The extraordinary heat and humidity of the past few weeks in NYC has meant that I haven't been baking. But I took advantage of a few cooler evenings and produced this last night: a mashup of the Della Fattoria pain au levain -- https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44078/pain-au-levain-della-fattoria-bread -- and rosemary & meyer lemon boule -- https://lisaiscooking.blogspot.com/2015/01/meyer-lemon-rosemary-campagne-boule.html.
I did this one 'jailbreak' style -- meaning I mixed all the ingredients and left the dough on the counter for almost 12 hours. Then I did a few sets of stretch and folds, and popped it in the fridge for another 12 hours. When I pulled the dough from the fridge, I gave it a short rest on the counter and one more set of folds. Then I added the citrus zest/rosemary/olive oil slurry as per the 2nd recipe above.
The only change in the dough formula was that I cut the salt to about 1.2%.
I screwed up the final shaping (for some reason I couldn't get the top of the dough to adhere to itself) and probably used too much olive oil (the recipe suggests 40g but when I make it again, I'll probably reduce that to 30.) As suggested, I sprinkled the top with coarse sea salt right before it went into the Dutch Oven.
I wish I had worked it to get a bit more of a domed shape -- but all told, I'm happy. This bread is good eating!
Rob
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Oh my God, are you really Rob? Where is Rob?! Who are you?! 🤣
lol jk Rob. I find it refreshing to see you once in awhile taking time away from rye. And that looks delicious too!
Jay
i know, Jay, I'm usually such a ryebaby. I have no idea what happened to me. Nervous breakdown (aka amylase attack.)? Mid-rye crisis? Will I now be rye-avoidant? Am I in pumpernickel breakdown? I need help -- fast.
boR
Lovely to see something else come out of your kitchen, and must have been so tasty
Well done boR
-noJ
Sorry but this is not Rob, give us our ryerob back!
All things considered - i.e. crisis, attacks and so forth - that loaf looks like fun and I'm sure it tasted as much too.
Nice to see you posting again, keep 'em coming pls.
-niL
no worries, niL. This was just an episode of low rye esteem. The condition is temporary. I remain affirmed in my belief that, as my blurry avatar says, 'life is good when the rye bread is good.'
boR
This must have been a tasty one. Interesting method. If I followed that with FMF I would have soup😀.
Best,
Ian
thx, naI.
So are you suggesting that freshly milled flour can tolerate less water than packaged flour? Or that it needs more manipulation (kneading, folding, stitching) to gain strength?
Sounds somewhat counterintuitive, no?
boR
I mean it ferments very quickly. It actually usually can tolerate higher hydration levels at least for whole wheats. Since it ferments very quickly you can’t do long bulk fermentation times or it degrades and over ferments.
aha! Thanks. I completely misunderstood. Timing is indeed everything.😀
The combination citrus zest/rosemary/olive oil + salt in top sounds very promising! It has a mediterranean touch. Added to the list of things to bake in the near future. Thanks for sharing.
I can imagine, that adding the oil so late in the process makes it hard to incorporate it. Especially with hand mixing. This would explain the issues with the final shaping.
thx, nafkraps! for sure, adding oil late makes shaping tricky.
For a different mediterranean effect, I'm thinking of trying this bread with zaatar instead of citrus/rosemary
boR
Rob, I actually like how organically this loaf opened up on top. I’m sure it was really yummy given the rosemary and Meyer lemon. It baked up really well, I’m amazed at how long the dough was sitting on the counter before cold retard.
Benny
thanks, Benny. If you make the recipe the way I did -- no levain, just dumpiing everything in a bowl, mixing and waiting -- it's 2 percent inoculation, which probably explains why it could sit on the counter for so long.
Rob
Ahhhh I see, that is an interesting way to do this. I’m not sure I’ve ever done that. It certainly worked well Rob. Thanks for explaining that to me.
Benny