The Fresh Loaf

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Anonymous baker's picture
Anonymous baker (not verified)

pre-ferment hydration question

Hi all,

I have a question about the hydration of a pre-ferment. I realize that changing the hydration makes it either a biga or a poolish, but I don't care so much about the name as I do the result! I just made Hamelman's Rustic Bread with a few changes, and the family loved it. I doubled the ww (there's not that much to begin with), and used it in the pre-ferment instead of the final dough. It worked wonderfully, but I'd like to go a little further and up the ww % even further, maybe to 50% eventually.

That much I'm OK with figuring out. The problem I have with the recipe is that the pre-ferment is really quite stiff, and since I don't have a mixer, working it into the dough is pretty hard. Still OK with that though; the problem is that I'd like to be able to make larger batches, say 6 loaves, so that I can bring it to the local food pantry. I don't think I can manhandle that much stiff pre-ferment into the final dough. If I keep all the final percentages the same, is there any reason I can't use more of the water in the pre-ferment?

Thanks,

edh

GrapevineTXoldaccount's picture
GrapevineTXolda...

Do I have to discard excess starter?

I've been plagued by this question since beginning my foray into sourdough four months ago.  Is it really necessary to toss excess starter or can I use it in my bread making?  Example, I've refreshed my starter from the fridge, bread baking formula/recipe calls for one half cup, I have another cup that is not needed.  I place it in the fridge and the next time I go to make bread I start my process over again, refreshing the starter and allowing it to become quite active.  I now have about two cups of starter.  I take out the half cup called for in the recipe, but I'm left with an ever increasing amount of active starter.  So....I've been dumping more starter into a recipe than it calls for and simply adjusting my flour/water ratios.  My bread is not consistent, but its not unedible.  Sometimes I even get a wonderful surprise. 

 Giving starter to friends is not an answer.  I'm one of the few bakers in my circle of friends.  I do keep starter in the freezer and always a secondary container in the fridge. 

 Does anyone else toss their 'extra' into their breadmaking?

Linda Hensens's picture
Linda Hensens

Does anyone have a great Artisan-type white sandwich bread recipe Please?

Good afternoon!

I am trying to find a really good, dense, Artisan-type white sandwich bread recipe to make for my family.

My husband is from the Netherlands, and he does not care for how soft the average white bread is that we get here in our grocery stores.  Compared to the white bread that his mom gets from their open air markets, there is a HUGE difference.

The European white bread is very healthy, dense, and it tastes divine!  It does not fall apart when condiments are spread on it, (they use butter as their mayonnaise), and when you toast the bread it tastes so great!  It has a nice crunchy crust, and a good chewy texture on the inside.

Since my husband loves this type of bread, I set out to learn how to make it at home with my KA 600.  I have gotten the French Baguette down to a science, even with the slashing when it goes in the oven, which took me forever and a day not to deflate the loaf when I tried the slashing..and now they come out looking really nice and tasting yummy!

Here at our local Sam's Club, there is a bread made by a company called Milton's Original Healthy Grain Bread.  It comes in loaves of 2, and it is very reasonably priced at Sam's.  However, Sam's is going to discontinue it, and that has started me on this quest to find a recipe that I can make at home.  Milton's has the texture that I am seeking.  They make 2 different types of white bread, but on their website 1 loaf of either is $12!!  I am not paying $12 for 1 loaf of bread. 

Please help me if you can!  There has to be a good dense recipe somewhere!  Thanks so much!

Christmas wreath

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Magic Squares

magic squares

This has been a family holiday favorite since I was around 10 years old. I believe it was a recipe off the side of a graham cracker box, but we got it from a family friend.

Magic Squares

1 stick of butter
1 package graham crackers (1/2 box of crackers)
1/2 bag chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 bag shredded cocoanut

Place the stick of butter in a large baking pan (9 x 13) and place in a warm oven until the butter melts. Make graham cracker crumbs by placing the graham crackers in a blender, a food processor, or by smashing them by hand (I've done all three). Pour the graham cracker crumbs into the baking pan full of butter and spread them around until you have a full layer of crumbs. Press down to compact it into a crust. Spread a layer of chocolate chips over the crackers. Sprinkle a layer of walnuts over the chocolate chips, then pour the sweetened condensed milk over the walnuts. Sprinkle shredded cocoanut on top. Bake at 375 for approximately 20-25 minutes, until the cocoanut has begun to brown. Remove from the oven and allow to cool before slicing into squares.

ron45's picture
ron45

100% hydration of whole sourdough starter?

