I like spelt and I like it better when the bread is 100 percent spelt rather than partly spelt. I'm not that way with rye or whole wheat. I am flexible with those. So this time, I went all the way and made a new starter. This took a couple of extra days, but I learned something about spelt. Spelt flour requires less water than wheat in both the starter and the dough. I found myself adding spelt flour a few times.
Only 10 or 20 grams of regular starter will jumpstart the new one without having to go through the effort and anxiety of creating a starter from scratch. In the evening, I added to the bit of starter to about 50g of water and 50g of spelt flour and the spelt starter was happy in the morning, though a bit on the wet side.
Sponge
133g spelt starter
186g slept flour
186g water
Mix, cover, and put in fridge overnight. Forgot to take it out in the morning and left it in the fridge for 25 hours. Took it out in the evening and got rid of excess liquid and added 10g spelt flour. Left out the sponge for eight hours. Then put sponge back in fridge to make dough that evening. Life gets in the way of bread.
Dough
302g spelt flour
11g salt
110g water
Mix and mix ingredients with sponge until all doughy and uniform. I did three stretch and folds at intervals of 15 to 30 minutes. I then covered the dough and put it in the fridge for 24 hours.
Baking
Preheated oblong la cloche in oven at 475 degrees for one hour. Took out dough and shaped it for oblong bread. Did a few slashes on top. Rolled bottom of dough in rice flour and sprinkled rice flour - generous amount - onto bottom - especially corners - of oblong la cloche.
Baking time a surprising 43 minutes. Usually breads take less time for that shape. I thought the taste was great. The spouse's review was eh okay. Translation: Better than normal bakery bread, but nothing extraordinary. He has become too accustomed to a regular diet of homemade bread; plus, he is a rye man and nothing else pleases him quite like a good rye. I still love the spelt.
loaf of bread
Showing posts with label Spelt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spelt. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Thursday, March 24, 2016
Bread Number 88: Lovely Multiple of Four for My Group of Four Peaceable Writing Compatriots
It's 8:30 a.m. and I have a challah dough almost ready for braiding, a sponge sitting on the counter - made this morning - and the flour for that dough ground and protected in the freezer in a ziplock bag. I'll come home late this afternoon from the husband's minor surgery and finish that dough. The challah will be baked and cooling off by 10.
Just because I have not been working on this blog does not mean an absence of home-baked bread. I've been so busy with research and projects at work, so accustomed to and in the rhythm of making favorite breads, so procrastinating - oh yes - the upcoming challah challenge to finish up the 108, that writing here has taken a seat way back in the bus.
For you, my writing lady pals
From time to time during monthly dinners and writing critiques that are the rituals of the Blockheads, my writing group, I keep my pals up to date on the 108-bread project. They have been known to bite into and enjoy the fruits of this quest. About a month ago, they laid down a challenge. That challenge was to make a bread dedicated to them, a bread especially for them. But of course.
Four of us and 88 the next number - kismet. I would make a bread with four kinds of grains and two kinds of seeds and enjoy the mathematical loveliness of the number 88. Perhaps something took exactly 11 minutes along the way. Really not sure.
I bought whole wheat, rye, spelt, and farro berries, which can be used to make food other than bread, though I have not yet tried any of those. I made my usual sponge, described below, used my flour mill machine (a piece of genius), and mixed up a dough with a wonderful aroma. I added caraway and sesame seeds. Next to my much-loved rye bread, I think this one is my favorite. And I am so glad that my writing pals supplied the idea. I dedicate this bread to them.
To Rose, Jill, and Franca: Women whose writing I always look forward to reading, whose company I enjoy, and whose analyses give food for thought.
This post is long overdue. I did the first try of bread #88 back in February and a second try three weeks ago. This is the recipe for the second try, which turned out to be a super delicious bread, at least to my happy taste buds.
Ingredients
Sponge
100g starter (100 percent hydration)
200g water
200g bread flour
I let the sponge rest for 10.5 hours in the kitchen.
Dough
150g whole wheat flour
84g spelt flour
40g rye flour
26g farro flour
11g salt
4g sesame seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)
4g caraway seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)
All of the whole-grain flours were freshly milled by my brilliant German flour milling machine.
Stretch and folds and resting
Yes, I've become blase, I do things somewhat by rote, but that's because I've succeeded already in this 108-bread quest. I've learned so much that I'm not thinking,pondering, considering every move. I've discovered good moves that work well and just need monitoring.
Usually I do four stretch and folds, each separated by 15 to 30 minutes. This time I did three. The dough was ready; it had a decent amount of rye and spelt, which do not seem to require as much manipulation. Sometimes the best instinct is to stop. I did three stretch and folds at 20 minutes apart. I slightly and quickly shaped the dough.
I put the dough bowl, covered, in the fridge for 24 hours. When I put the dough there, it was almost 7:30, a perfect time to bake the next evening.
Baking with rye and spelt
I did not go super high on the oven temperature here because of the rye and spelt, which, I've read and observed on breadtopia videos, do well significantly below 500 degrees. I preheated the oven - with the baking stone and top of la cloche inside - at 480 degrees.
I shaped the dough, sprinkled on some water, and then sprinkled more sesame and caraway seeds on top. I also made an X-slash on top. I admit that I have not gotten at all creative on that part.
Upon putting the dough in the oven, I turned down the temperature to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes in, I turned it down further, to 440 degrees. I turned it off completely at 37 minutes. (That's a result of a previous mistake that ended up being spectacular.)
Total baking time: 42 minutes.
Taste: Fantastic. One of my favorites. Everyone seemed to like it.
End note: I have to get back to putting in photographs. I miss the visual element. I like looking at bread and slices photos.
Just because I have not been working on this blog does not mean an absence of home-baked bread. I've been so busy with research and projects at work, so accustomed to and in the rhythm of making favorite breads, so procrastinating - oh yes - the upcoming challah challenge to finish up the 108, that writing here has taken a seat way back in the bus.
For you, my writing lady pals
From time to time during monthly dinners and writing critiques that are the rituals of the Blockheads, my writing group, I keep my pals up to date on the 108-bread project. They have been known to bite into and enjoy the fruits of this quest. About a month ago, they laid down a challenge. That challenge was to make a bread dedicated to them, a bread especially for them. But of course.
Four of us and 88 the next number - kismet. I would make a bread with four kinds of grains and two kinds of seeds and enjoy the mathematical loveliness of the number 88. Perhaps something took exactly 11 minutes along the way. Really not sure.
I bought whole wheat, rye, spelt, and farro berries, which can be used to make food other than bread, though I have not yet tried any of those. I made my usual sponge, described below, used my flour mill machine (a piece of genius), and mixed up a dough with a wonderful aroma. I added caraway and sesame seeds. Next to my much-loved rye bread, I think this one is my favorite. And I am so glad that my writing pals supplied the idea. I dedicate this bread to them.
To Rose, Jill, and Franca: Women whose writing I always look forward to reading, whose company I enjoy, and whose analyses give food for thought.
This post is long overdue. I did the first try of bread #88 back in February and a second try three weeks ago. This is the recipe for the second try, which turned out to be a super delicious bread, at least to my happy taste buds.
Ingredients
Sponge
100g starter (100 percent hydration)
200g water
200g bread flour
I let the sponge rest for 10.5 hours in the kitchen.
Dough
150g whole wheat flour
84g spelt flour
40g rye flour
26g farro flour
11g salt
4g sesame seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)
4g caraway seeds (plus more for the top of dough when baking)
All of the whole-grain flours were freshly milled by my brilliant German flour milling machine.
Stretch and folds and resting
Yes, I've become blase, I do things somewhat by rote, but that's because I've succeeded already in this 108-bread quest. I've learned so much that I'm not thinking,pondering, considering every move. I've discovered good moves that work well and just need monitoring.
Usually I do four stretch and folds, each separated by 15 to 30 minutes. This time I did three. The dough was ready; it had a decent amount of rye and spelt, which do not seem to require as much manipulation. Sometimes the best instinct is to stop. I did three stretch and folds at 20 minutes apart. I slightly and quickly shaped the dough.
I put the dough bowl, covered, in the fridge for 24 hours. When I put the dough there, it was almost 7:30, a perfect time to bake the next evening.
Baking with rye and spelt
I did not go super high on the oven temperature here because of the rye and spelt, which, I've read and observed on breadtopia videos, do well significantly below 500 degrees. I preheated the oven - with the baking stone and top of la cloche inside - at 480 degrees.
I shaped the dough, sprinkled on some water, and then sprinkled more sesame and caraway seeds on top. I also made an X-slash on top. I admit that I have not gotten at all creative on that part.
Upon putting the dough in the oven, I turned down the temperature to 460 degrees. At 15 minutes in, I turned it down further, to 440 degrees. I turned it off completely at 37 minutes. (That's a result of a previous mistake that ended up being spectacular.)
Total baking time: 42 minutes.
Taste: Fantastic. One of my favorites. Everyone seemed to like it.
End note: I have to get back to putting in photographs. I miss the visual element. I like looking at bread and slices photos.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Bread Number 74: First Try with Hodgepodge Beer Bread
Others tell me that beer bread dough rises the same way and with the same timing as their other doughs. I must be living in the twilight zone then because each time I use beer, the bread takes three days to rise. Now even if the coldness of the beer slows down the process, the beer is certainly warm a couple of hours later.
This time the starter was lively, there was a nice mix of flours, the hydration percentage was 78, and yet the dough rising time was already at 38 hours when I left home this morning. What's another day?
I used 50 percent whole grains because I ran out of whole wheat and spelt flours. I also added about 40 grams of cornmeal. Plus, of course, the bottle of beer. Stella Artois. My husband thought it would be the right lightness to go well in a bread.
Two days later
Now, on baking day, the dough will have been in the fridge for 54 hours. Not much hope for this one. Already contemplating a re-do.
Results were not the disaster expected. Despite a dough that rose somewhat, but was flat, at the end of a long - patient on my part - bulk fermentation, there was respectable oven spring. Perhaps due to the extended four-day fermentation, with two days on the counter and two in the fridge, the bread had a decidedly sour taste. I liked it, but it did go overboard.
