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This is a Basic Italian Bread recipe that came with my Oblong La Cloche.....I added a little poolish.  I placed half the dough into the frig for tomorrow!  There is no oil in this Italian bread.  The recipe actually stated to add yeast to 2 cups of "hot water"!!!  I used a cool room temp. water and a little added a extra hydration...I also placed the dough to rise directly into the La Cloche per instructions....usually I have my La Cloche pre-heating with the oven.  I have read that this helps from cracking the thin bottom on the Bell shaped La Cloche.  The bread was very good with a crispy crust and tender creamy crumb...it went great with the Italian dinner...I think it would make a nice garlic toast!

Recipe from LaCloche:

1 1/2 packages active dry yeast...used less IDY

2 cups hot water-----cool room temp...used

1 Tablespoon honey

6-7 cups all purpose flour....I was out of AP...used K.A.Bread

1 Tablespoon salt ....  I used a little less

Preheat Oven 400F  

I autolysed with stretch and folds.

Shape by Oblong La Cloche!! Little under proofed...Our dinner's on a time schedule....today...dinner 4:30 sharp...hubby has to eat and go to work!  But he got his almost cooled bread : )

Crumb

Sylvia

"Do or do not...there is no try." Yoda

And so it is finally time to actually make a "white flour" milling run. This is a project that I have been mulling over for some time - and it is not a small one.

Here are some specifics as to my milling setup.  I use a Diamant mill with steel burrs.   The mill is hand cranked.  For sifting, I use plastic classifiers from Legend, Inc.  I have #12 (screen openings of .07"), #30(.02") and #50 (.01").  I also have a #100 (.006") but have not been using it.  I use a Delmhorst G7 grain moisture meter to measure grain moisture.

The objective for this first "white flour" run was simply to get a generic "all purpose" white flour.  I do not currently have the equipment to measure ash content, and the method described by bwraith in his blog requires a 12 hour waiting period.  I can see how this would be useful, but at this time the project seems monumental enough.

The first step in the process is tempering.  I am hoping to produce enough flour to make a recipe of baguettes, so I started with 32 oz (Oh, me and my pound and ounces, but this is a low precision operation and they should be good enough) of hard white wheat berries.  To this I added 0.8 oz of water.  After 24 hours I took a moisture level measurement and found the grain to be at 12.7% moisture.  This is close enough to the desired 13% so the berries were left in the tightly sealed container for another 24 hours to continue the tempering process.

My target extraction level was 70%.  Some of the weight of the grain is lost in the process, so my goal was to obtain 20 oz of "white" flour.

My first pass through the mill was what I define as a "medium sized" cracked wheat.  This is a little finer than typical cracked wheat, but still more of a meal than a flour.  This pass was sifted through the #12 sieve which is part of my process to remove the bran and then through the #50 sieve (which is the sieve through which I normally sift my high extraction flour) to see how much "flour" resulted from the first pass.  On this first pass I obtained 1.5 oz of flour (from 32 oz of grain...)  Not much, just not much at all.

My second pass was a 'fine" cracked wheat.  This pass took all of the material that had not passed through the #12 sieve and milled it again.  Again I sifted it through both the #12 and the #50 sieve.  I obtained an additional 1.15 oz of white flour.

Since, frankly, I am just making this process up as I go along, I had to take a moment for quality thought.  I already have what I consider to be a successful process for obtaining my high extraction flour and my objective was to get as much bran out of the process before I started doing the finer passes.  So I switched to my "high extraction" process.  I did one more pass to "very fine" cracked wheat and sifted it through the #12 sieve.  This resulted in about 10 oz of "bran like" material left in the sieve.  This would be about a 70% extraction, however noticing that some "bran like" material had passed through the sieve and would be sifted out at finer siftings, this would not result in my target extraction rate.  So I put the material remaining in the sieve through the mill again at the same setting.  Sifting through the #12 sieve left 4.35 oz of material in the sieve.  This material was removed from the milling process.

I then sifted the remaining material through the #50 sieve to get 2.95 oz of flour.  Clearly I had to continue with finer grinding.

