dabrownman's blog

For the 2nd test of our new 2 week old WW starter, we though we would continue our 100% whole grain quest to a 3rd bake, similar to the last 2, but making a few changes along the way as my apprentice usually does.  She just can’t leave well enough, or me either for that matter, alone.

We decided to add in some YW to the mix to help open the crumb of the planned pumpernickel baking temperature and schedule.  We also decided to change from a 100% whole wheat, 100% whole grain bread to one that was still 100% whole grain but had equal portions of WW, Spelt and Rye.  We omitted the VWG on this bake.

We also added some barley malt syrup and cut the molasses in half and throw in some bread spices consisting of; black and brown caraway, coriander, anise and fennel.  To keep in line with the change in whole grains we also changed the whole berry scald to match it using WW, Spelt and Rye.

The resulting overall hydration of 87.5% is fairly in the middle of the pumpernickel hydrations we do around here in AZ where it is so dry all time.  The method was pretty straight forward if a tiny bit unusual.   We built the whole wheat combo SD YW levain together over (2) 4 hour builds where it easily doubled.

After a 1 hour autolyse that had everything in it but the levain and scald, we mixed the levain and the autolyse together with a spoon and then did 10 minutes of slap and folds trying to develop as much gluten as we could = what fun.  We then folded in the scald berries with a bench knife.

 Once the berries were evenly distributed, we tossed the paste into a large bread pan filling it about 3/4th full.  The paste filled the pan fuller than we would normally like for pumpernickel but, my apprentice was lazy and refused to pull it out, divide it and put into two smaller cocktail pans.

 She did, to be fair, reminded me that the Altus loaf at 300 G lsss in size actually shrank the last time leaving the finished bread 1” below the rim of this same pan.  We dusted the loaf with oat bran and let it ferment on the counter for an hour before it went into the fridge covered in plastic, for a 16 hour retard.

It's a little more dense and moist on the bottom.

It had risen to the top of the pan when it came out of the fridge the next morning when it went into a plastic bag to warm up and do final proof on a heating pad for 3 hours.  Since the bread would eventually rise almost an inch above the pan rim, we decided to bake it low and slow; pumpernickel style, in the WagnerWare, MagnaLite turkey roaster with the trivet inside so extra water could be added to steam the loaf.

The temperature reducing (as time goes on) baking schedule follows:

400 F - 30 minutes

375 F - 30 minutes

350 F - 30 minutes

325 F - 30 minutes

300 F - 1 hour

275 F - 2 hours

250 F - 2 hours

225 F - 1 ½ hours

200 F - 1 ½ hours

We had a powerful sunset last night

When the bread tests 205 F in the center, turn off the oven and leave the bread in the DO inside the oven for 8 -12 hours.  We did 8 hours and the oven was still warm in the morning due to the two baking stones on the top and bottom rack of the oven.

The 3 P sandwich - DaPumpernickel, Pepperjack and Pate

Yes, it is a long bake but worth it in the end if you want to make a classic pumpernickel style loaf.  Not that this one is a classic, since it isn't 100% rye, have cornmeal, potatoes or bacon fat in it.  But this sure tastes like a pumpernickel even if it doesn't really use classic pumpernickel flours and uses an Irish Stout for much of the liquid. That’s the great thing about bread – there aren't any real rules, especially if you choose not to follow them like my apprentice.  This bread smell tremendous with the caramelized grains, scald and aromatic seeds.

Love the first one so much we made a variant - DaPumpernickel, Irish Swiss and Pate open face

Sadly, even after it cools you don’t want to slice it for at least 32 hours.  Just wrap it on linen or cotton and be as patient as you need to be…. We love pumpernickel and do not mind waiting, as long as, we win the Power Ball tonight for over $320 plus million.  Well we didn't win the big moola drawing but we still won a jackpot none the less.  We took a few slices off the loaf this morning for pictures and breakfast, re-wrapping the rest to let it sit another 24 hours before slicing it.

A close up open face sandwich - in your face:-)

This bread easily sliced 1/4" thick slices even for such a large loaf.  The bread was open and very moist.  It is also about the best tasting example of a non-traditional pumpernickel my German apprentice has ever tasted.  She wanted to take the rest of the loaf outside to bury it in the back yard but I managed to stop her before she got to the doggie door.  It is a powerful bread flavor wise, as much so as last night's sunset,  and we can't wait to try it with some robust red wine, pate, cheese and fruit spread especially after this morning's toasted pumpernickel with butter, egg, hot sausage and bacon delight.    Yummy. 

Formula

After the our take on Ballymaloe’s Brown Bread with Guinness and Biga, turned out so nice for St. Paddy’s Day, we wondered why we haven’t ever seen this bread baked as a sourdough at Ballymaloe?  So we thought we would give it a go with Not Mini's Ancient WW SD Starter that is almost 2 weeks old and nearly tripling after 8 hours now.

