Blogs

I've recently picked up baking again, in particular sourdough. My baking mostly occurs at sea level in CA, but I am spending part of summer at our house near West Yellowstone at 6,800 ft.

I brought my starter with me and did my first bake here. I anticipated altitude-related problems, but it turned out fine (I made a few adjustments).

The formula was:

The "white" flour was Wheat Montana All Purpose (13.3% protein, so more like bread flour), and the whole wheat flour for the levain was KA Whole Wheat, and for the final dough, it was Central Milling T80 flour.

Process:

• Mix flour and water, autolyse for 1 hr
• Mix-in starter
• Mix-in remaining water and salt, dough temp about 74F
• 3-4 minutes of rubaud mixing
• 3 minutes of slap and fold mixing
• 4 times: wait 40 minutes, stretch and fold (with the last two being coil folds)
• Finish bulk ferment at 40% rise (75F)
• Pre-shape
• 30 minute bench rest
• Shape batard, place in banneton
• Cold retard 12+ hours
• Open bake on stone with tray with ice cubes underneath, 450F 25 minutes
• Bake another 25 at 430F
• Switch oven off, let cool in oven for approx 30 minutes
• Cool on rack completely

I like the resulting crumb and taste. Not overly sour, crumb nice and open, but no enormous holes.

It has been a while since I did anything creative with my bread making. If there is such a thing as a "comfortable rut", our usual 75-100% whole grain sourdough sandwich bread has been just that. With the pending visit of a family member, I was inspired to dust off the clay baker and do something more creative for her. My scoring skills are rusty could use some work (they were never all that great really), but otherwise it looks pretty good so far. It's cooling at the moment; I'll edit and add a crumb shot later as time allows.

Total flour 550 gm (KA bread flour 138 gm, Central Milling High Protein bread flour 137 gm, Sprouted Spelt 100 gm, Hard Red Spring (freshly milled) 175 gm)

 Levain 120 gm

 Water 375 gm  

Salt 10 gm 

Safflower oil 1 Tbsp (we prefer a little softer crust and crumb) 

Water and levain combined, then flour added. Mixed by hand until no obvious dry flour, then covered and rested ~ 20 min.  

Salt and oil incorporated by hand a bit, then kneaded in my compact Bosch for 10 minutes. Dough temp 80f at the start of bulk.  

Bulk x 4 hours (~ 50 % rise) with a couple of S&F in the first hour. Then pre-shaped > 15 min rest > shaped > into an oblong banneton, covered and into the fridge overnight.  

Baked today (after 20 hours of cold retard) in an oblong clay baker at 500f x 20 min (lid on) then 450f (lid off). It's cooling at the moment.  

I had been having difficulty getting a reasonable crumb since moving here. The 6000 ft altitude combined with my preference for a high percent of fresh milled flour haven't been a winning combination, and  I don't like the idea of adding VWG. Using just a bit of the Central Milling high protein bread flour seems to have fixed the problem so far, though the final proof is pending. I'll add a crumb shot later.  

I will probably not bake this very often over the summer months, but might repeat it once cooler fall weather returns. 

This video popped up on my computer several weeks ago and it looked intriguing to play with. It definitely isn't going to win any awards for appearance or presentation.  

I tweaked the flour a bit (she uses 100% AP) and added a few seeds. I didn't take time to weigh some of the ingredients, this loaf was "flying by the seat of my pants" in some respects, lol.  

Flour 280 gm  (48 gm AP, 48 gm KA bread flour, 185 gm sprouted spelt)

Instant Yeast - 1 tsp 

Salt - 1 tsp

Sugar 1 – tsp

Hulled hemp seeds - 1 rounded Tbsp 

Sunflower seeds - ~ 2 Tbsp 

Lukewarm water 250 gm 

Olive oil (or any really) for the pan. (Video says 1 Tbsp but that was a bit much for my pan.) 

Side note... my frying pan is a Ninja Foodi Neverstick 10.25 in frying pan. Finding a lid that would fit was a bit of a challenge, but thankfully Amazon came through. The lid needs to be domed just a little, and the multi-pan lid we have dips down into the pan enough for the bread to stick to the lid when cooking. 

Process: 

 1) Mix the dry ingredients and inclusions. 

