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I’ve been making our favourite sourdough weekly for years and have not varied the process at all (don’t fix something that’s not broken). Same flours, same temperatures, same hydration, same process and same kneading technique, which is hand stretch and folds for 15 minutes, quite an effort towards the end. Recently, I broke four ribs and punctured a lung and therefore haven’t baked in four weeks. With the help of painkillers, I got back into the kitchen today. While convalescing I read that I can achieve good dough strength by kneading for 5 minutes and then rest for 15 minutes. Repeat the cycle until you get a windowpane. This simple advice has proven very helpful as it has saved me a lot of effort. I’ll continue with this method from hereon and I wish I had known about it years ago.

Cheers,

Gavin.

EDIT Todays result:

IMG_6378.JPEG

I've had Daniel Leader's Living Bread book for a couple of years now but have baked scarcely any (one?) of the breads that it features.  One reason for not having dived into it enthusiastically is that I am, admittedly, a rather pedestrian baker whereas many of the breads in the book exemplify a high degree of the baker's craft.  Another reason is that some of the breads are in the "That's cool but it isn't what I want" category.  And, a number of the breads call for ingredients that, here in northern Michigan, range between exotic and Unobtanium.  Since I'm cheap thrifty, spending $10 or more on flour alone for one loaf doesn't appeal. 

Still, I thought I owed it to myself to at least take a stab at some breads that do appeal to me. 

The Pain au Levaine Moderne was appealing, so I chose that as my starting point.  I've made a lot of pains au levain over the years, so I have a good baseline for working with this style of bread.  The Moderne in the title is apparently a reference to the use of a liquid levain.  I maintain a stiff starter but didn't worry about it since the levain only requires 25g of starter, knowing that it wouldn't shift the final hydration by even a tenth of a percent.  The levain itself, at 100% hydration, isn't very loose.  It's on the boundary between a soft dough and a thick batter.

The formula calls for Type 65 flour.  I have none.  A bit of reading led me to the suggestion that a combination of 77% bread flour and 23% whole wheat flour would make an acceptable approximation of the Type 65 flour.  So, not the real deal but close enough for my purposes. 

The process outlined in the formula begins with an overnight levain.  The next morning, the final dough flour is autolysed with all but 90g of the final dough water.  The autolyse is then combined with the levain, salt, and yeast and mixed for 2 minutes at speed 2 on a KitchenAid mixer, then another 4 minutes at speed 4.  Finally, the remaining water is dribbled in over a 7 minute period, still at speed 4, untill the bassinage is complete.  Then, still at speed 4, the dough is mixed another 4 minutes "until the dough is elastic and shiny".  The dough is turned out onto the countertop and given a letter fold.  It is then placed in a container for 1.5 hours, at which time another letter fold is performed.  After a further 1.5 hours in the container, it is placed in the refrigerator for an 8-12 hour retard.  It is then removed from the refrigerator and allowed to warm up for a couple of hours, rounded, bench rested, shaped into a large boule and placed in a banneton for final fermentation.  It is then baked in a preheated Dutch oven.

A couple of comments are appropriate at this point.  First, the final dough hydration is just slightly more than 80%, hence the bassinage.  Second, Mr. Leader refers to speed 4 on a KitchenAid mixer as "medium low" speed.  True enough, in terms of the mixer's range of selectable speeds.  But it's a relatively high speed for kneading with the dough hook.  And it goes on for a total of 15 minutes at speed 4.  From what I observed, the dough was already well-developed at the end of the bassinage and did not require the last 4 minutes of mixing, even though I followed the instructions for the first attempt.

My third deviation from the formula (if you're keeping count) was to skip the cold retard step and subsequent warm up.  My fourth deviation was to shape the dough into two boules, rather than one large boule.  My fifth deviation was to bake the bread on a baking sheet in a steamed oven, rather than in a Dutch oven.  Now you know why I appended "sorta" in the header. 

What I got for my first attempt was an extremely sticky dough that was also quite extensible.  This, eventually, baked up into two loaves that were each the approximate size and shape of a smallish Frisbee.  They are currently in the freezer awaiting their fate as croutons or bread crumbs.

My second attempt, which is pictured in this post, had a better outcome.  The two changes that I made from the first attempt was to lower the hydration to 75% and to shorten the mixing time.  The resulting loaves have a higher profile and a more-open crumb that those from the first attempt.  

While I like the bread, I doubt that I will use this formula again.  It leaves me with the feeling that Leader chose to push the boundaries as far as he could for this particular style.  That may be appropriate for Olympic gymnastic routines but it isn't necessarily what I want to do when making my daily bread.  Life is too short for doing things the hard way.

Another couple of pics:

I will admit that the shape was particularly useful for the BLTs that we made for dinner last evening.

There are some other breads in the book (the ryes, especially) that look interesting, so I'll check those out, too.

