dabrownman's blog

Per our tradition, we welcomed in the new year with pizza, once again made the ‘killer grill’ way.  We no longer make pizza in the oven because it just doesn’t get hot enough and the pies are inferior in every way.

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Dough coming out of the fridge after a 24 hour retard

Lucy even perked up when got to have some crust.  She loved it too.  The 100% hydration pre-ferment for this one was 9% flour made up of equal parts sprouted Khorasan and sprouted spelt.  The liquid was all apple yeast water.  At the last minute, Lucy added in a pinch of IDY and 8 g of NMNF rye SD starter to make to make it a triple threat. 

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We put it on the heating pad until it doubled, then we stirred it down and put it in the fridge for an 18 hour retard.  The next afternoon we autolysed the dough flour, half LaFama AP and half BRM Artisan Bread Flour for an hour, adding enough water to get it to 71% hydration with the 2% PH sea salt sprinkled on top.

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We started off by doing 150 slap and folds and then let it sit for an hour before doing 50 more and then 25 more an hour later.  The dough was placed on an oiled plastic mat, on the heating pad and covered with a SS bowl and a towel between slapping sessions and then we let it sit for 2 hours after the 3rd one. 

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We punched it down and put it into an oiled SS bowl, covered it with plastic wrap and placed it into the fridge for a 24 hour retard.  It had nearly doubled on the heating pad and then doubled again in the fridge.  Three and half hours before we needed to make pies with it, we took it out of the fridge, divided it into 3 parts of 250 g each and placed them back into the SS bowl where the pieces doubled in volume again.

This dough was perfect for making pizza, easy to roll out with not much elasticity but strong enough not to tear and make holes either.  Earlier in the day we made a batch of Lucy’s Pizza Sauce with fire roasted tomatoes this time, smoked a pound of two kinds of Italian sausage – hot and mild, 12 large Crimini mushrooms cut into quarters and a huge red onion sliced into half inch slices.

Chris Bianco’s Wise Guy Pizza is the inspiration but we put pizza sauce on ours because we like it better than a white pie like Chris’s.  We also put fresh basil on our pies after they come off the grill.  Since it was so cold and windy outside, the grill only got to 550 F instead of 650 F like usual but the stone was still hotter than 550 F with all 4 burners running at full whack.

The Cheeses were fresh Mozzarella, Full Fat aged Mozzarella and then grated Pecorino on top.  I had some nice 3", thin sliced spicy smoked pepperoni too but forgot all about it...... so it never made it on a pie.  It is usually my daughter's favorite but she never mentioned missing it.

Normally it takes 8 minutes to make a pizza but this time it took 12 minutes.  My daughter said she was disappointed that the dough didn’t have the usual fresh rosemary, sun dried tomatoes and fresh garlic in it and then said that she liked the smoked mushrooms the best and wished there we more of them on the pies.  Then she said it was the best pizza she ever had?

She liked picking up the whole pie with her hands and no plate to show her husband how crisp it was and that even the entire pie had so sag.  Extra, thin, crisp and tasty is what makes pizza the most popular food ever invented after about a dozen others!   Make sue to put the cut slices on a wire cooling rack so that they don’t get soggy and foldable.

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Lucy reminds us to have a salad with those pies!

What a great way to bring in 2019 when served with Artful Farmer and Paraduxx red blend wines!  The 4 of us polished off the 3 pies and I hate to admit I had 6 pieces.  My daughter’s husband now knows all of Lucy’s tricks to making a great pizza.  Now he wants  some of my SD and YW starters.  Happy New Year to all!

https://www.landwatch.com/default.aspx?ct=D&pid=333007320&mltmid=23111

A few years ago Lucy bookmarked Ian’s Holiday rolls so that we could make them one day and

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/36664/ricotta-garlic-knots

this Christmas was the day.  Lucy changed it up some by making them sourdough with a tiny IDY kicker.  She subbed cream cheese for the Ricotta cheese, Pecorino for the Parmesan, added an egg, subbed water and non fat dry milk powder for the milk, used sprouted Khorasan for the Kamut and added some sprouted spelt.  So only half the recipe was totally different ?

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Oh yea, plus he made them in a 8” square Pyrex pan as pull apart rolls instead of knots.  These 9 rolls scaled at 88.5 g each to fit the pan perfectly.  The girls really oved these rolls saying they were best rolls yet , which is saying something.  When I asked them if they know what made them so good, neither of them guessed garlic and cheese but as soon as I said garlic they said oh yea because it wasn’t like it was hiding or anything but they couldn’t recognize the cheese part.

