Category: This Weeks Bread

This week is something totally different for me. It isn’t sourdough and most wouldn’t consider it bread. But it is the 5th of May or Cinco de Mayo, so what better way to celebrate than with homemade corn tortillas.

I have been thinking about this for a while as the last few packages from the supermarket have been bland and somewhat tasteless to me. Then, just as May approached, I learned that Wegmans sells Maseca brand masa harina. And tortillas are similar to sourdough in that they are both made from three ingredients water, salt and flour which in the case of tortillas is masa harina instead of wheat flour.

Masa harina is different than grits or polenta in that the corn has been dried, then cooked in an alkaline solution and the skin removed, then rinsed and dried again before grinding into flour.

Once I knew that Wegmans had Maseca, I ordered a tortilla press online. I chose a cast iron one made in Columbia branded Victoria.

The recipe on the Maseca bag calls for 2 cups of Maseca to 1-1/2 cups of water. Online recipes I found called for using warm water and adding a pinch of salt and I did both. After mixing the dough I thought it was pretty dry and I ended up adding 3 tablespoons of additional water, 1 at a time, until I had a nice dough that didn’t crumble. The recipe on the bag called for forming 1 ounce balls of dough to make 5” tortillas but I wanted them larger. I used 30 grams of dough and made 5-1/2 to 6” tortillas.

To press the dough balls into tortillas I took a gallon sized zip lock bag, cut off the zip lock and cut the bag down to fit the tortilla press.

Debbie and I worked together to make the tortillas. We had a 10” cast iron griddle preheated on the stove. I was pressing and Debbie was cooking them. The first few were rough until we figured out what we were doing. After the first couple I ended up adding a few drops of canola oil to the dough and working it in. I read about doing that to help the dough release from the plastic. It seemed to do the trick. Once we got our rhythm down and got the heat high enough on the griddle things went smoothly.

I have to admit I am surprised at how good these actually came out. We made both nachos and tacos and the tortillas worked well for both dishes. The corn flavor in the tortillas came through in both as well. The tortillas did not sog out from the meat filling in the tacos and they held up well first bite to last. Better outcome than I could have hoped for.

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.

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.