The next pass through the mill was at what I call "hippie whole wheat" coarseness.  This is starting to look like flour, but at a texture that bakes up into the doorstops we convinced ourselves were good bread a few decades ago.  This was sifted through the #30 and the #50 sieves.  From this pass I obtained an additional 2.95 oz of white flour.  There was more milling to do.  There was 5.25 oz of bran like material left in the #30 sieve.  This was removed from the milling process, making the total bran removed 9.6 oz - somewhat below my target, allowing for some more material to be removed in later siftings.

The next pass was to the fineness of coarse ground whole wheat.  Again it was sifted through the #30 and the #50 sieves.  I obtained an additional 4.6 oz of flour.

At this point I had obtained, in total, about half the amount of white flour that was my goal.  I needed to grind finer, but frankly at this point a small amount of bran was working its way through the mill and into my flour.  It was a very small amount, but it was there.  Oh well.

The next pass was essentially typical flour.  I grind finer, but this is very like commercial whole wheat.  This was sifted through the #50 sieve to obtain 4.05 oz of white flour.  The material remaining in the sieve was returned to the mill and put through at the same setting.  This was sifted through the #50 sieve to obtain an additional 3.95 oz of white flour.  All of the remaining material was returned to the mill.

At this point I put my mill on its finest setting.  Once again I sifted the output through the #50 sieve to get an additional amount of white flour of 2.5 oz.

That was it - I had my 20 oz of flour.  I returned what remained in the sifter to the mill and did an additional pass.  What went through the #50 sieve, however, was clearly loaded with bran and so was removed from the process.

All of this took about an hour.  Coming soon to an infomercial near you "Milling and Sifting Your Way to Fitness."

What were the results?  Unfortunately the combination of my snapshot camera and my photography skills result in unedifying pictures, so sorry, no pics.  I have 20oz of whitish flour.  It is clearly, but very lightly flecked with bran.  Compared side by side with King Arthur All Purpose flour, it is a bit more yellow in color and just a bit grittier, but not unpleasantly so.  The flour from the first couple of passes was distinctly greyer than the rest of the flour.  Here is our treasured "clear" flour perhaps, but at such a low volume that I don't think I could justify milling it.  I could put the results through the #100 sieve to attempt to get my "white" flour even whiter, but that would result in a much lower yield.  I may have to tolerate the flecks of bran.

Right now I have two paths I could take for the next batch: stay with this method and send the next lot off to the lab for some test results, or try another method.  The key, of course is to get the bran out before it gets ground too finely.  I am considering doing more passes at coarser settings, but the flour yield from those is just a bit discouraging.  I must remind myself that these burr mills are not roller mills and in general are not designed for milling white flours.  I can be terribly hard on myself.  Inspiration is welcome.

As for the baked results?  Now we wait.  Four weeks.  For while there is much ambiguity about aging whole wheat flours, there is none for white flours.  What I have is green flour and it needs to be aged prior to baking.  I'm not going to let my lack of patience mess with the results...

Happy Milling!

Todays Bake  included a few baguettes and I tried out the Beer and barley bread from hamelmans book. This is a solid recipe and i opted to use guinness as the beer because it definitly my favourite to drink on its own and figured it wuld give the bread great flavour. I would definitly recommend this recipe to anyone looking for a semi whole wheat bread with lots of flavour! Questions, thoughts, comments are always welcome.

When the Rosemary blooms I love to make Rosemary-Lemon Bread.  This is Beth Hensperger recipe in her bread machine cookbook.  I have made a few changes by adding some whole wheat flour and left out the hazelnuts and gluten.  I use my garden lemons and rosemary.  I hand mix and let the bread rise slowly in a cool room.  I also baked this one in my bell la cloche at 475 for 35 min. uncovered and baked 10min. more at 450.  The bread was sliced a little warm...my husband wanted a sandwich and it was getting late!  Hope you enjoy the photo of the Geese..they came and turned away into the sunset when I ran in to get the camera! 

A Lemon for the bread!

There is Lemon zest, Rosemary and Golden Raisins!

A Rosemary Flower/Lemon Fondant up close is so pretty and dainty!  They are very nice on cakes, breads, ect! 

 There's a hint of the rosemary and lemon zest with the sweetness of the golden raisins and honey.  The egg, butter and milk give the crumb a nice moistness and add to the lovely flavors!  All in all a nice bread for the coming of Springtime!

