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I thought I would share my results trying mountaindog's version of Country French. I didn't have exactly the right malt as called for in the formula so I substituted dry powder and a little raw sugar for the sweetener. I didn't get the airy crumb through out but there was nice activity in my wet starter which I am nursing back to a healthier condition. It's hard to see in the image but the crust is very thin and nice and crunchy. My family doesn't care for a thick chewy crust so I was going for a baguette style crust. I baked this in my new Steam Maker Bread Baker unit (background) with 15 seconds of hot steam injected, covered for 10 minutes then 20 more minutes of dry heat. The crust is incredible! Thanks mountaindog for the inspiration. I think this will be my new daily bread. The depth of flavor is very nice. I have another batch behind this one for tomorrow that I swapped some of the AP flour for King Arthur 7 grain. The combination of caramelized grains gives this a great aroma and chew.

After posting a forum question here on desem a few weeks back, I got some helpful hints from gt, JMonkey, pumpkinpapa, northwestsourdough, and maki (thanks all). I studied the recipes in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book and The Bread Builders, and improvised between them and what JMonkey posted here. I converted an existing vigorous batter starter to a stiff whole wheat one to make the desem starter, then fed it for the past 2 weeks more or less according to Laurel's method, burying it in fresh whole wheat flour, storing it in my cool 59F basement in between 1:1:2 daily feedings. After 2 weeks, the desem starter seemed nice and spongy, so I decided to give making a desem loaf a try this weekend.

Here is my little ball of desem just brought up from the basement ready to be expanded. It no longer needs to be buried in flour at this point, so as per Laurel, I keep it wrapped in 2 layers of clean linen inside an airtight container.

The inside of the ripe desem looks nice and spongy...

For this recipe, I used Allan Scott's weight ratios in The Bread Builders, just dividing his recipe by 6 for two smallish loaves rather than 12. I took about 230 g (8 oz) of my ripe desem, tripled it by adding 150 g water and 300 g flour, to give me 680 g (1.5 lbs) of expanded desem starter. I took 230 g (8 oz) of that and wrapped it up for storage as the starter, while the remaining 460 g (1 lb) was left at room temp. to ripen for 14 hours for making the final dough.

The just-fed desem starter ready to go back into the cellar:

Here is the final dough recipe I used (makes two smallish loaves):

453 g ( 16 oz) ripe desem starter

726 g (26 oz) organic whole wheat flour

631 g (22 oz) cool water

14.2 g (0.5 oz) sea salt

Dissolve the ripe desem starter (refreshed or expanded 14-16 hours before) into the water and mix well. In large mixing bowl, combine salt and flour, then add water/starter mix and knead with dough hook on stand mixer until blended. Continue to knead at speed 2 for 12 minutes. Dough will be softer than starter dough, but smooth and slightly tacky/sticky at the end of kneading. Place dough in covered bowl or container and let rise for 4 hours at 65-70F. Dough should have risen slightly, turn it out onto counter after 4 hours and divide in half, give each half a stretch and fold, and form into two tight boules. Place each boule in a floured banneton and cover with plastic to proof for 2.5 hours at 80-90F.

(Here is where I had a slight dilemma - I had to unexpectedly leave for the rest of the afternoon/evening just as I shaped my loaves to proof, so I put them in the frig overnight, took them out at 5:30AM the next morning, and let them warm up for a few hours until they rose enough and looked ready to bake - I did not want to over-ferment them since the recipe's final proofing time is rather short).

I preheated my oven to 500F and placed a lightly oiled 5 qt. Lodge cast-iron dutch oven inside to preheat as well. When the oven was ready, I flipped the firm dough out of the banneton and into the hot dutch oven, slashed the top, and covered it with the lid - no misting/steaming necessary. I baked it at 500F for 20 min. covered (it smelled great while baking...), then turned it down to 450F and baked it for another 20 minutes uncovered, after which it was nicely browned and the internal temp. measured 204F. So far things look pretty good:

I could hardly wait to cut into it to see if I had a brick or something worthwhile. It felt lighter than I expected when I placed it on the cooling rack. After 1.5 hours, I sliced in, and was very pleased with the result. Although I didn't get big holes, the crumb was not at all dense or heavy, instead it was very light. The crust was exceptional - very crispy on the outside, while the crumb was light, moist, and slightly chewy, with a nice flavor and no whole wheat bitterness.

A few more slices...it was delicious...

...crumb shot...

I am hooked - this bread was great, despite having my process interrupted and having to retard it overnight. I look forward to making it again, and hope that it will be even better as the desem starter matures over time. Maybe I'll even get bigger holes someday, but if not, this is still a delicious, light bread for a lean 100% whole wheat one. I am especially pleased with the results the Lodge dutch oven gave - the crispy crust and the high domed shape of the loaf - and no metallic taste, probably due to proper seasoning. I picked it up thinking I'd try a no-knead bread at some point, but have not got around to it yet - nice to know it is useful in this way as sort of a la cloche as well.

