life is good

There was a recipe for simit on ev cini's blog, and today was the day. Thank you ev cini!

However, I made the simit with some of the dough that was destined for sourdough bread, and I think sourdough was not a good idea. Next time, either I'll make it with commercial yeast or with my bread dough before it has a chance to sour. Still, brought tears to my eyes.

breads of the last ten days

I'm catching up on the breads I baked in the last ten days. First, I baked a couple of quick whole wheat breads  - half whole wheat flour, half bread flour. I'd been wondering whether I was overproofing my loaves, so I wanted to experiment with shorter fermentations. I divided the dough in half, and baked the first loaf after about 1.5 hours of proofing. As you can see, I had a blow-out, indicating it had not proofed long enough. I will continue to go with my instincts, instead of the usual proofing time suggested in most formulas.

This loaf was inedible. Unbelievably dense crumb. Couldn't bring myself to take a picture.

The second loaf of the same batch of dough was retarded overnight after shaping. The result:

Much better. Not a whole lot of oven spring. Taste still boring. The sesame seeds on the crust were the best thing. I miss the complexity of seeded breads.

A few days later, I experimented with long retardation.

the soaker (200 g dry):

• farro (first time I'm using farro in anything)
• steelcut oats
• flax seeds (using much smaller amount than before)

Soaked in boiling water overnight, with a pinch of salt.

the dough:

• sourdough starter (200 g)
• whole wheat flour (400 g)
• bread flour (200 g)
• water (400 g +)
• soaker, drained
• roasted pumpkin seeds
• salt (15 g)

Mixed very briefly, without the salt and the pumpkin seeds.
Autolyse for 30 minutes.
Added the salt and the pumpkin seeds, and mixed for 4 minutes in the mixer.
Gave it 3 s&f's at 20 minute intervals.
Covered and put in the fridge for retardation overnight.

Next morning, divided the dough into two, shaped the loaves, put one back into the fridge. The other one proofed at room temperature and baked as usual. That loaf had a very disappointing texture, mealy like the rye loaf that turned out terrible, though perhaps not quite as bad. This puzzled me to no end, so I checked my formulas and saw that both this seeded whole wheat and the seeded rye had a relatively low proportion of bread flour. I'm thinking that the amount of seeds and grains require the strength that the bread flour provides. The slices were better when toasted, but still not good enough.

The second loaf sat in the fridge for 3 days, then baked after an hour at room temperature. Significantly better. This long retardation seems to have helped the mealiness quite a bit. Wish I knew enough to understand why.

At first, this loaf seemed too sour, expected because of the long proofing. But the next day, the acidity seemed perfect. Generally, very happy with this loaf, though I think increasing the ratio of bread flour will make it much better.

The farro didn't give the same chewiness as wheat berries. I'll switch to wheat berries as soon as I get some more.

seeded rye not a success

Sounds better than saying it's a huge failure. Which it was, as far as I'm concerned. Don't be taken in by the fact that it looks kind of OK.

I'd never made rye anything, so I decided to try it. I used a formula relatively close to my whole wheat formula. The dough looked doomed all the way, and I had no idea how to correct it. Here's the breakdown:

the soaker (total 125 g before soaking):

• wheat berries (very small amount - all I had left)
• flax seeds
• steel cut oats

Forgot to add salt, but it doesn't seem to have mattered. I think. Covered with boiling water and let sit overnight.

the dough:

• rye flour (325 g)
• all purpose flour (75 g - don't ask me why)
• bread flour (150 g)
• sourdough starter (220 g)
• the soaker
• water (300 g, plus whatever came with the strained soaker)
• salt (11 g)

As usual, mixed ingredients without the salt, autolysed for 30 minutes, added the salt and mixed about 5 minutes in the stand mixer hoping to develop gluten. It looked like it wasn't happening. I did the Bertinet stretch/slap/fold. It cleared the table nicely, but not much elasticity developing at all.

I let the dough ferment for 45 minutes. It looked like nothing had happened. I did a few strech-and-folds, and half the time, the dough broke off instead of stretching. Not good news. I let it ferment another 45 minutes. Same thing. It just didn't look like it was developing any gluten at all. I let it ferment yet another 45 minutes, and then gave up. The dough was extremely sticky though it's a stiffer dough than my usual. And it didn't seem to have any strength, and it did not stretch. Bleh.

