March 14, 2016 - 8:02pm
Pugliese Capriccioso, oh yeah!
David Snyder's marvelous and "whimsical" boule 75% AP / 25% Semolina Durum creation. But somehow transformed to baguettes and batard here! How can be? An incredible snap to the crust and a semolina nuttiness inside. Good stuff.
Just because...
Crumb shot added.
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Actually, more than nice!
Those look great Alan. How did the crumb come out?
and the hydration at ~74%, not as open as one would expect for a higher hydration dough. But no complaints. The dough was a bit sticky vs. many others that I handle, so the final shaping might have been a little tight, certainly not "billowy" at all.
What did surprise me is that even about a half hour after baking, the inside still had some moisture to the touch. They seem to have since dried out. I wasn't going to risk baking them further as I didn't want the crust to start to burn. And I never temp either the water, dough or bread, instead going by feel and experience. They had somewhere around 29 minutes of bake, which would seem well long enough at 460dF.
Really.. those look fantastic and now I'm hungry for some fresh bread! Terrific..
One of my favorite breads to come from the Snyder Machine! The sweetness of the durum is just the perfect foil for the sour making them come out more like the taste of a nice....... Baguette! The thing about durum is that it is hard and it is high protein but has less the two proteins required for gluten so the crumb won't be as large as you would expect.
These look beautimous but would like to see the crumb anyway since we can't taste them! Well done and
Happy baking Alan
I'd made these once before, about 2 months ago, after warehousing the formula a year. Considering the semolina flavor and that thin wonderfully crispy crust, I think these will be keepers. They require more flour on the couche than I'd like and shed a lot of moisture to the couche after a long retard, but they seem to not display the raw flour/rustic look on the "undercarriage"after the bake. Which is not a complaint, rather a positive in my book. But they do stick a bit when moving from couche to hand peel, something that would make these a more difficult dough for a production environment.
I'm just waiting for you to inject your $500k seed money in my bakery for me to start it up ;-) .
Looks perfect to me. If I was going to invest 500K in a bakery that would be about 450K more than it takes and I would have to find a new wife after thsis. one tossed me out on the street. Genetics, nanotech and robotics or preferably all three in one company is another idea entirely...
Good luck fining that really rich investor who wants to ay for your villa in Tuscany and build a bakery for you there:-)
Those loaves look so good. It's time for me to bake my Pugliese again.
David
I love turning boules into baguettes and batards. Something to keep my interest up*. If I never make another boule again, and so far there have been very few, I'll be alright with that!
alan
*Not to mention that I really like scoring the dough.
Time for me to add some semolina to my next bread dough. It has been a while and I had forgotten the nutty flavour the durham brings. Next bake!
Happy baking! Ski
The semolina flavor is a little suppressed, but still adds that extra dimension to the taste. There is always David's 40% Durum formula in his Sourdough Italian Baguettes, and between the sesame seeds and the semolina, it's like being back on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx - only that the bread is better than there, but I don't keep wheels of Parmaggiano-Reggiano cheese stacked on burlap on the floor of the kitchen like there!
Thanks, alan
Alan, the crust of your loaves always seem to have a nice polish.
I'm curious, for this bake:
Thanks for sharing!
This bake is almost the same as all of my others, not much change. As I've mentioned before, with the black background and overhead incandescent light, my phone camera seems to add a little red tint to the breads, although they generally do come out a brownish red anyway. I snap the photos before the breads have a chance to "oxidize" or whatever the heck it is that they do to start losing that bright sheen.
So beyond that and to finally get around to your questions...
I have an electric oven which gets fired up some 45 minutes pre bake. A set of non-glazed terra cotta tiles lives in there and serves as my baking deck.
Just below the baking deck I keep a ~9"x13"pan of lava rocks which heats up with the oven. This gets a 2 cup dose of very hot water just after the dough gets loaded. 15 minutes prior to the dough going in, I put in a loaf pan with one of Sylvia's steaming towels - doused in water and also close to boiling upon entry. Both of these have a lot of references on TFL if you aren't familiar with them (that's how I discovered them too). I generally steam for ~12-13 minutes.
About a year ago, after experimenting with proofing the dough in the refrigerator rather than on the counter, I moved to retarding the dough in the refrigerator, post shaping. So my M.O. is bulk ferment on the workbench, retard the dough as bulk for anywhere from 1-6 or more hours, then pull it to divide, pre-shape, shape, couche and cover in plastic bags (for moisture retention). After which the dough, which now resides on a couche, itself on a small jelly roll pan, goes back into the refrigerator for another x hours (within reason, the time element is unimportant and has more to do with when I feel like baking rather than because the clock says to bake), as long as it at least meets the 12-18 hour total retard mark. When the oven is sufficiently pre-heated, the dough then comes out of the refrigerator and immediately gets scored and loaded.
I never temp the dough (or even the water for the initial mixing) at any stage of the process and there is no finger dent test either. After a while, and with a very stable kitchen temperature, I just know when to do what. Perhaps a little unorthodox, but it certainly works for me.
The baking deck:
The couche & jelly roll pan:
Thanks for asking. alan
Thanks Alan, this helps a lot! I am familiar with Sylvia's steaming technique. Not surprised you had an electric oven, just wanted to confirm. I don't usually see results like these in gas ovens.
Until recently, I haven't been able to capture as much crust sheen in my gas oven until I started placing my loaves in a Graniteware covered roasting pan. The nice thing is I can put a panned loaf in there and even add a little boiling water at the bottom of the preheated roaster.
It sounds like your dough really spends most of its unbaked life in the fridge: short bulk ferment on the bench, remaining bulk ferment in the fridge, divide/shape/cover and back in the fridge for final proof, then remove/score/load into oven right from fridge. I've never tried that much fridge time, but it sounds very promising (and certainly very convenient!)
Thanks again for sharing.
Actually, I don't shorten the bulk ferment. Rather I stick to the original instructions per the author - within reason. As my kitchen is always ~78-80dF, I'll cut a bare few minutes off each segment of the bulk rise between stretch & folds. And any subsequent bench rest time is also cut - but only by spare minutes.
So, for these, if David's O.P. says to bench rest for a total of, let's say, 2.5 hours, mine might be only 2 - 2.25 hours max, allowing for my warmer ambient kitchen temp. Otherwise, once the dough cools down in the fridge to that environment's ~38dF, the fermentation of the yeast pretty much cuts off (somewhere ~40dF I believe) and allows the acids in the levain to continue their work.
I am always able to finagle the refrigerator goods around to allow a half shelf for the jelly roll pan having a home there when I need it. And the need to watch the clock pretty much dissipates as I can chose when it is convenient to bake.
I've read about the misfortune of gas oven owners having efficient oven venting for good reason. And I've seen on TFL where some have improvised ways to cut that venting off. Not something I would ever want to recommend for the obvious dangers inherent in doing so. I'm wondering if generating massive amounts of steam with sets of lava rock pans or Sylvia's towels would help to compensate for the venting dilemma.
alan
chaffing trays to turn over your baguettes in a gas oven, You can add some extra water to the pan before turning it over to create even more steam. If you want Alan's crust and blisters that is about the only way to get enough steam in a gas oven. Plus the dough has to be really cold too - no warm up on the counter. The more whole grains in the dough, the fewer and smaller the blisters will be as well.