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It's been a while since I had a chance to post. Spring time clean-up has taken up a lot of my time and I'm almost finally caught up. Still have to get the veggies planted if it will ever stop raining. We went from 90 F last weekend to barely 50 F this weekend on Long Island, New York. At least we didn't have any hail or snow:).

My friend requested a couple of loaves for the holiday weekend so I decided to do a variation of one of my favorites with fresh milled Durum flour and Whole Wheat along with some KAF French style flour. The addition of the mashed potatoes really makes this crumb nice and moist and soft.

This is a great bread for grilling with some olive oil and also it makes a great sandwich.

Here is the link to the BreadStorm files:

Levain Directions

Mix all the levain ingredients together  for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.  Let it sit at room temperature for around 7-8 hours or until the starter has doubled.   You can use it immediately in the final dough or let it sit in your refrigerator overnight.

 Main Dough Procedure

Mix the flours, and the water for about 1 minute.  Let the rough dough sit for about 20 minutes to an hour.  Next add the levain,  olive oil, potatoes and salt and mix on low for 4 minutes.  (Note: with the Ankarsrum I adjusted the speed from low to medium).  You should end up with a cohesive dough that is slightly tacky but very manageable. 

Remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl or work surface and do several stretch and folds.  Let it rest covered for 10-15 minutes and then do another stretch and fold.  Let it rest another 10-15 minutes and do one additional stretch and fold.  After a total of 2 hours place your covered bowl in the refrigerator and let it rest for 12 to 24 hours.  (Since I used my proofer set to 79 degrees F. I only let the dough sit out for 1.5 hours before refrigerating).

When you are ready to bake remove the bowl from the refrigerator and let it set out at room temperature still covered for 1.5 to 2 hours.  Remove the dough and shape as desired.

The dough will take 1.5 to 2 hours depending on your room temperature and will only rise about 1/3 it's size at most.  Let the dough dictate when it is read to bake not the clock.

Around 45 minutes before ready to bake, pre-heat your oven to 540 degrees F. and prepare it for steam.  I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.

Right before you are ready to it in the oven, score as desired and then add 1 cup of boiling water to your steam pan or follow your own steam procedure.

Lower the temperature to 450 degrees.  Bake for 35-50 minutes until the crust is nice and brown and the internal temperature of the bread is 205 degrees.

Take the bread out of the oven when done and let it cool on a bakers rack before for at least 2 hours before eating.

I was looking for something different and I stumbled on this recipe: https://bewitchingkitchen.com/2012/07/22/there-will-be-bread/ I had saffron sitting in a cupboard so this was a good opportunity to use some up. I expected my dough to be bright yellow like in the original recipe but that did not happen. I wonder if it was because I’ve had the saffron for a while. 

The one departure from my usual method is that I decided to score these loaves so final proof was done seam side up rather than my usual seam side down. 

Recipe. 

Makes 3 loaves

700 g strong bakers unbleached flour

200 g freshly milled Kamut flour

100 g freshly milled rye flour

3 large pinches of saffron

700 g water (divided)

2 tsp fennel seeds

22 g salt

30 g whole milk yogurt 

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

Extra unbleached and wholegrain flour to feed levain 

The day before:

1. About 8 hours before bedtime, take 2 g of refrigerated starter and feed it 4 g of filtered water and 4 g of wholegrain rye flour. Let sit in a warm spot. 

The night before:

1. Mill the Kamut and Rye berries if using, on the finest setting of your mill or measure out commercial whole grain rye and whole grain wheat flour if you don’t mill your own.
2. Place the required amount of each freshly milled flour in a tub and add the unbleached flour to it. Cover and set aside.
3. Feed the levain 20 g of water and 20 g of wholegrain flour. Let it rise at room temperature for the night.

