Lazy Loafer's blog

It's always worth posting a photo when a loaf (finally) turns out to look like the picture in the book. :)

I've been baking rye sourdoughs over the last few days, for a special customer request. They turned out fairly nice, but I still have challenges with my rye starter staying strong enough to rise the bread properly. As a result some of them were a bit dense and wet (unlike the previous rye bake, where they rose nicely; not sure where the difference lies). Still fairly happy with them. From left to right they are:

1. Pumpernickel (from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's "How to Make Sourdough"). I used fresh sprouted rye berries for this one, rather than just soaking them as in the recipe. However, they turned out a little hard. I like this recipe because it used three barley malts - plain (Maris Otter), crystal and a very dark chocolate malt
2. A whole grain rye from Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" - I cook the rye berries along with some buckwheat groats and millet seeds for this one
3. Hadjiandreou's Orange Coriander Rye - very fragrant with grated orange zest and crushed coriander seeds
4. Not sure what to call this last one - it's the Lazy Loafer take on Stan Ginsberg's variation of Auerman's variation of Borodinsky rye! Again, turned out rather nice but too dense and heavy (even for a Russian rye). Not quite there yet. It does use a sponge and a scald, as well as red rye malt

Here is the crust and crumb of the Pumpernickel:

And here is the sort-of Borodinsky. Note the wet, dense layer.

At the bread tasting a couple of weeks ago, I made a series of six sourdoughs that all had the same formula and technique, with the exception of 25% of the flour being different. One of the popular ones was made with 25% Kamut flour. I was a little surprised that the Kamut seemed quite thirsty and also very strong. The dough seemed drier and much tighter than the doughs made with other flours. But the resulting bread was nice.

This time, I added a few things to the Kamut levain loaf as an experiment - chopped dried apricots, chopped crystallized ginger and dried orange peel. The results were excellent! Wonderful aroma and a good blend of flavours. Nice with all kinds of things, including preserves and some kinds of cheese. For ease of labeling I called it KOGA Levain (Kamut, Orange peel, Ginger and Apricot). :)

I have a customer who has teenage children. She buys a lot of different kinds of bread from me, but she was still buying cinnamon bread from a local chain because her kids love it. She asked it I ever made something like that. I found the ingredients online:

Ingredients

Wheat Flour, Water, Cinnamon Chips [Sugar, Vegetable Oil (Palm), Cinnamon, Soy Lecithin], Sugar, Yeast, Sunflower Oil, Salt, Dextrose, Sodium Strearoyl Lactylate, Mono-diglycerides, Ascorbic Acid, Protease.,

... and said, "Well, no, I don't make bread with those things in it, but I could make you something to try."

I started with Daniel Leader's recipe for Scali bread (from "Local Breads") which is made with a poolish, AP flour, and a touch of olive oil and sugar for enrichment. I did replace about 10% of the AP flour with white whole wheat flour (her kids will never notice :) ) [CORRECTION: The recipe for the Scali bread was actually from America's Test Kitchen's "Bread Illustrated" book. Sorry to lead anyone astray!]

Once the bulk ferment was finished I stretched the dough into a rectangle (easy to do; this dough is so soft and stretchy), then rubbed a little olive oil on it, sprinkled it with sugar (I used organic cane sugar for this and in the dough) cinnamon, and cinnamon chips (I figured they wouldn't like it without these!) then rolled it up. I then flattened the roll and cut it into three strips. I twisted each one then braided the loaf, tucked the ends under and put it in an oiled bread pan.

This was then baked as usual for a soft sandwich bread (350F for about 40 minutes). I should probably have done an egg wash to make the crust shiny, but it was just a test loaf. Still looked very nice once baked (though a bit lopsided; my braiding skills with soft sticky dough aren't great).

The crumb was really lovely. I cut the loaf in half and took a thin slice, just to make sure it was acceptable to me, before she took it home to the teenagers. Apparently it was a big hit and was quickly devoured, so now I need to make more!