I'm trying a sourdough starter with a combination of organic rye and organic wheat berries [gound very fine] and my well water. For convenience I decided try it with 100%, or something close to it, hydration. Are there good reasons not to do this? I just decided it would be easier measure and handle that way. It seems to be doing fine so far. Will it cause problems later when I try to follow a specific recipie that suggests a specific prrcentage of hydration? This p o v in baking is new to me but it sure seems like a better way to do things. How does the thinking or the math go when using my starter in the above situation? Thanks for any input.

Ron

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Need knead speed lead

The manual that came with my Kitchen Aid mixer (Accolade 400) clearly states, " Do not exceed Speed 2 when preparing yeast doughs as this may cause damage to the motor." But Daniel Leader in "Local Breads" calls for faster speeds, sometimes for rather extended times, in several formulas. For example, in the formula for Genzano Country Bread (pg.199), he says to mix at Speed "5 or 6 on a  KitchenAid mixer" for 10 minutes, then at Speed 10 for 8 to 10 minutes.

If this is okay, and I assume he has tried it without burning out his mixer's motor, I assume you can get away with the higher speed with high-hydration doughs because there is less drag on the motor.

 Any thoughts or, better yet, experience with Leader's formula for Pane casareccio di Genzano would be appreciated.

 

David

Trishinomaha's picture
Trishinomaha

Smaller loaves

Hi all:

 

TGIF!  I have a question for the great bakers here. We have just two in our house and our bread gets hard and stale before we can use it. I don’t want to slice and freeze a full size loaf. I’d like to have a small loaf we could use in a day or two…say ¾ pound. If I make a standard recipe and make smaller loaf, do all the same rules apply (i.e. rising time, baking time, etc.)?

 

Thanks for your input. It’s been a rough week in Omaha. God Bless all the victims’ family and friends. One of them, Beverly Flynn worked at my company…

 

Trishinomaha

 

bwraith's picture
bwraith

Workhorse Sourdough

Workhorse Sourdough - Crust and Crumb

Workhorse Sourdough - Loaves

This recipe is a basic sourdough that I make frequently and use as an all purpose basic bread. It has more components of whole grain in it than a typical white country loaf, yet because of the high extraction flour, it has a more refined texture and less grassy flavor than a typical whole grain loaf. At least for me, it blends better with food than whole grain or close to whole grain loaves I would make for toast at breakfast, peanut butter or tahini, or sometimes as a vehicle for more strongly flavored salted meats and cheeses. I could use it as a substitute for a rustic French bread to have along with a roasted meat or an eggplant parmesan, for example.

Some additional photos are posted, as well as spreadsheets of the recipe and rise time calculations in xls and html formats.

Levain:

  • 40g white flour paste starter (I used 80% hydration white flour starter) You can use 50g of 100% hydration starter or 35g of 60% hydration firm starter and get about the same rise times.
  • 90g whole rye flour (I used Homestead Grist Mills Whole Rye Flour)
  • 180g strong whole wheat flour (I used Wheat MT Bronze Chief)
  • 68g high extraction flour (I used Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo)

The levain is designed to ripen in 10 hours at 70F or about 7 hours at 76F. In my case, it was left to ripen on the counter overnight at about 70F for a total of 10 hours. The levain can be made ahead and refrigerated after it has just doubled. It will keep for a day or two stored in the refrigerator. Ideally, if it is refrigerated, it should be removed from the refrigerator an hour or two before you put it in the dough.

Soaker:

  • 540g high extraction flour (I used Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo)
  • 540g water

Mix the flour and water enough to form a shaggy mass. Let it rest overnight. I just left it on the kitchen counter next to the levain for the night. You can also mix it ahead and store it in the refrigerator along with the levain. Remove it an hour or two before you are ready to mix the dough.

High extraction flour is a less refined flour that has some or most of the bran removed but contains most or all of the remaining components of the whole grain. Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo has the germ and a small amount of bran in it.