Dough making day:

1. Feed the levain 100 g of filtered water and 50 g of wholegrain flour as well as 50g of strong baker’s flour. Place in a warm spot. Let rise until doubled (about 4-5 hours).
2. In the meantime, boil some water and soak the saffron threads in it. Let cool. 
3. About two hours before the levain is ready, strain the saffron water into a stand mixer’s bowl and add enough filtered water to measure 700 grams. Add the flours, and mix on speed 1 until all the flour has been hydrated. Let this autolyse for a couple of hours.
4. Once the autolyse is done, add the salt, the yogurt, the fennel seeds, and the levain to the bowl. Mix on speed one for a minute to integrate everything, then mix on speed 2 for 9 minutes. 
5. Remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place in a lightly oiled covered tub. Let rest 30 minutes in a warm spot (oven with light on).
6. Do 2 sets of coil folds at 30 minute intervals and then 2 other sets at 45 minute intervals, and then let the dough rise to about 40-50%. It should have irregular bubbles visible through the sides of the container and quite a few large bubbles on top as well. 
7. Tip the dough out on a bare counter, sprinkle the top with flour and divide into 3 equal portions. Round out the portions into rounds with a dough scraper and let rest 30 minutes on the counter.
8. Do a final shape by flouring the top of the rounds and 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 fold 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. Let sit for a few seconds to deal the seam. 
9. Sprinkle a mix of rice and all purpose flour in the bannetons. Place the dough seam side up in the bannetons. Let rest for a few minutes on the counter and then put to bed in a cold (38F) fridge overnight. I try to keep this between 10 and 11 hours. 

Baking Day

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

2. Cover the pots and bake the loaves at 450 F for 25 minutes, remove the lids, and bake for another 22 minutes at 425 F. Internal temperature should be 205 F or more.

Not bad for a newbie scorer. 

400g Strong Bread Flour

100g Plain Flour

45g Sugar

10g Salt

25g Milk Powder

15g Fresh Yeast

100g Starter - (100% Hydration)

225g Cold Water - 5c deg

40g Butter

250g Butter For laminating

9cm x 13cm @ 3.5mm - 4mm thick

Makes about 18 

Method:

Mix everything except butter

Add butter gradually

Mix well, knead by hand after

Wrap in cling wrap and refrigerate for 24 hours

Next day Make your butter block do 3 layers lock in

1 double fold and 1 single fold

Refrigerate till next day for when ready(4c deg)

Egg wash - 1 egg/20g Milk/pinch of salt(Beat and sift) refrigerate after 1st use

Rolled/pin to 3mm to 4mm thick then shape/roll and apply eh Wash

Proof 2.5 hours at 25-27c deg

Apply egg wash again before baking

Bake for 16 minutes @ 170c deg (convection oven)

Suppose to be Benny’s “Furikake and Miso” sourdough but missed sesame seeds! Overall amazing flavour but can’t really taste the full flavour having to missed one of the most important ingredients! Definitely making it again without missing ingredients 😂 @bread_md 

340g Strong Bread Flour

60g Whole Wheat

312g Water

7g Salt

86g Starter(12% of total dough weight-100% Whole wheat-mature)

40g Miso

3 tbsp Toasted Sesame Seeds

Inspired by “Trevor Jay Wilson’s Open Crumb Mastery”

Always trying to make it better the second time around.

Recipe:

320g Strong Bread Flour

80g Whole-wheat flour

320g Water

8g Salt

90g Starter(White Starter - 100% Hydration) 12.5% of total dough weight 

10 hours Autolyse @ 14-16c Deg

Starter PH - 3.8 (not sure how accurate, not a semi solid ph meter)

