Bread - Number 25: Spelt/Rye Sourdough - Successful Starter and Kneading

Bread - Number 25: Spelt/Rye Sourdough - in a rush and with life happening all around

Some musing before recipe appears below.

Must admit with the following stuff in life going on, I rushed through this bread and its redo. No pictures were taken and, admittedly, the recipe is a bit scant. The question is always whether to count a bread as another bread in the 108 or as a redo when there is always something different the next time around. Warning: What counts as another bread and whether to make one bread a few times before proceeding to the next are completely arbitrary decisions, inconsistently made.

In the midst of creating a spreadsheet for the breads, getting out of town for two consecutive truly special family occasions, and preparing for my workplaces' annual week-long conference, this bread got short shrift. Not too much description, but a bread worthy of a redo.

Also pondering life with said special occasions both being markers of time and of important milestones. I had always imagined having children and raising them has been a joy. I wish I could turn back the clock and live those days with them all over, even the ones where I could not figure out how to breast feed a crying baby, or the peeing on the subway in Brooklyn, or even the teenage death stares. I remember all of the times holding my girls as infants, reading to them for hours, the hugs, the "I love you"s, the afternoons with friends at the playground, drawing as we waited for their dad to come home, and doing homework at the kitchen table, their laughter, their debates, their beings filling our home.

Now that I am free of most parental responsibility, I have fallen into this bread obsession. My husband is encouraging my addictive behavior, having purchased a nice set of bread books for my birthday. About a year worth of lovely reading awaits. He is happy to eat the breads, the more delicious the better.

A confession: By the time this post is up, we have already enjoyed breads #26 and #27. A little behind in writing these up. Sneak preview - my starter is fabulous. Woohoo!

Praise for Breadtopia
Here is bread #25, from Breadtopia. This is the whole grain sourdough. There are two videos with the recipe, which are quite helpful and reassuring. Mr. Iowa is my idea of what a teacher of a neurotic student should be. I watched the videos twice.

Ingredients and instructions in stages
Sponge
100 g. water
60 g. starter (added only 9 g. when I tried the recipe a second time)
118 g. whole wheat flour

Day #1 - morning
Mix sponge. Cover with plastic. Leave on counter for a day or overnight. Use Danish whisk to feel special and admire its design. Use digital scale for accurate measurements and push to back of mind that your great grandmother probably did not use a scale.

I forgot to take pictures or note the nature of the sponge at the start or before adding the dough ingredients.

The second time I made this bread, I only added 9 grams of starter and the first rise lasted 17 hours - and that with whole wheat flour right out of the freezer.

Day #1 - evening
Dough
137 g. water
43 g. rye flour
125 g. bread flour
85 g. spelt flour
13 g. salt

Mixed sponge and dough ingredients. Kneaded for 10 minutes in the bowl. I put it in the fridge for 24 hours.

Day #2 - evening
Woo hoo! Nice rise. Celebrate the small successes along the way. I shaped the dough and put it in a towel in a wicker basket. As yet, I've resisted the urge to buy a professionally recommended proofing basket. Make sure the towel, bowl, or proofing basket is well-floured.

I let the dough rise for only two and a half hours - supposed to be four - placing the dough in the refrigerator for about 20 hours.

Day #3 - afternoon
Since I had gypped the rising time the day before, I let the dough rise on the counter for four hours. About an hour before baking, preheat to 500 degrees; make sure to place baking stone, la cloche or whatever else in the oven to heat. The dough was well-risen when I put it into the oven. Baked for 30 minutes, then removed top of la cloche, reduced heat to 450 degrees and baked for another few minutes. Forgot to write down how much time.

I forgot to decrease the oven temperature when I first put the dough in the oven. I forgot to do the slash at the top. Still, the bread forgave and it was yummy. Could have risen more. Definitely a do over.

On the second try, I did the star slash on top. As if on cue, this bread came out very nice and with that soft, wonderful crackling sound that signifies a good bread. Really good crumb and an excellent taste.

Bread - Number 24: Indestructible and One-Third Whole Wheat

Bread - Number 24: You cannot ruin this mostly white bread

This one-third whole wheat bread dough could probably be dropped on the floor and stomped on and would still turn out decently. I love that, but wish this were so with more whole grain doughs. This bread is based on Bread #5, Part 2, but with starter and with previous volume-based measurements adjusted for weight measurements.The great news is that the starter works just as well as the commercial yeast. It is possible to use a small amount and a long rising time for wonderful results. I prefer long rising times for taste and for the convenience of being able to go out to work all day. 

