alfanso's blog

I took a hard break from my standard baguette life to help my sister in law get her nascent bread skills some training wheels while she was visiting from far away.   I decided to do boule shaping with her, less challenging than the whole baguette pre-shape/shape/score shebang, and selected a bread I’ve never done before, in basically a shape I don’t do.  So it was discovery for both of us, but in different ways.

I’ve dined at Ken Forkish’s Trifecta Tavern in Portland and if I can recall correctly, he serves the Field Blend #2 bread to his guests.  It was delicious and so I took the plunge.  

Using my ~three month old levain culture – meaning that it hadn’t been refreshed for that long and which still has quite a bit of get-up-and-go, we followed FWSY instructions with a caveat or two.  Needing 360g of the 80% levain for the two boules, we only built 400g of levain from the culture and sacrificed a mere 40g of overage to the trash bin vs. how Mr. Forkish builds it in his book.  Count me among the throng of TFLers in deciding to not follow his full levain build amount.

I tried to mostly keep hands off and let my sister in law do most of the heavy lifting, with an ever present eye and words of correction/encouragement over her shoulder.  I was given a banneton proofing basket as a gift a year back, unused and lonely in a dark corner of my closet, until this very episode.  As such, I christened it by rubbing rice flour into the basket and also into a small ceramic bowl.  Not having worked with these before I was concerned with a 78% dough with rye flour not releasing and sticking to the surfaces after proofing.  And so I over-floured the basket and bowl with standard AP flour on top of the rice flour, a mistake which I will attempt to avoid next time around.  I let Sandra use the basket and I put my boule into the bowl for overnight proofing in the refrigerator.

Having only 1 Dutch Oven, the decision was made to bake both at the same time.  Hers in the DO and mine on the ceramic tile baking deck in my oven.  Then the oven was steamed my standard way – both Sylvia’s steaming towel and my baking pan of lava rocks with a near-boiling water pour-over.  

The same initial 30 minutes for the covered DO and steam for the deck boule, the final 15-20 minutes uncovered and steam released.  Below is what this first attempt looked like.  Way too much raw flour on the banneton boule.  What surprised me the most is that my baked-on-the-deck boule did not split on top.  I didn’t score it, as it went into the oven seam side up, but the seam did not open.  Hmm.

After Sandra leaves town later this week, I’ll try the whole thang on my own once more, “second verse same as the first”*.  I think that the second iteration will boast better results, with a bit of learning curve applied as well as my more practiced hands in the mix.  I’m curious as to how these will stack up side by side the next time.  We shall see.

alan

*Herman’s Hermits – “I’m Henry the Eighth” 

In an attempt at being anti-curmudgeonly, we hosted a get-together for neighbors last night.  I had the bright idea of consuming (too) many hours by baking three different breads on Friday.  Unfortunately, I thought about taking photos of the layout just as our first guests knocked, and mere seconds after the food had finished being laid out.  Therefore no more than a single photo was snapped of the groaning table.

Closest in the photo are the Pain a l’Ancienne baguettes.  At 80% hydration and unstructured, they are gently pulled to the length of the baking peel.  My first time baking these in a decade, from Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice.  Not knowing my baking left from my baking right at the time, I bought the BBA because the photos and walk-through explanations looked to be a good teacher.  Cold fermented for 1 day.

In the center and partially sliced is one of the two Ciabatta loaves.  At 83% hydration, I hadn’t made these in about a year.  SAF Red IDY with a 40% overnight biga, my take on a northwest bakery’s ciabatta which is baked for restaurants. Missing sufficient loft, I guess I’m out of practice.

At the far end, sharing a cooling rack with the other ciabatta, is my slightly skewed take on SJSD baguettes.  For these, at ~74% hydration, I used dabrownman’s 3 stage build schedule with a 50/50 mix of whole wheat and dark rye flours to get from my ~65% starter to 100% hydration liquid levain.  Followed by David Snyder’s formula for San Joaquin Sour Dough baguettes.  A slightly heartier version of Mr. Snyder’s SJSD by virtue of subbing the white flour in the levain with all whole grain and adding a few more grams of water to the final mix.

The evening’s dedicated toppings for slathering on the breads were an olive paste based on David Rosengarten’s Taste program from the early days of the Food Network, and also a hummus.

Outside of the picture on the dining room table my wife made a few of her fabulous offerings.  A Mexican Chocolate Roll and Chocolate Meringue Cookies, both from Mountains of Chocolate, a tiny 35 year old paperback for which I can find no current reference.  The chocolate is laced with cinnamon and almond extract, and el segreto final is the dusting of cocoa across the surface, the roll is guaranteed to make one’s eyes roll in delight.   Similar in look (only) to this lovely creature - http://www.cupofsugarpinchofsalt.com/2014/05/04/mexican-chocolate-cake-roll-with-kalua-cinnamon-whipped-cream/ .

The meringue cookies use cocoa for their exterior, toasted pecan’s and she uses Lindt’s Intense Orange chocolate for the chips.   Again, similar, in look only, to these - http://www.examiner.com/article/brownie-meringue-cookie-recipe .

