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I’m working on improving my spelt baguettes by slowly increasing the hydration 1% at a time trying not to overshoot and have a disaster LOL.  At only 9% of the total flour, whole spelt should give some good whole grain flavour while also helping the dough’s extensibility.  Also this should help achieve an open crumb which is quite desirable for baguettes.  I don’t think I’m quite there yet with this bake.  I also had some trouble releasing one of the baguettes from the couche causing some degassing.  As well, by using my Ankarsrum Assistent to develop the dough I have been increasing the final rise.  This time I started the preheat of the oven when the dough had a total rise of 60%.  During the oven preheat, the shaped en couche baguettes were cold retarded in the fridge.  I believe next time I will increase the hydration to 79% and start the cold retard at 65% rise.

I have been dropping the temperature of the oven sooner and more and like the effect on the crust.  I have been able to get a thinner crust this way which I love for my baguettes.

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Overnight levain

Built and fermented at 76°F to be ready in 10-12 hours.

Fermentolyse - mix 359 g water with all the levain, salt 10 g and diastatic malt 5.3 g to dissolve, then add AP flour to combine.  Rest 5-10 mins. Slap and fold x 100 or use mixer to knead until moderate gluten development,  then add hold back water 27 g gradually working in until fully absorbed then slap and fold x 100 or use mixer until mod-full gluten development.

Bulk Fermentation 82*F until aliquot jar shows 20% rise.

Do folds every 30 mins doing 2-3 folds

Could do cold retard at this point for  up to overnight. (Aliquot jar 20% rise)

Divide and pre-shape rest for 15 mins

Use spelt flour for couche

Shape en couche with final proof until aliquot jar shows 60% rise then cold retard shaped baguettes en couche for at least 15 minutes for easier scoring. 

Pre-heat oven 500*F after 30 mins add Silvia towel

Transfer to peel on parchment

Score each baguette and transfer to oven bake on steel

Bake with steam pouring 1 cup of boiling water to cast iron skillet dropping temperature to 480*F 

The baguettes are baked with steam for 9 mins.  Decrease the temperature to 450°F and continue to bake with steam for another 4 mins.  The steam equipment is removed venting the oven of steam.  The oven is left at 450ºF but convection is turned on and the baguettes bake for 8 mins rotating them halfway.  The oven temperature is then dropped to 375ºF and the baguettes rotated again if needed and baked for another 3-5 mins to achieve a rich colour crust.

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My index of bakes

I’m am behind on my posting here.  I baked this loaf a while back and it is already gone.  I recently found ground black sesame seeds at a local Asian market, this saves me the trouble of grinding the seeds myself.  I love adding the ground seeds to the dough as it gives the crumb a lovely grayish colour and a great black sesame flavour to the bread.  If you cannot find already ground black sesame seeds, then I would use my coffee grinder to grind the seeds.  You’ll just need to clean the grinder before and after use.

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For one 9x4x4” Pullman pan loaf.

Instructions

Levain

Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth. 

Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.

At a temperature of 76-78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak.  For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak.  The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.

Tangzhong 

In a sauce pan set on medium heat, stir the milk and whole wheat flour until blended. Then cook for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl.  Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature.  You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it, ensure that it is covered to prevent it from drying out.

If you plan on using a stand mixer to mix this dough, set up a Bain Marie and use your stand mixer’s bowl to prepare the tangzhong.

Dough

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 10 g of milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar and levain.  Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces.  Next add the flours.  I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas.  Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes.  Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins.  You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing.  Next add room temperature butter one pat at a time.  The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before adding in more butter.  Again, knead until well incorporated.   Next add ground black sesame and mix again until well incorporated.  You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane.  You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.  Add the nuts/seeds, then mix again until they are well distributed.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 2 - 4 hours at 82ºF.  There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape.  Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer.  Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pans by greasing them with butter or line with parchment paper.  