Last Sunday I held my third annual Bread Tasting Open House. This year I focused on a couple of areas - 100% rye flour breads, and a series of sourdoughs using different flours. For the latter the formula / recipe / technique was the same for all six of the breads; the only variation was that 25% of the flour was different. The six were:

1. Amaranth flour
2. Corn flour (whole corn flour, not the UK version or North American corn starch)
3. Durum flour (re-milled from semolina)
4. Kamut flour (stone ground whole Kamut)
5. Rye flour (whole, stone ground)
6. Teff flour

The general formula was:

• Bread flour - 75%
• Other flour - 25%
• Water - 72%
• Starter (100 hydration) - 19%
• Salt - 2%

With the starter, the overall hydration was 74%. Technique was to mix flours, water and starter and let sit for an hour, then mix in the salt (by hand and with very little mixing). All doughs fermented at room temperature for around 5 hours with 3 or 4 stretch and folds over the first couple of hours. The windowpanes on all of them were excellent - very strong and stretchy. Of all of them, the teff dough was the softest and the corn dough the silkiest. All doughs were then put in the fridge overnight and shaped / proofed in the morning.

The test batch I made first was proofed in floured oval bannetons, then transferred to peels and into the oven on the hot stones (pre-heated to 475F). The teff loaf was almost impossible - it was so soft and sticky that as soon as it was turned out onto the peel it spread into a puddle and stuck. Transferring it to the stones was very difficult and resulted in a bizarre shape!

All had good oven spring, but the corn flour loaf was the winner in this category - it nearly exploded in the oven! The rye loaf had much less spring than the others and the scores didn't open much (although when I made a second batch it had much better spring and burst).

Crumb on all of them was soft and moist, and quite open. The corn flour loaf had large holes and very moist crumb. The rye had a much closer crumb. The amaranth and teff had the most interesting aroma, with a sort of chocolatey sweetness from the teff and a lovely 'fresh hay' scent from the amaranth.

The results of the tasting were a bit surprising, actually. The corn flour loaf was the clear winner with the teff in second place and Kamut in third. The loaf made with 25% durum flour came in last! I asked people to vote for their favourite and their second favourite. Conversations indicated that people felt most strongly about both the amaranth and teff (they either really liked one or the other, or really didn't like it).

It was an interesting experiment! Here are some of the pictures:

25% Amaranth flour:

25% Corn Flour:

25% Durum flour:

25% Kamut flour:

Somehow I missed getting pictures of the Kamut loaf!

25% Rye flour:

25% Teff flour:

The Teff flour loaf was the mis-shapen one, so no picture of the whole loaf. :) When I made these breads for the actual bread tasting I baked the softest ones in the perforated Italian bread pans which made life a lot easier. These loaves not only looked lovely (crust and slashing was nice on all of them) but were easier to make more uniform slices. This photo shows (from top left to bottom right) two each of the Durum, Kamut, Rye and Teff loaves.

I just made a batch of the 25% Corn Sourdough for customers who ordered it after the bread tasting, and it turned out quite lovely!

I've finally (finally!) managed to make a rye sour starter that is active and able to rise bread. I don't know why this has been so difficult for me, but I've had a few disappointments when trying to make 100% rye bread. I make a pretty decent deli rye, but the three-stage starter alternates between wheat and rye flour and starts with my very active wheat starter, so that didn't count. I have a customer who had requested bread that was 100% naturally leavened and had no wheat (Kamut, spelt, etc.) in it, so was challenged to come up with something good. I baked him a couple of bricks that I wasn't happy with and really needed to make something better.

So, over the course of about ten days I patiently fed a rye starter (again), and voila, this time it worked!

I have 100% rye recipes in a few places that I want to try - some on Stan Ginsberg's site (The Rye Baker), some in Daniel Leader's book "Local Breads" (this is the book I used for the rye starter), and some from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's book "How to Make Sourdough".