Paul

Hi friends!

Last time, I shared how I bake lean bread in my beloved Walmart toaster oven. Today, I will show you how I use it to bake enriched bread. The loaves you see are sesame milk bread, made with 60% milk, 8% butter, and 8% sugar. I bake them "naked" — without the graniteware roaster — in a black tin and a light-colored tin, respectively. Each dough weighs around 500g for the 9x4x4 tin.

Here’s my process:

1. Place the TRAY in the lowest slot.

2. Put the tins directly on the TRAY.

3. Seal the inside of the oven glass with a large piece of heavy-duty aluminum foil.

Baking settings:

- Cold oven, no preheat

- Toast setting

- 360°F for 10 minutes, check

- 360°F for 5 minutes, check

- Cover the top of the loaves with foil

- 360°F for 10 minutes, check

- 360°F for 10 minutes

After baking, I blast a floor fan at the oven and turn on the range hood. This cools down the oven and the surrounding areas within minutes!

I've got an idea to expand the use of this little powerhouse. Once I’ve perfected the plan, I’ll share it with you!

That’s it!

see it with better lighting

P.S. 2nd version - swapping some of the flour for sesame powder and baking it in a mini pan—just for fun! 

Here's the breakdown:

82% AP flour

3% WW flour from CLAS

15% toasted black sesame powder

4.5% H₂O from WW CLAS

8% sugar

60% milk

8% butter

6% H₂O

0.7% dry yeast

15% toasted black sesame seeds

 click to enlarge:

Sorry to anyone who received weird emails notifications today. I was doing a bit of housecleaning, which triggered comment notifications that I was not expecting.

This is worthwhile opportunity for me to share that I am finally working on upgrading migrating this site from the current software it is running on. 

I've had conversations with different folks about it over the years, but to recap: this site is running on the open source CMS Drupal. Drupal version 7, in fact. Drupal 8 was released over 8 years ago. But rather than being a minor upgrade, Drupal 8 was in fact a ground up rewrite of the system. The data structures and the concepts remained mostly the same, but the code was almost totally rewritten. Most pertinent here, there was no upgrade process offered for Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. You have to "migrate" your site to Drupal 8, which more or less means rebuilding the site and then slurping over the content of the posts, comments, and pages. It is a cumbersome process. I work with Drupal often in my day job and while I'm good at it these migrations are still a very time consuming undertaking. I've put off migrating TFL for years now, hoping a cheaper, easier, better solution would emerge, but I really haven't found anything that I thought was a better fit for this site (and my skills managing it). So I am biting the bullet and starting work on the migration here, which includes dusting some cobwebs off the existing site, which is what I was trying to do today when I triggered those notifications.

My first order of business is getting the content across and rendering OK in the new system. Over the years I've used a number of different tools to allow people to embed images and format their posts, so getting it all processed correctly and carried over is quite a bit of work. Once that process is in decent shape, I'll start building up the new site, which means making it look nice, have decent landing pages and navigation, getting search, messaging, and notifications working again, those sorts of things. When it gets to that point, I'll likely set up a new site/server and offer folks who want an opportunity to check it out and give me feedback before making the final switch over to the new system. I'm still at least a couple of weeks from having something to share though, more likely not until September or October.

I'm hopeful the new system will be cleaner and easier to use, particularly on mobile devices. 8 years ago about 25% of the site traffic came from people on mobile devices. Now it is over 75%. This site just isn't optimized for that.

This is Maurizio Leos best sourdough recipe but with 80%-ish water instead of 85%. My flour actually probably could’ve taken the 85%

Mix 822g flour, 64g ww flour, and 650g water and let autolyse 1 hour.

Add 151g levain, 17g salt, 85g waterish - I didn't measure, just added reserved water by feel.

Fold every 15 minutes 3 times then every 30 minutes 3 times. Total bulk 4 hours. Shape (no preshape) and proof in fridge overnight.

Preheat oven with dutch oven at 550f for 30 minutes. Score and put loaf in, drop heat to 500f, timer for 20 minutes then lid off for 10-15min until desired color.

Things have cooled down just a bit the last few days, enough to make cooking more pleasant. This loaf is based on Trailrunner/Caroline's WW YW Pullman 13" bread. As Caroline mentions, this is a spin off of Danayo's 1-rise only bread. I scaled Caroline's recipe down a bit for use in my 9 in Pullman pan, and made just a few substitutions:

235 gm AP (Bob's Red Mill organic)

235 fresh milled Central Milling hard red spring wheat

50 gm KA Semolina that I ran through the Mockmill x2 to get it finer. No idea if that will work, but it was what I had on hand. 

20 gm fresh milled rye

280-325 gm water (100 gm of the water was yeast water)

34 gm each honey, EVOO, buttermilk (the real, cultured stuff) = 102 gm Trinity

9 gm salt

1 slightly rounded tsp of diastatic malt powder (none of these flours are malted, and the YW is pretty new. Not sure how strong it is and figured the wee beasties wouldn't mind a little extra help.)

