breadbakingbassplayer's blog

12/28/13 - Tangzhong + Rye Scald + Rye Sour + Too much dough for too small a pan = Balloon Bread

So this is from this morning's bake.  I decided last night to try and mix a bunch of elements into one bread to see what would happen...  This experiment consists of Tangzhong water roux, rye scald, rye sour, mostly AP flour, buttermilk powder, an egg, honey, salt, and a little bit of instant dry yeast.  My recipe made a little over 1kg of dough, which put the dough which filled my pan about 2/3 of the way.  The dough was pretty wet, so I couldn't really knead the dough very well so I resorted to stretching and folding in a plastic tub...  Anyway, this dough was proofed overnight in the pan covered with plastic wrap.  In the morning, it had risen about 1/2" above the form, so it was pretty much dumped into the oven as soon as I could heat it up to baking temp...

See the nice balloon top below?  I should have divided the dough into 2 pieces, but it was too late for that...

Crumbshot!  Pretty nice, but was did not have the shreddable crumb that I was looking for.  What it did have was a nice slightly sweet taste, and it toasts up very well.  See photos below with butter and grape jelly...

Happy baking!

Tim

This is a continuation of my spelt brioche experimentation.  This time I used 50% AP flour, 50% spelt flour, 50% unsalted butter, 32% eggs, 20% yogurt, 16% palm sugar/sucanat mixture, 2.5% salt, and a little instant dry yeast.  I prefermented 20% of the flour in a liquid levain at 100% hydration using my rye SD starter.  I am pretty happy with the result.  It's a tangy bread due to the yogurt and liquid levain.  I think next time I can up the sugar level...  My total dough weight was approx 1200g, divivided between two 4.5" cube pullman pans.  The dough only filled up about 1/4" the pan and had risen overnight to maybe 1" from the top.  The oven spring was impressive, about 1" over the pan.

Here is the crumbshot below.

Excellent toasted, and would be nice with pate...

Until the next loaf...

Tim

Hi everybody, especially rye bread enthusiasts...  Just wanted to post some things that I have been working on:

12/7/13 - Danish Rye Bread

This one turned out really well for winging it.  It's a mix of a bunch of stuff, freshly cracked rye, spelt, wheat berries, rye flour, pumpkin/flax/sesame seeds, old bread, rye sourdough, spelt stiff levain, barley malt syrup, blackstrap molasses.

12/11/13 - Lithuanian Scalded Rye Bread

This one was inspired by this video with Paul Hollywood of the Karaway Bakery in London: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2az4i_XP4Uc

http://karawaybakery.com/ourProducts/breads

and these blog posts: http://flourandleaven.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/lithuanian-scalded-rye/

http://www.clarkagency.co.uk/GreedyPiglet/the-dark-side-sourdough-scalded-rye-bread/

http://www.gourmantineblog.com/lithuanian-black-rye-bread/

and this page: http://ausis.gf.vu.lt/eka/food/bread.html

My attempt consisted of 95% rye flour, 5% AP flour, water, blackstrap molasses, barley malt, salt, caraway seeds.

Here is a photo of the nice side of the loaf.  I think it could have been proofed a little longer...  I will cut into it tomorrow to see what it looks like.  From the good side, it looks pretty good...

12/13/13 - Crumbshots and Breakfast

Until the next loaf...

Tim

Recent bakes:

11/27/13 - 100% Whole Spelt Pandoro-Like Thing

This is a continuation of the 100% spelt brioche that I made last week or so…  I wanted to see what more butter, eggs, and sugar would do using spelt flour...

11/24/13

Rye SD

100g - Water

50g - Organic whole rye flour (Arrowhead MIlls)

48g - Rye SD (100% hydration)

190g - Total SD weight

1:00pm - Mix rye SD, cover and let rest.

11/25/13

11:40pm - Add 100g rye flour to SD, mix, cover and let rest.

11/26/13

Decide to attempt making pandoro with 100% spelt flour (Arrowhead mills).

Sweet SD Starter

200g - Whole spelt flour

100g  - Rye SD from above

58g - Egg (1 xl egg)

17g - Water

38g - Sucanat

396g - Total sweet starter weight

8:30pm - Mix sweet starter, place in covered container, let rest…

11:45pm - Place starter in refrigerator.