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These were 7 hour from mix to finished rolls hot out of the oven if you discount the 11% pre-fermented 100% hydration LaFama AP flour levain made overnight on the heating pad. We did a 40 minute autolyse with the 60% water, the dough flour, 1g of IDY with the 1.5% salt sprinkled on top.

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Then we added in the levain, the egg, the NFDM powder, cream cheese, Parmesan, sugar and softened butter.  We started off with 150 slap and folds followed by 2 sets of 50 and 25 more and resting the dough on an oiled plastic sheet on the heating pad covered with the SS bowl and a towel. The  we did3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points.

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All of the dough slapping and folding sets were done on 30 minute intervals.  Then the dough was divided into 9 rolls, shaped and placed into the pan release sprayed pan and covered with plastic wrap to proof for 3 hours.  They really puffed themselves up well.

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Tamales are a staple for Christmas in many Mexican households served with guacamole and salsa to mimic the Mexican flag. .  These are red pork ones.  I prefer green chicken though but they were out of them as they akways are at Food City.  32 years ago there was one privately owned Food City in Phoenix on Mohave.  The 60 foot long buffet kitchen was just the same as it is now in all the FS stores kitchens that are now owned by Basha's.  They served the same tamales as they do now except that the 50 fly swatters that used to be hooked onto that long serving line are now gone.  The fly swatters weren't for the flies tough.  They were there for the parents to use to swat their unruly kids back into line.  My how times have changed:-)

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Turkey breast cooked on Indirect heat, outside burners only, on the grill at 325 F until it reaches 165 F and then let rest for 30 minutes. 

We were making candied root veggies (butternut squash, carrots and sweet potatoes) in the oven and they ere putting off some fine steam for the rolls at 375 F.  We egg washed the rolls and out them in for 20 minutes but they didn’t brown at all so we raised the temperature to 425 F convection for 5 minutes to brown them well. 

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When they came out, we brushed them with non-fat milk to keep them really soft.   The inside was soft moist fluffy and shredable.  Since we didn’t make dressing to go with the Turkey breast on the grill these rolls wee a big hit.  They would also make fine white bread for dressing next time though?  Wouldn’t change a thing but Lucy probably will next time.

Levain

2.8% NMNF rye starter

11% LaFama AP

11% Water

Dough

14% sprouted spelt and sprouted Kamut

8.5% Smart and Final High Gluten flour

67.5% LaFama AP flour

60% Non Fat Milk (water and NFDMP)

12% butter

8% Cream Cheese

4% sugar

4% garlic

6% Pecorino Cheese

12% egg

1.5% Pink Himalayan sea salt (less than normal because of the salty Pecorino)

1 g of Instant Yeast

Lucy feels back in her element when she starts getting close to anything remotely close to German baking and the next thing you know she has lost her mind and starts putting all kinds of stuff in whatever recipe she is concocting.  She really went wild with this one.

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Not only does it have a bunch of totally snockerd fruits that were snockering away in the fridge for over a year, which upset my wife the whole time, it has sprouted Kamut, sprouted spelt, whole rye and whole red and white wheat all in the triple levain with LaFama AP for 77% dough flour.  Instead of using water for the NMNF and wild and black Forbidden rice starter levain, she used well aged in the fridge, for months, fig yeast water.  Has she no shame?

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8 g each if NMNF and Black Rice starters were used with a whopping 23 % pre - fermented flour.  Fruitcake hardly has any flour in it to begin with so the percentages were deceiving in this case and it totaled 124 g with have the weight in fig YW.  Once it doubled on the heating pad we retarded it overnight. 

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The snockered fruit had 3 kinds of raisins, dried: figs, cranberries, cherries, dates and the other normal fruit cake stuff like red and green cherries, pineapple, orange, lemon, citron and whatever else I could find a year ago.  There was only 20 g of dough water to go with the 200 g of dough flour but the rest of the liquid came from the 3 eggs and the ton of butter that goes in last.  This one had walnuts and almonds for the nuts.  Lucy wanted pecans that usually go in….. but not this year.

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It usually has a bunch of chocolate chips too but I didn’t have any.   I did have some Andies mint choco chips I could have put in but decided at the last minute not to.  Now we will never know what a minty fruit cake would taste like – a shame really but there is always version 5 for next year. 

