varda's blog

Several years ago, when I first started haunting TFL for clues on how to make Jewish Rye, I came across references to George Greenstein's Secrets of a Jewish Baker.   The breads I made from this book were god awful which had nothing to do with George Greenstein and everything to do with the (lack of) skill of the baker.   As time went on and I learned more about bread baking in general and Jewish Rye in particular, SOAJB got pushed to the back of the shelf and almost forgotten.  And yet people like David Snyder reminded me of it with his occasional Jewish Corn Rye bakes.    See for instance here.   Yum.  

The other day I came back to it   I decided to handle the volume measurements in Greenstein by pulling out the old measuring cups and then weighing what I did as I went along.   Then make adjustments from the weighed measurements going forward.   Since then this bread has become my new favorite.   I already make Tzitzel and Flaxseed Rye and Borodinsky and Schuster Loaf, so do I really need another rye on my plate?   Absolutely.   So good.   Must have more.

Formula:

Method:

Ripen 80% rye sour until pungent

Mix all ingredients

Bulk ferment until somewhat puffy (this took two hours today in 70degF kitchen)

Shape into a jelly roll and mold the ends shut

Proof until it starts to soften (this took 1 hour today)

Glaze with cornstarch mix (boil two cups water - dissolve 2 tbsp cornstarch in 1/4 cup cold water.   Whisk into boiling water until thickens and clear.)

Sprinkle with caraway seeds

Preheat oven to 500.  Load bread with steam for 1 minute.   Turn off oven for 6 minutes.   Bake at 430 for 20 minutes. 

Note that I did not use yeast in addition to the rye sour as Greenstein does.  Nor did I keep the fermenting dough wet as Greenstein says - just the regular old bulk ferment in a covered bowl.  

Lately I find myself making a lot of baguettes.   I definitely have an ideal for this simple, hard bread, which involves the pure taste of fermented refined wheat sheathed in crunchy goodness, but how often my efforts fall short.   Lately, maybe because of practice, practice and more practice I feel like the corner has been turned, and more often than not, what I get appears to deliver what I'm looking for.   I say appears, because usually I don't cut into, let alone taste the results of my labors.  Today I got a taste simply because knobbly ends are fragile and I broke a few before I could sell them. 

Speaking of knobbly ends --

recently a fellow fresh loafer (she can identify herself if she wants) taught me to make them.   I fell in love instantly.   All my baguettes must have knobbly ends.   The ones above are pretty restrained -- they can get a lot more knobbly than this.   But as I said, fragile.   As I was unloading this  morning (maybe my brain was fogged so early in the morning) one of my baguettes fell on its end, and bang - that was the end of the end.   Then a couple more tossed around too much, lost their knobs (is there a French word for this?)   Must treat more carefully - as if made of china. 

I switched to knobs from points a few weeks ago.   The store manager where I deliver many of these said her customers were asking why.   I said, just because they're cool, but then thought I should have had a more sophisticated and learned historical answer.   Any ideas? 

Method, Formula, Notes

A few notes:

-Credit Mark Sinclair for the S&F in mixer approach.

- I started using fresh yeast a few months ago, and I definitely can see a difference - as you can see amount is tiny.

- I upped the salt to 2% because it seems to help survive the long night in the cold.

- I dropped hydration from around 80% a year ago to 73% now.   Much happier with the results.

- The high initial temperature is due to using baguette trays - you put all that metal in the oven and temperature drops pretty quickly.    It is actually a lot colder than that during the steam period but that's what I have the oven set to.

- a 300g baguette rolls out nicely to around 18 inches.   I also make a 24 inch baguette using 450g of dough.

One thing that happens when you bake for other people is they tell you what they want, and if you don't have it, sometimes they just walk away.   So it has gone for the past few months at farmer's markets, where a small but determined group must have their whole wheat bread, and won't even look at other offerings if it is not there.    I have been keeping a close eye on TFL for whole wheat baking.   True I have baked 100% whole wheat breads -- particularly Reinhardt's and also Pain de Mie following Janetcook's lead.   Neither of these satisfied me as a bread for sale - I was looking for an approach more in tune with my regular processes.  

