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If you’re interested in the process and recipe for the dough, look at my previous post with all those details.

In retrospect, I think in the future I would at least partly bake the mushrooms and dry the artichokes before using them.  The toppings were, after baking, quite wet and although most of the crust stayed crisp, the very center of each pizza was wet.

As Dan said, "bad babka" is a misnomer, and I also happen to think a "bad blueberry" bread is a misnomer. But I'm biased in liking fruit in my breads, and this particular combination of fresh blueberries and lemon zest in the bread is lovely.

As usual, this is a yeast water bread, this time made with apple yeast water. And, like last time, I only did a single build of the yeast water 'levain' before including it in the bake as I could tell that the fridge jar of apple yeast water was suitably fizzy and a double build didn't seem to be necessary. To 137g of apple yeast water I added two different kinds of wholemeal flour: 49g of a hard white wheat wholemeal and 50g of atta flour. To this was also added 129g of a strong bread flour, and it was combined with a danish whisk and finished off by hand kneading and then left for about 11.5 hours to overnight in the proofer at 27°C (80°F) before using in the final dough.

Once again the main recipe is the Hamelman recipe from the community bake. Other than using the single build described above the other main deviation was that I didn't use the same inclusions as in the community bake but instead used 80g of fresh unprocessed (but washed) blueberries, as well as the fresh zest of one lemon, about 3 tsp worth.

I got something right this time when preparing the final dough - did a short 20 minute autolyse of the flour and water before adding in the levain build and this made all the difference. It only needed about 3 minutes in the stand mixer before the bowl was clean, although I left it running for a total of 8 minutes before stopping the mixer; the salt was added about half way through by pouring it slowly into the running mixer.

Fermentation times were similar or faster than the fast times I've seen before with yeast water: 1h30 bulk followed by 1h10 final proof, all done in the proofer at 27°C (80°F). The aliquot was estimated at 50% at the time of shaping and reached up to 225% at the end.

Once again seam side DOWN in the banneton. Struggled to add the seed topping to it because of that. But this time around was so much better! It puffed up into a ball in the banneton during the final proofing. Loading it into the dutch oven was difficult. Even the 'heave ho' to lift in the parchment seemed to change the shape it was so jiggly. I was so worried that I'd get another ugly flat bread that 6 minutes into the bake I removed the hot dutch oven, opened it and did a small cross score just to ensure that there was some lift, and yes there was lift! I've actually already made another bread after this one, and for that I was bold enough to not do any 'panic' scoring and that one seemed to have achieved a nice lift so I'm beginning to trust the seam side down method more now.

Blueberry and lemon is amazing, never tried the combination before. Also think I've got a particularly good bag of lemons at the moment as they were also great in the parmesan bread. I should probably have extracted the juice and just used the blueberry skins, there might have been less cavitation. On the other hand the juice brought extra flavour to the loaf.

-Jon

Has anyone tried baking sourdough in a wood pellet grill?  Been looking at a Traeger..

Thanks!

Candy

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Does one need a pizza oven to make pizza at home?  I don’t think so although I’d love to have one 😉  I’ve been trying to fine tune my processes for making the dough and finally baking the pizza.  I’m still using the recipe from the TFL community bake but I’ll post it below for those interested along with my small alterations.

One thing about baking in my oven with a cast iron is that I now bake on the roasting setting which activates the upper elements of the oven.  I’ve also gradually moved my baking steel upwards in the oven so that the actual cast iron skillet is on the equivalent of the second highest rack.  This has the effect of baking really hot and fast.  My first pizza I didn’t check for doneness and it went just a bit too far after 6 minutes at 550ºF.  The second pizza I checked and gave it an extra 30 secs after I turned it in the oven after 3 minutes of baking, so it had a total of only 3.5 minutes and yet was totally baked, again maybe just a bit too long.  Anyhow, I’m pretty happy with my pizzas but I’m always fine tuning things to see if I can bake them better.  I now also brush water on the cornicione immediately before the pizza goes into the oven, this has really helped with getting “leopard spots” on the cornicione so that’s one tip I can share.

For these two individual pizzas I made a home made pesto with basil, walnuts, Grana Padano and a combination of EVOO and toasted walnut oil.  The other toppings were a simple combination of roasted red peppers, sliced kalamata olives and sun dried tomatoes.  After the pizza comes out of the oven, extra pesto and Grana Padano was added.  Delicious.  If you haven’t made your own sourdough pizza dough yet you really need to give it a go.