The starter saga can be found here:

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32665/mini-ovens-no-muss-no-fuss-starter-8-days-laater

The Ballymaloe Brown Bread for St Paddy’s Day can be found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32718/st-paddy%E2%80%99s-day-feast-sort-ballymaloe-100-ww-brown-bread-and-irish-ruben%E2%80%99s

This bread is just the perfect first loaf for Not Mini’s Ancient WW SD starter, even if only 13 days old and still a baby.

Some of the changes we made to the last bake were; upping the levain from 180 g to 240 g to try to account for a starter not quite on its pegs yet, adding a 100g (dry weight) scald since the last bake was crying out for one, replacing the 50 g of soft white wheat in the levain with whole red wheat,  reducing the molasses to 30 g from 45 g to make the bread less sweet, upping the VWG to 20 g from 15 to help out the new starter, adding 3 g each of red and white malt powders and 10 g of Toadies to the mix.  We love Toadies and the added flavor it imparts to the bread.  The hydration ended up 3.5 points lower at 85% due to the more dry add in ingredients and less molasses and nearly 200 g grams heavier than the last Brown Bread bake.

We have been reviving the 8 day old near dead and tumor bearing starter from its flour coffin for the past 5 days.   By feeding it straight WW at 100% hydration and refreshing it every 12 hours it has made progress.  We think we have it in good enough shape to try it out on this bread for its first bread.

The lid comes off and it had sprung an inch above the rim almost touching the top of the DO lid..

We did 30 minutes of autolyse excepting the levain and the scald.  We also changes the process this time to do 4 sets of S&F’s over 2 hours on 30 minute increments to develop the gluten further and incorporate the scalded berries during the third set and getting them really evenly distributed at the end of the 4^th set. 

As a final change, we decided to do the bulk ferment and a final proof in a small CI enameled Dutch oven and retard it for 20 hours between the two.  The bulk ferment on the counter was 2 hours.  After taking the DO out of the fridge we let the dough final proof on the counter for 4 hours before putting it into a 425 F oven to steam for 30 minute.

We then took the lid off and turned the oven down to 350 F to bake another 10 minutes before removing the bread from the DO and finish baking it on the oven rack between two stones until it hit 205 F.  We turned the oven off and left the bread on the bottom stone for 10 minutes to crisp the crust with the oven door ajar before removing to a cooling rack. 

The loaf rose well in the fridge during retard and on the heating pad during final proof .  Unlike the previous bake, this loaf sprang well in the oven.  We are glad we decided to bake the loaf this way rather than as a pumpernickel - low and slow.  The crust was dark brown, crisp and glossy when it came out of the oven like DO's put on bread.  It smells very good and my apprentice is very proud of the Not Mini's Ancient SD starter for its first bake at 14 days of age.  It really did its job and some sour came through.

The crumb turned out fairly open, moist and glossy for a 100% whole wheat bread.  It tastes very good and a little tangy.  It isn't as sweet as the biga brown bread from SP Day.We like this one a lot but both are very good in their own way.  Now we have to bake this one like a pumpernickel :-)

Volunteer zinnia  in the front yard.  Everything is blooming in AZ except the cactus which will be very soon.

Formula

Traditions get all tied up with the way things used to be but they point to a better future too.  There aren’t too many traditions that are tied to bad things.  No one wants to celebrate them year after year.   Those we try to forget.  But, the good things we want to remember and renew.  St Paddy’s Day is such a tradition and everyone can be Irish one day a year, put on the green and look forward to a better future.

Carrying on traditions can also be mean that things don’t change over time and the typical Irish feast is a fine example.  Who doesn’t want corned beef and cabbage, boiled; potato, carrots, celery and onion, a nice brown bread, soda bread or scones and fairy cakes at least once a year?  Next day Irish Ruben’s aren’t bad either.

This year, as we usually do, we mixed things up a little bit with the recipes to renew the tradition by not get stuck in the way things were, a problem with traditions that don’t change with the times - can’t let pride get in the way of progress.

So instead of covering the simmered corned beef in mustard and grilling it to finish we covered it as usual but baked it in the oven to get some color and flavor on it.  Instead of sautéing the cabbage with some garlic in butter and bacon fat, we added Swiss chard   and collard greens to the mix - highly recommended.  In place of scones, we made lemon curd fairy cakes and our take on Ballymaloe’s Yeasted Brown Bread replaced the usual soda bread.  So like all traditions that last, they change to withstand the test of time.

Sadly, our daughter Molly couldn’t be with us this year, but she did have Dad email her the recipes from his and her cookbook.  She called to tell me that a lot of important stuff was missing from them too!   She more into the way things are now than the way things were yesterday and so long ago as last year.

It’s the bread we want to talk about.  After staying at Ballymaloe for several days so long ago, we had the luxury of having their SD bread, soda breads; brown and white and their famous yeasted brown bread which is far and away our favorite with the sourdough coming in 2nd.  A SD brown bread would be out favorite if they made one.  Looks like a future project for my apprentice?

I have never had much luck making this yeasted brown bread as the recipe was originally written.   The recipe had several errors in it that have now been corrected by Darina Allen.  It had 50g too little flour, 150 g too much water and the hydration was 127%, pretty high for a no knead, one rise bread and totally unworable.  She has since changed the recipe adding 50 g of strong flour (now the bread is not 100% whole wheat) and cutting the water down to 425 g from 575g. 

