Bread week: Brioche, Boule, and Pumpernickel

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 baked the brown into boules last night (one for the week and one for the freezer). I made the mistake of starting the dough immediately after feeding my starter. Following FWSY method I mixed the white and brown flour with water, then smacked my forehead. I put that dough in the fridge to slow down and added starter a few hours later. The dough had really congealed nicely! After giving that an hour on the counter it went back in the fridge and just came out the next afternoon. 

The resulting dough seemed extra sticky 

The brioche:

I don't know why I made 2 kilos of brioche... I've still got half the dough sitting in the fridge. So far I've made cinnamon buns, chocolate babka, and (chocolate filled) donuts. For the babka filling I used a recipe from the NY Times. It's basically a fancy ganache. 

The donuts are really why I wanted to make this dough. They came out tasty, but under cooked. To make the 3 donuts I made yesterday, I portioned out the dough (I can't remember the size, but it was a touch too big.) into 6 pieces, shaped each (more or less) into a ~4" disk, then sandwiched a spoon full of cold (solid) babka filling between each pair. They rose for something like an hour, then I fried them at 350 for a minute on each side. The dough didn't cook all the way through, and the outside was dark brown, so I definitely made them too big!

I was thinking I'd use the rest to make a couple loaves of bread, but then I remembered that one of my loaf pans is in the dishwasher and the other is in the oven making pumpernickel... which means I won't be able to do anything with the oven till tomorrow!

The pumpernickel:

This one is currently in the oven. And boy is it dense! The hydration is about 66% and it's unleavened. Last night I did "the scald" which involved combining equal parts of pumpernickel meal (a coarse rye meal) and boiling water. Cover with foil and leave out overnight. It was supposed to stay out for 16-18 hours, but I made the mistake of starting too early in the day. So I had a 22-ish hour soak. Then it went into the mixer with a bit of extra rye and some salt. The recipe said to use the paddle attachment, but the dough was so dense I switched to the dough hook half way. And even then I had to keep pushing the dough back towards the hook. 

In to a cold oven set to 300 for 40 minutes, then temp lowered to 220 for 24 hours! 

Starter update:

Louis has still been smelling extra pungent so I moved him into a clean mason jar so I could clean his usual yogurt tub. He's in the fridge now, but seems to smell a lot better! I might have to start incorporating regular container moves for starters. That said, Louis II (the all rye starter) still seems okay. Still, I'll move him into a new container soon.