Month: March 2019

This week I finally got smart and mixed together 500 grams each of King Arthur All Purpose Flour and their White Whole Wheat Flour and put it in an empty container to use for refreshing my starter. That simple and now obvious act seems to have saved me several minutes a day when refreshing my starter. The time consuming part of that process is scooping out the discard starter and getting it into the wastebasket without making a mess.

This week I am making another variation based on Tartine Country Sourdough. This has become my favorite bread to make. The change this week is to substitute whole rye flour for half of the whole wheat flour. I want to see if that small amount of rye flour has an impact on the taste of the bread. I am hoping for some added complexity to the flavor.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
The Leaven
Starter	10 g	10%
Water	100 g	100%
50-50 Flour Mix	100 g	100%
The Dough
Starter	200 g	20%
Water	750 g	75%
Total Flour	1000 g	100%
Bread Flour	900 g	90%
White Whole Wheat Flour	50 g	5%
Whole Rye Flour	50 g	5%
Salt	20 g	2%

My Process

1. The night before mixing the dough add the 100% hydration starter to a bowl with the water and mix thoroughly. Add the flour mix to the bowl and stir until completely incorporated and somewhat smooth. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave on counter overnight, about 12 hours.
2. The next morning weigh out 700 grams of water and put in the dough mixing bowl. Weigh the remaining 50 grams of water and reserve. Weigh out the remaining ingredients, except the leaven. Experience has shown me that I will lose 10 grams between what sticks to the dough scraper and the bowl.
3. Mix the three flours together to get them blended as uniformly as possible.
4. Add the leaven to the mixing bowl with the water and stir with the danish dough whisk until uniformly distributed in the water.
5. Slowly add a scoop of the mixed flours to the mixing bowl using the dough whisk to incorporate the flours before adding the next scoop of flour. Continue adding and mixing until all the flour is in the bowl. Continue mixing until no more dry flour is in the mixing bowl.
6. Cover the bowl with a towel and let rest on the counter 40 to 50 minutes.
7. Add the salt and the remaining 50 g of water to the bowl. Squeeze the dough though the fingers to work the salt and water into the dough. It will get further incorporated during subsequent stretch and folds.
8. Cover the bowl with a towel and let rest on counter 30 minutes.
9. Stretch and fold the dough and try to incorporate any remaining water. Transfer the dough to the fermentation container and cover.
10. Stretch and fold fold the dough an additional 3 or 4 times on 30 minute intervals. Cover dough in between. Check the dough strength before the third stretch and fold with a windowpane test. Continue until a good strong dough is developed. I ended up stretching and folding this batch a total of 6 times at which point I was finding some large bubbles so I stopped there.
11. When desired dough strength is achieved, cover and let dough continue to bulk ferment. Total time should be roughly 6 hours. That is how long for my starter to reach its full height at room temperature. The dough changes in feel from dense an sticky to soft and less sticky when fermentation is done.
12. Dump the dough out onto a work surface and divide into two equal pieces. Close up the cut area on each piece. Pick the smoothest side of each and lightly dust with bread flour. Invert each piece of dough and preshape each piece into a ball. Invert on work surface and let rest 20 minutes.
13. In turn, tighten up each ball of dough. Place seam side up in cloth lined bannetons that have been dusted with a mix of rye and rice flour. Lightly dust seam side of loaves.
14. Place in plastic bags and place in fridge to proof overnight.
15. The next morning, place the dutch oven with the lid slightly ajar into the oven and preheat to 500F for 1 hour.
16. Remove the first loaf from the fridge. Invert loaf from banneton on to parchment paper that has been lightly dusted with rice flour. Brush excess flour from surface of loaf, if desired. Slash loaf with lame or serrated knife.
17. Using the parchment paper transfer the dough to the dutch oven and cover making sure the parchment is completely inside the dutch oven. Reduce oven temperature to 450F.
18. Bake for 20 minutes covered the remove the cover and bake for an additional 20 to 25 minutes. Remove bread from dutch oven to rack to cool. Wait at least 1 hour before slicing.
19. Return the dutch oven to the oven and increase the oven temperature to 500F and preheat for 15 minutes.
20. Repeat steps 16, 17 and 18 for the second loaf.

