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Many people wanted to get details how to make the bread with translucent alveoli walls which I have published in the community bake 50% wholewheat thread. So I promised to make notes about the process. However, this bread was not made with sourdough starter but rather with tomato and basil yeast water.

For those who don't like to read too much here are the major differences to what most of people usually do:

1.) Longer autolyse (this time 4 hours) at room temperature

2.) Extended bulk fermentation in the fridge for 18 hours

3.) Bread was shaped as ciabatta.

4.) There was almost no final proofing - just time needed to warm up the oven

5.) Staring baking temperature was 500 dF (260 dC).

This are by my opinion the differences which are not common in most recipes or traditional procedures.

The reason for 4 hour long autolyse is giving more extensibility to the dough caused by enzymatic activity of protease. Second reason is to hydrate well the bran particles so they will have less sharp edges and will not cut the gluten network so much.

I made this bread only from 300g of flour mixture with 50% of whole-grain wheat flour and 50% of type 500 white bread flour with unknown protein content but estimated to be between 11 and 12%. Definitely with significantly smaller protein content than American or Canadian flours.   The plan was to shape it as ciabatta.

The process is as follows:

1.) Two stage levain build: first stage with 50g of white flour T500 and 50g of yeast water. When doubled add 50g of whole-grain wheat flour and 50g of water (better if you use here yeast water again). The levain build will take about 5-8 hours.

2.) Mix whole-grain wheat flour and white wheat flour type 500 with 70% of water (70% of weight of flour for the main dough) and let it rest for 4 hours at room temperature.

3.) Mix levain and alutolysed flour with hand and develop gluten by using scoop & stretch method (rhubaud method of mixing). This usually takes about 2-4 minutes and as result you get a cohesive dough. Let the dough rest for about 20-30 minutes.

4.) Add 2% of salt and additional 5% of water (if necessary) in my case this was 15g. Incorporate the salt and water into the dough and repeat gluten development with scoop & stretch method.

5.) During the bulk fermentation make 6 stretch & folds at 30 minutes interval.

6.) When the signs of the dough are clearly visible: dough is well aerated, billowy, has risen for about 40-50%, the traces of previous folding are clearly visible at next folding then transfer the dough into rectangular container which is well oiled with olive oil and put it in the fridge for at least 12 to 24 hours. See the attached video.

7.) When the dough has risen nicely and one can see a lot of alveoli - after at least 12 hours, tip the dough out of the container and shape it as ciabattas. See the attached video.

8.) As this dough contains 50% of whole-grain flour it does not need a lot of final proofing. I just preheated the oven to 500 dF (260 dC) and baked the ciabatta in iron-cast skillet. No scoring needed! The temperature should be reduced to 430 dF (220 dC) after 8 minutes, uncover after 15 minutes of baking (from the start)  and continue baking at  410 dF (210 dC) for 10 minutes more. Overall baking time for ciabatta is about 25-30 minutes.

In the picture above one can easily spot the bran particles in the translucent alveoli walls.

I hope that the instructions are clear enough that you will be able to make such bread. Happy baking!

Joze

Anyone browsing through TFL will sooner, rather than later, come across mention of the Tartine Bread Book. I'll confess, I don't have a copy of this, but it does seem to be one of the go-to books at the moment for sourdough, no-knead, and lots of other techniques. Likewise, if you want to make enriched breads, there's really only one port-of-call, and that's Cresci by Massari and Zoia. I have a love/hate relationship with this book: it's expensive, the photography is not particularly beautiful (my opinion only but everything is so dark!) and the instructions are absolutely FULL of mistakes and omissions. But when the recipes work... well, everything seems worthwhile.

I've been interested in the panettone a tre impasti for some time now. For those who've never made a panettone, there are usually two separate mixing stages (excluding feeding the starter). The first one late at night and the second in the morning, followed by shaping and a 6-7 hour proof. The panettone a tre impasti is, as the name suggests, produced through three separate mixes. Cresci claims that a panettone made with more impasti will be lighter, softer, moister, and last longer. Better in every way therefore.

But I had my doubts. First, the dough looked far too lean compared to other panettone recipes in the book. If we look at the panettone a gusto moderno and the tre impasti it is easy to see what I mean:

(Baker's % of total ingredients)

The other thing which put me off is that the instructions (I have the Italian edition) are definitely very wrong. It seems as if the first page has been printed twice and page 2 is missing, leading straight into a mysterious page 3.

But I thought I'll have a go! And I'm thrilled I did. This panettone is excellent! The volume increase is truly unbelievable. I thought it would never stop growing in the oven. And the flavour is wonderfully rich and complex - it really is a celebration of the magic of a good starter and slow proofing!

I started mine at midnight and left it to proof for 7 hours at 28C. It had just over doubled in this time. I did the second impasto at 7 in the morning, put it back in to proof for another 5 hours, and then did the final impasto. I left it to rest for about 30 minutes and then shaped it (folding it repeatedly works best before making the final shape). Final proof was at 28C for 6 hours, then 45 minutes in the oven at 175C.