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There is a bunch of brown sugar in the mix, but there is no molasses in this one so it isn’t as dark as previous ones.  The last ingredient is the mix of 6 spices.  Cinnamon makes up half and then there are equal parts of allspice, cloves, ginger, mace and nutmeg.  All together it came to 1.5 teaspoons – not overpowering by any means.  If you like it spicy then you can add some more. 

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I put it on the heating pad, in the baking dish that had parchment on the bottom and the rest sprayed with pan release for 6 hours.  It didn’t do much but fruit cake isn’t known to be light and airy either.  The rest of the baking is 2.5 hours at 300 F.   You can find o;d versions by putting 1849 in the search box. Here is version 3 where you can see what the fruits looked like before a year of snockering.

1849 Gold Rush Sprouted 12 Grain Sourdough Fruit Cake III

By snockering the fruits, you get the flavor but the alcohol vaporizes out in the oven so that the little ones can eat it no worries.  That is why I usually make two, not this year,  one is for adults and soaked in brandy a few weeks so it can age properly.  

Levain

2% each Wild and Black Forbidden Rice starter and NMNF rye starter

23%  Whole rye, red and white wheat and sprouted spelt and Khorasan - 62g

23% Fig Yeast Water - 60 g

Dough

77% LaFama AP – 200 g

7.7% Water – 20 g

50% Butter – melted – 131 g

175% Snockered fruits – 458 g

50% Nuts - 131 g

48% Brown sugar – 118 g

1 ½ tsp of mixed spices, cinnamon, ginger, mace, nutmeg, allspice, cloves

My lovely wife asked Lucy and I to come up with a bread to give to a married couple who are also friends, mine too, who just happen to own a very nice hair salon in downtown Mesa AZ.  They been taking care of the girl’s hair, daughter too, for decades.  The catch is, if I mess it up, my girls might look bit odd the next time they come back from the salon – which might be worth it?

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So just in case, I am also sending along a very nice 2008 White Oak California Bordeaux style red blend that we know is killer hoping that, if the bread is bad, they will forget all about it after the wine is gone!  Since the make side of these partners is from France and knows wine well, he will quickly know if the wine is good or not and they both have had several loaves of Lucy’s bread over the years and know what to expect.

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Lucy got strange and specified an overnight, heating pad, white LaFama AP levain at 100% hydration and 12% pre-fermented flour that doubled in 8 hours.  We did a 40 minute autolyse of the dough flour which was 12% each sprouted spelt, Khorasan, 12% whole wheat (mixed red and white) and 12% Whole Rye, 14% LaFama AP and 26% Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour. 

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Water was added to the dough flour to get the overall hydration up to 80% and after the shaggy autolyse mass we formed with a spoon we sprinkled 2% pink Himalayan sea salt on top and covered it with plastic wrap.  We then mixed in the salt with a spoon and did 3 sets of slap and folds of 200, 25 and 10 followed by 3 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points – all on 30 minute intervals.

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3 hours in we pre-shaped it into a boule.  Then 10 minutes later we cut off some of it with the dough scraper to make the Chacon design of a knot and 4 balls placing them in the bottom of the rice floured basket.   Then we shapied the remaining dough into a flat boule and placing it on top of the design for the final proof covering it on the heating pad with a kitchen towel.

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After a 2 and half hour proof the dough was un-molded onto parchment on a peel, slid onto the combo cooker base, spritzed, covered and placed in the 500 F oven for 18 minutes of steam at 450 F.  Once the lid came off, we turned the oven down to 425 F convection for 16 minutes of dry baking.

After 8 minutes of dry heat, we took the bread off the CC base to finish baking it directly on the stone so the bottom would not burn.   It bloomed cracked and blistered a bit but browned well enough.  I keep forgetting that a Chacon cracks best a lower hydration in the 72% range and won’t crack much at all at 80% especially if over-proofed like this one was. 

Still, I’m sure the bread will taste fine ….. good enough for a holiday gift to a special couple.  Personally, I would like the wine best because I can get a nice loaf of SD bread for about a dollar or two any time the mood strikes …..but you can’t get the wine anywhere for a decent price.

Happy Holidays to all!

No not mad like crazy whack job mad but mad as hell none the less.  I go to Whole Foods ….eeeerrr…… whole paycheck, to get my normal load for whole grains – some oats, spelt, Kamut and who knows what else from the bins.  I don’t buy anything else there because I can get the same things I buy much cheaper anywhere else.