This is the flour I used for the desem - maybe someday I'll grind my own wheat berries to make fresh whole wheat flour like Allan Scott and Laurel Robertson do, but for now, I am pretty happy with King Arthur.

My Sunday baking suffered a bit today because we spent the morning out at the Chinese Gardens watching the lion dance for the beginning of the lunar new year celebration.

I had a batch of my pooish bread in the fridge as well as some sourdough with 20% whole wheat. Since the poolish bread was on the damp side, I ended up dimpling it and shooting for something like a ciabatta. Inside, it looked about right.

The crust was wonderfully thin and crispy, but it didn't look like your typical ciabatta since there was no raw flour on the crust. Alas.

The sourdough loaves I baked in pans. I also made some mini loaves of banana bread.

Anyone here ever tried making a yeasted banana bread? I thought about it today but though better of it. Actually, now I'm remembering that there is a sourdough banana bread on the site. I should try that next time.

Hi all,

Today I made Dosas in a Non-Traditional way. If anyone is not familiar with these: They could be called Indian Crepes made with Rice.

The traditional way of making these is

(1) Soak rice and Urad dal overnight. (Urad Dal is a kind of split bean which can be found in an Indian Grocery Store).

(2) Grind these up in the morning (you can do this in a Food Processor if you don't want to go absolute traditional). This will give a nice paste.

(3) Now you let this get sour (kinda like sourdough). Put in the sun all day long, if the outside is warm), or put in some other warm corner of the house. Hopefully, by the end of the day you will have the batter sour and bubbling. If not wait longer :-(

(4) Add salt to it, and adjust the thickness of the paste. (I would say the thickness is in between that of a pancake and crepe batter).

(5) stir the batter briskly.

Then you cook them up on a hot skillet, in a slightly different manner than crepes.

(1) Grease the skillet with Ghee or any other cooking oil.

(2) Depending on how big your skillet is, pour some paste on the in the center (a metal measuring cup can be convinient), and with the flat base of the measuring cup start spreading it thin on the skillet. It takes some practice to get this right.

(3) The thinner the better.

(Though if you want you could probably make it thinner and cook it like crepes, I haven't tried that!)

(4) When it seems to be really crunchy and golden brown on the bottom flip it over and cook slightly on the other side.

Filling

These can be filled with a variety of filling, but the most common is a spicy potato mixture spiced with (of cource) Indian spices.

(If anyone interested I can post that.)

 /****************************************************************************/

OK, so what does it have to do with the SOURDOUGH us people talk about here on the Fresh Loaf????

So here it goes. I had some brown rice flour sitting on my shelf not getting used.... Also I didn't make any breads this week and since I needed to feed my starter, I was going to have some extra starter.

So here goes my modified SourDough Dosa Recipe:

(All the ingredient amounts are in approximation, so use your intuation).... ;)

Ingredients

About 1 1/2 cups stiff wholewheat sourdough starter. ( you could probably use less )

2 1/2 cups water. (but maybe less like 2 cups, as you can always add more water later to get the consistence right).

4 cups (brown) rice flour. (you could probably use white if you want)

salt (about 1 tbsp not too sure, you'll have to go by feel here)

Method

(1) break the starter up into smaller pieces (10-15 pieces).

(2) Add water and with your hands dissolve all the sourdough chunks in the water until it is a big slurry.

(3) Now, start adding rice flour to this. and mix up with a fork making sure all the clumps of flour get dissolved nicely.

(4) Let it sit in a warm place, for as long as it takes :)

(5) Add salt before cooking them. Also adjust the thickness of the paste. It should be thinner than pancake but thicker than crepes' batter.

(6) stir the batter briskly.

(7) Cook them according to the directions above in the traditional method.

(8) Fill them up with your favourite filling or keep them plain.

(9) Eat them hot and crispy right off the skillet or they'll loose the crispyness fast.

NOTE:

(I started it late morning yesterday, but because of using so much starter it was progressing pretty fast. I actually started with 3 cups of rice flour, and  about by night it was super bubbly and I didn't want to cook them last night, so I added 1/2 cup more flour and refigerated it. I took it out of the fridge about noon today and since it was quite bubbly again, I added 1/2 cup more flour and cooked them after 1/2 an hour).

(We had these for lunch as well as for dinner :D, yum) They had a nice sour taste which stays in your mouth a long time after you eat them, but not super sour when actually eating them. Also I think, the potatoes balanced them out as well.

These are accompanied by coconut chutney and Sambhar (which is like a thin soupish dal/soup made of split beans).

