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sourdough loaf

sourdough crumb

Yesterday I made my first loaf of sourdough based on the Norwich Sourdough recipe from Susan's wildyeast blog. I have been baking bread regularly for the past two or three years -- mainly breads with overnight pre-ferments -- but had never attempted to make my own sourdough because I don't like the flavor of an overly sour bread. After learning a lot more about sourdough from books and this site, I realized that most of the information I was getting reinforced the idea that sourdough isn't necessarily all that sour. Plus, my kitchen is a nice 75-78 degrees these days, which seemed to be ideal for nurturing a new sourdough starter. So, I mixed together some flours and water, waited, fed it, and waited some more. After a week, my starter was more than doubling in four hours when fed a 1:2:2 mixture of starter, water, and flour by weight (I used KAF organic AP flour and a little rye in the first mixture, all AP after that) so I figured it was ready to test the starter with a real loaf. And it worked! I was extremely pleased with the whole process, and the bread tasted better than I had hoped. It really isn't sour at all; in fact, my husband and I thought it had a somewhat honey-like flavor. The loaf was baked on a pre-heated stone and covered for the first 15 minutes of baking with a pre-heated wide, shallow clay pot (it's about 11" in diameter and 5-6" deep and doesn't have a drain hole) that I bought specifically for that purpose. I love the color the crust gets when using the pot, although it limits my shaping options.

Thanks to everyone on this site who contributes such helpful information. I can hardly wait to try more sourdough recipes that I wasn't able to attempt before.

Bread and all of its manifestations. That's what this blog is about. Particular emphasis is upon earth ovens, sourdough bread baking and flatbreads. Currently, I'm scouring the web and my book collection for photos of earth ovens from around the world. Whenever possible, I list my sources to give the photographer or agency credit for any photos used.
If you have photos of earth ovens and would like to share, please email them to me, and I'll try to put them on my blog.
For lots more information on bread and ovens, please visit my virtual storefront at: http://stores.lulu.com/store.php?fAcctID=775822

Breadhunter's website:
http://breadhunter.com

Breadhunter's bread blog
http://breadhunter-breadforall.blogspot.com/

  I baked these rolls using a recipe from a book published in 1918 and meant to help in the conservation of wheat flour. It has many interesting recipes using other grains such as corn, buckwheat, etc. and the recipes that I tried all turned out beautifully. These rolls contain a minimal amount of sugar and butter and taste great.I made them for bread baking day #12.

Ingredients

1/2 cup scalded  milk

1 egg, well beaten

2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp melted butter

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

zest of 1 (organic) lemon

1/2 cup (60 g)  corn flour (I used Bob’s Red Mill brand)

1 tsp active dry yeast dissolved in 2 tbsp warm water

3/4 cup to 1-1/2  (105g to 210 g) cups bread flour (or as needed) (I used King Arthur bread flour)

Pour the scalded milk over the sugar and salt, mix well and set aside to cool. Once the milk mixture is lukewarm add 3/4 cup of bread flour and the dissolved yeast. Mix vigorously and let the sponge ferment,covered, until doubled.

When the sponge is light add the melted butter, egg, grated lemon rind and corn flour. Mix well at low speed then add just enough bread flour to make a dough that is very soft but well developed and just slightly tacky.  Do not add too much flour or the rolls will turn out dry and heavy.

Lightly grease a bowl and place the dough to rise, covered, until doubled in bulk.

Preheat the oven to 375°F.

Gently transfer the risen dough onto a lightly greased surface and divide it in 12 equal pieces. Shape each into small round rolls (the dough is too soft to keep well any other shape more complex than rounds or ovals). Place each roll onto a rimless baking sheet and lightly brush with milk.

Let the rolls rise, covered, until doubled. Brush again with milk then with sharp kitchen scissors cut a decorative pattern on each roll.

Bake for about 20 minutes until nice and golden.