To give you an idea of how much this thing grows, the pirottino here is 20cm by 6cm, and I put in only 750g of dough. It must have increased its volume by at least 6 times. Instead of using candied fruit I used gianduia. Yum! I also added the seeds from half a vanilla pod and the zest of half an orange. Because I had decided to substitute chocolate for the candied fruit and raisins, I included 5% acacia honey, to act as a humectant, and a sweeter, but mostly because I like the taste.

I made a little too much impasto to take into account loses during mixing and then took 583g of it before adding the chocolate.

My recipe was:

This might be the best panettone I've ever tasted, and the beauty of it is, is that it is a lot cheaper to make (though very inconvenient in its timings) than the gusto moderno.

I might have to make another one very soon, but not here in Perugia. My time here is at an end... a pity, because it's a wonderful city, and I recommend it if you ever get the chance to visit. And it's great as a base to explore Umbria, which might be one of the most perfect places I've ever seen.

David

There's lots of discussion and great information about starters on TFL. Everyone does things a little differently, and what works for you is best. Here's what works for me.

I typically make two sourdough loaves a week. Sometimes more, and sometimes I miss a week, sometimes two. Sometimes I make more than two loaves.

When I started baking sourdough I had a lot of questions and two constraints. First, I traveled a fair bit for work, often on short notice, so I needed a process that was not too fussy  - no twice-daily feedings, no big mason jar of goo on the kitchen counter.  Second, I hate waste; the idea of discarding half of anything bothers me. I addressed the first constraint by having Fred live in the fridge nearly all the time; and addressed the second by keeping him fairly small. Here's Fred:



That's a half-cup container, and it contains 2.5 ounces of Fred. He's a little guy. Fred is a 100% hydration starter, so he's 50/50 flour/water by weight.  Fred's hydration is not so important, but one reason 100% is nice because it makes the math simpler. Fred is too small to make bread by himself, I use him to innoculate a levain that typically ferments 12-14 hours.

I made the original Fred about 3-4 years ago using the great instructions on this site from Debra Wink. Pineapple juice rocks.

The evening before (or two evenings before if I am retarding the final proofing) I take Fred out of the fridge and build a levain. Sometimes, when I have presence of mind, I take him out an hour or two before I start to let him warm up a bit, but often I just take him right out of the fridge. This is what he looks like after being in the fridge for about 10 days:



Sometimes, after a week or so, Fred will blow his top in the fridge. Not a big deal, and if no one notices for a day or two Fred will create a dry crust on top to keep his innards moisty. Fred's a bit of a teetotaler: I very seldom see hooch, perhaps only after a couple of weeks in the fridge. If Fred looks all watery and hoochy, I might feed him once or twice, but usually I will let him warm up and he comes back to life.

I feed Fred in a 1:2:2 ratio: 1 part starter, 2 parts flour, 2 parts water. My experience  (YMMV) is that this ratio provides adequate food so that he will be in good shape to innoculate a levain in a week, and can tolerate cooling his heels for longer if necessary . I always (well, almost always) remove 2 oz (of the 2.5 total) to start the levain build:



There's just a little bit of Fred left (0.5 oz):



The 1:2:2 ratio means we need to add 1 oz of water and 1 oz of flour in order to make Fred the man he was.  So we add 1 oz  water (that's a chopstick, which works really well for mixing the remaining starter and water) and then 1 oz flour. I feed Fred with AP or Bread flour, but I always give him a little treat of rye:



The 2 oz of starter is built into the levain - in this case a stiffer levain for Pain au Levain. There's no waste; I haven't discarded any starter.



If the formula for the levain called for less than 2 oz of starter,  I decrease the amount of flour and water in the levain by the excess amount of starter. For example, if the formula called for 1 oz of starter, I would use 2 oz of Fred, but then reduce the amount of flour and water I add by 0.5 oz each (that's what I meant about the 100% making the math easier). (It could be that innoculating the levain with more than the amount of starter called for in the formula changes the flavor profile of the bread. That's okay; I'vehad no complaints yet, and I have other details of technique to work out before addressing that one. If I found that it did make a difference, I would simply scale Fred down.)

The levain I'm building often has a different hydration than Fred. Sometimes it uses a different type of flour, e.g. rye. No matter.

The chopstick doesn't work for a lot of stiff starter, so I switch to the handle of a wooden spoon.

The levain goes in the proofing box overnight. Fred goes in for an hour or so just to help get his juices flowing. (I'm writing this in New Hampshire in February - the proofing box is required equipment). Then Fred goes in the fridge and does not reappear for a week or so. It seems to take about 4-5 days for Fred to develop sufficient strength in the fridge. If I want to use him sooner I will take him out and place him on the counter or in the proofing box until he's bubbly.

The next morning the kitchen is at 63F, but the levain looks good:



Fred, flour, water, salt: