Bread Number 98: Oatmeal Sandwich Bread

It is two years since I last wrote and I have been making bread almost every week, though not new breads. More on that hiatus in another post.

Bread 98 is light on the whole grains at about one third of the total flour, but it does have lots of oats and, every time I have made this dough, a very long rise, almost or up to 24 hours, that gives a nice mellow sour flavor that I love. I've baked this bread three times for us, and a few more times if you count breads to send home with a friend and one of my daughters. It is a crowd pleaser.

The autolyse takes no time to put together and, following that, the dough sits forever after two stretch and folds. Quite easy.

Total ingredients
175g whole wheat flour (125g for autolyse and 50g that go into the dough)
91g oats (I used fine oats that can be used to make a quick oatmeal)
313g water - only spring water, never tap water
100g starter
13g honey
20g milk
44g olive oil
325g bread flour
11g salt

Autolyse
See the glossary if you are not familiar with the term, but it's basically a short pre-soak phase for the flour, grain, and water. If I do an autolyse, I generally let the flour and any grains soak for approximately 30 minutes. A few minutes more or less will not ruin your dough, so no need to be super diligent on this.

125g whole wheat flour
91g oats (I used fine oats that can be used to make a quick oatmeal)
313g water - only spring water, never tap water

Be careful: Not all of the whole wheat flour goes into the autolyse. Mix well and let the mixture sit for 36 minutes.

Dough
Autolyse mixture
100g starter
50g whole wheat flour
13g honey
20g milk
44g olive oil
325g bread flour
11g salt

Mix the dough together until all of the liquid is absorbed and the flour is integrated. Let sit for 20 minutes.

Stretch and folds
1. At 20 minutes, do a little kneading, just for a minute, and then a stretch and fold.
2. Wait another 15-30 minutes, whatever is convenient, and do another stretch and fold. The dough should be firm.

Cover this dough with plastic instead of something else. It tends to dry out easily.

In a winter kitchen, I have let this dough rise for up to 24 hours. The last time, during some mild winter days and nights (nights of 45 degrees Fahrenheit and days of up to 60), the dough took about 19.5 hours, and to be honest, I could have let it sit for an hour more. It was a recent Sunday evening and I just felt like baking already.

Patience please

The dough hardly rose overnight even though the kitchen was relatively warm. I did sprinkle on some water and replace the insulated, almost shower-cap cover over the bowl because there was starting to be a dry patch on the dough. It seemed to work.

I did the dent test to make sure that the dough was ready, but honestly, I always feel that there's a leap of faith in the determination that it is time to shape the dough and do a final rise before baking. I have waited until a dough looks super puffy, even post-puffy, and the breads come out pretty good anyway. When the comparison is supermarket or even farmers market bread, these are still way better.

Shaping dough and baking

One hour before baking, preheat oven to 460 degrees.

I sprinkle water on the counter, which prevents the dough from sticking when shaping it. This time, I made the oatmeal bread in a loaf pan. I do spray the loaf pan at this point with non-stick spray, then placed the shaped dough in there so that it is about the same length as the pan. Cover with plastic, or in my case, with another pan. Just make sure that the covering will not permit the dough to dry out.

Let the dough sit for an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes. Many bakers do a dent test at this point, but, I confess, I generally do not.


Another leap of faith and I put the dough in the oven, covered, of course. I used another loaf pan that fit right on top and this worked very well. One could use a dutch oven instead or a la cloche.

At 15 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 440 degrees. Let the dough stay in the oven for another 25 minutes.

In a nutshell:
Preheat to 460 and bake at 460 for 15 minutes.
Reduce to 440 and bake for 25 minutes.
Total of 40 minutes in the oven.

Beautiful oven spring and excellent taste. A crowd pleaser.

Bread Number 83: Am I Making Almost the Same Breads Over and Over? Yes

I have never sought out a career that demands travel. A few widely-spaced trips a year, fine. But for several months it felt like I was constantly out of town. I was not quite, but too much in terms of getting into a rhythm for bread baking. A whole week at home for Christmas week will revive me. Then, perhaps another trip in January.

Bread #83 was a rye with a little whole wheat flour mixed in because I had very few wheat berries left. Now it's time to reorder, but I haven't caught up with all manner of things at home after the last trips, those to beautiful Colorado, friendly Texas, and dynamic Alabama.

The nice part about baking for so long is that even off my game I have standard go-to formulas. This means I can whip up a dough and I feel confident without paying too much attention. Not how I generally like to proceed - fan of mindfulness and all that -  but there is other stuff in my life besides bread. 

Ingredients
200g starter (made with white flour)
290g water
38g whole wheat flour
141g rye flour
271g bread flour
8g caraway seeds
11g salt

I used a lot of starter because my jar was pretty full. Plus, I initially planned for an overnight rise at a kitchen temperature of 70 degrees. Turned out to be 65 and I left the dough out half a day more. It helped to have a person at home who could put the dough in the fridge, not a luxury one has with a regular commuter lifestyle.

Instructions
Mix all ingredients well and cover. I did two stretch and folds, each 30 minutes apart. Then I let the dough rise on the counter for 14 hours. Next, in the fridge for six hours.

Despite not much fridge time - I  usually wait for 24 hours of fridge time - I decided to bake. 

Preheat oven for one hour with dutch oven inside at 470 degrees. 

Just  before baking, take dough out of fridge. Shape, do the slash on top, and sprinkle with water. Don't forget to sprinkle some rice flour into the dutch oven before plopping dough in there.