I baked this bread twice because the first time it ended up a bit pasty, as if wet. I needed to trust my instincts and use my own weight-adjusted measurements instead of those on even trustworthy websites. Just because someone else says that one cup of bread flour is the equivalent of 128 grams of bread flour does not mean that your cup of bread flour, or anything else that you have been using to make delicious breads, is that same 128 grams. It might be 139 grams or 160 grams. 

The second time, I measured a cup of the whole wheat flour and then a cup of the bread flour and transcribed my measurements for each. The dough, magically, was more like cake batter and less pancake-like. The results were much improved, with just the smallest bit of wetness still left in the dough. There was a beautiful crumb and a lovely crust. This good, even lacking the good-luck cross/star slashed into the top of the dough before it went into the oven.

There's a movement? And has it already passed me by?
When making this sourdough starter and the dough, I kept hearing Michael Pollan on the radio, seeing references to him on twitter, and clicking links to watch his television news appearances. His presence gives gravitas to a movement of which I was unaware until recently. Slow food is quickly going mainstream. Now, people beyond Brooklyn and Portland are fermentation experts. Before I started this 108 breads project, I did not know about starters, the supposed health benefits of fermentation, or the existence of locally-milled flours. Actually, I had no idea of the universe of flours, books, and products in which one could become immersed, if not obsessed.

I had never seen a sauerkraut recipe or passionate descriptions of any. The idea of homemade sauerkraut would have caused my eyes to roll. Now I am the crazy person considering burying the jar of fermenting sauerkraut in the backyard per a friend's/another crazy person's recipe. But then he is the one who loaned his copy of 52 Loaves to me and started this whole obsession in the first place.

As usual, I am slow, and quite late to slow food. As it happens, however, I gave up most sugars and white flours years ago. Hardly ever let my children near an antibiotic and I consider a Diet Coke something for a special occasion. (Though every few years there are months of a daily diet soda.) Slow food was something I started before I was aware I was doing anything. Oh, and this week I give up all cakes, cookies and pastries for at least one year. I would rather have a nice slice of bread.

Ingredients
143 g. whole wheat flour (one cup)
332 g. bread flour (two cups)
1 1/2 cups water
11 g. starter
1/2 tbsp salt

Instructions
Very simple. No sponge, levain builds, poolishes, bigas or other preliminary dough stages. Just a good bread that is pretty much indestructible. Mix all ingredients. Let stand for 12 hours in a bowl that is loosely covered in plastic. Place dough in fridge for up to a couple of days or move on to preparation for baking. I kept my dough in the fridge for six hours, but I have left it in for more than a day.

Forgot to keep notes, so probably did usual shaping and left out for an hour to an hour and a half. I preheated the oven to 500 degrees with la cloche top and baking stone inside. Also, I did not write down how long I left it in the oven, so probably 40 to 45 minutes. A bit distracted with the new internal thermometer, which is mostly good. One should be careful to insert the thermometer into the center of the bread and not all the way almost to the bottom.

The taste was fantastic. An easy bread and a cheap thrill of feeling like a skilled baker. And the bread looks beautiful. Okay, the photograph of the bread cut open reveals its fault.

Just to have something to shoot for, the dough needed to rise some more.

Bread - Number 23

Bread - Number 23: The Spelt Variations
Like the Goldberg Variations, but more tasty

Purchases: Internal food thermometer $35 with shipping (half=price sale at Thermoworks)

I made the same 100 percent spelt bread three times to learn from mistakes, correct mistakes, and reach perfection. Reached pretty good. Thank you to my new trusty internal food thermometer, I did not bake the last loaf to death and before the end of the day, I personally consumed half of it.

Lessons learned: This recipe should not be left to rise overnight on the counter. The dough will over-rise, causing sadness even though less than a dollar of ingredients have been ruined, even though more starter is available, and even though the world is not nearly at an end. Other options are putting the dough in the refrigerator sooner or using less starter, both in an effort to slow down the process and sleep through the night while the dough rises.

Another lesson: An internal body clock will wake you in the wee hours of the night if there is the slightest suspicion that the dough will over-rise, not in time to catch the dough at its peak, but probably at a point where an edible bread can be produced.

Yet one more lesson: No recipe can totally account for different room temperatures, differences in flour batches, and the sourdough starter's phase of the starter cycle of eating and resting at which the starter was added to the water to make the dough. Get friendly with the dough at each stage and learn what it needs along the journey.

Scientific test coming: Whether dough rises better and bread is of higher quality if starter is at a phase where it will float in water or whether rising time will vary, but bread quality not affected.