 For 4 9” pizzas NY style thin crust 200 g each

Levain Build 100% hydration 35 g needed 

433 g bread flour

43 g Whole grain flour (50:50 whole spelt:whole wheat) (consider using whole Kamut instead of whole wheat)

4.76 g Diastatic malt 1%

252 g water and

41 g water hold out

8.43 g salt 1.71%

2.5 g sugar 0.5%

4.8 g olive oil 1.0%

Total flour 493.5

Total water 310.5 

63% hydration water only

64% including olive oil

Sourdough version you may have to adjust the amount of levain. At 3.5% PreFerment Flour (PFF) 2-4 day retard should work.

(1) In your mixer bowl(or by hand) dissolve the Starter or yeast in all of the Final Dough Water except the HOLD OUT Water.  (Add diastatic malt too)

(2) Mix in the flours until well hydrated 

(3) Allow to fermentolyse for 1hr 

(4) Mix in the remaining HOLD OUT Water, salt, and sugar mix until well-incorporated. 

(5) Slowly drizzle in the oil until well combined. 

(6) Beat or knead by hand until dough is moderately developed. The dough will be sticky and elastic. If kneading by hand, use slightly wet hands and avoid adding more flour. 

(7) Oil your hands and a suitable container. 

(8) Shape into a tight ball.  I divide the ball into four smaller ones each for one 9” pizza at this point.  Each goes into a small oiled bowl and allowed to proof for 1 hour before starting cold fermentation.

(9) Cold ferment in the refrigerator for 48-96hrs. 

(10) Remove to warm up to room temp for at 3-6hr or so before use, or you can ferment at room temp. for 6hrs.   2-3 hours seem ideal 80ºF 

(11) Stretch the balls into your desired size skins (see video below), top and bake at 550F (as high as your oven will go) Until the crust is browned and the cheese has melted. Spin the pie at least once to avoid burning due to oven hot spots. I have included a link to a skin stretching tutorial. Watch this video, more than a few times then go through the motions in your head. If you can see it in your mind's eye, you too can be a home oven pizzaiolo! 

Heat oven to 550ºF roasting setting, with skillet in oven on baking steel on the second highest rack about 1 hour.  My set up with the baking steel on the roasting rack that set up is on the third highest rack because of the added height from the roasting rack so it essentially makes the skillet on the second highest rack.

Place stretched dough into skillet and top with sauce and toppings.

Brushing water on the cornicione prior to baking in oven, gives better oven spring and leopard spots to the cornicione. 

Make sure the non oily side of the dough is down in the skillet to avoid a burnt bottom. 

Bake for 3 minutes at 550ºF then rotate and bake for another 3 minutes.  As mentioned earlier, watch the crust as I have found the second pizza often bakes faster than the first.

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Seeded Rye Sourdough Loaf.. Been a while since I post from here so much to catch up...

Ingredients

Day 1 – Pre-ferment

-50g active rye starter 100% hydration

-100g Whole Rye flour

-120g cold water 5-7c deg

Seeds

-100g Pepitas,Sunflower and sesame seeds +

- Boiling water

Day 2

-Pre-ferment as above

-25g Whole Rye flour

-50g Whole Wheat Flour

-175g Bread Flour

-7g fine sea salt

-30g molasses (black treacle)

-150g Warm Water

Method:

Day 1

- Mix flour, water and starter with cold water and leave for 12-14 hours

Day 2

- Add boiling water to your mixed seeds, soaked for 30 minutes then drain.

- Prepare your tin, Put oil in your tin and baking paper. 24x14x8 cm

- In a seperate bowl add all ingredients and mix well, rest for 1 hour

- Pour mixture to your prepared tin and add a hand full of seeds the press it down. 

- Leave to proof for 2-3 hours until volume has increased. 

- Halfway thru your proofing pre-heat oven to 250c Deg and bake for 20 minutes and 40 minutes at 180c deg

This was a partially successful experiment using pandan extract and coconut milk.  The final bake leaves something to be desired, but my first attempt was a major fermentation fail.  In the first attempt, I failed to account for the reduction in hydration caused by replacing all the skim milk with full fat coconut milk.  The increased enrichment and decreased hydration caused fermentation and rise of the dough to go extremely slowly.  At first I thought that something must have gone wrong with my levain but in the end I don’t think that was the primary problem.  That dough in total was baked after 36 hours of rise a combination of warm and cool temperatures.  In the end the dough rose only a bit in the oven and had an excessively sour flavour.

So thinking about trying this again, I decided to increase the hydration by increasing the pandan extract in the dough.  The problem of course was that the dough ended up being a greater weight than I usually use and as a result had way too much of a mushroom top to it.  Also despite a longer bake the sides couldn’t hold the weight of the top of the bread and started to collapse in on itself.  Not a stellar result.  Hopefully this bread will taste alright.  I’ve never tasted pandan, just hearing about it from some Asian bakers so I wanted to try it out.  If we actually like this flavor, I’ll try again and also reduce the dough weight by maybe 100 g  to reduce the crazy mushroom top and subsequent collapsing sides.  Oh I also used the 0.5 tsp of IDY because I wanted this to be ready today.