The end of a lovely day!

Sylvia

I was inspired from Teresa at her Northwest Sourdough website to try her sourdough cinnamon rolls pictured there, but the closest actual written recipe I could find to that was her Festive Hawaiian Roll recipe. After studying a lot of other sweet dough recipes and brioche recipes, I decided to make a hybrid dough with what I thought were the best aspects of each, that would also use only sourdough starter as the leavening agent. The main differences from NWSD's recipe is my addition of eggs and buttermilk, plus I added 4 times the amount of butter, bringing the butter content up to 11%, which is still not as high as many sweet doughs and not nearly as high as brioche.

This recipe will make about 16-24 large and airy, but rich and tender Cinnamon Rolls. We don't like excess cinnamon flavor in our rolls and so use about half the amount of cinnamon usually called for in the filling of similar recipes. We are also not *fond* of white fondant glaze, so I made up this cream cheese/buttercream glaze to provide a more flavorful topping that complements the flavor of the rolls well. I also did not use any nuts in these, but they could also be added to the filling if desired.

Beware of these rolls: Due to the potato and buttermilk in the dough, these are by far the richest, most moist, tender, and flavorful cinnamon rolls we've ever had, the dough itself is fragrant with vanilla and butter, it almost does not need the filling or icing. The sourdough made these extraordinarily airy and puffy with no commercial yeast added. Because these are so rich, they will be reserved for special occasions or special visitors in our house, they are far too addictive to keep around otherwise. Because they are also so light and billowy - similar to a good sourdough waffle, they are not overly filling and heavy in your stomach.

The total preparation time is about 36 hours to allow for the long cool ferments. If you want to serve these rolls on a Sunday morning, you need to build the levain the preceding Friday evening.

Approx. 12 hours before making the final dough, build the levain as follows:

Levain Build:

grams          Item
150       100% hydration sourdough starter, recently fed and ripened
340       Lukewarm water
340       AP flour
850       Total Wt.

Let this mixture sit at room temperature until doubled (usually overnight, if your starter is fast and the levain is active early, keep it in the frig. until ready to make dough). Meanwhile, make a small amount of mashed potato by boiling or microwaving (covered) 1 medium peeled & sliced potato in a little water until soft. Mash with fork and a little milk until smooth.

Final Dough:

grams     Item
113       1 stick Unsalted butter, softened
225       3 large eggs
42        1 ½ TBSP Honey
24        2 TBSP Vanilla Extract
130       Mashed potato
195       ¾ c. Buttermilk or whole milk
850       Levain
700       AP flour
21        Salt
2300       Total Wt.

Once levain is ripe, make the final dough. First cream the softened (not melted) butter by hand or in mixer with paddle attachment, then beat in eggs, honey, vanilla, and mashed potato and continue mixing. Stop to scrape down sides of bowl with spatula as needed and continue to mix just until well-blended. Switch to dough hook and add buttermilk and levain until blended, then gradually add flour and salt and continue mixing with dough hook until well-blended. Scrape down sides of bowl with spatula, cover, and let rest 20 min. After rest, uncover and continue to mix with dough hook another 2-3 minutes (or by hand, fold in bowl with plastic bowl scraper for 3 min.). This will be a very soft, sticky dough, around 71% hydration if you count the liquid from eggs and milk, but not counting the butter.

Place the dough into a container sprayed with cooking oil, cover, and bulk ferment in a cool location (55-65F) until doubled, approx. 8-12 hours depending on temperature and how fast a riser your starter is. Every few hours, give the dough a stretch and fold, for a total of about 2 folds.

Meanwhile, make the filling as follows:

Filling:

grams       Item
170       1 ½ sticks Unsalted butter, softened
85        Cream or half&half
300       Dark brown sugar
180       Raisins
3         1 ½ tsp. Cinnamon
12        1 TBSP Vanilla extract
750       Total Wt.

For the filling, add all above ingredients to a medium sized saucepan and bring to a low boil over medium heat while stirring. As soon as the mixture boils, take off heat and chill to a spreadable consistency before using.

