dabrownman's blog

We decided to grind up some more whole grains to feed then 15% extraction to this Levain Beast.  It loved the hard bits and doubled in less than an 2 hours again as we pulled out 100 g to make the naan.

We needed a special naan because we were making a special; Thai red curry that had some extra red curry paste, Tom Yum paste a; habanera, Hatch, Serrano and jalapeno pepper added to go along with the normal Thai Bird chilies just to make it hot enough so that my daughter will eat it.

This was killer Thai and the naan was killer too.  The normal 8 multigrain flours adding up to about 50%, the same versatile 1:2:3 formula.   The same method of mixing with half hour rest,  slap and folds followed by stretch and folds and this time mixing in the garlic, green onion and cilantro and a 5 hour retard.

I’m pretty sure Lucy can make just about anything SD with this recipe.  It is just as good as naan as it is a SD boule and would male great pizza.  My daughter says that SD can’t he used for naan, since naan isn’t SD,  but she did like the crunchy crispness even when brushed with butter coming out of the oven 

These were baked until the brown spots appeared – about 2 minutes each side in a 550 F oven with two stones top and bottom,  I thought the naan was as good as it can get using SD- but the curry was ……killer - and would taste fine on a SD flip flop.  The biyrani basmati rice was first rate too.  Wish we could eat like this every night.

Formula

Lucy has wanted to make some of these fine rolls ever since she saw them here 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38178/sacaduros

But ours didn’t open up like they were supposed to at the folds over the chunk of butter  You are supposed to use a lower hydration sort of white hearth bread for these rolls but we used our recent 8 whole grain mix using the 85% extraction for the dough flour.

 We once again used  our overly frisky levain along with about 80% hydration so the folds stuck together as it proofed even though we floured the touching surfaces before pinching them  lightly together over the butter

If the looks mean a lot to you might want to use the right dough for these very tasty rolls and cross your fingers.  Lucy did cut the butter down to 1/2 a sugar cube size and  dipped the folded tops into flour before putting them in a PAM sprayed cupcake tin.

We decided to preheat to 475 F but bake with steam for 5 minutes at 450 F using one of Sylvia’s steaming pans before turning the oven down to 400 F for another 10 minutes without steam.

They browned up nicely, cracked a little but these rolls really shine in the inside.  The crumb is soft, a little open, moist and buttery - it adds to the fine, if light, SD tang. These are some of the tastiest buns we have made in some time – healthy and nutritious too.

We will take another shot at them to if we can get them to open up like they are supposed to – but that will take a different recipe of white dough at about 68% hydration and flouring the inside before folding them.

Formula

 Lunch with yesterday's Frisbee bread.  Flat but delicious!

It's Frisbee Time

Lucy was so disappointed that the dough stuck to the new basket she decided a re-do was in order since we had the same powerful levain, fierce really, the same flour mixes and nothing but time on our hands

We also wanted to feed this levain again, after taking out the 100g for this bake, to see if it would double in 2 hours again or fail miserably  See here for pictures of the results  Here is a hint – it broke its old record and managed t double in 1 hour and 40 minutes - Amazing!

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/292562#comment-292562

We know it is going to make some great bread this time – if it doesn’t stick in the basket again.  We really rice floured the basket well and the boule itself before in went into it – hoping for the best 

We followed the rest of the previous bake to the letter to get a perfect match.  Same slapping, stretching and folding on the same intervals, same proof time, baked in the same DO (even using the same parchment in the bottom of the DO), same baking times and temperatures  The previous bake can be found here: 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38215/last-easter-sourdough-bakes-turns-ugly-tasty-way

The dough rose in the basket just as well and just as fast, if not faster, then the last bake  This levain really is a workhorse for making bread rise   This dough, since we took the added precaution of re-flouring the basket and dough at the 1 hour mark, came out of the basket just fine

We dropped it into the DO slashed and covered it before putting it in the oven between the two stones for steam.   It immediately spread out showing it was really over proofed a great deal even though there was no bulk ferment and only a 2hour proof, - it was also likely over hydrated 

Once the lid came off at the 12 minute mark, we could see that it had no spring or bloom  So,  the verdict is in… less water required and only a hour and a half proof is the ticket.   The pale color of the crust on the previous bake should have been the pointer to over proofing but the sticking to the basket really threw our senses off.

Another flat loaf resulted but I bet the crumb is still fairly open and it tastes fine – just like the last one.  I don’t think I like this fast acting levain at all!  Lucy says - bake and learn. 

