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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One nice bread

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

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

Bread Number 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.

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.