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| bread fresh from the oven |
After seeing
this wonderful recipe over there - inspired by Chad Robertson - (it is really great and even includes the timing for the preparation and I got the inspiration to do so from there of course) and after having read many times about the overnight storage of the bread in the fridge in order to increase the flavor profile, I decided to try this as well. I am referring to the recipe that I found over here, but it can be found on many blogs in the blogger sphere as well. After trying this bread, I have to say that this was my first, but not my last time to make the bread using the long overnight fermentation. I definitely will also try to create my own recipes using this way of increasing the flavor because the flavor of this bread is just the most intense bread flavor that I had so far, ever, since I started making my own breads. It shows me again why I am using the slow fermenting pizza dough in order to make
my favorite pizza as well. In this recipe I replaced the different wheat and spelt flours by the only type of flour that I had available, whole wheat flour.As I know that my sourdough is not the most active one, I added some yeast to the recipe and last but not least, I added a good portion of Rosemary to it as we just love herbs and spices in our bread. All in all my dough was a bit drier than the one in the description and for sure I did not get a crumb nearly as good as the one on the picture. But honestly, I think I must use more liquid next time because liquid dough’s tend to develop bigger holes in the crumb then dry ones. That being said, I know very well that I need to put more effort and research in how to make a crumb with bigger holes in the future. But still, I am very happy with the bread and it won’t be the last time I made it. Here is my version of the recipe.If any of you has any hints and tricks for the crumb development, I am always open for your great suggestions
Ingredients and timing: Day 1 – Midnight-40 g of wheat sourdough starter
-53 g water
-73 g wheat flour
Mix all the ingredients and leave them over night ferment on a warm place (ideal would be 25 degrees Celsius), 12 – 16 hours.
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| sourdough before fermentation |
Day 2 – morning 10:30Sourdough part 2
-132 g water
-165 g wheat flour
Mix everything and let it ferment on a warm place in the house (same place as before, 25 degrees Celsius)
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| sourdough after fermentation |
13:15:-593 g whole wheat flour
-66 g rye flour
-330 g water
-2 g dried yeast
-2 g rosemary
I added yeast to the recipe in order to get more activity in the development of the crumb; I also added some rosemary as well as we love to have herbs on our bread. Let everything rest of half an hour
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| fresh kneaded dough ball |
13:45:We add 13 g salt to the dough and mix it with the sourdough. We really mix and knead the dough well until it is soft and the gluten developed in the dough. That can be that you need to knead about like 10 – 15 minutes. At this stage I had to add some water as the author said that the dough is VERY soft and mine was not so soft but still a bit dry. Here I just think that it is due to the flour that I am using instead of the kinds of flour that is suggested by the author of the recipe.
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| adding the salt to the dough |
14:15:Let the dough rest till 18:15. During the resting period make sure that you stretch and fold the dough every 45 minutes in order to increase and develop the gluten in the dough.
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| before folding the dough |
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| folding the dough 3.rd time |
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| folding the dough 3.rd time |
20:15:Shape the dough and let it rest in the fermentation basket
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| cutting the dough in half to make two breads |
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| shaping the breads and resting them in my fermentation basket (plastic cups) |
20:15:Place the dough in the fermentation basket in the fridge until the next morning so the flavors are developing overnight.
Day 3 – in the morning:Now I drop them upside down from their bread baskets on my permanent Teflon baking foil on which I already sprinkled a bed of flour. I also cut the bread and sprinkle a layer of flour on top of the bread before putting in the oven. The oven should be pre heated on 250°C. Now pour a cup of hot water in the oven (if you do not have this inbuilt steaming program in your oven at home), pop the bread in the oven and also place a cup of water on the floor of the oven to give some additional steam later on. Quickly close the door so the hot steam will be caught within the oven. Having all that steam in the oven is, like mentioned many times before, extremely important for a scrumptious crust and a great consistency of the bread.
Bake the breads for 10 - 15 minutes like this until it reached the right brown color that you are looking for in a bread crust, then open up the door, let the steam out, lower the heat on 200°C and continue to bake the bread for another 35 - 40 minutes. Now switch off the heat, keep the door open and let the bread cool down slowly. I always spray a bit of water on top of the fresh loaf when it's still hot. It gives a nice and shiny surface the fresh baked crust.