The revised recipe can be found here: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/24/how-to-make-yeast-bread

I’m not into no knead bread and I wanted to keep the recipe 100% whole wheat if I could, plus, I wanted to use Guinness for the water.  I don’t keep packages of yeast around as a general rule but I did have one that had a little bit left in it which I used to make a 180 g 100% hydration biga that had 50 g of home milled soft white wheat in it.

Irish whole wheat, which is traditionally used to make this bread, is milled from soft red wheat, something I haven’t found unless online - at exorbitant prices.  So, to try to replicate this flour, I used 50 g of home milled hard red wheat, 150 g of whole wheat pastry flour and 300 g of store bough whole wheat flour.  With the soft white in the biga and the pastry flour we added 15 g of VWG to help this bread out with its lack of gluten.

The Irish Ruben - Kerrygold Irish Swiss cheese and butter for panini, home made Dijon mustard, corned beef with sauteed cabbage, Swiss chard and collard greens  just yummy with the usual veggies and fruit assortment.

You always want to buy Guinness in the can since Guinness travels so poorly.  The can is the only way to get anywhere close to what you get in Dublin out of the tap.  It has a small plastic CO2 canister in each can that lets loose its bubbles when you pop the top to ensure you get the proper stoving that Guinness is so famous for when poured,  as the bubbles work their way back to the top to make the head.

Since one can of Guinness is 14.9 oz or 423 g that is what we used for the 2 hour autolyse.  With the 100% hydro biga and the 84.5% autolyse, the 45 g of molasses (6 times more than Darina’s recipe) and 15 g of VWG we ended up with just the right amount of liquid at 88.51% hydration to allow us to do a nice set of French slap and folds to incorporate the biga into the autolyse and develop the gluten.  Plan on doing 10 minutes of slap and folds to get the dough in shape, eventually the dough will come around.

Once the dough had rested for 10 minutes after being slapped around, we divided it into 3 portions, did some S&F’s to get it tight and then made 3 little boules to fit in the large loaf tin.  You can see from the picture that the dough did not fill the tin even half full - Irish tins are smaller just like the leprichauns that make them - so have your apprentice make a 12% larger amout of dough next time like i will.  I wasn’t paying attention and let the dough proof 1/2 “ past the top of the tin, instead of  just under the top of the tin so it was over proofed and there wasn’t any oven spring as a result.

It took 8 hours on the counter to get it over proofed - so 7 hours would have been better.  We also thought that we would bake the tin in a hot MagnaWare oval turkey roaster with 1/8 C of extra water under the trivet.  We preheated the roaster at 425 F until the oven beep went off saying it was at temperature and then 5 minutes later removed the roaster from the oven, put the tin inside, topped with the lid and put it back in the oven for 20 minutes of aided self steaming.

We removed the tin from the roaster and put it on the oven rack and turned the oven down to 350 F, convection this time.  We removed the bread from the tin 10 minutes later and placed the bread upside down directly on the oven rack for 10 more minutes.  When it hit 205 F on the inside, it was removed to the cooling rack.  The oven had a stone on the top and the bottom of the oven to regulate the heat properly.

We like the way this bread tastes and isn't far off the Ballymaloe version from a taste point of view.  Even though my apprentice over proofed it, the crumb was glossy, open and mildly sweet.  The crust was crispy, probably due to the DO, but went softer as it cooled.  No wonder this is the bread Ballymaloe is famous for baking and serving to their guests!  Will post the Irish Rubens here after we make them for lunch.  Happy St. Patrick;s Day to All Fresh Lofians everywhere.

Formula

Wouldn't you know it......another year of clean living and the Irish Fairies stopped by to leave a St Patrick's Day surprise again this year!  Wish The Leprechauns would take notice and follow the Frairy's lead !  Used Rachel  Allen's lemon curd recipe and froze it for a year .......Fairies love lemon curd with some age on it.    The cake is a lemon sponge with cake flour.  I saw the Fairies tossing their dust on them before disappearing till next year.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

For our Irish native from Belfast -  Sylvia.  I can't remember where I got the  cup cake recipe.

Lemon Curd

2 eggs and 1 yolk

1 stick of butter

¾ C sugar

zest and juice of 3 lemons.

Mix and slowly heat on top of the stove in 2 qt sauce pan until mix thickens into thick curd.  Put in refrigerator for 4 hours to thicken further.

 Irish Lemon Curd Fairy Cakes

• 5 egg yolks
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1 teaspoon grated lemon peel - 1 lemon
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice - half a lemon
• 5 egg whites
• 2/3 cup sifted cake flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 16 oz lemon curd
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Grease and flour 20 muffin cups.

Beat egg yolks till thick with a whisk in a bowl. Gradually add 1/3 cup sugar in several stages beating continually.

Whisk in the lemon peel and juice.

