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So I've been poring over some older TFL posts on autolyse, as well as other web sites. 

The traditional definition of autolyse means that only flour and water are combined to enhance flour hydration and gluten formation, with a host of other benefits. 

One post I found said that yeast should not be included in an autolyse because it can potentially form too acidic of an environment, which may not be conducive to flavor (or possibly to gluten development). I can imagine that the addition of lots of leaven (yeast, preferement, etc) could cause problems with autolyse, but I have never experienced this myself.  

My question is:

In your own experience, have you tried autolyse with yeast, as well as without? If so, what difference did it make in the final product for the same recipe? Note I'm not looking for theoretical answers here, i want to know if you were able to perceive a significant difference in the resulting bread. 

For me, I guess my next step will be to run some experiments, and compare the results of autolysed doughs which contain levain vs. those which don't. Considering doughs are autolysed 20 min to 1 hour, those are the intervals that I will be working with. 

One of my favorite stores in Portland is Micucci's, an Italian whole and retail grocery. They don't only have Südtiroler Speck and the best Fontina, they also carry nice wines at reasonable prices (I'm too cheap to spend more than 7 - 10 dollars for a bottle - and choosing European wine is easy because of the standardized labeling).  There I purchase Italian 00 flour and spices in bulk, and such items as Marzano tomatoes, cooked chestnuts and gooseberry jam.

Micucci's also has a little bakery, selling pizza by the slice, sfogliatelle with ricotta filling, ciabatta and fluffy "Luna" breads. But what enticed me to show up last Friday at 8:00 sharp was their special "Wheat Walnut Poppy Seed Bread", cut in quarters from a large boule. You have to be there when it comes out of the oven - an hour later it may be already snatched up by customers waiting eagerly in line.

Micucci's Wheat Walnut Poppy Seed Bread

I really like this bread, but since we're in Portland perhaps once a month, and not necessarily on Fridays, I wanted to re-create this specialty at home. I also thought I could probably even improve it - it's slightly sweet than necessary. Looking closely at the crumb I realized that these dark spots were not all poppy seeds but some other black seeds, too. Smaller than flax, and darker: black sesame.

The dark reddish color of the slices must come from the walnuts, there are plenty in the bread. I don't know how it is leavened, but the tag doesn't specially mention sourdough. The crumb is fairly open - the dough must be well hydrated, and I doubt that it is 100% whole wheat. I wanted to try a spelt version, prefering its nuttier taste to wheat.

How large is the percentage of seeds? I measured walnuts, poppy and black sesame seeds, and eyeballed the amounts. Walnuts with 80 g/510 g flour, and poppy and sesame with 10 g each. Using a basic formula from Reinhart's "Whole Grain Breads" ("Transitional Country Hearth Bread"), I came up with this formula, exchanging spelt for wheat, and adding nuts and seeds. Since it was already afternoon, I didn't work with pre-doughs, but used the stretch & fold technique (from Artisan Bread Every Day").

Usually I bake these kinds of lean bread like my German Feinbrot (preheat to 500 F, bake 10 minutes at 475 and 30 minutes at 425 F) - the crust is thinner and crisper than the one from the original recipe), but I wanted to try a technique I learned from Martin Pöt Stoldt (www.der-Sauerteig.de), falling temperatures to imitate the slowly diminishing heat in a wood fired oven.

WALNUT POPPY SEED SPELT BREAD

312 g water, at 95 F
    6 g instant yeast
284 g spelt flour
227 g bread flour
    9 g salt
  80 g walnuts, slightly toasted
  10 g black sesame
  10 g poppy seeds

DAY 1

Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add to all other dough ingredients (except for walnuts) in mixing bowl. Mix together for 1 - 2 min. by hand or with mixer at low speed, until ingredients come together in sticky, coarse ball. Let dough rest for 5 min.

Knead dough for 2 min. at medium-low speed, feeding the nuts slowly in it, and adjusting with some more water as needed, dough should be smoother but still sticky. Continue kneading for another 4 min., the last 20 sec. at medium-high speed (or more vigorously by hand). Dough should be still somewhat sticky. Prepare clean, lightly oiled bowl.

Transfer dough to lightly floured work surface. With wet or oiled hands, stretch dough gently into rectangle. Fold it like a business letter. Turn folded dough around and fold it from the sides again in 3 layers like a letter. Pick dough ball up, tucking sides under, and place it into clean bowl. Cover and let rest for 10 min.

Repeat those stretches and folds 3 times, with 10 min. intervals (total time 40 min.) After last stretch and fold maneuver, cover and immediately place into refrigerator for overnight fermentation.