Definitely will do this one again this weekend. This time, I plan to let the beer get to room temperature before mixing it with the other dough ingredients. Hoping the spouse is willing to donate another beer to the effort. Otherwise I will be compelled to actually purchase some for the first time.
Recipe after the do over
I will write up the recipe after trying this one again. Starting to think that my kitchen is located in a no-beer-baking zone.
In other news, I am researching storage times for whole grain flours. Nothing much for storage except to keep the flours in dry, cool, places. I put mine in ziplock bags in the freezer. What I am curious about is whether there is data on average times that whole grain flours, whether in bulk or from small producers, sit on grocery store and supermarket shelves.
Update - the recipe
Because I ended up making a new bread instead of a do over of this bread, I wanted to add the recipe to this post.
330g beer
35g starter
100g whole wheat flour
100g spelt flour
200g bread flour
10g flaxseed meal
9g salt
Mixed, covered, and let sit for 38 hours. Refrigerated for 51 hours. So many hours = very sour taste. Baked at 475 degrees for 45 minutes with dutch oven. Boy that thing gets hot. Needed oven mitts AND pot holders.
This time the starter was lively, there was a nice mix of flours, the hydration percentage was 78, and yet the dough rising time was already at 38 hours when I left home this morning. What's another day?
I used 50 percent whole grains because I ran out of whole wheat and spelt flours. I also added about 40 grams of cornmeal. Plus, of course, the bottle of beer. Stella Artois. My husband thought it would be the right lightness to go well in a bread.
Two days later
Now, on baking day, the dough will have been in the fridge for 54 hours. Not much hope for this one. Already contemplating a re-do.
Results were not the disaster expected. Despite a dough that rose somewhat, but was flat, at the end of a long - patient on my part - bulk fermentation, there was respectable oven spring. Perhaps due to the extended four-day fermentation, with two days on the counter and two in the fridge, the bread had a decidedly sour taste. I liked it, but it did go overboard. Definitely will do this one again this weekend. This time, I plan to let the beer get to room temperature before mixing it with the other dough ingredients. Hoping the spouse is willing to donate another beer to the effort. Otherwise I will be compelled to actually purchase some for the first time.
Recipe after the do over
I will write up the recipe after trying this one again. Starting to think that my kitchen is located in a no-beer-baking zone.
In other news, I am researching storage times for whole grain flours. Nothing much for storage except to keep the flours in dry, cool, places. I put mine in ziplock bags in the freezer. What I am curious about is whether there is data on average times that whole grain flours, whether in bulk or from small producers, sit on grocery store and supermarket shelves.
Update - the recipe
Because I ended up making a new bread instead of a do over of this bread, I wanted to add the recipe to this post.
330g beer
35g starter
100g whole wheat flour
100g spelt flour
200g bread flour
10g flaxseed meal
9g salt
Mixed, covered, and let sit for 38 hours. Refrigerated for 51 hours. So many hours = very sour taste. Baked at 475 degrees for 45 minutes with dutch oven. Boy that thing gets hot. Needed oven mitts AND pot holders.
Monday, February 23, 2015
Spelt favorite: hot vs. cold kitchen
Kvetching in the cold
I have been sleeping with socks, undershirt, thick fleece pajamas, and even, last night, a scarf. Our old house is good to about 25 degrees, okay at 20, but not fit for single digits and zero-degree temperatures. Not at night with the heat turned down. Not with 1928 windows. Yesterday, I put the rising dough next to the warm oven just to give it a few extra degrees of warmth. Maybe I just wanted to keep checking it so I could stand in the warmest spot in the house.
I made my favorite spelt bread - bread #34 - with adjustments for the cold winter in which we find ourselves - luckily not in the six feet of snow of Boston or in the relentless freezing tundra of Chicago, but in Washington, DC (one block away), where the weather reporter tells you to bundle up at 30 degrees. The last time I made this bread it was 80 degrees in the still of the night and 95 or 100 during the day, a whole different experience. [Photo should say cold vs. hot kitchen, but wishful thinking took over.]
Temperature down, starter amount up
I quintupled the amount of the starter from 10 grams to 50. This time, the dough took longer to rise in a kitchen that was probably 65 to 70 degrees (next to that warm oven), but not much longer - 12.5 hours in the summer kitchen with 10 grams of starter vs. 13.25 hours in the winter kitchen with 50 grams of starter. I adjusted the flour and water accordingly.
Snowing again, but changing to sleet. Looks like North Dakota out my window.
Temperature up, motivation up
Yeah! 24 hours later, we are up to the freezing mark. The house feels warmer. Layers are shed. I wake and remove the dough from the fridge to begin baking preparation with a stretch and fold. Yes, only a one day respite before normal winter set in again, but we had hours of 56 degrees and sunshine. Shoveled snow in a t-shirt.
Ingredients
275g water
51g starter
425g spelt flour
10g salt
optional sesame seeds
Kind of autolyse
Mixed the starter, flour and water. Covered. Left for half hour, really due to my own timing needs rather than any reason of dough development. I say "kind of autolyse" because an autolyse should only be flour and water. But with sourdough starter that is only flour, water, and the friendly bacteria that reside in the jar, I figured this was not too much heresy.
Dough
Add salt to the dough and mix throughly. Do two stretch and folds, the first at 15 minutes and the second fifteen minutes after that. Cover and leave dough on counter for the first rise, or, as others call it, bulk fermentation.
The kitchen was somewhat cool throughout the day, so even with a few hours of a warmer kitchen in the late afternoon (while baking another bread),this dough took a long time to rise. I left it out for 13.45 hours. At that point, I was tired; it was very late. 10:30 p.m. - the 20-year-old me would be judging. I did not have any interest in staying awake for another couple of hours, so in the fridge went the dough.
Due to errands, shoveling of a new few inches of snow, and having some friends over, I kept that dough in the fridge for more than a day, for 34 hours to be exact. By now it was Sunday morning.
Baking preparation
Same as before. A stretch and fold, though I had to be quite gentle because the dough ripped pretty easily and did not want to have that. Used plenty of flour on the cutting board so the dough would not stick. Covered and left for 15 minutes. Shaped into a oval-ish boule and left covered on the cutting board for 75 minutes. I checked at one hour, but the dough did not respond at all to the dent test. Did not pop back at all.
Nervous because dough spread. Will there be oven spring?
At an expected one hour prior to expected baking time, turned out to be 75 minutes out, I preheated the oven to 455 degrees with the top of the la cloche and the baking stone.
Prior to placing, okay plopping, the dough onto the baking stone, I did a cross slash on top, sprinkled with water and then sprinkled generously with sesame seeds. I quickly plopped the dough and covered it with the top of the la cloche. Total oven time of 36 minutes, covered the whole time.
Yummmmm .... mmmy
Lovely oven spring and oh so delicious. Love spelt and love the sesame seed taste in the crunch of the crust. So, so good. Could not stop eating it. Still in love with this bread and happy it was easy to adjust from summer to winter by playing with starter amount and timing.
P.S. For the first time, our local Whole Foods had einkorn flour. Though it is just five or six weeks before Passover, when I should be thinking of finishing bags of flour, and though I already have plenty of flour in the house, I wanted to express my support for the store carrying this flour, and bought it.
P.P.S. Next up is a beer bread, though at this moment its integrity depends on my sleepy daughter calling me from home before she trots off to work, texting a photo of the dough (insufficiently risen when I left for work this morning), and my making the decision of whether to go for the fridge or leave the dough out for several more hours, until early evening. Do not want to waste a bottle of Brooklyn lager or a good dough, but you never know what surprise awaits when you take a risk.
I have been sleeping with socks, undershirt, thick fleece pajamas, and even, last night, a scarf. Our old house is good to about 25 degrees, okay at 20, but not fit for single digits and zero-degree temperatures. Not at night with the heat turned down. Not with 1928 windows. Yesterday, I put the rising dough next to the warm oven just to give it a few extra degrees of warmth. Maybe I just wanted to keep checking it so I could stand in the warmest spot in the house.
I made my favorite spelt bread - bread #34 - with adjustments for the cold winter in which we find ourselves - luckily not in the six feet of snow of Boston or in the relentless freezing tundra of Chicago, but in Washington, DC (one block away), where the weather reporter tells you to bundle up at 30 degrees. The last time I made this bread it was 80 degrees in the still of the night and 95 or 100 during the day, a whole different experience. [Photo should say cold vs. hot kitchen, but wishful thinking took over.]
Temperature down, starter amount up
I quintupled the amount of the starter from 10 grams to 50. This time, the dough took longer to rise in a kitchen that was probably 65 to 70 degrees (next to that warm oven), but not much longer - 12.5 hours in the summer kitchen with 10 grams of starter vs. 13.25 hours in the winter kitchen with 50 grams of starter. I adjusted the flour and water accordingly.
Snowing again, but changing to sleet. Looks like North Dakota out my window.
Temperature up, motivation up
Yeah! 24 hours later, we are up to the freezing mark. The house feels warmer. Layers are shed. I wake and remove the dough from the fridge to begin baking preparation with a stretch and fold. Yes, only a one day respite before normal winter set in again, but we had hours of 56 degrees and sunshine. Shoveled snow in a t-shirt.
Ingredients
275g water
51g starter
425g spelt flour
10g salt
optional sesame seeds
Kind of autolyse
Mixed the starter, flour and water. Covered. Left for half hour, really due to my own timing needs rather than any reason of dough development. I say "kind of autolyse" because an autolyse should only be flour and water. But with sourdough starter that is only flour, water, and the friendly bacteria that reside in the jar, I figured this was not too much heresy.
Dough
Add salt to the dough and mix throughly. Do two stretch and folds, the first at 15 minutes and the second fifteen minutes after that. Cover and leave dough on counter for the first rise, or, as others call it, bulk fermentation.