Lightly oil the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide it into four. I like to weigh them to have equal sized lobes. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Using an oiled rolling pin roll each ball out and then letterfold. Turn 90* and using a rolling pin roll each out to at least 8”. Letterfold again from the sides so you have a long narrow dough. Then using a rolling pin, roll flatter but keeping the dough relatively narrow.  The reason to do this extra letterfold is that the shorter fatter rolls when placed in the pan will not touch the sides of the pan.  This allows the swirled ends to rise during final proof, this is only done for appearance sake and is not necessary.  Next roll each into a tight roll with some tension. Arrange the rolls of dough inside your lined pan alternating the direction of the swirls. This should allow a greater rise during proof and in the oven.

Cover and let proof for  4-6 hours at a warm temperature.  I proof at 82°F.  You will need longer than 4-6 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350F and brush the dough with the egg-milk wash.  Just prior to baking brush with the egg-milk wash again.

Bake the loaves for 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 190ºF, rotating as needed to get even browning. Shield your loaf if it gets brown early in the baking process. After 50 mins remove the bread from the pan and bake a further 10 mins by placing the loaf directly in the oven on the rack with the oven turned down to 325ºF

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My index of bakes

I want to pose a number of questions that I hope will stir up some discussion.  I have ideas about some of them but no real facts.  Here's the first.

I have measured the volume of a starter as it rose after feeding.  I've done this several times with various starters and a poolish. The general pattern was the same.  The starter would, after a delay, start rising and build up to a roughly constant rate, then start to taper off.

If at this time I stirred the starter, it would naturally deflate and then start rising faster than before with little or no delay. I've even stirred it up again and again it would start to rise even faster. I also did this with a piece of dough, which I had to knead instead of stir, and got a similar pattern.

My overall question is: What is going on here?  It comes with sub-questions:

1a. After the initial mixing of the starter, there is the usual delay before rising starts.  But after stirring there isn't much if any delay. Why the difference?

1b. Wouldn't the handling during shaping act like kneading or stirring, and is this the reason proofing usually goes faster than bulk fermentation?

1c. Is there a way we can put this behavior to use?

Before any stirring, the samples I've measured increase in volume at a more-or-less constant rate.  If there were a lot of multiplication of the yeast, the rate should increase since more yeast cells would be available to emit gas.  I think this confirms what we're all taught, that the conditions during bulk fermentation are mainly anaerobic and the yeast cannot multiply.  But why would there be faster growth right away - without that initial lag -after stirring?

TomP

Today's bake: Laminated Honey Rye

Source: Living Bread by Daniel Leader

Notes: Doubled original recipe of TDW 1.055kg.

Substitutions:  AP flour for Type 55, Used plant-based butter.

Discussion: I wanted to try something different and this bread and process caught my eye. This bread is a nice combination of AP and rye flours giving it a rustic taste. The combination of herbs and lemon flavors makes is really quite nice. The only major issue was with the baking, the 'butter' was running out of the bead and it was fortunate that I was using rimmed pans or there would have been a pool of butter on the flour of the oven.

Make again? - Yes with modifications.

Changes/Recommendations:  75% Less butter and increase the amount of lemon juice and lemon zest by 25-30%.

*** The Images can be made to full size by placing your cursor on the image and right clicking, and then, open image in a new tab.

Ratings:

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Chilled dough and butter, ready to start the lamination process.

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Tony

I’ve been making our favourite sourdough weekly for years and have not varied the process at all (don’t fix something that’s not broken). Same flours, same temperatures, same hydration, same process and same kneading technique, which is hand stretch and folds for 15 minutes, quite an effort towards the end. Recently, I broke four ribs and punctured a lung and therefore haven’t baked in four weeks. With the help of painkillers, I got back into the kitchen today. While convalescing I read that I can achieve good dough strength by kneading for 5 minutes and then rest for 15 minutes. Repeat the cycle until you get a windowpane. This simple advice has proven very helpful as it has saved me a lot of effort. I’ll continue with this method from hereon and I wish I had known about it years ago.