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O don’t get white or red wheat or rye there because I can get them elsewhere for much, much cheaper as well.  Well Well….no whole grains were to be found in the bins at all …..not even wheat or rye at Whole Paycheck!  Things have changed drastically at Whole Foods since Amazon bought them ….except the super extreme high prices of course.

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Now I have no reason to go there except to see my doctor of course, since I can’t ever seem to get an appointment to see him in his office and he is the only one I know who is rich enough to shop there.  I figured,since I was there, I went over to their flour aisle to see if they had discontinued all of their flour too.

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We like beautiful bottoms.

All the Hayden mills was gone but they were carrying a whole bunch of Bob’s Red Mill flour in its place including Artisan Bread and two sprouted flours – spelt and Khorasan.  I couldn’t say no because that was the only way I was going to get any kind of spelt and Kamut and I would sprout them most of the time anyway if I had found the whole berries.

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We love thick grilled pork chops almost as much as T-Bone stakes - and they look about the same too.

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I could actually afford them too since they were all on special for some reason.  The normal pricing for all 3 would be way more than I would ever pay for flour of any kind.  Lucy is having a conniption fit and now worries that Smart and Final will quit carrying rye and Winco will cut out the red and white wheat all sold for less than 50 cents a pound in the bins.

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Bob's Red Mill flours

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We will worry about that when it happens. This week’s bread for Baby is 25% rye, red and white wheat milled from berries at home, 25% sprouted spelt and Khorasan and 50% Bob’s Artisan Bread Flour.  We did our usual 100% hydration. 12% pre-fermented flour (winter) bran levain that was retarded overnight after it doubled.

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Looks like sandwich bread to me but was a bit over proofed and the dough not quite enough to proper;y fill put the pan I love so much!  It made fine toast this morning with butter, cherry jam, white cheddar, sausage, bacon and and egg on top for the stacked high breakfast sausage.

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After 1 hour autolyse with the PHSS on top, we mixed it up at 80% hydration and immediately knew it was way too dry.  The BRM flours were very thirsty for some reason.  We added water to get it to 90% hydration but it still felt like a 80% hydration dough with this amount of whole grain and kind of flours. After 2 sets of slap and folds of 100 and 25 we did 2 sets of stretch and folds from the compass points letting it rest for half and hour between each on a thin foldalble plastic sheet and a heating pad with a stainless bowl on top covered with a towel.

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Instant Pot Texas Beef Chuck, Chunk Chili with kidney beans that they hate so much:-)  Cilantro, green pinion, pepperjack cheese and creama stirred in as a garnish pile on

We then oiled up the bowl and plopped the dough in for a 12 hour bulk retard in the fridge.  After warming up for 2 and half hours, we shaped it into a short log for the non stick sprayed Oriental Pullman pan.  We let it proof till it was a little below level with the rim so the lid would slide on.  We preheated to 500 F but baked it for 18 minutes at 450 F lid on.

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Lucy loves her salads and ribs

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The lid was slid off and we baked it for 8 minutes at 425 F convection and then removed the bread from the pan and continued baking for 13 more minutes until it reached s07 F on the inside.  If bloomed itself up enough to nearly fill the Pullman with the lid on.  It then browned up nicely out of the on as well.  It would have had nice blisters if the top of the loaf didn’t get squished when it hit the lid.

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and chicken noodle soup for lunch

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Kale. broccoli, blueberry, cranberry. pomegranate and sunflower seed salad

It smells terrific.   Can’t wait to cut into it but that will have to wait till tomorrow.  Turns out to be very tasty, soft and moist inside and easy to cut the thin slices that my wife likes,  The sprouted grains really make this bread tastier than the ones without them.

It is nice to see others actually doing it today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTL8z5pbmHU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHR5hyTBnSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUUob15LOf8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41IXziKSCtw&list=PLJMp5K0iCc88nac8oMFPrd62TH3fsKxY-

Happy building sustainably

Lucy has been crafting bread for my wife of late.  I’m still not eating carbs but she is which is good if you like to make bread and can’t make any for yourself.  We have been trying to stick to her what she likes as best we can and, this week, we didn’t add in a yeast kicker.   The 5 grains were red and white wheat, rye, oat and spelt in equal proportions.

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She isn’t much for seeds, nuts or fruits so add ins are no, nos and she wants bread that has whole grains in it, but still tall, soft and moist with a soft crust.  She likes her less open traditional, loaf bread the beat so that is what she is getting.  She is coming around to sourdough slowly but this one we hope will get her over the hump.  