I forgot, but I got lucky. No sticking of dough to dutch oven bottom.

Baking time: 53 minutes, the last five uncovered. Beautiful oven spring. Nice solid go-to bread taste. Nice to have a great bread be normal.

Second try

I left out the whole wheat flour because I have not gotten to the wheat berry purchase yet. I am buying food storage containers to store them and the order for wheat and rye berries should be made today. I accounted for the lack of whole wheat flour by increasing the bread flour amount to 339 grams.

This time the dough took 18 hours for the first rise, followed by 11 hours in the fridge. Lovely, lovely oven spring and a great taste. A nice rye is always a winner in this household.

Bread Number 72 - Perfect Crust and 2/3 to 108

Probably my best crust ever and a wonderful bread. I feel like I've made this before, but not a completely no-knead 40 percent whole wheat. Here's my post-Passover quest (one of a few): returning to higher percentages, perhaps even completely, whole grain breads.

Seduction
I've been seduced by white flour, to be sure. Who would not be? That color in the bread, that spectacular oven spring, those crusts. It's addictive in its own way. 

Plus, when one buys a whole grain flour from a grocery shelf - even at Whole Foods or a food coop - who knows how long that flour has sat in its bag each step of the way or how long it has remained in that same spot on the shelf before one buys it. I keep the whole grain flours in my freezer, but I wonder whether I am getting anywhere near the taste and freshness I should if it has spent days, or, more likely, weeks, at room temperature before I use it in a dough. This is another post-spring cleaning and post-Passover quest, to do a little investigation of how long these flours take from grinding to sale.

Parenthetical
(If I declare these quests out loud here, then I feel a bit more confident that I will actually follow through. Yes, and also pushing off until after Passover visiting the local bakeries on my short list. Add to that the updating of my bread spreadsheet, which actually is a big aid in keeping track of what happened with each bread and which ones I want to repeat.)

Adapted=more hydration

Because I wanted to use a significant amount of whole wheat flour, I added additional water to the dough. The original recipe, I believe, was only 350 grams of water, but that was for an entirely white flour bread. The whole wheat flour is more thirsty. So 76 percent hydration instead of 70 percent. 

The recipe is an adaptation of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt's recipe on Serious Eats, for which he is the managing culinary director, a job I could never hold, for too many reasons to list.  

Ingredients
380g water
20g starter
300g bread flour
200g whole wheat flour
9.5g salt

Day one
Late afternoon, mixed all ingredients together thoroughly and covered. No kneading, no stretch and folds. Just waiting. Right after mixing, of course, I think it would have been nice to have done a soaker with the whole wheat flour.

Day two
The dough has sat out for 21.5 hours, some in a cool kitchen, but not freezing winter cold, and some in a warm daytime kitchen. Dough pretty puffy. I put the dough in the fridge.

Day three - All day in the fridge. Real life delays dough-related tasks.

Day four
Baking day! Preheated oven, with dutch oven inside, to 475 degrees for one hour. Wary of heating oven to 500 with dutch oven after disaster of last loaf and bread entirely stuck. Right before baking, I removed dough from fridge, shaped, sprinkled flour on bottom and flaxseed meal on top (did not weigh any of that). Did a couple of slashes on top.

Removed lid of dutch oven at 30 minutes. Total baking time of 52 minutes, amply demonstrating my patience, admittedly won with the use of the internal thermometer. To my credit, however, I am checking the temperature of the bread much less often, thereby reducing loss of heat from an open oven door for a minute or so. 

Gorgeous, a little burnt on top, but a marvelous crust. A great taste and an easy bread that I shared with my writers' group. Definitely, a yummm .... mmy on this one.

Deserves a couple of extra photos

2/3 to 108
Number 72 is two-thirds of the way to 108. Too busy to celebrate at the moment. That goes on the post-Passover list as well. At the beginning, I could not imagine getting this far; so very committed of me. 

Okay, in case I'm getting cocky, I now have a beer bread dough that is supposed to be rising on the counter that is not actually rising. It's for my daughter to take back to school, but I think the dough's lack of activity is a pre-Passover message to cease with the dough obsession and to finish the spring cleaning. 

Bread Number 71 - Second Try: Crustier, Airier, and Almost the Same

What happens with the same ingredients, adding stretching and folding
I decided to take to heart a comment on the freshloaf forum to try stretch and folds with rye breads of up to 50 percent rye. Bread #71 came out so well on the first try and I was so curious about adding this dough manipulation that I could not wait to do the bread a second time and compare the results while the taste was still almost in my mouth.

I have to confess to a couple of emergency changes, but the ingredients in toto are exactly the same as the first try of bread #71, even up to the thirsty bag of flour I used the first time and the all-purpose einkorn flour. Well, not exactly, because I had no old bread to soak and add. Almost exactly. What was the emergency - or rather last-minute change? I ran out of rye flour and had to get more, despite my month-before-Passover pledge to use up the flour already in the house. This significantly changed the nature of the sponge, though the same amounts of each type of flour were used, just at different phases. 

And how did this bread - with its stretch and folds - compare to the first try of bread #71? The bread crumb (meaning interior) was somewhat airier with bigger holes. The taste was very close. The crust was better, most likely because I had a better feel for how long it needed in the oven and because I removed the top of the la cloche for the last five minutes to let the bread get some time without being covered. This allowed for a crustier crust and a darker color.