The kitchen was somewhat cool throughout the day, so even with a few hours of a warmer kitchen in the late afternoon (while baking another bread),this dough took a long time to rise. I left it out for 13.45 hours. At that point, I was tired; it was very late. 10:30 p.m. - the 20-year-old me would be judging. I did not have any interest in staying awake for another couple of hours, so in the fridge went the dough.
Due to errands, shoveling of a new few inches of snow, and having some friends over, I kept that dough in the fridge for more than a day, for 34 hours to be exact. By now it was Sunday morning.
Baking preparation
Nervous because dough spread. Will there be oven spring?
At an expected one hour prior to expected baking time, turned out to be 75 minutes out, I preheated the oven to 455 degrees with the top of the la cloche and the baking stone.
Prior to placing, okay plopping, the dough onto the baking stone, I did a cross slash on top, sprinkled with water and then sprinkled generously with sesame seeds. I quickly plopped the dough and covered it with the top of the la cloche. Total oven time of 36 minutes, covered the whole time.
Yummmmm .... mmmy
Lovely oven spring and oh so delicious. Love spelt and love the sesame seed taste in the crunch of the crust. So, so good. Could not stop eating it. Still in love with this bread and happy it was easy to adjust from summer to winter by playing with starter amount and timing.
P.S. For the first time, our local Whole Foods had einkorn flour. Though it is just five or six weeks before Passover, when I should be thinking of finishing bags of flour, and though I already have plenty of flour in the house, I wanted to express my support for the store carrying this flour, and bought it.
P.P.S. Next up is a beer bread, though at this moment its integrity depends on my sleepy daughter calling me from home before she trots off to work, texting a photo of the dough (insufficiently risen when I left for work this morning), and my making the decision of whether to go for the fridge or leave the dough out for several more hours, until early evening. Do not want to waste a bottle of Brooklyn lager or a good dough, but you never know what surprise awaits when you take a risk.
Wednesday, February 11, 2015
Bread Number 68: Exploring Anxiety Via Ancient Grains
Anxiety is a luxury when one is making one bread at a time
Even at bread #68, I hover over doughs, mired in pondering whether a dough is ready in one way or another. What has improved, I think, more than the accumulation of knowledge is the development of instinct. Though experts differ on ways to handle and develop doughs, the instinct that whispers wait or move forward is never wrong. Really - though not before seven in the morning.
The luxury of hovering over one piece of dough is the reason why I should never open a bread bakery. I would be in over my head dealing with 20 pieces of dough, and that per type of bread - AND every single day. Gives me a sinking feeling of gloom in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it.
I felt at one with my ancient foremothers with this bread of spelt and teff. Teff is the flour used to make the Ethiopian bread (pancake-like) injera. Both grains were used throughout the ancient world because they are easy to grow and to work with. Everything I have read endorses the view that ancient grains are healthy. There are plenty of sources that explain the details about health benefits. I won't waste time on that.
There is some white flour in this bread via my sourdough starter. I was not sufficiently ahead of the curve to grow a spelt sourdough starter, though that is easy and only takes a few days (taking a bit of the mother starter and feeding it with spelt or whatever flour you wish). [Photo: "bread" translated into Hebrew. An ancient language for an ancient set of flours. Rough transliteration is lechem for the word bread.]
Ingredients
Table with ingredient amounts and phases below.
Hydration percentage: 67 percent
All whole grains except for starter, which at 100 percent hydration, would be 26 grams of white flour; not too shabby.
Soaker
40g teff flour
46g water
I was going to do 100 percent hydration in the soaker, but some extra water spilled out of the cup into the bowl and I decided to let it stay. Mix and cover. I let the soaker sit for just under four hours (3.85 hours). I could see letting this soaker sit overnight.
Autolyse
225g water
380g spelt flour
Mix and cover. Let sit for 15 minutes. Then I added the salt because I went off for a few hours and I did not want further gluten development. I let this mixture sit for 3.75 hours. For ease of understanding, the salt is listed in the dough list.
Dough
soaker
autolyse
51g starter
10g salt
I mixed everything together, which took hands-on effort because the autolyse is pretty cohesive. I did two stretch and folds about 15 minutes apart. I covered the dough in between, of course. At 10:30 on a Saturday night (exciting nightlife), I covered the dough and left it on the counter in a cold, winter kitchen, which might as well have been the refrigerator. There was little dough progress.
On all other mornings ...
Why is it that on any regular day of the week I can hardly drag myself out of bed before seven, but on a morning when a dough is waiting I pop up at five or six in the morning? I have an internal alarm that goes off and prods me with curiosity to look at the dough. Even when I know little or nothing has happened because the kitchen is cold, I question whether the dough has over-risen because the dough is flat, though in this case because it has barely started to rise. And this after baking at least 200 loaves. Sometimes it feels like I am just as anxious as when I handled the first dough, as if I am gambling with time for a good bread.
At six a.m., the dough was flat and the bubbles seemed to be disappearing. It took hours of being in a warm kitchen for the dough to progress and for bubbles to emerge and for the dough to begin to appear airy. I am talking 2.5 hours. In total, I let the dough rest, covered, for 16.5 hours. At 16.5 hours, the dough was positively puffy. No doubt, the rest period would have been half that in a warmer kitchen.
Let's get outside
I did a stretch and fold, covered, and let the dough rest for 15 minutes. I then shaped it, put it on a well-floured kitchen towel, in a small round wicker basket, covered. I refrigerated the dough to give myself a chance for a nice long walk on the sole warm day this winter. Could not miss that.
Three hours later, I removed the dough basket from the fridge. I let it sit out for 90 minutes.
Preheat the oven one hour prior to baking at 455 degrees. I preheated the oven with the dutch oven inside. Even prior to putting the dough in the oven I was second-guessing the decision to mix teff and spelt. As teff is not a flour to expect any rise from, I was already curious whether better results would come from mixing it with wheat flour.
Carefully handle the hot dutch oven. Plop the dough inside without burning yourself. Make that cross slash in the dough. I am having slash envy as I see artful designs on twitter photos of breads; some intense creative dough slashing at those English bakeries.
Baking
Heat at 455 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 420 degrees. Bake for another 29 minutes. Total baking time of 44 minutes. I actually removed the top of the dutch oven for the last four minutes.
What is perfection anyway?
Not the most fantastic oven spring, but respectable. Fantastic taste. Lovely color. Found myself missing a platonic ideal of oven spring, something I should let go of. Again, taste, taste, taste. Can't get enough of this one. Maybe I would add less teff if mixing with spelt again. Curious to try teff with whole wheat and even with white flour.
Here is the ingredients table, which lists when each ingredient was added.
P.S. Spouse's verdict: He likes the breads that rise more. Not a fan of density, even delicious density. All so subjective. I was actually pretty impressed with my handiwork.
P.P.S. The Escali scale is working perfectly fine and was miffed that I insulted its tare function (getting back to zero and staying there) in the previous post. Still, the scale is pleased with my dependence and has gotten over its irritability. I believe this is because I treat it well by keeping it clean and trying to be gentle with it. The scale is aware of my need for it, but knows that our situation may change. It fears that like my grandmother and great-grandmother before me, who never employed any type of scale, that I could graduate to the level of instinct. It wants to be the shiny, dependable gadget, likely jealous of the Danish whisk.
Even at bread #68, I hover over doughs, mired in pondering whether a dough is ready in one way or another. What has improved, I think, more than the accumulation of knowledge is the development of instinct. Though experts differ on ways to handle and develop doughs, the instinct that whispers wait or move forward is never wrong. Really - though not before seven in the morning.
The luxury of hovering over one piece of dough is the reason why I should never open a bread bakery. I would be in over my head dealing with 20 pieces of dough, and that per type of bread - AND every single day. Gives me a sinking feeling of gloom in the pit of my stomach just thinking about it.
I felt at one with my ancient foremothers with this bread of spelt and teff. Teff is the flour used to make the Ethiopian bread (pancake-like) injera. Both grains were used throughout the ancient world because they are easy to grow and to work with. Everything I have read endorses the view that ancient grains are healthy. There are plenty of sources that explain the details about health benefits. I won't waste time on that.
Ingredients
Table with ingredient amounts and phases below.
Hydration percentage: 67 percent
All whole grains except for starter, which at 100 percent hydration, would be 26 grams of white flour; not too shabby.
Soaker
40g teff flour
46g water
I was going to do 100 percent hydration in the soaker, but some extra water spilled out of the cup into the bowl and I decided to let it stay. Mix and cover. I let the soaker sit for just under four hours (3.85 hours). I could see letting this soaker sit overnight.
Autolyse
225g water
380g spelt flour
Mix and cover. Let sit for 15 minutes. Then I added the salt because I went off for a few hours and I did not want further gluten development. I let this mixture sit for 3.75 hours. For ease of understanding, the salt is listed in the dough list.
Dough
soaker
autolyse
51g starter
10g salt
I mixed everything together, which took hands-on effort because the autolyse is pretty cohesive. I did two stretch and folds about 15 minutes apart. I covered the dough in between, of course. At 10:30 on a Saturday night (exciting nightlife), I covered the dough and left it on the counter in a cold, winter kitchen, which might as well have been the refrigerator. There was little dough progress.
On all other mornings ...
Why is it that on any regular day of the week I can hardly drag myself out of bed before seven, but on a morning when a dough is waiting I pop up at five or six in the morning? I have an internal alarm that goes off and prods me with curiosity to look at the dough. Even when I know little or nothing has happened because the kitchen is cold, I question whether the dough has over-risen because the dough is flat, though in this case because it has barely started to rise. And this after baking at least 200 loaves. Sometimes it feels like I am just as anxious as when I handled the first dough, as if I am gambling with time for a good bread.
At six a.m., the dough was flat and the bubbles seemed to be disappearing. It took hours of being in a warm kitchen for the dough to progress and for bubbles to emerge and for the dough to begin to appear airy. I am talking 2.5 hours. In total, I let the dough rest, covered, for 16.5 hours. At 16.5 hours, the dough was positively puffy. No doubt, the rest period would have been half that in a warmer kitchen.