After dough has doubled, divide it into 2 pieces on a flour-dusted surface (it may be sticky even though the butter should be solid from the cool temps), then roll out each piece of dough into a rectangle shape about 10 x 16 inches across. Spread the filling across each rectangle of dough, leaving 1 inch clean where the outer seam edge of the roll will be and then taking the opposite edge, roll up the dough gently but firmly and seal the seam.

Slice each log into 8 or 12 rolls (depending on how big a rectangle you rolled out and how large you want the rolls to be) with serrated knife and place them just barely touching each other on baking parchment on sheet pan. Don't worry if log gets flattened as you slice each roll, you can straighten them out once placed on the sheet pan, and they should rise very high and straighten out when proofing. Spray tops of rolls lightly with cooking spray, cover with plastic wrap, and slowly proof rolls overnight or up to 12 hrs. in the refrigerator or cool place between 45 and 55F until the dough is about doubled and puffy looking. Bake right out of frig. at 400 degrees for about 25-35 minutes until light golden, or until the center of dough registers about 195-200F on instant-read thermometer. Do not let the rolls get very brown. Melt about 4 TBSP of butter in microwave and as soon as rolls are out of oven, brush them with the melted butter to keep crust soft before icing them.

Here are the rolls right out of oven and after being brushed with butter, they had a great amount of oven spring and rose tremendously during the bake:

While rolls are baking, make a glaze/icing as follows:

Cream Cheese Glaze:

grams       Item
56        ½ (4 TBSP) stick Unsalted butter, softened
56        4 TBSP. Cream cheese
165       ¾ c. Confectioner's sugar
65        ¼ c. Milk, whole
2         ½ tsp. Vanilla extract
344       Total Wt.

Microwave the butter and cream cheese together until very soft but not melted. Whisk them together while adding the vanilla, powdered sugar, and enough milk to thin out the icing to a drip-able consistency.

Let the rolls mostly cool before glazing them with icing. Dip a wire whisk in the icing and drizzle across surface of each roll in crisscross pattern. Serve and enjoy.

(NOTE: I've not yet tried this, but it should also be possible to chill the un-sliced logs in frig overnight and slice just before baking, or freeze the logs for up to 1 month, take out the night before baking and defrost in frig. Next morning, remove from frig., slice, and let warm up at room temp about 1-2 hours before baking.)

It's a good thing we had a house full of guests this past weekend to help us put away not only the cinnamon rolls, but also these Vermont Sourdough boules, and cherry-sunflower-seed levains.

I am still extremely new to this forum, as well as to bread baking in general.  I am enjoying reading all of your posts, and appreciate greatly the opportunity to learn from your successes and/or tribulations.  I am sticking with straight doughs for now, and working them only by hand, in the hope that I will develop my feel for the dough. 

For these loaves, I used the following recipe:

400g KA Bread Flour

200g Semolina Flour

12g SAF instant yeast

1T Diastatic Malt Powder

2t Salt, dissolved in

420g water at 125 degrees

I mixed the dry ingredients together, then added the water/salt.  I let this rest for 20 minutes.

I turned the dough out onto a lightly floured bench and kneaded conventionally for approximately 10 minutes, did a windowpane test to determine dough development, then returned the dough to a lightly oiled bowl to rest until almost triple (which took only about 1 hour)

At that point I folded the dough and returned it to the bowl to rest for an additional hour, at which point it slightly more than doubled.

I divided the dough in half, and shaped two batards, covered them with a damp towel and a plastic bag, then let them proof. I preheated my oven to 525.  When the loaves were proofed, I scored them, then I added a cup of water to a preheated sheet pan sitting on the bottom rack of my oven.  I placed the loaves, on parchment, on the preheated baking stone on the middle shelf, turned the heat down to 470F and misted every thirty seconds for three minutes.  At ten minutes I removed the sheetpan from the oven. 

Here's the crumb, apparently I manhandled the dough...

I probably should have left these in the oven a little longer.  The crumb is not as open as I would have liked, but the texture is wonderfully soft and moist.  The flavor is everything I expect in an italian bread, and I think the ratio of semolina flour is ideal.