Not a scientist
If I were a scientist, I would have carefully produced this bread, changing just one aspect of the process, which would be to add the stretch and folds. But then I received some marvelous comments on the freshloaf about doing a long autolyse, and how could I wait for another bread to do that? Impossible. So, way before the sponge was done, I mixed together the bread flour and water (too much water, but can perfect that another time) and let it sit, covered, in a bowl, beside the sponge, for a long autolyse.

Just making the same bread twice in a row, I checked the dough and the baking bread less often - not opening the oven door as many times - and let it go uncovered by the top of the la cloche for the last five minutes, giving it a nicer crust.   

Taste, color, and sound?
Answers in order of how one experiences a bread: Sight - beautiful, with gorgeous deep brown crust. Sound - nice crackling sounds. So satisfying. This requires silence in order to hear the very low crackling. Taste - Delicious, very good. Perhaps another experiment would be to use whole grain einkhorn. 

So, yes, not exactly the same recipe, but almost. In an imperfect world of impatience and excited baking, this is pretty much as close to the scientific method as I am willing to get.

*** for the second time, almost, but not quite, the same instructions for bread #71 

Sponge
51g starter
94g water
14g rye flour
99g bread flour

Mixed and covered. Let sit overnight and well into the next day for a total of 17.25 hours because the kitchen is still pretty cold at night.

Autolyse
221g water
133g bread flour

Mixed, covered, and let sit for 4.33 hours, while the sponge became sufficiently bubbly to be considered done and ready to move on to the dough phase. When the sponge was ready, I added the autolyse to the sponge, and then mixed in the dough ingredients.

Dough
92g rye flour
114g einkorn flour (all purpose; still working to finish that bag of flour)
8g caraway seeds
10g salt

Mixed everything together, the sponge, the autolyse and the remaining ingredients. The dough proved tough to mix, so wet hands at the ready, I squeezed and manipulated the dough until it became as it should be, a homogeneous blob.

Stretch and folds
Over the next hour and a half, I did three stretch and folds. The first at 15 minutes, the second 35 minutes later and the last 30 minutes after that. Covered and let sit, in this case for 4.66 hours.
 
Finally, we have sunshine and temperatures in the 50s. Snow is melting, hats are unnecessary, and I could go crazy with carrying my dough elsewhere so that I could tend to it on the go. Not something I do often, but I'm not going to let a dough fail just because I have something unavoidable to do. As it turned out, however, no one showed up for my meeting, and there I was in a room at my synagogue with my bowl of dough, my art supplies, some text and a creepy lonely sensation of being without anyone else in a place that is usually full of people. Like being at Grand Central without a soul; very twilight zone.

I actually did one stretch and fold in the car, paper towel and a bottle of water at the ready, and the last one in a bathroom. In my defense, I have not yet gotten sufficiently crazy that I have taken a bowl of dough on the subway and to my office. I have contemplated it. In the eyes of the law, however, conduct is what counts, not mere thoughts (unless we are talking intent, but then, of course, that is thoughts accompanied by actions).

I took home the dough, examining it every 15 to 30 minutes, to determine when it was ready to be prepared for baking, which my mind always equates with preparations for take-off, though that is completely different.

Baking preparation
When the dough was ready to move on to the next phase of baking preparation, I did a stretch and fold on a well-floured wooden board, covered the dough, and let sit for 15 minutes. That's a good time to clean up a kitchen. I also prepare the basket where the shaped dough will sit for the hour to an hour and a half before going into the oven.

I put a kitchen towel in a small wicker basket and generously sprinkle flour on that regular kitchen towel, so that the dough will not stick to the towel. In this case, I also put caraway seeds on the flour so that the top of the dough would get some pressed into it. When the 15 minute rest period has passed, I shape the dough into a boule, and - important - put the dough, upside down, onto the well-floured towel.  

I have to confess that I have never used a banneton. Curious; just have not yet spent the money.

Rye needs some more caraway seeds just before baking
At one hour, generally, and in this case, the dough is ready to be baked. I cut a nice "X" of cross-slashes on the top of the dough. Because this was a rye bread, and I love caraway seeds on a rye, I sprinkle a generous amount of water on the top of the dough, and sprinkle even more caraway seeds on top.

Oven
One hour before I will put the dough in, I preheat the oven to 500 degrees with the top of the la cloche placed on the baking stone. Immediately upon putting the dough in the oven, I reduce the temperature to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes, I reduce to 440 degrees for the remainder of baking.

This bread took 50 minutes in the oven. At 40 minutes, I removed the parchment paper and at 45 I removed the top of the la cloche.

Musical crackling sounds out of the oven. Wonderful crust. Scrumptious taste.

Bread Number 71: Rye-Einkorn Beauty, But All Purpose Einkorn?

Disaster struck. No beer in the house for the planned second beer bread. Not that there is always beer in the kitchen or in the basement, but usually there is some bottle of craft brew around. I will wait until the spouse buys some; in the pantheon of household tasks, as the beer drinker, he is tasked with beer purchasing. 

So a different type of bread would be made; there was rye flour and rye starter, and the package of einkorn flour that I was curious to open and try.

