man_who_eats_bread's blog

It's been a while since I've been here, but not since I've made bread. I've got a pumpernickel on the counter, a sourdough slow fermenting in the fridge, and a soaker/biga combo for a whole wheat sesame sandwich loaf I'll make tomorrow. With nothing to do I'm considering making a partial whole wheat hokkaido milk roll...

In any case, I'm realizing that I'm just not the sort of person to faithfully keep a baking log. But perhaps I can give an impressionistic account of the current state of my bread baking journey.

I've officially retired Louis I (i.e. unceremoniously dumped him into the trash). He was smelling like a prison distillery by the end. Fortunately, one of his offspring (Louis IV) has taken over as my go-to wheat starter.

Since getting home from the holidays I've been busily baking bagels, brioche, and boules. Also pizza. 

Earlier this week (I'm 80% sure it was Tuesday), for some reason, I mixed up two full size (~1.5kg) batches of dough. The FWSY country brown, and the Tartine brioche. Last night I started a Westphalian pumpernickel from The Rye Baker.

The brown:

I took the Tartine Country Rye recipe and added whole wheat.

Ingredients:

• 300g bread flour
• 115g whole wheat
• 85g rye flour
• 400g water
• 100g mature levain 
• 10g salt

After combining (yesterday afternoon) and a few turns in the bucket, that dough sat in the fridge overnight. This morning I went to shape it and had a hard time working with it. Just that little bit of Rye really made it sticky. But the good news is that my starter did just fine!

It's been a busy couple weeks since I've posted. Two notable things have happened: Louis has been misbehaving, and I took a brioche/challah class. 

Dec 4th: I can't remember what this was, but I'm guessing a 50% whole wheat overnight boule.

I did two batches of FWSY overnight brown modified to be (approximately) 50% whole wheat. (I also took a similar loaf out of the freezer to make into stuffing which turned out fantastically!)

The first batch was turned into rolls. The flavor was good, but I didn't spend enough time shaping them... they didn't rise nicely. I used some of the leftovers to make a french toast casserole (i.e. lazy man's bread pudding).

In preparation for Thanksgiving I wanted to figure out dinner rolls, so I portioned off half my dough, and turned that into 6 buns (two of which didn't last long enough to make this photo).

The dough was the Overnight Brown from Flour Water Salt Yeast (78% hydration, 30% whole wheat). I followed the recipe (more or less) exactly for the loaf.

Same technique as last time, but this time with salt!

250g whole wheat
250g white (King Arthur AP)
375g H2O (actually, 384g)

Autolyse for about 40 minutes, then add in:

124g levain
12g salt

Stretch and fold 4 times, adding in 117g of raw pumpkin seeds (from Trader Joe's) on the 3rd stretch/fold.

After about 3 total hours at room temperature, leave it in the fridge over night (this time that meant about 21 hours in the fridge).

Sunday

6:32am Mix by hand:

250g white flour
251g whole wheat flour
372g room temp. water

7:13 Add in 124g active levain (80% hydration, 20% rye).

Stretch and fold 4 times over two hours, adding 117g (~1 C.) pumpkin seeds during 3rd S&F.

9:30am into the fridge.

Monday

4:00pm out of the fridge

5:40(ish) shape and proof on greased parchement in bowl

6:28 score loaf, then into a 500F dutch oven for 25 minutes with the lid, then 10 without.

This recipe was from The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg.

I made this Monday, but haven't taken the time to post. Ultimately, it was pretty unexciting. But these are the dues I've got to pay if I'm going to get a great loaf out of this massive tub of Rye flour before it goes bad...

The rise sucked and the crumb is super dense. But it does smell nice and rye-y. Actually, now that I'm trying it again (I've been eating walnut wheat all week), I sort of like its chewiness. I think it'll be good with a smear of cream cheese and some pickled herring.