You know what they say... Life is a journey. But have you ever been pulled down a path that you otherwise would have walked on by? That's what happened to me when I started playing with sourdough. I didn't even like sourdough, or so I thought until about seven and a half years ago. I was watching the food network one day, and Daniel Leader appeared as a guest on Cooking Live. He was demonstrating how to make a sourdough starter from nothing but flour and water. How fascinating! I had no idea you could do that. Bread science was nowhere in the curriculum when I went to university almost 30 years ago, let alone sourdough. But for someone with a microbiology degree and a passion for baking, sourdough is the perfect marriage of two loves. I had to try it for myself. And so began the journey. The path so far has taken some surprising twists and turns, and led to meeting many interesting people along the way. Including Peter Reinhart, who has been nothing but gracious and supportive throughout, and who is ultimately responsible for getting me to sit down and record this story in my own words. Now, back to the beginning...

In early 2002, I was a member of the King Arthur Baking Circle, a message board for baking enthusiasts. With this brand new interest in sourdough, I found myself reading all of the threads under that category. In March another member, Pat Doucette began posting of the difficulties she was having in getting a starter going. She had tried a few different recipes with no success. Now she was following the formula in The Bread Baker's Apprentice and... still no luck. Newly armed with all of the advice that she was getting from others on the forum, she started over. And once again, she got results that were nothing like the book describes. But a pattern was becoming clear. On the second day, her seed cultures would fill with bubbles and expand to over three times the starting volume when minimal growth was expected. And then do nothing on the third and fourth days when they were supposed to be expanding more and more. They came on strong and then died at the same point each time. A pattern holds a clue, so I offered to do the procedure myself and see if I could reproduce what she was seeing. I followed the directions to the letter and, lo and behold, my results duplicated Pat's perfectly. I may be the only person on the planet who would be excited about this, but it gave me something to study and troubleshoot. There was something unexpected going on at the microbial level. Living things are funny that way, and microorganisms don't always follow directions.

One by one, other people on the message board began to speak up and post that they had experienced the same thing. In fact, it seemed that many more saw that scenario than the one described in the book. This phenomenon had nothing to do with local strains of lactobacilli and yeast as some had surmised, because Pat was making starter in Massachusetts and I was in Missouri. Others chiming in represented various regions of the country from coast to coast. This pattern is apparently quite common. We ran the gamut of theories on why yeast were coming on like gangbusters, only to quit and become non-responsive. We tested each theory by trying different flours at various points, increasing the feeding frequency, changing the hydration and water source, cooling it down, and anything else that anyone thought might help. But in the end, nothing fixed the problem, and the results weren't making much sense to me.

At that point, I had to do what microbiologists do when things don't add up---go back to the microscope and take a look. That meant packing up my starters, taking them to work, and having to answer all the curious questions about what I was doing and why. But the microscope answered a few of my questions, and that day proved to be the turning point. No wonder things didn't make any sense! We were operating on the assumption that we were growing yeast. What I found was that there were no yeast or lactobacilli to be seen anywhere in all the activity of day two. Not a single one. But it was like a three-ring circus in there---different kinds of bacteria, some round, some rod-shaped, some motile, some not. Some were spinning, some were twirling, some flipping or zigzagging, and some were just darting back and forth across the field. What were these bacteria, and which one was responsible for all the gas?

I knew, from having made so many starters by now, that this pattern does turn into sourdough if given more time. So, I looked at cultures each day in the process, comparing them to my established starter which was yeasty and stable. Everything quiets down in there and yeast emerges a few to several days later. They don't appear to be coming from the air as many people believe, because it happens even in a covered container. But if they are already in the flour as the more reliable sources say, then why couldn't I find any? Obviously, there was more to this than just a symbiotic relationship between lactobacilli and yeast gradually increasing in number, good guys out-competing bad---the usual explanation. It was evident that there are many more bacterial and fungal species present in flour than just sourdough lactobacilli and yeast. But where were the good guys? Why weren't they growing? It was time to close the cookbooks and open the textbooks.

