Showing posts with label
Art of Baking w Natural Yeast.
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Showing posts with label
Art of Baking w Natural Yeast.
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Recipes to follow
In baking, I find a little of the best of my mother, who never baked, but made the best brisket, the best chopped liver, and the best gefilte fish. Plus, she loved my challah. One beautiful memory in the months before she passed away without any warning was the time she spent making gefilte fish with me one morning. I wrote down every tip from her years of experience. She patiently explained, somewhat haphazardly (because we both expected a few more such sessions), the mixing and shaping and boiling that resembles the first scene from Macbeth. Every Chanukah I think back as I make latkes about how she assisted me in the operation of shredding onions and potatoes, adding matzo meal, frying, and dealing with so much oil and grease. She totally let me be in charge even though it was her recipe and her grandchildren and her son in law who would be eating. She always let me shine.
My mom did not press me to succeed in all things at all times - outside of school. Baking, which I started doing in high school and dabbled in sporadically thereafter, certainly fell into the "it's nice if you do this" category, along with my artwork. She liked what she called my artistic sensibility. [Note: The photo of "Betty and Irwin," the kettle couple, by my front steps.]
And now for the breads
Maybe it's arrogance, or being generally unmindful of authority, or just being busy, but I so much altered the recipes in the two recipes that my results are not any statement on the quality of those recipes. These are whole wheat breads that are from recipes in the Art of Baking with Natural Yeast, #36 being a bit less than half whole wheat and #37 being 100 percent whole wheat. Violating my sort-of rule that any alteration in the ingredients or process constitutes a new bread, I changed some ingredient or some part of the process in each attempt. Maybe that's my way of slowing down - the reason in another post.
Quickly, the recipes are:
Bread #36
Ingredients
309g water
150g whole wheat flour
324g white bread flour
8g starter
8g salt
Hydration is about 65 percent.
Quick instructions
I used autolyse phase of 20 minutes, mixing only the flour and water together. This is supposed to develop the gluten and reduce the kneading time. Then I added the starter and the salt. For want of a long overnight rise, I used much less starter than recommended. In a rush, I skipped the kneading and did three stretch and folds in a class completely having nothing to do with baking. II took the dough with me in the car and into the class. I just did not want to throw away the already mixed dough. I let rise for almost 11 hours. After shaping, the final rise was for a whole day in the fridge.
All of the recipes in this book recommend rather low temperatures. I baked at 375 degrees for 43 minutes. I used my la cloche. There was nice oven spring. Both times I made this bread it tasted good. Just nothing inspiring.
Bread #37
Ingredients
323g water
388g whole wheat flour
27g starter
8g walt
Hydration is about 84 percent.
Quick instructions
Again, I did an autolyse for 20 minutes of just the flour and water. After 20 minutes, I added the starter and the salt. I kneaded for five minutes and let the dough rest for 10; then repeated. I let it rise for seven and a half hours, did a stretch and fold, and placed the dough in a well-greased loaf pan. I let the dough rest for a final rise of two and a quarter hours.
I baked in the la cloche for 18 minutes at 405 degrees and for another 10 minutes at 375 degrees (the actual recommended temperature). There was decent oven spring. As the photos show, this bread never quite blossomed. Some wholes are good, but these were cavernous.
At least the bread did not taste like a hockey puck. It was actually good, but not anything to write home about.
It's me, not the recipe
I do not prefer an "it takes all day" recipe. I am sure it must be lovely to be home all day and I am somewhat jealous of those who work at home and who, therefore, can bake breads of various rising times. Okay, very jealous. Okay, even on those days when I am at home, I do not necessarily want to be shackled to the dough. Maybe I am jealous that there are people who not only stay at home, but are also disciplined as much about bread as about work.
Two hours, all day or overnight - that's what I ask for in a rising time. Anything else is somewhat resented, unless it results in an incredible bread, in which case all is forgiven.
Finally, kneading the dough for bread #32, I felt like a baker. My hands were covered in sticky dough; the counter was pasty with it; the scraper was being used frequently to gather stray bits; and the texture of the dough felt magical. With a 20 to 30-minute autolyse, the strands of gluten were nicely developed by the time kneading began and a surprising rendezvous had begun.
Yes, I feel that I strayed from the purist position of flour, water, yeast and salt that I prefer. But there was some familial demand for an easily slice-able sandwich bread. Due to low expectations, I only took pictures after baking. [The photographs of the dough development were taken when I made this bread again.]