Lunch from yesterday's bake that I'm betting looks just like thos one on the inside

This Easter we are having smoked baby back ribs and smoked chicken with pasta and potato salads, Cole slaw and smoked BBQ beans.  Not our usual Easter fare but that means we needed a good whitish SD bread to replace the usual Wonder Bread that comes with Kansas City, MO  BBQ.

We had a multigrain levain in the fridge that had doubled in 2 hours the day before so we knew it was in tip top shape since we have been feeding it every day since we starter balking hot cross buns from it on Good Friday.

We also had some 87% and 89 % extraction whole wheat and multi-grain flour that we have been baling with since Friday as well.  We love this flour as it makes such great tasting bread.  It is thirsty but works so well at high hydration and the dough is a delight to work with.

The multi-grains were; wheat, buckwheat, oat, spelt, rye, barley farro and Kamut – a nice mix of grains with the wheat being twice the amount of the others.  We thought we would throw in some AP too and get the whole grains to fit in at about a 40% equivalent.

Since were making a less than 70 g loaf, we got to use our new small basket for the first time.  We like it a lot and for 50 cents our usual basket bargain at Goodwill.   We did a quick mix including everything except the salt, which was sprinkled in top and let the dough sit for 30 minutes so the flour could hydrate.

We then mixed in the salt and did 3 sets of slap and folds on 5, 2 and 1 minutes where the dough quit sticking at the 4 minute mark of the first set.  These were followed by 3 sets of stretch and folds, from the compass points.  All the slapping , stretching and folds were done on 12 minute intervals.

We then shaped the dough and placed it the rice floured basket but forgot to rice flour the boule as we always do for a new basket so it can’t stick.  After a short 2 hour proof, It was 85 F in the kitchen today, the dough had doubled on the counter and ready to be baked.

It was wet and giggly so of course it stuck – really badly too.  I actually had to grab it and drag it out of the basket, from three places causing it to lose all of its airy proof.  We should have reshaped it and proofed it again.  But we were out of time so into the DO it went for 12 minutes of steam at 450 F.

Once the lid came off we continued to bake for 5 minutes of 425 F convection before we removed the bread from the DO and placed it on the bottom stone to finish browning.  !0minurted later the bread was done.  Be baked it to 210 F because it wasn’t browning a s dark as we wanted at our usual 205 F.

The bread really never sprang much and it never got a dark as we like either.  Still, it was very tasty and the crumb was open, soft and glossy but not quite as moist as our 205 F bakes. This is still a fine tasting SD bread and not at all horrible except in the way it looks - all squashed and weird looking on the outside and not as open as it would have been either.  Can’t wait to have it with the ribs and chicken for Easter Dinner….. 

Happy Easter to all.

Formula

Here is the Italian Easter bread we found online to bake with the GMA’s, also less widely known as The 3 Twisted Sisters.  http://crumbsoflove.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/pizza-civitavecchia-italian-easter-sweet-bread/

This was a really fun Easter bake as we got to use the wife’s KA to mix it all up, paddle it to death and then hook it some too – at least we didn’t dirty up the whisk but with 5 left over egg whites we might.   

We also found a recipe that is probably an older, more authentic and much less healthy version that we didn’t make.  http://www.piciecastagne.it/2012/03/30/pizza-di-pasqua-di-civitavecchia/  But it sure sounded decadent even in Italian.  What we noticed most was the very bold and dark bake this bread seems to have.  I guess you get that after 1 ¼ hours in the heat!

First off I made a 10 hour counter top biga with a pinch of year and 75 g each of AP  and water where the recipe called for a lot, a huge amount of yeast for me and a 1 hour sponge.  I don’t even keep that much yeast so I always sub a long biga thinking the flavor would be better.

The 2nd thing I changed was to add a 100% hydration, 100g SD multi-grain levain that was at full strength but cold after being in the fridge for 24 hours.  This was added at the dough hook and mix in the butter stage.  The recipe said it should double in size at the first stage in 2 hours.

My kitchen is at 82 F the perfect temperature for yeast and it rise about 25 % instead of 100% so I figure a little SD would only improve things and add to overall taste and keeping qualities – plus I just felt bad making an Italian sweet bread sort of like panettone and not getting some SD in there.

Lucy said Michael Wilson would have done the same thing so that was al lit took to get it out of the fridge.  I was going to make a bread with it needing 240 g but I just fed it again along with some YW levain I found in there too.  The multi-grains included, barley, wheat, spelt, farro, rye, oat, buckwheat.