126 gm active YW levain

Process: 

 Friday morning:

 - 7:20 a.m. Mixed 23 gm each of YW and flour (50:50 BRM AP and whole wheat) and put it out in the garage for 4 hours (temp 82 degrees). This is what it looked like at ~ 3:00. Probably not super strong yet, but it still smelled fresh and got there eventually. 

3:20 pm Mixed everything above. Mixed until everything was well incorporated, covered and rested 1 hour. Then mixed in a Bosch compact mixer for ~ 7 minutes. While the dough was mixing, I prepped the Pullman pan with some baking spray and previously used parchment paper. This spray has always served me well, nothing ever seems to stick when I use it. Still, parchment paper gives that extra layer of insurance. ;)

I had pondered holding back some of the water but my flour is always so thirsty in our dry climate that I decided to just go all in. Might not have been my best decision..... The dough was quite slack. Better than batter, but shaping wasn't going to happen. Good thing this is a loaf pan formula! I did about 50 slap and folds on the counter and that helped bring the dough together a little better. (It always amazes me how those help!) I schlorped the dough on to the parchment paper and used it as a sling to put it into the pan. DT was 78F. (Note to self - use a little less water!)

After 3.5 hours on the counter. The clips serve 2 purposes: they keep the parchment from flopping onto the dough, and also keep my trusty shower cap cover from touching the dough. Sorry for the blurry pic:

 - Saturday morning. We needed bread for lunch, and I was not willing to wait any longer. Preheated the oven to 375F and once it had been at temperature for about 15 minutes, I pulled the dough out of the fridge. This is after 13 hours in the fridge:

Baked at 375F for 30 min with the lid on, then 20 min with the lid off. The crust was still not quite our preferred color and the internal loaf temp was a bit cooler than usual so it got an additional 5 min in the oven. So total bake time was 55 min, right on par with how long most of my loaves take. 

After cooling for 2.5 hours, we needed lunch! It left a little gummy residue on the knife, but it was still just a little warm. No gumminess today, thankfully. 

The flavor is soooo good! Creamy, sort of yogurty but not quite. Definitely not the bland flavor I associate with a simple yeast based loaf. This one will definitely go into my regular rotation! It's an easy, no-muss-no-fuss loaf. Hubby liked it too - he doesn't often comment on the flavor 2 days in a row, and this loaf received that praise. I may increase the amount of whole grains next time.

Thanks again, Caroline and Abe, for all your help getting me to this point!!

Mary 

I doubled and baked the 8 small loaves and an 8x4 pan not quite full. 

2 T soft butter

1/2 c white sugar 

1 large egg

1/2 c light brown sugar 

2 c fresh milled Purple Straw soft red wheat

1/2 t baking soda 

1tsp baking powder 

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp mixed spices - I ground cinnamon. Allspice, clove and nutmeg

1 c sliced pre moistened dates

zest of one orange

3/4 c oj

cream sugars and butter. Add egg beat til smooth. Add all dry ingredients. Add OJ and zest. Don’t worry if looks  curdled. Butter pan/ pans. 350° 30 min for tiny 8 pan loaves or 45 - 60 depending on larger loaves. So delicious. My Robert said “ it tastes like Christmas!”

Haven’t made this since 2018. What was I waiting on ???? This was originally posted by the prolific poster/ baker Shiao-Ping. It’s the most flavorful rich incredible bread. I made my own adaptations so will write it up below. 

It’s very easy to inoculate your current YW with banana slices. There’s also info online to start a YW with banana from scratch. I just add a new fruit to some of my current active YW I don’t start from scratch. 

I don’t do anything but my typical minimal folds in the bowl and then I laminated 2x to incorporate the chopped dates. Shiao-Ping doesn’t have dried fruit in hers. I have my dried fruit hydration down pat and did that as usual. 

Mist fruit microwave a couple minutes cover tightly . Then chop or whatever you’re going to do. I slice in 3-4 pieces. I like distinct pieces not purée . 

250 g levain made with 125g fresh milled rye and 125g active banana YW

220g Stardust hard white wheat milled 

45g rye milled

55g Rouge de Bordeaux milled

250 g roasted ripe bananas  ( 300° with peels on) 

35g each Trinity- yogurt, honey , EVOO

9g salt

Fold everything together til all is moistened. Cover rest 30 min. Fold in bowl rest fold rest. Laminate on either wet counter or lightly floured to incorporate date pieces. 
Bulk ferment til about double . Shape boule place on floured cloth in banneton rise at room temp til puffy and cover then retard . Bake in covered pot ( I use my graniteware roaster ) 450 20 min covered and 20 min uncovered. 

