Blog posts

Bread these days is much maligned.  The Paleo diet people think grains were a mistake.  The low-carb people think carbohydrates are the root of all evil.  And the gluten scare mongers imagine they all have celiac disease.  Even mainstream dietitians warn of the high glycemic index of bread.  What is a baker to do?

Many of these folks can't be convinced otherwise. They've accepted their beliefs about grains, carbs, or gluten in a kind of religious shared-delusional way that is impossible to argue against because it's not logical.

Sourdough Bread

Based on the method of Ramon Padilla

March, 2019

David Snyder

Steve Giraudo, whose family owned the company that ultimately controlled Parisian, Colombo, Toscano and Boudin bakeries, sent me links to a couple youtube videos that document the history of those companies. Note that Larraburu was never part of this consortium.  Given the recent interest in SF SD, I thought these would be of interest to many TFL folks.

I have always loved the smell of fresh baked bread.  It holds a special place in my imagination.  Up until a year ago, my forays into bread baking was limited to a bread machine and a store bought package.  Last spring I attempted to create my very own sourdough starter.  It took a couple of tries, but eventually I was successful and had a very lively culture, all lovely and bubbly.

In December 2018 I tried to duplicate the delicious breadsticks we had at one of the Arizmendi bakeries in S.F.  I think that I came close after a few tries, eventual swapping out the somewhat invisible-tasting sharp cheddar and jalapeño for pecorino cheese and serrano chilies.  Converted in this iteration from sponge to a 100% hydr. levain with 20% preferment AP flour, it is a 50/50 semolina/AP dough at 69% hydration.

A few weeks ago I attempted a bake using corn flour, inspired by Dutch style soft corn bread. It's basically a soft fluffy bread good for toasting, baked with a hint of corn flour for colour and flavour. Anyway, I felt like baking buns and decided to incorporate some corn. Ingredients:

The recent flurry of chatter about SFSD, Larraburu Bros and Galal et al. highlights curious issues about the terroir of bread.  It occurs to me that bread has a staggeringly more extreme element thereof than wine, cheese or olive oil.  Forgive me if this is obvious and widely acknowledged.  These are new(ish), or at least somehow suddenly more deeply considered, ideas for me.

I used my 'cheat' sourdough starter for this one. It is reasonably quick because it uses yogurt and a 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast and makes a fair volume of starter. The recipe stated 180g of starter refreshed with 80% wheat and 20% rye flour.  The bread is made with coconut water and also contains grated coconut. Slow rising, it sat in the fridge overnight for its first rise and I finally baked it the next evening. I love the way the aroma of the coconut takes over the kitchen when you toast it. We took the final slices with us when we went hiking in the mountains.

I haven't contributed for a while, this is a s/d loaf using Caputo Italian flour Type 0 that has recently become available at the local Supermarket its a Manitoba Ora. On the label it says it is well suited to long fermentation times.

The dough was inoculated  with 10% s/d culture and the formula worked out for a 750g dough piece. 

flour 436g

salt 9g

s/d culture 44g

water 262g

One of my favourite baked goods is a crusty and seedy roll, perfect as a sandwich or eaten open-face like the Germans do. Once again I tried to increase the nutritional content by using Spelt rather than white flour, and by adding a chia and flax seed soaker. I added SD starter for flavour, but also used yeast because I was baking the same day. These tasted great and were a good balance of chewy and fluffy on the inside. The recipe below made 8 rolls, but if you want them larger just divide into 6 rather than 8.