chapstick's blog

I continued working through Ford's beautiful new book with a recipe better suited to my Azure "unifine process" hard red wheat flour. The result has a great sourness to it, and a relatively open crumb. My main disappointment was that I hoped it would rise more. 

After we demolished this loaf, I made a 95% whole wheat sourdough from Maurizio's site, using the Azure flour for the "high extraction" flour. This replaces his method of sifting out the bran and adding it in later. He has some good information in the recipe about the challenges of whole wheat baking. The result was much closer to my tastes, even achieving some of that custardy inside that I've previously only had with white flour. This time the primary flaw was that I managed to burn the loaf onto the baking tray and had to saw it off. A good excuse to give it a second try? :)

Photo of my (not yet) Perfect Loaf

Like scorchia, Covid-19 led me to invest in a big bag of "ultra-unifine" bread flour from Azure. I've used it in place of white bread flour in a few recipes and decided it was time to let it shine in a classic-style sourdough.

I tossed up whether to use Ford's Pan Rustico or his Pan Integral recipe. Perhaps the latter would have been more appropriate, but for whatever reason I went with the former.

Dough made with this flour feels extremely soft and smooth. It absorbs water easily, so I splashed in a little extra as I mixed, probably about 50g (for a half-batch). I followed Ford's "squeeze and rest" method for the mix, and found it very effective.

The taste of the bread is excellent. The texture of the crumb isn't as custardy and open as I like it. I think my handling was quite light, so I wonder if this is either inevitable with this flour, or suggests a higher hydration would be beneficial. 

For my first bake from Bryan Ford's beautiful new book, I was drawn to these "semitas de yema" for two reasons. First, their appearance - and, it turns out, the method - is similar to Asian "pineapple" buns, hitting the void that is within me, now that I am living far from the Asian bakeries of my home town. Second, I have previously experimented with using sourdough in enriched doughs but never seen a professionally written recipe that relies entirely on wild yeasts.

Despite making a decision explicitly based on the fact of the dough being enriched, I had not given any thought to the obvious implication that much fat and sugar would be involved. Nor had I properly read the recipe and noticed the volume of dough to be made. It was only when I started mixing the final dough that I realised what I had got myself into! It was too late to scale down; but I couldn't bring myself to go full opulence. I cut the weight of these ingredients by about a third, and veganised the butter by replacing with a mix of vegan faux-butter and olive oil. Unfortunately my pandemic-inspired using-up of long-neglected pantry items had left me only recently without coconut oil, otherwise a perfect and already-vegan fat called for in the topping. For this part I followed the recipe's weights but used olive oil with the sugar and flour.

Speaking of flour, I used one that is new to me and high-extraction. The egg, I replaced with some chickpea cooking liquid I happened to have in the fridge, and about 20g of ground flax seeds. With all of these substitutions, I was deeply uncertain the recipe would work at all. Yet three hours after shaping, the topping on the buns had nicely cracked, and I preheated the oven. 

I've never eaten (or seen!) semitas de yema before, so I cannot speak to the authenticity of taste or texture. However, I can confirm that these are delicious, chewy but not tough, and perfect with a cup of hot, black coffee.

I've tried a few methods of making naan without using dairy or eggs. This was the most successful yet. It had the right soft, fluffy texture and slightly tangy flavour. They are a bit dark in colour because I used a little bit of wholemeal flour and some ground flaxseeds.

I based my recipe on Dabrownman's, and followed some tips in the comments there and on Skubum's post last year.

I replaced the yoghurt and water with oat milk mixed with 2 teaspoons of apple cider vinegar. Oat milk doesn't curdle the way that soy milk does, because it has far less protein. Next time I'll try with soy milk to see if that has an effect on the texture.

I had some leftover "no muss no fuss" starter in the fridge that I'd built up over the weekend, so I included that in the poolish. I think this might have been the key to getting that tangy flavour. I also added a ground flaxseed "egg" to the dough for richness and a bit of extra rise.

The dough was quite wet, so I threw in a tablespoon of wholemeal flour during the stretch & folds.

I wanted to bake on the same day, so I skipped the overnight rest, and rolled out half an hour after the final set of stretch & folds. I let rest for another half hour after rolling out and before cooking. I imagine that giving them more time would make them even lighter, so next time I'll definitely make the dough in advance. I cooked them on a pre-heated grill plate on the stove, for three minutes on each side, brushing each with a little oil.

I don't know if you can still call these "naan" after so many adjustments, but they hit the spot for me.