For Pullman 9x4x4” pan

Sweet Stiff Starter - overnight cool room temperature

• 53g bread flour 

• 24g pandan extract    

• 18g sugar 

• 18g sourdough starter ~100% hydration 

Tangzhong classic 1:5 ratio

• 52g coconut milk + 37 g pandan

• 18g bread flour   

Dough Dry Ingredients 

• 360g bread flour 

• 50g sugar (reduced from 59g)

• 7g salt 

(Optional IDY 0.5 tsp)

Dough Wet Ingredients 

• 77g coconut milk 

      • 62 g pandan extract + 53 g (to compensate for the low water in coconut milk)

• 59g egg beaten (about 1 ⅕ of a large egg)

• 67g melted butter 

Total flour = 431 g

The tangzhong, levain and all the wet ingredients were mixed then added the dry ingredients mixing on low until no dry flour.  Rested for 10-15 mins, then mixed on high until good gluten development.

After 2-2.5 hour of bulk I placed it in the fridge for 1 hour.  after this divided, shaped into boules and then into swirled rolls.  Placed into pullman pan alternating the swirls.

Baked 350ºF for 50 mins then taken out of pan and placed back in over for another 10 - 15 mins bake.  Watch the top crust as it may get too dark too quickly so may need to be shielded.

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I have been working on a new starter, and you can find details on that in my forum post.  Yesterday's bake was the second bake using it, and so far so good!

Vermont Sourdough with a Cracked Rye Soaker

The first bake was two loaves of Vermont Sourdough with a cracked rye soaker added to it.  The only variation is the levain.  I did not use an overnight levain build per Hamelman's method.  Instead, I used the same amount of prefermented flour but out of a starter refresh at 140% hydration.  Loaves turned out great!  Completed bulk in 4 hours (50-75% rise at 76 deg F) and final proof in 1 hour.  No crumb shot for these as they were both spoken for by friends.

Maple Spelt and Barley

This loaf was an experiment.  I picked up a 10" round banneton and haven't made a loaf with it yet.  This loaf was a porridge bread that used farro, hulled barley, maple sugar, and whole milk for the porridge.  The loaf also had spelt and barley flours.

The porridge was made by cooking the farro and hulled barley with water only and low heat until fully hydrated and soft (~2 hours).  The fully hydrated grain was pureed in a food processor before returning to the pot where the milk and maple sugar was added.  Cook on low heat and stirring regularly until the porridge is creamy.

Again, I used the new starter at 140% hydration after a 9 hour refresh.  I didn't know where to go with hydration as this used spelt, had a significant amount of low gluten flour with the barley, and had a creamy porridge.  It was on the wet side after final mix.  Thought about adding a little more flour, but I wanted to see if the flour would take it.  It was close, but the loaf spread a little more than I wanted.  This bread proceeded very similar to the VSD.  Bulk was nominally 50-75% rise and was done in just under 4 hours.  Final proof was also an hour for this dough.

The loaf spread more than I wanted, but I attribute that to the moist dough and the spelt.  I couldn't quite get the strength in the dough that I wanted.  However, the crumb was excellent with this bread!  I split it with my neighbor, so I had to cut it a little early (~ 5 hours after baking).  It was still curing, but very happy with it! 

All three of these loaves were baked at the same time using the new baking steel.

This was an interesting bake as I don’t remember the last time I just used plain white flour to make a loaf of bread. Reason for making this is that my dad is in dialysis and his diet is extremely restricted. Plain white sourdough bread is allowed. So the only bit of whole grain comes from the starter and comes out to only 25g per loaf. The dough felt very different than what I’m used to dealing with. I added an undetermined amount of water when it was in the mixer because it was too stiff so water amount is a guess. 

So it was basically 1200 g strong bakers unbleached flour, 750 g water plus extra, 22 g pink Himalayan salt, and 250 g 100% hydration Levain. The levain has 75 g of whole grain Kamut and 50 g white flour. 

1. I simply followed my usual procedure using 10 minutes in the mixer and 4 coil folds after that. The dough took a bit longer to ferment than my heart healthy loaves. Baking was the same. 
   Crumb seems to be very creamy and custardy. It might have benefited from baking a bit longer. Then again, it wasn’t completely cooled off when we cut into it. Blame hubby for that. 
   

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Porridge 

150 g rolled oats

300 g water

Dough

700 g Strong Bakers Unbleached flour

200 g freshly milled whole grain Spelt flour (200 g Spelt berries)

100 g freshly milled whole grain Kamut flour (100 g Kamut berries)

50 g freshly ground flax seeds

25 g black sesame seeds

700 g water + 25 g

22 g salt

30 g yogurt

50 g olive oil 

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

Extra wholegrain flour of your choice for feeding the levain

The night before:

1. Mill the grains and place in a tub. Add the unbleached flour to the tub as well. Cover and set aside.
2. Take 10 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 20 g of water and 20 g of wholegrain flour. Let that rise at cool room temperature for the night. 

