Month: April 2019

This week I am again trying a recipe that I have converted from yeasted to sourdough. It is based on King Arthur’s Vermont Whole Wheat Oatmeal Honey Bread (I have no affiliation with them). I am using 70 grams of 100% hydration starter to replace 1 teaspoon of instant yeast. I decided to use the starter just before it was refreshed for the day. This has always been a favorite sandwich and toasting bread of ours but it’s a long time since I’ve made it.

I’ve mixed the dough and it came out way stiffer than it should have. Soft dough = soft bread. I added an extra 20 grams of water and kneaded it in and now the dough feels much better. Still a little stiffer than I would like, but I don’t want to go too far. For flour I am using King Arthur Organic All Purpose and King Arthur White Whole Wheat. Since I made the switch to the organic all purpose flour earlier this week for my starter I noticed the starter was a little stiffer. I am guessing that the organic is absorbing more water than the regular all purpose. Also, the rolled oats could absorb a different amount of water from batch to batch.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
Boiling Water *	454 g	70%
Rolled Oats	99 g	15%
Brown Sugar	106 g	16%
Honey	21 g	3.2%
Butter	57 g	8.7%
Cinnamon	6.8 g	1%
Salt	13 g	2%
White Whole Wheat Flour	170 g	26%
All Purpose Flour	482 g	74%
Total Flour	652 g	100%
Starter	70 g	11%

“*” Added additional 20 grams room temp water after mixing

My Process

1. Weigh out ingredients.
2. Bring water to boil.
3. In a large bowl add rolled oats, brown sugar, butter, and honey. Pour over boiling water and stir.
4. Let cool 30 minutes.
5. Mix together the flours, cinnamon and salt in a bowl.
6. Slowly add and mix flour mixture into cooled water mixture.
7. Knead into smooth satiny dough.
8. Transfer dough to a greased, covered container.
9. Bulk ferment dough 10 to 12 hours or until dough has become puffy and less sticky to the touch.
10. Remove dough from container and divide into two equal pieces.
11. Pre-shape dough and let rest on surface for 20 to 30 minutes.
12. Final shape dough and place in greased 4-1/4 X 8-1/2 bread pans.
13. Cover dough loosely with greased plastic wrap.
14. Place covered bread pans in refrigerator to proof overnight.
15. The next morning remove from the fridge and let sit on the counter until dough is domed 1” above the top of the pan. (Took 7 hours, only got to top of pan. Dough was still cold to touch even after spending 3 hours in proofer at 75 F.)
16. Preheat the oven to 350 F.
17. Put both loaves in oven. Bake 25 minutes, cover with aluminum foil to prevent over browning.
18. Bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes.
19. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack before slicing.

Loaves ended up with good oven spring. Height of loaves was good but I need to improve on making uniform loaves when forming and putting in the pans.

The flavor is great just like I remembered, though a bit sweeter than I remembered. Texture and crumb are also very nice.

So, what will I change when I make this again? First and foremost the process. I took forever, seemingly, for the dough to warm up after taking it out of the fridge. If I make the dough early in the day like I did this time then I will retard the dough in the fridge during bulk fermentation. The dough will come out of the fridge before bed to finish bulk fermentation on the counter overnight. The morning it will be divided, shaped and proofed, all at room temperature.

Second, I am going to scale up the recipe in hopes of filling the bread pans out better. I will also increase the water slightly more than this time possibly an additional 10 to 15 grams or a total of 35 grams more than the recipe calls for.

This is a good whole wheat bread for sandwiches, paninis and toasting. It will be in my regular bread making rotation.

This post will be different in that I am covering two weeks worth of bread for a variety of reasons. Primary because I have covered both before and there were only subtle changes in each. I also have not felt that great and not been up to posting.

For our first weeks bread I am again making rye bread from the same recipe as before with a couple of changes. First I have doubled the recipe to make two loaves. Next I made a rye starter (converted from my normal starter) and used that to make an overnight rye leaven. Finally, I didn’t have any oranges to zest so I used Meyer lemons.

