Friday, March 28, 2008

Poolish boules

Upper: poolish after 18 hours, bubbly with creases
Below: after mixing
Below: after first folding
Below: after 2nd folding
bench resting after preliminary shaping

Into the bannetons for proofing [all RT]
The finished products: the crumb was yellowish and chewy. Crust not quite as crisp as I'd like but thin and flavourful. Interior has big holes and lots of character

Did it by the book as much as possible
My version

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Pain a l'ancienne


Pain a l'ancienne; Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" version.

Made a chilled dough with 80% water, retarded overnight, took about 4 hours to double today at RT, then "shaped" the very wet doughs and followed the recipe and gave no real final proof -- not my instincts to do this -- and the surface did look under-proofed. I think next time I will make the ciabatta variant and give the "shaped" doughs a further bench rise before baking.

Other than that; spectacular; chewy yellowish kinda sweetish crumb [not like added sugar or "evaporated cane juice" (mostly sugar) sweetened] but very subtle, and a crispy flavorful crust, just the ants pants and really easy to make [I'm sure it's much easier the second time around]. Could have baked a touch cooler too.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Next day -- Barley batards


Similar recipe -- plus 2% extra dry gluten -- double bulk ferment; may have been too much as there wasn't much lift in the proofer. Still got some additional oven-spring today. Tried the "new" steam arrangement; ala Brother Juniper's, bought a garden sprayer an spritzed the doughs on entering the oven and at 2, 4, 6, and 16 minutes of baking.

These were smaller loaves, scaled at 700 g and baked 20 min @ 200 deg C and 10 min at 150 deg C. They look and smell great, can't wait for them to cool. The dough is weird to handle, not very gassy and somewhat plastic; resting seems to give no advantage in moulding. I have great trouble keeping the seam together, even if I wet it first before sealing it. Still, the oven spring filled most of the gaps :-)


OK -- cool enough to cut and eat -- scrumptious, crispy thin crust, great flavor, although there is a hint of bitterness with this much whole-grain barley -- very slight -- just the call with blackberry preserve. Nice crumb structure shows there was some oven lift.

Barley Wheat bread mark 1

50% hull-less waxy barley stone-ground with only coarse bran sieved out plus 50% "Titan" high-gluten HRS baker's flour. 170 g rye sour and 0.25% SAF instant yeast. Rose nicely but slowly, did double in bulk fermentation and again in proofer. Not much oven lift but some. Very dense bread, very flavorful, with uniquely soft moist crumb from the waxy starch in the barley. Crust is a bit over baked even with early steam [205C for 45 min left center only ~ 65 deg C -- needed a further 30 min @ 150 deg C for the center to cook --just cause it was so dense and a fairly big loaf -- scaled at ~ 1250 g]
My rye sour after a week -- 6 feeds and the weekend in the fridge -- the top inch or so has no bubbles 'cause it has collapsed from the highest point it rose to overnight. It smells great.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Last week's breads

Tuesday's bread -- half wholewheat
Fermenting nicely
Ready to punch -- a beautiful dough -- about 3500 g
proofed in a banneton with rice flour lining
nice chewy crumb, pretty even for hand molded
Wednesday's Bread
Woops - - forgot it a little too long -- used a "biga" from the day previous's pita bread dough
Not too bad, good crackling musical crust
Crumb had dark and light patches maybe a little too yeasty [the biga had a lot of yeast but it was retarded overnight]. But really nice and chewy and even OK 4 or 5 days later [toasted]

Naesten den aegte dansk surdejs rugbrød -- getting there -- a bit small, a scaling issue. This is a Faerøsk recipe and was really simple but still took 3 days to make. Have not got the oven down yet, the crust is still a bit too baked, but certainly baked right through [150 deg C for 1 hr then 175 deg C for 1.5 hrs and then leave bread in the cooling oven 2 hrs] I think i should have kept the lids on the pullman tins for the last section. Still tastes great and wonderful chocolaty aromas

Monday, March 17, 2008


Monday bread - very nice chewy crumb

Thursday, March 6, 2008

70 percent water

Formula

-Flour:

1300 g HWW "Gary" white flour

700 g FRESHLY MILLED atta flour from the hard-white cultivar Winsome

500 g HWW "Bauermeister" white flour

flour temp 19 deg C

-- TOTAL 2500 g / 100%

-Water 44 deg C

1750 g 70% -- wet sticky mess -- was handleable with dusting after fermentation and floor time

-Saf instant yeast added directly to flour 20 g / 0.7%
-Salt 30 g / ~12%

Process

Mixed 10 minutes on speed 2 in 20 quart hobart. folded and rounded on bench

Fermented 60 minutes @ 30 deg C


Divided into ~750 g pieces


Proofed 60 minutes @ 25 deg C


Baked 30 minutes for baguettes free in oven, 40 for bread in la cloche with last 10 min without the bell.


Preheated oven to 220 deg C, turned down to 200 deg C when doughs loaded in oven.


Nice bread; good crumb, bit more open structure, nice crusts but not baked hot enough early to be crispy.