Cheers,

Gavin.

EDIT Todays result:

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I've had Daniel Leader's Living Bread book for a couple of years now but have baked scarcely any (one?) of the breads that it features.  One reason for not having dived into it enthusiastically is that I am, admittedly, a rather pedestrian baker whereas many of the breads in the book exemplify a high degree of the baker's craft.  Another reason is that some of the breads are in the "That's cool but it isn't what I want" category.  And, a number of the breads call for ingredients that, here in northern Michigan, range between exotic and Unobtanium.  Since I'm cheap thrifty, spending $10 or more on flour alone for one loaf doesn't appeal. 

Still, I thought I owed it to myself to at least take a stab at some breads that do appeal to me. 

The Pain au Levaine Moderne was appealing, so I chose that as my starting point.  I've made a lot of pains au levain over the years, so I have a good baseline for working with this style of bread.  The Moderne in the title is apparently a reference to the use of a liquid levain.  I maintain a stiff starter but didn't worry about it since the levain only requires 25g of starter, knowing that it wouldn't shift the final hydration by even a tenth of a percent.  The levain itself, at 100% hydration, isn't very loose.  It's on the boundary between a soft dough and a thick batter.

The formula calls for Type 65 flour.  I have none.  A bit of reading led me to the suggestion that a combination of 77% bread flour and 23% whole wheat flour would make an acceptable approximation of the Type 65 flour.  So, not the real deal but close enough for my purposes. 

The process outlined in the formula begins with an overnight levain.  The next morning, the final dough flour is autolysed with all but 90g of the final dough water.  The autolyse is then combined with the levain, salt, and yeast and mixed for 2 minutes at speed 2 on a KitchenAid mixer, then another 4 minutes at speed 4.  Finally, the remaining water is dribbled in over a 7 minute period, still at speed 4, untill the bassinage is complete.  Then, still at speed 4, the dough is mixed another 4 minutes "until the dough is elastic and shiny".  The dough is turned out onto the countertop and given a letter fold.  It is then placed in a container for 1.5 hours, at which time another letter fold is performed.  After a further 1.5 hours in the container, it is placed in the refrigerator for an 8-12 hour retard.  It is then removed from the refrigerator and allowed to warm up for a couple of hours, rounded, bench rested, shaped into a large boule and placed in a banneton for final fermentation.  It is then baked in a preheated Dutch oven.

A couple of comments are appropriate at this point.  First, the final dough hydration is just slightly more than 80%, hence the bassinage.  Second, Mr. Leader refers to speed 4 on a KitchenAid mixer as "medium low" speed.  True enough, in terms of the mixer's range of selectable speeds.  But it's a relatively high speed for kneading with the dough hook.  And it goes on for a total of 15 minutes at speed 4.  From what I observed, the dough was already well-developed at the end of the bassinage and did not require the last 4 minutes of mixing, even though I followed the instructions for the first attempt.

My third deviation from the formula (if you're keeping count) was to skip the cold retard step and subsequent warm up.  My fourth deviation was to shape the dough into two boules, rather than one large boule.  My fifth deviation was to bake the bread on a baking sheet in a steamed oven, rather than in a Dutch oven.  Now you know why I appended "sorta" in the header. 

What I got for my first attempt was an extremely sticky dough that was also quite extensible.  This, eventually, baked up into two loaves that were each the approximate size and shape of a smallish Frisbee.  They are currently in the freezer awaiting their fate as croutons or bread crumbs.

My second attempt, which is pictured in this post, had a better outcome.  The two changes that I made from the first attempt was to lower the hydration to 75% and to shorten the mixing time.  The resulting loaves have a higher profile and a more-open crumb that those from the first attempt.  