Recently Last year Abel posted a bread (thanks to Bröterich for the link) made with rye sour and all whole wheat in the final dough.   (For some reason I can't find it - the post seems to have vanished.)   This inspired me, but my attempts to copy it resulted in a very bricklike substance.  So I played around a bit trying to find my own way.   Finally I stumbled on something that looked beautiful which used both my white and rye starters. The rush of the market being what it is, I sold a few loaves without having ever tasted it.   Last Saturday I brought even more to the market, and the loaves flew off the table, all the while with me wondering what in the heck I had just sold.   Fortunately though, I had a few repeat buyers, so I knew it couldn't be too bad.   This week with a bit of a slowdown since I'm not baking for the market this Saturday, I was finally able to taste my whole wheat bread.   I am really not much of a whole wheat fan - a little too healthy for my tastes, but this was really nice - particularly with the very dark crust whose sweetness contrasts nicely with the hearty crumb.   In fact I love this bread and it fits nicely into my routine, as it doesn't require any new preferments - just the ones I have on hand.

Some would call this 100% whole wheat, but of course it has some white flour and some rye flour from the starters, so I'll just call it whole wheat - seems ok.

Formula and Method:

The last few weeks have been a blur of baking, as I have started selling at a new market which has a BIG appetite for bread.   The Waltham market has been around for 24 years and has a very large and loyal set of customers.  

This Saturday was our third week.    I say "our" as my daughter has gotten the market bug and has come to sell with me every week in Cambridge and now Waltham.   

Here she's selling three deep and probably cursing me for standing behind taking pictures instead of helping out.

This week I tried to take some pictures before the crowds descended as by the time I got to it last week, half of the bread was gone already.

Cranberry and Sunflower Multigrain Levain

Cardamom buns, challah rolls, bagels and baguettes

Durum Levain and Hamelman's Country Loaves

Rye, Rye, and Rye

There are many great vendors, and I wish I had more (any) time to do a bit of shopping.   This week I traded a challah for some local strawberries from this stand.

In the middle of a frenzy of baking getting ready for the Saturday market and trying to squeeze more and more from my trusty Assistent, I got a visitation from an alien lifeform, who took pity on me and came to help  me mix dough.

These 6 loaves worth of cranberry dough are just a drop in the bucket for my new friend Molly.

Her bowl alone is as big as the Assistent altogether.  

And finally, a fresh loafer asked me about Tzitzel Rye of St. Louis fame, and reminded me that I hadn't made it in awhile.   So I made some for the second Waltham market, but didn't quite get to take any pictures in time.   I have been fiddling on this formula for a couple years now.   Here is the current version:

Lately in the midst of making a lot of decent bread, I've had a string of mysterious failures.   Here are the symptoms:   at best poor opening of scores which leaves the resulting bread more compact than it should be and with gummier crumb.   At worst cakey crumb and collapses along the crust which leave a skin of paperlike crust with a cavern beneath.   The second gets thrown out; the first is fine to eat but nothing great.    Over the months I've wracked my brain trying to figure out what was going on.   What made it especially difficult is that I'd tweak this or that and get fine bread, but then a few times later, back to square one.   As these breads would tend to get tacky during the proof I tended to think that they were getting over-proofed very quickly.   So I'd try a shorter proof and that would seem fine, or lower the hydration, or, or, or

What made this particularly irritating is that these failures were concentrated among my simplest breads – flour water salt starter.    How could this be?  