It is the loveliest tender loaf. Gorgeous crumb and you can taste the banana but it’s not overpowering. 

The ultimate test of a newly created formula is replicability. 

Today's yield (Double batch)

1 loaf pan bread 

11 Hot dog buns 

 Regarding the formula process.

This is a simple straight dough. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine all the ingredients, except for the softened butter. Mix on medium speed until a Strong dough is achieved. Slowly add one small pad of butter at a time making sure the butter is fully incorporated. Bulk fermentate the dough ball until well doubled in volume. Scale at 82 g ea. For rolls or total dough for a pan loaf.

Pre Shape then rest for twenty minutes before the final shaping. Proof for one hour. Preheat oven at 30 minutes to 350° F. Bake for 25-30 minutes untill golden brown. For the roll. 40-45 minutes for the pan bread. Interior of the bread should reach 205° F. 

Note

The enriched dough is easy to handle but Sticky. Use some bench flour sparingly to facilitate the final shaping.

The total formula amount was too much for the 9×5 loaf pan. That being said, A+✅

I made a version of this a week before and completely over-hydrated the dough and ended up with an unintended super sized ciabatta :).

I’ve been experimenting with the amount of time and temperature to use for bulk and have not been getting consistent results. I decided to not only adjust the hydration of this one taking into consideration the water content of the fresh cherries and sour cream but also to significantly reduce the amount of starter used. I went from over 22% to only 16.4% for the levain. The total dough hydration including the water content of cherries which are 80% and the sour cream which is 73% ended up being 83%.

I used one of my favorite whole wheat berries from Barton Springs Mill called Star Dust as well as some fresh milled spelt and some KAF bread flour. The whole wheat was milled and sifted twice and the spelt was milled twice and sifted once.

I pitted the fresh cherries and put them in my mini food processor and pulsed a few seconds to create a cherry slurry. I drained the slurry as best as possible before using. The cherries added a beautiful purple swirl to the final bread and subtle cherry flavor. I might try using chopped cherries along with the swirl next time as it would give it even more cherry flavor.

The dough was left to bulk at a lower temperature than I usually use at 75 F with a target bulk rise of 50% which took 5 hours and 40 minutes in my proofer.

The end result was not only a beautiful bread but one of the more flavorful ones I’ve made in a while. The caramelized crust with the semi open crumb tasted amazing. This made great sandwiches as well as toast and grilled bread.

Formula

Levain Directions 

Mix all the levain ingredients together for about 1 minute and cover with plastic wrap.

Let it sit at room temperature for around 6-7 hours or until the starter has almost doubled. I used my proofer set at 76 degrees so it took around 5 hours for me. Either use in the main dough immediately or refrigerate for up to 1 day before using.

 Main Dough Procedure

Note: I use an Ankarsrum Mixer so my order of mixing is slightly different than if using a Kitchenaid or other mixer. Add all your liquid to your mixing bowl except 50-80 grams. Add the levain in pieces and mix for a few seconds to break it up. Next, add all your flour to the bowl and mix on low for a minute until it forms a shaggy mass. Cover the mixing bowl and let it rest for 20 – 30 minutes.   Next add the salt, and sour cream, and remaining water as needed and mix on medium low (about speed 3) for 12- 24 minutes.  When the dough is fully developed add the cherry slurry and mix on low for a minute until it’s incorporated.

Remove the dough from your bowl and place it in a lightly oiled bowl and do several stretch and folds.  Making sure the dough is as flat as possible in your bowl/container measure the dough in millimeters and take the temperature of the dough as sell. Based on the chart here, determine what % rise you need and make note. If you have a proofer decide what temperature you want to set it at and what rise you are aiming for. If the dough is fully developed you don’t need to do any stretch and folds, but if it’s not, do several sets 15-20 minutes apart.

Once the dough reaches the desired bulk rise, pre-shape and let rest 15-20 minutes. Finish shaping place in your banneton, bowl or on your sheet pan and cover it so it is pretty air tight. You will then place it in your refrigerator so you don’t want the dough to get a crust on it. Since there is such a high percentage of whole grains in the dough I didn’t want to leave it in the refrigerator for more than 12 hours. Depending on how cold your refrigerator is you could leave it longer and have to experiment to make sure it doesn’t over ferment.

When you are ready to bake, an hour beforehand pre-heat your oven to 540 F and prepare for steam. I have a heavy-duty baking pan on the bottom rack of my oven with 1 baking stone on above the pan and one on the top shelf.  I pour 1 cup of boiling water in the pan right after I place the dough in the oven.  Remove your dough from the refrigerator and score immediately.

After 1 minute lower the temperature to 450 degrees.  Bake for around 35 minutes or until the breads are nice and brown and have an internal temperature around 200-210 F. 

Take the bread(s) out of the oven when done and let them cool on a bakers rack for as long as you can resist.