Who knows, maybe a multi-grain combo YW SD bread will happen early next week since the flour is already ground and sifted to make an 85% extraction something.  But those sacaduros rolls might just win out since I’ve never heard of them before and they look cute.  Back to this bake,

The final rise was supposed to take 1 ½ hours but it took 6 hours even with the extra SD punch and the perfect temperatures.  No worries - the 6 hours had to be the best thing that could happen for the SD add.  We glazed the top with egg whites and turbinado sugar. 

It baked up nice and brown and we waited for the sloped top this bread is supposed to be famous for - with a collapsed middle.  Well it only happened in Lucy's dreams and not a problem if baked to 202 F on the inside middle it seems.  It smells deliciously of anise,  is sweet even though their isn't all that much sugar in it and is moist with an open crumb.  The browned crust is just the best tasting part by far.  Can't wait to have breakfast toast with some marmalade .....yummy!

The breakfast way indeed yummy.  A Denver omelet with aged white cheddar cheese, sausage, bacon, mango, strawberries, cantaloupe, half a minneola and this fine bread with home made marmalade.

 The half a red beef tamale and half a green chicken enchilada and home made mixed beans with your favorite hot sauce is a favorite around here for dinner - and Lucy says not to forget the salad.

With hot cross buns on the bake list it has to be Good Friday.  Last years version lasted 11 months in the freezer having finished off the last one a month ago – tasted great by the way.

This year we decided not to bake them in ramekins and bake them like cinnamon rolls, which are pretty much what they are, without the rolling and brown sugar.  We upped the whole grains to an 50% equivalent and dropped the egg

We were milling some multigrain flour for another bake today; the Pizza Civitavecchia, and had sifted out the hard bits averaging a 13.5 % extraction (or 37 g of hard bits for 275 g).  But our 87% extracion isn’t what anyone would call white as AP flour either.

We are guessing a the 50% whole grain but it has to be close.  All of the hard bits were used in the stage levain that was refrigerated for 24 hours after the 3rd feeding had risen 25%.

The white crosses were made from YW and White AP flour to set them off from the darker bun but, in the end, they baked up the same color just to spite Lucy and I.  We did our usual 3 sets of slaping and folding followed by 3 stets of stretch and folds all on 12 minute intervals.  We put the snockered fruits (cranberry, raisin and apricot) and the home made peel (lemon and orange) in on the 2nd S&F.

We then let the dough bulk ferment for 1 hour before shaping and placing the crosses on top and then regrigerating the buns overnight.  We let them come to room temperature and finish proofing on the counter before placing them in the mini oven at 450 F  with a splash of water in the botton of the g broiler pan so a little steam.

They baked for 8 minutes and then we took the bottom pan put and turned the oven down to 425 F and baked them until the center roll was 180 F – it was the laggard .  The buns got some of the mini oven’s famous blisters and they browned up boldly.

They tasted just as good as they looked and we made French toast out of one of them and toasted up another with butter and minneola marmalade.  Just yummy.

Happy  Easter to all.

Formula

This isn’t like our usual Kitchen Sink Banana Bread because it isn’t iced and doesn’t have the usual snickered fruits.  So this is just plain Chocolate Chip and Walnut Banana Bread but it did have an extra banana in it making 4 total.

These bananas came out of the freezer which I where they go when they get perfect for bread and no one wants to eat them.  Banana bread is one of out very favorites but we usually make his recipe into cupcakes for portion control and then just eat two of them!

This batch came out well and after tasting it to make sure it wasn’t poison, we packed of the rest of it tour daughter’s Boyfriend’s parents as a partially eaten Easter gift,  Well, we didn’t know we were going to sent it until after we had tasted it for poison.  We sent a quarter of one of our SD bakes of late that was a little on the white side too.

If the daughter wouldn’t have already flown the coup to New Mexico, I would have sent some uncut hot cross buns Lucy and I made today.  They smell tasty.  I think I have published the recipe for this BB before and all you have to do is leave out the snockered fruits and don’t ice it.  But I can’t remember so will put here again.

Lucy says don't forget to have a salad with that Banana Bread

Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Dry Mix:

1 ½ C plus 2 T flour

¼ tsp salt

1/8 tsp each ginger, cloves, allspice

1 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp baking powder

1 C chopped walnuts

1 C chopped chocolate chips 

Bourbon Fruit – add bourbon to below dried fruits in a Pyrex 1 cup measuring cup covered with plastic wrap.  Microwave on high for 30 seconds and set aside 15 minutes to plump up fruits.

2 T bourbon

¼ C raisins or sultanas

¼ C dried cranberries

¼ C dried apricots cut into raisin size pieces 

Wet Mix:

 3 mashed up ripe bananas

1/8 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

½ C vegetable oil

½ C each brown and white sugar

Add ½ C sugar, ½ C brown sugar and Bourbon fruits to wet mix and stir until sugar is dissolved.  Mix the wet into the dry and stir 50 times with spatula until the flour is incorporated.