Beat the egg whites utill soft peaks form.   Then gradually add remaining 1/3 cup sugar and beat till stiff peaks form.  I use a hand mixer for this

Gently fold the whites into the yolks.

Sift together cake flour and salt and gently  fold into egg mixture.

Fill muffin cups 2/3rds full.  Bake at 375 F for 10 minutes, rotate the cupcake pans and turn down the oven to 325 F convection this time and bake about 5 minutes more until the tops are nicely browned.

Remove cakes from tins and cool completely on a wire rack.

Use a sharp paring knife to cut into the top center of each cupcake, removing the cone shaped piece and reserve.

The quest for the New Your bagel continues.   This time we lowered the hydration 2% to 56%, used more barley malt, used 27% whole grains (the bulk of which was whole wheat in the dough flour to try to mimic first clear flour) and we used AP with VWG since we didn’t have any bread flour.

We also changed the process around a little bit too.  We built a full strength SD starter out of whole grains, stiffened it up to 65% and then let it sit in the fridge for 3 days to get sour.  Then we built a levain from that using 15 g of seed and whole grain spelt, rye and WW.  We made the yeast waster levain separately and replaced the whole spelt with AP flour.

Once the two levains had doubled, the SD levain was placed into the bottom of the container and the YW levain was put on top of that and they were placed in the fridge together for 2 days.

The levains were removed from the fridge to warm up.  While they warming we autolysed the rest of the ingredients, including; the salt, malts and VWG for 2 hours after having kneaded them together.  Dough like this would kill the KA so hand kneading is always the wiser choice but a hard slog.

After the levains hit the autolyse it took a while to work then in the hard dough by squeezing it through the fingers.  Then we kneaded the dough until it was tough but silky smooth.  After a 1 hour rest we shaped the bagels around the knuckles at 135 g each and put them on semolina dusted parchment where they rested for 1hour before gong into the fridge for a 32 hour retard.

Sorry, cut into one for a taste while they were still quite warm.

After coming out of the fridge, we let the bagels proof on the counter for 4 hours.  The bagels doubled over that time and then we refrigerated them again for 1 ½ hours to stiffen them up.  Next time we will put them back in the fridge after 3 hours and let them cool for 2.  The bagels were gently boiled for 30 seconds each side, in water that had barley malt and baking soda in it, just to shock them awake. 

Bagel hole?  Made a little dough ball for floating to see if the bagels were ready to boil and that they too would float!

They were flipped on a kitchen towel to get rid of the excess water and then dunked into the seed mixture.  The 3 mixes this time were white, brown and black poppy, white and black sesame and a multi-seed and salt one comprised of the previous seeds plus oregano and basil seeds, black and brown caraway seeds, nigella seeds and kosher salt.  We made twice as many of the combo salt ones since they are our favorite.

Looks and cuts better when fully cooled,

The steam was supplied by 1 of Sylvia’s steaming pans and a 12” skillet with lava rocks and we used both stones to accommodate the 13 bagels and 1 small roll.   They baked with steam at 450 F for 8 minutes and then steam was removed and they baked for another 8 minutes at 425 F convection until they were deemed done and nicely browned.

Beautiful skies don't have to be sunsets or sunrises.  The sunset was great too!

After deflating in the boil they managed to puff themselves back up nicely in the steam.  These are getting very close to NY SD Bagels and would be way sourer without the YW in the mix to tone it down.  The blistered crust is crispy, the crumb chewy but the taste is near spot on too.  Even my wife is having one for breakfast today instead of Einstein’s.  Now that takes some doing.  We like this batch very much but will make some changes next time as we always do still searching for the perfect bagel that doesn’t exist.

I never eat two bagels at once but did when they came out of the oven yesterday - yummy!  Cream cheese schmear and buttered with minneola marmalade.

Formula

With David Snyder recent post of his new take on SFSD with higher amounts of Semolina and Ian’s new bread with semolina, it was only natural that another semolina bread would fit in this week. This one had a small amount of Desert Semolina - 150g.  We wanted to see if the high gluten, not just protein, claims were true.

The bread has 35% whole grains that included millet, another yellow grain and Kamut a durum variety that has a yellow cast too.  We didn’t want the whole grains to take away from the yellow crumb color we were shooting for the Desert Durum.  The small amount of honey was there to sweeten the non yellow AP flour since the yellow ones are pretty sweet all by theselves.

This bread was leavened with combination yeast water and mainly whole grain SD starters.   For the liquid in the dough we used the left over soaker water from our last 100% whole grain pumpernickel bread.  We added some ricotta cheese in keeping with this Altamura shape and Italian leanings of this bread – plus we are growing to like cheese in bread and the moisture it imparts to the crumb.

Since the color of the dough was yellow we thought green add ins would be appropriate and included pumpkin seeds and pistachios along with some millet seeds.  This bread isn’t as complex as some of the others we bake but it wasn’t meant to be since this is about as white a bread as we usually get around to making and we were getting low on white …..eeerrrr….yellow bread.

The levains were built separately over two builds and 8 hours.  The SD portion has spent a few days in the fridge before the final build to get it nice and sour.  The method is similar to or recent bakes but only this time only a 1hour autolyse, with the salt, was used.  We did 10 minutes of slap and folds until the dough was silky smooth and the gluten well developed. 