Let's get outside
I did a stretch and fold, covered, and let the dough rest for 15 minutes. I then shaped it, put it on a well-floured kitchen towel, in a small round wicker basket, covered. I refrigerated the dough to give myself a chance for a nice long walk on the sole warm day this winter. Could not miss that.
Three hours later, I removed the dough basket from the fridge. I let it sit out for 90 minutes.
Carefully handle the hot dutch oven. Plop the dough inside without burning yourself. Make that cross slash in the dough. I am having slash envy as I see artful designs on twitter photos of breads; some intense creative dough slashing at those English bakeries.
Baking
Heat at 455 degrees for 15 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 420 degrees. Bake for another 29 minutes. Total baking time of 44 minutes. I actually removed the top of the dutch oven for the last four minutes.
What is perfection anyway?
Here is the ingredients table, which lists when each ingredient was added.
| INGREDIENT | SOAKER | AUTOLYSE | DOUGH | TOTALS |
| Water | 46 | 225 | 271 | |
| Spelt flour | 380 | 380 | ||
| Teff flour | 40 | 40 | ||
| Starter | 51 | 51 | ||
| Salt | 10 | 10 |
P.S. Spouse's verdict: He likes the breads that rise more. Not a fan of density, even delicious density. All so subjective. I was actually pretty impressed with my handiwork.
P.P.S. The Escali scale is working perfectly fine and was miffed that I insulted its tare function (getting back to zero and staying there) in the previous post. Still, the scale is pleased with my dependence and has gotten over its irritability. I believe this is because I treat it well by keeping it clean and trying to be gentle with it. The scale is aware of my need for it, but knows that our situation may change. It fears that like my grandmother and great-grandmother before me, who never employed any type of scale, that I could graduate to the level of instinct. It wants to be the shiny, dependable gadget, likely jealous of the Danish whisk.
Monday, November 3, 2014
Bread: Number 58 - Spelt/Rye on Okay Combination
I tried this recipe three times and three times it never got beyond mediocre. More than the rising and other issues I worked out, the taste combination just did not work. It was as if the heartiness of the rye and the natural almost sweetness of the spelt cancelled each other out. Perhaps also this continues my sub-par experience with the book the recipe comes from. Though there are nice grain and seed combinations in Wild Sourdough and I do like some of her baking wisdom and grain information, it's not working for me as a source of inspiration or great breads. [Note that the link is to my book review page and this review is toward the bottom. Here's a link to the book.]
What I did like about the recipe and the one good aspect of the taste was the sourness. The dough includes 300 grams of rye starter, which comes to approximately 20 percent of the total flour. It is a 3:2 starter - three parts water to two parts flour. It took about a week to build it up to 300 grams, so in addition to the effort and attention to making the bread, I spent time all week making sure to have the right amount of starter. No matter, I used the leftover rye starter in my starter hibernation-rejuvenation experiment. Not a loss.
And truth be told, it was not a bad bread, just not really good or great. Still, after three tries, not worth another one. I'll quickly relate the ingredients and instructions. I'm also collapsing the three tries into one narrative because who wants to read or write the details of three mediocre breads of the same ilk.
Ingredients
300 g starter - 3:2 ratio of water to flour
250g water
500g spelt flour
(on the third try, I ran out of spelt flour at 405g and added 50g bread flour and 45g whole wheat flour)
15g salt
Instructions
Mix all ingredients at once. Let rest for 20 to 30 minutes. The Wild Sourdough author recommends a kind of air-and-slap kneading, but I did a combination of kneading and stretch and fold, very little because rye is fragile and does not tends to be best when left alone. Perhaps that was part of the problem here.
You are supposed to check the dough after another 30-minutes rest, but the recipe fails to provide advice for what to do if the dough is in any way inadequate. Rise for four to six hours. Well, mine in a 65-to-70 degree kitchen was clocking in at nine hours when I finally said - enough, I want this bread made before I go to sleep. I even filled a bowl one-third way with hot water (not terribly hot) and put the dough bowl inside the water bowl so that the dough would get some warmth. It worked and the dough rose and prospered.
Turn on the oven
At a random time beyond six hours I wasted energy (mea culpa) by turning on the oven and keeping it on - way above 400 degrees - just because I did not know when the dough would be ready. When your kitchen is not at an absurdly cold or hot condition, shouldn't the dough be ready within the range of times given in a recipe? Just got cranky about the whole method recommended and came down to earth because rising times can vary considerably. Many recipes afford six hours of variation in a long rising time and I don't get snitty about that, after all.
Shape and bake - or not
I tried this recipe following and not following the instruction to shape and then bake. No joke, just an instant thought of shake-and-bake 70s bad food that my mother refused to buy and I was curious about, even desiring, at the time in a nine-to-14-year-old way. Shape and bake did not work. I tried stretch and fold, leave for 15 minutes, shape and rest for an hour. No difference. And the results either way were none too impressive upon doing the finger dent test.
Bake and taste
Preheated the oven to the recommended initial heat of 455 degrees, but also tried 500 for the initial phase, though that was not a trial run but rather a mistake. After 10 minutes decrease to 410 degrees. About 45 minutes total. None of the various methods or mistakes produced a wonderful bread.
Alas, who wants 108 great breads? The choice when deciding what to make would be overwhelming. It's preferable to have some lousy ones so one can remain humble, not consider oneself a bread-head genius and not be deer in the headlights with possible selection overload. Really, it's like being thankful for a bad haircut, but not one where you've had the beautiful tresses shorn off only to decide that a pixie is not for you. That is a disaster.
Update: Defrosted the half of the bread I had put away and on a second try (or maybe that's a fourth try), it actually tasted pretty good. Nice whole grains and a good sour from the large percentage of starter in the dough. Really enjoyed it.
What I did like about the recipe and the one good aspect of the taste was the sourness. The dough includes 300 grams of rye starter, which comes to approximately 20 percent of the total flour. It is a 3:2 starter - three parts water to two parts flour. It took about a week to build it up to 300 grams, so in addition to the effort and attention to making the bread, I spent time all week making sure to have the right amount of starter. No matter, I used the leftover rye starter in my starter hibernation-rejuvenation experiment. Not a loss.
And truth be told, it was not a bad bread, just not really good or great. Still, after three tries, not worth another one. I'll quickly relate the ingredients and instructions. I'm also collapsing the three tries into one narrative because who wants to read or write the details of three mediocre breads of the same ilk.
Ingredients
300 g starter - 3:2 ratio of water to flour
250g water
500g spelt flour
(on the third try, I ran out of spelt flour at 405g and added 50g bread flour and 45g whole wheat flour)
15g salt
Instructions
Mix all ingredients at once. Let rest for 20 to 30 minutes. The Wild Sourdough author recommends a kind of air-and-slap kneading, but I did a combination of kneading and stretch and fold, very little because rye is fragile and does not tends to be best when left alone. Perhaps that was part of the problem here.
You are supposed to check the dough after another 30-minutes rest, but the recipe fails to provide advice for what to do if the dough is in any way inadequate. Rise for four to six hours. Well, mine in a 65-to-70 degree kitchen was clocking in at nine hours when I finally said - enough, I want this bread made before I go to sleep. I even filled a bowl one-third way with hot water (not terribly hot) and put the dough bowl inside the water bowl so that the dough would get some warmth. It worked and the dough rose and prospered.
Turn on the oven
At a random time beyond six hours I wasted energy (mea culpa) by turning on the oven and keeping it on - way above 400 degrees - just because I did not know when the dough would be ready. When your kitchen is not at an absurdly cold or hot condition, shouldn't the dough be ready within the range of times given in a recipe? Just got cranky about the whole method recommended and came down to earth because rising times can vary considerably. Many recipes afford six hours of variation in a long rising time and I don't get snitty about that, after all.
Shape and bake - or not
I tried this recipe following and not following the instruction to shape and then bake. No joke, just an instant thought of shake-and-bake 70s bad food that my mother refused to buy and I was curious about, even desiring, at the time in a nine-to-14-year-old way. Shape and bake did not work. I tried stretch and fold, leave for 15 minutes, shape and rest for an hour. No difference. And the results either way were none too impressive upon doing the finger dent test.
Bake and taste
Preheated the oven to the recommended initial heat of 455 degrees, but also tried 500 for the initial phase, though that was not a trial run but rather a mistake. After 10 minutes decrease to 410 degrees. About 45 minutes total. None of the various methods or mistakes produced a wonderful bread.
Alas, who wants 108 great breads? The choice when deciding what to make would be overwhelming. It's preferable to have some lousy ones so one can remain humble, not consider oneself a bread-head genius and not be deer in the headlights with possible selection overload. Really, it's like being thankful for a bad haircut, but not one where you've had the beautiful tresses shorn off only to decide that a pixie is not for you. That is a disaster.
Update: Defrosted the half of the bread I had put away and on a second try (or maybe that's a fourth try), it actually tasted pretty good. Nice whole grains and a good sour from the large percentage of starter in the dough. Really enjoyed it.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Breads - Numbers 47-52: Finding My Way Okay Without a Digital Scale
I have so lost my mojo that these breads were made when snow was on the ground and not a blossom had poked through the soil. Now we're on the cusp of summer. I have still been making breads, just old recipes. In fact , this week I just made a 100 percent spelt with a 24-hour first rise and a tiny bit of sourdough culture. Nice.
By the last month or so before my bat mitzvah, which was a couple of weekends ago, I totally devoted myself to that effort and left the bread aside. Except for a Jennifer Lawrence moment on the steps, everything went well. I took a week off before starting to study again. Now I have to get back to bread and other projects. Finally, way beyond age 13, I am ready for eighth grade, which, as those from New York City will shake their heads in agreement, I skipped along with many others. I therefore have no knowledge of earth science.
Bereft temporarily of a digital scale
After weeks of my mouth open and my eyes like a deer's facing a car's headlights, not knowing how to move, I figured that I had made breads before the digital scale entered my home and I could make breads until a fixed or a new scale crossed my threshold again. I used cups and teaspoons instead of grams, sometimes roughly calibrating weights to volume measurements, more educated guessing than anything else.
Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to find one's way. We get so dependent on numbers and formulas that we fail - or I fail at least - to pay attention to the real details, in this case, the texture of the dough and how it acts. We think that if we use exact amounts given in recipes that no more mental energy need be expended. Sometimes poor results do not mean that a recipe is bad, but rather the baker or the cook should have focused on the dough or the dish as it emerges, rather than on precise numbers.
Maybe that's why I have become over time a cook who throws things in rather than measuring. By the time I get to bread #108, will I be using handfuls and pinches - perhaps weighing them for others - and feeling my way to good breads? I don't know, but I realize that setting aside the exact measurements that the digital scale provides, at least every once in a while, is a fruitful exercise for concentrating on moisture, texture and appearance.
One more confession: As these breads were made closer and closer to Passover, mid-super spring cleaning with the distraction of preparing for the holiday and travels, and a laundry dryer that broke in the midst of all that. (From an environmental standpoint, after weeks of air drying the laundry and it not being so bad, I should actually purchase an outdoor drying rack and use it during the summer.) I was so busy that the few seconds to take a photograph of dough or bread seemed too time consuming.
Spelt always good
You have to love spelt. It works at 100 percent of the flour or in a hodgepodge of flours one is using to rid one's household of opened flour bags. Breads # 51 and 52 included spelt flour, with the latter mostly spelt. Both came out great.
Bread #51
Ingredients
1 cup starter (an unusually large amount for me)
1 1/4 cup white whole wheat flour (KAF)
1/4 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
Mixed and let rest for 25 minutes. Kneaded and did a stretch and fold; all together that amounted to three minutes. Very sticky, so I added the 1/4 cup bread flour listed in the ingredients.
I let the dough rest for another 25 minutes. Since it remained quite sticky, I added approximately two tablespoons of bread flour (not listed in ingredients). I kneaded in the extra flour and did one more stretch and fold.
I did two more stretch and folds of intervals of 25 minutes. I then shaped the dough into a somewhat baguette form so that I could later bake in the oblong la cloche. I let the dough rise in a couche-like, baguette-forming contraption for four hours. Much anxiety that this was too long to have waited.
Oven time
Preheated oven to 455 degrees for one hour. Heated the oven with the la cloche inside to make sure it was super hot, thus ready for the dough. At one hour, fearing maiming from placing the dough inside the ungodly hot la cloche, I opted instead to put the dough on parchment paper and place the parchment paper into the bottom of the oblong la cloche. Much easier and the bottom of the bread turned out just fine.
At 13 minutes, I reduced the temperature to 420 degrees and baked for another half hour, for a total of 43 minutes baking time. Beautiful! Way better than expected, lovely rustic-looking baguette. Solidly good taste. Husband happy that this shaped bread is much easier to cut than the boules.
Bread #52
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup starter
3 cups spelt flour
1 3/4 cups bread flour
2 tbsp. wheat bran
1 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
Mixed all ingredients and did three stretch and folds, two at 30-minute intervals and the last at 15 minutes. Let the dough sit, covered in plastic, overnight for approximately 11 hours. I put the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours until ready to bake. (Seems that when the exactitude of the digital scale is gone, everything else goes somewhat approximate as well.)
I love being able to take the dough from the fridge, shape it (unless already pre-shaped) and plop it in the oven.
Baking
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees about an hour before baking. Preheated the oblong la cloche - both top and bottom - in the oven so it would be hot when dough placed inside.
I split the dough in half for two baguettes, rather squat ones that did not resemble the long thin professional ones sold at the local Whole Foods supermarket. I shaped each loaf and placed on parchment paper. Then I used a spousal gift that had been sitting in the pantry since way before the 108 breads project - a baguette shaper made of thin metal and full of tiny, presumably aerating, holes. Being of little faith, I used parchment paper over the metal.
One dough went immediately into the oven-heated oblong la cloche, while the other dough stayed in the shaper, but placed in the fridge until its turn with the oven.
Baked each baguette for 30 minutes, a good 12 to 15 minutes less than a boule would have needed. The taste was wonderful, a great and easy bread.
Breads #47 to #50
Forgettable is the operative word. I write down a couple of details just so I remember not to repeat these breads. I used vital wheat gluten in all of these recipes, so perhaps there is a lesson to be learned. Every other ingredient was pretty standard, which makes me think it was either that ingredient or the distractions of Passover cleanup and the upcoming bat mitzvah that led to edible, fine breads, though way short of spectacular.
These breads were #47, whole wheat; #48, combination of rye, whole wheat, and bread flour; and #49, white whole wheat and bread flour, the latter two with 1/4 cup each of flaxseeds as well.
Nothing more need be said. Why give instructions for mediocrity? Almost at the halfway mark to 108, I prefer to spend the time proceeding to new breads and techniques.
By the last month or so before my bat mitzvah, which was a couple of weekends ago, I totally devoted myself to that effort and left the bread aside. Except for a Jennifer Lawrence moment on the steps, everything went well. I took a week off before starting to study again. Now I have to get back to bread and other projects. Finally, way beyond age 13, I am ready for eighth grade, which, as those from New York City will shake their heads in agreement, I skipped along with many others. I therefore have no knowledge of earth science.
Bereft temporarily of a digital scale
After weeks of my mouth open and my eyes like a deer's facing a car's headlights, not knowing how to move, I figured that I had made breads before the digital scale entered my home and I could make breads until a fixed or a new scale crossed my threshold again. I used cups and teaspoons instead of grams, sometimes roughly calibrating weights to volume measurements, more educated guessing than anything else.
Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to find one's way. We get so dependent on numbers and formulas that we fail - or I fail at least - to pay attention to the real details, in this case, the texture of the dough and how it acts. We think that if we use exact amounts given in recipes that no more mental energy need be expended. Sometimes poor results do not mean that a recipe is bad, but rather the baker or the cook should have focused on the dough or the dish as it emerges, rather than on precise numbers.
Maybe that's why I have become over time a cook who throws things in rather than measuring. By the time I get to bread #108, will I be using handfuls and pinches - perhaps weighing them for others - and feeling my way to good breads? I don't know, but I realize that setting aside the exact measurements that the digital scale provides, at least every once in a while, is a fruitful exercise for concentrating on moisture, texture and appearance.
One more confession: As these breads were made closer and closer to Passover, mid-super spring cleaning with the distraction of preparing for the holiday and travels, and a laundry dryer that broke in the midst of all that. (From an environmental standpoint, after weeks of air drying the laundry and it not being so bad, I should actually purchase an outdoor drying rack and use it during the summer.) I was so busy that the few seconds to take a photograph of dough or bread seemed too time consuming.
Spelt always good
You have to love spelt. It works at 100 percent of the flour or in a hodgepodge of flours one is using to rid one's household of opened flour bags. Breads # 51 and 52 included spelt flour, with the latter mostly spelt. Both came out great.
Bread #51
Ingredients
1 cup starter (an unusually large amount for me)
1 1/4 cup white whole wheat flour (KAF)
1/4 cup spelt flour
1/2 cup bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
Mixed and let rest for 25 minutes. Kneaded and did a stretch and fold; all together that amounted to three minutes. Very sticky, so I added the 1/4 cup bread flour listed in the ingredients.
I let the dough rest for another 25 minutes. Since it remained quite sticky, I added approximately two tablespoons of bread flour (not listed in ingredients). I kneaded in the extra flour and did one more stretch and fold.
I did two more stretch and folds of intervals of 25 minutes. I then shaped the dough into a somewhat baguette form so that I could later bake in the oblong la cloche. I let the dough rise in a couche-like, baguette-forming contraption for four hours. Much anxiety that this was too long to have waited.
Oven time
Preheated oven to 455 degrees for one hour. Heated the oven with the la cloche inside to make sure it was super hot, thus ready for the dough. At one hour, fearing maiming from placing the dough inside the ungodly hot la cloche, I opted instead to put the dough on parchment paper and place the parchment paper into the bottom of the oblong la cloche. Much easier and the bottom of the bread turned out just fine.
At 13 minutes, I reduced the temperature to 420 degrees and baked for another half hour, for a total of 43 minutes baking time. Beautiful! Way better than expected, lovely rustic-looking baguette. Solidly good taste. Husband happy that this shaped bread is much easier to cut than the boules.
Bread #52
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup starter
3 cups spelt flour
1 3/4 cups bread flour
2 tbsp. wheat bran
1 1/2 tsp salt
Instructions
Mixed all ingredients and did three stretch and folds, two at 30-minute intervals and the last at 15 minutes. Let the dough sit, covered in plastic, overnight for approximately 11 hours. I put the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours until ready to bake. (Seems that when the exactitude of the digital scale is gone, everything else goes somewhat approximate as well.)
I love being able to take the dough from the fridge, shape it (unless already pre-shaped) and plop it in the oven.
Baking
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees about an hour before baking. Preheated the oblong la cloche - both top and bottom - in the oven so it would be hot when dough placed inside.
I split the dough in half for two baguettes, rather squat ones that did not resemble the long thin professional ones sold at the local Whole Foods supermarket. I shaped each loaf and placed on parchment paper. Then I used a spousal gift that had been sitting in the pantry since way before the 108 breads project - a baguette shaper made of thin metal and full of tiny, presumably aerating, holes. Being of little faith, I used parchment paper over the metal.
One dough went immediately into the oven-heated oblong la cloche, while the other dough stayed in the shaper, but placed in the fridge until its turn with the oven.
Baked each baguette for 30 minutes, a good 12 to 15 minutes less than a boule would have needed. The taste was wonderful, a great and easy bread.
Breads #47 to #50
Forgettable is the operative word. I write down a couple of details just so I remember not to repeat these breads. I used vital wheat gluten in all of these recipes, so perhaps there is a lesson to be learned. Every other ingredient was pretty standard, which makes me think it was either that ingredient or the distractions of Passover cleanup and the upcoming bat mitzvah that led to edible, fine breads, though way short of spectacular.
These breads were #47, whole wheat; #48, combination of rye, whole wheat, and bread flour; and #49, white whole wheat and bread flour, the latter two with 1/4 cup each of flaxseeds as well.
