davidg618's blog

I have a friend who owns an orchard of chestnut trees. Each year she harvests them, aided by her donkey, Carlos, who pulls the harvest wagon tree-to-tree. It's hard work, a lot of bending, and the outer husk of a chestnut pod is armored with thorns. In past years, rising at 4:00 AM, she sold her crop, pound by pound, at a nearby Farmers' Market. A recently retired ICU nurse, the proceeds add to her modest pension.  Two years ago, chestnut farmers in the area formed a Co-op.  Now she sells her entire crop to the Co-op. Her life got easier; Carlos didn't benefit.

...you return from a wonderful weeklong boat trip on the Rhine river, through Germany and France, with only one souvenir: a Kugelhopf baking pan.

Today, I baked my first ever Kugelhopf. The original recipe came from here http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19577/gugelhupf. I modified it slightly.

Kugelhopf  (recipe from TFL; Hezi, IsrealiBaker :modified)

Ingredients:

Normally held in January, because of a bout with sciatica, this year's open house was delayed until this weekend (April 3). Nonetheless, it was, as ever, a great bash.  The food this year was inspired  by the book Charcuterie, introduced to TFL by hansjoakim in a recent blog. The centerpiece of the spread was a Pate de Campagne (country terrine) and a Shrimp and Salmon Terrine with Spinach and Mushrooms.

I'm still wearing a temporary cast on my left wrist/hand, but an x-ray, Tuesday, revealed no fracture. None the less, although relieved, the doctor prescribed an infernal nylon-velcro cast be worn until the sprained and bruised wrist heals: about three to four weeks. So, I've regained the ability to use the shift-key, but not the bowl scraper. No hand-mixing for me for the duration.

Back to the title:

I routinely make baguettes with a straight dough at 70% hydration, and an overnight ferment at 55°F.  Curious, in yesterday's mix I reduced the hydration to 65%, all other ingredients (KA AP flour and sea salt) and processes were the same: DDT set to 55°F with ice water, and the dough chilled during autolyse, between S&Fs and overnight retarding for 15 hours. I was motivated to try a lower hydration based on a smattering of comments scattered in various TFL threads that argue open crumb isn't only about hydration.

After two years following the directions and/or advice of Dan DiMuzio, J. Hamelman, a bit of Reinhart, and a lot of TFLers, e.g., dmsnyder, SylviaH, Susan, Debra Wink, proth5, hansjoakim, ehanner, ananda, and a host of others, I'm comfortable that I can consistently bake satisfactory sourdough loaves, reminiscent of Vermont, Norwich, San Jouquin, etc., while at the same time, feel they are subtly my own.

I've been thinking about the Yukon Gold Rush miner. You'll recall, to preserve his sourdough mother--he called her Maude, after the first girl he'd ever kissed--and caught in a Yukon white-out, miles from camp, weak from having not eaten for four days--he'd boiled the last of his dogs, King, six weeks earlier--he'd kissed Maude one last time, placed her next to his heart, curled his emaciated body around her, and lay down in the lee of a a twelve foot drift.

I've been looking for a recipe for buns suitable for hamburger, sausage and peppers, grilled portobello mushrooms, pulled pork, or the like. Indirectly I came across this recipe, Dan Lepard's Soft Baps (Manchester Guardian, Oct. 6, 2007) replying to this TFL posting http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21843/high-percentage-fats-bread .

They feel wonderfully soft, just like my wife wants in a sandwich bun. I'm making turkey burgers with pesto tonight for dinner. Seemed like the time to try these.

There are numerous threads on TFL about the benefits of retarding fermentation and/or final proofing by reducing yeast amounts or, more commonly, refrigerating the dough.  However, other than using higher temperatures to manage production scheduling, and a few posts discussing warm fermentation increasing lactic acid production in sourdoughs there doesn't seem to be an equivalent interest in other benefits (if any exist) warmer temperature fermenting and proofing might bring to our baking.

Desired DoughTemperature (DDT), at best only a gross-estimate of the temperature of a dough at the beginning of bulk fermentation (ref.: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/11719/ddt-calculation-question-daniel-t-dimuzio ) is too often ignored, or given only a brief word or two of non-specific, and often ambiguous explanation.