The first one is the Rye Berry bread from Leader's book. I changed it a bit by cooking (rather than soaking) the rye berries, and adding some kasha and millet to the cooking mixture. I find that rye berries don't soften enough when just soaked. I should have added the kasha after cooking though, as the grains sort of disintegrated in the mix. Oh well, the taste is still there. So this bread is a fairly high percentage of fermented rye along with the cooked grains, a bit more flour, water and salt, and that's it. No flavouring or seeds added.

I could have baked this in a Pullman pan but I only have a 13" one, and the dough would have fit into a 9" one. So I improvised. I have a couple of nice 8" x 4" tins from Fat Daddios. I used one of these, sitting on an old baking sheet, and covered it with a deep pan that I got for $5 (used) from my local restaurant supply store. These are steam table pans and come in different sizes. Food grade stainless steel, so very good quality. This way I didn't need any steam added to the oven either.

This loaf cooked at 325F for two hours, the last 15 minutes uncovered.

This customer likes his loaves cut in half and wrapped, as he keeps it in the freezer. So I was able to cut it the next day (and take a thin slice to taste it, just in case!).

The second bake was Hadjiandreou's Orange Coriander Rye bread. Again a fairly high proportion of starter, with dark rye flour, grated orange zest, crushed coriander seed, salt and hot (just boiled!) water. I didn't have any whole coriander seed (darn, thought I did) so I used ground coriander instead, and sprinkled a seed mix that I had made for something else on top (I think this was poppy, sesame, cumin and fennel seeds).

I baked it with the same pan cover, but this one baked at 425F for 30 minutes, then the cover off for an additional 10 minutes.

I had to get a crumb shot (and again, check that it tasted okay), so I sliced it too early and it looks a little gummy. However, by tomorrow this will be moist and lovely, and the taste is amazing! A keeper, this one.

I've got several more to try, including a pumpernickel with three kinds of barley malt (Maris Otter, crystal malt and a dark chocolate malt), a rye and barley loaf and a Lithuanian rye bread. I'm so excited! I'm such a bread geek, and I'm so glad to have this forum and wonderful bunch of other bread geeks who understand this. :)

It's a non-baking day (i.e. I don't bake for customers on Mondays), so of course what I end up doing is baking. I usually try out new recipes or variations on Mondays. Given that I got a lovely Pullman pan for Christmas, I decided to try Pain de Mie. This was a recipe from America's Test Kitchen "Bread Illustrated". I followed it exactly, but if I make this again I will cut the amount of yeast in half. I didn't take a picture, unfortunately, but the dough was at about the 1.5 litre mark in the proofing container when I put it in there, and in an hour it was puffed over the rim of the four litre container! That's a little too quick. Then, after putting it into the Pullman pan, it was trying to climb out the slightly open end of the lid after less than an hour again.

Haven't sliced it yet, but it looks very interesting! Crustless white bread - just what all those picky children want! Or people wanting to make a tray of perfect cucumber sandwiches for the bridge club luncheon... :)

Any other suggestions for loaves in a Pullman pan? I've already got a nice-looking rye loaf recipe in mind.

I bought myself a copy of Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" just before Christmas. It's a very good read for one thing - lots of stories about his travels to different parts of Europe, learning the secrets of many traditional regional breads from France, Italy, Poland, Germany, etc. There are lots of techniques to try and recipes scaled for the home baker.

I was very intrigued by the consistent recommendation throughout to mix aggressively, preferably by machine. Leader tested all the recipes using a KA Classic. One of the recipes I really wanted to try was a 50% whole wheat Genzano bread from Italy. This is a fairly high hydration (80% water to flour, but the 'biga naturale' starter is quite stiff so the overall hydration is lower than this) with both a stiff sourdough starter and added dry yeast. It is half unbleached bread flour and half stone-ground whole wheat (I milled it myself, so no additives).

I followed the recipe quite closely for this first try, wanting to see how it turned out. The mixing instructions are like nothing I've ever seen before - 10 minutes at speed 8 (yes, you read that right), followed by 8-10 minutes at speed 10! I had to spend the entire time holding down the mixer so the head didn't bounce around too much and the mixer didn't jump off the counter. It got quite hot too, but soldiered on. When finished, the dough was wet and drippy but very, very stretchy, and it cleared the bowl completely as it mixed. The temperature was a bit high at 95F.

