it wasn't exactly thriving. After series of feedings a few weeks ago, it was back to it's robust self.
We are seeing some friends in our building tonight for dinner and I offered to bring some rolls. We are still here in Florida and without my starter so these were made with IDY. I wanted to bring something that wasn’t just a milk bread so decided to add mashed steamed sweet potato to the dough. I couldn’t find purple sweet potatoes anywhere near me so went with the regular orange ones. I didn’t measure the amount of sweet potato that I added. I added it after the dough was well developed after adding the butter/flour paste.
This is a follow up to my post in the "Besuschio - The Definitive Panettone" thread, with a bit more detail.
Starter
I decided to make a fresh starter for my LM - probably not necessary, but never mind! I followed the instructions at https://www.homebaking.at/sauerteigansatz-herstellen/
using a homegrown organic apple, flour mix of Marriages organic BF and some Italian Manitoba flour (+ a little malt) + spring water.
Nothing different except I frequently swap out my grains so as to get through my inventory. Milled the grains right before using them they were still warm. Mixed everything except salt autolyse 30 min. KA mixer 7 min speed 2 adding in the salt and some extra held back water. Cleaned the bowl as usual with a perfect ratio of dry/ wet ingredients.
I am very pleased with the crumb and crust and amazing wheat flavor. Made great grilled cheese sandos. Don’t recall ever making 3 loaves as identical as these 3! 😊
Inspiration
I was away from my Toronto place for 7 months, living alone, working on projects and losing 55 pounds. When I came back, I was ready to get back into baking!
