Sourdough

Ulrike (Küchenlatein) will host BBD #03, and she is asking everyone to make a sourdough-leavened bread, preferably rye.

it is my first time baked bread with starter and rye , my bread came out great!

My first starter

756 g rye starter.

2 cups cup dried dates.

2 Tablespoon Anise seeds.

4 cups  white flour.

1 2\3 cups whole wheat flour.

1 2\3 cups rye flour.

2 2\3 cups water.

1 teaspoon salt.

2 Tablespoon olive oil.

1)In the bowl of mixer, mix the flours, dates, Anise seeds, water, and starter until just combined, about one minute.

2)Allow the dough to rest for 30 minutes.

3)Add the salt and oil and continue mixing about 4 minutes.

4)Cover and let rise for 1-2 hour.

5)Divide dough into 2 pieces.

6)With lightly floured hands, shape each piece into a rough oval.

7)Cover loaves loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for 1 hour.

8)Bake at 400 for 30-40 minutes.

zainab 

http://arabicbites.blogspot.com/

Also known as Baguette aux lardons.

This is fabulous bread!  I baked it yesterday from Daniel Leader’s new book, Local Breads.  It is a very easy recipe, absolutely delicious fresh from the oven and today it made incredible toast.  The incorporation of slightly browned bacon and his recommendation to retard the shaped loaves overnight to infuse the dough with more of that great smoky bacon flavor is a winner.

His recipe calls for making four 316g baguettes but for some reason I only ended up with about 1100g total dough so I made 3 roughly 366g baguettes.  The dough was supple and slashed really well which I was concerned about with the bacon.  No problem though.

His method of using floured parchment and then making your own couche worked really well for this.  I was able to fit all three baguettes perfectly on a quarter-sheet restaurant style pan with rolled up dish cloths on each side to keep the loaves from spreading.  You make the troughs for the dough creasing the parchment between each loaf and then tuck the rolled cloths against them and the rim of the sheet pan. 

The next day I removed from the fridge and slid the entire thing onto the counter, took off the plastic wrap and covered with a cotton flour-sack towel.  I let them warm up and finish proofing for about 2 hours and then baked.  Even in my small oven all three loaves fit perfectly on my smaller-than-normal baking stone.  I steamed the oven and baked them about 25 minutes at 450°F and was really happy with the way they rose and actually grew ears.  (chuckle)  That is always welcome and always surprising for my breads, it seems but I’m getting better. 

I have not typed up this recipe yet.  I encourage you all to go buy Daniel Leader’s new book.  This is the first of his two books I have purchased so others are way ahead of me in the knowledge of his great breads and first book.  Mountaindog is lucky enough to live close to his bakery – wow!  That would be a treat.  So far in what I’ve read I’m very impressed with this book although since I use a firm starter I do have a couple thoughts that may differ from what his instructions are only by means of my own experience.  All in all it is a wonderful book and I’m thrilled to have it.  Can’t wait to try more new recipes.

Baguettes aux lardons

Great crisp crust and you can see how the bacon bits on the exterior crisp when baked. (yum)

Crumb was creamy with bacon infused throughout in little bits.  He doesn't show a photo of the crumb so I'm hoping this is how it is supposed to look.  He does have you beat the tar out of the dough and with a mixer it does break down the already small cooked pieces.  I didn't mind. :o)

Yesterday, I gave my back from the dead starter a workout and made some of the Pearl's walnut levain from Artisan Baking. I turned out really well and is mostly gone already! The dough was pretty stiff, but really easy to handle as a result. I was surprised that i didn't end up with any char walnuts poking out, but luckily the dough proof around any nuts near the skin.

the crust was thick and chewy and the crumb was tight for levain, but still resonably open. I'm still in love with the purple streaks from the walnuts' oil. Purple is one of those colors that doesn't appear naturally all to often in food, especially baked goods, that it always catches my attention.

The insides:

And last thursday, I made some portguese sweet bread from BBA to take with me to Lake Placid last weekend. The bread was a hit and make some seriously incredible toast. I was expecting to be pretty apathetic to this bread, but it really surprised me. Its super light and fluffy, pleasantly sweet and the extracts make it smell amazing.

I didn't thoroughly degas, and ended up getting these really cool looking gluten stalagmites by the crust. Pretty cool, eh?

I liked how the Pearls walnut levain turned out so well that today i'm making their Pane Coi Santi and maybe I'll even get to blog about it quick enough to enter bread baking day 2. time will tell and the dough will dictate!

It's been a while since I've had the luxury of daily check-ins with TFL. Lots going on this summer, and actually I really don't have the time even now! But I made some sourdough sandwich bread today for the first time (so far I have only made rustic loaves with my starter), and I wanted to get the recipe written down and share it with anyone else who might like it.