Quickly fill cupcake paper liners 3/4th full or put into PAM sprayed large bread loaf pan.

Bake cupcakes for about 12-16 minutes until wooden toothpick comes out clean.  Loaves will take 45 minutes or more for wooden skewer to come out clean. 

After 20 minutes remove from pans and let cool completely on wire racks.  Ice both with cream cheese vanilla icing and put sprinkles on each to decorate per the holiday or special occasion.  Makes about 21 cupcakes or 1 large bread loaf pan.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

1/4 C butter, softened

4 oz. cream cheese, softened

8 oz. package powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract.

You can cub the juice of ½ of a lemon and the zest if you prefer that to vanilla 

Preparation

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended; stir in vanilla. 

We try to bake some kind of gefilta fish based loosely on Wolfgang Pucks Passover recipe here.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/passover-gefilte-fish-recipe.html

 Last year’s was tilapia, with various Mexican green chilies wrapped in collard greens and set into cabbage to look like little cabbages that were covered in fish stock and veggies.  We made 6 large ones and they were terrific here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32810/50-whole-wheat-matzoh

This year we made 8 mini ones with sushi grade swordfish, Vietnamese hot sauce that were wrapped in our garden grown Swiss Chard and covered in home made chicken stock and veggies - also delish.  I still like fresh whitefish and pike the best but can’t get them here.  A good reason to move to Canada!

No whole wheat matzo or whole wheat matzo balls after last year. 

Hope everyone had a great seder and Passover.

This levain was originally made to have pizza on Friday night but it was put off until Saturday so it spent an unplanned day in the fridge. It didn’t seem to mind much though.  This YW levain was different in that Lucy added a pinch of ADY to it and some of the left over 15% sifted out portion from the Plotziade bake on Friday.

The wife's more plain pie.

These sifted out portions have the effect of making the AP dough a 33% whole grain one.  We like the whole grains but this pizza bake was also different in other important ways.   We decided to do a mostly raw pizza.

We made uncooked sauce made from fresh home grown cherry and heirloom tomatoes, garlic, red pepper flakes, red onion and fresh basil buzzed up in the mini Cuisinart.   Our normal sautéed veggies where the toppings weren’t cooked ahead of time to get them extra caramelized were also left raw and included red and green onion, red pepper and crimini mushrooms.

Instead if cooking up Italian sausage ahead of time we chopped up some home make smoked beef sausage instead.  The only thing that remained as usual was the very thinly sliced pepperoni.

Yes, my pie was too big for the 16"stone so I folded the dough over some on the par bake:-)

We finally got around to doing 3 sets if slap and folds over 20 minute intervals and 3 sets stretch and folds on 1 hour intervals, all over the 6 hours after the levain met the rest of the dough.  This dough had no oil, or sugar …nor our usual rosemary. garlic and sun dried tomato in it.

This dough was very extensible and strong. We were able to form it very thin,  So thin that it if you lifted the edge if the pizza on side and got some air under the crust and then let the rim back down on the counter, a balloon like bubble formed and stayed in the middle of the pie - just floating.  You could read a newspaper though it easily and it had to be 1/32 of an inch thick or even less. – the thinnest yet.  This recipe made (2) 14”pies

Since these pies weren’t going to be piled high with toppings like usual no par baking was needed but we did so anyway, for only for 2 minutes where the center of the pie was completely baked and browned. And end puffed but mot set or browned.  The oven was set to 550 F and the pies baked on the bottom of 2 stones.

Lucy wants to know if you think her nose is too big?   These were delicious pies and I ate one all by myself no problem at all.  I can only eat a half of our usual piled high and thicker pizza.

Formula

Lucy was really depressed this week.  It was the first time in along time my Baking Apprentice 2nd Class couldn’t come up with her own recipe for the Friday Bake.  She was also more than a little surprised that the Plotziade Olympic Bread was not the full flavored pumpernickel of her Black Forest youth .

She is starting to wonder how San Francisco Tartine like …her German countrymen, back in the old country, have become.  No worries!   Lucy couldn’t be left out of the Bread Olympics no matter what - especially when it was being held in her homeland she misses so much.

Right off the bat she ran into trouble.  There isn’t any T550 flour within 6,000 miles of Gilbert, AZ and she wouldn’t allow me to ruin everything by adding some VWG to our 10% protein AP.   We are also out of our favorite 12% protein LaFama AP

So, as a work around to get some decent white flour and to give her something to do, she freshly milled some whole wheat berries and sifted the result to get exactly 113 g of  85% extraction white wheat.  When added to the majority of the weak AP it would be as close to T550 as she could get in a pinch.

