Bread - Number 23

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Photo of starter right after being fed.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bread - Number Seven

Bread - Number Seven: All spelt with honey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Another view of the just-baked beauty.]

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

Bread - Number Five

Bread – Number Five: La Cloche

Written with a French accent.

Dedicated to my husband, who always support purchases that result in delicious bread.

Puchases

La Cloche $57 (bread making is addictive, though less expensive than other addictions).

Using another no-knead recipe, this time from the Breadtopia website, which provides a link to La Cloche purchasing possibilities and inspiring videos sporting an Iowa gentleman bread maker. The recipe and instructions are from Breadtopia.com, the basic no-knead recipe and the video on the recipe webpage. 

Ingredients

2 cups bread flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (Used same proportions as the above video: 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 cups)
1/4 tsp. instant yeast
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups purified or spring water (Used filtered tap water because had not bothered to read the recipe before early morning bread making while still in bathrobe)

Feel like a sell out with majority regular bread flour and only one third whole wheat.  Want to see how much lighter it is and, perhaps, generate a special-occasion bread. Yes, rationalizing.

Instructions

1.      Mix dry ingredients. Add water. Mix well.

2.      Cover with plastic and let sit to rise for 12 to 18 hours depending on the temperature of the room. Cooler rooms will require longer rising times. This time, made sure the kitchen was warm and stopped at 12 hours. 

3.      Cover a cutting board or flat surface with a generous layer of flour. Regular or whole wheat, cornmeal, or similar meal or flour will do fine. Cover the top of the dough in a sprinkled layer of flour. Rub a good bit of flour onto your hands.

4.      Keep flour right at your side. You will need it. Use a spatula and the flour to separate the wet dough from the bowl. We will see how this works out, but my choice was to use a nice amount of flour any time the wetness of the dough became an obstacle to anything.

5.      Put the dough on the well-floured cutting board or other surface. Spread out without pressing or kneading. Mine was about seven by eleven inches, though not a perfect rectangle by any means, and maybe about an inch thick.

6.      Fold the dough in thirds as if folding an old-fashioned aerogramme or a piece of paperto fit into an envelope. Then rotate once and fold in half. Video does a wonderful demonstration of the folding.

7.      Let the folded dough sit for 15 minutes. Cover loosely with plastic.

8.      If you have a proofing basket use it. Grease first, then put flour, cornmeal or something similar to prevent sticking with the wet dough. If not, use an oiled and then well-floured bowl or a floured kitchen towel (that’s my choice). Cover with a kitchen towel, or, in the case of using a kitchen towel, just fold it over the dough. Wait one hour to 90 minutes. Wait! Do not leave the room.

9.     Put on a timer or immediately preheat oven – but make sure oven is well heated before baking time, a half hour to an hour before. Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Yes, 500. (This number is anxiety inducing as my pampered oven has never experienced such high temperatures, and frankly, not sure the appliance is up to the task.) Hoping that my oven does not die and that no one dies or gets burned when handling the top of the 500-degree la cloche or when dumping the dough into it.

[Bungalows in Kansas City.]

La Cloche - and related anxieties
For those of you who did not take high school French, la cloche means bell, and yes, it is shaped like one. Basically, this clay contraption that looks like a wide and much smaller Liberty Bell (sans the Liberty Bell inscription). The idea is to create a bread oven within a conventional oven. Major advantage is that no water or ice is necessary to create steam in the oven, or accidentally crack oven glass. Major disadvantage, and this is said before the first use, is that a 500-degree piece of clay (not heavy) has to be lifted before placing dough inside the bottom. Oiled it for the first use with olive oil. Though other oils were recommended, and olive oil specifically mentioned as something to avoid (that is on one of the many websites and discussion boards with la cloche information; seems there is a la cloche community out there), used it anyway because love olive oil and it was the only oil in the house. So, getting back to the la cloche, the bell shaped mini-oven lets the moisture from the dough fill up the small space so that the baking bread receives the correct amount of steam to bake well, critical to “oven spring,” the rising in the oven that gives that lightness to the interior of the bread.

That is the theory. Right now, the dough is sitting and rising on a kitchen towel. Wondering whether should have refrigerated the dough until the morning as the thought of late-night handling of the hot la cloche is making me ever more nervous. The kitchen is wonderfully warm, more comfortable than the cool rooms elsewhere in the house.

How convenience oriented our ancestors were
There is something ancient about the la cloche, similar to the baking stone, in that they are porous and made out of materials that one would sooner find in a medieval town than in a modern kitchen. Indeed, one is expressly warned against using soap of any kind to clean them as that will seep in and ruin the next few foods baked on or inside them. Use water, a brush, or knife for difficult spots. Yes, they were used throughout the world in one form or another, and still are, but if you want one in 2012 United States, they cost more than a peasant somewhere would pay. But these are of a class of goods that one buys and keeps forever. Amortized even for the few years employing the baking stone, we are probably at about 50 cents per bread.

Waited only an hour and a quarter. The bread rose and the kitchen was warm. How could it not be with a burning 500-degree oven? It was toasty and with the la cloche as the assistant in this process, it felt like a wintertime French hearth pre-revolution, during one of the times when scarcity was not a problem.

[Roman Baths in Bath, England. Wish I could beam myself there for bread making classes.]

