albacore's blog

A few months ago I was given some French flour by my sister after her holiday in Brittany. So it was time to have another try at "proper" French pain au levain.

I've tried to make a good pain au levain with proper French flour a few times before, but never had much success, often ending up with a dry, lifeless crumb. The last time I tried, I used the Prof Calvel's recipe from his book le Goût du Pain (the French version - he increased the hydration in the American book, presumably for American flours). I wasn't happy with the result. Also, as an aside, I find his recipes are difficult to follow! This is how the crumb looked:

It was time to look for another recipe. I am a member of BoulangerieNet.fr so I headed over there and looked for a good recipe.

Eventually I came across this one, which looked good to me (translated to English):

"10 kg CRC t85 stoneground flour

7l of water

-autolysis 30 min

5 kg of stiff levain (always half the weight of flour)

360 g of salt

10g fresh yeast

400g water

11min in 1st then 3 in 2nd (fork mixer)

temperature at the end of kneading 27°c and up to 29-30°c when it is cold.

bulk approx. 30min then fold and another 30 min

scale and preshape not too tight then shaping.

blocking in a 4°c room then slow growth at 13°c approximately 11 hours.

possibility of blocking for 2-3 hours at 4°c depending on your availability in the oven."

Note the addition of fresh yeast; French law permits addition of up to 0.2% in pain au levain.

At first I didn't understand the blocage/blocking steps, but it turns out that avoidance of night work in French bakeries has always been a big thing, so a retarder/proofer called a Panem came into being.

This crash cools the shaped loaves to 4c and then it has a ramping set point to increase the loaf temp to 13c ready for baking in the morning.

I don't have a ramping controller, but I do have a small dedicated dough fridge with digital stat.

So I crash cooled the shaped loaves to 4C - as I normally would. Then at 11pm I changed the set point to 9.5C, baking at 9am the following morning.

I think this technique is used because the bulk time is only 1 hour, so the dough is underdeveloped after bulk.

I also did some research on the levain, to keep things authentic. Traditionally the French bakers have used a stiff (50% hydrn) levain (levain dur) and they developed a 3 step build, to ensure a minimum quantity of old levain went into the dough.

This was devised in the 18th century and is known as  "Le travail sur 3 levains":

I'm afraid I find the French levain build diagrams over complex and tricky to follow, but eventually I came up with my own version which is shown in my bread log. It includes some initial refreshes to get the levain in tip top condition.

My main levain is already a stiff levain (50%) fed on French T65 flour, so I was good to go with it.

For the main dough, I pretty much followed the recipe from BoulangerieNet, with scaled down quantities. I didn't have any T80 or T85 flour, so I used a mixture of T65 and T110. I kept the mixing action gentle, with 6 min low speed and 1.5 min high speed (spiral mixer).

As expected, I observed NO dough volume rise during the 1 hour bulk.

I was quite pleased with how the loaves turned out, with good ears, thin crispy crust and quite open crumb. I was happy with the flavour, but I can't say that it tasted any better than if I had used British flours!

Full recipe and process details in my bread log

I think if you want a true French taste, the only answer is to eat the bread in France!

Another Italian style bake using my DIY multi-cereal flour blend, as developed for my recent Pagnotta Multicereali bake.

It comprises 85% Dallagiovanna Manitoba flour with the balance being an equal parts mix of wheat, rye, barley, oats and rice grain all freshly milled together.

I've never had much luck with naturally leavened ciabatta - mine tend to be tough as old boots and with small alveoli, so I used fresh yeast in a 45% hydration biga. 100% of the flour is in the biga.

I made the biga in my Kenwood Chef with the K beater. I highly recommend this method as it is so easy. You just put the flour in the mixer, run at low speed and slowly trickle in the yeasted water and mix until all the flour is just hydrated.

It's important that all the flour is hydrated and I don't think some other methods of mixing do this.

The biga temp should be about 22c after mixing. It is then stored at 18-19C for 18-20 hours.

The rest of the bake was standard ciabatta method. Note that without a spiral mixer it is difficult to hydrate a 45% hydration biga and it might be better to make it at a somewhat higher hydration.