This loaf is delicious but I don’t think it was any better that the original version with just the white whole wheat flour. I have not been disappointed anytime I have made this bread in any of the variants I’ve made. It always comes out with a great crust, a tender moist crumb and large open structure. I like the fact that it gets baked straight from the fridge as that makes it easier to slash. And it still gets amazing oven spring straight from the fridge. The flavor is great whether eaten fresh the day it is baked or toasted the next day.

This week I am making one of my favorite yeasted breads as a sourdough. It is based in Baking Illustrated by publishers of Cooks Illustrated called Rustic Italian Bread. I call this version Rustic Sourdough Italian Bread.

The original recipe calls for an overnight sponge. Instead I make a 24 hour sponge that I mix the morning before I am going to mix the dough. That then stands for 3 hours at room temperature to get fermentation going then into the fridge until the next morning. This allows for fermentation to continue slowly and for gluten development to occur.

At roughly 12 hours before I am going to mix I refresh my starter so it is nice active by morning. I do this by removing some starter from its container to a bowl and adding equal parts water and flour. I have gotten so I prefer doing that instead of doing the second daily refresh on that starter itself. The end result is the same and I find it more convenient.

No need to have an autolyes with this dough. The sponge has good gluten development after 24 hours.

The hydration level of this dough is 75% so it is a wet dough to work with. You wouldn’t know it however when trying to mix the last of the flour into the dough.

I did make one big mistake with this recipe. I was too lazy to get out a separate bowl for mixing the dough so I mixed in my proofing container. During my second stretch and fold I discovered hard lumps of dried flour in the dough. I had to pick out what I could and then moved the dough to another container. Lesson learned!

I did a total of 4 stretch and folds this time. Before I performed the fourth I did a windowpane test and wasn’t quite satisfied with the dough strength. Total bulk fermentation time was 5-1/2 hours at which time the dough was nice and soft and puffy with some large bubbles. The dough was then divided, weighed and preformed. After a 20 minute rest on my board the dough was shaped and placed in lined bannetons seam side up. Then it was into a plastic bag and into the fridge overnight.

Because it worked so well with the Country Sourdough Loaf I decided to bake the loaves straight from the fridge. The oven and stone were preheated to 500 F for 60 minutes. The roasting pan went in 10 minutes before baking.

The first loaf was taken from the fridge, inverted out of its banneton onto parchment, slashed, into the oven and covered. Baking time was 15 minutes covered at 475 F. The cover was removed, the oven temp dropped to 400 F, and the loaf baked another 17 minutes. After that the oven temperature was raised back to 500 F and the process repeated for the 2nd loaf.

This was the second time I made this recipe. There were two changes that I made from the first time. Change one was the switch to organic bread flour from non-organic. Change two was an additional 12 hours fermentation of the sponge.

I felt that this tasted much better than the first attempt. I do believe there is better flavor from the King Arthur Organic Bread Flour (I have no affiliation with them) compared to the regular bread flour. I also believe that longer fermentation also improves flavor. When you use the same four ingredients starter, flour, water and salt it is difficult to get a difference in taste except by changing the fermentation time. An change in flavor is going to be subtle.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
Sponge
Starter	25 g	9%
Flour	285 g	100%
Water	212 g	74%
Dough
Sponge	522 g	123%
Starter	75 g	18%
Bread flour	425 g	100%
Water	310 g	73%
Salt	13 g	3%
Dough weight	1345 g