What do you mean it's not whole grain?
I recently spotted, for the first time, in the local Whole Foods, a store that is a mix of a locally-sourced food emporium and a corporate food behemoth, a package of einkorn flour. Before I set out to work with this flour, I was blissfully unaware that there is more than one type of einkorn flour. Without looking closely, I purchased the "all purpose" variety, a euphemism for a white flour, cleansed, if you will, of most fiber and nutrients. I just assumed it would be whole grain, like everything else in that small part of the baking aisle. Somehow, it seems wrong to sell an ancient grain in a form fit for Wonder Bread.

Ingredients and instructions

Sponge
94g water
39g rye starter
113g rye flour

Mix and cover. This is not a sponge that will get bubbly. Indeed, I find rye starters a bit frustrating because their expansion is so reserved. No need to worry; if you skimp on this phase, more time will be necessary for the dough to rise. Just a matter of when the fermentation will occur.

Dough
221g water
114g einkorn flour
232g bread flour
9g salt
8g caraway seeds (plus more later for sprinkling before putting dough in oven)

Mix, cover, and let rest. This dough rested longer than expected because, I am supposing, I could have let the sponge develop for more time. The dough seemed to be at its peak at 5.25 hours. Nice and big and puffy.

Warning - weird bag of flour makes numbers questionable
My ingredient numbers might be off on this bread, not because my measurements were inaccurate, but because I was working with a King Arthur bread flour package that was especially thirsty. In a bread I make each week, flour from this particular package required a good 50 percent more water than usual, though I always use KA bread flour for this bread.

Also, einkorn flour is said to require less water than wheat. In this recipe, previously using whole wheat instead of einkorn, I generally use 207 grams of water, though for this specific dough, with the weird bread flour package, I used more. I am guessing that with a typical bag of bread flour, from 20 to 50 grams less of water would probably be needed.

Pause - benefit of making same bread over and over
Here I was, making a bread with einkorn flour for the first time, adapting a recipe - bread #27 - I have used about 10 times. I had to feel my way with the water amount because this is not a dough I know intimately. But the reason I could make my weekly challah perfectly even with an extremely thirsty batch of flour is that I know exactly how this dough should be at every step. After 15 years of almost weekly practice, one gains confidence. It was easy to see that the dough needed a whole lot more water. 

So, when trying out a recipe that turns out terribly, do not immediately blame yourself or the instructions. It just might be that one of your ingredients is not acting within the average in some way, thus, throwing off the entire bread. Such a challenge gets easier to spot and rectify with experience.

Pause here for Purim baking
After 5.25 hours, instead of pushing on to prepare for baking, I put the dough in the fridge. I was in the midst of hamentaschen baking for the Jewish holiday of Purim, with a deadline for sending a package to the daughter in college. Needed to roll out the hamentaschen dough, with my grandmother's rolling pin and her yellow baking bowl, and to fill each cookie (pastry?) with fillings modern and old-fashioned. Poppy seed filling, traditional, one daughter's favorite; apricot for my other daughter; and, of course, a universal preference for chocolate.

Morning brain - another pause 
Next morning, instead of trotting off to work, we have another two-hour delay due to ice. Winter this year is reluctant to leave this. As I write, we are expecting not one, but two more storms this week. We are not in Minnesota, here; we should be noticing signs of spring already. 

Because bread is on the brain, I wake up an hour earlier than usual, despite the two-hour delay, and get the bread baked before my usual start of work. 5:45 and I am in the kitchen, brain on autopilot, preparing the dough for baking.

I sit in the kitchen, reading Michael Pollan's Cooked, the part about a perfectionist chef describing a restaurant that operates with precision timing and operations, down to how to load the dishwasher. I realize I am completely deficient on this score. I mostly perform tasks with a "good enough" attitude, or, at other times, I experiment, flirting with failure to move outside my comfort zone. That's what 108 breads is all about. I go for the quirky, but reading at 6 a.m., I feel as though, perhaps, I have never, except for motherhood (where perfection is impossible), reached the point of loving something so much that I take joy in the the consistent performance of a task down to the last detail. 

Maybe it was a little early to be so hard on myself.

Baking preparation
I take the dough out of the fridge, sprinkle flour on a large cutting board, then on top and on the sides of the dough. I do a stretch and fold, cover, and let the dough rest for 15 minutes. 

Shape the dough. Then I put a well-floured kitchen towel in a small wicker basket. I also sprinkle some caraway seeds on top of the flour. Place the dough, bottom up, in the towel inside the basket, and cover. Let rest for an hour.

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with a baking stone and the top of a la cloche, if you have one. (Otherwise, place a pan on the oven shelf below where the dough will be. Right before after putting the dough in the oven, place a cup of water or ice in the pan. This will provide steam for the dough to rise. The la cloche does the same thing without risk of steaming in your face or ruining the oven. It creates a mini-Roman oven in your oven.)

Thank goodness for parchment paper
I put a piece of parchment paper, that miracle invention, on the baking peel, and, in order:
(1) Turned the dough, right side up, onto the parchment paper. 
(2) Generously sprinkled water on top of the dough.
(3) Threw some caraway seeds on top as well.
(4) Did a quick cross-slash cut into the top after that.
(5) Put the dough in the oven. 

Reduce oven heat immediately to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes, reduce again, this time to 440 degrees. I removed the parchment paper at 40 minutes. Total oven time was 51 minutes, but I should have left it in for another three minutes. Just a tiny, tiny tad underdone.

Isn't that beautiful?
Gorgeous oven spring and a great taste, but I'm a pushover for anything with rye and caraway seeds, despite the all purpose einkorn and the need for a few more minutes of baking. This is why I cannot be a perfectionist. I like this really good bread quite a lot; it doesn't have to be perfect. 