Well, I had mixed success with TomsBread's method. I mixed 450 grams of whole wheat flour with 388 grams of water (85% hydration) and just a pinch of yeast. I put it in the beer-cooler incubator at 85 degrees F for 3 hours, and than popped it in the fridge for about 15 hours. I then pulled it out, let it warm at 85 degrees for an hour, and tried my best to mix in 1 tsp yeast and 9 grams of salt. Wasn't easy, though, because the dough was very well developed by this point.

I then did a stretch and fold every half hour for a total of three, shaped it and let it rise for about 90 minutes. I forgot to slash the loaf, but I baked it in the cloche at 500 degrees for about 45-50 minutes, with 30 of those minutes covered.

The bread tastes great -- wheaty, sweet, a buttery after-taste with very little dry, bitter bran flavor. The texture is weird, though, which probably comes from my not mixing the yeast up well enough. Big holes in places with very dense sections elsewhere. "Fault lines" where the bread easily splits apart, as you can see on the lower left. I imagine thats from a layer of yeast that didn't get mixed. But I did learn that big (or moderately big) holes are possible and that 85% hydration doesn't have to mean flat bread. Next time, I think I'll try a combo of pain a l'ancienne with the NYT / Sullivan St. Bakery method. Mix up the full dough with cold ingredients and just 1/4 tsp of yeast. Pop it in the fridge for 12 hours or so. Then, pull it out, do three stretch and folds once per 45 minutes to an hour, shape and let it rise. Slowly.

Maybe I'll try it this weekend. If I do, I'll post how it went.

Laurel Robertson, I owe you an apology. I pulled a loaf of Desem bread out of my oven about an hour ago, and, unable to wait any longer, just cut a slice to eat. Without doubt, it is the most delectable, fully flavored whole wheat loaf I have ever eaten. Why it took me this long to get it right, I don't know. But I'm glad I did. When I'm making dinner bread from now on, I'll be making this.

First of all, folks should know that I didn't use a starter made according to the methods described in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, which requires 10 lbs of freshly ground flour. I'm sure you can make it that way, but there's an easier method. I just took some of my regular whole wheat sourdough starter, created a dough ball at about 60% hydration when I fed it, and left it in my chilly (55 degrees F) basement to ripen. I fed it once a day for three days, building it up each time, until I had about 200 grams or roughly 7 ounces of dough. On the final build, I increased its size by a factor of 3, and let it ripen for about 16 hours at 55 degrees, more out of convenience and necessity than calculation. If you don't have a whole wheat starter, it's simple to convert. Just take some of your regular ripe starter, and feed it in the following weight ratio of 1:4:4 -- starter: water: whole wheat flour. Refresh it two or three times like this, and you'll have your 99.99% whole wheat starter. (I won't tell anyone if you don't that it's not absolutely pure).

I screwed up my math in preparing the dough, so I ended up with about 38% of the flour as starter rather than the 30% I'd hoped for, but I'm not sure it would make that much difference. You do want a fairly large amount of starter, if I'm reading Laurel's recipe right -- somewhere in the range of about 30%. I also went for the customary 2% salt and aimed at a hydration of 75%.

Here's my formula:

• Whole wheat flour: 100%
• Water: 75%
• Salt: 2%
• 30% of the flour was pre-fermented at 60% hydration.

• 220 grams starter
• 260 grams water
• 320 grams flour
• 8 grams salt

Nothing terribly interesting baked today. A couple of loaves of my poolish French bread.

And a large sourdough miche-like loaf.

The French bread stales quickly, so we ate it tonight and will finish it tomorrow. I think the miche will be better after a day or two anyway, so we'll crack it open tomorrow evening or the next day.

I've been wanting to make this bread for years, ever since I first had a bite of chocolate cherry bread from Zingerman's in Ann Arbor, Mich. I've tried making this several times over the past few months, all of them flops. Pancakes, covered in charcoaled chocolate (Yum-o!) were the usual products of my labors. Not this time. I finally got think I nailed it. Here's how I made it (note: These cups are Laurel's Kitchen-style cups. Don't fluff up the flour and spoon it in -- dig deep and let it settle.

Ingredients:

125 grams or 1 scant cup big chunks of chocolate

I've found I get more flavor out of my sourdough if I let the starter ripen at above 80 degrees. It's not necessary, though. Just make sure your starter is ripe. The night before, dissolve the starter into the water as best you can. Mix the salt with the flour (You can try using all-purpose -- I think all-purpose has better flavor and texture for sourdough, personally -- but I find that bread flour gives this bread the heft it needs to rise well despite the weight of the goodies). Then dump the flour into the starter slurry and mix it all up together until it's all hydrated. The dough should be very tacky and maybe a little sticky, but not super sticky. We're shooting for the texture of wet French dough, not ciabatta.

Cover the bowl with plastic or a plate, and let it sit at room temperature (about 70 degrees F, more or less) for about 12 hours (anywhere from 10-14 should be fine). Once it's ready, it should look something like the photo to the left.