In the last few days, my thinking changed.   Was I under rather than over fermenting?    The other night I had some excess starter, and I decided to try an experiment.   Right before bed,  I mixed up some dough and turned the heat in the house way down.   Since we have been experiencing the coolest spring ever, I thought that I could try a longer rather than shorter bulk ferment.    Because this made me nervous I also upped the salt and lowered the hydration a bit.   When I went to sleep the temperature in the house was 70F (20C).   Ten hours later it was 64F.   The dough was fine – nice and light and expanded, and not at all tacky.   I did a short proof and then baked and sure enough – the bread came out very nicely.  

Long overnight counter ferments may be fine during a cold spring – but summer is coming.   I couldn’t rely on that for very long.   So last night I decided to rework and do a cold ferment but not to underdo it.  

This is what I did:  upped salt to 2.3%  (my standard has been 1.8%)   Lowered hydration to 65%.   Mixed all medium developed.   Left on counter for 20 minutes, then did a vigorous stretch and fold.  Then bulk retarded for 13 hours.   Then removed, left on counter for 1 hour, then shaped.   Then proofed for 2.5 hours on counter, and last ½ hour in refrigerator.   Then baked.   The dough was well behaved the whole time without a trace of tackiness.    When I took the loaves out of the couche, I would have sworn it was over-proofed, as it was very expanded and flopped around a bit.   

And yet, it wasn’t.   The loaves expanded a lot in the oven, with the scores opening very nicely.   The resulting bread did not suffer from gummy compressed crumb.  To the contrary.

What I take away from this is that the thing I've been trying to figure out since I started baking - when is the bulk ferment done - is still eluding me.   There isn't a simple poke test.   You can't use time.    You can't even use time and temperature, as it is so starter dependent.  And if you go too short, you will get the strangest set of symptoms ever which will point in all directions.   I think I've been going too short for certain types of breads, and the solution is to ferment for longer (perhaps much longer.)   Do I need to keep the salt so high and hydration low?   Not really sure yet.

Formula:

Methodology as above.  

Lately I have been spending a lot of time baking - a lot of time trying to execute well and less time thinking about new breads.   But last week as my daughter was helping me at the Cambridge farmer's market, she jolted me out of my complacency by saying that she didn't like my pain au levain and that it was boring and I should rethink it.   Aren't kids wonderful?  So that sent me off browsing and thinking in the few moments when I wasn't baking, and I landed on Maggie Glezer's Thom Leonard's Country French Bread.   I had no intention of making the huge loaves that she describes, and finding her formula presentation confusing, I took the general idea and put together my own formula. 

This bread calls for High Extraction flour, which in the past I've found daunting.  But this time around, I realized it was pretty simple.   Just sift out some of the bran from whole wheat flour.   In the past I tried this, but didn't realize there is a big difference between home milled whole wheat and massive machine milled whole wheat.   All it took to make some very passable high extraction flour was to run some GM Stone Ground Fine Whole Wheat through a drum sieve once.   It took less than five minutes.   The resulting flour with bran removed weighing 16% of total (so we'll call it 84% extraction) looked almost white with golden undertones.

and some bran left over:

The resulting bread was very pleasant with a rich warm flavor and really not boring.  

The Cambridge market has been keeping me very busy but added to that is a three day a week delivery to a local restaurant.   This is a brand new restaurant less than a mile from me, very high quality, and I must say the chef has good taste in bread :-)  He has been ordering Durum Levain and Flaxseed Rye for the dinner bread basket, and Multigrain Cranberry Sourdough for I wasn't sure what until last night.   My husband and I ate there and ordered Charcuterie as an appetizer.   It came with very thinly sliced toasted wedges of my Cranberry Levain.   Nice!  

So my day on Friday  started with the flaxseed rye scald at 7:30 am.    I finished the restaurant bake ten minutes before my 4 pm deadline and made the delivery, and then got started on finishing my bake for the market the next day, wrapping up around 11 pm.  

I love this Durum Levain - apparently the restaurant guests like it too, but I can't sell it at the Cambridge market.   Go figure.