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Going in the fridge for bulk ferment.

This one has an 18% pre-fermented flour ,100% hydration, bran levain made with 15g of NMNF rye starter with all the bran from the whole grains in the levain.  Once it had doubled we retarded it for 24 hours. 

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Going in the pan for final proof

We did a 1 hour autolyse with the rest of the HE, and the 25% King Arthur bread flour and 25% LaFama AP and enough water to get the hydration up to 80% with the 2% PHSS sprinkled on top.  We took the levain out of fridge to warm up, stirred it down and used it when it had risen 50% after 2 hours.

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Ready for the heat.

We did 3 sets of slap and folds of 150, 25 and 25 slaps on 30 minute intervals. It seemed tight during the first set so we added another 5% water to get to slap a bit easier.  We then did 3 sets of starch and folds also in 30 minute intervals and then let the dough rest in an oiled SS bowl for 30 minutes before bulk retarding it for 12 hours.  No over proofing that way - yea!

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After warming up 2 hours, we shaped it and put it into a wide loaf pan instead of the tall oriental Pullman and let it proof until it reached about ¾ of an inch above the rim of the pan in the middle.  It hit the heat at 550 F with 2 cups of water poured over the lava rocks to make Mega Steam.

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It stayed at 500 F for 18 minutes of total steam because Lucy forgot to turn the oven down again.  Once the steam came out, we turned the oven down to 425 F convection for 8 minutes of dry heat.  At that point we took the bread out of the pan and baked it I the stone for 8 mire minutes at 400 F convection to try to compensate for the extra heat it got at the beginning.

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It worked because the bread was only 208 in the middle but really boldly baked to perfection.  We will have to wait in the crumb shot till tomorrow when my wife needs sandwich slices.  The crumb ended up like a sandwich loaf should.  Soft moist, not so open but not dense either.  Just the way she likes it!

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Its a plate of meaty, juicy, smoky ribs for me but Lucy says a salad a day will keep her at bay - she lied! But a good breakfast on bake day with veggie noodle soup for lunch can't be beat.

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Cousin Jay sent me this article about the death of the Montreal Bagel.  Maybe we will have to import Canadian wood into NY and bake NY bagels in a WFO and sell them back into Montreal.  The best of both worlds maybe?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-death-of-the-montreal-bagel/tter than either.

Wife Needed Bread to Make Thanksgiving Leftover Turkey and Cranberry Sandwiches for Lunch

I’m looking for any excuse to make bread even if I can’t eat it as much as I would like – at least not yet at any rate.  My wife was out of her store bought, fake, whole wheat Oroweat bread that she loves so much so I was able to bake her a loaf of SD and poolish bread to tide her over.

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I also got to use our favorite extra tall bread baking oriental pullman pan that Yippee sent me as a gift not too long ago.  Yippee is about the best person out there in our bread baking world but that pan is the very best baking essential one could have and hold dear!

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This one only came out at 40% whole grains but I swear it has to have more whole grains in it than her claimed 100% whole wheat one she buys at the store.  The whole grains were a mix of red and white wheat, rye and oat.  No potato flakes this time but I’m surprised Lucy didn’t get some in there somewhere.  Oat and Potato flakes are perfect for sandwich breads especially ones not enriched like this one.

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The 10% pre-fermented, 100% hydration bran NMNF levain had all of the bran sifted out from the home milled whole grains and HE Flour.  The poolish was a 4% pre-fermented LaFama AP flour one at 100% hydration.  The dough flour was half LaFama AP and half KA bread flour.  The SD Levain took 4 hours on the heating pad and the poolish was started 2 hours after the SD one.

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We did a 3 minute autolyse with the salt sprinkled on top getting the hydration up to 78%.  Once the poolish and the levain hit the mix we did 2 sets of slap and folds of 125 and 50 slaps each followed by 3 sets of stretch and folds all on 30 minute intervals.  Then we shaped the dough into a batard and placed it into the pan for final proof on the heating pad.

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It proofed for about 2.5 hours before we baled it with the li on for 18 minutes at 450 f and then 18 minutes with the lid off till it hit 207 F.  The last 5 minutes we took it out the pan and finished it on the stone.  Because of the kicker poolish it isn’t as sour as our normal SD bread.  The crumb has the perfect sandwich loaf look, nice and soft, moist and shreddable.  My wife likes it a lot,