Comments
with that little kick of rye in there. It is a little dense on the bottom but no worriers - mine were too when I first started to ake SD especially with a new starter, One of the things we need to do is get your starter up to speed so no yeast booster is required.
Your first feeding 40 g of starter 73 g or flour and 53 g of water sitting out for 12 hours is a very long time for such a small amount of flour in the feed and such a large amount of starter. It must be pretty pooped out after such a long time.
There also seems to be some flour missing from your recipe. I'm counting 324 g of flour and 535 water, assuming your starter is 100% hydration, which would be a soupy mess.
One thing I would try is make the first small levain build at 9 PM and then do the 2nd one 3 hours later at midnight and let that sit out overnight to ferment. It should be pretty perky in the morning and easily doubled without being fatigued.
So how much flour was missing in the dough ?
It's hidden here: “13:15:-593 g whole wheat flour”, sorry for my bad formatting of the text and thanks for your pointers. I agree with you, not having that flour would make the dough into a creamy soup indeed.
And I will try to work with your way to user your way to make my sourdough, hope it will be more active this way as my sourdough is actually already more than a year old and not that young any more, but never was that active indeed. Let me see how I can give it a "kick in the behind" in order to get it working harder...
to make sure that the levain is at its peak is to do a 3 stage build. I starter with 15 g of starter at 66% hydration and then make sure to feed it twice the amount of flour than what is in the seed. In this case the seeds would have 15/1.66 = 9 g of flour and 6 g of water in the 15 g of seed. So for the first feeding I would do 20 g each of flour and water making 55 g of levain. Then 2 hours later I would feed it 30 g each of flour and water making 115 g of levain. 3 hours later I would feed it 50 g each of flour and water making 215 g of levain and make sure it doubles in less than 6 hours.
This gives enough levain to raise a 1,000g loaf of total weight of the flour and water. The 215 g of levain being 21.5% of the total is more than enough to do the job if it can double after the 3rd feeding in 6 hours. If it doesn't then toss 100 g of the levain and feed it 50 g each of flour and water again until it can double within 6 hours of the last feeding,
The dense bottom could be several different things going on. My problem was that the oven and stone weren't properly preheated and i was baking at too low a temperature without enough steam. The stone lags the oven temperature by 20 minutes. So when the oven says is it at 500F then set the timer for 20 minutes. After that time the stone will be at 500F. Make sure to make as much steam as you can I use lava rocks in a 9" square pan half full of water and 2 of Sylvia's steaming pans with a rolled up kitchen towel in each also half full of water. These go on the bottom rack of the oven when the oven hits 350 F. By the time the oven hits 500 F the steam should be billowing like crazy.
Once you put the bread in the oven doesn't turn the oven down to 475 F for 4 minutes and leave it there for 11 mor eminutes of steam. Then remove the steam and bake at 450 F until done to 205 F in the inside - usually about 15 minuted more and 30 minutes total. I'm pretty sure these things will help to make your bread better.
Happy baking,
Indeed you point a few things out here that might be quite true. Before, I was doing a one stage sourdough (Dettmold kind) only, never the three stage sourdough that you are mentioning here. Mostly I did that because I never had time to take care of my sourdough and doing the one stage sourdough is just less time intensive and with the addition of yeast did work fine for me in the past. But I will definitely have to approach the three stages sourdough after what you write and hopefully it will improve the crumb.
The dense bottom might be, because I do not have a pizza / bread stone at all. But that was never a big problem before and I do put a lot of steam to the bread when I am baking it and I leave the oven on full whack for about 15 minutes before I lower the temperature and let the steam off. This time I think I did not manage to put that much steam but the temperature and the timing were the same as all the times before. You can also see it from the pale crust of the bread; normally I manage to get a much browner crust.
Thanks again for all your pointers and I will first just try to focus mainly on the sourdough while maintaining the baking technique that I always use to have before and that worked quite all right, maybe look if I can get a bread stone at some stage.
I agree with DAs pointers. Keep at it and your bread will only continue to get better and better. I love doing overnight bulk retards of my dough and find this to create the most flavor. You can also check out the 36 hour technique I have used several times with a long autolyse of the flours.
Great bake none the less.
Regards
Ian
Ian, You are so right with what you way about the flavor. I will check out your 36 hours technique indeed. I am only afraid that if I am going to use it on my wasabi bread that I will make soon, it will be too spicy to eat then … hehe.
Greetings from China