The stone mill in "action"


Dough half mixed

Dough nearly mixed

Ready for oven after 60 min proofing

Bread baked without a cover but with steam

Bread baked with the la cloche cover for the first 30 of 40 min baking


Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Fermentation factors

Fermentation factors

-Plain flour [no added malt or amylase] - Palamino and Bauermeister 1000 g
-10g / 1% salt
-15 g / 1.5% Saf instant yeast
[maybe more yeast? for classroom demo]
-600 g / 60% water 44 deg C

-mixed 6 min in the 20 quart Hobart [not completedly developed]
-kept under damp towel
-take 300 g dough pieces
- add 5 g of

-nothing [control]
-glucose
-malted barley flour [MBF]
-xylose
-maltose

Mix again in 200 g pin mixer 1 min, fully develops doughs and incorporates additives

Dropped dough pieces into pre-greased 12 cm diameter * 33 cm tall containers – closed but not sealed.

Hold at room temperature 20 deg C – measure height. [keep warmer for class demo]

Punched at 2 h

At about 100 min fermentation L to R: Control, glucose, malted barley flour, xylose, maltose. The MBF, xyl, and maltose are clearly faster in the early part of the fermentation. Glucose lags, and of course the no-added sugar control is slowest.


After 135 min: the MBF treatment has collapsed a little; Much the same order a bit later, but all the other "stuff" -- enzymes [likely proteases] -- in the MBF are causing a bit of collapse in that one
After punching: At about 100 min fermentation L to R: Control, glucose, malted barley flour, xylose, maltose
150 min after punching: L to R: Control, glucose, malted barley flour, xylose, maltose. After punching, remember these have been fermenting with a LOT of yeast for 4 1/2 hours total. The maltose and glucose treatments are clearly best. Seems it tookt he yeast some time to switch to using glucose but now full steam ahead. Into proofer: L to R Maltose, xylose [rear], MBF, glucose [rear], control

Out of proofer -- the doughs are a bit rough, they after have been ver y mishandled. But it is REALLY clear the power of the MBF to keep pumping out more sugars for fermentation, as it is now biggest by far.Out of the oven: same order as above; the control is clearly paler, the maltose the biggest [MBF dough lost its trapped gas because of poor dough structure]. But the extra browning of the residual 5-carbon xylose in the xylose sample is really really evident - wow - these were all baked together -ergo- at the same temperature.

Injera round 2

Finished the Injera fermentations – Thanks to Senayit Yetneberk for the recipe and flow diagram (Yetneberk et al 2004 Cereal Chemistry 81: 314-321)

took 40 g teff dough from Saturday and cooked with 100 ml of water, boiled until starch well cooked.

After cooking added 50 ml cold water to get temp of ~ 35 deg C for cooked paste.

Mixed cooked paste into remaining teff dough.

Fermented further 3 to 4 hours.

Cooked on very hot griddle 2 min covered.

The injera has a very strong taste from the teff, and I couldn’t really detect much difference between the “starters” for the fermentation. But sure did get bubbles. Might try half teff, maybe half whole-wheat or wheat-atta next time to moderate the very strong taste.


1- secret sourdough starter
2-0.1 g Goldrush SanFrancisco sourdough starter
3-nothing to see if it ferments naturally.



http://www.pecad.fas.usda.gov/highlights/2007/12/Ethiopia_BF-Niger/

La Cloche round 3


Formula

-Flour:

1200 g Montana High gluten + malt flour,

600 g atta flour from the hard-white cultivar Winsome

400 g 12.3% protein whote flour from the hard-white cultivar Palamino

flour temp 19 deg C

-- TOTAL 2000 g / 100%

-Water 43 deg C [hottest I could get] 1300 g 65% -- nice dough, still coulda been wetter !!!

-Saf instant yeast added directly to flour 20 g / 1%[part 1 of trying to slow down the fermentation even more]
-Salt 30 g / 15%

Process

Mixed 10 minutes on speed 2 in 20 quart hobart. Kneaded and shaped on bench 1 minute.

Fermented 120 minutes @ 25 deg C – punched / folded @ 75 min. Did not run out of lift in the oven this time either.


The doughs 45 min after being punched

Divided into 4 largish dough pieces ~825 g each.
Moulded and folded gently into round.
Rested 15 min. under a damp towel at room temp [note 3x increased floor time]

Molded into a round and placed, seam up, in oiled and wheat-bran lined rattan proofing baskets.
Covered with damp towel and proofed 60 min @ 25 deg C and in a cabinet controlled to 85% RH.

Turned 2 dough pieces out onto sole of preheated [450 deg F; 228 deg C] La Cloche stoneware domed clay baker.

Two other dough pieces were left free in the oven; no clay dome, but with Julia's steam generator once again.

Preheated oven to 220 deg C then decreased temperature to 190 deg C as soon as doughs loaded. Baked La cloche 25 min lidded and 15 min unlidded. All loaves baked 40 min total.

Final crumb temperatures 98 deg C.

Crust was SOFT, obviously temperature was too low for crispy crust. This is especially noticeable in la cloche. BUT the crust was really nice. But it was like the bread the baker at Sunrise bakery in philomath makes with a very mice softness to the crust.

For crispy crusts - Next time try – 250 deg C preheat and turn oven doen to 200 deg C for baking.

Really nice bread with the added flavor of the fresh stone ground atta flour. Longer fermentation with even less yeast also helped. And so I think did the slower & cooler baking.