We incorporated the add ins on the first of 3 S&F’s which were done 15 minutes apart.  After 1 hour of ferment on the counter, the dough was bulk retarded for 14 hours.  In the morning it was allowed to warm up o the heating pad for 2 hours.  It was then shaped Altamura style but once again, it came out too long for the 12” mini oven so we folded each end under to shorten the shaped dough without having to redo it all.

After a 2 hour final proof on the heating pad, we started up the mini oven for preheat with the bottom of the broiler pan 1/4 full of water.   The bread was baked at 450 F with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups on the top of the broiler pan with the dough.   After 12 minutes we removed all of the steam and turned the oven down to 425 F, convection this time.

After 5 minutes 3we flipped the bread over on its top  to brownnthe bottom since the bread had sprung well and the top was getting done before the bottom,  5 minutes later we turned the oven down to 400 F convection androtated the bread 180 degrees.  5 minutes later we flipped the bread over and continued to bake for another 5 minutes until the bread reached 205 F on the inside.  All total the bread baked 32 minutes 12 with steam.

The bread crust came out that usual durum color.  It was nicely brown, blistered  and crispy that went soft as it cooled.  The crumb was fairly open but not as much as we expected with the nice rise during proof and the spring in the oven under steam.  Still, it was very soft, moist and airy with the green and brown splotches of the pistachio and pumpkin and the yellow millet bits that stayed crunchy.

Can’t really makeout the ricotta cheese but the soft moistness of it was left behind.  This bread reminds me of bread with cream cheese in it.   We like the taste of this bread and it made a fine sandwich for a late lunch today.  We will be making a version of the bread again.

Formula 

After 4 Fresh Loafians recent trip to KA flour where they took the rye class from master baker Jeffrey Hamelman and the recent spate of posts on altus, my apprentice couldn’t help but devise a baking test to see if we could tell the difference, taste wise, when altus was added to a high percent rye and 100% whole grain bread.

Perfect bread holder for home made Pate Maison.

Our last bake was a test on ‘old dough’ that proved old dough makes a difference in taste that is noticeable and really quite profound.  Normally we would put altus in high percent rye bread, if we have it, but have never baked the same recipe at the same time under the exact same conditions with and without altus to determine first hand if there really was a noticeable taste difference.

We would have made a 100% whole rye bread for this test but didn’t have enough rye berries to grind up.  We decided to use whole spelt berries for 50% of the mix and bake it like it was pumpernickel, that had real pumperdime berries cut in half - long, low and slow, to bring out the dark color.  The instant coffee, cocoa, molasses, barley malt, honey and red malt also helped to turn this loaf dark.

The altus we used came from this bread - Multigrain SD/YW Brown Bread with Aromatic Seeds and Multi-Grain Scald which was also a multi-grain and YW/SD combo levain bread sort of similar to this one.

Today's lunch sandwich featuring the bread we used for the altus in todays bake that is still in the oven going on 7 hours.

You want to start the levain and scald the day before you bake.  We had a mainly rye and spelt 100% whole grain starter, that had been developed to its peak for the last bake.  It had been in the fridge for a coupe of days putting on some more sour.  It was used to make the combo levain with 30 g  of YW - a tiny amount in the scheme of things but YW really makes a huge difference to open the crumb in heavy whole grain breads.

All of the cracked and meal varieties of rye and spelt, half the total flour amounts used for the levain, along with some whole rye and spelt flour was used in the 1 build.  The rye and spelt berries were soaked overnight for 12 hours and then simmered for 10 minutes and allowed to cool.  The excess soaker / scald water was used to soften the altus so none of the flavor was lost.

It took about 12 hours for the levain to double on the counter.   While that was happening, we autolysed the dough flour, salt, all the add-ns (less the altus and the scalded berries) using excess soaker water for the liquid for 4 hours.   We like longer autolyse times for whole grain breads.  We also see no difference if the salt is included to the autolyse or not… so we always put it in.

Once the autolyse and the levain came together we mixed the heavy 76 % hydration mass with a big metal spoon to try and get things acquainted before turning it out on the counter and doing 10 minutes of French slap and folds when the dough really came together nicely from a structure point of view but still very sticky.

The dough was rested for 15 minutes before the first of (2) S&F’s were completed on 15 minute intervals.  The scald was incorporated in the first one and the seeds in the 2nd one.  Then the dough as divided in two with one dough 72 g more than the other since the smaller dough would have 72 g of soaked altus added to it. 

Once the scald was added the dough felt wetter than a 76% hydration dough because of the excess scald water carried along with it – even after draining and running a paper towel through the berries.

15 minutes later, the altus went into half and a minute of slap and folds was used to distribute it properly.   A few slap and folds were also performed with the other half to get it back into better shape gluten wise.

 We then panned each into half of a PAM sprayed large metal loaf pan and covered the non altus side with the lighter colored oat bran and the altus side with the darker wheat bran to mimic their actual color since the altus had made that side darker.