Instructions continued

10.   Wear oven mitts! Open oven, take off top of la cloche and dump in dough. Perhaps one should aim for the middle of the bottom of the la cloche. My aim, not so good;, dough leaning on the side. Maybe using the top of the la cloche over the baking stone would have been the better way to go, as this is an option. In that case, perfect aim would not be necessary.

11.   Set timer for 30 minutes.

12.   At 30 minutes, take off top of la cloche, close oven door, and reduce heat to 450 degrees. Bake for another 15 minutes.

13.   At 15 minutes, if the bread looks done, remove bottom of la cloche from oven with bread. Remember that each oven is different and baking times vary. My bread was definitely done, the crust a dark, deep brown, with some scattered burnt black spots.

14.   Let the bread stand for a couple of hours.

Baking and hearing the Jeopardy music in my head

Good thing about the la cloche is that peaking is impossible. The clay is opaque.

15 minutes in oven: The kitchen smells like bread, almost entirely masking the previous strong scent of the olive oil that permeated the kitchen during the pre-heating.

30 minutes in oven:  Removed top of la cloche and looking good.  Bake for another 15 minutes.

Waiting and looking at the “store” at Breadtopia. G-d forbid, ever up at three in the morning and that stuff is on an infomercial. It is possible proofing baskets, boards and other paraphernalia would be purchased in mass quantities.

45 minutes: Now that is a bread any peasant or shtel dweller would recognize. Took the bottom of la cloche out of the oven. Bread slid right out with a spatula. No problema aqui. Put the bread on a rack, where it is making lovely crackling noises.

Time for sleep – will taste it in the morning.

9 a.m. of the next day – SUBLIME

OMG, have made the perfect bread. Crunchy crust that is not hard, a wonderfully light interior with beautiful wholes in the crumb, a great taste, and an impressed husband. This is bread any bakery would be proud of. This is bread I’ve paid for. I stare lovingly at the la cloche.

This made a pretty large bread. Can make half of the dough or store half. Still he is a beauty - big, strapping, crusty and gentle on the inside – really a Gary Cooper of breads.

[No Gary Cooper photo here due to ambiguity of copyright laws and not willing to investigate copyright renewal of any particular Gary Cooper photo.]

[The Eye in London.]

Remember, though, that Bread Number Five is two thirds regular bread flour and only one third whole wheat. That ratio and the type of flours will have to be juggled for better fitting the goal of good daily, healthy breads. As a special occasion bread – for having company or bringing a bread to someone else – this will be perfect.

Wish List

Wish list of baking tools is growing. After all, if Breadtopia was correct about the la cloche, then perhaps that cute Danish whisk featured in its video is not far behind. And there is a bread book page on the website.

P.S. Perhaps it helped not to add the vital wheat gluten. Maybe that ingredient was the source of the little bit of aftertaste in the previous breads. Also could not hurt that this bread was two thirds white bread flour.

Bread Pause – Between Three and Four

Bread Pause – Jotting Down Observations Between Three and Four

Spent a good part of the weekend immersed in this new obsession, searching through bookstores for bread books. Even better was searching a used book store, exploring previous bread baking trends, finding something good. Love picking up a book that someone has already read, especially if the book has underlining and writing in the margins.

Observation #1

This niche of bread baking, in the larger baking literature, includes many books, which themselves contain about 50 percent of what are called “dessert breads,” though they are consumed, really, as cakes. This leads to the following observations. Not counting dessert breads in the 108.

Observation #2

There are too many websites with bread making information to possibly read in one lifetime, particularly if that lifetime includes any of the following: Children, work (including housework or volunteering), watching stupid television, reading, playing games, or hobbies.

Observation #3

The vast majority of “whole wheat” bread recipes are not 100 percent whole wheat. Many are two thirds whole grain, such as the Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day master recipe. Saw a recipe yesterday in what looked like a wonderful book on bread baking technique and properties of bread that was 25 percent whole wheat. At this point, it seems to me, one really is stretching when calling that loaf “whole wheat.”

Many recipes include a good deal of, or at least some, sugar, honey, molasses or other sweet ingredient. Do not rule this out. After all, my basic recipe for the bread machine contains one-quarter cup honey. With this 108 project, aiming for something authentic, which gets me to the next step in this journey. In addition to the plan to buy myself a bunch of bread baking books for the holidays, might search for book on history of bread making. When reaching back to my great and great-great grandmothers, what ingredients did they grow up with; did they use communal ovens and what is the history of those; how did humankind go from – oh, that’s a nice wheat stalk – to set the oven to 450 degrees for a little more than a half hour? Very curious.

 [London flags in a window just after the jubilee.]

Post Scripts

P.S. Between a work-at-home day and mail delivery of the King Arthur’s Flour Company catalog – or, as we call it, food porn – spent my lunchtime flipping through the pages and adding to my holiday wish list. Indeed, they sell a baking cloche (something I had not even heard of until the other day), giant spatula-like things for scraping dough, oven thermometers, digital scales, and large vacuum-packed packages of different kinds of yeast. Really have to think about whether to buy and where to store what could be an extra kitchen’s worth of baking paraphernalia.

P.P.S. Wish list of tools growing to include razor blades, not for shaving or killing, but for slicing into dough before baking. Serated bread knife not working well. Must find time to head over to Barnes & Noble to make my preliminary wish list of books.

Confession 

Easier than you think to become addicted to youtube breadmaking videos. Many, many of the easy-ways-to-make-artisan-bread variety. An entire genre.