Nothing more need be said. Why give instructions for mediocrity? Almost at the halfway mark to 108, I prefer to spend the time proceeding to new breads and techniques.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Top 4 from the First 40
Top four breads: Like watching a good movie over and over
On the way to making 108 different types of breads I have discovered a few breads that I am making over and over because they taste wonderful and are easy to fit into a working - I spend the day at the office - schedule. These will be so popular that you will receive requests, perhaps even from family and friends who questioned why you would produce your own bread to begin with.
The following recipes all use sourdough starters, which are not complicated to create, maintain or use. I have an easy sourdough primer and links. Some of these bread recipes were adjusted for earlier recipes that I had made with commercial yeast. The sourdough culture has worked so well that I have not used store-bought yeast in almost a year - except for challahs, but that could be changing soon.
My favorite repeats
- drum roll, please ...
Rye bread - No surprise because I am from Brooklyn. You can't do better than a good rye. The New York genes in my children have made the recipe for bread #27 a big favorite.
Whole wheat sandwich bread - The secret ingredient in bread #32, a 100 percent whole wheat bread, is coconut oil. Make in a loaf pan. It is easy to slice.
Spelt bread - I am a spelt lover. It's not just me. Everyone adores breads made from the recipe for bread #34. This 100 percent spelt bread is not heavy at all.
and ... one more drum roll, please ... the new entrant -
White bread - Bread #38 comes out so well every time, is so perfectly matched to a busy schedule, and so amazing with its bubbling sponge and miraculously rising dough that I made it three times in rapid succession. Now I understand why bakers extol the virtues of white flours and white breads. I've already started to make variations on this recipe.
[I have now made a few variations of bread #38 (breads #40 to 42) and whole wheat-dominated variations do well. We did not care so much for the partial spelt variation.]
Celebrating the 40 mark
For Chanukah, my husband gave me a few bread-related gifts. Perhaps the best one is a 108 breads apron. I feel so established and professional wearing it. Already the apron is another talisman for good fortune in baking. The other gifts were an oblong la cloche, which I must figure out how to use, and a book, the Art of Fermentation, which threatens to turn me into a fermentation maniac. A review soon. Even though it is not a bread book per se, it is related. From a read through, the directions are less than thorough. I like a nice detailed instruction on anything that I have not tried before.
I am contemplating homemade sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables. Brad and I have been talking about a sauerkraut endeavor for over a year. If I het as far as making tempeh at home, I have gone a bit off of the deep end. Of course, it was not all that long ago I felt similarly about growing and maintaining a sourdough culture.
I doubt I will get past the sauerkraut, however, as I do work for a living. Going beyond sauerkraut would mean going into business to teach people and sell the fermented goodies. Something about the word fermented does not go with goodies, unless you are beer lover, but that's a whole other story.
Well, I will have to figure out when to use this lovely new oblong la cloche. My husband gets the first bread made with it, for sure.
On the way to making 108 different types of breads I have discovered a few breads that I am making over and over because they taste wonderful and are easy to fit into a working - I spend the day at the office - schedule. These will be so popular that you will receive requests, perhaps even from family and friends who questioned why you would produce your own bread to begin with.
My favorite repeats
- drum roll, please ...
Rye bread - No surprise because I am from Brooklyn. You can't do better than a good rye. The New York genes in my children have made the recipe for bread #27 a big favorite.
Whole wheat sandwich bread - The secret ingredient in bread #32, a 100 percent whole wheat bread, is coconut oil. Make in a loaf pan. It is easy to slice.
Spelt bread - I am a spelt lover. It's not just me. Everyone adores breads made from the recipe for bread #34. This 100 percent spelt bread is not heavy at all.
and ... one more drum roll, please ... the new entrant -
White bread - Bread #38 comes out so well every time, is so perfectly matched to a busy schedule, and so amazing with its bubbling sponge and miraculously rising dough that I made it three times in rapid succession. Now I understand why bakers extol the virtues of white flours and white breads. I've already started to make variations on this recipe.
[I have now made a few variations of bread #38 (breads #40 to 42) and whole wheat-dominated variations do well. We did not care so much for the partial spelt variation.]
Celebrating the 40 mark
For Chanukah, my husband gave me a few bread-related gifts. Perhaps the best one is a 108 breads apron. I feel so established and professional wearing it. Already the apron is another talisman for good fortune in baking. The other gifts were an oblong la cloche, which I must figure out how to use, and a book, the Art of Fermentation, which threatens to turn me into a fermentation maniac. A review soon. Even though it is not a bread book per se, it is related. From a read through, the directions are less than thorough. I like a nice detailed instruction on anything that I have not tried before.I am contemplating homemade sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables. Brad and I have been talking about a sauerkraut endeavor for over a year. If I het as far as making tempeh at home, I have gone a bit off of the deep end. Of course, it was not all that long ago I felt similarly about growing and maintaining a sourdough culture.
I doubt I will get past the sauerkraut, however, as I do work for a living. Going beyond sauerkraut would mean going into business to teach people and sell the fermented goodies. Something about the word fermented does not go with goodies, unless you are beer lover, but that's a whole other story.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Breads - Numbers 40 to 42: So nice to have an "it always works" recipe
Breads - Numbers 40 to 42: I am infatuated with this recipe and its variations
I had not yet made bread #39 a second time (as I did not write down the recipe the first time) and I was on to the next bread. Bread #38 was so perfect, so easy, so seductively ready for variations that I immediately started. Forget that it was Thanksgiving week, Chanukah about to begin, travels to prepare for, and a time to take a breath, a pause before starting, with a month of non-stop activity about to begin. I barely promise myself not to make the next bread in the series, to make an old one again, when I break the promise.
This bread - bread #38 - and its three variations in breads #40 to 42, is easy and flexible, and quite adjustable from all white to at least 40 percent whole grain. The recipe is also adjustable in terms of timing and the amount of starter. I have been baking with adjustments to the master recipe all December and during my week off. [Note: The photos show a bread #38 repeat.]
Should I really continue the bread project?
Though I sometimes think there are not enough breads to make it to 108, variations pop up almost immediately. I wonder why I am spending time making new breads and writing down the recipes, the challenges, the triumphs and the thoughts along the way. Why could this possibly be important in a world where there are injustices, poverty, pollution and an endless to-do list for humankind? Why, when I have an old novel I would like to take up again am I spending my time on bread, something for only a few people to eat?
I only know that I made myself a promise, a promise to make 108 breads and to write about the experience - an extended writer's block exercise. I write about almost nothing else. Bread gets most of my attention. Bread and fantasies of latkes and waffles and muffins to fill a small, convivial bakery. Bread and practicing for my bat mitzvah in a few months (fear of public humiliation is a great motivator.)
The bakery fantasy is an odd recurrent thought for someone who has always done public interest work. I know nothing about making a profit.
I also do not like to wake up early or be chained to a location or not to be able to take vacations. Clearly, the fantasy does not comport with the reality. Oh, and the fantasy involves revolving art and music and chatting. I don't actually fantasize about being busy baking all day.
Variation
The conceit of the original bread recipe is ease for those with a conventional work schedule. For bread #40, this dough will be 40 percent spelt. It is 63 percent hydration. For bread #41, I mixed whole wheat and oat flours in with wheat bran, and in bread #42, I made a 40 percent whole wheat bread. Each time the oven spring was lovely and the taste wonderful.
Ingredients
Sponge
100g starter
200g water
200g bread flour
(Okay, for bread #41 and 42, I used about 50g of starter because I use up most of my starter at 100g and I did not have time to build it back up again.)
Mix all of the sponge ingredients in the evening. Cover and put in the fridge. Leave the sponge in the refrigerator until morning. Leave out all day on the counter.
Timing and starter adjustments
As it was cold outside and cool in the house during the day, I put in the recommended 100g of starter. However, already at bread #41 and 42, with little starter and more flexibility on timing due to vacation, I put in about half as much starter and let it rise just as long in a warm (we're all home over winter break) kitchen. I have even made the sponge in the morning and skipped the convenient-for-work refrigeration phase. Be sure to add to the dough the flour and water you are not adding when you use less starter.
If this were the summer, with 90-degree temperatures, I would use much less (perhaps even 10 grams) starter so that the timing could remain the same. If you play with the starter amount, assuming a 100 percent hydration starter (I assume it because I make mine by feel and appearance rather than by weight), substitute into the sponge or the dough the amount of flour and water that is being taken out of the 100 gram starter amount recommended. (For example, for 10 grams of starter, assume 90 grams that needs to be replaced in the recipe, which works out to 45 grams of flour and 45 grams of water. These can be added either at the sponge or the dough stage.) Having done this now a couple of times due to weird timing demands, I can say with confidence that this works.
Bread #40 Dough
100g water
200g spelt flour
100g bread flour
10g wheat bran
10g salt
Bread #41 Dough
125g water
180g whole wheat flour
40g oat flour
80g bread flour
10g whear bran
10g salt
Bread #42 Dough
130g water
200g whole wheat flour
100g bread flour
10g salt
Before making the dough, look at the sponge. It should be exuberantly bubbly. Admire it; feel the accomplishment. Now, on the evening of the second day, mix the dough ingredients into the sponge. Even with the Danish whisk this will become difficult. Wash your hands, keep them a little wet, and use them to form the dough into a cohesive mass.
Note that bread #41 has a little extra water. I added extra because whole wheat tends to need more moisture. I did the same with bread #42.
Stretch and folds before bed
Do four stretch and folds, each 15 minutes to an hour apart. I went with 15 because I had to rush off to class for bread #40. I made a simple dinner and ate it during the 15-minute intervals. I shaped the dough, covered it, and put it in the refrigerator for approximately 24 hours. I have also used intervals of one half hour to an hour. This is truly the golden recipe of flexible and easy breadmaking. If you like, nothing is required of this bread during the day. It is for vampire breadmakers.
Note to self: On the morning of the third day, put the top of the la cloche into the oven on top of the baking stone. That way, if in an absentminded rush, I will not forget to preheat the la cloche.
