Today's Bread

Today's bread has no title -- it's just a casually constructed sourdough, using the firm starter that was left over after a refresh. I added 1/3 cup of the King Arthur Harvest Grains (soaked in water), about 1 cup KAF White Whole-Wheat, and KAF Bread flour for the rest -- a couple of squeezes of honey, and a couple of tablespoons of KAF Baker's Dry Milk (just to see). A 3-hour rise (or so).

These pictures don't quite show how very dark the crust has become. The cuts were made with the knife held almost horizontal to the top of each loaf (and more cuts seems to work better, as you can see by comparing the first loaf, on the left, with the second, on the right).

I've been painting the loaves with water before sliding them onto the stone and placing an aluminum pan over them for 10-15 minutes at the beginning of the bake -- it's not much!

After cooling, the loaves themselves are soft, not hard (today's a rainy day, too), and there's a faint honey or floral scent.

The Pearl's Walnut Levain (Again) // Maggie Glezer, Artisan Baking

This is my second time making this formula. (I can see, looking at the photo of the previous iteration, that I did not bake the bread long enough -- it's quite pale!) This time, although the finished bread was quite attractive, and tasty, I made a couple of instructive mistakes.

 

The primary mistake was in not refreshing the firm starter enough times before beginning the bread. Glezer's instructions are explicit: the starter should be refreshed "until it is again quadrupling in volume in 8 hours or less" (Artisan Baking 93). I did refresh it -- once -- but I've been so used to my wet starter, which is reliably enthusiastic, that I didn't take the trouble to check that the firm starter was equally active. Mistake! The dough was very sluggish in both its initial rise and proofing stages, and didn't really increase much even in the oven.

My secondary mistake (and I'm unsure how serious it was) was in forgetting to let the flours, water, and starter autolyze before adding the salt and walnuts. I was so eager to get going that I simply carried on ahead. Et voilà.

 (Apologies for the jagged cuts!)

This bread is much darker than my first attempt, and the inside is a richer color. I'm intrigued by the holes because it suggests that I've somehow become better at not degassing the dough -- if I have, I'm not at all sure how I achieved this!

San Joaquin Sourdough // dmsnyder @ Fresh Loaf

Formula here: San Joaquin Sourdough ("best yet" version).

 

This was a particularly interesting bread to make because it was a followup, conceptually, to making the Thom Leonard's Country French -- both use a small portion of rye flour and both use a firm starter (mine is the one described by Maggie Glezer in Artisan Baking). In fact I made a levain based on Thom Leonard's Kalamata Olive Bread instead of strictly following dmsnyder's instructions (though sticking pretty close for the rest).

The bread takes a couple of days. First the levain rises (two days ago), then the bread rises at room temperature (I started mixing it yesterday morning, let it rise till noon or so), and then it ferments in the fridge for about 20 hours (coming out this morning to be shaped). 

I continue to have trouble shaping my loaves tightly, which the following picture reveals:

The diagonal cuts show where I slashed the loaf, and the arc at the top shows where the loaf went ahead and split by itself. (Also, the droopy bits show where I sort of bungled the transfer to the hot stone.)

Here's a picture of the bottom to show how much trouble I have with seams:

The multiple folds tell the story. At least this one did not produce a bread-goiter!

The holes are nice and open (didn't expect to get them), and the flavor is about as close as I've ever gotten to a San Francisco-style sourness. Mm!

Quick Rustic Ciabatta // LilDice @ Fresh Loaf

[Post backdated to Feb. 8 when the bread was made]

I wanted to try ciabatta again -- it's a challenge to handle a very wet dough and get those big open holes in the final bread. For my quick-and-casual try, I pulled up LilDice's Quick Rustic Ciabatta Pizza dough from the Fresh Loaf site, doubling ingredients as instructed.

While I was making the bread, I got the idea to shift gears and make it into a kind of faux focaccia, so I dimpled slightly on top and brushed it with olive oil when it came out of the oven.


Very tasty!

Continued - Thom Leonard's Country French // Maggie Glezer, Artisan Baking

And here we are. This is a big (4-pound) loaf -- about as big as my baking stone could possibly handle, and definitely bigger than any bread-storage box I own. The speckling on the inside comes from the cereal (see previous post).

I'm proud of those large open holes -- this dough was on the slacker side, and that, plus the size, made it challenging to handle. I'm very pleased that I managed to move from couche to peel, to slash the top, and get it onto the stone without degassing or deforming.

Here's what it looked like out of the oven (it's at least a foot across):

Thom Leonard's Country French // Maggie Glezer, Artisan Baking

Okay, disclosure: I went about this formula so casually that it's hardly fair to put either the original baker's or the author's name on the results. But the Country French was my starting point, and it's a popular bread on the Fresh Loaf Bread Blog, so I'm admitting the inspiration.

My starter this time is Maggie Glezer's firm starter (I usually use a wetter starter and rarely maintain exact proportions).  Glezer has you take a rough-grind whole wheat flour and sieve out the bran to make a "high-extraction" flour for the bread, but I didn't have that, so I went with King Arthur's regular white whole wheat and bread flours, plus the small portion of (Bob's) rye that the formula calls for. I also threw in about a cup of Heritage Flakes cereal, so, yes, this is a pretty loose interpretation all around.

As a wild yeast bread, the rise times on this large loaf are pretty heroic -- 8 hours for the "batter-like" levain, 3 hours initial rise, and 4 hours (maybe more) as a proofed loaf in the couche. In an additional departure from the formula, I proofed the loaf in the fridge overnight (had to).

I continue to find that breads made out of Artisan Baking seem somewhat wetter than described, if not a great deal -- this is no doubt due to my having to measure by volume instead of weight. It did make a somewhat wobbly loaf, so I'm hoping that the oven spring will be good. Nice floured pattern on the loaf this morning when I flipped it out of the floured-towel-lined colander I used for proofing.

The peel that my baking friend gave me continues to be essential -- the only other way for me to get such a large loaf onto the stone would've been parchment, or a truly lucky flip.

Results later today.

Classic / Stuffed Baguettes // King Arthur Flour

Day 2 of the Classic / Stuffed Baguettes. The starter rose to the top of the bowl, becoming very full of gas:

Then, after a 3-hour rise (with one stretch-and-fold after the first hour), I divided the dough into four pieces (not equal). Two pieces were regular baguettes (that is, I shaped them into baguette-like forms), and two became "stuffed" before proofing:  

Flatten each piece into a 5" square. Layer with the stuffing of your choice—a slice or two of ham or salami, some cheese, mustard—and roll up like a jelly roll, pinching the ends and the side seam closed.

For stuffing, I used smoked cheddar and spicy mustard, with a little sprinkling of shredded romano/parmesan blend. When sliced, the cheesy pockets make lovely pinwheels. I'm sorry I can't show you images but both were eaten at Movie Night!


There were minor bread disasters while loading: I managed to flip both of the "standard" baguettes onto their slit-sides, so they assumed especially rustic shapes. One of the baguettes came unsealed and assumed a fan shape. You can see from the results photo that each loaf had its own character.

 

From left to right, then: baguette-that-came-unsealed; standard baguette, stuffed baguette 1, stuffed baguette 2.


I'll try this recipe again, and the stuffed version was definitely popular.