While I like the bread, I doubt that I will use this formula again.  It leaves me with the feeling that Leader chose to push the boundaries as far as he could for this particular style.  That may be appropriate for Olympic gymnastic routines but it isn't necessarily what I want to do when making my daily bread.  Life is too short for doing things the hard way.

Another couple of pics:

I will admit that the shape was particularly useful for the BLTs that we made for dinner last evening.

There are some other breads in the book (the ryes, especially) that look interesting, so I'll check those out, too.

Paul

Hi friends!

Last time, I shared how I bake lean bread in my beloved Walmart toaster oven. Today, I will show you how I use it to bake enriched bread. The loaves you see are sesame milk bread, made with 60% milk, 8% butter, and 8% sugar. I bake them "naked" — without the graniteware roaster — in a black tin and a light-colored tin, respectively. Each dough weighs around 500g for the 9x4x4 tin.

Here’s my process:

1. Place the TRAY in the lowest slot.

2. Put the tins directly on the TRAY.

3. Seal the inside of the oven glass with a large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil.

Baking settings:

- Cold oven, no preheat

- Toast setting

- 360°F for 10 minutes, check

- 360°F for 5 minutes, check

- Cover the top of the loaves with foil

- 360°F for 10 minutes, check

- 360°F for 10 minutes

After baking, I blast a floor fan at the oven and turn on the range hood. This cools down the oven and the surrounding areas within minutes!

I've got an idea to expand the use of this little powerhouse. Once I’ve perfected the plan, I’ll share it with you!

That’s it!

see it with better lighting

P.S. 2nd version - swapping some of the flour for sesame powder and baking it in a mini pan—just for fun! 

Here's the breakdown:

82% AP flour

3% WW flour from CLAS

15% toasted black sesame powder

4.5% H₂O from WW CLAS

8% sugar

60% milk

8% butter

6% H₂O

0.7% dry yeast

15% toasted black sesame seeds

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Sorry to anyone who received weird emails notifications today. I was doing a bit of housecleaning, which triggered comment notifications that I was not expecting.

This is worthwhile opportunity for me to share that I am finally working on upgrading migrating this site from the current software it is running on. 

I've had conversations with different folks about it over the years, but to recap: this site is running on the open source CMS Drupal. Drupal version 7, in fact. Drupal 8 was released over 8 years ago. But rather than being a minor upgrade, Drupal 8 was in fact a ground up rewrite of the system. The data structures and the concepts remained mostly the same, but the code was almost totally rewritten. Most pertinent here, there was no upgrade process offered for Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. You have to "migrate" your site to Drupal 8, which more or less means rebuilding the site and then slurping over the content of the posts, comments, and pages. It is a cumbersome process. I work with Drupal often in my day job and while I'm good at it these migrations are still a very time consuming undertaking. I've put off migrating TFL for years now, hoping a cheaper, easier, better solution would emerge, but I really haven't found anything that I thought was a better fit for this site (and my skills managing it). So I am biting the bullet and starting work on the migration here, which includes dusting some cobwebs off the existing site, which is what I was trying to do today when I triggered those notifications.

My first order of business is getting the content across and rendering OK in the new system. Over the years I've used a number of different tools to allow people to embed images and format their posts, so getting it all processed correctly and carried over is quite a bit of work. Once that process is in decent shape, I'll start building up the new site, which means making it look nice, have decent landing pages and navigation, getting search, messaging, and notifications working again, those sorts of things. When it gets to that point, I'll likely set up a new site/server and offer folks who want an opportunity to check it out and give me feedback before making the final switch over to the new system. I'm still at least a couple of weeks from having something to share though, more likely not until September or October.

I'm hopeful the new system will be cleaner and easier to use, particularly on mobile devices. 8 years ago about 25% of the site traffic came from people on mobile devices. Now it is over 75%. This site just isn't optimized for that.

This is Maurizio Leos best sourdough recipe but with 80%-ish water instead of 85%. My flour actually probably could’ve taken the 85%

Mix 822g flour, 64g ww flour, and 650g water and let autolyse 1 hour.

