amberartisan's blog

          Even before I was making "good" pizza dough, and perhaps even before I was born, we have had a family tradition of making Pizza on Sunday nights during the winter. The oven's heat is a welcome addition to the kitchen, and laughter and voices fill the kitchen as pies are loaded and removed from the oven. The quality of the pizza has improved a lot since I started making the crust though, all modesty aside!

Yesterday I made three doughs, one based on Bien Cuit's buckwheat fougasse recipe, one tartine-style country bread, and one naturally leavened baguette. All were delicious, but need a little work. 

TARTINE-STYLE BREAD:

This was made with 15% Wholewheat Flour, 18% Liquid Levain (79F/100% Refresh rate/2.5 hours), 82% Water, 2% overall salt. I lost my lame, so I was unable to get a super-clean score (I used a paintbrush as a mount for the razor). Oh well, still looks pretty good, albiet rustic. Crumb picture to follow, I'm not slicing it until supper.

I'm going to follow in @joshfoxbreadco (Golgi70's) footsteps with my own Farmer's Market blog! I own Amber Artisan Bread, a cottage food operation located in Prosser, Washington.

After waiting an agonizing 4 months to get through the layers of beurocracy, I finally have my permit and am selling!

This week, I sold $100 worth of bread in 2 hours at my 8,000 head town's farmer's market.

Since I can only take individually approved items, I decided on only a few items: Country Levain, Wholewheat Levain, and Baguettes. Next week I'm going to do 100% Rye as well.

I am continuing my journey into mastering this one loaf - and this marks 4 in a row that have been nearly perfect. Still 20% WW, 19% Very Active Firm Starter (VAFS).

Like @pipsbread, I am using mostly instagram now to chroncile my Baking journey. 

Check me out at @amberartisan.

ALSO: After saving 2 grad from summer jobs, I am intending to purchase a Rofco B-40 oven at christmas time and tremendously expand my prodcution level to include 2 or 3 farmer's markets in the summer! I'll keep you posted on Instagram.

I was impressed when I cut into the loaf!

Like it when my crumb matches that of my "heroes" (chad or phil (PiPs)).

SEE: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/39474/todays-bake-country-levain

Today I baked my standard country levain using my typical formula:

• 85% AP
• 15% WW
• 82.5% Water
• 19% 50%WW-50%AP-60%Water-50%Fresh Inoculant Levain - 4 hours @27C. 
• 2.25% Salt (Amounts to 2% after figuring in the starter - may try reducing eventually along with .5-1% water)

Autolyze 1 hour. Add Levain (cut up) and Salt, Mix until the levain no longer feels chunky. DDT 27C.

Bulk ferment for 3.5 hours, with 5 folds every 30 minutes. Your time may vary, its been as low as 3 hours and as high as 4.25. 

Today I baked a wholewheat Miche. The formula was as follows:

50% hand-bolted hard white whole-wheat flour, 

25% Hard Red Whole Wheat

15% Soft White Whole-Wheat (next time I will use 15% Hard Red and 25% Soft White)

10% AP Flour (I got lazy because I didn't want to mill more flour on my mill!)

105% Water 

16% Fresh Firm Levain (WW with 60% hydration, 50% inoculant) - DDT 27C

2.25% salt

Autolyze 1.5 hour, holding back 5% water.

Lately I've been having inconsistencies with the Levain I bake. Sometimes the cell structure is too tight and the taste too acidic, sometimes I get a tight crumb with no acidity whatsoever, indicating a lack of micro-organism activity, and sometimes, I get a beautiful open crumb and just a hint of acidity, which is my ideal pain au levain. This week, I baked my levain (which is always 80% AP, 10% WW, and 10% Rye), with 12% Prefermented flour and using a stiff levain 84-16 (AP:WW) instead of a liquid 50-50 to generate the fermentation. 

I baked Ciabatta yesterday. Turned out quite well, the crumb is very yellow. It looks like the one in Ken's Artisan Bakery except more yellow. It is feather-light, with a very open cell structure. Flavor is AMAZING! Last time I tried Hamelman's 73% Hydration Ciabatta with a hand mix and it came short. So I tried (this bake) 80% Hydration, and got the results I wanted. The flour was Shepherd's Grain Low Gluten (11.2% Protein)

BIGA (30% Prefermented Flour) - 150g flour; 90g water, 0.1g instant yeast (I salted mine w/0.8g because of summer temps). Let stand 12-16 hours @ 70F.

I was going to make Pain au Levain in the tartine style, 12% Prefermented flour, warm water in the levain, fermented for 8 hours, 1 hour autolyze. My target hydration was 81%. I poured the (warm) water for the autolyze and realized it felt... runny, not just wet (I routinely do bread in the 80-85% hydration range, but really wet. I looked at my paper where I had made the scaling calculations to make 3 boules and I found, upon double checking, that my dough was 100 percent hydration!