I turned to a large, newly updated food microbiology tome, and was disappointed to find only two brief paragraphs on sourdough, and not much more on yeasted breads. So it became a challenge to find the information, mostly borrowed from chapters on wine, beer, dairy, and other food fermentations that share something in common with sourdough. I was able to narrow down the gas producer to a Leuconostoc species. The tip-off was reading that almost 90% of spoiled doughs are caused by Leuconostoc mesenteroides or Leuconostoc dextranicum. When I started searching for more on the genus, I found Leuconostoc mesenteroides is considered the primary agent in the fermentation of an Indian steamed bread called idli. (Spoilage is a subjective thing from culture to culture.) After soaking grains for a day and then grinding them with water into a paste, there is a 15-24 hour fermentation during which the idli batter increases in volume by about one and one half to three times---the same as our wild day two growth.

Leuconostocs are also occasional spoilage bacteria in wine making, "but they undergo little or no growth during the alcoholic fermentation and tend to die off because of competition from yeasts. Nevertheless, these bacteria are capable of abundant growth in the juice and, if yeast growth is delayed, they could grow and spoil the juice or cause stuck alcoholic fermentation."[1] Many microorganisms produce characteristic aroma compounds, and so smell is also an important clue. I had previously described an unamended, all-white seed culture as smelling like sour milk with a hint of rotten cheese. Then I learned that some leuconostocs are added to dairy fermentations (such as cultured buttermilk, and cheeses like Gouda, Edam, blue cheese and havarti) for their carbon dioxide and aroma compounds. Together, these pieces all fit what we were seeing, and according to the chapter on fermented vegetables, leuconostocs are quite common in nature and found routinely on all kinds of produce and plant material. So, we can expect them to be present on grains and in flour.

Knowing how bland a flour-water mixture starts out, and seeing how the microscopic picture becomes more subdued as the sourness increases, it was apparent that the shift in populations and activity are tied to changes in acidity. pH is a fundamental factor in microbial growth. Some like it neutral while others need more acidity or alkalinity, but each species has its own pH range. The reason that the starters had become quiet on day three was because the pH had fallen and the gas-producing bacteria were no longer growing. Even though I still wasn't sure what these bacteria were, it was clear that whenever the gas-producing one or ones grew, the starter would subsequently become still and take longer to finish---sometimes by several days. I reasoned that the best solution might simply be to keep them from growing. And since they stop growing as the pH drops, why not add an acidic ingredient to the mixture to lower the pH and inhibit them from the outset?

It was May now and Evan Shack had entered the picture. Unaware that this was already a hot topic, he began posting to the message board seeking help after having just tried to make starter and getting the same result that we had. Evan was interested in learning the science behind it, and he and Pat were both eager to get to the bottom of the problem, so they volunteered to do some testing. Soon after we joined forces, Gary Wray contacted me and we invited him to join our little task team. With so many different recipes to choose from, it was clear that there are several approaches to making starter. But we needed to pick a direction to focus our problem-solving efforts. And because so many people on the message board were loyal fans of The Bread Baker's Apprentice, the group decided the goal would be to use that formula, altering it as little as possible, and make it proceed as described in the book. The fix should be simple, with ingredients readily available at home or in the average grocery store. Our choices for the acids were ascorbic (vitamin C), citric (sour salt), tartaric (cream of tartar), acetic (vinegar), lactic (yogurt), and mixed acids (fruit juices).

For our first trial we chose ascorbic acid, because it is readily available in the vitamin supplement section, known to be beneficial, and widely accepted in bread-making. Pat and I used vitamin C tablets that we had on hand. We crushed them and mixed the powder with the flour and water on day one. And much to our amazement... it worked! No gassy bacteria, and we were both growing yeast on or before day four, where it had been taking about seven days. But I discovered a little problem with supplement pills, which is that some are buffered without being labeled as such. I was not getting the pH to drop in mine even though I kept adding more and more vitamin C. When I took a closer look at the bottle, I found two ingredients listed which together, formed a buffer system that was keeping me from reaching the pH I was aiming for. Pat's vitamin C was not buffered and her starter took off in only three days.