11/27/13

8:01am - Take starter out of fridge.

9:30am - Place starter in microwave with a cup of hot water, just to keep starter warm.  My kitchen was cold.

6:50pm - Place starter back in refrigerator…

Final Dough

250g - Whole spelt flour

292g - Eggs (5 xl eggs)

188g - Unsalted butter

150g - Sucanat

10g - Honey

6g - Salt

2g - Instant dry yeast (½ tsp)

396g - Sweet SD starter

1306g - Total dough weight

10:00pm - Weigh out all ingredients.  When butter is slightly softened at room temp, whip with whisk with a little of the succanat, set aside.  Cut up sweet SD starter into small pieces.  In large mixing bowl, place eggs, honey, salt, yeast, sweet SD starter, and spelt flour.  Mix well with wooden spoon until smooth and lump free.  When you can feel some resistance and gluten development, then start adding the succanat.  When all the sucanat is is combined, then mix in the whipped butter.  This process takes about 1 hour by hand…

11:00pm - Place dough in lightly oiled covered container, place in fridge.

12:00pm - Lightly spray 5 ¼” diameter x 3 ¾” tall paper pannetone molds with spray olive oil or you can butter lightly if you like.  Divide dough into 2 equal portions, and place into molds.  Spray lightly the top of the dough with olive oils spray, place on pan and cover with saran wrap and proof overnight…  The dough is very wet and I think I overhydrated so I was unable to shape the dough into a ball…

11/28/13

10:40am - Preheat oven to 380F.

11:30am - When dough reaches approx ¾” from top of mold, bake in oven for 40 minutes or until internal temp reaches 190F…

Ugh…  This recipe was inspired by the Bruno Bakery’s Pandoro recipe from Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking Across America…  This was a lot of work especially when you don’t have an electric mixer, and a lot of time.  Not sure if it was worth it, but at least it didn’t taste bad.  The texture wasn’t what I was after, the shreddy crumb of a pandoro made from high gluten wheat flour…  It was more cakey…  It tastes quite good toasted…

At the same time, I made another spelt bread using a spelt/rye starter, and all spelt for the final dough…  I’ll just say that it didn’t turn out well probably due to not bulk fermenting long enough…  I think I’ll wait awhile before I try a 100% spelt bread using only spelt flour, water, sourdough and salt…  I just didn’t like the taste…

Now on to the next thing…  Limppu and Ruisreikäleipä from Nordic Breads in NYC…  So I have been baking a lot with rye flour lately and remember an article from New York Magazine: Rye’s Rise: Loaves That are More Than a Vehicle for Pastrami: http://www.grubstreet.com/2013/09/new-rye-breads.html

I am fortunate enough to live in NYC and was able to find Nordic Bread’s rye bread Ruisreikäleipä at Dean & Deluca.  I got it just to try and see what it was like.  It’s 100% locally grown organic rye flour.  It’s quite soft, light textured, and sour.

So here is my attempt at Limppu, which simply means loaf in Finnish…  

The recipes that I referenced are as follows. more so the 2nd one:

http://flourandleaven.wordpress.com/2013/08/17/limpuu/

http://tofufortwo.net/2009/06/08/finnish-rye-bread-2/

For technique, I saw this video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thaVEPbcT_w

I just think the word “limppu” sounds funny…  On a more serious note, I think that limppu is basically a 100% rye bread that is 75% hydration.  The sourdough starter is a rather liquidy batter in which approx 35% of the total flour is pre-fermented in in most of the total liquid...  Anyway, here’s what happened:

11/28/13

Rye SD - Freshening

50g - Rye flour

50g - Water

Whatever rye SD I had leftover, probably about 50g.

6:30pm - Mix SD, cover and let rest.

11/29/13

Rye SD

364g - Rye flour

700g - Water

50g - Rye SD from above

16g - Toasted spelt bread crumbs from the failed loaf…

1130g - Total SD weight

9:45pm - Mix, cover and let rest.

Final Dough

636g - Rye flour

50g - Water

20g - Salt

1130g - Rye SD from above

1836g - Total dough weight

6:30pm - Mix all ingredients with a wooden spoon, place in covered container and let ferment for 3 hours.

10:00pm - Flour work surface well with rye flour, shape dough into a cone, place on parchment paper, cover with towel, let rest for 2 hours, or until surface is cracked.

