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As I had such a lovely result from my last Pain de Tradition using white flour, I thought I'd give it a try with whole-wheat flour.   James said to make a miche de campagne, substitute 15% whole-wheat or up to 10% medium rye for part of the white flour, so my 100% whole-wheat version isn't conventional. 

   100% Whole-Wheat Miche de Campagne - James MacGuire's Pain de Tradition formula

                  The crumb

                                                                                     close-up

There is one major difference in the procedure from my previous one.  I retarded the shaped dough overnight, for 8 hours, and then let it come back to room temperature for an hour and a half before it's loaded to oven to bake.  The whole process seems to be long but is not at all cumbersome for a housewife - there are always a million things to be done in the kitchen and around the house any way.

The result is very pleasing for me.  I think the high hydration dough loves to sing, I could hear it crackling even 5 meters away.  It has a very strong nutty and wheaty aroma.  The crust is very crispy and the crumb is lovely.   So often wholemeal bread is dense and heavy, but this high hydration pain de tradition formula makes this 100% wholemeal bread light and delightful to have.  I will have no trouble at all getting my son to have a piece of this.  Done!

Shiao-Ping    

Many TFL users would recognise Mr James J. MacGuire's name as he is the technical editor for Prof. Raymond Calvel's "The Taste of Bread."   In a 10 page article entitled, "The Baguette" in the Winter 2006 issue of Mr Edward Behr's quarterly magazine "The Art of Eating," ie. No 73+74 issue, Mr  MacGuire's message about a good French traditional bread is very clear: slow & gentle mixing with autolyse, long fermentation, and high hydration.  

A 4-page formula follows The Baguette article in the same issue and is entitled "A Full-Flavored, Minimum-Kneading, All-Included Recipe for a Round Loaf with Many of the Advantages of the Baguette."    This is an old-style straight-dough formula which is superhydrated and can also be used for baguette.   My understanding from reading the article is that the method in the formula is like that applied in Prof. Calvel's younger days.  I made my bread using Mr MacGuire's formula in the magazine and I called it "James J MacGuire's Pain de Tradition" which may not be entirely accurate but it is how I understood it to be.   I would strongly encourage any one who is interested in Mr MacGuire's detailed formula to have a look at his well-written article in the Art of Eating magazine.  As a home baker, I can finally say that I have found a method that I can rely upon with consistent result, and I thank Mr MacGuire for making the formula available to home bakers as well as Mr Behr's for publishing such a quality magazine. 

As Mr MacGuire says in Prof. Calvel's "The Taste of Bread" that bakers have always been known for their desire to form friendships and for their willingness to share, to me no sharing is as useful as pointing to the right direction.   I first learnt about the MacGuire's article through the Q & A with Daniel T. DiMuzio when Floyd and Eric interviewed Mr DiMuzio back in May this year.  If Mr DiMuzioh had not mentioned about it, I would not have known about Mr MacGuire's recipe. 

The following is the bread that I made based on Mr MacGuire's formula:      

When it came out of the oven, it sang for the best part of 6 to 7 minutes.   There was a very strong nutty aroma in the crust.  The crumb was a beautiful creamy color; it's light and delicate to taste.

Shiao-Ping  

Hamelman's 40% Caraway Rye without commercial yeast:

I haven't cut into this yet, but I'm so pleased!  I modified the recipe and only used the rye levain.  It looks great.  This bodes well for paying attention to fermentation temperatures.

I cut the recipe down to make a single loaf:

Rye Sourdough:
dissolve together
8.5g ripe starter
150g water
mix in
181g Giusto's whole dark rye flour
It makes a putty-like starter.  Let ferment 17 hours at 70F.  I floated the container in the bathroom basin with 70F water.

Next day:
Dissolve rye starter in 151g 105F water
Mix together:
265g 12% protein bread flour
7g Giusto's Vital Wheat Gluten (to approximate 14% protein flour)
8.5g salt
8.5g caraway seeds
Combine dry and wet and knead vigourously for 10 minutes.  Dough was initially sticky but soon came together and was easy to knead without any flour on the counter.
Ferment at room temp 90 minutes with two stretch and folds
Life intervened with a Dr. apt., so dough to 'fridge for 2 1/2 hours.  Upon return dough is domed but not doubled
Ferment an additional hour at room temp, altogether doubled from the beginning now
Lightly degas and form into a batard.  Proof on parchment at room temp for 2 hours
Sprinkle with caraway seeds, mist, and slash
Bake 460 with steam 15 minutes, peek in the oven and jump up and down, bake an additional 20 minutes without steam

I'll post a crumb shot once I've cut into it.