20c deg IDT

3 minutes mix

30 minutes rest

2x Stretch and folds with 30 minutes interval 

2x coil folds with 30 minutes interval 

IDT- 21.3c deg

Bulk proof - started @ 10:30pm @ 18.5c- 14c deg room temp to 7:00am

Shape and proof for 5 hours @ 15c deg

48 hours cold proof @ 4c deg

For this bake of my usual country sourdough I wanted to see how well the aliquot jar correlates with pH readings.  I have usually been shaping when the aliquot jar shows a 60% rise and now trying to push bulk wanted to cold retard when the rise is 110%.  This might be a bit overproofed but we’ll see.  From what I’ve seen shared from other bakers, they are shaping when pH reaches 4.4 and baking when pH is 4.1.  Now I do not have my new pH meter so I think I have to take these readings with a grain of salt, but I did calibrate my meter prior to use but keep in mind the readings were taken by placing the meter’s blunt probe end into a separate small aliquot jar that I did so that readings wouldn’t affect the dough or the aliquot jar used for measuring rise.  The pH meter for dough and bread is still back ordered so these reading maybe quite off.  Ideally I should have taken a small amount of the dough and mixed it with water and then take a reading, but I was too lazy to do this.

The following are the readings I got.

600 am 600 slap and folds completed

620 am bench letterfold pH 5.64 proofer set at 80*F 

640 am lamination 

705 am coil fold pH 5.57

725 am coil fold pH 5.57

750 am coil fold pH 5.47

815 am coil fold pH 5.45

845 am coil fold pH 5.28

945 am aliquot rise 25% pH 5.1 

1100 am 40% rise pH

1125 am 52.5% rise pH 4.8

1152 am 60% rise pH 4.4 shaped 

1242 pm 75% rise pH 4.28 proofed 80ºF 

102 pm 85% rise pH 4.21

130 pm 95% rise pH 4.01

205 pm 110% rise pH 4.02 into cold retard

715 am next day pH 4.02

So you can see that I didn’t cold retard at 4.1 instead when the aliquot jar showed 110% rise the pH had fallen to 4.02 a fair amount lower than 4.1.  Surprisingly the pH the following day after 17 hours in the 3ºC fridge was the same 4.02.  Given that 900 g of dough would take several hours to reach 3ºC I would have expected the pH to fall even further and was surprised that it did not.  However, I’m not sure how accurate my pH meter truly is.

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TFL'er Bake List Week #5...  Slowly but surely working on the list of bakes I saw on TFL and wanted to try.  This week's bake was based on Paul's Barley/Wheat Bread loaf.

I used a 2-stage levain build with blueberry yeast water and a small rye starter inoculation.  Instead of hard, red whole wheat, I tried a soft, white whole wheat, and I used most of the WW in the levain builds to make sure it was fully hydrated.  The second levain was over doubled in 5 hours, and had a yeasty/yogurty aroma.

This was the first time I used this soft white wheat, and it doesn't seem very thirsty so I dropped the hydration to 70%.

The bake went well and the dough was easy to handle.  It wasn't sticky at any point during the bake. The only thing that was unexpected was the small size of the loaf.  After the initial mix, I thought I had missed one of the flours.  I had to double check my notes to make sure I didn't miss anything.  I'm guessing it's from the high amount of whole grain???  The loaf did rise well and had a good oven spring, but I should have used Paul's 600g flour per loaf instead of dropping to my usual 475g.  It would have filled the pan out nicer.

Loaf smells great and looking forward to slicing it tomorrow morning for breakfast!

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I think this is my favorite ciabatta I made so far. I really like the slightly more acidic flavor the levain brought to the bread. I enjoy sourdough on the milder side, not a huge fan of overly sour bread. In this formula, I think the biga and the added yeast were the ones responsible for the rise, and the levain gave a more complex flavor profile. I wonder if the biga contributed to the flavor in this case, since levain was also used, it may have simply overpowered the more subtle acidity of the biga. Next time I will try and see what happens if I leave out the biga altogether. 

The only thing I was not completely satisfied with was the shape of the baked loaf. This time I was aiming for a taller, more barrel-like shape, so I shaped the dough combining methods of Ciril Hitz and Scott MeGee, inspired by Alan (alfanso). Although the dough had a nice oven spring and the crumb was very light and open, it didn't hold its shape that well. My guess is that I might have overproofed the dough either at the bulk stage or at the final proof.