Buffer problems aside, neither one of us enjoyed the task of crushing pills. And whirring them in a blender with the water only worked so-so. We also had no idea what the best dose would be. Gary and I both had ascorbic acid powder, so we did another experiment testing different doses ranging from 1/8 to over 1 teaspoon mixed with the 4.25 ounces of flour on day one. It was a fun experiment to do. With the jars lined up next to one another, they looked like perfect stair steps as the starters began to rise. It was easy to see which doses were most effective by how fast and how high the cultures rose. For me, the most active jars were the ones with 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoon of ascorbic acid powder. For Gary, the best results came from 1/2 and 3/4 teaspoon, and so we settled on 1/2 teaspoon as the recommended dose. While the ascorbic acid worked quite well, and may be the ingredient of choice for purists or professionals, the average person must go a little out of their way to find or mail-order it. So we decided to press on.

All of the acids that we tried, inhibited the gassy bacteria effectively, but sour salt (sometimes found with canning supplies) was so strong that it was hard to measure the tiny amounts accurately. Cream of tartar (found in the spice section) was too weak, and required an impractical amount to effectively lower the pH. We dismissed lactic acid because we didn't want to deal with dairy or go to the trouble of draining yogurt for the whey. And vinegar was so highly inhibitory to yeast in the doses required to lower the pH, that it was no solution at all. That left fruit juices. I tested the pH of various juices and made a list for the group to try---apple cider, orange, lemon, grapefruit and pineapple juices seemed like the most suitable candidates based on wide availability. But whenever trying a new juice or acid, I had the group run a negative control alongside---a duplicate to the test in every way, except using plain water. This would show whether changes in the result were due to the ingredients under evaluation, or to chance or variation in experimental conditions. Time after time though, the control jars followed the familiar pattern, while the test jars proceeded by the book.

While the trials were under way I went back to basics, monitoring the changes in acidity and examining seed cultures under the microscope every day. I recorded pH readings, growth measurements and observations at the beginning and end of each 24-hour feeding cycle. After a number of runs, I gathered my notes to compare and look for patterns. (My pH paper was only sensitive to the nearest 0.5 increment, so readings are approximate.) I found that when I acidified the day one mix to 4.5, it stayed at 4.5 until I fed it again on day two. If I didn't add more acid at that time, the freshly fed starter would read 5 and the gassy bacteria grew on day two and followed the oh-so-familiar pattern. If I acidified the day one mix to 4, it stayed at 4 until I fed it on day two, after which it read 4.5. The gassy bacteria did not grow and the culture started producing its own acid as other lactic acid bacteria were increasing in activity. During the second 24 hours, the pH dropped to 3.5 and the starter tasted really sour. Yeast usually appeared the day after. When I acidified the day one mix to 3.5, I actually got some yeast growth on day two. I'm not sure that this is the best way to go, though. I've only done it once with citric acid and yeast were not as vigorous the next day as I had hoped to see them. More testing could be done. But the key points here are that the gassy bacteria grew at or above pH 5, not at or below 4.5, and the cultures I was growing all failed to produce acid of their own in the first 24 hours. That is important because a day one flour-water paste measures about 6---quite inviting to leuconostocs. And even more importantly, in all my trials I have never seen yeast before a starter gets sour, but it usually follows very soon after.

I was hoping orange juice would perform well, since it is a good source of Vitamin C and a staple in many homes. But, it turned out not to be acidic enough to meet the group's objective, which was to use it only on the first day. However, Orange juice and apple cider do work well if they are used in place of the water for two or three days. Pat was the first to try pineapple juice, which has a lower pH than most other juices, and just happens to come in handy 6-oz cans (exactly the right measure for day one). She liked it so well that she stopped testing anything else and started recommending it to others. Almost everyone who tried it was thrilled with the results, and so pineapple juice became the solution that stuck. While the group's mission was accomplished, the story doesn't end here. But the rest will have to wait until next time, so please stay tuned...

References
1. Doyle, Michael P., Larry R. Beuchat, and Thomas J. Montville. 2001. Food Microbiology Fundamentals and Frontiers, 2nd ed. American Society for Microbiology Press, Wahington, DC.

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This article was first published in Bread Lines, a publication of The Bread Bakers Guild of America.
Vol. 16, Issue 1, March 2008

The Pineapple Juice Solution, Part 2 | The Fresh Loaf

Some time ago, Pat (proth5) posted her formula for baguettes. This was in the context of our "great baguette quest" of some months back. We were playing with higher hydration doughs and cold fermentation à la Gosselin and Bouabsa.