These rolls are great to eat either warm or cold. They can also be split and toasted to have with jam or marmalade, and can be frozen once cooled.

http://bakinghistory.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/corn-flour-rolls-bbd-12-small-breads/

i fired up the mud oven on thursday, and had a hectic evening of trying to time everything correctly.

i made pizza, brussel sprouts with garlic, onions and breadcrumbs, sourdough rye, french bread, and roasted corn, sweet potatoes and garlic.

as you can see, i overproofed the french bread, but the sourdough came out perfect, with a great oven spring. i soaked my door a second time before the bread to increase the amout of steam in the oven, and it really seemed to work.

sorry for the lousy pictures, but by the end of the evening i was exhausted. getting the timing down to maximize the oven is really going to be a challenge.

here's the group shot. i took this while all the veggies were roasting. leftover pizza, sourdough, french and brussel sprouts:

i saw the brussel sprouts at the farmer's market and knew we had to try them in the oven. i roasted them at about 600 degrees. they look ugly but taste fantastic:

the bread. the sourdough was about 25% rye made from my 100% hydration starter, thaddeus. thad's been lounging in the fridge since the weather started getting hot, so this is not only his inaugeral run in the mud oven but first bake in about 5 weeks.

the french bread in the back is based on reinhart's recipe in BBA. i overproofed it because of timing issues, and it tastes okay but is really a disappointment.

i'm going to try and fire the oven again next week. i just brought in a fresh supply of almond wood, and the starter is back to living on the counter. i'm going to try and see how many loads of bread i can cook in one firing.

My starter is extremely active these days. I think that's one reason this bread turned out so incredibly well. When I started to make it, I was sort of sneaking around about it. It was a bit warm outside (around 28C) and I wasn't absolutely certain that turning on the oven would be a big hit.

My fears were unfounded. We loved this bread. And no wonder. It was fabulous!

It was equally delicious on its own, or buttered, or toasted and buttered. And it made the most stellar Reuben sandwiches (made with home-made red cabbage sauerkraut)! Did we take photos of the sandwiches? Ha. Of course not. We were too busy stuffing them down our gullets.

I was particularly thrilled with the slashes on the bread. I've never managed to have slashes stay so well defined. I only hope I can reproduce this! I can't wait until we have enough freezer space so I can make it again.

For a more detailed account, please see:

• blog from our kitchen: wild onion rye bread


• recipe for wild onion rye bread (based on Mary's (aka Breadchick) Dark Onion Rye)

The all-purpose flour I use is "No Name" (Loblaws) unbleached (about 11.5% protein). The rye flour is "Five Roses" Dark Rye flour (no idea how much protein). The bread flour is "Robin Hood" 'best for bread' flour (about 13% protein).

And I used my shiny new digital scale to weigh the ingredients!

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Lest anyone who reads my posts think I know what I'm doing, I've decided to post my latest adventure as an illustration to the contrary.

The story of how the tandoor got into my back yard is one for which the world is not prepared, but it is there, the weather is too hot to turn on the oven, and I thought to myself “Well, this is a good time to learn to make naan.”

The first step is getting the right tools.  After watching and watching the YouTube video of a chef making naan, I decided that the little tool seemed pretty handy.

Although it just looks like a wad of towels, it is actually a convex pad of compressed straw covered with a cloth.  It is firm enough so that (if you know what you are doing) you can get the naan dough to make good contact with the side of the tandoor.  It is pictured below:

Armed with the tool – the next step is to heat up the tandoor.  It took about two hours for my model (pictured below) to heat to the point where the walls were nearly 700F.

So it was time to cook the naan. 

I took about 4oz of dough and shaped it into thin disks and then draped them over the dough pad (sort of as per the video), gave them a quick spray of water (so they would stick better – hahahahahaha) and steeled myself to put my hand near a 700F tandoor entrance to stick the dough to the side.My first disk (of six)dropped promptly to the bottom to become a flaming dough ball.

Oh well.  I learned that you really need to apply some firm pressure on that tool.  Never mind the smell of burning feather as the hair was singed off my hand.

Finally disk three stuck.  But it also stuck to the side of the tandoor when it was done and came off in shreds.  Four was the turning point (or so I thought) and I moved on to five feeling like I had figured this thing out.  Four and five are featured in the pictures below.

Number six showed me to be overconfident and slid off the dough pad without ever making contact with the tandoor wall.

Well, two out of six isn’t bad – and what bread I did get was eaten with relish.  Of course, failure never deters me – it just makes me more determined.  I’ll be back with a report when the whole thing has been perfected. In about a year or so...

Meanwhile my consolation prize is pictured below.  It has been a long while since I had real Tandoori food…

I am interested in baking a rustic bread with huge holes or bubbles and a thick crisp crust - any recipes come to mind? I have tried several chabatta bread recipes which come close but I'm looking for larger bubbles.