With slight, but significant variations, both breads used the Grammy sandwich bread recipe from the Art of Baking with Natural Yeast. The recipe calls for coconut oil and optional honey, which I left out of bread #31 and added to the dough for bread #32. I changed the timing for the recipe as my very warm, DC-area summer kitchen completely changes the equation for rising duration coming from recipes that imagine 65 or 70-degree temperatures.
Spoiler alert: Bread #31 was less than mediocre, while bread #32 was sublime. At the end of this post is a mention of the controversy over coconut oil.
Ingredients and instructions
Autolyse
10 oz. water
12.65 oz. whole wheat or white whole wheat flour (used the latter in bread #32)
Mix, cover, and let rest for 20 minutes. [Photo: At the end of the 20-minute autolyse.]
Dough
Add to autolyse:
1 tbsp coconut oil
1/8 cup = 1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp starter for bread #31 - 3.5 oz. starter for bread #32 (will explain briefly later)
1 tsp salt
Just put ingredients in order on top of autolyse, except for the salt. I put the salt in last, only after partially mixing, so that the dough would get a little more time before the salt affected the yeast development.
Mixing and kneading
Leave about 10 minutes for mixing by hand as the autolyse takes more strength to mix than a regular dough. Cover the dough and let rest for 10 minutes before kneading. This was added to bread #32 after reading a different book, which will likely be discussed at another time. It is Wild Sourdough. [Photo taken just after the dough is kneaded.]
The dough is gloppy, gloopy and feels a little oily as well from the coconut oil. Knead for 10 minutes or until the windowpane test is satisfied. Wet your hands and the counter a bit. For hand kneading, the dough scraper will be necessary. Be prepared for a mess.
Rising
Due to timing demands so that I would get the bread baked within one day of beginning, I greatly upped the starter content for the second try of this bread. The original recipe calls for 1/4 cup. I tried for an overnight rise the first time with 1 tablespoon of starter and an afternoon bread baking for the second attempt with 3.5 ounces (about 100 grams).
Bread #31
1 tablespoon of starter - 10.25 hours of rising. The overnight rising does not work so well during the summer, when the 15 to 20-degree (Farenheit) difference in temperature dramatically decreases the rising time. Even with using just a fraction of the recommended amount of starter culture, I find I should decrease the starter amount further to get a 10 to 12-hour first rise.
Bread #32
3.5 ounces (about 100 grams) - 3.5 hours of rising, which was perfect
At two hours, just a few bubbles. [Photo to the left on top was taken at two hours. Bubbles must be looked for.]
At three hours, the dough had doubled in volume, though the bubbles were not as apparent as they had been at two and a half hours. [Photo to the left on bottom was taken at three hours. There are more bubbles, with some large and almost bursting.]
At three and a half hours, I was getting anxious about over-rising.
Shaping
I will skip bread #31 on this and head straight to bread #32. I only did a shaping taking the corners and folding in. Then I did a few swift rounding motions on the counter. I sprayed a loaf pan with non-stick baking spray and put the dough in the pan to rise, covered with plastic.
Recommended rising time was two to two and a half hours, with the suggestion that the dough is sufficiently risen when a poke does not immediately bounce back. Both times, mine seemed ready at two hours. For bread #32, the dough rose remarkably in the loaf pan - coming completely in contact with the plastic at two hours without room for further expansion. Poking was impossible with the dough sticking to my finger. Expectations were low.
Baking
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Baked bread #32 for 28 minutes. I put the loaf pan on the baking stone. For bread #32, at 25 minutes, the crust still seemed a little light. Three more minutes did the trick. Ten to 15 minutes later, the bread easily same out of the loaf pan. I then let it sit on a rack overnight.
I was not expecting anything from the sticky mass of the dough for bread #32.
(No need to go into details about bread #31, which I baked for 40 minutes and did not go over well with anyone.)
Taste
Bread #32 is a winner with great taste. I expected a wet blob and instead got a wonderful oven spring, great rising, a bread that slices easily and is in the right shape for sandwiches. There is a very slight sweetness and the texture is moist, but not wet.
Coconut oil
The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast claims that coconut oil is very healthy. A brief Internet search finds more complexity. WebMD's page on coconut oil states that there is a lack of data and takes the cautious approach of advising sparing use of this non-saturated, but fat-filled oil. However, there are numerous sites that appear in a Google search that extol the health benefits of coconut oil, with many subsidized through advertising. One representative link discusses benefits for heart, skin and cancer prevention. Supposedly, coconut oil is a favorite with vegans and is used in many healthy population groups. I have performed no independent data collection on this topic.