Pat's formula is levain-based and employs a 65% hydration dough. She has insisted repeatedly that, while higher hydration is one route to a more open, holey crumb, fermentation and technique in shaping the baguettes are at least as important and that good technique can achieve the desired open crumb even with a dryer dough.

Okay. It was past time I tested my own technique against Pat's claim.

Pat's formula is as follows:

This is for two loaves at a finished weight of 10.5 oz each

.75 oz starter

1.12 oz flour

1.12 oz water 

Mix and let ripen (8-10 hours) 

Bread

All of the levain build

10.95 oz all purpose flour

.25 oz salt

6.6 oz water 

Dough temperature 76F 

Mix to shaggy mass (Yes! Put the preferment in the autolyse!) – let rest 30 mins

Fold with plastic scraper  (30 strokes) – repeat 3 more times at 30 min intervals 

Bulk ferment at 76F for 1.5 hours – fold

Bulk ferment at 76F 2 hours

Preshape lightly but firmly, rest 15 mins

Shape.  Proof 1 hour or so

Slash

Bake with steam at 500F for about 20 mins

 

I followed this except I baked at 480F. I used Whole Foods 365 Organic AP flour. The result was an excellent, classic baguette with a crunchy crust and cool, creamy crumb. It was slightly sweet with imperceptible sourness when eaten just ... well, almost ... cooled.

Here's  the crumb:

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Thanks, Pat!

David

It is still cold here so I made a big pot of black bean soup this evening.   I also made whole wheat rolls with organic stone ground whole wheat flour that grown and milled by flourgirl51.

The rolls were great.  I was really surprised... the flour felt much courser than the whole wheat flour I usually buy and the dough seemed pretty rough, not silky.  But the rolls rose beautifully and had a wonderful wheaty flavor.  No complaints from my kids, which is usually my test of whether I've gotten too organic for my own good.  So thank you, flourgirl51, so much for the flour.  I will be looking forward to baking with the rest and trying your rye flour as well.

I've been asked (via Messages!!) to post the recipe I used for Pitas.  I made two recipes, but I'll post the one that was designed as a Pita recipe.  Apparently just about any bread recipe will work, although I don't know about high-hydration doughs.

In my experimenting, I've become curious about the role of the yeast.  My conjecture is that the yeast just helps with the development of the gluten and of the formation of a gluten skin (as I think someone called it).  I don't think it has much of any role in the puffing up.

This recipe was taken from Beatrice Ojakangas' Great Whole Grain Breads.  It's on page 277 and is called "Whole Wheat Pita Bread".

• 1 package active dry yeast (I'm sure I used considerably less)
• 2 1/2 cups warm water (warm if you go the proofing-of-the-yeast route - I don't - instead, I go for long refrigerator rises, usually overnight)
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons salad oil
• 5 1/2 to 6 cups whole wheat flour

I won't go into the details of making the dough.  Do it however you usually do it.  Develop it into a smooth ball, but it doesn't need to rise.  Ojakangas has you let it rest about 15 minutes after the mixing and before kneading 10 minutes on a board.  Then you cover it and let it rest 20 minutes.  Then you "punch dough down" and divide into four parts, and each part into four more, for a total of sixteen.  So the dough for a single standard loaf of bread will make about eight standard pitas.

Shape each piece of dough into a small ball and roll out to make a 6-inch circle.  I don't know how thick this is, but I suspect it's 3/16 of an inch.  In my subsequent pita trial, I used the special rubber bands for rolling pins and rolled them out to 1/8 inch, and they were quite a bit thinner.  Cover and let rise 30 minutes.

Here's where the Ojakangas narration gets confusing.  I'll adapt.  While the pitas are rising, preheat the oven to 500 degrees with a stone in place (for 30 minutes).  Arrange six pitas at a time on parchment paper.  With the assistance of a cookie sheet - a rimless one or a rimmed one turned upside down - transfer the pitas and the parchment to the stone.  Bake 4-5 minutes "or until rounds are puffed and tops begin to brown."  But don't wander off.  Turn on the oven light and sit on the floor to watch.  Mine started to puff up at about the two minute mark, and they were fully puffed up about a minute later.  Quite a show.

Rosalie