Here is my bake log:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FzIimDFs-A3mwSydhgP-w8xGJnLGHufG/view?usp=sharing

Biga ready to put in mixer:

I'm happy with this bake - good crispy crust and open crumb.

Lance

Following my recent post about posts (!), I thought I had better put my money where my mouth was and submit one of my recent bakes to the forum. 

This bake has a bit of a quirky origin: SueVT recently posted about several baking books in Italian and posted a photo of a random recipe showing the effectiveness of smartphone camera translation.

The recipe, which caught my interest, was for Italian baguettes made with a multicereal flour. I don't tend to bake baguettes as my oven isn't big enough, but I thought the recipe would probably work for small boule shapes or pagnotta as I think the Italians call them.

The flour used was Molino Grassi Linea QB Multicereali - not something most of us will have to hand. Looking at the W index compared to the W of the Manitoba flour used, I estimated there was about 15% of non-gluten grain in the mix, so I used 85% of a similar Manitoba flour (basically strong Canadian or American wheat flour) and 15% of a mix of wheat, rye, barley, oats and rice grain all freshly milled together.

And this is what came out the other end:

Unfortunately one of the pagnotta stuck to the banneton liner when I turned out, making a bit of a mangled shape. Other than that, I was pleased with the bread produced - quite a chewy crust, but soft, open crumb. Flavour was mild, with no sour notes.

I think this flour mix might also be good for ciabatta with a bit of extra flavour compared to all white flour.

Here is my bread log entry in case anyone wants to look at the process details (or even bake it!):

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1icbZ6S3N7IkC4pTyJhhgax8lCYrkBZFT/view?usp=drive_link

Lance

I've been thinking about making a rye tin loaf off and on for a while and chanced upon a Rye Baker TFL post:

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44945/outstanding-russian-rye-bread-moskovskiy-rzhannoye-khlebv

The post came with a nice looking loaf, so I thought I would give it a try.

As always, a few tweaks:

1) I used 60% freshly milled rye and 40% light rye for the flour mix. Like Stan, I didn't want the crumb to be too solid, so I decided against 100% wholegrain (sorry Suave!)

2) I used "proper" Solod for the red rye malt and malt extract (ND) in place of molasses

3) Stan's timings make for a long baking day, so I made the sponge the night before with a lower temp and bigger flour to starter ratio

4) I gave my diecast alloy rye tins an outing - the hard to find L6 and the smaller L12a Borodino tin

5) Stan's dough weight is a bit off to get the tins full. I've seen (tin vol) X 0.65 or 0.67 for suggested dough weight. The L6 holds 2000ml brimful and in the end I went for 1200g of dough, which worked out pretty well, but I think it would have stood 1300g.

6) I like this type of bread to have shiny tops, so I did the 3 coat system: flour paste before baking and 2 x cooked potato starch paste at the end of baking.

I was pleased with how the loaves turned out. Flavour was good: some mild lactic sour and pronounced malty and aromatic notes. It wasn't as sweet as the Borodinsky I made a while ago - I put this down to using a scald rather than the mash (Zavarka) that my Borodinsky recipe used. A scald will soon cool below mash temperature (but probaly not in a bakery setting), so there won't be much starch to sugar conversion. I'm not sure if the scald is correct or the mash, but if making again I would try the mash.

Lance

I recently baked (and enjoyed!) Benny's Chocolate Olive Oil cake. It reminded me that a while ago I made a very tasty German chocolate cake and I thought I would make it again. Unfortunately I had lost the link to the recipe, but after a lot of searching, I found it again - only to find that the link had broken! Fortunately The Wayback machine came to the rescue.

The recipe is in a sense totally the opposite of Benny's cake, using chocolate, not cocoa and butter, not olive oil. It is very rich, but very tasty.

Here is a link to my pdf recipe, translated from the German. I have retained the flowery introduction at the start of the recipe as I find it entertaining!

https://mega.nz/file/XIcz0AZK#mLtXRBsZywVAKYmT1W3KFDi9voBZE55NlaeXsDkrt48

One bonus is that the recipe is very easy to make - no need to separate the eggs. I scaled the cake down to 20cm as I thought the original 26cm version could have been a bit dangerous for just the two of us!