Almost ready to go - just have to finish the Cranberries:

Finally they are all out - just a few minutes to cool before they get shipped down the hill.

The definite favorite for the Cambridge market is Multigrain Sunflower Levain.   I make twelve loaves and no place to put the dough until I got this nice Cambro box:

The finished product:

I also wanted to share my new favorite - Country French Sourdough:

Now thank goodness the Cambridge market is over and I have a few weeks before the next market (much bigger) starts.   

Since it was too inefficient, I shut down my little bake to order business, and now I am looking for retail outlets that will sell some of my bread.   Starting some samples tonight. 

A couple questions.   I find myself doing a lot of hand mixing - not because I love it but for convenience to avoid moving one dough to machine mix another.   What is the best way to incorporate water and flour together by hand?    I haven't been satisfied with my approach.   Second - if you were going to get a 20 qt mixer which could mix say 15K of dough which one would you get?   There are Chinese models out for under $1000.   Any good?

Lately I've been a lurker on TFL and not even a very good one.   But the urge to post is too strong.   I must post.   After a disappointing several weeks at the Winchester Market - some good weeks and some bad weeks, but not really a nice place, or a very well run market, I finally participated in a really great market in Cambridge Massachusetts.   A few days before the market, I called a baker who had been there before me, and asked how much he sold.   He told me close to a hundred loaves.   I gulped as that's around 4 times as much as I've ever baked for one day.    So I got to work and cranked out 35 loaves, plus bagels, baguettes and challah rolls.  On the day of the market, my daughter met me there to help me set up, as I had injured my knee (something to do with a dog and a squirrel.)   And then the shoppers started coming in.   At one point, I decided I should sit down for a bit to rest my knee.   An hour later, I realized that I hadn't had a chance.   The market wasn't that large, or that crowded, but it seems that everyone there had come to shop, shop, shop.

They showed up with their canvas bags, and shop they did.  

A pretty classy place - even the flautist was good.

Even the little kids got in the act.   This guy is either reading my price list, or trying to snag a bagel while I'm busy with his dad.   One father got down to eye level with his three year old, and let the kid pick the bread - a flaxseed rye.    I bit my tongue - no need to say, huh? what? do you think he'll like that?

After a couple hectic hours - in which not a single person told me they were "gluten free" or joked for the 35th time that they too had a bread obsession and then scurried away without buying - I had two bagels left on my table, and an hour and a half left of the market.   Must bake more.   Eek!

This week I started baking yesterday.   Hope to make it to over 50 loaves before Saturday plus my trusty bagels, baguettes and rolls.  

It has been awhile since I've been on Fresh Loaf.   I have been bread busy and so too bread exhausted for posting lately. For the last few weeks I've been selling on Saturday mornings at a winter market, held in the greenhouse of a large nursery.  

The weather has not cooperated, and traffic has been sluggish, with sales following along.    This week, not wanting to be left with a load of bread (as happened when we got hit two weeks ago with a surprise snow storm) I followed the forecast carefully, and somehow got the reassurance to make a good load of bread.   I was not disappointed.   The temperature went up, the sun came out, and the shoppers reappeared at the market.   I sold almost all my bread, with quite a few return shoppers from past weeks.   Phew!

Fig Anise loaves

Tzitzel Deli Rye, Baguettes, and Bagels

Delicious marshmallow treats from the next table.

Guacamole made up fresh on the other side.

In other bread news, I finally got my wholesale license.   This was neither cheap, nor easy, nor pleasant, but the deed is done.   I have been visiting restaurants in my spare time with rolls and brochures trying to scare up some business. It turns out that there are some big bakeries who have managed to corner the market with low costs and high volume. Not so easy for a tiny little operator to get in there.   Will have to figure out how to do this.   

On the bright side, I recently rediscovered a treat from my youth that I'd entirely forgotten about - salt bagels.

Unbelievably good with a bit of cream cheese. 

