I tried making altamura bread using semolina sourdough from Leader's book. I came out somewhat dense. Is this a characteristic of durum flour breads? It didn't seem that my starter was very bubbly. Could I make a semolina starter by refreshing a stiff dough levain with durum flour? Thanks for any help.
Tony
For Thom Leonard's sourdough bread recipe, it states that the starter should be activated ~ 8 hours. If I activate it at 10 PM and begin making the bread at 9 AM, the starter is no longer fully active. Can one activate it fully for about 8 hours and then refrigerate it overnight and use it the next morning?
Thanks!
Hi,
Can someone please explain why you put for example milk, egg or butter in a bread or cake recipe. What is it they do for the outcome? And if possible add other ingredients you know of, that will change a recipe somewhat texturely, et cetera.
Thanks in advance.
According to Wikipedia, about 90% of the people in the USA live in places where the water is hard or very hard. I know I always have.
Now, I've moved to a place where the water is amazingly soft. According to Calvel, soft water prevents dough from having good cohesiveness. And that seems to be the case. My lavash cracker dough at about 55% hydration and a San Francisco Sourdough type dough at about 60% hydration both feel soft to me. How soft? Like 75 to 85% hydration doughs in other areas where I have lived. Even at 60% hydration, and with good dough development, my doughs are too soft to be good free form loaves.
Needless to say, it's driving me crazy. (My wife will tell you that I can walk that far.) Regretably, Calvel didn't mention what to do about very soft water.
Anyway, are there any bakers here who have coped with soft water? And if so, what did you do?
Thanks,
Mike
I caught onto refreshing sourdough starter in bmuir's guide as one of the easier ways to understand my starter -- TFL node 6742. Now that the weather is warming up I find my starter is developing better though this guide really helped me with the numbers.
First, since I have been wanting to convert my 100% starter to a firm one and I had just bought a used Glezer "Artisan Baking Across America" I thought I'd try her method for that. (My starter began about three years ago from freshly milled rye flour per RL Bernbaum's "Bread Bible" method.) I took 15 grams of my starter, added 15 of water and 50 of while bread flour (15-15-50), it rose 2x by 8-12 hours. Since it seemed slow to rise I then used Glezer's method to enliven my firm starter to make sure it was active enough - so I did a refreshing schedule of (15-25-45) starter-water-flour every 12 hours. That just didn't seem to go as Glezer said it would (by tripling or quadrupling!?). So, as I read in various blogs here on TFL (such as node 1807), I took Andrew's advice and used his amounts (30-30-50), and my starter started to grow well to 2-3x in 3-5 hours. So, I knew my sourdough starter was good.
Now, I was ready for bmuir's guide and graph to direct me. I did the (25-50-50) building first, every 12 hours I added on, and by 36 hours I had the 500 Grams of starter/preferment to bake. (I didn't want the 1000 gram amount.) After the first two feedings it had doubled in 4-6 hours (the aroma was soooo goood) and with dmsnyder's and Mike Avery's advice I refrigerated it "because you want to use the starter at the peak of activity when you add it to the dough".
I was now ready to make bread. I took out the refreshed starter/preferment from the fridge and let it warm up for 2 hours to nice and bubbly. I made half recipe of Glezer's Thom Leonard Country French by zolablue's node 3934 -- specifically with the sifted Hodgson Mill graham flour mixed with KA bread flour. I followed the recipe fairly exact; it rose according to the hours mentioned (I made sure of a 75F rising temperature by using a heating pad+rack+towel cover). I made one large boule, risen in a willow banneton, and baked it a total of 40 minutes.
shaped Thom Leonard country french bread
baked Thom Leonard country french bread
sliced country french bread
The bread rose well, had a great oven spring (though maybe not deep enough slashes?) and had a great wheaty taste. I wish I had real high extraction flour to see how that affects the taste.
Then since I had more fresh sourdough starter leftover, I made pizza dough per Peter Reinhart's 'transitional' whole wheat pizza in his WGB book. I quickly made up a soaker with whole wheat flour, let it sit/autolyse for an hour, added it and the remaining refreshed starter to the total dough and refrigerated it until an hour or two before I made the pizza, probably 6-8 hours. The dough turned out much more elastic and fun to work with than in the past when I had used this recipe. I did use active dry yeast instead of instant yeast - maybe this and the nicely active starter helped.
elastic sourdough pizza dough
I used the tomato based sauce per "a pizza primer" by Floydm's recipe and here is the result, a tasty pepperoni-onion-mushroom-basil pizza.
