This Week in Baking..April 17, 2015: Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough
Finally I have a new place to lose my extra loaves besides the freezer and birds so I am again trying to perfect my technique.
Today's bread is Vermont Sourdough from Jeff Hamelman's book Bread. In his book, all the recipes are written in bakery sized formulas along with a home version which is written in pounds and ounces so I needed to convert them to grams. I also upped the rye a slight bit and added a little whole wheat but kept the formula in the same balance.
My Levain
75 gr mature starter
125 gr. warm water
125 gr. whole wheat flour
Allowed to ferment in my warm microwave with a boiled glass of water for about 10 hours until bubbled and risen.
Final Dough..I think I calculated it correctly this time. I'm still trying to learn the technique behind those spreadsheets so its calculator and paper!
600 gr bread flour
80 gr whole wheat flour
100 gr rye flour
419 gr water
17 gr salt
325 gr levain
Mixed all of the ingredients together except the salt and allowed to autolyse for 30 minutes. You can leave it for up to an hour according to his book.
Mixed in the salt well and allowed to bulk ferment for 1.5 to 2.5 hours. Again in the microwave with boiled water. After 30 minutes I stretched and folded the dough, reheated the boiled water and put it back in the microwave. It now being 11:00 at night....why do I get these urges so late? ...I decided to perform one more stretch and fold and put it in the refrigerator for a cold overnight bulk ferment. At 3 a.m. or so during my nightly bio break I pulled it out of the fridge and left it on the counter. By 7 a.m. it was looking great! Spilled it out and preshaped it.
This dough is slightly dryer than some of the breads I've been making recently which contributed to making it easier to split and prepare for the bannetons. Or maybe I'm just getting it.
Another recommendation I decided to try today is taking a small bit of the dough and placing in in a shot glass to monitor its rising. It is just about an inch deep in the glass coming to the top of the word Berlin so by my calculations it should be ready for the oven when it reached the yellow part of the coat of arms design. This took about three hours. I plan to use this technique going forward.
I'm still working on my slashing technique and am thinking my homemade lame is not upto par or I need to put the loaves in the fridge for 30 minutes before baking....I'll try that next. In to the hot dutch ovens....
I took the little proofing ball of dough and threw that on foil and tossed it in the oven. It was ready after 30 minutes and was a nice little preview of what hopefully was contained in side those full sized loaves.
Forty minutes later out come these beauties!
And the crumb shot.... I think we have a winner.
Hubby has been bragging to the owner of his favorite service station and he had previously brought over a piece of baked goods for him to sample. He was headed out so I gave him a loaf to drop off. This was a good opportunity to lose one loaf and build relationships!! LOL! Maybe he'll get a good customer discount next time.
Comments
to the comments posted to this thread before you updated it? i see the crumb shot is up and this bread really looks perfectly delicious. Well done and
Happy baking
I didn't see any before I added the crumb shot. I think TFL has gremlins. Abe made a comment yesterday that showed in an email but never showed up in the thread. My apologies if I caused them to be deleted.
And thanks. I feel really good with this bake. Your advice helped immensely.
We'll just write new comments!
I am so enjoying watching your enthusiasm and progress with baking SD! I like that you're now making loaves to keep and loves to share, so you can continue to bake! we have similar cycles at our house. Definitely a challenge with only two in the house. My little part-time apprentice, Tillie, is also a taste-tester who has strong opinions, as Lucy does, but she really can't power through much volume of bread.
I can always bake and bring to the office - these people will eat most anything!
Cathy
A great recipe from my favorite book. I like the idea of the dough in the shot glass. I will have to try that next time.
Looks delicious and what a nice crumb. Well hello oven spring :) You've gotta feel happy with this bake.
I've just started hamelmans Vermont sourdough with a twist or two.
Used whole spelt instead of rye. And added in a tablespoon of halva spread which is sesame seed, sugar and soya lecithin. Should be interesting.
how did it come out?
Now to have some halva spread on my halva bread :)
What did you change in the recipe or did you just add?
Well I used whole spelt instead of rye but would work just as well with normal recipe. Used spelt out of convenience. And for the halva I just added in a tablespoon of the spread into the water followed by the starter and flour. Mixed into the dough and autolysed as recipe asked for. So basically just added.
Its called halva spread but its basically tahini with some sugar and lecithin. Would work just as well with tahini paste I think. Will be easier to find.
How did yours taste. Looks so nice! And great oven spring.
it is really yummy. Crust was crisp and chewy. Hubby loved it.
Its a lovely go to recipe. And room for self expression.
Hamelman's formula for the Levain build calls for 20% mature starter and you are using 60%. In terms of "sour," how does your bread taste. One of the things I'm still frustrated with is getting tang in my bread. I've been using the recipe as written and it seems to be hit or miss in terms of tang. I've tried retarding the bulk fermentation but that doesn't seem to do much. My starter is quite good in terms of activity and does have a good sour smell and taste to it. Maybe boosting the amount in the Levain build is the way to go.
Nice looking loaf btw!
levain percent...also, I think this thread has been spammed!
As far as the percentage...and I'm new at this...my levain is approximately 25% starter... 75/325=23
My rye sour is sour to begin with and if you want to increase the tang you need to bulk ferment it longer....in the fridge is a good place.
on the basis of the amount of flour and not the total weight. Your calculation is for the total weight of the whole culture and not the flour which is why it is much higher than in the Hamelman recipe. Nothing necessarily wrong with doing it that way other than you have much more mature culture than called for.
Alan
not comparing apples to apples. And I see it done both ways as well.
As far as tang, perhaps my use of more sour contributes to the tang.
Here are the amounts for the Liquid-Levain build for Vermont Sourdough (I have the 2nd edition and it is on page 152). Baker percentages are in () and the numbers are 1/10 the value of the Metric measurements that he gives.
Bread Flour - 150g (100%)
Water - 188g (125%)
Mature Culture - 30g (20%)
My starter is one made from AP flour and I have not tried an all-rye starter yet (my wife might object to the refrigerator being taken over by microbiology experiments). As I noted, the starter I do have does have a mild tangy taste which is fine with me as I don't want really sour bread.
thanks,
Alan
I had one from the library but returned it. I want to be able to add my own calculations in as none of his recipes are written in grams.
Again if my calculations for the levain as you stated are correct that would be 30/338=9 or 9% mature starter. As I said, I'm still learning as well.
Here's my disclaimer: I do make my own little adjustments....so if a recipe recommends a two step levain, I usually skip the first one because I have mature starters in the fridge and usually just build using my mature levain as the total for step 1.
I highly recommend a rye starter.
Wendy
but they are 'commercial' quantities. Perhaps the library copy you looked at was the first edition. You just have to divide by 10 to get the 'home' amount. This makes it pretty easy and avoids math mistakes in converting from ounces to grams.
Getting a rye starter going is one of my next projects.
Alan
the book to refresh my memory. I do not believe your divide by 10 is correct. I calculated the home amounts using an app on the phone to arrive at the below:
4.8 oz = 136
6 oz = 170
1 oz = 28
which gave me a total amount of 334 so I rounded a bit.
So we're not comparing apples to apples but it works for both of us because we use a formula and see it through to the end so neither is wrong if it works.
And if you look at his calculation for us and metric, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds which should actually end up at 19.8 pounds, not 18. But again, its based on percents so it works in the end.
your mileage may vary...I'll check my book when it comes.