Note the crack where my rubbish baking paer didn't release properly!

Lance

A slightly experimental bake, with a stiff French levain (for raising power), a liquid levain (for pH reduction) and an overnight yeasted sponge (for flavour).

All went well, but bulk (to 60% vol increase) was rather fast at 2hrs 10m. Retarded, shaped and baked the following day.

As soon as I turned out the loaves from the bannetons onto the peel they started to spread and I realised the loaves were "classically" overproofed.

Sure enough, the ears and loft were poor and the crumb was closer, more regular and more "frogspawn" than I like.

The hazards of experimental bakes, I guess. next time I would reduce the yeast in the sponge and eliminate the bench rest and ambient (pre-retard) proof.

Lance

A recent comment by Michael Lily regarding dough bulk volume increase got me thinking about a topic I have already given a lot of thought to - volume increase during bulk and it's effect on the final bread.

In that post Michael suggested a bulk volume increase of 20% to improve oven spring, which I would agree with, but I think there may be a downside in terms of flavour development.

I'm coming to the conclusion that low bulk volume increase, eg 20-40%, gives good oven spring, good ears, good loft, good open crumb, but maybe a lack of lactic flavour deveopment. Bulk volume increase of 60-100% gives good lactic flavour development, but poorer oven spring, poorer ears, lower loft and a more closed, regular crumb - "frog spawn crumb", as I have christened it.

This can be quite well tracked by measuring the pH of the final bread - mush up 6g crumb + 40g distilled H2O and take pH.

More musings may follow!

Lance

I recently bought some French Foricher T65 flour whilst shopping for some other flours.

I hadn't got a particular recipe in mind when I bought it, but then it became obvious that the first thing to try was an authentic "pain au levain".

I became rather interested in the original method for making pain au levain which dates from 1778 (or earlier) as detailed in Parmentier's "Le parfait boulanger, ou Traité complet sur la fabrication et le commerce du pain (Éd.1778)". The method is known as "travail sur trois levains", or work on three levains.

Basically it's a way of building up a levain in 3 stages and is similar in concept to the German Detmolder  Dreistufenführung method for rye bread.

Anyway, I digress! The first thing I needed was a starter. Although I already had one, it seemed appropriate to make a proper French one - ie French flour, low hydration. A book from M. Calvel provided a suitable method, as detailed in this table:

I shrank the quantities down as detailed here and had a working starter in about 3 days. An interesting starter - 50% hydration and salted from the start (to reduce proteolysis).

So I went to on to make the pain au levain; sadly it wasn't that good! - rather bland and with a tight crumb.

I know it's heresy to say it, but I've decided I don't actually like T65 flour very much! It makes a sticky dough and I think it's too weak for sourdough use - best results I've had are with a poolish. Maybe it's just the brand I've used (though it's well respected....).

On the other hand, I've ended up with a great starter! - it has become my main starter and gives great rise and good flavour. Previously I could see my loaves spreading when I put them in the oven, but not now.

I usually do 3 levain builds - 4pm (1/1/0.5 25C), 10pm (1/6/3 25C) and a "booster" at 8am the morning after (1/1/0.5 29C), all salted at 1%. I do the builds with strong Manitoba flour to minimise gluten degradation.

I use the levain at about 33% of main flour with a minimal autolyse of about 10 minutes.

Not much to see in a starter (apart from those overflowing jar photos....), but here is mine when I'm taking a bit out to use - peeling back the crust (a bit like a bound lievito madre):

Only 30g in that jar - my normal weekly refresh.

And here's a loaf I made recently with this starter:

Lance

I chanced upon some interesting YouTube videos of the JWU Bread Symposium 2021. One of them was a prebiotic bread by Michael Kalanty He uses a sourdough leavened soaker of home milled wheat grits, oats and flax seed to develop prebiotic bacteria.

It sounded interesting so I decided to give it a go and (painfully!) transcribed most of the recipe from the video and guessed a few missing bits.