P.S. I received a note saying to try stretch and folds even with rye doughs up to 50 percent, so I will try that next time with this bread and report back here.

Bread Number 70: Celebrating with Beer - in Dough and Otherwise

Just pour the bottle into the bowl
So weird to actually open the beer bottle, in this case, Brooklyn lager, and just empty it right into the dough bowl. Great smell. 

Maybe it was the beer that explains why this dough rose so slowly, or perhaps, it was my unwise use of a just-fed starter instead of having the patience to wait to make the dough until the starter was ripe. Definitely, the cold winter temperatures contributed to the slow rise as well, a total of 27 hours. Mind-blowing, yes, and a testament to my ability to be patient, at least on occasion.

Beer is welcome as a fun way to experiment as I approach the final third of the 108-bread project. Will also taste good to eat the beer bread with beer. I drink about one to two beers a year. An exact level of thirstiness is necessary; somehow, wine requires no such limitations. Of course, for those for whom any beer will do, this might seem like an alien attitude.

Two more breads - number 72 - until I hit the two-thirds mark. My daughter tells me to plan a celebration for 108 and immediately a party at a bakery or a bakery tour come to mind, closely followed by the idea of a bread-maker gathering. Or maybe just a quiet breakfast of homemade bread, nice tea or coffee, and some fine music, Sinatra, perhaps, and something good to read. I like my bread that way. 

Ingredients and instructions

352g beer
70g starter (120 percent hydration, with big qualification; details below)
100g whole wheat flour
16g flaxseed meal
20g rye flour
389g bread flour
11g salt

Autolyse
Mixed all flours, flaxseed meal and beer (love writing that word in this context), covered, and let sit for 30 minutes. 

Dough
Added starter and salt. Mixed and covered. Did two stretch and folds, the first at 15 minutes and the second another 15 minutes later. Covered and left out overnight. 

This was Oscar night, which I totally enjoy. Two reasons: Commenting on dresses and listening to thank you speeches. Warms my heart to hear appreciation for parents, spouses, and opportunities, as well as curiosity about what political outbursts celebrities will engage in. Since I do not read People or pay much attention to celebrity culture, the Academy Awards is the perfect dose.

Starter and long, long rise
Though this recipe includes a healthy amount of starter, 70 grams, I do believe the exceptionally long rise of 27 hours was partly due to the state of the starter and not only to the winter temperatures. Instead of feeding the starter and waiting for it to get all exuberant again, I began with impatience. I fed the starter, adjusting it to a pretty high hydration percentage - estimating 120 percent - and put the almost just-fed starter into the dough. I waited only a half hour in a 65-degree kitchen.

I thought the rise would occur overnight because the outdoor temperatures had increased considerably; we were up to the 30s or 40s. I suppose, however, that the kitchen was nearly as cold as ever in the wee hours. By morning, the dough had hardly expanded. I went off to work, leaving the dough in the heated kitchen, with adult offspring in the house. Called this adult, who sweetly tolerated her mother, and texted a picture of the dough. It needed more time, so I took the chance that the hours would be too many until I returned home from work and asked for the dough to be left out.

Kitchen heat turned off, then six hours later, turned on for the evening. Returned home, immediately checked dough, but did not look fully ready to cease bulk fermentation. Left dough out until bedtime and then put it in my heated closet. As I was bringing the bowl through the bedroom, spouse noted my increasing bread craziness. Woke up at 12:30 a.m., and carried the dough to the refrigerator. Finally, it appeared ready, but this was not my time to move on to the next phase.

Tending to the dough
The next morning, I shaped the dough, without even a stretch and fold. Placed the dough on a well-floured kitchen towel and put it in a small wicker basket. Covered and left in fridge for 12 hours.

Returned home from work and preheated oven, with top of la cloche and baking stone inside, to 500 degrees for one hour. I took the dough out of the fridge immediately prior to baking, stopping only to put a nice set of cross slashes into the top of the dough.

Baking
Left the temperature at 500 for 20 minutes, then reduced to 470 degrees. Total baking time, 51 minutes. Lovely oven rise that only a majority white bread flour dough will produce. Divine crackling sound emanating, hissing practically, from the just-done bread. 

Incredible, great taste with a hint of the beer. I never would be able to identify the beer taste if I did not know there was beer in the bread, but the taste had a different twang than a long rise sourdough - a more complex, maybe a two-layered, twangi-ness. And twangy is not a technical term, yet.

Next up: plan to eat the bread with beer: A big yum, I'm sure.

Bread Number 69: Outstanding Bread, Clumsy Position (in Dutch Oven)

I figured out this weekend that I hate parties. I like the idea of a party, but once I arrive the whole gathering is just people standing around talking, often in a crowded, noisy space. I'd rather be talking to the same people without the party. Or I could be home looking at a dough, painting  or studying. In fact, I find more and more that I value my time alone. I'm living so much of my life in my closet, doing my artwork and studying there, including much of the writing of this blog. Ha, ha, yes, literally in the closet, though actually a tiny room.

One wet bread 
At one percent below 80 percent hydration, this was one wet dough; given the number of the bread - 69, there is no minimum to the mileage on the double entendres. The position referred to in the title of this post has nothing to do with sex; it's the unlikely placement of the dough - super wet - in the Dutch oven. I was glad, frankly, to get it in there at all. 