My Process

1. Mix sponge ingredients 12 hours before planned dough mixing.
2. Cover and let stand on counter 3 hours.
3. Place in fridge until next morning.
4. Remove starter from fridge.
5. Weigh out dough ingredients.
6. Mix starter into water.
7. Pull small chunks off sponge and mix into water and starter until all of the sponge is incorporated.
8. Mix salt into flour.
9. Slowly incorporate flour into water. Mix until all flour is incorporated into the dough. Transfer dough to fermentation container.
10. Cover and let rest 60 minutes.
11. Stretch and fold dough a total of 3 or 4 times until a good windowpane test.
12. Total bulk fermentation time will be 4 to 7 hours.
13. Divide dough into two equal pieces, if making two loaves. Preshape and let rest on counter for 20 minutes. Lightly flour top of dough.
14. Flour banneton(s) with a mix of rye and rice flour.
15. Final shape loaf, place in banneton(s) seam side up. Lightly dust with rice flour. Place in plastic bag and refrigerate until next morning.
16. Place baking stone in oven and preheat to 500 F for 1 hour. Put roasting pan in oven 10 minutes before baking.
17. Remove one loaf from fridge. Invert loaf from banneton on to a sheet of parchment paper. Lightly dust loaf with flour for rustic appearance. Slash loaf.
18. Transfer loaf on parchment to oven and cover with roasting pan. Set oven to 475 F and bake 15 minutes covered.
19. Remove roasting pan and reduce oven temperature to 400 F. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes .
20. Remove bread from oven and let cool on rack before slicing.
21. If baking a second loaf, place roasting pan back in the oven, raise the oven temperature to 500 F and wait 15 minutes before repeating the baking process.

In honor of Saint Patrick’s Day and having leftover corned beef, our bread this week will be a loaf of sourdough rye.

Rye bread has been my nemesis. I have tried a number of different recipes and not been satisfied with the texture I achieved. This is my first time making a sourdough rye loaf. I am using a recipe I found on the website www.breadtopia com It is called Artisan Sourdough Rye Bread. For flours I used King Arthur Organic Bread Flour and Hodgsons Mill Stone Ground Whole Rye Flour. I have no affiliation with either of those companies.

This is as close to a “do nothing” bread as I have ever made. It is a high hydration dough at around 83% hydration. It is 50% rye flour which makes it a very sticky dough. Those two things together make it difficult to work by hand so instead, it gets mixed with a danish dough whisk a total of 3 times over an hour or so. The dough then bulk ferments for 12 to 14 hours at room temperature. That works out well for mixing in the evening and then baking the next day. In my case I am tired by the time evening arrives so I like to mix earlier in the day. So I mixed the dough late morning and put it in the fridge until 8:00pm. Then it sat on the counter until next morning. I had expected the time in the fridge to slow down fermentation more but it was ready to go by 8:30am. I stretched, folded and shaped the dough into an oval loaf and placed it in an oval banneton with a liner that was well floured with rye and rice flour. Final rise only took an hour and into the oven it went. The aroma coming from the oven was enticing. With out a doubt this is the best loaf of rye I have ever made. Texture and flavor are spot on. I will be reluctant to make any other rye going forward.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
Water	400 g	82%
Starter	70 g	14%
Rye flour	245 g	50%
Bread flour	245 g	50%
Total flour	490 g	100%
Molasses	44 g	9%
Fennel seed	8 g	1.6%
Anise seed	2 g	0.4%
Caraway seed	3 g	0.6%
Salt	10 g	2%
Zest of 1 orange