I floured the table and formed it into a ball and let it rest for 10 minutes. Time to shape. I was careful to go for surface tension this time, and I think I got it right, and finally the dough is starting to look like a loaf. Let it proof close to an hour, scored it, and baked it.

One good thing: The scoring was easy and worked beaurifully. I think it's because the dough was stiffer than usual.

I got oven spring. Yeay! I'm pretty sure it was the surface tension. Got a beautiful grigne too, and started to feel hopeful. I let the loaf cool overnight and cut into it this morning.

Calling it moist would be a euphemism. Moist to the point of goopy glompiness. You can't tell from the way it looks. It almost looks decent. True, the crumb is not open, but I didn't expect big holes with rye.

But if you press it even gently between your fingers, it turns into doughy mush. What's worse is the mouthfeel. For reasons I can't fathom, as soon as you put it in your mouth, it feels mealy, like you're eating porridge or something. I confess that a couple of times (stop reading here if you're easily disgusted) I took it out of my mouth to stare at it to figure it out, but I couldn't.

So what went wrong? Fermentation and/or proofing too short? Too long? Too much soaker interfering with gluten development, which is already not very active in rye? Didn't bake long enough? I have no idea.

On top of it all, the taste is nothing special. I'm not going to try and improve my rye bread, because frankly, it doesn't seem worth it to me. So who wants the rest of my rye flour?

seedy whole wheat redux

A miserably dark, rainy day. A perfect day to bake bread. The last time I baked this, the two loaves were smallish and were gone too quickly. Today, I'm making a bigger batch.

the soaker (total 250 g before soaking):

• wheat berries  - beautiful sensuous chewiness
• flax seeds - can't taste them, can't see them, but healthy
• buckwheat groats - adds no taste or texture that I can detect, finishing up my stock
• small pinch of salt

This time, I poured boiling water on the mixture and let it sit overnight. I wanted to see whether it would turn out significantly different from soaking in cold water. It did. It was much better.

the sourdough starter:
         I maintain my starter with all purpose flour, because I figure it's the most neutral. For this whole wheat loaf,  I built it up two days ago with whole wheat flour. When I tasted, it was a bit on the sour side and I wondered if I should have fed it closer to baking time. However, the sourness turned out just right, a remote whiff.

the dough:

• sourdough starter (400 g)
• whole wheat flour (625 g)
• bread flour (475 g)
• water (555 g, but I added more later)
• sunflower seeds (99 g)
• the soaker
• salt (20 g)

If these amounts read as though there was careful, precise calculation of ingredients, there wasn't. Either that's how much I had at hand (e.g. the sunflower seeds, the whole wheat flour), or my hand slipped (the water). I'm not getting obsessive with precise baker's percentages because (1) it's stressful, and (2) it doesn't let you respond to what's actually in front of you. And I don't have to replicate breads precisely, which is a major advantage of being an amateur baker.

I mixed everything except the salt on the lowest speed of the mixer. The dough was clearly much stiffer than what I usually shoot for, so I added more water. Don't know how much. Just added until it seemed right.

I covered the dough and let it rest for 30 minutes (autolyse).

I added the salt and mixed the dough for 5 minutes on the second from lowest speed.

I covered it to start the bulk fermentation. One stretch-and-fold after 45 minutes, a second one after another 45 minutes. Then 30 more minutes of fermentation.

I pinched off a bit to bake into a flat bread. Just experimenting. I divided the rest of the dough into two, pre-shaped them into balls, and let them rest for 15 minutes. Then I put one in a round basket, and the other one onto the couche, and let them proof for 1 hour.

I filled an iron skillet with lava rocks and put it on the lower shelf of the oven, and preheated the oven to 500 F. I was determined to get more steam this time. Didn't help.

While I was waiting for the loaves to rise, I made my flat bread. I stretched it with my hands and cooked it in a skillet on top of the stove baked it on the baking stone (brain-fingers not coordinated). Puffed up and cooked very quickly. A success!