This I documented the rye starter in a post earlier this week so I won’t cover that again. I did decide not to keep the rye starter going. I did not find any improvement in flavor to justify using a separate rye starter. I also will make sure to have oranges on hand the next I make this bread as their absence was noticeable.

The leaven was made by measuring out 10 grams of the rye starter into 70 grams of water and mixing it in thoroughly. Then 35 grams each of AP and whole rye flour were added to the water and mixed in. The leaven then sat on the counter for 12 hours before being mixed into the dough.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
The Leaven
Rye Starter	10 g	14%
Water	70 g	100%
AP Flour	35 g	50%
Whole Rye Flour	35 g	50%
The Dough
Leaven	140 g	14%
Water	800 g	83%
Bread Flour	490 g	50%
Whole Rye Flour	490 g	50%
Tot Flour	980 g	100%
Molasses	88 g	9%
Fennel Seed	16 g	1.6%
Anise Seed	4 g	0.4%
Caraway Seed	6 g	0.6%
Salt	20 g	2%
Zest of Meyer Lemon	2

The process was the same as before so I won’t bore you with that again. The results were great and again we enjoyed some Rueben sandwiches. For the corned beef this time I cooked it in our sous vide and it turned out delicious. We soaked it for a couple of hours to get out some of the salt. Then it was dried off and seasoned with a couple or tablespoons of freshly ground black pepper and vacuum sealed and refrigerated overnight. The next morning the sous vide was preheated to 180 F. Once it was up to temperature the corned beef went in for 10 hours. When the 10 hours were up the sealed bag with the corned beef went into an ice bath to stop the cooking. Then into the fridge until we were ready to slice for sandwiches. We were able to slice this nice and thin and it was one of the most tender corned beefs we have made.

The next weeks bread was again the Tartine Country Sourdough Loaf. This was two loaves of the original formula with one minor change. I have always thought it made no sense to make the leaven twice the size as going to be used in the bread. So this time I used 11 grams of starter, 100 grams of water and 100 grams or my AP and white whole wheat flour mix and used the whole leaven in the dough. Sharp observers might note the the formula only calls for 200 grams of starter and I made 211 grams. I have discovered that between what is lost as CO2 as the starter ferments overnight and what sticks in the bowl I lose about 10 grams of starter.

My results were different to prior results with this recipe. The bread had much more of a sour flavor. I was surprised to say the least as this has been so consistent in the past. I don’t know if it was the change to the leaven or the fact that the kitchen was a little warmer now that the weather has finally changed and there was more activity during bulk fermentation. The structure and rise in the oven were both very good so I am thinking it was the change to the leaven.

The next time I make this recipe I will go back to the original leaven formula, check the results, and report in that post.

This bread was by no means bad and in fact had more flavor. It’s just that we prefer a milder loaf.

I just realized I never posted the original formula and process. I will post the formula and my process the next time I make this bread. In the meantime, it is available online from many sources, just Google “Tartine Bread” and you’ll find lots of links.

Now that I am feeling better I hope I can get back on track for future posts.

We will be doing something a little different this week, sourdough crust pizza. I’ve never done this before so it could be interesting. I had too many doctor appointments this week to make bread so I thought this could be a quicker alternative.

First decision was what to use for flour. I wanted to get a crispy crust as opposed to a New York style crust that folds. In the end I chose to use a mix of Caputo 00 flour and King Arthur All Purpose flour (I have no affiliation with either company). Next decision was to decide on hydration level. From the research I did I learned that 00 flour doesn’t absorb as much water a domestic flours, so 60% hydration would be appropriate. AP flour could go 70% or more. In the end I arbitrarily decided 65% hydration. Next was how much olive oil to add. I wasn’t sure how the addition of a fat would impact sourdough since I hadn’t done it so fat. I decided to keep it low at just under 5%. I also wasn’t sure how it would effect gluten formation and decided to add after most of the flour was incorporated in the water and starter mix.