The dough handled really well, was very smooth and elastic. - That's what it looked like after the final S & F. (a bit more orangey because of the artificial light). The next morning it had considerably darkened with a purplish hue, thanks to the walnuts, and risen to almost double its original size.

DAY 2

Remove dough 2 hrs. before using.

Preheat oven to 480 F/250 C, including steam pan.

Shape boule and place in banneton. Proof for 45 - 60 min., or until it has grown 1 1/2 times to almost double its original size. Turn out onto peel. Slash.

Bake with steam (1 cup boiling water) at falling temperatures:

10 minutes at 480 F/250 C, 10 minutes at 445 F/230 C, remove steam pan, rotate bread 180 degrees. Continue baking
10 minutes at 410 F/210 C, 10 minutes at 375 F/190 C, 5 - 10 min at 355 F/180 C (internal temperature should be at least 205, better 210 F/96 - 99 C). Bread should sound hollow when thumped on bottom.

Let cool on wire rack.

Walnut Poppy Seed Spelt Bread                                                 Crumb: not quite as dark as the Micucci version

The falling temperatures create a really amazing crust!! The bread tasted very good, but next time I would rather make it with a white sourdough starter - we love the little more tang.

Actually, I posted this elsewhere, but am not sure how many have seen it, so I'm reposting under its own heading.

It's been a good while since I last chronicled our adventures and misadventures in the world of publishing, and a lot has happened in the interim.

Many of you know that our publisher wasn't entirely happy with our original title -- The New York Bakers Jewish Bakery Book -- and so after putting out several suggestions for informal feedback, we finally settled on Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking. Looking back at it, Norm and I both agree (as does the publisher) that this title is much more indicative of the contents of the book and leaves a lot more room for Norm's stories and reminiscences of how it was back in the day.

It's also amazing how content inflation works: originally, our contract called for a 70,000 word book, which translates into about 250 pages. In September, when the manuscript was due, it came to about 90,000 words, but the publisher didn't make an issue of it. With additions -- more Norm stories and a whole section on Passover baking -- and revisions, we suddenly found that we had 100,000 words -- about 350 pages -- and the publisher freaked.

Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway to name toe most important quality of great writing, and he answered, "a willingness to murder your children." And so I murdered about 28,000 of my kids and got the book down to around 72,500 words -- which probably isn't a bad thing, since the discipline of self-editing made me think about what was really essential -- the must-includes versus the nice to includes. So basically, most of the background info in ingredients, techniques and equipment went bye-bye, along with redundant recipes and those that people can find elsewhere.

I expect that a lot of the cut material will end up on the NYB website at some point. Norm suggested that we try to sell it as Volume 2 -- The Lost Chapters. We'll see ....

Also, it looks at this point like the pub date will be more like July than the March-April timeframe Camino Books was thinking about before ... understandable, given the complexities of editing, design, marketing, etc etc.

And speaking of marketing, one of the things we're also learning is that being an author is different from being a writer. Writers write and get paid for it; authors become public personas and have to go out and do signings, shows, media, etc etc. More than that, if you're an unknown at a small publishing house, you have to pay for it yourself. Fortunately, we found this terrific publicist who not only has done a bunch of cookbook work, but whose father owned a Jewish bakery in West LA in the 50s and 60s. So not only did we get a great professional; we also got a member of the family, so to speak ... and we even got a great photo of her dad rolling bagels that's gonna appear in the book.

So that's what's been going on ... except for one more great thing.

We had to re-shoot a bunch of the photos, including rainbow slices and French cookies, and Norm was having some health issues (all resolved now), so it was up to me to do the baking. Unfortunately, I couldn't find glace cherries, needed for the French cookies, in quantities less than 30#, so I went to a local bakery and asked if I could buy some. The woman at the counter went in the back and came back out, telling me there was no problem with that. The baker himself followed, with 1/2 a pound of the cherries and told me "no charge."

I thanked him, introduced myself and told him what I was doing and we talked shop for a bit, then his wife came out. "Ooooh, rainbow slices, I love them. He made me a tray for my birthday!" Jerry, the baker, smiled. "A lot of work," he said. So cherries in hand, I went home and baked. You can see the results here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21485/some-recent-baking-and-book-update.

After the cookies were finished and photographed, I took a plate over to the bakery and got huge smiles and thank you's from both Jerry and his wife -- talk about positive reinforcement: I floated on air for days!

So okay, that's where we stand coming into Valentine's Day weekend. Stay tuned!

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com