 2) Add water and mix until no dry flour remains. (After the initial hand mix, I let things rest for about 15 minutes then gave it a few S&F for good measure. Probably not needed, but I do take pleasure in handling the dough just a bit....)

 3) Cover and let the dough rise for about an hour.

 4) Grease the (room temp) frying pan with olive oil. 

 5) Degas dough by rolling the dough with a spatula.

 6) Sprinkle with flour and roll a few more times.

 7) Put the dough in the (room temp) frying pan.

 8) Cover and let the dough rise for 30 minutes.

 9) Cover and cook over low heat (20-25 min). A little bit of moisture condensed and dripped onto the top of the bread, but it didn't seem to do any harm. 

10) Turn over and cook for another 15 minutes without the lid. I checked at the 10 minute mark and there were areas that were still a little "doughy". Your time may vary... 

This was mostly cooled and ready to eat about 45 min after cooking. 

I've made it several times now. It was quick and easy, with very little handling. Bonus, it didn't heat up the kitchen. It might be fun for making with kids, camping (RV or other), or a variety of other uses. My 95 y.o. mother-in-law (who made her first loaf of bread ever about 2 years ago) thought she would like to make this. It definitely came in handy after being gone for a couple weeks. After only a couple of hours after getting home, we had fresh bread ready to eat... another plus while my starter was getting back up to speed. I suspect it will come in handy again at some point.  

First time attempting croissant dough. Any help with butter or margarine bread flour  yeast.   I have new sheeter 

any advice appreciated

We are having a mediterranean fish stew tonight for dinner and leftovers tomorrow so I decided to bake these spelt sourdough baguettes, which I haven’t done for almost 2 years.  Since I baked them last I’ve made some changes to how I develop the dough.  I now use my Ankarsrum Assistent which I find is as gentle as hand developing dough and I do much more gluten development than I used to.  The idea is that if I develop the gluten more than I used to, the dough should be able to be fermented for a longer time allowing better flavour development.  Where I used to aim for 30-35% total dough rise as the time to bake, I am now aiming for around 60-65%.  I am hoping that the spelt at 9% will allow a nicely open crumb.  I was video recording my scoring, when I knocked my iphone onto one of the unescorted baguettes causing quite the deep dent.

IMG_1324.jpeg

IMG_6738.jpeg

IMG_1318.jpeg

Overnight levain

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

Fermentolyse - mix 356 g water with all the levain, salt 10 g and diastatic malt 5.3 g to dissolve, then add AP flour to combine.  Slap and fold x 100 then add hold back water 27 g gradually working in until fully absorbed then slap and fold x 100.

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 and 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.

IMG_1329.jpeg

IMG_1331.jpeg

IMG_1325.jpeg

IMG_1327.jpeg

My index of bakes

…and when you make ice cream, you end up with a lot of unused egg whites. And when you have a lot of egg whites, @txfarmer’s super soft sourdough sandwich bread calls my name. So I whipped up 2.5 kg of her dough substituting buttermilk for her specified whole milk. And when it’s ice cream season, it’s also burger season so a quarter of the dough went into burger buns topped with @nbicomputer’s onion roll topping. Interestingly, the onion topping kind of turned the buns into coronavirus look-alikes. The rest of the dough went into what I’m now calling my White Buttermilk Brioche. The buttermilk causes a much darker crust than I usually get on this super light, shredible sourdough crumb. Buns worked great for our burgers and just had an excellent egg salad sandwich on the brioche. Good to be back home and baking.

Buttermilk Brioche - 2.jpeg

Phil

My wife wanted these sausage and pepper sandwiches for dinners this week, so I made a batch of "Italian bread" as sandwich rolls from Bread Baker's Apprentice. The only deviations I made from the recipe were to let the biga retard in the fridge for about 36 hours, and to retard the proof again for about 9 hours while I was at work. Both changes were due to not having time to plan the bake properly over the weekend after getting back from a work trip. Despite the changes, the rolls turned out great. I expected them to be longer, but the sausages only stuck out the ends of the rolls slightly, so it worked out fine.

I hadn’t baked a cake in quite sometime and wanted something to share with the staff of our building.  I had this saved from quite sometime ago and never made it so it was overdue.