:-Paul

I have read a lot of press about a special baguette called "La Flute Gana" made by Bernard Ganachaud, one of the pioneers of the artisanal bread revival in France during the late 70's. I have tried to follow different interpretations of Ganachaud's recipe available in some  bread books without much success so I decided to experiment and develop my own interpretation of "La Flute Gana".

I went on Ganachaud's website and saw snippets of the making of his baguettes and read all the materials available such as press releases, interviews, quotes etc.

Although he never published the exact recipe, I was able to piece together the principles behind his famous baguettes:

1- It is a Poolish baguette.

2- It is based on a Type 65 flour.

3- It calls for a minimum use of yeast.

4- It calls for very gentle mixing of the dough.

5- It calls for an extended fermentation at low temperature.

6- It has a signature one stroke end to end score of the baguette.

Following is my formulation for a 500 gms total Flour mixture and 70% hydration:

- 300 gms KAF AP Flour

- 150 gms KAF Bread Flour

- 50 gms KAF WWW Flour

The Poolish:

- 150 gms Flour mixture

- 150 gms Water

- 1/16 tsp Instant Yeast

Dough mixture:

- 350 gms Flour mixture

- 200 gms Water

- 1/8 tsp Instant Yeast

- 8 gms Sea Salt

Mix the poolish and let it ferment 8 to 10 hours.

Mix the water, flour and yeast to the poolish with a flat beater at speed 2 for 1 min. and autolyse for 1/2 hr.

Add the salt and mix with dough hook at speed 2 for 1 min.

Stretch and fold 10 times using the Bertinet method and threepeat it at 20 mins interval.

Let the dough ferment at room temperature for 1 hr until almost double in size.

Refrigerate dough for 24 hrs before dividing into 3 roughly 280 gms pieces and gently preshaping into torpedo shapes and resting for 1 hr.

Gently shape baguettes trying not to de-gas too much and proof for 45 mins.

Score end to end with one stroke of the lame 1/2" deep at 45 degree angle. Bake immediately at 460 degrees with steam for 10 mins.

Reduce oven temperature to 430 degrees and continue baking without steam for another 12 mins.

Turn off heat and let cool in oven with door ajar for 5 mins before cooling on wire rack.

I have made this recipe 3 times and it turned out great everytime. The baguettes had a golden brown crust that smelled sweet and caramelly and sang loudly while cooling. It was not too thick but was nicely crackly. The crumb was open and not too gelatinized. It had the right balance of sweetness, richness and wheatiness.

Ganachaud shaped his baguettes before retarding them in the refrigerator for a prolongued second fermentation. I do not have a big enough refrigerator to do this but am wondering if this will make a big difference in the end result. Nonetheless, my wife and I enjoyed the fruits of my experiment with some home made Jambon de Paris, sweet butter, cornichons and a glass of Burgundy as a toast to Bernard Ganachaud!

This poor bread had a tough time of it with me.  It's Pumpernickel Bread from the BBA.  I made the levain version without instant yeast.

Ingredients:

7 oz. starter - 100% hydration

7oz. Giusto's pumpernickel flour

6oz. water

*************

9 oz. high-gluten flour (I figured it was important to use high gluten flour since there is a 25% rye component and rye has gluten issues.  I mixed a high [14%] gluten flour at the ratio of 97g 12% protein white flour to 3g 75% protein Giusto's VWG)

1 oz. brown sugar

.5 oz. powdered cocoa

1 1/2 t salt

1 cup old bread bits (a previous SD baguette)

1 oz. vegetable oil

2 oz. water

Method:

Make rye starter: mix starter, rye and water, ferment at room temp 4-5 hours until bubbly and foamy.  "Immediately put in the 'fridge overnight"  Here's where the trouble started.  My starter bubbled and tripled, woo hoo, I put it in the 'fridge.  When I took it out the next day, it had fallen back to essentially it's original size.  That made me worry about that word "immediately".  Hummm...  maybe my starter was right on the edge of over ripe, maybe I should have refrigerated it more immediately.  I soldiered on.