As luck would have it, our rye and wheat 66% hydration SD starter has been in the fridge getting more and more sour for the past 4 weeks – unfed and undisturbed.  This is when it really starts to make fine sourdough bread - it would be perfect for Plotzaide.  Lucy decided that the levain would total a little over 16% of the total flour and water weight of the final dough.  We hoped this whould give us a 12 hours retard without over proofing in the fridge.

All of the whole rye was freshly home milled and used in the 3 stage levain build so that the whole grains in this bread would be wet the longest and hopefully be softer and contribute mire flavor tin the end.  We did out usual levain build with the first 2 stages being 4 hours each where it doubled after the 2nd stage and then we refrigerated the levain for 24 hours after the levain had risen 25% after the 3rd feeding.

The levain doubled again in the fridge and smelled very sour.   An hour and a half after we took it out of the fridge to warm up, we started the 1 hour autolyse of the dough flour and water with the pink Himalayan sea salt sprinkled on top of the autolyse ball so we wouldn’t forget to add it later.

In the two and a half hours the levain was on the counter warming up it nearly went from doubling to tripling in volume and was just starting to crash.  We mixed the salt into the autolyse and then added the levain and mixed it in with a spoon.  We then did 3 sets of slap and folds on 7, 2 and 1 minutes that were separated by 15 minute rest periods.  The 78% hydration dough finally quit sticking to the counter at the 7 minute mark of the first set.

Then we did 3 sets of stretch and folds on 15 minute intervals doing one stretch from each of the 4 compass points and folding over.  Then Lucy decided to do a Chacon design on the bottom of the basket - which we like to do for special occasions such as this one.  So, we cut off 2 pieces of dough about 100 g each and, with lightly flour dusted hands, rolled out two logs.

One we formed into Kaiser….eeerrrr….Franz Joseph roll and the other we cut into 8 pieces and roll them into little balls.  The FJ roll went into the bottom center of the basket and the 8 balls surrounded it .  We wanted to do a Twisted Sister rope to surround the balls but this bread is just too small and doing this wouldn’t leave enough dough to cover the entire design in the bottom.

So, the rest if the dough, about 700 g, was pre-shaped and then shaped into a boule and placed in top of the Chacon design.  We love the way the Chacon cracks under the heat and steam of the oven to reveal the hidden design.  Only the best for the first Plotziade!  Once the design was complete, we immediately trash bagged the basket and put it into the fridge for a 12 hour retard.

It proofed nicely in the cold to about 85% and when we took it out of the fridge in the morning, Lucy fired up Big Old Betsy with baking stones top and bottom to 550 F, regular bake.  We also got the Mega Steam ready with 2 of Sylvia’s Streaming Pans, with a rolled up kitchen towel inside and one of David’s Lava Rock Pans - all 3 half full of water.  This steaming combination takes up the entire width if the bottom rack of the oven.  The steam went in when the GE hit 525 F.

15 minutes later the oven was at 550 F, the stones were at 525 F and the steam was billowing.  We un-molded the bread into parchment paper on a peel and slid it onto the bottom stone.  After 2 minutes of steam we turned the oven down to 475 F regular bake and continued steaming for another 10 minutes.  At the 12minute mark, the steam came out and the oven was turned down to 425 F – Convection bake this time.  10 minutes later the bread tested 205 F on the inside and it was removed to the cooling rack.

We liked the way it looked in the outside from a browning point of view, but it only cracked over 1/3 of the design on the top for some reason?  Either it was over proofed or more likely over hydrated or a little of both I’m guessing.

In the past this has happened with high hydration white breads like this but to get a more open crumb we like the hydration a little on the high side,  The design portion also had smaller blisters while the much larger  bottom potion sported more numerous larger ones.  The crumb came out fairly open, glossy, very soft and moist.

The sour also came through very nicely and should be just the way we like it for tomorrow's breakfast.  Very tasty indeed - for a white bread:-)  It made for a fine lunch grilled chicken sandwich with all the fixin's, veggies and fruits!  Poor Lucy!  She feels like she let her countrymen down with a Chacon that didn't pop - and has gone into her kennel and won't come out.

Formula 

Lucy says not to forget the salad.  Thanks to Plotzblog for holding the Plotzaide and to Karin (hanseatta) for pointing us to it.  A fun time was had by all no doubt.

I went in and got Lucy out of her kennel fiunk - but she still isn't the Doxier dog we know and love......I'm hoping the sunset will cheer her up some!