Ups and Downs in Bread-Baking

I've been trying for about a month to establish a sourdough starter that came in a packet. It's been puzzling me because it never really acted like the starters I've done from scratch. I'll start breads with it, thinking it's active, and end up with dense loaves -- occasionally with massive craters -- scary scary bottomless craters! -- inside:

I did work out, for the bread above, that punching down the dough better might help.

In addition to punching down the dough, I made an effort to feed the starter, carefully, for a couple of feedings, before trying to make bread with it. The latest bread is an improvement (and with a little bit of wheat flour in it, it has a nice, faintly wheaty taste):

Still a few large holes, but the texture is much better, not nearly so dense. By the next loaf I hope to have a nice, airy bread again!

Casatiello // Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker's Apprentice

Rich bread full of bacon, butter, milk, and cheese. Reinhart says that a slice of this is like a sandwich. He ain't wrong.

Chewy, Grain-Rich Beer Bread

Another throw-'em-together bread. Amounts are approximate (as you'll see, this is a tilde-heavy description). I started with the following:

~ 1/2 bottle Black Toad Dark Ale
~ 3/4 c King Arthur Harvest Grains Blend
~ 1/2 c Country Choice Multi Grain hot breakfast cereal

Left it to soak ~30 minutes, then added

2 c AP flour
2 tsp yeast

Mixed well, then kneaded in ~ 2 tsp salt. Let it rise a little, stretch-and-fold, and then left it to rise for ~2 hours.

The dough is a dense dough, so it needed to be handled lightly. I shaped a basic batard and let it proof on parchment for ~1 1/2 hours. Baked at ~400 for ~35.

There was a bit of spring, but not a great deal as 1) I didn't bake on a stone and 2) it's a dense bread. But it came out wonderfully -- chewy, flavorful. I'm a fan.

Chewy, grain-rich ... mmm

Seeded Bread

After a series of fairly unsuccessful breads made according to formula, I've gone back to a good old-fashioned "throw ingredients in the bowl" type sourdough (kitchen sourdough?). This one has AP flour, rye flour, whole wheat flour, a small portion of multigrain breakfast cereal, honey, olive oil, and salt.

Average method: mix flours and water, let sit (autolyse) about 30 minutes. Combine w/ fed sourdough starter, honey, a touch of oil, salt. Let rise ~8 hours. Shape into boules; rest; shape into batards. Proof ~2 hours. In this case, I moistened the proofed loaves slightly and spread on King Arthur's seed mix before slashing. The pattern calls for each new cut to be started in the middle of the previous cut. Steam pan in oven, and then an overall bake of ~35 minutes.

In this case, it's neither art nor science -- it's habit. But pretty good results.

Black Russian Rye // LA Times (adapted from The Bread Bible)

The LA Times published an article yesterday on "old world" breads, "Old World breads boast layers of taste." One of the recipes that they reprinted came from Beth Hensperger's Bread Bible and called for chocolate and minced shallot as well as caraway seeds, fennel seeds, rye, wheat, and cornmeal. Here's my Black Russian Rye:

 

The method for this bread is to melt the chocolate and butter with the cider vinegar, mix the flours, and then add the liquids (melted chocolate mixture plus the dissolved yeast) to a couple of cups of the flours. The recipe states that you may not need all of the flour mix to get the right consistency. I had already started mixing before I realized that I couldn't find my caraway seeds (my spice cabinet is like a sock drawer: odds go missing), so I was able to use all of the flours and even a little extra AP. A fully seeded version would be drier.

The dough rose very vigorously (as it should, with two packets' worth of yeast) and, though it deflated some in shaping, popped up again quickly. The cuts were easy to make.

The loaf on the right in the picture acquired a whitish cast. I believe this is because I moistened my hands to transfer the loaves to the pan, but that's just a guess.

Very tasty, very quick. I would expect that a true "old world rye" would be the traditional sourdough, but this is a good one for special occasions. And I like shallots. Yum.