Benito's blog

Blasphemy, I know what the Baguette Brigade will say about these, Blapshemy!!!  Oh well, I do not care.  I was in the mood to do something with chocolate and had started the mix for these Bouabsa baguettes.  I added 100 g of Lindt 70% dark chocolate which is always a good pick me up.  I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone add chocolate to their baguettes, but I have to admit I haven’t done a search.  In all likelihood it isn’t an original idea.

I decided I’d try to apply some of what I’ve learned making baguettes to my hearth loaves.  One thing that has been in the back of my mind for a while has been whether or not my use of high protein Canadian bread flours 13.3% protein could be preventing my heart loaves from having a more open crumb.  I know that achieving an open crumb is multi factorial and for many not worth the trouble, but it is something I wanted to see if I could eventually achieve.

I threw together a formula with:

50% strong bread flour

30% low protein (10%) white flour

I thought I’d give a go at this formula again making one small change.  With my recent experience scoring warm dough I thought I’d skip the final cold proof and be brave and score room temperature baguettes.  The kitchen is much cooler now than before so my usual 30 mins bench proof turned into a 60 mins bench rest.  I now keep the aliquot jar out on the counter with the dough when taken out of the fridge ending cold retard.

I love the effect that sweet potatoes have on tenderizing the crumb and the sweet flavour of sweet potatoes and thought I should make another sweet potato sourdough but instead of pecans, this time adding black sesame seeds.  Those who know me know I love the flavour of sesame seeds and black sesame seeds in particular.

This formula makes a 900 g dough.

I built both the levain and saltolyse dough in the evening starting both with fridge cold water and some fridge time.

Levain 1:4:4 10 g starter 40 g 2ºC water and 40 g whole wheat

Having only made Bouabsa baguettes once very early on when I first started to bake baguettes I thought it was time to try them again.  Because I’ve been enjoying seeded crusts on baguettes lately I thought I should use sesame seeds to enhance the flavour and bite.

I seldom make boules, so I decided I need to brush off some of the rust on that skill and also had long wanted to make a bread with sundried tomatoes, so here is my take on this.

For one loaf only. Total weight ~ 900 

340 g white bread flour 80% total

87 g whole wheat flour 20% total 

Total Flour = 427 g

Total water 307 g 78% hydration  (82% hydration first time)

Final dough for mixing

340 g white bread flour

49 g whole red fife flour

These are my first go at an all white flour 10% protein, in this case from Quebec, that is sourdough and no commercial yeast.  After the good results I had with the sesame semolina sourdough baguettes without commercial yeast I decided I needed to give it a go again but with the Quebec white flour.  These are essentially Abel’s baguettes au levain without the commercial yeast and hydration increased to 70% during bassinage and finally encrusted with poppy seeds.  So I’ll just call them Yorkville Baguettes since that is the neighborhood that I live in ?

This is my first ever cinnamon raisin bread if you can believe it.  It was feeling very autumnal here in Toronto when I started working on this loaf, but today it will reach a high of 26ºC and feel very summer like.  I followed the general outline for this bread on The Perfect Loaf by Maurizio’s, but used my usual dough development with a bench letterfold, lamination then coil folds.

Total Formula

Bread Flour 66% 290 g 

Whole Red Fife Flour 34% 152 g includes levain 

Total flour = 442 

Cinnamon 1%

Raisins 20% 

This time I used yellow miso which is milder in flavour than the more assertive red miso I usually use, only because red miso was unavailable the last time I bought miso.  Also my homemade miso is far from ready yet needing many more months to ferment.  The furikake I bought for this bake didn’t have the bonito flakes in it so instead was a simpler seaweed and sesame seed.  The furikake is so delicious with just steamed rice and that is what I usually eat it with.

Back at the same sesame semolina sourdough baguettes but with some changes to try to improve the crumb. So I made some changes in the hopes of achieving a more open crumb. The first significant change I made was to delete the commercial yeast altogether, this change was made by accident and wasn’t planned as removing the commercial yeast wasn’t something that I thought would improve the crumb.  In fact, I thought that the addition of commercial yeast was part of what was giving my an open crumb.