The Process

1. Mix together the water, starter, fennel seed, anise seed, caraway seed and the orange seed.
2. Mix together the rye flour, bread flour and salt.
3. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture into the water mixture using a dough whisk or spoon. Continue until all flour is incorporated into the water. Cover and let rest 15 minutes.
4. Stir dough for 1 – 2 minutes, cover and let rest 15 minutes.
5. Stir dough dough 1 – 2 minutes then cover.
6. Let dough bulk ferment for 12 – 14 hours at room temperature. If mixing dough early in the day, place covered dough in fridge to retard fermentation until early evening. Then remove from fridge and place on counter overnight.
7. When dough is ready the next morning stretch and fold dough with we hands to minimize sticking. Let rest 15 minutes. This is a very sticky dough so make sure to flour surfaces and hands while shaping the dough. Preshape the dough. Let dough rest 15 minutes. Heavily flour a cloth lined banneton with a mix of rye and rice flour. I was making an oval loaf so I used a 10” x 6” x 4” oval banneton.
8. Final shape the loaf and place in the banneton. Cover with plastic and let rise for 1 to 1-1/2 hours.
9. Meanwhile, place baking stone in oven and preheat oven to 475 F. I use a roasting pan to trap steam so that goes in the oven 10 minutes before baking. Depending on the shape of the load a dutch oven or some type of clay baker could also be used.
10. When dough is ready invert out of the banneton onto a heavily floured peel or onto parchment. Transfer to the oven and cover.
11. Bake at 475 F covered for 20 minutes.
12. Remove cover, reduce oven temperature to 450 F and bake another 10 minutes.
13. Remove bread from oven and let cool on rack at least 1 hour before slicing.

Here is the reason for making rye bread this weekend. A grilled Rueben sandwich! What is better than corned beef with sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and homemade russian dressing on rye? Probably my favorite sandwich of all time.

This weeks bread is another variation of the Tartine County Sourdough Loaf with black olives and fresh rosemary added. This is the first time time I have made this combination.

I wanted to use salt cured olives packed in olive oil. The only place we could find them locally was the olive bar at Wegmans, so that’s what I used. The fresh rosemary also came from Wegmans.

When developing a new recipe there is a guessing game on how much to use for each add in. In this case I guessed 3/4 cup of chopped olives and 1-1/2 teaspoons of chopped fresh rosemary. When I chopped and measured the fresh rosemary it didn’t like enough rosemary so I used 2 teaspoons (4 grams). The 3/4 cup of olives (120 grams) was too much and I could only get 96 grams worked into the dough. The next time I make this loaf I will use 1/2 cup or 80 grams.

The recipe and process for this bread is pretty much the same as the smoked cheddar cheese and jalapeño add-ins. The one change I made to the process is to add the olives and rosemary 15 minutes after the first stretch and fold. In the earlier loaf I added the cheese and jalapeños when the salt and remaining water were added. My reasoning was I wanted the salt to have a chance to dissolve and absorb into the dough before I added the salty olives.

This loaf turned out delicious, but not the most attractive loaf I have made. In retrospect, I probably should have spread out the chopped olives on paper towels to absorb some of the oil and dusted them with flour before adding them to the dough. I had an issue when stretching and folding the dough with olives falling out because the dough didn’t stick to them. The same happened as the bread rose in the oven. When we sliced the loaf many of the olives were loose in pockets inside the loaf.

I will make this loaf again with the changes I’ve noted above. I may try to get the 120 grams of olives into the dough when they are dusted with flour and see if that helps.

This weeks bread is a retry of last weeks bread, with changes.

The first change was to bulk fermentation. Instead of putting the dough into the proofer it was left at room temperature. I was also bulk fermented until I felt it had fermented long enough. This was done by feel until the dough went from feeling dense to somewhat soft. This took 6 hours compared to the 3-1/2 hours fermentation went last week.

The second change was to proof the dough overnight in the fridge. In the morning the dough was removed from the fridge and placed in the proofer at 75F. The dough proofer 3 hours until a finger indentation in the dough slowly filled.

The bread was the scored and baked in a preheated oven at 360F for 37 minutes.

The bread came out of the oven much taller than last week. They weren’t quite the same size since I just eyeballed dividing the dough. Oops. The loaves felt nice and soft not the bricks of last week. The good thing with bread is you can eat your mistakes. Last weeks loaves were cubed up and frozen for a future batch of dressing.

This bread is delicious. We have been using it for breakfast toasted with jam and for lunchtime paninis. It’s been so long since I actually had a sandwich for lunch I have been truly enjoying having them again.