Dough Making day:

1. Early in the morning, feed the levain 100 g of filtered water and 50 g of strong baker’s flour and 50 g wholegrain flour. Let rise until doubled (About 5 hours, mine was ready in 4 and a half). 

2. About two hours before the levain is ready, put 700 g of water in a stand mixer’s bowl and add the flours from the tub.  Mix on the lowest speed until all the flour has been hydrated. This takes a couple of minutes. Autolyse for a couple of hours at room temperature. 

3. Make the porridge: Add the water to the rolled oats and cook on medium heat until the liquid is absorbed and porridge is very thick and creamy. 

4. Once the autolyse is done and the levain has doubled, add the salt, the yogurt, the porridge, the oil, and the levain to the bowl. Add the extra water if needed. Mine needed it. Mix on the lowest speed for a minute to integrate everything, then mix on the next speed for 9 minutes. 

5. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place in a lightly oiled covered tub. Let rest 45 minutes in a warm spot (oven with light on). 

6. Do 2 sets of coil folds at 45 minute intervals and then 1 more set after 30 minutes. Let rise about 30%.

7. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into portions of ~860g. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and let rest 30 minutes on the counter. 

8. Do a final shape by flipping the rounds over on a lightly floured counter. Gently stretch the dough out into a circle. Pull and fold the third of the dough closest to you over the middle. Pull the right side and fold over the middle and do the same to the left. Fold the top end to the center patting out any cavities. Finally stretch the two top corners and cross over each other in the middle. Roll the bottom of the dough away from you until the seam is underneath the dough. Cup your hands around the dough and pull towards you, doing this on all sides of the dough to round it off. Finally spin the dough to make a nice tight boule.

9. Sprinkle a  mix of rice flour and all purpose flour in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side down in the bannetons. Let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge overnight.

Baking Day

1. The next morning, about 11-12 hours later, heat the oven to 475F with the Dutch ovens inside for 45 minutes to an hour. Turn out the dough seam side up onto a cornmeal sprinkled counter. Place rounds of parchment paper in the bottom of the pots, and carefully but quickly place the dough seam side up inside. 

2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 20 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205 F or more.

I was reading how UK bakers, especially in Scotland and Ireland, used to bake their batch loaves in wooden frames. That's right - the wooden frame goes INTO the oven! Originally, the bakers didn't even use a frame - it was just lengths of heavy timber inserted into the oven defining a rectangle with the dough pieces inside the rectangle. Interestingly, these lengths of wood were called "upsets".

There's a Scottish baker, Wild Hearth Bakery, who does these batch loaves to perfection. Some regional German breads are also baked the same way.

The idea was so wacky, I just had to try it! Like all new things baking, the journey turned out to be a lot longer than expected....

So I made a simple frame designed for 2 loaves. Oak for 2 sides and maple for the other 2 - just what I had available. I guessed at a size of 5" tall x 9" x 6 3/4" internal. Simple butt joints screwed together:

I made white yeasted bread based on a 4 hour sponge. Baked for 1 hour at 200C Two main problems: the dough stuck badly to the wood (even though oiled well multiple times) and not enough rise.

I then read that the frames should be oiled and baked empty for 60 mins at 190C. This certainly eased the sticking problem, especially if the frame is oiled and floured before use.

The second bake was similar to the first, but with the sticking problem more or less solved. This helped the loft. It was a lot bolder, too:

Both bakes had excessively thick bottom crusts. I'd baked  with the frame sat on a thin baking sheet which was then placed on my bake stone. So for bake 3, I did away with the bake stone and used another thin steel baking sheet instead. This worked fine.

I also get fed up of nearly white bread and did a 100% sponge enriched dough with 20% freshly milled heritage wheat (Millers Choice) and SD levain along with the yeast.

This solved the rising problem, but introduced problems of its own, with the loaf sides collapsing in with a doughy strata in there as well.

Probably reducing the hydration will solve this. Another problem is that the outer wall of the loaf (in contact with the wood) never rises as high as the inside wall so the loaves are lop-sided - I think this is a known fact.

Although this loaf looks worse than the earlier ones, it's actually very tasty!

So quite a journey - and more to do!

Will I carry on? Sadly, probably not, as I don't find any advantages in the loaves or their flavour. Some say there is a woodyness or smokiness there, but if so, it's very subtle.

It's also quite a chunk of hardware to have lying in the kitchen (somewhere).

Still, it was a good learning curve!

Lance