11:00pm - Place baking stone on middle rack in oven along with steaming device, preheat oven to 500F.

12:00am - Bake for 10 minutes at 500F, then 80 minutes at 400F, then 10 minutes in off oven.  Internal temp should be approx 210F, and loaf should weigh approximately 15% less than pre-baked weight.  Cover in aluminum foil, then in kitchen towels and let rest for at least 24 hours.  I let mine rest for 2 days before cutting.

Notes:  I think it turned out well, but it was not as sour as I had heard that this type of bread could be.  The rye bread from Nordic Breads is more sour than my limppu…  Also, maybe I left the loaf in foil for too long as there were some strange spots on the loaf that I ended up just cutting out with a knife…  

I think the texture is good, but I think I could have let the loaf proof for longer so it flattened out more and developed more cracks and possible had a lighter crumb…  Anyway, I am relatively pleased with this attempt…

Until the next loaf…

Tim

Hello fellow fresh loafers.  Hope you are all doing well, and I wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving in advance if you are in the States!  Anyway, sorry for the long absence from TFL.  I have been busy with changes in my life and have not had much time to bake or blog about it until about now.  I have been pondering some things about bread baking which I will not reveal as of yet, but in my absence my wife and I had done the Fast Metabolism Diet, which basically says that you cannot eat the following foods for 28 days: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, dairy, wheat, soy, corn…  If you want to read up on it, be my guest…  It’s actually not a bad diet, but the food list and eating schedule is a pain to follow…  Anyway, that got me thinking…  What if I start baking breads without wheat…  The non-wheat flours that are available to me easily are rye and spelt…  Anyway, the story of this bread is that a few weeks ago, I baked a 100% spelt bread that I absolutely hated…  Sour, dense, dry, yuk!  I’ll spare you the details.  Now on to the fun stuff…  Here is my formula below:

11/24/13 - Poor Man’s 100% Spelt Brioche

Spelt Sourdough - 1
50g - Organic spelt flour (Arrowhead Mills)
100g - Water
5g - Rye sourdough starter (100% hydration)

155g - Total starter weight

Spelt Sourdough - 2
155g - Spelt SD - 1
100g - Organic spelt flour

255g - Total starter weight

Final Dough
350g - Organic spelt flour
100g - Eggs (2)
75g - Plain almond milk
25g - Succanat
12g - Salt

2g - IDY (instant dry yeast-1/2 tsp)
112g - Unsalted butter
255g - Spelt SD - 2

929g - Total dough weight

Instructions
11/22/13
8:50am: Mix spelt SD, cover and let rest.

9:25pm: Add 100g spelt flour to spelt SD - 1 to make SD - 2, mix, cover, let rest.

12:30am - Refrigerate spelt SD - 2

11/23/13
10:45am - Weigh out all ingredients for final dough, placing wet ingredients (not including butter) in large mixing bowl first, then dry ingredients.  Mix will with wooden spoon, then plastic scraper for a few minutes into shaggy dough, cover and let rest.

11:15am - Take stick of butter from fridge, pound with rolling pin to make more pliable, mix butter into dough by hand.  Dough will shred and look like a mess.  When butter is incorporated, pick dough up and throw down into mixing bowl for a few minutes.  Form into ball, place in lightly oiled container with cover, cover and let rest.  Do not add any extra flour when working with dough…

11:45am - Stretch and fold (turn dough) in container, cover and let rest.

12:05pm - Stretch and fold (turn dough) in container, cover and let rest.

12:30pm - Stretch and fold (turn dough) in container, cover and refrigerate.

6:00pm - Stretch and fold (turn dough) in container, cover and refrigerate.

9:00pm - Shape dough, place into greased tin, cover with plastic wrap, refrigerate overnight.

11/24/13
10:10am - Take dough out of refrigerator, place on counter.  Place rack on middle rack with baking stone.  Preheat oven to 380F - 400F.

