April 22, 2012 - 5:13am
Experiments w/e 22/04/2012: SF Sourdough, Fruitless Panettone
This week I have cooked up a couple of breads to test my skills using my powerful sourdough and 00 flour.
Sourdough / Natural Leaven:
I spent a few days refreshing this firm starter for the panettone. Feeding 4 times a day, every 4hrs.
San Francisco SD:
I converted my firm natural leaven into a 70% hydration starter and fed a few times, keeping at 28-29C. At the end of fermentation it was quite soupy. From this I made a 60% hydration dough.
This was the nicest all white sourdough I have ever tasted! Crisp and yet chewy crust. Delicate and smooth flavour. But unexpectedly just a hint of sour.
Fruitless Panettone:
Beautifully yellow, soft, light and shreddable crumb.
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Very nice!
Nice panneton too. Shreddable crumb is an indication of quality?
Thank you.
The shreddable crumb indicates a highly aligned gluten structure. Essentially I have mixed it well...
on the boule. Nicely brown, blistered well scored - top notch. The crumb is nice and airy too for 60% hydration
Would you post your panettone recipe?
Bake On
Thanks very much.
The blistered crust on the boule was achieved with steam. No refrigeration at any point!
I used 60% hydration because at all stages I was using '00' soft wheat flour. I believe you get a better bread with weaker flour plus acidity.
Panettone was based upon Iginio Massari's 'Modern Panettone' although I used 50% more leaven as mine had not yet met the degree of activity required.
First dough: left to rise at 25C for 14hrs
45 Leaven (50% hydration)
120 Flour
40 water
37 sugar
42 egg yolk
42 Butter
Second dough: left to rise until triple in size then baked.
30 Flour
2 Salt
30 Sugar
5 Honey
52 Egg Yolk
46 Butter
491 grams total.
Total Ingredients (including flour and water from leaven):
100 Flour
31 Water
1 Salt
37 Sugar
3 Honey
52 Yolks
49 Butter
273%
I used eggs with very orange yolks to achieve that desired yellowy crumb.
Thanks again.
Thank you very much mwilson
Amazing color on both!!
Congrats!
Eli
Thanks Eli
Both breads are stunning!!
Janie
Thanks Janie
Mike,
Both loaves really nice. Panettone is one bread that I discovered last winter and my family loved the texture....just a bit rich to make often though they would love me to :-) They especially liked it when I added chocolate and a touch of orange zest.....smelled heavenly.
What is it that you like about breads made with weaker flours? The texture? More open crumb??? I tend towards using hard spring wheat when I make my loaves simply because the added protein makes them stronger and the resulting dough seems to hold up better when using freshly ground flour that isn't sifted - bran etc all intact.... Now you have me wondering about the weaker grains of soft wheat or winter wheat....
Thanks for the post and the photos.
Janet
Hi Janet.
Chocolate orange panettone sounds delicious!
I like weaker flours for the points you mentioned. I've learnt that weak flour plus ample acidity makes for the best texture. A more tender and open crumb... I guess the other point is perhaps just the challenge of it... I love to be challenged.
I definitely recommend using weaker flours... It's only with a challenge that you can improve your skills.
Just as an advisory I would only ever use stiff pre-ferments or starters with weaker flours.
Thanks,
Michael
Michael,
Okay, so I am being catapulted into another dimension of baking here.....just when I was getting the hang of things too....Oh well.
So, do you gravitate for the weaker flours in your lean doughs only or do you also use them with your enriched doughs?
My leaven is always kept at 60% so the only thing I would have to toy with would be the combination of grains I grind. In the past I have mixed 60% soft wheat with 40% hard wheat but nobody seemed to notice a difference so I don't really do it all that often. I will have to give it a shot again and pay closer attention to how it holds up with long retarding times in the refrig. and in the end results.
Thanks for your help and nudge to try something new again.
Janet
I'm using weaker flour to mimic the task undertaken by Italian bakers in times gone by. I am an Italophile (new word to me) it would seem. Naturally Italian flour is very weak. Italians have developed many intriguing techniques to overcome this. Although in modern times 'Manitoba' flour is now available. I consider Italians to be the best bakers because they've had things so hard when it comes to making "good" bread. From using weaker flour it forces you to make the most of what you've got.
About your leaven. When I said stiff I mean 50% or lower.
To mix low hydration doughs with a mixer. Treat it like pastry. Add the dry ingredients first and add water gradually to create mixture like breadcrumbs until it starts to lump together. Turn out and squeeze together and then roll out with a rolling pin. Fold up and repeat a couple of times. Just like in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQux_bgIDu8
Good luck,
Michael
Hi Michael,
HIs roller looks a lot different than the rolling pin I have tucked away in my drawer. :-) Interesting process and I have never seen a mixer such as the one he used.
My leaven is made with 100% freshly milled whole grains so when I am saying 60% it is probably about a 48% leaven if someone were to make it using store bought flours. Freshly ground grains require more water so I generally add about 12% more water to any formula I convert that uses bread flour or all purpose flour - anything other than freshly milled whole grains.
If you follow Phil's (PiPs) blogs you will see that his hydration level is generally about 80%. He uses freshly milled grains as I do. 80% with whole grains is still a somewhat firm dough - soft but not unmanageably so and it firms up even more when retarded overnight in the refrig.
So I am thinking that my leaven is okay to use with my softer grain mix…I have a good mixer (a DLX) and it handles stiff doughs without a sweat or groan….
Thanks for the video. Helps to see with my eyes what you describe with your words.