Next day: remove rye starter from 'fridge an hour before using.  Stir together flour, sugar, cocoa, and salt, add starter, bread crumbs (if only I'd noticed it said "crumbs" and not "cubes") and oil.  Scrape it out onto the counter and knead.  Supposedly the dough should pass the window pane test.  Ha!  I was worried about not overmixing a rye dough and making it gummy, I did knead for a full 6 minutes, rather vigourously, but then i stopped, although it didn't approach the window pane test, in fact it broke apart the moment I attempted to stretch it.  And the bread cubes.  oops!  Not even moistened.  Those are the white chunks here and there in the crumb.  Live and learn.

Ferment to double.  Preshape into two loaves, shape into boules, proof.  I over proofed.  The dough was fermenting faster than I thought and it got away from me.  I didn't attempt to slash as I was afraid it would just collapse.  Luckily I proofed it on parchment paper so I just slid it in the oven.  It rose not at all in the oven, but it had risen quite a bit while proofing and it didn't collapse in the oven, so it could have been worse.

Given all that, it came out OK.  I was very leery of using brown sugar and cocoa in a "real" bread.  The flavour is actually pretty nice.  I'm favourably impressed.  My next rye will be a light rye with caraway seeds though.  And that will be soon.

:-Paul

The San Joaquin Sourdough has been my wife's favorite bread for quite a while now. It's not that she doesn't like other breads. She thought Salome's Potato-Nut bread that I baked yesterday was “amazing.” But, if I had an “everyday bread,” I guess this would be it. The recipe and background on this bread are described in my blog entry for Pain de Campagne.

While this loaf used the method I have described a number of times, the ingredients were a bit different. I had about 20 gms of 100% hydration starter left over from another bread, so I used it and made up the rest of the 100 gms of starter from my stock 1:3:4 mixed flour starter. I'd exhausted my stock of Giusto's whole rye flour, so I used KAF Pumpernickel, which is more coarsely milled. I figured the 100% hydration starter provided a little more water, but the pumpernickel probably absorbed a little more, so I used 10 gms less water to mix the dough. In other words, I kind of faked it.

The dough tripled during cold retardation in bulk! That's probably why I didn't get much of a rise during proofing or much oven spring. The poor yeastie beasties must have been starved. <sniff>

I baked under an aluminum foil roasting pan for 10 minutes at 480F/Convection, then another 20 minutes at 460F. There wasn't a lot of oven spring, and, while there was respectable bloom, no real ear formed.

It turned out that the bread had a nice crumb structure, and the taste was as good as I've ever made, if not better. It was assertively sour, which we like. Interestingly enough, while I'd been having mild problems with the retarded dough being slacker than I wished, this dough was a bit more elastic. I can't explain it, unless it was due to the slightly lower hydration (73% vs. 75%).

I think I'll bake this bread again with 10% pumpernickel flour.

David

A Tale of Two Boules

I wanted to find out if I could bake a decent loaf without adding any flour to a starter.  I keep my starters on the counter and feed them twice a day at 1:5:6.  My routine has had me taking 5 grams out and mixing that with 25 grams of water and 30 grams of flour.  The leftover I then mix with flour down to ~50% and stash in the 'fridge.  I'm currently running two starters, my own that I started around the time that I started here at the Fresh Loaf last August that has been with me through thick and thin, which is fed 85% white, 10% rye and 5% ww, and Carl's Oregon Trail starter that I rehydrated a week or two ago and have been feeding 100% white.

The starter balls on the left are Carl's, accumulated for a few days, those on the right are my regular starter.  I'll get to the bread cubes in a minute.  For the Carl's loaf I had 375g of starter at 50% hydration and I kneaded in 45g water mixed with 6g salt.  The dough handled nicely, I proofed it for 2.5 hours at room temp and baked under a bowl. 

The loaf looks nice, but the crumb is very close.

I haven't played with the Carl's starter yet at all.  This was my first usage.  I imagine that treated differently I'll get a more open crumb.  It's certainly edible bread. 