That makes me very happy. Will repeat it often.

At the end of an hour, the loaves hadn't risen a whole lot, but once again, I was afraid of over-proofing. I first baked the loaf that had proofed on the couche. I transferred it onto the peel, sprayed the top with water,  covered it with sesame seeds, and slipped it onto the baking stone. Put some ice cubes in the iron skillet. When I closed the oven door, I saw the steam coming out in sheets. I'm not sure any steam stayed in the oven. Arrgh.

Turned the oven down to 450 F and baked for 15 minutes. Turned it down to 425 F, and baked another 15 minutes. This was a bigger loaf than my usual, so I decided to give it another 5 minutes and then I let it stay in the oven w/ the door ajar for 10 minutes. Next, onto the cooling rack.

In the meantime, I had placed the second loaf into a plastic bag and transferred it to the fridge, because it would have to wait while the first was baking and then while the oven heated up to 500 F again. I think I'm going to adjust my baking so that I can bake two smaller loaves at the same time. This is too much juggling.

I inverted the second loaf from the basket onto the peel, sprayed it with water, and covered with sesame seeds. Continued to bake in the usual manner.

Results: Very little oven spring. Crumb on the dense side. The breads were very moist, maybe too moist. Both loaves spread sideways when I put them on the peel. I think I may not have developed enough surface tension, so I'll focus on that next time. But I don't even know if a whole grain loaf that's so packed with seeds can rise very high.

This picture shows very uneven rising, but parts of the loaf were better:

I thought that the denseness might have been a result of overproofing. But the second loaf proofed longer, and the crumb turned out better and more even:

So maybe the first loaf was underproofed. Sometimes this feels like a crapshoot.

People might find the moistness of the crumb objectionable, but I actually found it very pleasant eating.  So yes, the crumb was way too moist, but that felt like an advantage after toasting. And the ratio of the soaker to the dough was absolutely perfect. This made for a chewiness that was orgasmic. And I don't use that word lightly. Not only was the texture great, but the taste was wonderfully rich and earthy. I couldn't stop eating it. This turned out to be my most favourite bread so far.

the burnt loaf

I finished the first loaf quickly, and had to start on the loaf that I had burned.

 I was also curious about the crumb, given that it had proofed much longer than the first loaf and I had screwed up the baking temeprature. It looked quite good, except for the fact that it was, well, burnt. I cut off the top crust before I tasted it. It was more sour than the first one, obviously because it had proofed longer, but it was not an overwhelming sourness. It was pleasant, actually. The crumb was better too - more and bigger holes. But the difference was not dramatic.

I think next time, both the bulk fermentation and the proofing will be longer. We'll see how it goes.

whole wheat with grains and seeds

I want my daily bread to be a healthy whole grain, and I like seeds and grains in it for texture. What's available here commercially is disappointing. First, almost all of them have sugar/honey/syrup added. I'm fiercely opposed to this, not just on principled grounds (which I am), but also because I can taste it immediately. I've been able to find a relatively satisfactory bread but you have to hunt around town for it, and it ain't cheap. So I decided to bake my own basic bread, which is what got me started baking bread again.

Now that I've baked a number of good all purpose flour sourdough breads to get my feet wet, it was time to get down to business.

 ingredients:

• sourdough starter (220 g)
• bread flour (300 g)
• whole wheat flour (300 g)
• water (300 g)
• roasted sunflower seeds (70 g)
• soaker (total 170 g before soaking)
• flax seed ('cause they're good for you)
• buckwheat groats ('cause I hadn't even seen them before and I was curious)
• wheat berries ('cause I love their texture)
• salt (10 g)

the night before: 
I feed my sourdough starter as usual, with all purpose flour.
I add a small pinch of salt to the soakers, cover it with water, and let it sit for about 14 hours.

mixing:
I strain the soaker, in all its gel-like gloopiness from the flax seeds.
I combine in the bowl of my stand mixer everything except the salt, and mix at lowest speed for about 2-3 minutes. That soaker doesn't want to incorporate.
I let it rest for 30 minutes.
I add the salt and mix for about 4 minutes on the second-from-lowest speed.