05/27/2021.

• 468 g Patel brand stone-ground whole wheat durum. Canadian.
• 468 g Swad brand "Sharbati Gold" whole wheat flour. Imported from India. This is a flavorful/sweet and relatively soft wheat intended for Indian flatbreads. It is considered a high quality wheat in Indian cuisine.
• 132 g King Arthur bread flour.
• 132 g Arrowhead Mills organic all purpose flour.
• 468 + 468 + 132 + 132 = 1200.  Final dough flour.
• 24 g salt. approx 2%.
• 15 g whole chia seed, soaked in 60 g water.
• 84 g fresh levain, 100% hydration. (Made with King Arthur Bread flour.) Approx 3.5% PFF.  .035 x 1200 = 42.   
• total flour = 1200 + 42 = 1242.
• 374 g water with the WW durum. (Was too much. Dough was a gluey paste.)
• 304 g water with the Sharbati WW flour. (Intentionaliy used too little to make up for over-hydrated durum.)
• 166 g water with the KA bread flour and AP flour.
• 1/2 tsp Italian seasoning, 1/2 tsp ground oregano, 1/2 tsp whole fennel seeds.
• 40 g hold-back water added in  (2 additions of 20 g each.)
• 374 + 304 + 166 + 42 ( in levain) +  20 + 20 =  926 g water. (not counting chia soaker.)
• Total hydration, not counting chia soaker: 926 / 1242 = 74.4%.

Thursday the 27th: Durum was mixed with just water and soaked about an hour. Sharbati was mixed with water, intentionally a little dry, and then kneaded into the overly wet durum. The combined dough mass was coated in about 1 tsp of grape-seed oil, and left to soak/autolyse an additional 4 hours.

The KABF, A.M. AP and salt were combined by themselves, hydrated with 166 g water, and the resultant dough kneaded into the durum/Sharbati main dough.

The hydrated chia and the levain were then kneaded into the main dough.

20 g water was kneaded in.

Italian seasoning, oregano, and fennel seeds were kneaded in.

Another 20 g water was kneaded in.

4 sets of stretch-and-folds.

Bulk ferment, from the addition of levain to fold/shape/banneton, was 4 hours.

11-7/8" outer diameter (11-1/4" inner diameter) banneton, linen liner dusted with rice flour and AP flour.

Overnight proof,  10 hours in fridge. No room temp proofing, neither before nor after fridge.

05/28/2021.

Friday the 28th: Baked on a 15" Lodge cast iron skillet, with an inverted stainless steel bowl as cover. 

Dough weighed 2210 g right before going in oven.  (Lost some durum yesterday, as it stuck to things.)

• Oven preheated to 465 F.
• covered, 450 F, 5 min.
• covered, 425 F, 15 min.
• covered, 400 F, 15 min.
• uncovered, 400 F, 25 min.
• Final internal temp : 209.1 F.  Thump sounds good.

Crumb is excellent.  Fennel and oregano were good additions. The Italian seasoning tastes off, and appears to be the only negative.

One of the advantages of doing the same recipe back to back combined with having reasonably decent notes is it's easier to reproduce the last bake.

Tweaks for this bake: No steam (sprayed with water instead), and a foil tent for the second half of the bake. Otherwise, I did everything the same as bake #1 (same hydration, fermentation times, all of it). Oh and I followed minioven's advice and made sure the rim if the pan was in the center of the toaster oven.

The crust is more evenly colored on the sides and bottom, and the top is not so overcooked which is appreciated. 

Update, crumb shot below. I'm not a good photographer, and phone cameras don't always capture things as well as possible. That compression of the crumb on the sides/bottom is much better than the last loaf. The crust is a bit more chewy than we care for in a sandwich bread maybe. Overall it's a reasonable bake, especially for a toaster oven, lol. This one probably won't be high on my list of what to bake next, only because there are others we like much more. On to exploring the nuances of our new oven! First up, verify internal temps. 🌡️

Mary