For the other starter I was inspired by reading David and Mini's recent comments about including old bread in your loaf.  As long as I was experimenting anyway...  Something I learned is that I probably want to cut the crust off tough old SD (leftover from the proofing experiment) before using it.  Luckily I picked up from David the idea of soaking the bread before adding it.  I did not do that with the BBA Pumpernickle loaf that is now proofing and I think what I'll have is "Chunky Pumpernickle".  Since the soaked bread crumbs were a complete hydration unknown I just winged it adding water and I added a little too much, the dough was pretty tacky, but I could handle it, barely.  I was determined to not add any flour and to just use 100% starter.  It was doing fine until it stuck to the couche when trying to get it onto the parchment paper to bake.  I panicked and just abandoned it to the Oven Gods.  What I think I should have done was treat the inadvertant degassing as simply a degassing and reformed the loaf and let it rise again.  Lesson learned.  So the poor flat thing went in the oven and came out as above.  But, look at the crumb!

Not spectacular but much more open than the first one.  How 'bout that.

So, I answered my own question about whether I could bake a serviceable 100% starter loaf.  Yes. 

:-Paul

Today I made Mark Sinclair's wonderful Multigrain. I've made it before and don't know why I waited so long to make it again. The aroma of this bread baking should be enough to get me to make it often. Ehanner posted his loaves last year and his crumb is very open and beautiful. And the crumb on his is lighter in color for some reason. To see his take on this bread go here...

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/7905/really-great-multigrain

Mark's recipe makes 4.6 lbs of dough enough for 3 good size medium loaves and one that I made into a small cinnamon raisin pan loaf. Even with a tighter crumb than Eric's the bread is still light and delicious. Toasted for breakfast or for sandwiches is my favorite way to eat it. I used mostly white whole wheat for the whole wheat called for otherwise I followed the directions as given. I didn't use a mixer.

I am back but this time with no bread,,, I am back with my ful & Taameya. I promised before that I'll share the recipes with you. Sorry for being late but I had a lot of work to do. First talking about Ful Medames "Ful medammas also Foul Medammas (Arabic: فول مدمس fūl mudammas) is popular in Egypt , often eaten at breakfast. It consists of brown fava beans, partially or completely mashed, which are slow-cooked and served with olive oil, chopped parsley, onion, garlic, and lemon juice. Ful medames is typically eaten with Egyptian bread ('eish masri).'egyptian pocket bread or flat bread" Though originally a peasant food, ful medames has long been part of the daily Egyptian diet. Some have described it as being "like a stone in the stomach". This has led to it being consumed by many in the Middle East in the early morning meal to prepare for a day of fasting during Ramadan. The dish's name derives from the Egyptian language: ful is the Egyptian word for fava beans, and medames is a Coptic word meaning "buried." The second word hints at the original cooking method, which involved burying a sealed pot of water and beans under hot coals." Thanks to wikipedia ;))) So today I am going to tell you how we cook ful from scratch. Ingredients:- 200gr. Fava beans "the best quality has a lighter color" 50 gr. Of chickpeas "it is not in the original recipe but sometimes I add chickpeas for change, the original recipe contains just fava beans". 50 gr of yellow lentill 50 gr. of wheat seeds A half of small lemon. First wash all these seeds very well then cover it with water for 2- 4 hours. Rinse it again and put it in a pan we use a special pot, it is like a jar, we call it "damassah" The capacity of our pot is 3 litres. Put the seeds and fill the pot with water till the top just leave 1 cm without water. Put it on the stove till boiling then tranfer it on a heater like this one, a lot of people use the stove by putting the ful pot on the smallest and weakest flame, but this heater gives wonderful results because we will leave ful for 7 or 8 hours on the this weak heat. After this period take some with a spoon and test it , if it is done squeeze a half of lemon and pour your ful in a container so after being cooled you should put it in the refrigerator and it can be freezed very well too. If you test it and you find that fava beans still firm and there is no enough liquid in your pot add water but it has to be very hot, just to keep the lovely light color of beans.and let it more time on the heater or on the stove. you'll find all the pics in my blog. It is time now to talk about falafel , in egypt we call it taameya more than falafel it is a little bit different than the lebanese & the syrian one, we use more green herbs and we use just fava beans to make it. Fo me I use to make it with fava beans but sometimes as a change I mix with my fava some chickpeas. "Falafel is a fried ball or patty made from fava beans. Originally from Egypt,[1] falafel is a popular form of fast food in the Middle East, where it is also served as a mezze. Falafel is usually served in a pita-like bread, either inside the bread, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flat bread. In many countries falafel is a popular street food or fast food. The falafel balls, whole or crushed, may be topped with salads, pickled vegetables and hot sauce, and drizzled with tahini-based sauces. Falafel balls may also be eaten alone as a snack or served as part of a mezze. During Ramadan, they are sometimes eaten as part of an iftar, the meal which breaks the daily fast after sunset." o.k thanks again to wikipedia. The ingredients;- 250 gr.skinless and crushed fava beans. Sometimes I put 125 chickpeas and 125 fava beans, but the egyptian original one does not contain chichpeas at all. 1 big onion 2 garlic cloves 125 of green herbs " leeks ,parsley, coriander, and dill Salt & pepper cumin and dried coriander. Wash the beans and rinse it then cover it well with water for 6 hours, if you are using chickpeas you will leave it for 12 hours. Rinse it and strain it very well then add to it the onions and the garlic and the fresh herbs "washed and cut to be ready to go to the food processor" you will mix all and put it in the food processor , it will take from you some time to be a real paste. You can add to it the salt, pepper , cumin and dried coriander or you can wait till you will start to fry it, I usually freeze all the quantity after dividing it into portions. To fry it , we need 250 gr of falafel paste and 1 big egg beat the egg with a fork and gradually add you falafel paste , add 1 tsp of sodium bicarbonate and continue to beat it for 2 mn. Add your salt , pepper , cumin and dried coriander. Apic for the whole meal. please check my blog to watch all the pics, I could not put it all in two places, forgive me !! Start to fry it, I made a videoooo, yes I did it for the first time in my life , my husband and me, were struggling two days to make it, but finally we did it , it is horrible but I hope that it really helps. You can watch it now on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ieAhoOakoI but please no laugh we are the worst editors in the world, next time would be better ;)) Thanks to all of you, this forum is really the best !! Chahira Daoud www.chahirakitchen.blogspot.com www.chahiraelkhabira.blogspot.com There was a fellow here on TFL, he was talking about "David" and how there is a lot of David on the forum...... David , I am a David too, " Daoud" is David but in Arabic, Cheers David ;)))