In this dough are an arbitrary mix of different flours, mixed in intentional proportions - teff and coconut flours, whole wheat flour and bread flour. I used the cold of the kitchen to extend the sponge phase. I also did a soaker for a few hours before mixing it into the sponge, a pretty wet sponge. I used so much bread flour because the last bread bothered me with its lack of oven spring. And the oven spring here was divine. That white flour, darn it, can't be beat in this respect. 

Ingredients
By the way, all of these unusual flours, as well as the whole wheat flour, I keep in the freezer to preserve freshness. I'm still thinking of a way to get fresh, local grain to grind myself, but I'm not there yet. Except for the fresh-ground flour guy at a different farmers market downtown DC, I have no connection to the local grain scene, if there is indeed one at all.

24 percent whole grain.
79 percent hydration - calculating with the hydration percentage of my starter, such as I guess it is. I almost never measure what goes into the starter.

Soaker
50g teff flour
20g coconut flour
90g water

Mix and cover. I waited 3.5 hours, but this could have sat overnight.

Sponge
Soaker
114g water
73g starter
58g bread flour

Mix and cover. I let this sponge rest for 17.5 hours because the cold kitchen overnight meant activity in the sponge came to a standstill. It waited for the heat to be turned on in the morning to become exuberantly bubbly, with larger bubbles than I usually see in a preferment. Three hours of warm kitchen air did the trick.

Dough
Sponge
218g water
336g bread flour
70g whole wheat flour
10g salt

The mixing took quite a while as I added little bits of more flour to decrease the mushy, wet texture of the emerging dough. 

Total ingredients
50g teff flour
20g coconut flour
394g bread flour
70g whole wheat flour
73g starter
422g water
10g salt

Mix and cover the dough. I did three stretch and folds in the first 90 minutes - at 45 minutes, 60 minutes and at 80 minutes. Now, with such a wet dough, the stretch and fold will be less doughy than with a less hydrated dough. Also, remember to wet your hands before manipulating this dough so that it will not stick to your hands. 

I let the dough sit for three hours in a warm kitchen, maybe 70 degrees. As this bread was being made by feel, pretty much, I looked at that dough quite frequently, staring at it, pondering whether to hold tight or move on.

Pause- advice for when you're in New York
Not sure why it felt important to get this bread done by evening when New York bagels were coming home via my husband's trip there. You can't buy just enough bagels. No, buy a dozen - make that a baker's dozen - and then freeze them. But the real reason to buy a bagel is to make a delicious platform for fish so sublime you will groan when you eat it. I'm not kidding, we actually scream out, exiled New Yorkers that we are, about how good it is.

First, a schmear, a thin layer of cream cheese, followed by red onion pieces flattened. Then the fish - some baked salmon (called kippered salmon in DC); be generous; followed by thin, translucent, freshly sliced nova lox. Do not buy anything packaged or even sliced that morning. That is not fresh. That is a reason to give a dirty look, as in are you kidding me? That's so far from fresh it does not dignify an explanation.

No, go to a place where they slice in front of you and so thinly that you have pantyhose thicker, definitely tights, than what is being cut. While you eat, appreciate, and keep munching between bites on tastes of the baked salmon without any embellishment, just on a fork, or, really, on your finger. If you are lucky, very lucky, or skilled you will make bread that gives you the same sublime happiness as a nice bagel with lox and baked salmon. Now that is eating.

(If you're a tourist, 72nd Street Bagel, on 72nd between Broadway and Columbus, is very good and close to the park. They'll make something decent for you.)

Baking preparation
The dough rose very nicely in the three hours and with that good puffiness from emerging bubbles, large and small. Did a stretch and fold on a well-floured board and left the dough covered for 15 minutes. It spread. Use plenty of flour, more than usual, for covering hands and board. I'll be repetitive. This is a wet dough.

After 15 minutes, I shaped the dough, though the wetness meant that no shape would be sustained without some structure. I shaped, using more flour for the cutting board, and left the dough covered for another hour. 

Preheat the oven to 500 degrees with the dutch oven inside. I figured the dutch oven would give the shape that the dough could not hold on its own. Before putting the dough in, I did the slash while it sat on the board instead of dealing with the intense heat with the oven and dutch oven open. That thing can generate a scary heat.

After plopping the dough in the dutch oven and quickly covering it, I reduced the oven temperature to 460 degrees. That dough plopped on the side of the dutch oven had no shape whatsoever. Worried. I quickly took off to pick up my husband at the local train station, leaving my daughter nominally in charge of the oven situation. This is what cell phones are for. I took the kitchen timer with me, returning with four minutes to spare. Total oven time was 44 minutes, with the last two uncovered. (Oh don't judge that I left a neophyte in charge of the bread. I had two non-negotiable, simultaneous tasks: my husband returning home and my dough ready for the oven. Due to the timer and cell phone, neither had to be sacrificed.)

One nice bread

Lovely oven spring. Gorgeous crust. I did not listen because we were in a rush to eat the bagels and the lox sliced by my favorite Zabar's guy. The next morning, I had my favorite day-off breakfast of hot water and buttered bread (okay, I do that at the office as well). OMG great! The crust had almost a malted taste and such crunchy crust. Sublime. Can't wait to eat more. (No comments from the peanut gallery about how my favorite breakfast is dangerously close to prison food).