10:50am - Bake for 1 hr in tin, then the final 15 minutes out of tin on baking sheet.  Bread is done when internal temperature reaches 190F.  Cool completely before cutting and eating…  At least 4 hours if you are impatient…

Notes: I baked this in a 4.5” x 4.5” x 4.5” pullman pan available from browncookie.com

Small Pain de Mie Pullman Bread Pan with Lid, 4.5”.
http://browncookie.com/products/small-pain-de-mie-pullman-bread-pan-with-lid

This bread turned out much better than I had expected and had an amazing amount of oven spring.  When I put the dough in the tin, it filled up about 2/3 of the way.  The dough reached the top of the pan during the overnight proof and rest out on the counter before baking…

The next time I bake this, which will probably be soon, I will increase the hydration slightly, and add more butter, maybe twice as much…

Enjoy!

Tim

Here are the gratuitous bread shots...  All 360 degrees of it!

1 slice in

2 slices in...  Yum!

Oh, what to do with old bread during Hurricane Sandy…  Lucky for us, we live on the UWS, so we only got some rain and lots of wind…  We had power, internet, food, etc…  We couldn't go to work either as our offices downtown were without power and trains weren't working…

Anyway, back to old bread.  I tend to keep old bread and dry it with the intention of putting it back into new bread…

Behold…  Compost Bread

Old Bread Soaker
112g     Dried baguette (from Silver Moon Bakery)
124g     Old rye bread (from my kitchen)
26g     Croutons (from a failed loaf attempt)
528g    Water

790g    Total

Biga
300g    AP flour
180g    Water
Pinch    IDY

480g Total

Final Dough
438g    AP flour
20g     Sea salt
480g    Biga
790g    Old bread soaker

1728g    Total

11/2/12
7:40pm - Soak old bread mix in water.
11:00pm - Mix biga, place in covered container on counter, let ferment.
11:10pm - Transfer soaked old bread to covered container, refrigerate.

11/3/12
2:40pm - Weigh out all remaining ingredients using a digital scale.  In a large mixing bowl, place old bread soaker and mash with hands until reasonably smooth and there are no large chunks.  Cut up biga and place on top of old bread mash, add salt and flour.  Mix with wooden spoon until a dough is formed.  Continue mixing by hand.  Do not add any additional flour.  Knead for a few minutes until flour is hydrated.  Place in lightly oiled continer, cover and let rest.

6:00pm - Turn dough (stretch and fold) and form into ball, cover and let rest.

7:45pm - Preshape into boule.

8:00pm - Final shape into boule, lightly dust with flour, using a bench knife, make 3 cuts like a "peace sign" almost all the way through, transfer cut side down into lightly floured basket, cover with towel and proof.

9:35pm - Place dutch oven into oven on middle rack, preheat to 450F.

10:00pm - Turn boule out onto peel, make vertical slashes between the cuts, carefully, with oven mitts, take off top of dutch oven, slide boule into dutch oven, cover and bake for 30 minutes.  Remove top with oven mitts, turn oven down to 400F and bake for another 30 minutes.  Bread will be done when internal temp reaches 205F to 210F.  Cool completely (overnight) before eating…

Now preparing for the Nor'Easter…  Ugh...

Tim

Hi All,

A few weeks ago, I bought some goat milk to try out.  I love goat cheese, but found out that I absolutely hate goat milk…  It tasted terrible with cereal, and still not so good mixed with cow's milk...  So rather than toss the milk, I decided to make bread with it…  I think it turned out quite well.  The crust was very crispy, the crumb was very moist and soft.  The goat milk taste was most present in the long lingering finish or aftertaste…  Not overpowering, but there…  Funny, after eating the bread, and waiting a while, the final taste I had in my mouth was something uni-like (sea urchin)…

While I think this bread turned out well, I don't think I will be baking it too often as it would require me to buy more goat milk…

Please note that I have a hand crank grain mill, and tend to freshly mill grains for my starters and/or preferments...

Here is the recipe/process below:

Poolish:
150g - Freshly ground organic rye berries - medium fine grind
75g - Freshly ground organic spelt berries - medium fine grind
75g - Organic AP flour (Whole Foods Mkt 365)
450g - Tap water
1g - IDY (1/8 tsp)
751g - Total

8:30pm - Mix poolish, cover and let rest.  Measure out 700g of goat milk, scald in saucepan and let cool (in ice bath if necessary).

Final Dough:
1200g - AP
30g - Salt
600-650g - Goat Milk (some will have evaporated)
751g - Poolish
2581g - Total (approx)

11:00pm - Mix all ingredients until all flour is combined with liquid and there are no dry bits in large mixing bowl.  Cover and let rest.