Total dough:
200g flour
158g water

20% in poolish:
40g flour
44g water
+ approx 25g sourdough starter + 4g yeast

remainder in dough:
160g flour
124g oat milk + 2t apple cider vinegar (in place of water and yoghurt)
20g sugar
1T ground flaxseeds + 2T oat milk

4g salt - add at same time as poolish, after approx 1 hour autolyse

20g melted nuttelex (vegan margarine) - add in 2nd set of stretch/slap and folds

1 clove minced garlic - add in 3rd set of stretch/slap and folds

4g oil - for brushing.

I was so inspired and moved by the response to PalwithnoovenP's challenge that I belatedly present my own entry.

There's a cooking blog I enjoy reading called Guai Shu Shu. I like this blog because the writer posts a lot of "home-style" recipes from various parts of south-east Asia (e.g. Singapore, Malaysia). I am really interested in the flavour combinations and cooking techniques from this region.

Recently this blogger posted a recipe for a small batch of steamed buns or bao. I decided this was the perfect choice for Pal's challenge to make bread without an oven.

The actual recipe mis-specifies the quantity of flour. It's described variously as either 9 or 12, or maybe up to 16, tablespoons, with 12-15 tablespoons of water. This gave me a very wet dough, so I just added flour until it seemed right. As a result, I wasn't sure how much dough was required for each bao. I also reduced the sugar to 1 tablespoon.

I really liked the idea of mixing the dough with a chopstick! I've never tried this before. It was surprisingly effective in developing a smooth dough.

Pre-shaped before a 15 minute rest:

The image at the top of the post shows them shaped into buns.

I left most of the bao plain, but filled some with about a teaspoon of peanut butter - fairly non-traditional, I admit, but I like to think in keeping with the spirit of the recipe! I invented some kind of sushi-bao fusion too - I put a small piece of avocado in one.

Proofed - maybe overproofed? I reshaped a couple of the plain ones that were especially 'relaxed' before steaming.

I know from experience steaming frozen packaged buns that I can only fit two or three in my steamer, so cooking was a bit of a slow process.

Non-traditional, but a winner! I liked that they had a looser crumb than is usual. I suspect this might be more controversial than my fillings.

Enjoyed with a delicious black bean stew, and the jealous, longing face of my lovely dog, Bruce.

Thanks for the motivation to give these a try, Pal!

To celebrate my housemate's birthday my recent baking experiment was a number of beer-inspired breads.

The most popular was one that combined spent grains from my local craft brewery, Young Henrys, with some beer that had been leftover at the bottom of a growler of Batch beer, another local brewery, for a bit too long to be interesting to drink. My part of Sydney is a great place to live!

I took an idea from Dan Lepard's Handmade Loaf and made a "quicker barm" by heating 125g Batch beer then whisking in 25g white flour. To this I added 97g spent grains and (when cool enough) a couple of teaspoons of NMNF starter that had finished its second build. I left this overnight to ferment.

In the morning my "quicker barm" smelt amazing. I mixed it with 250g water, 500g white flour, 10g salt.

There aren't any flours specially for bread available at my local shops. However, I recently joined a fruit and veg delivery scheme that has various organic, stoneground flours available from Demeter Farm Mill in NSW. Stay tuned for a review!

In the meantime, I use "Black & Gold" plain flour, which is effectively no-name brand. Its protein content is 10.9%, which is higher than others that are marketed as "premium" plain flour. I once read that there's no real difference in quality between plain (all purpose) flours that are available in most supermarkets. I'd be interested to hear from any Australian bakers whether they notice a difference.

I didn't note down the exact timeline from here. I followed my usual practice of doing a few stretch and folds over a few hours during the bulk ferment, then shaped into a batard, gave it another couple of hours, and baked for about 40 minutes at 230 C (higher for the first 10 minutes).

To create steam and help with oven spring, I poured about half a cup of boiling water into a baking tray, which I put on the bottom shelf of the oven; and I sprayed the top of the loaf and sides of the oven with water.

The result was a very tasty loaf! My housemate recommended it as a base for lamb or cheese sandwiches... but I'm vegan, so I enjoyed a slice or two with vegemite - another excellent by-product of beer making. Cheers!

I've been experimenting with using chia seeds in my regular "low hydration" sourdough. I tried incorporating them in three ways.

1. Pre-soak 2 tablespoons of chia in 8 tablespoons of water. "Dimple" into the pre-dough along with the levain/starter.
This was quite messy and difficult to work with. There was a lot of wet chia gel to try and mix into a fairly firm dough. I tried to take a light-handed approach to this and not worry too much. The end result was great! The texture of the crumb was almost silky. My guess is that this is because I managed a higher hydration than I usually would.

2. Add 2 tablespoons of chia to the usual pre-dough, with no extra water.
This produced a very stiff dough that was almost hard to handle for that reason. The texture of the bread itself was fine but nothing especially interesting. The taste was good - a bit nuttier, maybe, than a loaf without chia.