Essentially a do over
Used the breadtopia spelt sourdough recipe. Same as Bread #7, but this time with starter instead of yeast, and no sweetener. The recipe comes with two in-depth videos that effectively walk one through the process. Recommended for beginners. In my three variations, I used different starters, the third time with a spelt starter. I also varied the sizes of the loaf, the rising times, the number of stretch and folds, and the baking times.

[Photo of starter right after being fed.]

 
Ingredients
280 g water
11 g spelt starter
424g spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
oats for coating dough (before placing in oven)

Instructions
Mixed water and starter first. Starter did not float. Added flour and then salt. Really enjoying the digital scale. Easy to use and clean. Very precise measurements in grams or ounces.

I did three stretch and folds at intervals of 20 to 30 minutes. I admit that I varied the number and the timing of the stretch and folds without any apparent consequences for the dough. [Photos are two different doughs after the third stretch and folds.]

Afterward, I let the dough rise on the counter for about five hours, perhaps less. Any more, at least in a springtime kitchen, was too much. Place in fridge or proceed to final rise and baking. I left mine in the fridge on the second try for 26 hours and that seemed like too much. I think the dough went past its peak rise. 

Shaping and Preparation
Breadtopia man recommends an easy shaping technique for this bread. Essentially, take "corners" of the dough and bring into the center so that the dough becomes a sphere. Then handle around for 30 seconds or so until the shape becomes a classic boule. It is described on breadtopia as an alternative to a direct degassing technique, such as punching down the dough. Then refine the shape further if necessary. 

Leave the dough on a well-floured board, loosely covered in plastic, for 15 minutes.

At this point, prepare your bowl, banneton, or basket for the dough's final rise. I used a bowl sprayed with baking spray. I poured some oats over the baking spray so that what would become the top of the bread would be covered with oats. That worked out well - plus there were plenty of nice, roasted oats that fell off at some point in the oven. Quite tasty.

I turned on the oven to 500 degrees to get it nice and hot. Be sure to put in the la cloche and baking stone or whatever you are using to create a steamy environment in the oven. My oven seems to need a good hour to get that hot, according to an independent thermometer, though the oven claims to heat up much faster. 

At 15 minutes, place the dough in the bowl or whatever. Allow the bread to enjoy its final rise for an hour to an hour and a half. Mine lost its shape, which made me nervous, . This dough was sufficiently dry to get in the oven with just flour on the baking peel, but I admit that parchment paper is better insofar as it reduces anxiety and does not seem to compromise the bottom of the bread.

Baking
Turn the dough gently onto the peel if you are using one. Just before putting the dough in the oven, score your line or design on top. I always do a star with the bread knife, which generally, if I'm lucky, produces a cross. I am getting tempted to go out and buy razor blades to do some fancy scoring.

Reduce the oven temperature to 450 degrees. I put a note right near the oven to remind me because I forget this part. 

At 30 minutes, remove top of la cloche and parchment paper. Take the bread's temperature. Mine was 203 degrees at this point. It was good to have this information as otherwise I certainly would have left the bread in the oven for too long. In fact, I did that the first two times. I was so excited that the thermometer was already proving its value. 

And?
A nice crackle. A beautiful bread. Two hours later: A heavenly taste. I waited for a late breakfast of tea and butter on the spelt sourdough. So, so good. I ate half of it before the afternoon was done.  It's the cross on top. Works every time. I'm still Jewish. No plan to convert just because the cross seems to be the good luck charm.

The best part is that I made a wonderful bread with my own starter.

Bread - Number Seven

Bread - Number Seven: All spelt with honey

Dedicated to farmers markets, delis, supermarkets, and the farmers who provide the plentiful food that we take so for granted that we can obsess on organic, artisan and other categories we would never consider were we hungry.

This recipe is adjusted for store-bought yeast from the breadtopia sourdough yeast recipe. On the recipe webpage are 15 minutes worth of instructional video to guide one through the process.

Ingredients
4 3/4 cups spelt flour (that was the end of the bag)
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 3/4 cups water (add 1 1/2 and determine how much more to add depending on consistency)
1/4 tsp yeast (instead of the 1/4 cup sourdough starter in recipe)
3 tbsp honey

Instructions
Mix water and honey in a large bowl. Let sit and mix dry ingredients in another bowl. Add mixed dry ingredients to large bowl with wet ingredients. Mix well. My dough was dry with 1 1/2 cups water and added another two ounces. Think it could have used a couple more.