The final third of her own confection trilogy last night was a pumpkin cheesecake with a cream cheese/whipped cream topping and gingersnap cookie based crust.  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Pumpkin-Cheesecake-with-Caramel-Swirl-2635 .

Understanding that TFL is a bread based website, but - if anyone is interested in the chocolate roll or meringues, and as Mountains of Chocolate (1981) seems to be out of print for a generation, I’d be happy to share the recipes.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must hop on the treadmill for oh, say, the next 12 hours.

alan

I had some time constraints yesterday and still wanted to ensure that I’d be able to bake some Bouabsa Baguettes this morning.  I had just enough time in the early morning to mix the flour and water, but then had to place the goop on hold until I could return a few hours later to continue mixing the dough.

The Bouabsa baguette formula that I use (thanks to Janedo and DMSnyder) calls for the instant dry yeast to be mixed into the dry flour up front along with the first-hydration water.  Then set aside for about a half hour before adding the remaining second-hydration water and salt.  Therefore, this is not a true autolyse due to the IDY being part of the initial mix.  

I wasn’t about to leave the first mix out with the IDY already incorporated.  So I tried something new, at least for me.  I mixed the flour and IDY with refrigerated water, which is 37F in my icebox, and then placed the dough into the refrigerator to retard.  The idea being that I wanted the IDY to have as little chance to wake up as possible.

When I did return home I continued the remaining mixing and initial fermentation with stretch & folds proceeding from this point onward in the usual way.  The resuts came out of the oven a short time ago.  Although they look a bit short and stubby, they are not.  They are ~14 inches long, which is pretty much all that I can do with my oven depth.  They just open so much that it makes them look short.  I’m quite happy with them! 

with apologies to C. Dickens.

The Levain (Charles St. Evrémonde)
I was gone for the two summer months this year.  As this is the first year that I’ve had a levain starter, I decided to “protect my investment” by dividing it into roughly thirds.  One third was spread thin, dried, flaked and placed into a sealed jar.  Another third was double zip-locked and placed into the freezer.  And the last third was treated as I always treat my levain starter when I refresh it.  I wrapped it in cellophane wrap and chucked it into the refrigerator.

As a note, I always play it safe by preserving a chunk of my working starter when it is time for a refresh.  Force of habit, anal-retentive, whatever, but I feel that it is a small price to pay for a little peace of mind and the ever-important back-up.

Here is a picture of the little triumvirate.

In order to revive the starter, decided to try bringing the dried flakes back to life and relied on the steps outlined in a post from Fellow Loafian GAPOMA, found at
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/142323#comment-142323 .  It worked like a charm, and I was back in business.  Here’s a result from earlier this week.

The Poolish (Sydney Carton)
As I’ve mentioned a few time here in some of my very few posts, I still basically concentrate on baguettes only.  Practice makes kind-a perfect.  And in this past year since getting the home baking bug, I’ve pretty much stuck with alternating between Instant Dried Yeast and levain baguettes, but all with long cold fermentations.  I had almost forgotten about poolish baguettes.  But not the other evening, when I didn’t have enough time for any of my standard go-to formulae.  I decided to bake a set of baguettes using a 33% overnight poolish at ~71% hydration.  

Just for fun and experimentation I also decided to mix the AP flour with water and then give it an overnight refrigerated autolyse.  In the AM the poolish was a-bubblin’ away, but I had a few tasks to do for a few hours, so I placed it in the refrigerator for a bit of a cold sleep.

When I did retrieve the poolish and the autolysed blob, I left them out on the counter for a warm up prior to a final mix.  But not long enough to completely warm up.  And so the mix by hand (always by hand with me) was quite difficult as the autolysed half of the partnership was still quite chilly and just not very cooperative.  After giving my forearms a workout, I was able to successfully complete the mix and then go to my standard French Fold step.  

And they baked up quite nicely too.  My wife described the final result as “light, doughy, eggy, almost like a popover”  and the crust had that dark baked crunch that I cherish so much.  Later, after having been gone for a few hours and returning home, the smells still coming from the kitchen reminded me of something like a cake that had been baked.  Here’s a picture.

The verdict (Madame Defarge)
Well, there really isn’t any verdict here.  Just a post-note.  The poolish baguettes were fabulous on the day baked, but by day 2 (today) had lost a step.  The levain baguettes baked on Thursday evening still had some legs this morning and the superior taste.  As a note, after the first day, just about all bread all makes it into my toaster, so the flavor impression is based on toast.  But after more well over a half century of being a toast aficionado, I can still call ‘em as I see/taste ‘em.  

Hello,

I’ve returned from our more than two months away from home and from our oven, but made good on a promise to a distant acquaintance.  I said that I would try to create a video of the making of the Bouabsa baguette for her, and I did.  As my first baking “project” since returning home.

It is posted on You Tube and comes in at a whopping 38 minutes, and is quite detailed, with the first ~9 minutes alone talking about the ingredients and the tools that I use. If you have trouble falling asleep at night, this is the video for you :-) .  However, for anyone wanting to learn the steps and methodology of making this simple, yet incredibly satisfying bread, it may be worth your time.  I use French folds and stretch & folds for my mixing and folding here.

If you have a hankerin’, it is posted on You Tube as www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYvORu_oLYc .

alan