It went something like this:

Prebiotic Bread Michael Kalanty

Description 

Prebiotic bread by Michael Kalanty JWU Bread Symposium 2021

Prebiotic soaker 16hrs at 22C

Overll bread hydration 72 %

DDT 25 C

Lev qtty: 350 French, salted, 50% hydration

Build 1: 7e5.15 8/8/4/0.08 25c

Build 2: 7e10 14/84 Can BF/42/0.8 25c tot 140

Build 3: 8m8 135/150 can bf/75/1.5 25c tot 360

Soaker make 7e9

Mulika wheat MockMilled coarse grits with flour 128

Pinhead oatmeal 67

Flaxseed, coffee grinder milled 45

Refreshed liquid starter 24

Salt 3

Malt 0.45

Water 330

total 598

Flours in main dough

Carrs BF 682

Soaker grains & seeds 252

Malt 3

Lev flour 233

Total 1170

Water

Total 842

Autolyse water 320

Lev water 117

Soaker water 342

Bass 63

Salt

1.6% 13.3

Lev pH 4.6

M8 soaker pH 4.8

E12.40 soaker ph 4.15. lev ph 4.60

Main Dough

Autolyse with soaker

duration: 10m

Mix

3m ls

1.75 hs

2 rest

1.5hs w bass

15m in bowl rest

All in e1.35 dt23

Take pH 4.76!!!!!  Acid must have leached out of grains

Dough weight 2035

1 x bowlfold 

Bulk 2hrs 10m

Rise 54%, take ph 4.52

Scale: 2 x 850 bat and 1 small tin

BR no

AP no

Frij e4.15

Bake 9m8.30

Quite a lot of spread

Quite open crumb and tasty, some nutty texture from the grits

Low loft

Good enough to make again though!

Lance

The quarter sponge system was a method of professional breadmaking developed in Scotland and was designed to produce tall, airy tin loaves with the minimum amount of yeast possible. The quarter refers to the fact that a quarter of the total recipe water is used in the first sponge.

I've tried it a few times before, but the loaves were never as tall as they should be and lacked oven spring.

Not liking to give up on my breadmaking missions, I decided to have another go.

I have two recipes, one from Manna, by Walter Banfield (1946), and the other from The Modern Baker from John Kirkland (1911). Both recipes are pretty similar and this time I went with the Manna recipe. I upped the hydration from the original 55% to 61%. These old recipes always have low hydration - I guess it was because of the wheats used in those days.

Previously I think I've followed the recipe times too closely and not fully taken account of what was actually going on with the dough.

The recipe starts with the Quarter Sponge (a stiff sponge):

229g Canadian bread flour

134g water

1.8g salt

1.35g fresh yeast

DDT 24.5C

Made in the Kenwood with the dough hook with some gluten development and stored for 14 hours at 25C

After 14 hours this was well risen and starting to drop. Time for the next stage, which is the batter sponge:

Batter Sponge

All the stiff sponge, chopped up

357g BF

5g malt

393g water

6.3g salt

DDT 28C

Made in the Kenwood with K beater

Well mixed at moderate speed to give good aeration

Stored at 28C

This is allowed to rise fully and is then ready for use when it starts to drop. This should take an hour, but actually took 2hrs 40mins!

Batter songe dropping:

Main dough

All the batter sponge

314g BF

100g white wholemeal, coarse bran sifted out

83g water

11.5g salt

10g glucose

Mixed in the Famag with 5 minutes high speed

DDT 28C

Punchdown and knead when well risen - 1hr 20mins, then fermented for another 1hr before turning out. (The recipe time for bulk is just 1 hour.)

Scale and bench rest 20 mins

Dough degassed by pinning out into squares and then shaping and placing into tins.

Final proof lasted 1hr 40mins, until dough had reached the shoulder of the tins

Ideally the loaves should be baked in wooden frames, (the loaves are then called Scottish plain loaves), but my wooden frame experiments are over, as I don't think they are suitable for a home oven. So I baked in tins. I do have one big tin that approximates pre-war tins in size and shape so I used that. It has tapered sides which I believe give better rise than straight sided tins.

Masterclass large bread tin used:

The result

Much improved compared to my previous efforts! Good oven spring and a soft fluffy crumb. And very tasty, helped by the 22 hour fermentation. It's incredible to think that the yeast rate was only 0.135% fresh yeast!

Lance