alfanso's blog

as we pack up this morning to get out of the way of Hurricane Matthew.  On our way to friends on the Gulf Coast.

SFBI Pain au Levain.  2x350g, 2x605g.

An invite to a dinner party for 8 folks at our uncle's house prompted my wife to say that she would like me to bake a few Semolina batards to bring.  She, OTOH, decided on baking the above pictured rum infused and lemon zested Torta di Riso (Italian Rice Cake).

The slew of baguettes that I made the other day for my in-laws yielded a set of Hamelman Pain au Levain w/WW that I wasn't really thrilled with.  The crumb was too tight, the baguettes seemed to lack some standard amount of girth that I expect from them and all along the pathway from mix to bake something just didn't feel right.  A nice part about baking is that I get to do a do-over.  These seemed more "right" to me starting at mix time and beyond.

My wife is heading north to visit with her parents.  And they really like the bread I make for them.  Baguettes more so than batards, a little more plain than fancy.  In preparation I made a batch of SJSD and a batch of Hamelman Pain au Levain w/WW to freeze and take with her.  

We have a friend who is moving across the country this coming week.  She really liked my raisin-pecan WW batard, and my wife thought that I should bake her a goodbye R-P WW.  And while I was at it, I figured that another two would be just dandy!  Just because.

The last few times I've used dried fruit, I took the advice of some TFL "elders" and soaked the fruit first.  I also added the soaking water into the mix as part of the hydration. 

I had an inkling that I hadn't baked these in a while but never thought that it was as long as 8 months ago.  SJSD variations?  Yes, but the base product?  No.  

Most of my formula sheets have notes on what the dough feels like at stages: extensible, slack, tight, fluffy...  Do I need to dust the couche more or dust it less post-shaping?  But on this sheet I didn't have any guide, and as it had been a while, I didn't remember what to expect.  

I had such a good bake with my one previous turn at David's SFBI Pain au Levain (my way!) , a mostly all AP flour dough, that I knew I'd be returning to the scene of the crime soon enough.  Again using my 75% hydration levain and adding water to make up for the difference vs. a liquid levain, I also decided to add caraway seeds to the dough.  A good slather of cornstarch glaze before and after the bake.

Looking to shake things up just a little, I decided to change a bit from my recent Semolina with Rye Levain concoction.  Not a lot, just enough to see what would happen by altering that one thing.  And that one thing was to use 60% durum/40%AP flour in the final mix rather than 100% durum.  Otherwise all things remained the same.  Well, except that I actually did a 3 stage build this time.

Baguettes are 3x350g, Batard is 1x600g

Not to be complete and comprehensive and certainly not to be pedantic, but I decided to list a set of my own do and don’t “baking rules”.  I expect no one to take any/some/all of these to heart or put into practice - least of all because I say I do them.  None of these are absolute, but in general, they serve as my personal list of commandments – at least around dough and baking.
  
We have, will develop and hopefully forever evolve our own individual set of rhythms and axioms for what works best for each of us.  There is probably no “one size fits all”.

Okay, so I'm playing fast and loose with the name.  It is actually a durum with rye levain.  Which has its roots in  TFL's whirlwind tour this past Spring of the bread within the high walls of Altamura in Apulia Italy, and David Snyder's formula.  I thought about this a few days ago when I posted my question: at what point does dough become bread? and used pictures from my completely untraditional and blasphemous shaping of the bread, used kinda as a demo of the before, during and after.