We then covered in oiled plastic wrap and allowed it to proof on the counter for 30 minutes before refrigerating it for a 12 hour retard at 38 F.  After removing the loaf from the fridge the next morning, we allowed it to warm up and proof on the counter for 6 ½ hours at 68 F until it nearly doubled to the rim of the pan.

We covered the top with a PAM sprayed double layer of heavy aluminum foil and placed it on the 375 F mini oven’s broiler pan that was half full of water along with (2) of Sylvia’s steaming cups that were heated to the boiling in the microwave.   Even though the loaf tin was covered we still wanted as much steam as we could generate in the mini.

After 30 minutes we turned the mini oven down to 350 F for 30 minutes.  We continued the baking in a falling oven with steam according to the baking schedule:  Many will notice that this is similar to the baking schedule for Black Pumpernickel that Hamelman uses.  This one just starts a little higher

Theise were 3"pieces of pumpernickel (altus left) that we got 12 slices out of the altus side than the 11 slices we got out of the non altus side.  For lunch the altus wa more moist and produced few crumbs when slicing and the non altus side was more dry and produced more crumbs when slicing.  It will be altus pumpernickel from now on.

375 F - 30 minutes

350 F - 30 minutes

325 F - 30 minutes

300 F - 1 hour

275 F - 2 hours

250 F - 2 hours

225 F - 1 ½ hours

200 F - 1 ½ hours

Turn oven off and leave the bread in the oven until morning or 8 hours.  Uncover and de-pan the bread.  Wrap the cooled bread in cotton cloth or linen for a minimum of 24 hours - 36 hours would be better.

A great lunch sandwich of Pesto Infused Roasted Pork Loin with; pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato and homemade Dijon mustard.  The fruits and veggies, include Poblano peppers cantaloupe, carrots, a homemade kosher dill pickle and a Minneola from the back yard.  A piece of this bread with a schmear of grilled salmon and cream cheese was included because it was go fantastic at breakfast.

Beautiful sunrise this morning!

Please note that the altus actually used for half of this loaf was 72 wet grams not the 144 listed in the formula below.  The 90 g dry and 144 g wet altus would be used in a full, non test loaf of this bread.

Crumb shots will be 24 hours from now.

The great aroma of this bread didn't start permeating the house until the temperature had been reduced to 250 F.  There were some unusual things and some expected from the crust points out.  First the loaf shrank a little bit while baking instead of springing. I have never used a  long low slow baking schedule for this kind of bread before and have never had one shrink - maybe this is normal?

The altus side came out of the pan much wetter than the non altus side and it was more caramelized.  We have never had a bread come out of the pan this wet before but this too may be normal?  When the aluminum foil lid came off, the aroma was incredibly pungent and pervasive.  It sure smells like a very nice black pumpernickel and I can't wait to slice into it.  But we will wait, even though my apprentice doesn't want to her being German and this loaf dear to her heart.  The loaf is now resting in its cotton cocoon for 24 hours - making it 32 hours after it finished baking before we will slice it. 

After baking and slicing the color difference went away,  the non altus inside was more open with larger holes.  the altus side was open too but the holes more even throughout.  The crumb was glossy and moist.  The YW really helped to open the crumb and make it lighter than just about any other bread of this type that I have made, seen or eaten.  Great taste - less weight :-)

The long low and slow bake at the end produced a finished temperature of exactly 205 F . Amazing!  This loaf was perfectly baked and the taste was just the best we have ever experienced.  The difference between the altus and no altus was slight though not nearly as great as we would have expected.  The altus side had a deeper and more complex flavor though and next time we have this bread for the altus. What a great loaf of pumpernickel!

Formula

After seeing David's  post earlier this week  about his experiment with using old dough vs a levain to make bread here "Old Dough" vs. Natural Levain ....... my apprentice just knew she hat to put her 4 cents in and replicate the experiment to see if we came out with would match David's bake.  Plus it was going to be fun because we haven’t used old dough to make bread for a very long time and had forgotten how good a no fuss job it could do.

Old dough is the way commercial bakers, as opposed to home bakers that baked smaller quantities and used levain, made all of their breads before 1870 or so when the Fleischmann brothers perfected their first commercial yeasts.

We didn’t have any old dough after bulk ferment to use so we decided to make a 125 g old dough from scratch.  We first did a formula that we would use for the levain dough and then scaled everything back from the larger dough weight to the little, what would become, old dough.  Spreadsheets really helped in this regard. 

Once we had everything together using the exact same ingredients that would be in the levain bread, we developed the little dough ball just like we would the larger one later.  We did an autolyse of 3 hours, added the tiny whole grain starter, salt, other flours and water and did 3 finger one hand tied behind the back French slap and folds until the gluten was well developed and the dough satin smooth.

After a 15 minute rest we did (3) S & F’s on 15 minute intervals and then let it ferment on the counter for 1 hour before refrigerating for 12 hours where it rose very well by doubling.  The next morning, while the old dough and the 125 g of the same levain were coming up to room temperature, we autolysed the dough with the salt, flour and water for the levain bread exactly as we had done the little old dough the previous day. 