Cover with plastic. Let sit for anywhere from 15 minutes to one hour intervals for three stretch and fold exercises. [Note: A sneaky way to be introduced to the concept of kneading.] For this bread, the timing was uneven so that one stretch and fold was done at 15 minutes just prior to dinner, one was performed a half hour later, and the next a half hour after that. That's what happens when fitting bread making into real life, or at least my particular real life.

Stretch and fold quite easy
How to do the stretch and fold? Hold the dough in the air and stretch similarly to a stretch on a board. Do not stretch to breaking. When stretched fold in thirds. Then turn around and do the same on the opposite side. If that's confusing, watch the first breadtopia video.  After the final stretch and fold, let sit on the counter for 12 hours. Remember to cover loosely with plastic. 

Okay, so it looked at 12 hours like it was fully risen, but not completely sure. The holes were ubiquitous, though smaller than in the whole wheat recipes. Mine rose very nicely. Put the dough in the refrigerator; probably good for four to five days. Made the bread two days later. 

Baking day
Almost confused the two batches of dough sitting in the fridge. Thankfully, they were slightly different shades of beige or else my husband might have taken the 100 percent spelt to the office holiday lunch. That would be wrong - and it did not happen. Disaster averted. (Not completely as managed to slightly burn his bread, though he was nice enough to not mention that.)

Take the spelt dough out of the fridge. Dust a board with flour and dust the top of the dough with flour. Indeed, dust wherever you want as remove dough with spatula from the bowl. Mine had actually become more wet and was pretty sticky. Needed a nice amount of flour.

Here is where my performance deviated from the recipe, most likely because it was late at night and escaped my mind that there was a different technique offered for this stage of the process. Mr. Iowa in the video never seems thus distracted. Mine is a less rational process. Also was distracted by mental activity of figuring out the logistics of baking husband's bread in the morning at the same time would be getting ready for work, which, from the previous paragraph one can tell went a bit off track.

Back to bread preparation
Stretch the flour on the board (will stretch to maybe eight by ten inches) and fold in thirds; then fold in half. Leave for 15 minutes covered loosely with plastic if dough seems wet. Put the dough in a well-floured bowl, covered with plastic, for 90 minutes. In recipe video, the guy does a thing that looks like making a bandana bag akin to Huck Finn, but with dough. 

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees. The recipe called for 450, but wanted to make sure oven was hot. Make sure la cloche and baking stone are in the oven to preheat as well. Actually, since husband was cooking, did not have the usual long preheat and it turned out fine. Put la cloche in an already hot oven and do not believe there were negative consequences. 

Next in a less-than-stellar preparation, after the 90 minutes, dumped dough; yes dumped; onto parchment paper on baking peel. Employed parchment paper because dough was wet. Took bread knife and made three cuts into the dough, across the top, somewhat like a star. Placed the dough-on-parchment onto the baking stone in the oven and covered with the la cloche, with which I have absolutely fallen in love. Immediately reduce heat to 450 degrees.

Gorgeous is not the word
At 30 minutes, remove top of la cloche. This was a deviation from the text of the breadtopia explanation. Also remove parchment from underneath the bread. Tends to rip at this point, so best to use the baking peel.

At 45 minutes, that's 15 minutes later for anyone with math difficulties, remove bread from oven. Mine was so exquisite, so absolutely what a country bread should look like, that with oven mitts on, holding the bread as one would a newborn straight out of the womb, carried the bread to my just-about-sleeping husband and said - here look at how amazing - the star had not quite made it, but a cross spanning the top of the bread had. He asked if this was a Jesus bread. 

Decided not to take the cross as a religious message; preferred to see the miracle that any design at all had materialized and so perfectly, though not as planned.

[Top of bread. There's the cross.]

Never bake late at night
Slept fitfully and almost not at all, so racing was my mind with my brilliant result (seduced by appearances), leading to the sub-par baking the next morning of my husband's bread. Sorry. 

Tasted the bread in the evening when returned home. It was good, solidly good, and liked the all-spelt taste, though wondered if it would be better without the honey. Was, however, a bit dry. Not sure if that was partly due to it being spelt. Need to experiment more, perhaps making a bread combining spelt and other whole grains; perhaps having 15 to 25 percent bread flour would do nicely.

And should have followed the explanation, which said good results from leaving the top of the la cloche on for the entire time. Might have been less dry. Definitely more than edible, just not perfect.

Results sufficiently promising for more spelt experiments. Also showed that la cloche not preheated performed just fine.

[Another view of the just-baked beauty.]

Effort worthwhile 
P.S. Two days later, my daughter came home from school. Without even mention of the new bread, when everyone was out at work, she found and sampled it and told me the bread tasted great, like a farmers market bread. Now that's a compliment.

