Using the “no-knead” method, popularized by Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery, I went for a ciabatta this weekend. There were a few adjustments I made to the recipe:
We were in Portland, OR last week. While I was in meetings, my wife bounced between Powell's (the biggest book store in the US of A) and the Pearl Bakery. I got to taste a number of their breads in sandwiches my wife brought back to the hotel, but I didn't taste their "multigrain roll," which my wife had one day and really liked.
I think it worked out well despite all my changes to the recipe:
- I didn't make a preferment, simply used the same porportion of starter directly, adjusted for my 100% starter so the same percentage of flour came from the starter.
- my starter is whole wheat, so the final product has some WW flavor in it.
- I added <1oz of extra water, due to the WW flour I think
I haven't made my San Joaquin Sourdough for quite a while. It is one of my favorites, so I made a couple loaves today. I used KAF European Artisan Style flour and Bob's Red Mill Dark Rye. The "variation" of note is that I used a bit less rye (5%) and put all the rye flour in the starter feeding. I also decreased the overall dough hydration just a bit to 70%.
When I started baking a few years ago, I was a strict adherent to recipes. I still do not deviate much as results are then unpredictable. One area in which I do deviate is in the amount of flour. I measure (weigh, if possible) all other ingredients, but since flour is the largest single component, and the one most affected by outside influences (humidity, temperature), I find that adding flour by the cup (less as the dough comes together) gives me a much better finished product. I am not advocating that new bakers do this, but as you see the
Same old recipe, tweaked a little for the seeds. I keep learning more and more, thanks to everybody here. This one's named Prescott, as we're up the hill in Arizona for a short while.
Here's the way I did it. It's only one way, so bake how it suits you and your location, temp, flours, etc.
At SFBI, we did a 100% Spelt bread using dry instant yeast. To soften the bitterness taste of spelt flour, we did a poolish as the preferment for this bread. The result was very pleasing. Two things about that spelt bread I found worthy of a mention from my own perspective:
In addition to the baguettes I made yesterday, I also mixed up my first batch of Susan's Sourdough. I built my firm starter last week and it was ready to go for today's bake. I converted my 80% hydration starter to both a 50% firm starter and a 100% hydration starter. Instead of the 25g white whole wheat called for in the original formula, I used 25g Medium Rye.
The "Magic Bowl" method is great. I can't believe the oven spring on this little loaf! However, I made quite a few mistakes on this loaf.
Today was a good day :-) I made baguettes.
I used the Pain a' l'Ancienne formula as recorded here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8524/philippe-gosselin039s-pain-à-l039ancienne-according-peter-reinhart-interpretted-dmsnyder-m
I find Hamelman's Pain au Levain formula very attractive (page 158 of "[i]Bread[/i]"). A friend asked if I could do spelt sourdough for her.