I love spelt but not too much of it.  My high percentage spelt loaves have turned out fine, but somehow don't get eaten up, even by me.  Today I made a Pain au Levain with added Spelt and kept the spelt to 21%.   To my taste at least, this is ideal.   The resulting loaf has that special nutty fresh taste that spelt in small enough quantities provides.  

Using Janet's Cadco techniques plus my  new steel plate, I got some good ovenspring.  Perhaps too good.

I also wanted to come back to the fig anise bread.   I baked the La Brea formula several times, and it was a big hit, but I felt vaguely uneasy, as it is very sweet and incredibly figgy.    I decided to take it down a notch by leaving out the fig puree, reducing the sugar, adding some whole grains, and upping the hydration.   The resulting loaf seems just as figgy even without the puree, still quite sweet, and somewhat more interesting with the added whole wheat.   I accidentally added more water than I had intended, by a lot.   Despite being somewhat perplexed by how wet and slippery the dough was, it still handled reasonably well, and behaved properly.   If anything I would reduce the figs and sugar even more, and perhaps up the whole wheat.   In any case, this version was more satisfying to me than the original.   It almost seems that when you get a lot of figs in there it hardly matters what the underlying bread is made of as the figs conquer all.   

Some time ago, my husband and I ate out at a Portuguese restaurant in East Cambridge.    The bread was amazingly good.   The dinner not so much.   As this hardly ever happens (usually a good dinner is accompanied by just so-so bread) I needed to find out more.   The owner told me that the bread was Broa - Portuguese cornbread.    More questions didn't lead to more answers, as it turns out they don't bake it themselves.

I searched around, and didn't find much on Broa.   Clayton had a quite unsatisfying version in his book.   Then a comment on TFL led me back to my own bookshelf.  Greenstein has a recipe in his Secrets of a Jewish Baker, not really the place I expected to find it.   Greenstein uses volume measurements and it has been so long since I've baked using them that I felt all at sea.   I weighed everything and took notes so I would be able to figure out what I had done.   The dough was incredibly dry - almost like putty, and very salty - perhaps I misunderstood.   To make matters worse I used Masa Harina, and that was just a mistake, as the bread ended up tasting like tortillas.   When I went back and calculated percentages, not surprisingly the hydration was around 50%, and the salt was 2.6%!   Furthermore, the method used was very fast - not even a bulk ferment - and so I thought the flavor was pretty dull excepting the lime treatment of the corn flour which was not a plus. 

I went back to it, and decided to do things a bit differently.   I used starter instead of a boatload of yeast, upped the hydration somewhat, used remilled cornmeal for the corn flour (Greenstein's suggestion) and started over.   This was definitely an improvement, but I don't think I've come close to the delicious bread I had in that restaurant.   Anyone know how to make this authentically?

Happy New Year everyone.

I've been baking a lot lately, as I try to master my Cadco oven.   Some breads come out better than in my conventional gas home oven, others not so  much.   The other day I made challah, and it came out better than ever.   Unfortunately I didn't take good notes, so I'm not quite sure how I baked it.   I did one six strand loaf and the other seven.   The seven was strangely flat and boring.   I guess I need a fancier braiding regime. 

Awhile ago, I tried another La Brea bread - currant buns with a liquid rye sour and a fairly low hydration.   While they were tasty, I wasn't quite happy with them.   So I tried it my way with my drier rye sour and a higher hydration.

I made both loaves and buns.   Using Janet's regime (turn off the oven for a few minutes after preheat and a couple minutes of steaming then on again)   my loaves open consistently but I've only got a really good ear once and of course didn't take a picture. 

I made the buns by rolling into a thick log and then curling them up.   The spiral is largely lost in the bake but you can see it a bit.

These are really tasty, but need a few more currants to push them over the top:

I got a steel sheet that fits on a full shelf in the oven.   This can be baked on directly like a stone, but today I baked on a baking sheet on top of it.