P.S. A second try at this bread almost resulted in disaster. I did the final stretch and fold, shaping, and final rise on wet surfaces, which went quite well, only to have the bread stuck to the bottom of the dutch oven at the end of baking. Fortunately, a couple of bread buddies on the freshloaf forum offered suggestions. After I followed their directions and loosened the bread (I'm not backing away from that position), my husband came along and swiftly liberated the loaf. I also did a long autolyse and a longer soak. Have to say, not my favorite combination of grains, but solidly good. Did not feel OMG great this time, perhaps due to fear that this bread almost did not make it unscathed out of the dutch oven.

Bread Number 63: Cornmeal /White Bread Good for Sandwiches

This cornmeal/white bread came out fine and if you are looking for something a little better than a homemade pure white bread for sandwiches, this is a good option. The bread is 26 percent cornmeal and 70 percent hydration (76 percent if you count the water plus the oil in the recipe).

This bread is essentially a redo of the cornmeal bread by Hamelman in Bread that I made in bread #59, which were blue cornmeal rolls. Lovely as the blue was, somehow I wanted to experience the bread with non-primary-colored cornmeal and I bought a whole grain white cornmeal this time.

A bread for picky eaters, perhaps
I have to say I was not wowed by this one, but it might be a good fit for families with picky eaters who need school lunch sandwiches. I actually started making sandwich bread in my bread machine days to replace the supermarket, disgusting, potato sandwich bread that my children liked. Turned out they liked homemade bread more. Check one for parental success.

Ingredients

Sponge
50g starter (at 60 to 70 percent hydration)
114g water
114g bread flour
Cover and leave out. Good for an all-day or overnight rest period.

Soaker
114g cornmeal
174g water
Mix and leave for 15 minutes.

Dough
176g bread flour
23g oil
8g salt
soaker
sponge

Sponge likes a warm kitchen
Mix, cover, and let rest for 12 to 16 hours, except for unusually warm kitchens. I was prepared for a 16-hour rest for the sponge due to a cold, winter kitchen that would essentially be almost like a fridge overnight, but this was yet another night when one of us (we are all bad on this) forgot to turn down the heat in the kitchen. The sponge did not mind and was discovered in a bubbly, exuberant state after nine hours. Smiling and ready, it demanded immediate progress toward full dough development.

One minute to mix the soaker and 15 minutes to rest in the bowl. The dough took a good bit of mixing. I added a little less flour than in the Hamelman recipe because of the low hydration percentage of my starter. Translation: My starter is on the thick side and not viscous at all.

Just two stretch and folds
I did just one stretch and fold at 45 minutes for a 90-minute rise. Then one more at the end of the rise.

Let rest and cover for 15 minutes. I shaped the dough and put it into a loaf pan. Then cover. Why a loaf pan? The dough did not seem to be holding its own, structure-wise, so the support of a loaf pan was in order to save this one.

Preheat and don't do the dent test
Preheat the oven for one hour to 500 degrees. I also preheat the top of the oblong la cloche, which will fit - though not well - over the loaf pan, and allow for a nice oven spring.

There is no dent test, though I tried. The dough was simply too sticky. No matter; this has happened before and a respectable bread resulted.

Upon putting the dough into the oven, reduce the temperature immediately to 460 degrees. The bread took 36 minutes with the loaf pan.

And?
Nice, nice oven spring. A good taste if you like white bread. Not overly impressed, but a decent bread.

Bread #65: Arrowroot, Cornmeal and Barley Combine for Delicious White Bread

This bread is made mostly with white bread flour, but one quarter of the flour has a surprisingly tasty variety of flavors. Arrowroot flour, barley flour and cornmeal contribute to a not-at-all boring white bread that is topped with oats and caraway seeds. 

Lovely crumb and delicious.

Ingredients

Sponge
95g water
62g starter
52g arrowroot flour
47g bread flour
20g barley flour 
Mix and leave out covered all day or overnight. 

Soaker
18g cornmeal
200g water
Mix and let rest for 15 minutes.

Autolyse
10g cornmeal
277g bread flour
Either split the water between the soaker and the autolyse, to do both phases at the same time. Or do the soaker first and add it to the autolyse mixture.
Mix, cover and let rest for 20 minutes to a half hour.

Dough
Sponge
Soaker
Autolyse
10g salt 
Add everything, plus the bit of salt called for, and mix thoroughly.

Sponge overnight - but check the heat in the kitchen
Combine the sponge ingredients and leave covered on the kitchen counter either all day or overnight. Good thing I woke up before dawn while on a winter-break from work because someone inadvertently left on the heat all night (no accusations or crying over spilled milk as the kitchen was deliciously warm). In the warm kitchen, the sponge took 10.3 hours to get to a nice bubbly ripe state. I had expected the sponge to be ready somewhere in the vicinity of 9 to 11 a.m., but a peek before 7 a.m. revealed a weirdly warm kitchen for a winter morning and a sponge that was practically shouting I am ready to become part of a wonderful dough. Hurry up already!

I stayed awake to make the dough - promising myself a nice nap as reward. Vacation time at home is a precious and enjoyable treat. So nice to sneak a nap into the middle of a winter day, especially a nap with the dog.

Soaker and autolyse at the same time
Tell the sponge to hold its horses and prepare the soaker and the autolyse, preferably so that they are resting at the same time. I did not do that.