This dough may seem to be 50% hydration, but it isn't when you take into account the water that comes with the soaker. I debated whether I should add a bit more water, but it looked OK to me after the mixing:

bulk fermentation:
I let the dough rise for 45 minutes, and then do that magical stretch-and-fold thing. (I still have trouble grasping the fact that this is better than kneading.)
I let it rise for another 45 minutes.
After 90 minutes, I'm not sure that it has risen enough so I give it another fold and let it rise for 30 minutes more.

proofing:
I pre-shape the dough into two balls and let them rest for 15 minutes.
I still haven't gotten myself a new set of bannetons, so I decide to proof them on the couche.
I shape one ball into a boule and the other roughly into a batard shape, and place them on the well-floured couche.
I give it an hour. They rise minimally, so I give it another 40 minutes.
At that point, the fear of too much sourness strikes and I decide to bake them.

baking:
OK, now this is why I need to get me some bannetons. I'm not the world's most coordinated person anyway, but the feat of getting the loafs from the couche to the peel is daunting. When there is more than one loaf on the couche, I usually have trouble rolling the loaf straight from the couche onto the peel. So I wonder about what I can use as a flipping board, get lazy, and decide to roll it onto my arm, and from there to the peel. Arrgh. It's amazing how laziness can trump good sense. I wanted to apologize to my loaf, which now was a bit deflated and a bit warped.

I slash the top of the loaf (in vain, it turns out), and spray the top with water.
I slip the loaf onto the baker's stone in the oven preheated to 500 F, turn it down to 450 F, bake for 15 minutes, turn it down once more to 425 F, and bake another 15 minutes.

There was very little oven spring and no grigne. This loaf didn't look sexy. I put it on the cooling rack and turned to the second loaf.

I decided to bake the two loaves separately, because I knew getting the second loaf on the peel would take additional juggling while the first loaf was in the oven, and I didn't want to disturb the first loaf while it was trying to rise (ha!).

I reheat the oven to 500 F. This means that the second loaf proofed almost 40 minutes longer. Curious to see what that will do.

I slip the second loaf into the oven. When I'm back in the kitchen to turn the oven down to 425 F after the first 15 minutes, I realize that I forgot to turn it down to 450 F when I first put it in. So it had 15 minutes at 500 F. Jeeeez, how could I?!! Well, of course I can, because I've burnt even soup.

I turn the oven down to 425 F. Then I think maybe it should go lower still, and I turn it down to 400. I give it 10 minutes, then I turn off the oven and let it sit for 5 minutes.

I'm heartbroken, because the top crust looks really burnt. I know some people think you can't overbake bread (Clavel, Silverton), but that's not my taste.

However, this loaf has much better oven spring than the first one. I mean, it actually has oven spring. Was it the extra proofing? Or the crazy baking temperature. I dunno.

the morning after:
Ooooh, anticipation. I decide to try the unburnt loaf, and it tastes really really good. I toast one slice for breakfast, it's magical. I'm so so happy.

I compare it side-by-side to my commercially baked multigrain, and no contest, mine wins hands down. But look at the crumb.

How come it looks so good even though there was no oven spring? It's moist, chewy, with a rich earthy taste, and barely sour. So the loaf that doesn't look promising on the outside turns out to be super on the inside.

One flaw in the concept. Although the wheat berries are beautifully chewy inside the crumb, the ones that ended up on the surface of the loaf are hard and sharp. Unpleasant. I have to figure out a way to avoid that. In the meantime, I'm focusing on finding a good way to shave the burnt top crust of the second loaf to feed to my dogs.

buckwheat sourdough

Thought I'd follow a formula this time and see how it goes. I went with Susan's sourdough from her inspiring blog, since people on Fresh Loaf have such high praise for it. Susan notes that it's an adaptation of Jeffrey Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough, in his book Bread: A Baker's Techniques and Recipes. The bread turned out interesting and surprising. And good.

Try as I might, though, I didn't/couldn't follow her directions exactly. First, I halved the ingredients:

450 g KAF all purpose flour

60 g buckwheat flour

300 g water

180 g sourdough starter

11 g salt

Susan's formula calls for rye flour, but I didn't have any. I'd gone to the store to get it, but once there, I was completely distracted by cherries, sea bass, etc. I had buckwheat flour at home, which I was planning on experimenting with, so that's what I substituted.