Bread – Number Five – Part Two

Bread – Number Five – A second batch with minor variations. Like a concerto, but different. 

Dedicated to the la cloche, a miracle tool. Same recipe as bread number five.
 

Ingredients

2 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (Used same proportions as breadtopia recipe used in bread number five)
between ¼ tsp. and ½ tsp. instant yeast (Up from ¼ tsp.)
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups purified or spring water (Used filtered tap water because the first batch of Bread Number Five came out fine, indeed, wonderful, with it.)

Variation on Bread - Number Five - Part One 

This time using just a little more yeast for a guaranteed 12-hour rise and the same ingredients otherwise. Instead of making the bread after the dough is ready, will be storing it in the refrigerator for a day or two. Will be dividing the recipe into two batches as well because the first batch made such a large bread.

Also going to try using the top of the la cloche, the bell part, on the baking stone.

Instructions

1.  Mix dry, then wet ingredients. Cover bowl with plastic. Let dough rise overnight for 12 hours.

2.  Put in fridge during workday. Return home and take dough out of fridge. Easier to work with because not quite as warm and wet. Cut dough in half with shears, so cool, to make two small breads out of this batch.

3.  Put well-floured half of dough batch on well-floured wooden board with well-floured hands. Very easy because not as sticky as unrefrigerated previous batch. Flatten into approximate rectangle. Fold in tri-part envelope configuration and then in half. Cover loosely with plastic for 15 minutes.

4. Lay out well-floured kitchen towel. Put dough on towel and cover dough with rest of the towel as if inside a tri-partite envelope. Or, keep dough on well-floured board and cover with well-floured towel. Either way works fine.

5. Let sit for an hour to 90 minutes. Preheat oven to 500 degrees at least a half hour before placing dough in oven. Or, like me, dinner is taking up oven space prior to bread baking. So, make something that needs oven heat as close to 500 degrees as possible. This way, minimal time will be needed to bring the oven up to 500. After all, one may have foods to prepare other than bread, though that is apt to become an obsession.

6. Reminder: At 60 to 90 minutes beforehand, get oven well heated to 500 degrees. When oven and dough are ready, place dough onto baking stone and cover with top of la cloche. (Did not quite drop from the floured towel, but managed to keep its shape as eased the dough off and into 500-degree oven and onto hot baking stone.) Actually, the dough is really dropped onto the baking stone, which is much easier than employing the bottom of the la cloche; this way the top just goes wherever on the stone the dough happens to fall, or has been carefully placed, whichever best describes one's practice.

7. Baking time according to size of the dough. With dough half the size of the last batch, bake at 500 degrees for 22 minutes; remove top of la cloche and reduce temperature to 450 degrees for 13 minutes.

8. Admire the beautiful bread when removing it from the oven. Looking good.

[Restaurant in San Francisco that must be named for development in Brooklyn in Coney Island.]
 

Perfect breakfast

Amazing. Genius. And tasty. Relished the deliciousness of the bread with a little butter and tea for a simple breakfast. Divine.

In the evening, made the last half batch. This time it was easy as it was the third time through the process. Skipped the recommended folding because the half batch of bread made last night came out a little too spherical. Want a somewhat more pleasing shape – less soccer ball, more the top of a football. Nice part of the repeat performance is how much faster the process goes and with much less trepidation. A bit of a confidence boost, really.

Indeed, did not even do the entire wrap-in-a-kitchen-towel step and instead left the dough on the cutting board and covered with a well-floured towel. Really, what is the big reason for moving the dough unless one possesses an impressive proofing basket? (Hope not to receive my comeuppance with that comment.) Also convinced that placing the top of la cloche on the baking stone instead of the bottom of the la cloche works miracles as bottom of la cloche requires way better aim than I possess while handling sticky dough in a kitchen towel as entire body is suddenly confronted with open oven’s 500-degree heat. The baking stone makes for a very wide and generous target, with the bell-shaped la cloche fitting wherever the dough happens to land.

Another wonderful bread. Feel proud.

P.S. Have now made this bread yet again and comes out perfectly. Very easy and dough lasts at least a few days in the fridge after the 12+ hours first rise.

Visions of something other than sugar plums dance in my head

Of course, however, mind rushing to possible next steps. Already in pantry is the spelt flour. Visions of cold mid-winter Sundays with various sourdough starters on the dining room table like a third-grader’s science fair experiment in progress. On the horizon, videos to watch that demonstrate step-by-step kneading and rising.

[Pacific Ocean]