The next decision was how much starter. I decided to use the equivalent to one teaspoon of instant yeast 70 grams of starter. The salt was 2% just like any dough.

I should add, my original plan was to make the dough the day before and do an overnight cold ferment in the fridge. That didn’t happen because I had an eye doctor appointment and couldn’t read anything afterwards with my pupils dilated. That meant the dough had to be mixed, fermented, formed, proofed and baked in one day. Not what I planned, but I thought it would work with a small sacrifice of flavor.

The other decision was how much dough do I need. I had hoped to make two 14” crusts. I ended up with two 12” crusts. Research indicated that a 14” crust takes 15 ounces of dough or 30 ounces of dough for two. In grams that would be 850. I decided to go slightly higher and my formula ended up at 885 g. That should have been enough but the dough resisted stretching and kept shrinking back even with several rests to allow the dough to relax. After forming the dough balls I probably should have waited more than 15 minutes before forming the crusts.

The Formula

Ingredient	Amount	Bakers %
100% Hyd. Starter	70 g	14.7%
Total flour	475 g	100%
Caputo 00 flour	275 g	58%
All Purpose flour	200 g	42%
Water	310 g	65%
Salt	9 g	2%
Olive Oil	15 g	4.8%

My Process

1. Weigh out all ingredients for the dough.
2. Mix the starter into the water thoroughly.
3. Mix the two flours together until uniform.
4. Add the flours to the water mixture one or two handfuls at at time mixing with a danish dough whisk until about 3/4 of the flours are added and a shaggy wet dough has formed.
5. Add the olive oil to the dough and mix in with dough whisk until thoroughly combined.
6. Add the remaining flour mixture and mix by hand until all flour is incorporated into the dough.
7. Cover mixing bowl and let dough rest 20 – 30 minutes.
8. Add salt to dough and mix by hand until completely incorporated. Salt grains will will still be visible in dough but will disolve and be further mixed into dough with subsequent folds.
9. Tranfer dough to covered container for bulk fermentation. Bulk fermentation takes roughly 7 hours.
10. Stretch and fold dough 4 times on 60 minute intervals, then let rest for the remainder of bulk fermentation.
11. When dough has increased by about 30% in volume and is soft to the touch remove the dough from the container and divide into 2 equal pieces.
12. Form each half of the dough into a tight round ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest 15 minutes.
13. Place baking stone in oven and preheat oven to 525F on conventional bake (not convection).
14. Take one dough ball leaving the other covered. Lightly flour a work surface and form into a 12” crust. I used a combination of rolling with a tapered rolling pin and stretching by hand to form and the dough resisted all the way. I let the dough relax several times but still struggled to get to 12”.
15. Let crust rise a few minutes before topping.
16. Top crust with favorite toppings. We used sauce, homemade Italian sausage, red onions, sliced black olives, sautéed mushrooms, mozzarella and parmigiana reggiano cheese.
17. Bake 13 minutes or until crust is lightly browned.

This turned out delicious. It may be one of the best crusts I’ve made. This surprises me because most of the pizzas I’ve liked best have had a very yeasty crust which this definitely wasn’t. The crust was crispy and didn’t sag with the weight of all the toppings. I really don’t like floppy or crusts that fold.

There are somethings I will do different the next time. I felt the dough was slightly stiff and fought me when forming the crust. So I will add another 10 grams (to 67%) of water. I will increase the total flour to 500 grams in hopes of getting closer to a 14” pie. I will do the bulk fermentation in the fridge possibly 24 hours but at least overnight.

I will continue to work on this and try to improve it. I will continue to use the Caputo 00 flour as I like it for both pasta and pizza dough. I have some Caputo Semolina on hand so I may try an all Caputo flour crust. Caputo flour comes from Naples Italy so it would be appropriate. Or I may try using the flours used this time in different percentages. Next time however will be the same percentages with the changes documented above.