On the next evening, ...
On the evening of the third day, come home from work and preheat the oven to 445 degrees. Or, like me, text the teenage boy who watches the dog every afternoon (the dog was too old to learn to be alone all day when his sisters went off to college) and ask him to put on the oven so that it is ready for baking when I get home. Let the oven preheat for an hour.
I have also preheated to 500 degrees and reduced to 450 degrees. The bread still came out great. It is an invincible recipe even when juggled. Makes me happy.
Leave the covered dough in the fridge. Right before baking, take the dough out of the refrigerator. The dough will need minimal shaping. If you are superstitious like me, do a lucky slashing of the top of the dough. I make a cross. (This is not religious; it just happens to give my breads good luck.) [Note that the photo shows a bit rushed remake. I should have allowed that dough to rise longer. However, the taste was still fantastic.]
Baking
Open the oven, remove the top of the la cloche with an oven mitt (without and the bread will not be baked because you will run screaming to the nearest emergency room), and gently plop the dough onto the baking stone. Cover with the top of the la cloche or otherwise provide for a steamy oven (ice in a casserole dish - not made of glass- works nicely).
Remove the top of the la cloche at 20 minutes. Total baking time is about 42 to 45 minutes minutes. The bread will look done way before it is. I recommend use of a thermometer or a cake tester. I have also kept the top of the la cloche on until the last 10 minutes with good results.
Bread #40 - A fine bread
A beautiful and fine tasting bread. Maybe I just prefer a 100 percent spelt bread when I use spelt. The milder spelt taste was fine, very good, a respectable bread, but I will try this recipe with other flours and I might not return to this one. Perhaps we are just getting spoiled with such fantastic breads, that a really good bread does not make the cut anymore. Already a bread snob.
[Note: Uh oh. Add that to pizza snob and lox snob and gefilte fish snob. A New York indigenous food snob. I don't care if my ethnic or fancy meals are one way or another, but New York food - Brooklyn, circa 1975 - must always remain the same.]
Bread #41 - This is it, whole wheat bread
I should have taken a picture. This was a beautiful, bakery-perfect artisnal bread. If I had put it in a bakery window, the shop would have been crowded all day. And it tasted so good. Maybe the best whole wheat boule I've made. I ate it for a few days for breakfast, savoring every bite.
Bread #42 -
Is this a gorgeous bread or what? I am helped along by a gift from a friend. He bought for me a little green-handled lame with which I am now making sleek slits on top of the dough before it goes into the oven. As for taste, this bread is being frozen and then sent back to college with my daughter. I will put in an endnote when she gives me the word on the taste.
I had not yet made bread #39 a second time (as I did not write down the recipe the first time) and I was on to the next bread. Bread #38 was so perfect, so easy, so seductively ready for variations that I immediately started. Forget that it was Thanksgiving week, Chanukah about to begin, travels to prepare for, and a time to take a breath, a pause before starting, with a month of non-stop activity about to begin. I barely promise myself not to make the next bread in the series, to make an old one again, when I break the promise.
This bread - bread #38 - and its three variations in breads #40 to 42, is easy and flexible, and quite adjustable from all white to at least 40 percent whole grain. The recipe is also adjustable in terms of timing and the amount of starter. I have been baking with adjustments to the master recipe all December and during my week off. [Note: The photos show a bread #38 repeat.]
Should I really continue the bread project?
Though I sometimes think there are not enough breads to make it to 108, variations pop up almost immediately. I wonder why I am spending time making new breads and writing down the recipes, the challenges, the triumphs and the thoughts along the way. Why could this possibly be important in a world where there are injustices, poverty, pollution and an endless to-do list for humankind? Why, when I have an old novel I would like to take up again am I spending my time on bread, something for only a few people to eat?
I only know that I made myself a promise, a promise to make 108 breads and to write about the experience - an extended writer's block exercise. I write about almost nothing else. Bread gets most of my attention. Bread and fantasies of latkes and waffles and muffins to fill a small, convivial bakery. Bread and practicing for my bat mitzvah in a few months (fear of public humiliation is a great motivator.)
The bakery fantasy is an odd recurrent thought for someone who has always done public interest work. I know nothing about making a profit.
I also do not like to wake up early or be chained to a location or not to be able to take vacations. Clearly, the fantasy does not comport with the reality. Oh, and the fantasy involves revolving art and music and chatting. I don't actually fantasize about being busy baking all day.
Variation
The conceit of the original bread recipe is ease for those with a conventional work schedule. For bread #40, this dough will be 40 percent spelt. It is 63 percent hydration. For bread #41, I mixed whole wheat and oat flours in with wheat bran, and in bread #42, I made a 40 percent whole wheat bread. Each time the oven spring was lovely and the taste wonderful.
Ingredients
Sponge
100g starter
200g water
200g bread flour
(Okay, for bread #41 and 42, I used about 50g of starter because I use up most of my starter at 100g and I did not have time to build it back up again.)
Mix all of the sponge ingredients in the evening. Cover and put in the fridge. Leave the sponge in the refrigerator until morning. Leave out all day on the counter.
Timing and starter adjustments
As it was cold outside and cool in the house during the day, I put in the recommended 100g of starter. However, already at bread #41 and 42, with little starter and more flexibility on timing due to vacation, I put in about half as much starter and let it rise just as long in a warm (we're all home over winter break) kitchen. I have even made the sponge in the morning and skipped the convenient-for-work refrigeration phase. Be sure to add to the dough the flour and water you are not adding when you use less starter.
If this were the summer, with 90-degree temperatures, I would use much less (perhaps even 10 grams) starter so that the timing could remain the same. If you play with the starter amount, assuming a 100 percent hydration starter (I assume it because I make mine by feel and appearance rather than by weight), substitute into the sponge or the dough the amount of flour and water that is being taken out of the 100 gram starter amount recommended. (For example, for 10 grams of starter, assume 90 grams that needs to be replaced in the recipe, which works out to 45 grams of flour and 45 grams of water. These can be added either at the sponge or the dough stage.) Having done this now a couple of times due to weird timing demands, I can say with confidence that this works.
Bread #40 Dough
100g water
200g spelt flour
100g bread flour
10g wheat bran
10g salt
Bread #41 Dough
125g water
180g whole wheat flour
40g oat flour
80g bread flour
10g whear bran
10g salt
Bread #42 Dough
130g water
200g whole wheat flour
100g bread flour
10g salt
Before making the dough, look at the sponge. It should be exuberantly bubbly. Admire it; feel the accomplishment. Now, on the evening of the second day, mix the dough ingredients into the sponge. Even with the Danish whisk this will become difficult. Wash your hands, keep them a little wet, and use them to form the dough into a cohesive mass.
Note that bread #41 has a little extra water. I added extra because whole wheat tends to need more moisture. I did the same with bread #42.
Stretch and folds before bed
Do four stretch and folds, each 15 minutes to an hour apart. I went with 15 because I had to rush off to class for bread #40. I made a simple dinner and ate it during the 15-minute intervals. I shaped the dough, covered it, and put it in the refrigerator for approximately 24 hours. I have also used intervals of one half hour to an hour. This is truly the golden recipe of flexible and easy breadmaking. If you like, nothing is required of this bread during the day. It is for vampire breadmakers.
Note to self: On the morning of the third day, put the top of the la cloche into the oven on top of the baking stone. That way, if in an absentminded rush, I will not forget to preheat the la cloche.
On the next evening, ...
I have also preheated to 500 degrees and reduced to 450 degrees. The bread still came out great. It is an invincible recipe even when juggled. Makes me happy.
Leave the covered dough in the fridge. Right before baking, take the dough out of the refrigerator. The dough will need minimal shaping. If you are superstitious like me, do a lucky slashing of the top of the dough. I make a cross. (This is not religious; it just happens to give my breads good luck.) [Note that the photo shows a bit rushed remake. I should have allowed that dough to rise longer. However, the taste was still fantastic.]
Baking
Open the oven, remove the top of the la cloche with an oven mitt (without and the bread will not be baked because you will run screaming to the nearest emergency room), and gently plop the dough onto the baking stone. Cover with the top of the la cloche or otherwise provide for a steamy oven (ice in a casserole dish - not made of glass- works nicely).
Remove the top of the la cloche at 20 minutes. Total baking time is about 42 to 45 minutes minutes. The bread will look done way before it is. I recommend use of a thermometer or a cake tester. I have also kept the top of the la cloche on until the last 10 minutes with good results.
Bread #40 - A fine bread
A beautiful and fine tasting bread. Maybe I just prefer a 100 percent spelt bread when I use spelt. The milder spelt taste was fine, very good, a respectable bread, but I will try this recipe with other flours and I might not return to this one. Perhaps we are just getting spoiled with such fantastic breads, that a really good bread does not make the cut anymore. Already a bread snob.
Bread #41 - This is it, whole wheat bread
I should have taken a picture. This was a beautiful, bakery-perfect artisnal bread. If I had put it in a bakery window, the shop would have been crowded all day. And it tasted so good. Maybe the best whole wheat boule I've made. I ate it for a few days for breakfast, savoring every bite.
Bread #42 -
Is this a gorgeous bread or what? I am helped along by a gift from a friend. He bought for me a little green-handled lame with which I am now making sleek slits on top of the dough before it goes into the oven. As for taste, this bread is being frozen and then sent back to college with my daughter. I will put in an endnote when she gives me the word on the taste.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Bread - Number 39: Big Payout for Poor Behavior
Bread - Number 39: Mistakes were made; move on
The dough for this bread went so wrong that it would not be fair to divulge the source of the recipe. At some point along the way, perhaps with the 6 a.m. weighing of the ingredients for the dough, a bad mistake was made. With complete failure staring me in the face, I decided to go by feel the rest of the way. One should not be rewarded so well for bleary-eyed mishaps. I have never seen such amazing oven spring for a majority whole-grain dough. I gasped and if it were not for the sound of football games on televisions throughout the land, the entire United States would have heard it.