Take Care,
Janet
Any chance you could share your formula for SF Sourdough? There have been some interesting posts on this lately with widely different strategies (Syd and David Snyder) and yours looks fantastic but from your remarks very different from both of those. -Varda
I didn't have a formula. I just went by fermentation.
Since offering lots of advice on how to make a more sour bread I thought I'd put my money where my mouth is and heed ones own advice. So I just kept things warm and wet. 28-29C. Knowing that gold-miners would keep this leaven in a pouch in their clothing, I knew I had to keep a starter of dough consistency, but opting for things on the wetter side at 70%. Things turned soupy fairly quickly - 8hrs at a 2:7:10 ratio - I repeated this twice. At all stages things were at 28-29C.
The final dough was made at 2:6:10 ratio. But the bread wasn't sour at all, or hardly! In hindsight using very low ash flour and not large enough feeds didn't help. I will keep experimenting!
Michael
to a formula. Thanks so much. But not sour? I tried two versions of Syd's formula - and neither one was sour, but second one was at least really good bread. Hope you post when you reach the end you are trying for. -Varda
Hi Michael,
The breads are stunning. The boule's crust and crumb is to die for :) ... and your panetonnes are always a marvel to behold.
cheers,
Phil
Hi Phil,
Thanks. I really appreciate that.
Cheers,
Michael
You mention "00" flour. Are you using an Italian Typo 00 or a "clone?"
David
Hi David,
Flour is Italian but milled here in the UK, link
Just finished my second 25Kg sack!
Hello Michael,
You titled your panettone as 'fruitless' but your efforts here certainly were not!
Your sourdough boule and panettone both look very lovely.
:^) breadsong
Thanks breadsong.
These breads were actually effortless to make... It's when I really try that things don't go so well!
Just to be clear, the boule is entirely 00 flour at 60%? I don't think I've seen that before.
Yes that's correct.
Michael, what great creature you pulled out of the oven! I like the slightly spongy look of the panettone crumb. It shows that the flour is very strong.
The bread is a great specimen, too.
For the kind of breads I prepare italian flours are totally unfit. See? Who has them available almost for free doesn't make use of them:)
Congratulations! also for having finished your 50 kg of flour:)
Hey Nico.
Great to hear from you.
I know what you mean about the crumb but I can assure you my flour is on the weaker side. I think weak flour plus plenty mixing achieves the same look. I'm still amazed how far panettone dough rises. It more than tripled during the proof and then doubled again during the bake.
I'd love to be able to use your flour and see if I could make good bread. I bet I could.. ;)
Perhaps you could compare it to DeCecco's '00'. That is the weakest flour I have used.
Lovely breads Michael. I love the pic of your starter. It looks like a bed roll. I could just lie down on it and take a nap. How do you use it? Do you just tear strips off it?
Glad to see I am not the only one who has had problems baking a sour all-white boule. I think the biggest hurdle lies in the 'all white' ingredients. The only time I have unequivocably succeeded with an all-white was when I used an enriched dough: eggs, sugar and butter. It might have been the sugar providing food for the acetic acid or it might have been the sugar impeding the activity of the yeast so that it took almost 24 hours to bulk ferment and proof (at room temp) and it was the extended time at that temp that resulted in a really sour loaf (albeit pleasantly so). Either way, I am not sure, but seeing as real SF sourdough doesn't contain any of those ingredients, I haven't bothered to repeat the experiment. Recently I have been adding maltose and getting very consistent results: significantly sour but probably not what I would call moderately sour. By significantly sour I mean that you notice it as soon as you start to savour the bite in your mouth and while it is mild, the sour flavour lingers for a long time after it has been swallowed. But no harsh acetic tones and there certainly nothing in your face about it. In the original recipe that I followed from the Handbook of Dough Fermentations, Sugihara states that the pH of the starter sponge should drop to 3.8-3.9 which is what the pH of the final dough and the baked loaf will be.
This suggests to me that sour in= sour out which is why I try and ferment my starter as long as possible without letting it get overripe. I also add the extra step of sponging half of the flour in the main dough to lower the pH before mixing the final dough. There is a caveat, though: too low a pH encourages proteolytic activity and results in sticky dough and poor volume in the final loaf. Yesterday I had one of my best results so far. I fermented the levain for 12 hours, sponged half of the flour for the main dough for 3 hours and retarded for almost 24 hours. It has a pH of 4.0 a full 24 hours after being baked. For some reason or other it gets sourer on the second day. I didn't measure the pH yesterday after the bake but it certainly didn't taste like 4.0.
Your panettone is stunning and I have to try your recipe soon.
Best,
Syd
Hi Syd.
Haha, yeah my leaven does look pretty comfy! That's a shot of it during unwrapping after a period of sleep. When I'm not feeding every four hours the dough gets rolled up, covered in clingfilm, then a cloth and tied tightly with string. Like so...
It can be kept like this for 12hrs at room temperature or in the fridge for 5days.
After the rest period, I unwrap, slice the dough and refresh in sweetened water as so...
This is how natural yeast for panettone is kept.
I think your expeience with the rich dough causing sourness is more to do with the lengthy rising. In my book, if the sourdough for panettone has soured it is mixed with egg yolk and sugar to correct this.
I will continue to experiment trying to make an all-white sour loaf and let you know my findings and if you need any help with the panettone please let me know...
Cheers,
Michael
That starter looks amazing: almost like fresh cake yeast. I love the way you have cut it into strips like that. I will definitely ask you for help on how to maintain it and how to make the panettone as soon as I have finished my current experiments.
All the best,
Syd