Farmer's Market Week 33 (Sesame Wheat) + Tuesday Bake
I decided I'd fine tune my Sesame Wheat this week. The previous results had notes saying "approved" so I didn't faddle much with the formula but I will increase the hydration next time as the seeds gobbled up some of the h20. I may also see if ti benefits from a liquid levain opposed to stiff next go around.
All the loaves were shaped and ready for an early morning around 3pm. So a good 12-15 cold final proof was set. Then i woke up in the middle of the night to find my oven wasn't heating up. Uh Oh. Okay so i lose a batch and have to repair oven but how am I gonna get rid of all that dough? Fortunately I made a call at 8 am on Saturday and my oven was fixed by 9 am and baking started 8 hours late. Too late to make the market but just in time to save the dough and find some friends to adopt the loaves for dinner. So they ended up with nearly 24 hour cold proof and held up nicely. A little extra acidity but the loaves were just great. Thank you toasted sesame seeds. This project started on Week 3 and then again on Week 12. Since then I've fiddled further increasing the whole grain and seeds quite a bit.
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Formula:
11% prefermented flour (70% White, 30% WW) 1:2:2 @ 66% hydration (8 hours)
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Flour Compostition (42% Stone Ground Hard Red Winter Wheat, 2% Whole Rye, 56% Bread Flour (11.5%)
H20 87% (This will go to 90% next time around)
Sesame Seeds Toasted 20% More raw seeds to roll the loaf in.
Sea Salt 2.5%
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Autolysed with levain for 1 hour. Hold back 5% H20.
Add Seeds and most of held back h20 and sqeeze through to combine. Add salt with remaining h20 and
continue pincer/folding to develop some gluten and incorporate some air.
Bulk 3 hours with 4 folds @ 30 minutes
Divide, preshape, rest, shape and roll tops/sides in seeds . Retard 12-15 hours. Bake.
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Now that I'm baking on Tuesday's for small donations/trades as well I opted to work my Spelt Country Bread from Week 19 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/35667/farmers-market-week-19-spelt-sd-and-volkenbrot-continued. At that time I was using Whole Grain Spelt Flour but now I have Spelt I've milled. I opted to put 10% whole grain in the levain and sift the remaining 15% to roughly 90% extraction. This is an excellent loaf and in the books as far as I'm concerned.
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Spelt Country
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Spelt Levain: 10% PF 100% whole grain spelt @ 66% hydration with 3 builds. Final Build (3-4 hours)
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total flour: 25% Spelt (15% sifted to 90% extraction for final dough), 2% Whole Rye, 73% Bread Flour (11.5% protein)
total h20: 79%
Salt: 2%
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Autolyse with levain 20 minutes holding back some water for the salt
Add salt with h20 and pince/fold until salt is well incorporated and dough has some strength (more will come with folds)
Bulk 3 hours with 4 folds @ 30 minutes.
Divide, preshape, rest, shape retard 8-12 hours
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And for the Spelt Country
Cheers
Josh
Comments
Sorry to hear about your oven and missing the farmers market Josh. I really like the look of that spelt country.
Best,
Syd
All worked out in the end
Cheers
Josh
Missing the market is a bummer and I bet you friends there were disappointed not to get their fix of your bread. Another great bake Josh. Well done and
Happy Baking
They'll get their fix back next week. At least it was a simple fix and I didn't have find a place to trash 12 Kg of proofed dough.
Josh
Those are real beauties, Josh! too bad they didn't make it to the market. I'm sorry that you had to miss that.
The sesame loaves are gorgeous in and out; no harm done. The crumb strucuture on all your loaves, especially the spelt country is just so open and attractive.
So you you bake midweek too? how lovely!
best wishes,
Khalid
Lovely results, josh. Sorry about that oven of yours, and that you missed the market.
Now you get to bake midweek too :)
best wishes to you,
Khalid
Yep two bakes a week. Just trying to get name recognition while I seek a more commercial baking environment. But everyday my house (which is small) turns more and more into a bakery. Just bought a 6 shelf NSF rack from Costco yesterday to organize my baking goods and open up the cupboards and such being filled with my baking gear. Before long we'll sleep outside and the house will be a full production facility:)
Hi Josh, Love your breads. I'm doing something similar to your spelt bread, but find it a bit temperamental. What do you see as the advantages or differences with liquid levain? I almost always use a 67% levain (that's for wheat, rye is 80-90% and 167% for Borodinsky) and tend to back fit formulas that call for higher back to my stiff levain. Good save with the sesame - getting in a service call just in time. Did you have a psychic connection with your bread, or were you planning to get up in the middle of the night? -Varda
I've worked with both stiff and liquid levains. For the past year or so I've transferred my mother dough from liquid to stiff and haven't turned back. If I desire a liquid levain I build from this. I don't want to say advantages but i will note differences I've noticed.
First
the aroma which would transfer to flavor. I think my stiff levain has a much more complex aroma and is certainly more acidic(in a good way). when I use a liquid levain and its ripe its smell is a bit more mellow and yogurty. That said we can use either type of these preferments and manipulate the flavor through dough fermentation. ie. if we use liquid levain but want to add more acidity we can do a cold overnight rise. If we use stiff and want those yogurty/buttery notes we can work with a high hydration dough and aim for particular temps to bring them out. And then do a final proof at ambient temps.
Second Strength.
I think a stiff levain/PF brings much more strength to doughs than liquid with the increased acidity. This allows us to mix less. The less we mix to achieve a well developed dough the more flavor compounds remain. Or so is my understanding but don't quote me there.
Liquid Levain/PF does the opposite to strength and creates more enzymatic activity which bring more extensibility to a dough. This is why they are almost always used in baguettes. We want to be be able to shape that dough long without tearing it apart or it just shrinking back.