'transitional' sourdough crust pizza
As you can see I used several different books, and many ideas, recipes, and recommendations from a variety of TFL bloggers. The Fresh Loaf has been so good for me!
Anet
This website is great. I recently starting making my own bread using Mark Bitman's NY Times no-knead recipe. I've had tremendous success with it and I am using a clouche. The crust and crrumb almost perfect and I am creating some nice loaves.
I wanted to try a sourdough loaf at the request of my 10 year old daughter. I used Mark Shepard's Simple Sourdough formula/recipe for a starter and the bread.
I am able to get a pretty good starter, it bubbles has a sour smell, has hooch and looks a lot like the pictures posted on the web sites I visit. I also am able to get a pretty good sponge. Its a little too wet but again its bubbly, has a sour smell and when stirred has a pretty good body.
My problem is when I make the dough, I am not getting a good rise. I let it sit in the gas oven with the pilot on for 4-6 hours. It looks like it is rising or doubling is size but when I go to put it in the clouche or a loaf pan it just lies flat. I follow the directions and start out with a cold oven and set it to 375 and let it bake for 55 minutes.
The loaf comes out as a flat disc that is very dense. The last one I made had a an alright crumb, nice holes in it but it was very dense. The flavor was pretty good too but not nice and airy like the other bread I've made. I am using King Arthur Whole Wheat flour for the starter and for the dough.
Any suggestion to get a good rise would be greatly appreciated.
btw, i have ordered the starter from Carl Griffith's page and am thinking about ordering the starter from King Arthur.
I have the starter in the refridge now and it looks pretty good.
thanks
alex
I found this recipe here on the boards. It was called Sourdough Guy's one stage sourdough bread. I used the exact quantities given with whole wheat. It requires so little labour and it actually allows you to soak your flour for long enough that I think it must meet the requirements of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook, but it produces a loaf that is incredibly light. I am so happy because I have been trying to make the healthiest bread possible out of wheat flour and yet I wanted it to be light for sandwiches and buns.
My one problem now is that it is quite sour. My husband loves it and I think we will get used to it, but is there a way to make it less sour?
The recipe:
Take 20-35 grams of active starter and disolve it in 765g of low chlorine or filtered water. Add to the water and starter, 1090 grams of flour and 20g of salt. Mix the salt into the flour first. Stir until all the flour is wet and set aside for an hour. Tip the dough out onto the counter and do a "french fold" or do a "letter fold" 4 or 5 times. Put into a clean oiled container and allow to double. This should take around 16 to 20 hours. After it has doubled turn it out shape and allow to proof 4 hours or so and bake as normal. This recepie makes a 70% dough. I have found that 35 grams of my starter will double after 16 hours on a 70 degree day. I scaled back to 20 grams or so to get the full 20. Cool thing about this is you can throw it together 8 or 9 pm. let it set until 4 or 5 the next day, shape and bake around 9 or 10pm. If you make it with cold water I imagine you could stretch the fermentation time out even longer. I also sometimes give it a second folding the first night if I think it needs it. This bread also has wonderful flavor as well. Hope this helps.
Da Crumb Bum
100% Whole Wheat boules
100% Whole Wheat boules Crumb
I had made the whole wheat bread from Reinhart's BBA a couple of time. i liked it a lot. It was, for me, the perfect bread for a tuna fish sandwich or a BLT.
I bought Reinhart's newer book, "Whole Grain Breads" a few months ago and read, with interest, the introductory chapters right away. Following his "journey" and the evolution of his thinking has been really interesting. But I had not baked anything from the new book until today. I decided to start with his "foundational loaf," the "100% Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread. As you can see, I decided to form 2 boules of around 1 pound each rather than making one sandwich loaf.
It's interesting that Reinhart's instruction have you hand knead this bread, even after a 2-3 minute machine kneading. This is a relatively dry dough. I hand kneaded it as instructed, maybe with an extra minute or two, and actually achieved window paning. That was a kick!