Before today I'd never tasted nor baked Brioche. Yesterday I began by making the dough,  and today I made two tries baking it.

First Try

The crumb, and flavor, seem to be what I should expect, from this dough, so for a first time, ever, I'm pleased, especially after reading all the cautions--offered by the author, and elsewhere--about making high fat percentage doughs; but as you can see I have a long way to go learning to construct these rascals correctly. I've nicknamed the one in the upper left corner Nearly Headless Nick (Harry Potter fans will recognize the name.)

The formula is from "Baking Artisan Bread" by Ciril Hitz, and I followed it and the author's instructions to the letter, except constructing the individual rolls.  The ones shown were constructed using the little-ball-on-top-of-the-bigger ball approach. Additionally, the intructions called for 90g of dough for each mold, and I thought my molds were the same size as those shown in the author's pictures. They weren't.  One head slipped off entirely. The oven spring in this dough made them look more like popovers than brioche in my forms.

So I tried again. using some of the reserved dough--thus the 1 and 1/2 tries--with three changes. First I reduced the quantity for each mold to 65g, secondly, I'd baked the first four at 345°F on the oven's convection mode, as recommended by the author; the 1 and 1/2 try I used the recommended 265°F thermal mode setting, and lastly, I used the author's novel shaping. Here's an attempt to explain it in words. Starting with the dough pre-shaped into a ball, by pressing and rolling with one finger two balls--one large, one small--connected by a thin neck of dough is created. Then, the neck is stretched to three fingers width, the larger ball is turned into a doughnut shape, and the smaller ball--neck intact--is passed through the doughnut hole, and the doughnut shape is gently coaxed to collapse around the now curved neck. (I  hope readers can visualize this. I couldn't have done it with out the author's pictures.)

Try 1 and 1/2

Photo says it for me. Far from perfect, but OK.

David G