Tell me more about your spelt loaf and what is going on. What type of spelt are you using?
Psychic no but I was thirsty and noticed my house wasn't warm at all. When the oven goes on in our small place the whole house heats up so I checked the oven and then spent a while fussin with it before I threw in the towel. Lucky? Yes who knew I'd get service on a Saturday morning instantly.
Cheers
Josh, Interesting comments. I think I've gravitated to stiff levain because it's easier to maintain a daily fed starter. But of course I've also been happy with the breads it produces for the reasons you are laying out so clearly. As for the spelt, I've had problems with it getting tacky and I wasn't sure why. Recently I reduced both the bulk ferment and the proof to 2 hours and 1 hour respectively and it came out fantastic, so I suppose the issue has been overproofing but overproofing in very short timeframes. My house runs around 70F so not out of the ordinary temperature. Maybe I'm using too much starter for its strength, but I haven't tried cutting back yet. I do around 18% prefermented flour for that bread. -Varda
I'd say the biggest difference working with Spelt to a regular wheat is that it ferments a bit faster. Are you using whole grain spelt? If it's fresh milled it really moves. What percentage spelt is your dough? And finally autolyse??? some skip autolyse with high proportions of spelt. I just keep it very short (20 minutes) because I think it helps since I'm hand mixing.
My routne at least when baking multiple loads is a cold final proof as it is the most efficient. So I know I have to keep the PF down so I have time to develop the dough and still allow for a long cool final rise. I hand mix these batches and it takes some time to develop the dough properly since most of it is done through folds. I've been hanging around 10% PF in most of my doughs lately. I feed my starter 2 times daily and never put the mother dough in the fridge but it is said a stiffer starter stands up to refrigeration better than a liquid. This is also the reason I've been using less PF. My culture is pretty thriving and my doughs are all made with a 2nd and sometimes a 3rd build.
sounds like you might already have it figured out. But none the less
Josh
I use whole spelt, not freshly ground. I hadn't realized that spelt was a particularly fast fermenter but that makes this all clearer. My version is 23% spelt, which I prefer to higher percentages.
My restaurant orders are due in the late afternoon so I start the bake that morning. I just picked up a store customer who needs their order by noon, so for that I will be doing bulk retard, as I think that comes out better than retarding shaped loaves, but I guess I'll experiment with that. You are right, that for long retards it's good to decrease percent preferment, and I don't always remember that.
My starter didn't see the inside of the refrigerator for around a year, but lately I've been finding that occasionally my starter is ready before I'm ready to use it, so in that case, I will refrigerate it for a few hours rather than work out something more complicated. But that tends to happen when I haven't really thought things through and a better solution is doing better planning.
Looks like TFL gobbled up your message
It was a long message and can't recreate it now. If you get email notification of comments, the message will be in there. -Varda
With the exception of a good 100% Spelt (tinned loaf) I think 25% or so is right around perfect for a hearth loaf. I've fiddled with higher and had good results but this past one was the best of the bunch.
I doubt a few hours in the fridge to stay on schedule does much harm to your culture. It's the long lived stays that have serious impact. As it gets warmer I tinker with my inoculation and try and stay on the same 12 hour feed schedule. I've just started cutting back on the morning feed as the days are a bit warmer but my night feed I haven't changed. i live in a pretty temperate place though. If i was back in NY I'd probably have to do more to keep it balanced.
If i could I'd do much more cold bulk opposed to final proofing but it just doesn't work with my current setup and needs. I'd have to stagger shapes in the same room as the oven is heating and it would get a little hectic. I've considered trying it so i could offer a 100% wheat but haven't pulled the trigger on that experiment yet.
Do you incorporate your spelt in the levain? When I make batches with mid range whole grain i like to incorporate them in the levain to get the flavor from said grain being pre fermeneted.
Well I'd love to see your results the next time you make it.
Josh
Hi Josh, Re adding spelt to the starter itself, I used to do that, but lately take a more standardized approach which I find gives more predictable results, so I just put the spelt in final dough. Yours looks so good, that maybe I should reconsider. -Varda
The spelt in the levain will make the overall difference. But if do remember spelt ferments quickly here as well and you will need to adjust your inoculation to keep on your schedule. I like to preferment the focus of the said dough particularly when i'm doing a 20-30%. In this case Spelt. If I'm doing a Rye, even a light Rye I like to use my Rye Sour etc.... Gather flavor from added grain both in preferment and bulk opposed to just the latter.
I think with this variation of Spelt the trick is in dough development/fermentation. If you had improved results with decreased levain push it further and let the dough dictate. Whenever I'm making a tweak like such I push big to start and then come back opposed to tiny steps. So if you were at 23% and then 18 showed improvement. Heck jump down to 12 and then work back. You follow a different approach so you'll have to find your own sweet spot and you will.
I look forward to your results.
Josh
Great looking loaves as usual Josh.
Can you tell me what you are using to sift your flour? I had tried to find some sifters on-line a while ago but couldn't find anything reasonably priced.
Thanks,
ian
The flour i sifted here was from my last job where I used a stone mill. Just used a simple sifter from the kitchen store. I I have not needed to use my mill yet as i have some backstock of aged flour. But soon I will.
From reading on here all you really need is a #30 sieve to get 15-20% extraction which is what we are usually looking for. some get the notch coarser #20 and a notch finer #50 as well. . . http://www.keeneeng.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?
Someone else posted this link that I saved way back when. 25 bucks and your in business. I haven't done much googling but I'm sure you might find em even cheaper than that. I plan to experiment with the mill and HE Flour here pretty soon. I'll let you know how it goes.
Cheers
Josh