Meanwhile, pour some boiling water over the cherries. If you can't find dried tart cherries (Trader Joe's sells them around Boston), dried cranberries will usually do almost as well. Let the fruit soak for about 15 minutes, drain and then place them on towels or paper towels to dry. You want the interior wet enough so that the fruit won't draw moisture from the dough, but dry enough on the exterior so they won't turn your dough into soup (it can happen -- believe me, I know). When the fruit is ready, mix it up with the chocolate in a bowl, and have it handy.

Flour a workspace lightly, and then gently turn the dough out onto the board. With wet hands, lightly pat the dough into a rectangle. Stretch the dough to about twice its length, and then spread 1/4 of the chocolate cherry mixure in the center. Fold one-third of the dough on top, and again, spread 1/4 of the mixture on top. Fold the final third of the dough like a letter, and then turn the dough one-quarter. Follow the same procedure, and then cover the dough. Let it rest for about 15 minutes. Here's a photo sequence to show you what I'm talking about.



Stretch and spread.


Fold and spread.


Fold again. Then turn the dough one quarter and repeat! Easy-sleazy. (That's the final product above. I skipped a few steps in the photos. It's well-established that stretch and fold only remains exciting and engaging for ... oh ... no more than three photos, I believe..)

Folding the chocolate and cherries into the bread ensures that the vast majority of the goodies stay protected from the fierce heat to which you're going to subject the dough in order to get that lovely, crunchy crust we all adore. The yummy stuff is not as evenly distributed as it would be were it mixed in from the beginning, but uneven distribution is highly preferable to charcoal. Trust me.

Now, after letting the dough rest for 15 minutes, gently shape the dough into a boule, and place it in a well-floured banneton. I splurged a while back and bought one of my own, but you can easily construct a makeshift banneton out of a bowl and a well-floured linen napkin.

I like to let my sourdough proof in the makeshift proof-box you see to your right. I pour a cup or two of boiling water in there and close it up. It'll stay within 3-4 degrees of 85 degrees F for about 90 minutes. I then pour in another cup or two of hot water.

After 3 hours, my bread looked like this.




About an hour beforehand, I'd put my cloche in the oven and preheated it to 500 degrees F, but if you don't have a cloche, a dutch oven or oven-safe casserole will do. If you don't have that, just use your baking stone and steam the oven. If you don't have that, just put the bread on a baking sheet. Once the bread was scored, I baked it covered for 30 minutes, and uncovered for about 17-18 minutes, and then let it cool an hour (can you believe it?) until we dug in. I had a minor mishap with a bit of my bread sticking to the peel, thus the odd shape to the left. It didn't disuade us from gobbling it all up with 48 hours though.

Last weekend I took another stab at the Sourdough English muffins, going with some of the modifications that I suggested in my previous post. Here is my recipe for this batch with the changed ingredients from Nancy Silverton's original recipe in boldface:

SPONGE:
18 oz White Starter
2 cups plain soy milk
7 oz unbleached white bread flour (high extraction - 14% protein) (I used 1 oz less)
3.5 oz dark rye flour

DOUGH:
Sponge
10 oz warm water (85 degrees)
0.3 oz of SAF instant yeast
1/4 cup oat bran
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup flax seeds
1/4 cup rye flakes
2 tbs raw sunflower seeds
2 tbs raw pepitas
7 oz unbleached white bread flour (high extraction - 14% protein)
1/4 cup (minus a smidge) honey
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 tbs kosher salt
Cake flour for dusting
Semolina flour for dusting

This time, I was able to make the muffins over the course of one day as the original recipe calls for. The sponge fermented for about 2 hours before I made the final dough which in turn rose for another hour and a half.

I decided this time that I needed more strength for the parchment paper rings and so I cut the pieces of parchment twice as tall and then folded in half. While seeming like a good idea, it ended up being more difficult to fill the rings since the dough got caught between the folded layers on a few of the muffins and the strength of the rings was no greater. Besides, I cost me double the amount of parchment paper.

The use of the cake flour for dusting the board became a real pain since the dough was more hydrated in this version than the last. Most of it clumped up and took some effort to brush off. In the end, using no flour at all and keeping my hands slightly damp to help handle the dough would have worked much better.

The muffins rose in the rings for about an hour and then I dusted them with semolina and tossed them in the oven.

I waited until the next day before tearing one open and they were much tastier than the last batch. The sweetness of the honey was much mellower than the agave nectar and the wheat germ and rye flakes added even more heartiness in flavor and texture.

My wife and I have been enjoying them as the base for fried egg sandwiches: toased muffin, 1 fried egg, 2 slices of facon (veggie bacon), a think spread of garlic herbed queso fresco from Shepard's Way and a smear of dijon mustard.

My parents just came back from Paris. Here are a few bread pictures they took for me: