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I received a sack of graham flour for Christmas.  It is from Burkett's mill.  If you read up on graham flour you usually read that is whole wheat ground more coarsely than the usual WW.  If you find the right site, it will tell you that the endosperm is ground finely and the bran and germ are ground coarsely, I think the flour I have must be the latter.  It's color is lighter than the water wheel-stone ground flour I have, with larger flecks and dark bits.

For this loaf I cooked some rolled (porridge) oats in the microwave, and added them to the dough. The flour content is 70% bread flour, 30% graham flour, and the uncooked oats weighed 20% of the total flour.

A picture of the crumb, then ingredients -

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Ingredients
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70% bread flour (KA)
30% graham flour (Birkett's Mill)
20% oatmeal (rolled oats uncooked weight)
50% water (for cooking oatmeal)
60% other water
36% starter (100% hydration)
2.2% salt

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370g flour (exclusive of starter)
990g Total dough weight

It is always hard to know how much of the water in cooked grains, scalds, etc. will contribute to the effective hydration.  In this case, I had trouble wetting all the flour so I added some water.  Apparently I added too much because I ended up with a thick, pasty batter.  A few sets of coil folds over the next 2 1/2 hours added some strength, but I still had to scrape the dough into the Pullman pan.

The loaf rose well in the end and has a surprisingly open crumb.  The crumb is a little delicate; the flavor is richer than the usual WW, and a little sweet, which I think is partly down to the graham flour and partly to the oatmeal.

I baked the loaf for 50 minutes at 350 deg F/177C without the lid.  The internal temperature had reached 208 F/97.7C but the loaf was pale and I knew it had a lot of moisture still to give off.  So I baked it at 400 F/204C for another 10 minutes.

Overall, a very nice loaf.

Very successful and as simple as it gets.

Preferment: 2 cups wholegrain rye flour,  2 heaping tablespoons of rye starter from the fridge,  enough water to make a soft dough.  Place in lukewarm spot for a couple of hours, then move to a cooler place fir the rest if the fermentation (total of 18-24 hours) 

Final dough: whole amount of the preferment,  4 generous cups of wholegrain rye flour,  golden flax seeds (I shook them straight from the bag), salt to taste (about a tablespoon) enough warm (not hot!) water to obtain a soft but cohesive dough. Mix everything by hand,  let rest in the bowl for 20-30 minutes then move into the prepared loaf pan.  Proof, covered, in a lukewarm spot until it crowns over the rim of the pan. Paint with leftover thinned dough, dock with a chopstick,  bake in preheated oven without steam 15 min at 475, 15 at 425 and 15 at 400 ir until done. After 30 minutes of baking paint the surface again and sprinkle with lots of flaxseeds. 

I made three panettoni for my family Christmas, and I'm very happy with the result. There was some discrepancy between final proofing temperatures due to proximity to the oven light, so one of them was a little shorter than it could have been, but the flavor and texture was great on all of them.

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 Traditional raisin and candied orange

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Chocolate with candied orange (next time I would use more candied orange, this time it was only 25% of the mix-ins)

Crumb not pictured, the third and tallest one was all chocolate.

I wanted to make a special bread for Christmas and the Lithuanian Christmas Bread from Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker fit the bill. The bread is 100% rye and has a whopping 45% fruit added (prunes, apricots, and raisins). The recipe specifies 76% white rye and 24% medium rye. I don’t have any white rye flour so I made it with all medium rye (King Arthur) and increased the hydration from 70% to 75% to compensate.

The recipe starts with a two-stage sponge: the first stage is at 83% hydration and the second brings the hydration up to 100% overall. The final dough has honey, the fruit, and a small amount (2%) of red rye malt added. I opted to use fermented rye malt instead because that seems to be a more traditional additive in Baltic region breads.

The dough is placed directly in the loaf pan and the bulk/proof is conducted warmer than usual. Ginsberg’s instructions are to preheat the oven to 38 °C (100 °F) and turn off. My proof was slow so I occasionally, and carefully, applied heat to the oven and kept the oven light on to keep it warm. I let the dough rise for 4.75 h but it still hadn’t reached the rim of the pan. It’s probably the combination of all medium rye and a weaker than optimum rye sour culture. There may also be a slight inhibitory effect from the apricots. I did not have unsulfured apricots as required and the sulfite may have had a negative effect on the yeast.

I baked the loaf 10 min longer because some of the rye breads I’ve made have been a little sticky. I think maybe an extra 5 min would have been enough as the crust got a little darker than intended.

After waiting ≈18 h, the bread was cut for Christmas Eve. The crumb is firm and almost cake-like. All the flavors of the rye, fruit, and malt blend beautifully in this bread. A non-rye fan was converted—a Christmas miracle!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Today's exercise.

Brooklyn style, Sicilian stuffed pizza. Sausage roll/chicken roll. 

2.0 The second time, much better than the first time. 

I've done 25 panettone bakes this year, according to my records! How the time, and panettone, flies. Looking back on the year, I've studied, taken classes, tried numerous techniques affecting each stage of product. There have been successes and a few (thankfully) failures, bright ideas and "Oops" moments. 

I've learned from some of the best people in the business. They've been incredibly kind and helpful, as most panettone bakers are. We've all had the same struggles, and share the same goal. We all know how hard it is. I am inspired by all of them, and even more inspired by the people who are just starting out with panettone, who dream of that succulent, feathery crumb, and are willing to do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to get it. 

Panettone is much more than a recipe; it's a system, a collection of interlinked processes with numerous interdependencies. But this difficulty also makes it very interesting.

This coming year, I hope that more people will try baking panettone, remembering that it will take a while to get positive results  😊

Happy Holidays!  --Sue

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My first bake since returning home for us, although I made two, one is for a present.  We love seeds and nuts in bread so wanted to have a nutty bread.  I toasted the walnuts and also used toasted walnut oil in lieu of butter to maximize the nutty flavour.  I also last minute decided to top the loaves with black sesame seeds because why not!  I usually weigh the dough when I divide, this time I did not and obviously didn’t do a good job by eye LOL.

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For one 9x4x4” Pullman pan loaf.

Instructions

Levain

Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth. 

Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.

At a temperature of 76-78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak.  For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak.  The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.

Tangzhong 

In a sauce pan set on medium heat, stir the milk and whole red fife flour until blended. Then cook for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl.  Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature.  You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it, ensure that it is covered to prevent it from drying out.

If you plan on using a stand mixer to mix this dough, set up a Bain Marie and use your stand mixer’s bowl to prepare the tangzhong.

Dough

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 10 g of milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar and levain.  Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces.  Next add the flour.  I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas.  Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes.  Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins.  You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing.  Next drizzle in the walnut oil a bit at a time.  The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before adding in more oil.  Again, knead until well incorporated.  You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane.  You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.  Finally add the walnuts and mix until evenly incorporated.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 3 - 4 hours at 82ºF.  There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape.  Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer.  Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pans by greasing them with butter or line with parchment paper.  

Lightly oil the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and shape into a batard.  Place into your prepared pan.

Cover and let proof for  4-6 hours at a warm temperature.  I proof at 82°F.  You will need longer than 4-6 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350F and brush the dough with the egg-milk wash.  Just prior to baking brush with the egg-milk wash again.

Bake the loaves for 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 190ºF, rotating as needed to get even browning. Shield your loaf if it gets brown early in the baking process. After 50 mins remove the bread from the pan and bake a further 10 mins by placing the loaf directly in the oven on the rack with the oven turned down to 325ºF.

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My index of bakes.

We bought a lot of Turkish black olives last week and I thought finally it's time to bake olive bread.

It came out super well, so I decided to share the bake here. Dough is more or less 50/50 ruchmehl (Swiss high extraction flour) and white flour, but I didn't write down the exact proportions. Total flour weight, including 50 g of prefermented whole rye from the starter, is 450 g. Not too high hydration, in the 70% range, but also with additional liquid from the olives (around 80g after pitting), and a glug of olive oil. Since the olives are salty, I reduced the salt a little, 8 g instead of the usual 10g. After adding the olives the dough got much darker and acquired some pretty dark purple streaks, which came out beautifully in the final crumb. Did some typical stretch and folds etc, after a few hours it seemed the dough was ready, so I shaped it and final proofed mainly on the balcony, where I suspect the temperature is a little higher than the fridge at the moment, so the fermentation doesn't stop completely, but progresses very slowly. It rose somewhat, and next day I baked it with steam.

Bread came out crunchy on the outside, not too fluffy, but very soft inside, and very tasty. Actually amazing to eat with some more olive oil.

I love how artisan bread gives you the opportunity to do something creative with your scoring. I think Santa is my favorite—he got the full glamour shot treatment! 🎅🏻 

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First post!! 

I'm so excited to have found a cool community where I can talk/read about baking bread without an algorithm to decide to put other random crap in front of my face.

Anyhoo!

I use a pretty basic sandwich bread recipe for pretty much all the bread I've ever made

Warm water and honey to bloom the dry active yeast

Butter, flour, salt to form the dough. 

This time around, I made a loaf with a swirl of bacon bits and shredded cheese! It was a massive hit and we used it to make breakfast sandwiches the next day. 

From this same batch, I made a parmesan flake swirl loaf as well. Whenever I make this recipe, I tend to do one plain loaf and one with inclusions. The parmesan loaf was for our dinner tonight, toasted and dipped in French onion soup. YUM. 

I'm working on bringing up a starter from scratch right now, I'm on day four! Can't wait to make some tasty sourdough loaves, hopefully I can give it a couple tries and get to a point where I'm satisfied gifting a loaf or two for Christmas to my husband's family. I have no expectations of truly getting the hang of it that quickly, though, so call this a reach goal 🤣