Then before the levain went in we cut off half the autolyse for the old dough.  After that each dough was treated the same, together at the same times, yet separate .  The same - yet separate would make a good book title for a story about twins separated at birth.  Back to baking.

After the 10 minutes of French Slap and folds and the 15 minutes rest, the (3) sets of French slap and folds were done between  15 minute rest increments.  The Janet inspired bulgar and flax seed scalded mash was incorporated on the 2nd fold and fully distributed by the 3rd fold.

Each dough was allowed to ferment on the counter for an hour before being bulk retarded in a 38 F fridge for 18 hours.  After removing them from the cold, the dough balls had doubled in the fridge, they were allowed to come to room temperature for 1 ½ hours on a heating pad set to low.  Each was then formed into a boule and placed in like sized baskets even though one was more of an oval shape.

The baskets were placed in a nearly new trash can liner and placed back on the heating pad for a 78 F proofing.  After 2 hours, Old Betsy was fired up to 450 F with two DO inside, one a CI Martha Stewart and one was the Magnalite MagnaWare Turkey roaster.  Since the turkey roaster has a trivet insert that allows extra water to be put in for steam, we used the bottom of our spring form pan to raise up the bread off the bottom so extra water could be placed in it too.

Once the baking temperature was reached we un-molded each from the basket, slashed them and placed them into the hot DO’s with a parchment sling.  These smallish 525 g breads were baked 18 minutes with steam then the lids were removed and the temperature turned down to 425 F, convection this time.

The bread was baked another 5 minutes before being removed from the DO’s and rotated 180 degrees on the stone now.  The darker bread was done in 5 more minutes at 205 F on the inside and it was removed to a cooling rack,  The lighter colored bread was baked another 3 minutes before it too hit 205 F and we left this one on the stone with the oven off and door ajar for 5 minutes.

The darker colored boule spread more the lighter oval one.  The lighter oval rose and sprang higher and had a slightly softer and less open crumb but they were very close crumb wise.  The darker bread had more and bigger blisters.  The one in the WagnerWare turkey roaster was the lighter bread and we do not know why because nothing has been able to put crust on bread better than it does – except this time.

There is no question that one had a better more complex and deeper sour flavor just like David's bake and it was the one that used old dough too!  The difference in taste was definitely there and easy to decipher.   I’m would be using  this old dough technique  on bread from now on…… except that I forgot to hold back from this bake - darn…..typical the apprentice didn’t bark out a word of warning either!

So which one is old dough?  It’s the one that tastes the best and they both are great breads - some of the best we have made to date.   Let’s see who can guess the taste winner by looking.

Formula

This week we again baked, a little late as usual, with the 3 GMA’s.  This weeks bread was banana bread.  We were flat out of deserts around here and had been forced to eat Russell Stover candies for a few days, not the best option. So, when I saw the GMA’s fine examples, I knew my apprentice had to chime in with her take.

It is, of course, full of all kinds of other things besides bananas since Lucy has no self control whatsoever – I can’t figure out who she takes after but it can’t be pretty.  We changed our recipe a little for this bake.  Instead of 1 C of sugar split half and half between brown and white we only used 3/4 of a cup split.  We used 1/2 C each of almonds and walnuts instead of all walnuts.

Instead of 3 ripe bananas, we used 4 frozen ones - couldn’t wait any longer for the fresh ones to get brown.  We added some dried prunes to the dried apricots, raisins and cranberries in our usual snockerd mix.  We used 1 T of bourbon and 1 T brandy to do the snockering instead of our usual bourbon only.  Our current drinking bourbon is some very nice and old 103 proof premium small batch variety and way too good for dried fruit snockering in my book.

We also substituted 1/3 C of oats for some of the flour too.  We have these little packages of oatmeal everywhere and I am determined to get rid of them so they won’t fall out the cupboard every time you open a door… Sheesh!  One down.

We kept all the chocolate chips but made them the mini size this time - since it was going in the mini oven.  It took an hour at 350 F for this bread to hit 180F in the center and be declared done by Lucy who looked a little hungry if you ask me...... and 5 more F wouldn't have hurt any..

From what I can tell, none of the change we made for this bake hurt the taste of our banana bread in the least - which is usually made into cupcakes and frosted with cream cheese icing.  No frosting this time -plain will do.

Brownman’s Banana Bread or Cupcakes

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Dry Mix:

1 ½ C plus 2 T flour

¼ tsp salt

1/8 tsp each ginger, cloves, allspice

1 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg

1 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp baking powder

1 C chopped walnuts

1 C chopped chocolate chips

Bourbon Fruit – add bourbon to below dried fruits in a Pyrex 1 cup measuring cup covered with plastic wrap.  Microwave on high for 30 seconds and set aside 15 minutes to plump up fruits.