I already have a favorite sandwich bread, but wanted to try using my homegrown 100% hydration starter in a sandwich loaf. Specifically, I wanted to use my starter in my favorite sandwich bread. I started with a google search and came up with a method for using starter in your favorite recipe. The website (which I can't find now, typical) stated that this was a method modified from one in Sourdough Jack's Cookery. Take 2/3 of the flour from your recipe and add it to all of the water, plus 1 cup of active starter. Stir, cover, and set on the counter overnight. Then add the rest of the ingredients and proceed as usual. This method as written, however, only allowed for a 10 minute rest after mixing, followed by final shaping. I wanted a bulk fermentation followed by shaping and a final proof. So, here's what I did, using amounts from my recipe:

Night before baking:

Combine 1 C starter (at feeding time, I feed mine every 12 hours at a 1:4:4 ratio) with 4 C KAF bread flour and 2 C Brita-filtered water at room temp (or it might have even been straight from the fridge). Stir, cover with plastic wrap and leave out overnight.

Day of baking:

Pour sponge mixture into mixer bowl and add 1/4 C melted butter, 2 TBSP sugar, 2 tsp kosher salt, and 1 C flour. Mix until combined, then add remaining cup of flour until dough is fairly stiff (my usual yeast-raised dough uses about 6 C flour and 2 C water, plus 1/4 C melted butter, for around a 35% hydration level). The dough will clear both the sides and bottom of the bowl. Knead at speed 2 for about 4 minutes or until dough passes the windowpane test. Transfer to oiled bowl and let rise in warm place until doubled, around 2 hours.

Shape into loaves and place into greased pans. Let rise for about an hour, or until light and risen nicely, then bake at 375.

This bread is tangy but not terribly sour. It tastes a little like Panera's sodo, actually, but is less chewy and has a very thin and soft crust. Moist, tender and fine crumb. Can't wait to try it in a ham sandwich!

So for a while I've been meaning to start documenting my baking a little better, and contribute a bit more to this wonderful site, and today! today is the day.

This weekend I had three buddies from Rochester come down to ithaca to visit for the weekend, and I had some more friends over and I pounded out half a dozen pizzas. I had some serious doubts that my apartments rickety half-size oven was up to the task. Turns out the bugger gets up to a solid 550F and is fantastic for pizza (though it heats kinda unevenly, but nothing a mid-bake spin can't fix). My camera batteries were dead or i'd share some pictures but for fun, here's the lineup: 2 Margherita, 2 Chicken Wing(fried chicken tossed in franks red hot, sharp cheddar, low moisture mozz, danish blue and a few dots of roasted garlic), 1 roasted tri-color pepper pesto pie and 1 sauted mushroom and roasted garlic pie. Those last couple had healthy dollops of herbed riccota, fresh cow's milk mozz, parmigiano and all the pie were on top of Reinhart's neo-neopolitan dough with an extra tablespoon of honey. Far as i'm concerned, that's about the easiest to handle and best tasting pizza dough i've ever had. Here's a pic of an older pie, white pizza with tomatoes:

This afternoon I also put my young starter to the test and mixed up a batch of thom leonard's kalamata olive bread from Glezer's "Artisan Baking".

I took a few liberties, which is to say I didn't listen to ms maggie when she told me to mail order olives, and I used a smalled percentage of ripe oil-cured olives to replace the softer kalamatas she calls for. Loaves turned out pretty well...the crumb is a bit dense and the loaves sourness isn't terribly pronounced. I've been having some issues keeping my starter sour. It was very sour initially, but one miserably hot week later its sweeter and much less potent. I've been feeding it with ice water (lowering the temp to promote acetic acid, not sure if it's working) and trying to catch and feed it before it smells even faintly alcoholic in order to bring back it's potency (it's smelling less sweet and has got a little tang back). Any suggestions on this front would be really appreciated.

As for the crumb issues, I think i could have let the dough proof a little longer and i also forgot to fold it until the 2nd hour of fermentation. I rushed the proofing a bit in a frustrated fit after I tripped over my still unpacked slow cooker in my bedroom floor and broke my pinky toe. It had been a bit to long since a mid-baking injury occured. i suppose i was due, haha.

I was pleased with how everything turned out and have to say that buying glezer's book was probably the best decision i've made since getting bba. Absolutley gorgeous pictures and warming baker profiles. I highly recommend it to any fellow intermediate baker. This following weekend I'll be in NJ, but there'll be plenty more bread on the way this week (i'm planning a roasted garlic/asiago cheese ciabatta, a saranac b&t loaf with caraway and onions, and maybe some pane siliciano). take it easy everyone!