3. Add 2 tablespoons of chia to the usual pre-dough, plus 4 tablespoons of extra water.
This has been the most succesful method. I tried using an extra 6 tablespoons of water but find 4 tablespoons more manageable. I love the texture of the loaves made this way. The crumb is somehow shiny and smooth. I've been getting a good crust and rise too. As with the first method though, I'm not sure how much of this is attributable to the chia seeds, and how much is due to the (slightly) higher hydration than what I'm used to.

I was inspired recently to try a different sourdough recipe, taking some time away from my favourite. Whereas Trevor's has only 50g levain/starter (about 5% of the flour is pre-fermented), the Bread and Butter Project's sourdoughs call for 275g starter (about 22% pre-fermented).

The Bread and Butter Project is a pretty neat social enterprise where refugees and asylum seekers are trained and employed as bakers. Well... they say they employ people. I wonder if their capacity to do this is limited. After all, the Australian government is a world leader in denying as many rights as possible to people seeking asylum here. I know it has previously been the case that asylum seekers and possibly also refugees weren't allowed to work (or to claim any government support. How they were supposed to survive, I'm not sure). It's a bit of a miracle that anyone in need is allowed into Australia. For this reason, any positive project like this is worth support.

They also produce really tasty loaves. A friend recently lent me their book.

The first loaf I made was the orange, yoghurt and poppyseed sourdough. I followed the instructions to the letter, since it was the first time I'd made anything from the book. The taste was great.

Aside from that loaf, I've been working on baking bravely following the excellent suggestions and advice on my posts here.

This was their basic white sourdough - the one in the photo at the top of this post. I used rye flour in my NMNF starter so it's not as white as the recipe intended.

I was especially proud of the shaping on this loaf.

My latest bake was inspired by Ru007's double fermented oat porridge sourdough, omitting the seeds and nuts to keep it simple. I first tried this a fortnight ago and produced a pancake. I suspect this was due to over-fermentation. Ru007 already recommended reducing the final rise time, and I suspect my fridge doesn't get very cold. When I took it out of the fridge in the morning it was so extremely puffy that I'm certain it had overfermented. It collapsed completely when I turned it out and didn't get any oven spring. Maybe I need to shove the dough right up the back.

This time I was much more conservative with the timing of both the bulk ferment and the final rise. I didn't do an overnight rise at all, but baked after a couple of hours at room temperature instead.

I also reduced the water in the autolyse by 50g. I'm not used to handling very wet doughs. I was proud of what I had managed to achieve with the first effort, though I have nothing to show for it. I managed to roughly shape it into a log before putting it in a basket in the fridge, without using too much flour at all.

The result of both these adjustments was a dough I was much more comfortable handling, and one that came out of the oven looking like a loaf. I think I could have given the final rise a bit longer though.

The flavour and texture is gorgeous. I think it looks a bit dry in the photos, but it didn't taste that way. It's going to be tough resisting the urge to bake this one every weekend!

For my other bread of the week, I went overboard incorporating add-ins to my "regular" bake, Trevor Wilson's low hydration dough. In retrospect I could have held back some of that chocolate... but it was a delicious indulgence!

Thanks for the wonderful feedback on my post last week. I wrote this post over the weekend while I was making another couple of loaves following Dabrownman's recommendation that I retard the levain and the final dough. I used my idea about sticking the loaf right at the back of the fridge. Can't wait to see how they turned out.

Last weekend I conducted an experiment to test the theory that a larger quantity of sourdough starter produces a more sour tasting bread. On the face of it, this seems obvious, but I thought I'd read an alternative theory. The alternative theory is that less starter means a slower-proofing dough, which means more time for the sour flavours to develop.

I used Trevor Wilson's low-hydration dough as my basic recipe, using rye flour instead of whole wheat. I doubled the pre-dough ingredients and then divided the pre-dough in half on baking day.

I made two No Muss No Fuss rye starters, one using 3g seed to make 81g starter; the other using 6g seed to make 160g starter.

My NMNF 'mother' starter has been in the fridge for at least a month now, and definitely has been developing its sour taste. This came through on both loaves. My partner and I agreed that the one with the larger amount of starter did have a stronger and more sour taste. However, the difference wasn't huge. Unfortunately, she was the only "blind" tester I had! I suspect others might have been able to detect a slight difference, without being able to identify it as a difference in sour-ness.

I'm still developing my dough handling and shaping skills, which I think explains why one loaf (the one with 160g starter) came out flatter than the other.

A third loaf I baked the same weekend was a complete pancake!