The soaker will need to rest for 15 minutes and only takes a minute to prepare. No cover is necessary. The autolyse should sit for 20 to 30 minutes and will require a few minutes of mixing to fully blend the flour and water. I did the soaker first and added it to the autolyse mixture. My autolyse did not incorporate all of the flour; it was very dry, but it still had some nice gluten development. I resisted the urge to add more water because the eventual mixing into the sponge possibly would supply all needed moisture. Cover and let autolyse rest for 20 minutes. 

Dough gathers everything 
To make the dough, put together the sponge, autolyse and the soaker. Sprinkle the salt on top and then mix thoroughly. This will take some effort; get those hands - wet first - in the dough. Do three stretch and folds over the course of 60 to 90 minutes. I did mine at 30-minute intervals. The dough developed nice strength. I covered it and let rise on the counter for two and a half hours. 

Went to the farmers market, ate breakfast, read, and needed to cash in on that nap. I looked at the dough and it looked at me. It had risen well. We decided it needed to be shaped and take a hiatus in the fridge. This would take all anxiety out of the nap. I floured a cutting board, gathered the corners of the dough, and shaped it into a boule. I took out my handy round small wicker basket and lined it with a well-floured kitchen towel. On the flour, I dumped a nice sprinkling (no measure taken) of caraway seeds and oats. I put the top of the dough onto the lined bottom of the basket, covered, and placed the dough basket in the fridge for an uncertain period.

I left the dough basket in the fridge for several hours later - 6.7 to be exact.

Oven and dough preparation
Preheat oven and top of la cloche for one hour at 470 degrees. After the hour preheat, I took the dough almost straight from the fridge to the oven. Just a set of slashes on top and putting the dough on some parchment paper that was waiting on a baking peel. 

I removed the parchment paper after 30 minutes, but kept the bread covered with the top of the la cloche for the whole time. The bread only took 39 minutes, not much for a boule at 470 degrees.

Yummy
Beautiful, loud crinkly sounds emanated from the freshly baked bread. It was gorgeous as well with respectable oven spring. The bread made a delicious breakfast the next morning. Great, great taste. And though the bread looked all white, it had some decent whole grain participation.

 
It was so good that I did not take the time to shoot some photos of its lovely, truly impressive, crumb. I just wanted to keep eating.
  

#1 Bread Recipe Template

My go-to recipe when I am overwhelmed or busy with aspects of life beyond bread making is Bread #38, which I have adapted time and time again for making 20 to 50 percent whole grain breads. It is always a miracle to me when oven spring occurs and doughs turn into delicious breads. This recipe template is 100 percent successful. It doesn't matter that I am an imperfect baker, making various mistakes along the way; the breads turn out fantastic.

Now Bread #38 was a white bread, but almost every bread I have made since based on its approach has been partly whole grain. The major adjustment is adding more water. Just this week, I made two breads, a rye and a whole wheat, both of which came out of the oven looking so lovely that I found myself not wanting to ruin them by slicing them up for eating. If Plato were conceiving the ideal loaf of bread, these two would be top contenders. 

Three easy steps
1. Make the sponge in the evening, put it in the fridge, and take it out the next morning. Let it mature, making lots of happy bubbles, throughout the day. Come home to a gorgeous, lively sponge.
2. Mix the sponge, some more flour, water, and salt to make the dough. Over the next hour to an hour and a half, do some stretch and folds. Notice the evolution of the dough along the way. Usually four stretch and folds, but fewer for a rye dough. Details below.
3. At the end of step #2, shape the dough and put it in the fridge for 24 hours, more or less (I'm pretty elastic on this measure). Heat up the oven and put in the already shaped dough. Remove from oven when dough is fully baked.

There you are. The approach is about as friendly as possible for incorporating bread making into a normal life. 

Sponge
100g starter - I have made this dough with much, much less (down to 10 grams of starter) during the summer months. Just remember to adjust the amounts of flour and water when reducing the amount of starter.
200g water
200g bread flour

Dough
125g water for breads that are 20 to 50 percent whole grain, but adjust accordingly (100g water if using all white flour)
200g whole wheat or other whole grain flour
100g bread flour
I used a rye starter for one of my breads, in which case I added only 50 grams of rye flour and put in 250 grams of bread flour. For the rye, I also added 1 tablespoon of caraway seeds. I'm not boasting when I say that I can't conceive of rye without the seeds.
10g salt
add the sponge

Mix well. Cover.

Stretching and folding
The classic form of the recipe calls for four stretch and folds over the course of an hour to an hour and a half. Keep this regimen for whole grains. EXCEPT - rye breads. For the rye version, even at only 20 to 30 percent rye, do just two stretch and folds - very gingerly - over the course of an hour and a half.

Once the stretching and folding is done, shape the dough, cover it, and place it in the refrigerator for the next roughly 24 hours. I have to admit that I've reduced this to 18 and increased the duration to 30 hours with fine results.

The next day
An hour prior to baking, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. If using a la cloche or dutch oven, preheat that as well. I sometimes bake at 500 degrees, sometimes at 475 degrees. For the rye dough, however, reduce immediately to 465 degrees and decrease once again at 15 minutes to 440 degrees. Another confession - I forgot to do the second decrease on the rye this time to no ill effect. There is a but. I baked for much less time because I made the bread in a baguette shape, which takes about one quarter less time than if I had been making a boule.

Timing
The boule baking time is about 40 to 45 minutes. For a baguette shape, and a thick one at that, the bread took only 30 to 32 minutes to bake.

The oven spring is beautiful and the bread itself is fabulous - each and every time. 

This is it, my go-to bread. Can't miss.