I turned it into a lightly greased bowl to rise. The recipe said 1.5 hours, but it rose very quickly. I did let it go for 1.25 hours, then turned it and let it rise again. It deflated a lot after the turn but rose again, doubling in less than an hour.

Here it is before the turn:

After the fold:

And after the second rise:

As instructed, I covered a peel (a piece of 1/4" plywood in this case) with parchment paper and sprinkled it with wheat bran.

I turned the dough out onto a floured counter and cut it into two pieces. It was very, very soft and billowy; a bit sticky but a little flour tamed that easily. I patted it out gently into two rectangles and did a simple letter fold, then flipped each over onto the peel, nudging it into shape with my bench scraper. It was very much like a soft, stretchy ciabatta dough.

Before final proof (shaped very roughly!):

And after proofing for about 40 minutes:

The loaves were baked on stones pre-heated to 450F, with steam, for 20 minutes, then turned and baked at 400F for another 15 minutes. Excellent spring and gorgeous crust.

I barely restrained myself to wait until it was cooled before I sliced it and had a look inside. There has been so much debate about over-mixing resulting in close crumb, tough crust and chewy bread. This dough was about as over-mixed as you can get - 18 minutes at high speed on a stand mixer! And ... drum roll please... here is the crumb shot:

This is about the lightest, fluffiest 50% whole wheat lean bread I've ever made (or seen, for that matter). The crust is delicate and thin, and the crumb soft, tender and moist. Leader says the bread should keep on the counter for up to seven days! We'll see about that, but I seriously doubt it will last anywhere near that long.

To be fair I should try the same recipe with minimal handling and see how it turns out. Maybe I will, but I also want to try it with less added dry yeast and a bit longer ferment. With the biga naturale the flavour should be fine though, and it's nice to have a bread that can be mixed and baked in four or five hours.

I baked something I hardly ever do anymore (for some reason) - a simple white ciabatta. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to work with a soft, silky, high-hydration white dough with olive oil, and simply fold it into a rough shape. The bread was perfect cut into pieces for dipping into our New Year's Eve cheese fondue, as well as simply enjoying with butter or whatever. Even dry leftover cubes went into the bowls of stew made from the leftover meats, broth and vegetables from the broth fondue, to soak up all that tasty goodness. The first loaf went before I had a chance to photograph the crumb, but the second is in the freezer and I'll try and remember a crumb shot before it's all gone!

Something I should make more often. :)

Christmas Eve, I tried baking a loaf in the wood stove again, having learned a lot from Take 1. Same basic set up, with a few key changes. One, I waited until the coals had died down a bit more than the first try. Two, I used a 6-inch Fat Daddios cake pan inside the cast iron pot, and proofed the loaf in this as a bread pan.

This worked well to provide a bit of insulation between the hot iron pot and the loaf, and also made it easier to handle the dough (a simple 123 sourdough with about 75 grams of stone-ground whole wheat flour). I made a sling of parchment to lower the pan into the pot, then removed the parchment so it wouldn't incinerate like last time.

I put the pot in the stove and baked it for 20 minutes with the lid on. I then used a barbecue fork to carefully lift off the lid - the loaf looked very good, almost done! I put the thermometer probe into the loaf, closed the door and watched it like a hawk. This picture is a bit fuzzy as the camera focused on the ash on the stove door instead of the pot (should have cleaned the door glass first).

The temperature went up more quickly than I thought it would, and reached 200F in about 8 minutes. I'm glad I was watching it so closely this time!

When I turned it out of the pan, it looked fabulous, though the side closest to the back of the wood stove was a little dark.

The bottom crust was perfect though, so the pan-in-a-pot theory seemed to work well.

The crumb was excellent - moist and chewy with good oven spring. It was so good, we had it for lunch on Christmas Day!

It's so nice to know we can have good bread even if the power goes off. As long as it's in the winter. Next No Oven try - the barbecue!