Add 151g levain, 17g salt, 85g waterish - I didn't measure, just added reserved water by feel.

Fold every 15 minutes 3 times then every 30 minutes 3 times. Total bulk 4 hours. Shape (no preshape) and proof in fridge overnight.

Preheat oven with dutch oven at 550f for 30 minutes. Score and put loaf in, drop heat to 500f, timer for 20 minutes then lid off for 10-15min until desired color.

Things have cooled down just a bit the last few days, enough to make cooking more pleasant. This loaf is based on Trailrunner/Caroline's WW YW Pullman 13" bread. As Caroline mentions, this is a spin off of Danayo's 1-rise only bread. I scaled Caroline's recipe down a bit for use in my 9 in Pullman pan, and made just a few substitutions:

235 gm AP (Bob's Red Mill organic)

235 fresh milled Central Milling hard red spring wheat

50 gm KA Semolina that I ran through the Mockmill x2 to get it finer. No idea if that will work, but it was what I had on hand. 

20 gm fresh milled rye

280-325 gm water (100 gm of the water was yeast water)

34 gm each honey, EVOO, buttermilk (the real, cultured stuff) = 102 gm Trinity

9 gm salt

1 slightly rounded tsp of diastatic malt powder (none of these flours are malted, and the YW is pretty new. Not sure how strong it is and figured the wee beasties wouldn't mind a little extra help.)

126 gm active YW levain

Process: 

 Friday morning:

 - 7:20 a.m. Mixed 23 gm each of YW and flour (50:50 BRM AP and whole wheat) and put it out in the garage for 4 hours (temp 82 degrees). This is what it looked like at ~ 3:00. Probably not super strong yet, but it still smelled fresh and got there eventually. 

3:20 pm Mixed everything above. Mixed until everything was well incorporated, covered and rested 1 hour. Then mixed in a Bosch compact mixer for ~ 7 minutes. While the dough was mixing, I prepped the Pullman pan with some baking spray and previously used parchment paper. This spray has always served me well, nothing ever seems to stick when I use it. Still, parchment paper gives that extra layer of insurance. ;)

I had pondered holding back some of the water but my flour is always so thirsty in our dry climate that I decided to just go all in. Might not have been my best decision..... The dough was quite slack. Better than batter, but shaping wasn't going to happen. Good thing this is a loaf pan formula! I did about 50 slap and folds on the counter and that helped bring the dough together a little better. (It always amazes me how those help!) I schlorped the dough on to the parchment paper and used it as a sling to put it into the pan. DT was 78F. (Note to self - use a little less water!)

After 3.5 hours on the counter. The clips serve 2 purposes: they keep the parchment from flopping onto the dough, and also keep my trusty shower cap cover from touching the dough. Sorry for the blurry pic:

 - Saturday morning. We needed bread for lunch, and I was not willing to wait any longer. Preheated the oven to 375F and once it had been at temperature for about 15 minutes, I pulled the dough out of the fridge. This is after 13 hours in the fridge:

Baked at 375F for 30 min with the lid on, then 20 min with the lid off. The crust was still not quite our preferred color and the internal loaf temp was a bit cooler than usual so it got an additional 5 min in the oven. So total bake time was 55 min, right on par with how long most of my loaves take. 

After cooling for 2.5 hours, we needed lunch! It left a little gummy residue on the knife, but it was still just a little warm. No gumminess today, thankfully. 

The flavor is soooo good! Creamy, sort of yogurty but not quite. Definitely not the bland flavor I associate with a simple yeast based loaf. This one will definitely go into my regular rotation! It's an easy, no-muss-no-fuss loaf. Hubby liked it too - he doesn't often comment on the flavor 2 days in a row, and this loaf received that praise. I may increase the amount of whole grains next time.

Thanks again, Caroline and Abe, for all your help getting me to this point!!

Mary