2 T bourbon

¼ C raisins or sultanas

¼ C dried cranberries

¼ C dried apricots cut into raisin size pieces

Wet Mix:

 3 mashed up ripe bananas

1/8 cup sour cream

1 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

½ C vegetable oil

½ C each brown and white sugar 

Add ½ C sugar, ½ C brown sugar and Bourbon fruits to wet mix and stir until sugar is dissolved.  Mix the wet into the dry and stir 50 times with spatula until the flour is incorporated
Quickly fill cupcake paper liners 3/4th full or put into PAM sprayed large bread loaf pan.

Bake cupcakes for about 12-16 minutes until wooden toothpick comes out clean.  Loaves will take 45 minutes or more for wooden skewer to come out clean. 

After 20 minutes remove from pans and let cool completely on wire racks.  Ice both with cream cheese vanilla icing and put sprinkles on each to decorate per the holiday or special occasion.  Makes about 21 cupcakes or 1 large bread loaf pan.

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

1/4 C butter, softened

4 oz. cream cheese, softened

8 oz. package powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract.

You can cub the juice of ½ of a lemon and the zest if you prefer that to vanilla.

Preparation

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended; stir in vanilla.

Varda caught the the original Pope's Hat was really a Priest's Hat and then we found out it wasn't and Priest's Hat either so we got a chance to fix that, inserting Priest's for Pope's and also fixing that to remove the Priest's Hat entirely and our spelling and grammer errors too.  Hope this clears up the confusion in a confusing way.

We were making a stiffer levain Italian style and decided to revisit another Italian bread – Altamura style like David Snyder did here

Pane tipo di Altamura from "Local Breads"

 This bread is also one where the whole multi-grains were going to be in the levain.  We also decided to go more Italian style with a stiff levain - 51%.  Since the whole grains  only amounted to 35% or so and not too much rye or spelt,  we thought a good 30 hour retard would really bring out the whole grain flavor and the sour too.

First off you simmer the soaker seeds for 3 minutes and then let them soak for 24 hours.  We would normally use the excess water at the end of the soak for the dough liquid but forgot to this time - so we saved it for the next bake.  Remember to rum a paper towel or two through the well drained soaker seeds to get rid of as much excess liquid as you can, otherwise, the dough will bee wetter than it already will be.

Nothing like a big picture of the reject :-)

The levain was made over (3) 4 hour builds and an additional 10 second one at the end.   20 g of the water in build 3 was added and mixed it at the 12 hour mark.  The levain was very stiff at 51% before this addition and so the normal doubling we look for went out the window.   We got 50% and that is normal for this levain type.

The rest of the ingredients, less the soaker seeds, were autolysed for 1 hour before mixing with the levain.   Then 10 minutes of French slap and folds followed.  After a 15 minute rest 2 sets of S&F’s followed on 15 minute intervals.  Then the soaker seeds were added and 2 minutes of slap and folds were used to rebuild the gluten structure and incorporate the seeds.

The dough was then allowed to develop on the counter for an hour in a well oiled covered bowl where the plastic was oiled too.  The dough was then retarded for 30 hours in the fridge at 38 F.  It easily doubled in volume while in the fridge. 

After removing from the fridge and letting it warm on the counter for 2 hours we took out first shot at shaping a Pane tipo di Altamura.  This turned out to be the pre-shape since it ended up looking like 2 ugly stuck together baguettes. Plus it wouldn't  fit on the mini ovens 12” square broiler pan. 

So we took another shot at the shape a few minutes later and it came out a lot better - but not at all like it should have if we were writing home about it.  But, it now fit on the top of the broiler pan too – a really good thing.  It then went into a trash can liner for final proof and was placed on a heating pad set to low with some kitchen towels on top of the pad.

After and hour it had popped itself open at the seam so we tried to fix that by re-sealing and we were almost half way successful. Another hour and it had puffed itself up well enough to bake.  Into the 450 F preheated mini oven it went after throwing a ¼ of water in the bottom of the broiler pan and heating one of Sylvia’s steaming cups for the vented top where the bread would bake. 

After 12 minutes of steam the Pane tipo di Altamura had sprung nicely so we removed the steam and turned down the oven to 400 F, convection this time.   We continued bake for 10 minutes rotating the bread 180 degress every 5 minutes.

This my new apprentice.  As I was hiking in Sabino Canyon in Tucson yesterday , this Roadrunner followed me on the trail for about 1/4 of a mile.  I didn't want to scare it off but as I took a few step he would take a few too.   Next thing you know he was walking with me as I hiked along. 

They are expertly camouflaged and if they don't want you to see them - you won't.  I already miss my new hiking buddy :-(

Then we turned the bread over on its top and continued to bake for 8 more minutes to brown the bottom when the bread reached 205 F in the thickest part.  The bread had baked a total of 30 minutes.  The crust was nicely browned and crispy but no huge bubbles which is the norm for baking this way in the mini.   The crumb went chewy and soft as it cooled.

The crumb turned out very soft and moist with chewy bits of soaker seeds - just liked we hoped.  The surprising thing about this bread is that it tastes great.  The grain flavors and sour are front and center.   It has to be one for best tasting crusts and crumbs we have ever managed and my new apprentice would have approved as much as old one did. 

Formula