I mixed it all in the stand mixer for about a minute, maybe less. Then let it rest for 30 minutes. 

Added the salt and mixed for about 3 minutes. It didn't look like it needed more mixing; it was beautifully smooth and stretchy.

Then I was supposed to fold it after 50 minutes. I don't have a good sense of time (meaning I usually disregard it), and the timer doesn't always help (because I disregard that too, to the dogs' distress). I have a feeling it was more like 70 minutes before the first fold.

Now the folding schedule was off, so I did the second fold a bit earlier, in another 30 minutes.

Yet another 30 minutes, and the fermentation seemed to be enough.  I didn't want to let it go for the suggested 2.5 hours, because I'm trying to correct a recurrent mistake, over-fermentation.

At that point the dough looked different from any dough I worked with before. Incredibly stretchy, but not many holes and no big holes. It had definitely risen some, and you could also tell by how it felt when you touched it, but I started worrying about how subdued the holes were. Maybe my starter wasn't vigourous enough? I had been sure that it was - was I wrong? Or maybe the culprit was the buckwheat. Buckwheat has no gluten. I hadn't added any high-gluten flour to compensate. Was it going to work?

On the other hand, there were reasons to think everything was going fine. The stretchiness of the dough meant that there wasn't a gluten problem. And when you gently placed your palm on the dough, it felt right - good resistance, beautifully smooth, etc.

Not like I had options at this point. There was nothing to do except to go on.

I had thrown out my bannetons some years back and haven't replaced them. What do I use for proofing? The dough was very soft so I knew it was going to spread a lot. Bite the bullet, I thought, make it a big ciabatta. I gave it a couple of gentle folds and let it proof right on the peel. I really don't know how long it proofed, but I think it was about an hour, at most an hour and a half.

In the meantime, the oven had been preheated to 500 F, with the baking stone in it. I slid the loaf onto the stone, with a sigh of relief when it actually did slide off the peel. Turned the oven down to 450 F and baked for 15 minutes. Dying of curiousity, I opened the oven door and peeked in. Hey! It had risen beautifully! I turned the oven to 425 F, and baked another 15 minutes. Then turned the oven off and was going to let the bread sit there for 5 minutes, when my time handicap struck again and I left it there for half an hour. Way too long. The crust got too thick and too brown for my taste. 

I let it cool completely, and cut off a slice before I went to bed. Ugh. The buckwheat was overwhelmingly strong. Disappointed, I went to bed debating how to choose between love of experimentation and enjoying a predictably good result. 

Next morning (yesterday), I gave it another try. Surprise! It had mellowed beautifully and tasted great. The buckwheat taste was there, of course, but it was not overwhelming and it was not too 'strong' to have for breakfast before your mind and your body readjusted to life. And this morning, it was even better.

So it's true, bread develops better taste after a day or two. I guess I didn't want to believe it because it would mean that I couldn't tear off a piece right out of the oven. But really, isn't that one of the main reasons we bake bread? To get to it while it's warm? I refuse to give that up. The solution is to bake at least two loaves, one to attack right away and one to let rest for a day. Then we can have our bread and eat it too. (Groan! I know, but I couldn't resist it.)

I loved the consistency of this dough when I was working with it, and the end result, so this formula will be repeated. The sourness was just right, the crumb had great texture, and it was moist and chewy.

I prefer a bit less salt, so I'll reduce the amount next time. Also next time, I won't screw up the crust by overbaking.

where are they?

Sourdough whole wheat bread I baked two days ago. Still not following a recipe, but I'm getting wiser. 

I used almost all whole wheat flour, and the starter had been fed with whole wheat for the last couple of feedings. Added roasted sunflower seeds, roasted sesame seeds, and flax seeds. I thought I'd put in a ton, but they're not very present, are they? Can't taste them much either. Next time I'll put in twice as much. 

Lessons learned:

• remember to soak whole grains the night before, so you can add them too
• less starter - it's OK to waste, as long as you don't tell my mom
• vastly increase seed ratio
• buy your seeds elsewhere so they're fresher