Dough:

  • Levain from above
  • Soaker from above
  • 18g barley malt syrup
  • 34g salt
  • 608g water
  • 975g AP flour (I used Heartland Mills Organic AP with Malt)

Mixing

The dough was mixed with a DLX mixer for about 10 minutes on low/medium. The dough is medium soft to soft. It spreads a little bit when you first pour it on the counter and is a little sticky. The dough was folded a few times after mixing, using a wet dough folding/kneading technique, in order to form it into a round ball. The dough was then placed in a covered container to rise.

Bulk Fermentation and Folding

The bulk fermentation phase was designed to last 3.7 hours at 75F. During that time the dough was conventionally folded three times, about once per hour. As the gluten develops, the dough will become stiffer and will no longer spread out when turned out onto the counter. Fold more often if the dough is too slack or fold less often if it seems too stiff and resistant to folding.

The dough should expand to about 1.7 times the original volume and become puffy during the bulk fermentation. The dough is not intended to double in volume during the bulk fermentation.

At 70F the bulk fermentation should take about 5 hours, somewhat longer than at 75F.

Shaping

The dough was halved and two large rectangular loaves were formed. The two loaves were placed in a couche on a half tray and placed in a Ziploc "Big Bag" with two bowls of hot water. The loaves were proofed for 2.6 hours at 75F. At 70F the loaves should proof for about 3.5 hours.

Slash and Bake

The loaves were slashed, put on parchment paper on a large peel and placed in a brick oven. The oven hearth temperature was about 525F at the beginning of the bake. The loaves and interior of the oven were sprayed with a fine mist using an orchid sprayer (1/6 gal/minute for 25 seconds), and the oven was sealed with a towel covered door. After 15 minutes, the loaves were rotated and the door of the oven was left open. The loaves were baked for a total of 45 minutes until dark brown. Since the dough is fairly wet, it helps to give the loaves a thorough bake. The internal temperature was 209F, but I've found that internal temperature can be an unreliable indicator of doneness with higher hydration loaves.

In my kitchen oven, I would preheat the oven to 500F with a stone and cast iron skillet. After placing the loaves on the stone, put water in the skillet and drop the temperature to 450F. After 15 minutes, drop the temperature to 400F for the rest of the bake.

The loaves are fairly large, as my brick oven has room for them. In a kitchen oven the loaves could be done one at a time, possibly shaped a little wider and shorter. To do a more typical quantity of bread for a kitchen oven, halve the recipe and make two smaller loaves that can be baked at the same time.

Cool

Allow the loaves to completely cool on a rack that allows the entire loaf, top and bottom, to be exposed to air.

Results

This bread is named Workhorse Sourdough because it can be used for almost any job. It will work in place of a white country bread for dinner, for sandwiches, for toast, or even for dipping in olive oil. The sourdough flavor of the levain with the rye and whole wheat is a little stronger than breads I've made with a white flour or spelt levain. One could put all the whole grains and Golden Buffalo flour in the soaker, and make the levain from a portion of the white flour. Water would have to be moved from the dough to the larger soaker in that case.

hefetc's picture
hefetc

Panettone that's not too dense?

I was reading PMcCool's panettone post from last year and thought it might be seasonally appropriate to revive the subject of natural yeast panettone.

I've made panettone for several years now (never before from natural yeast) and it generally turns out a little denser than it seems like is traditional. I mean, it always tastes fantastic... hard to go wrong with all that egg and butter. And I add some rum to the fruit, which is yummy.

I agree with PMcCool that the fat and all that fruit (and I think, in my case, the _wet_ fruit, because of all that yummy rum) definitely weighs it down.

I'm going to experiment this year with dry fruit (finding somewhere else in the procedure to add the rum, which my family loves).

And I've been eyeing the pandoro recipe in Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking (I've requested my sister bring me some for... um... research... she lives in Brooklyn). I'm going to attempt to maybe follow that procedure, but add the fruit in.

Has anyone tried that Pandoro recipe from Maggie Glezer? Am I asking for trouble if I try to add fruit to it? Maybe I should just follow the procedure it describes (to get the airyness and height) and use the high gluten flour and SAF Gold it suggests (both of which apparently give it the strength to overcome all that extra weight) but use the somewhat less rich (ha!) proportions of butter and egg (like maybe something closer to Peter Reinhart's) to compensate for the extra fruit.

 

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

soaking whole grain flours

I know that it's a good idea, nutrition-wise, to presoak whole wheat flours.  Does this also apply to other whole grain flours?  How long a soak is necessary?

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