The other problem was that I did this recipe in ounces instead of grams. My brain is a creature of routine and this change might have prompted the mistake(s).
Backtracking for documentation
Of course, after the first try I did not have a reliable recipe because part of doing something by feel is giving up on the diligent weighing of adding something here and there. I'll do my best to describe the process and I will attempt to recreate this bread - for purposes of having an actual recipe. On the second try, I successfully recreated my mistake and diligently weighed and documented everything added thereafter.
First, woo hoo! What a confidence booster to feel my way to a fantastic bread and one that rose so well even though it is whole grain.
A big thanks to my internal thermometer, not only for its temperature readings, but for what stuck or did not stick to the probe. It really acts like an old-fashioned cake tester. With a nice crust (okay, I have a fear of burnt crust), I thought that this bread was ready a good 15 minutes before it was anywhere close to fully baked.
Ingredients and instructions (sort of)
Sponge
8 oz. water
.4 oz. starter (yes, less than half an ounce)
4 oz. spelt flour
1 oz. whole wheat flour
(Second time around I went with 5 oz. spelt flour with no change in taste.)
I mixed the sponge at night and left it for 10 hours in a kitchen I thought would be cool. Someone, maybe me, forgot to turn down the heat at bedtime and the sponge was looking a bit forlorn in the morning. The same thing happened on the second try when I left the sponge in a cool kitchen for 12 hours. No matter; decided to add a little more to the dough.
Dough
.7 oz. starter
(I added .25 oz. starter on the second try.)
12 oz. water
10 oz. spelt flour
4 oz. whole wheat flour
(On the second try I used 5 oz. whole wheat and 9 oz. spelt with no discernible difference.)
10.2 oz. bread flour
.35 oz. salt
1 tbsp olive oil or .5 oz.
First, I did a 20 minute autolyse of the dough's water and spelt and whole wheat flours. At this point, I was trying to follow the recipe, which did not call for any bread flour. Since the recipe did involve kneading, I used the autolyse phase to develop the gluten for the purpose of cutting down on the kneading.
I then mixed the autolyse with the sponge and the ingredients not yet mixed in - the salt, the extra starter and the oil. Instead of seeing a shaggy dough that resembled the photographs or that appeared to be roughly 60 percent hydration, I saw what looked like a marsh or a thick soup. Something was definitely wrong. This wet, batter-like blob could not be kneaded.
And I start throwing in extra bread flour
With the scale close at hand, I added an extra 5 ounces of bread flour. I started to knead, but as I went along I ignored the scale and I threw in more bread flour, a small handful here and there, probably another two to five ounces. I probably kneaded for 10 minutes, maybe 15. At this point, I did not believe there was going to be a decent bread, so I did whatever I felt like. On the second try, I did the same thing with the exception of having the scale close at hand and actually using it to weigh the additional flour, which amounted to a little over 10 ounces.
At two and a half hours, it seemed that the dough was fully risen, maybe a tad past its peak. On the second try, in a warm Sunday kitchen, I only let the dough sit for one and a quarter hours. I did a stretch and fold on a well-floured board, then covered the dough with plastic for 15 minutes. Due to the dough's utter shapelessness, I thought about buying a bread and put the dough in a loaf pan that had been sprayed with non-stick baking spray.
Feeling very 19th century
On the second try, during the 15 minutes I lined a small wicker basket with a kitchen towel - thickly covered on the bottom with flour. At the end of the 15 minutes, I shaped the dough, still sticky, and placed it - bottom side up - in the basket, covered with the towel and then the old piece of plastic.
Each time I left the dough for an hour and a half. It rose alright, though nothing to write home about. An hour before baking I preheated the oven to 450 degrees. The first time, I made the bread in a loaf pan and on the second try, I made a boule.
Baking and not really wondering
The first time, I put a pan on a shelf underneath the baking stone and put at least two cups of ice in. As the la cloche top would not fit over the loaf pan, I figured that this doomed bread could at least use some steam. Maybe it would not be a total failure. The second time, I used the la cloche, which has the benefit of not having to stop myself from peering into the oven. One can not peer into a dome-shaped clay thing.
Deciding to follow the recipe at least once, at 20 minutes, I reduced the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Oh my g-d, there was such incredible oven spring when I peaked. The total baking time was 42 minutes, probably increased because I checked the bread's internal temperature about every four minutes after looking at 20 minutes. The second time around, I was more relaxed and left the bread in for 45 minutes.
The bread was so good, it deserved the second try. The question being how to recreate a process that had something more akin to an I Love Lucy episode than to following a recipe. On the second try, I trusted myself more and was curious, but unattached to the outcome. I was still on cloud nine from making a bread by feel on the first go around. The bread was just as good the second time.
The moral of the story: Invest in a thermometer and get a feel for working the dough with your hands. If you are lucky, a neighbor might hear you scream woohoo!!! when you see the beautiful oven spring.
The dough for this bread went so wrong that it would not be fair to divulge the source of the recipe. At some point along the way, perhaps with the 6 a.m. weighing of the ingredients for the dough, a bad mistake was made. With complete failure staring me in the face, I decided to go by feel the rest of the way. One should not be rewarded so well for bleary-eyed mishaps. I have never seen such amazing oven spring for a majority whole-grain dough. I gasped and if it were not for the sound of football games on televisions throughout the land, the entire United States would have heard it.
The other problem was that I did this recipe in ounces instead of grams. My brain is a creature of routine and this change might have prompted the mistake(s).
Backtracking for documentation
Of course, after the first try I did not have a reliable recipe because part of doing something by feel is giving up on the diligent weighing of adding something here and there. I'll do my best to describe the process and I will attempt to recreate this bread - for purposes of having an actual recipe. On the second try, I successfully recreated my mistake and diligently weighed and documented everything added thereafter.
First, woo hoo! What a confidence booster to feel my way to a fantastic bread and one that rose so well even though it is whole grain.
A big thanks to my internal thermometer, not only for its temperature readings, but for what stuck or did not stick to the probe. It really acts like an old-fashioned cake tester. With a nice crust (okay, I have a fear of burnt crust), I thought that this bread was ready a good 15 minutes before it was anywhere close to fully baked.
Ingredients and instructions (sort of)
Sponge
8 oz. water
.4 oz. starter (yes, less than half an ounce)
4 oz. spelt flour
1 oz. whole wheat flour
(Second time around I went with 5 oz. spelt flour with no change in taste.)
I mixed the sponge at night and left it for 10 hours in a kitchen I thought would be cool. Someone, maybe me, forgot to turn down the heat at bedtime and the sponge was looking a bit forlorn in the morning. The same thing happened on the second try when I left the sponge in a cool kitchen for 12 hours. No matter; decided to add a little more to the dough.
Dough
.7 oz. starter
(I added .25 oz. starter on the second try.)
12 oz. water
10 oz. spelt flour
4 oz. whole wheat flour
(On the second try I used 5 oz. whole wheat and 9 oz. spelt with no discernible difference.)
10.2 oz. bread flour
.35 oz. salt
1 tbsp olive oil or .5 oz.
First, I did a 20 minute autolyse of the dough's water and spelt and whole wheat flours. At this point, I was trying to follow the recipe, which did not call for any bread flour. Since the recipe did involve kneading, I used the autolyse phase to develop the gluten for the purpose of cutting down on the kneading.
I then mixed the autolyse with the sponge and the ingredients not yet mixed in - the salt, the extra starter and the oil. Instead of seeing a shaggy dough that resembled the photographs or that appeared to be roughly 60 percent hydration, I saw what looked like a marsh or a thick soup. Something was definitely wrong. This wet, batter-like blob could not be kneaded.
And I start throwing in extra bread flour
With the scale close at hand, I added an extra 5 ounces of bread flour. I started to knead, but as I went along I ignored the scale and I threw in more bread flour, a small handful here and there, probably another two to five ounces. I probably kneaded for 10 minutes, maybe 15. At this point, I did not believe there was going to be a decent bread, so I did whatever I felt like. On the second try, I did the same thing with the exception of having the scale close at hand and actually using it to weigh the additional flour, which amounted to a little over 10 ounces.
At two and a half hours, it seemed that the dough was fully risen, maybe a tad past its peak. On the second try, in a warm Sunday kitchen, I only let the dough sit for one and a quarter hours. I did a stretch and fold on a well-floured board, then covered the dough with plastic for 15 minutes. Due to the dough's utter shapelessness, I thought about buying a bread and put the dough in a loaf pan that had been sprayed with non-stick baking spray.
Feeling very 19th century
On the second try, during the 15 minutes I lined a small wicker basket with a kitchen towel - thickly covered on the bottom with flour. At the end of the 15 minutes, I shaped the dough, still sticky, and placed it - bottom side up - in the basket, covered with the towel and then the old piece of plastic.
Each time I left the dough for an hour and a half. It rose alright, though nothing to write home about. An hour before baking I preheated the oven to 450 degrees. The first time, I made the bread in a loaf pan and on the second try, I made a boule.
Baking and not really wondering
The first time, I put a pan on a shelf underneath the baking stone and put at least two cups of ice in. As the la cloche top would not fit over the loaf pan, I figured that this doomed bread could at least use some steam. Maybe it would not be a total failure. The second time, I used the la cloche, which has the benefit of not having to stop myself from peering into the oven. One can not peer into a dome-shaped clay thing.
Deciding to follow the recipe at least once, at 20 minutes, I reduced the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Oh my g-d, there was such incredible oven spring when I peaked. The total baking time was 42 minutes, probably increased because I checked the bread's internal temperature about every four minutes after looking at 20 minutes. The second time around, I was more relaxed and left the bread in for 45 minutes.
The bread was so good, it deserved the second try. The question being how to recreate a process that had something more akin to an I Love Lucy episode than to following a recipe. On the second try, I trusted myself more and was curious, but unattached to the outcome. I was still on cloud nine from making a bread by feel on the first go around. The bread was just as good the second time.
The moral of the story: Invest in a thermometer and get a feel for working the dough with your hands. If you are lucky, a neighbor might hear you scream woohoo!!! when you see the beautiful oven spring.
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