This bread is not really that different from the BBA version. The new formula uses milk (I used buttermilk.) in the soaker. The BBA whole wheat uses water. The BBA bread has an egg in it which the WGB bread does not. The end result is actually quite similar. I suspect that baking boules rather than pan loaves made as much difference as the different ingredients.
The crust felt a little soft, even after an extra 10 minutes left in the oven, but it crunched nicely when I bit into it. The bread has a pronounced whole wheat flavor but with many layers of flavor including sweetness that are lovely.
I bet this will make delicious toast for breakfast, even with competition from the banana bread from Crust & Crumb that I also baked today.
David
Hello Folks, this is my first post on The Fresh Loaf, altough I have been reading and trying out recipes for a long time.
I wanted to share a very easy recipe for Sourdough Onion Rye, which is an adaption of pretty much everything I have learned from this site. It's really quite easy to make and comes out fine every time, so good luck and please give me feedback, I would love to hear about your experience.
The Starter
I use a fairly wet "batter" style sourdough starter. I keep it in the fridge and refresh it after I use it and then let it sit out for a while. Right now I am living in Zambia, this starter is therefore infested with Zambian yeast - I wonder if there is a difference? In any case, it's pretty active and works really well.
The Flour
I love reading the discussions about the various types and properties of flour, and how important a specific type of flour is for one recipe or another. In Zambia, we get two types of flour: Bread Flour and Cake Flour, that's it. I use Bread Flour and it works great. Rye flour is harder to come by, I get mine from a local bakery that imports it from South Africa. I have no idea exactly what kind of Rye it is, it looks sort of a like a medium extraction. I have learned not to worry too much, it all comes out tasting pretty good.
The Recipe
The night before baking, start the poolish.
about 1/2 cup starter
3 cups bread or all-purpose flour
1 cup Rye flour
2 cups of water.
Mix it all together, cover and let sit overnight.
The Next Morning.
Add to the poolish:
3 cups of flour as before
1 cup of Rye, as before
1 large (raw) Onion, finely chopped
(Optional) 1 Tablespoon Dried Dill
1 Tablespoon Salt
3/4 Cup water.
Mix well and let sit for twenty minutes.
This makes a pretty wet dough, one of you scientists can figure out the hydration. Because of the rye flour its quite sticky. I find the best way to mix it is to just get my hands in there and squish it all together.
After it sits, knead for 10 minutes. You will need to use quite a bit of flour as the dough is very sticky. After kneading cover and let rise until doubled, about two hours.
After rising, dump the dough onto a well floured surface and cut in half. Stretch each half **gently** into a ball, then **gently** stretch into a loaf shape. You don't want to squish the air bubbles. I find the "envelope" method of shaping just a bit too vigorous.
Transfer the the loaves onto baking paper, cover and let rise for about an hour.
Sourdough Onion Rye - Ready for the Oven
Meanwhile, preheat your stone and your oven to 450/220. Then transfer your loaf onto the stone, I use the back of a cookie sheet as a peel. When the loaf is in the oven use whatever steam method you prefer, I simply toss a cup of water into the bottom of the over and shut the door. Bake for about 25 minutes, turn the loaf once. I have a very small oven, so I can only bake one loaf at a time.
Take the bread out, and let it cool for as long as you can, and then enjoy! Also makes great toast!
Sourdough Onion Rye - The Finished Product
Your feedback greatly appreciated
Cheers!
DLX-Hook
Mike,
I don't mean to turn this into an "Ask Mike" day but as far as I know you are the only one who has used the dough hook on the DLX. This is the first time I have used the hook on the DLX. I started out with the roller and was frustrated with the roller not developing the "ring". So, I thought I would give it a try. In the bowl is a double batch of your Bohemian Rye SD so it should look familiar. Is this the way it should look? Are there any clues as to when it's developed? It rolled into the cone shape shortly after starting on the lowest range and stayed that way for the next 10 minutes.
The dough was decently developed when I pulled it off the hook so I did a couple french folds and dropped it into the oiled bowl to rise.
My first impression is that the hook is way easier to use and like you say, just walk away from it and let it work. The roller seems to require my constant attention with almost any dough type. I do wonder if the hook would distribute the firm white starter as well as the roller. I broke it up into pieces and let it sit in the water to soften then ran the roller for a minute to dissolve the chunks into the mass.
Eric