dosco's blog

Posted below is the recipe I use for my Portuguese sweet bread. I am interested in suggestions from the collective audience that may result in improvements in taste, texture, oven spring, etc.

In my last bake I used about 50g of leftover levain ... not sure it made any difference and it might be interesting to experiment with adding even more to assess its affects on the final product.

Regards-
Dave

++++++++++++

PORTUGUESE SWEET BREAD

Had my 2nd engineering staff meeting and thought it would be nice to offer a sweet bread instead of sourdough. Plus I haven't made this bread in a while and it's always a hit. Let me know if anyone wants the recipe. It's basically flour, potato water, mashed potatoes, butter, eggs, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and mace. I bought some AP flour for use in Irish Soda Bread but used a bunch of it for this bread ... will be interesting to see what happens when I use bread flour.

My wife asked me to bake a loaf of bread for some neighbors who recently had a new baby. She made meatballs.

It was sort of last-minute and I had just picked up some el-cheapo store brand AP flour (we haven't yet made our St. Patty's day soda bread and I was planning on using AP like I always do) so I took out some ripe starter (that I had refreshed after my last bake 2 weeks earlier) and decided to try a different recipe ... Reinhart's Pain de Campagne.

Made 2 batards for my first Engineering Staff Meeting today. I followed the Reinhart BBA recipe but used 50% WW flour, upped hydration to ~77%, warm fermented for ~1 hour at 100dF followed by cold fermentation for 48 hours in the fridge, and hearth baked at 550dF for ~15 minutes followed by 450dF until done. Nice oven spring this time, got a nice ear on one loaf. Co-workers liked it. Gave one to a friend (of the 2 loaves about 1/2 of 1 loaf was eaten by my coworkers).

Cheers-

Dave

This time I tried it with about 15.5 oz of water, 50% WW flour, resulting in a hydration of ~76% to 77%.

Fermented for 4 days in the refrigerator. Baked at 525dF, this time I staggered the loaves so the first loaf baked for about 25 minutes at 525dF, the second loaf baked at 525dF for 15 minutes, then 475dF until browned (about 20 to 25 minutes).

I lopped off a piece for a coworker who used to be a cook ... I haven't tried it myself.

After reading Reinhart's various and sundry compliments of the Poilane style, I thought it would be interesting to give it a try.

I made half of a batch ... I may post a crumb shot later today. The flavor is nice, but the crumb is very tight. You might see in the pic that there was some oven spring but not all that much ... I'm sure some of that is because WW is less extensible than breads based on white flours, but I'm fairly certain that some of it has to do with hydration.

I'm interested in making a Poilane style bread, so I thought it might be interesting to make a BBA Basic Sourdough with half of the flour being whole wheat.

I made the dough up using the same procedure I've been using for the other Basic Sourdoughs, except (of course) using much more WW flour. Due to schedule conflicts the dough stayed in the refrigerator for 4 days ... I baked the loaves yesterday evening.

Another bake of BBA Basic Sourdough. Life interfered a bit on this one, had to drive to NY (from MD) to goto a party, then had a sports tournament the next day in PA. I had to let the preferment sit in the fridge for an extra day, and the autolysed flour also went into the fridge for a 24 hour period. After I mixed the dough I had intended a 36 hour ferment but I had some other priorities (... work ...) and it stayed in the fridge for 60 hours.

So ... I finally got an ear (!!) which is good and I'm very happy. Huzzah!!

The "good" loaf is misshapen (the "bad" loaf is horribly misshapen) ... I did not do what I normally do, which is to jury-rig a couche with kitchen towels. I need a real linen couche, which is on my list of things to get. My older daughter (14 yo) was very surprised when I pulled the finished loaves from the oven and noted the ear (lol).

So the first loaf was pretty stiff. Upon reviewing the recipe I noticed that the water called for can range between 12 and 14 ozs, therefore the hydration of the main dough can vary between 59% and 70% ... of course the starter can affect the overall hydration and my starter is hydrated at 50% while Reinhart calls for 100% hydration in this recipe.

Oops.

Nonetheless the first batch was good. As I mentioned I gave a loaf to a friend who enjoyed it, and my kids housed the other loaf. A neighbor came over on Saturday afternoon and I gave him a piece and he also enjoyed it.