IMG_1280.jpeg

IMG_1279.jpeg

IMG_1277.jpeg

IMG_1281.jpeg

I unfortunately forgot to take a photo of the crumb.  It was nicely studded with the orange zest and was a lovely yellow colour.  I loved the orange glaze, it was thin and crisp and really enhanced the eating of this loaf.  It had wonderful orange flavour with hints of cardamom.  Cardamom is pretty citrusy so it really goes well with orange.

Ingredients for 1 loaf 

1.5 cups (187.5 g) AP flour

250 g granulated sugar (used 225 g and can be reduced even more try 200 g next time)

2.25 g kosher salt

3.75 g baking powder

1 tsp ground cardamom

180 g whole milk

112 g vegetable oil

75 g eggs (1.5)

1 tablespoons orange zest from one orange

3/4 tsp (3 g) vanilla extract

Instructions 

1.   Preheat oven to 350°F (180°C). Butter and flour a (8/x 4/2-inch) loaf pan.
2.   In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and cardamom; make a well in center of mixture. Add milk, oil, eggs, zest, and vanilla, whisking until smooth. Pour batter int prepared pan.
3.   Bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, about 55 minutes. Let cool in pans for 10 minutes. Remove from pans, and let cool completely on wire racks. Drizzle with Orange Glaze.

ORANGE GLAZE

For 1 loaf

120 g icing sugar

1 tsp orange zest

40 g fresh orange juice 

This turned out to be far too much glaze, half as much would be plenty.

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together all ingredients until smooth. Use immediately.

Another Italian style bake using my DIY multi-cereal flour blend, as developed for my recent Pagnotta Multicereali bake.

It comprises 85% Dallagiovanna Manitoba flour with the balance being an equal parts mix of wheat, rye, barley, oats and rice grain all freshly milled together.

I've never had much luck with naturally leavened ciabatta - mine tend to be tough as old boots and with small alveoli, so I used fresh yeast in a 45% hydration biga. 100% of the flour is in the biga.

I made the biga in my Kenwood Chef with the K beater. I highly recommend this method as it is so easy. You just put the flour in the mixer, run at low speed and slowly trickle in the yeasted water and mix until all the flour is just hydrated.

It's important that all the flour is hydrated and I don't think some other methods of mixing do this.

The biga temp should be about 22c after mixing. It is then stored at 18-19C for 18-20 hours.

The rest of the bake was standard ciabatta method. Note that without a spiral mixer it is difficult to hydrate a 45% hydration biga and it might be better to make it at a somewhat higher hydration.

Here is my bake log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FzIimDFs-A3mwSydhgP-w8xGJnLGHufG/view?usp=sharing

Biga ready to put in mixer:

I'm happy with this bake - good crispy crust and open crumb.

Lance

Nigella seeds add so much savoury depth to bread and works really well with sourdough. For anyone in Toronto, Blackbird Baking has a seeded loaf which uses a mixture that includes nigella seeds. Their seeded loaf was a staple for me many years ago. The defining feature of the loaf, I think, is definitely the addition of nigella seeds! Recipe here.

I did not think to bake with nigella seeds until very recently. I have made these seeded buns 2 or 3 times prior but this is my first time adding nigella seeds. I was super pleased with the flavor it brought. If you've never tried nigella seeds, they taste savoury, vaguely allium, slightly oregano-ish. Hard to describe!

For this bake, I was a bit lazy with the stretch and folds. I usually do at least 3 and sometimes up to 5 stretch and folds for this type of dough, but this time I only did 2. As a result the buns were not as open crumbed as they could have been I think. 

I also typically bake the following morning after cold bulk fermentation in the fridge. For this bake however, I did not form and bake the buns until more than 41 hours later. The buns were flavorful but I think the crumb could have been better - in previous iterations of the same recipe, I have had a much airier open crumb structure. I think it was slightly over-fermented, but some additional strech and folds could probably have fixed this.

I have heard that pizza dough is optimally cold fermented for 3-5 days. I am wondering if this also holds true for doughs like ciabatta or if that amount is way too long. In both pizza dough and ciabatta the goal is similar - crispy crust, open crumb, big air bubbles. They are both also relatively high hydration doughs. Does anyone have experience cold-fermenting high hydration doughs for 3-5 days? I would be curious to know the results. 

If you would like to try these seeded buns, the recipe is here. I highly recommend trying nigella seeds!

Below is a previous bake using the same recipe, but without the addition of nigella seeds and only 14 hours in the fridge.