San Francisco Baking Institute; photo journal

Many thanks to David A. for the pictures.

Loading the oven
Slashing the baguettes
Finished products proudly displayed
Judging the results
Taste time
Country breads out of the ovenEgg washing a sweet bread
Fast hands making last second adjustments
Miches unloaded
Same ingredients different processes - different results
Round and round...
Steaming fun
Proofing time
The end of the day

Barley Struggles

Trying out some product development with ConAgra waxy hull-less whole grain flour, a.k.a. the sponge...

Lots of great soluble fiber in this whole-grain flour, beta-glucans that is, same as in oats.

Had trouble with the baguettes, not enough lift. Doughs were tight. Need to be braver about adding extra water... Maybe some bracketing and being happy to throw out the failures. Personally I do not think the barley flavor mixes well with an acidic sourdough. I used a stiff, acetic levain to replace the strength I lost by diluting the bread flour with the Wx barley flour

Had trouble with the batards using the "Vermont sourdough with wholewheat" barely variant. Added 4% extra water but the dough dried out so much in the bulk fermentation that the seams wouldn't seal and some blew out in the oven.

The "80% barley sourdough", well went with the 4% extra water, so far off the mark that I threw it out. Could've maybe used 10 -15% more water !!!

Finally got brave enough with the water [extra 5% for a 10% admixture of waxy barley flour in the bread flour]. Used the Shepherd's Grain low gluten flour as the base with a pre-fermented dough [Page 296 in Advanced Bread and Pastry; Michel Suas]. This dough was nice and gassy, shaped well into strands, and lifted well in the oven.

100% rye

100 % rye with a dark rye flour because I could not source medium rye. The formulation and procedure is what I learned at the San Francisco Baking Institute - Baking and Pastry Arts School for Professionals and Enthusiasts. Upped the water to 1015 g to compensate for the added water absorbing capacity of the dark rye flour.

Still, a nice outcome. Can't wait to get some cheese.

Shepherd's Grain flours

Tried 2 new flours today; Shepherd's Grain high- and low-gluten. Shepherd's Grain are, in their words, "an alliance of progressive family farms dedicated to practicing sustainable agriculture".

http://www.shepherdsgrain.com/

These folks are regional if not exactly local. A BBGA member told me she really liked the hi-gluten version for her sourdough business. Because we do variety development on hard-grained breadmaking wheats for Oregon and the Pacific Northwest [in addition to our soft-white wheat variety development], I thought it might be prudent to see what commercial hard-wheat flours from the region were like.

To do this I made Jeffrey Hamelman's Vermont sourdough with whole wheat, of course it was my PNW and Oregon version. It is all levain risen, no commercial yeast. Mixed to a shaggy lump, 25 minute autolyse, 2 hr bulk with one fold, pre-shaped to boules, shaped to boules and blunt batards, final fermentation 12 hours at 10 deg C, 1 hour at roon temperature, baked 25 min @ 460 deg F with steam, vented 8 minutes. I forgot to turn the oven down a little after 10 minutes or so into the bake and got a little too dark a crust, but it was crispy !.
It turned out just fine, but the high-gluten [behind] did not have ears that opened up as nicely as the low-gluten version. The low-gluten flour also had a little stiff levain in the formulation to top up the liquid levain when I ran out of liquid levain, so the stiff levain seemed to build a little more strength.
Crumby [pardon the pun] picture of the interiors, both fairly nice and open, the high-gluten [left] had a much much chewier texture, maybe too chewy. Unfortunately I gave away the prettier ones before remembering to take the picture, so the low-gluten one was the mishapen one the stuck to the stone during the oven-spring.

These are mixograms of the high [upper] and low-gluten SG flours at 63% and 61% hydration respectively. The low-gluten could have used maybe 2% less water again. The low-gluten version takes a little less water for optimum handling and would take less time to get to the intensive mix stage; its peak happened earlier than for the high-gluten version.


SG high gluten 63% water
SG low-gluten 61% waterSG Low-gluten at 1.5% less waterGeneral Mills' Harvest King at 58.5% water.This is the machine that made the graphs - a mixograph; a recording dough mixer.

Walnut & raisin sourdough and rye sourdough

Baking away merrily.

Walnut & raisin sourdough; learned the formula and technique at the San Francisco Baking Institute [SFBI].


Rye sourdough 50% dark rye [couldn't get medium], 50% hi-gluten bread flour with added malt.
Caraway seeds and a mixed levain of bread flour levain and my new rye levain.

Final proofing begins in the bake lab.
Out of the oven; they smell as good as they look. Based on Page 212 of Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas.

On the other side, my research assistant has been getting conventional pup loaf test-baking nailed down so we can provide data to our wheat breeding program this harvest season. These are not artisan-type breads; intensive mix PLUS a longish 2 hour bulk ferment, added sugar and shortening, and lots of mechanical punching and molding.

We have been talking about getting repeatable "hearth bread" test method going based on the technique from www.wheatflourbook.org [a very nice resource] but with some tweaks inspired by my trip to SFBI to make it "good" bread [e.g. dump the sugar and fat], and some others to make it wholly repeatable.
Nonetheless; she is doing a great job with them, and the volume differences are indicative enough of the general baking potential of the flours that we can use the data to make selections in our wheat variety development work.

Sesame Semolina

One of my favorites from last week.

50% bread flour, 50% durum semolina
67% water
2% salt
0.2% instant yeast
6% butter
30% liquid [100% hydration] levain.

Most excellent tasting bread.

Beautiful creamy yellow crumb [one of my grad students couldn't wait and cut it hot, but you can get the picture] and openish crumb structure. This one was molded by my assistant, her very first go - good work.

San Francisco Baking Institute

Just spent 2 weeks at the San Francisco Baking Institute http://www.sfbi.com - getting the lowdown on hand-crafted breads.

An excellent 2 weeks, Artisan I, then Artisan II, back-to-back. Bit of a stamina test but ably led by the energy and tremendous skills of our instructor Steven Isaac. Both weeks had crews of about 16 students that were all a delight to work with. The whole place is dedicated to great bread and SFBI has very good facilities and instructors to get novices or experts to their next levels in baking.

Pre-class coffee was enlivened by whatever pastries the professional 18 week class had made the day before. Lunches were great; ranging from fresh wheat-germ baguettes with mozzarella, tomato, and fresh basil, to soups, fresh hand-made pizzas, and the best ever sandwich rye bread, among others. Just a great experience all round.

This is the first time I've tried to adapt my newly learned skills to my own bakery with its specific limitations, but not bad none-the-less. Certainly more attractive loaves than I've been able to make in the past. Still some problems with the steam in my oven... blah blah... but the crust was nice and thin and crispy if a little dull from insufficient steam. Not too bad internal crumb structure, despite the seam blowouts that happened because my "people" were baking pan bread for the breeding program today and just had sheet pans and not hearthstones in the oven.

The pictures tell some of the story [minus aroma and taste], good enough as straight-dough emergency bread to have with my own mozzarella, tomato, and fresh basil tonight.



These are cereal scientist-style standard test-bake pan breads baked by my able assistant; the 'real' work going on in the lab today.