11:30pm - Turn dough, transfer to lightly oiled plastic tub at least 3x size of dough (6L), cover and let rest.

12:23am - Turn dough, cover and let rest, go to bed.

7:00am - Turn dough out onto floured surface, divide into 4 equal pieces, shape, proof on lightly floured linen couche, cover with plastic, proof.

8:00am - Prepare oven with 2 baking stones and steam pan filled with lava rocks and water.  Preheat to 500F with convection.

8:45am - Turn off convection.  Transfer loaves to lightly floured peel, slash, place in oven directly on stone.  Bake for 10 minutes at 475F with steam.  Remove steam pan, bake for 15 minutes at 425F.  Switch loaves between stones, bake for another 10 minute.  Then turn off oven and leave loaves in for another 10 minutes.  Cool before slicing and eating…

Enjoy!

Tim

Without crumbs

With crumbs

Hey All,

Long time no post here on TFL.  I have been working a little too much these days to post, how ever I have been baking about once a week.  I have been baking very whole grain breads with rye lately, and had some grains in the freezer that I wanted to bake with…  So here's what I came up with….  

For flours, I am using Whole Foods Market 365 Organic AP and whole wheat flours, and Arrowhead Mills Organic Stoneground Rye Flour.  The OG rye and spelt berries are from Fairway Market in NYC, the OG flax seeds and wheat germ are from a little organic market.  The water is NYC tap water.  

I also have a Porkert hand crank grain mill that I got at Lehman's…  It is the same one that Gerard Rubaud uses.  Sadly Lehman's called me a while a go and said Porkert went out of business…  Also, I mix everything by hand in a large stainless steel mixing bowl, using a rubber spatula, plastic scraper, and wet hands.  Everything is pretty low tech except for using a digital scale to weigh out the ingredients...

Here is the recipe and process below:

Rye/Spelt Soaker
250g - Organic spelt berries
250g - Organic rye berries
500g - Water
1000g - Total

Flax Seed Soaker
50g - Organic flax seeds
50g - Organic golden flax seeds
250g - Water
350g - Total

4/8/12
10:00pm - Weigh out spelt and spelt berries.  Coarsely grind using grain mill.  Mix with water, place in covered container and refrigerate.  

Mix flax seed soaker, place in covered container.  Refrigerate.

Biga
100g - Organic whole wheat flour
50g - Organic rye flour
100g - Organic AP flour
160g - Water
Pinch - IDY
410g - Total

12:00am - Mix biga, place in lightly oiled covered container, refrigerate. (I used organic flax seed oil to oil the container)

4/9/12
9:30am - Take biga out of refrigerator, place on counter at room temp.

Final Dough
350g  - Organic AP flour
25g - Organic wheat germ
20-22g - Fine sea salt
1000g - Spelt/rye soaker
350g - Flax seed soaker
410g - Biga
1 - Tbsp - Malt Flour
2157g - Total

4/9/12
10:00pm - In a large mixing bowl, combine the spelt/rye soaker, flax seed soaker, AP flour, and wheat germ.  Mix with wooden spoon until well combined, place into lightly oiled container, cover and let rest.

10:30pm - Cut up biga into pieces, mix into final dough using wet hands until well combined, cover and let rest.

11:15pm - Knead in salt with wet hands until well combined, cover and let rest.

12:30am - Scrape dough out of container on to well floured surface, shape into boule, place into well floured linen lined banneton/basket, cover with tea towel, place into plastic bag and let proof overnight.

6:00am - Place baking stone into oven on middle rack along with steam pan filled with water and lava rocks, pre-heat oven to 500F with convection if you have it.  Be sure to  place an oven thermometer on the baking stone so you can tell how hot the stone is.

6:30am - Turn off convection.  Turn boule out onto lightly floured peel, brush off excess flour, dock dough with bamboo skewer or Japanese style chopstick, place boule into oven directly on stone and bake at 500F with steam for 15 minutes.  After, remove steam pan and turn oven down to 425F and bake for another 60 minutes.  Turn off oven and leave loaf in for another 10-15 minutes.  When finished baking, internal temp should be approx 210F and weight should be about 15% less than before baking.  Cool and rest for about 12 hrs before cutting.

Top

Crumb

Close-up

Enjoy!

Tim

Submitted to Yeastspotting on 4/12/12