alfanso's blog

No, that isn't my batard.

During our recent visit to my brother and wife in Albuquerque, their home baker friend, having seen my postings on TFL asked if I could give him a baking lesson.  Just in case, I also packed up everything to make a few batches of SJSD batards.  Everything except the kitchen sink and my baking deck, that is.

The prior day Sandra, also my "student", and I worked on getting a batch ready to have Marty bake as soon as he walked in, because that is the only way that he'd be able to see the full cycle from levain build through bake in a single afternoon.

Working backwards with Marty, we

1. baked, then did
2. a mix, bulk ferment, divide and shape finally ending with couched batards for the next bake.  And we finished up by
3. doing a levain build.  

An entire cycle in one day, albeit out of order.  I'd done this scheme once before and it worked out really well, so I already had the template in place.

The day after Sandra did that dough's bake, and then a week later, just before we returned home, she wanted to lock in the process so we did another cycle - in logical order this time.

Three weeks ago Marty sent me a really nice email with his own SJSD picture.  He wrote "I made my first bread with your instructions and it’s probably the best bread I’ve made."  I also showed Marty that we can use plain old Pillsbury types of flour to get superior results - no need for the fancy stuff.

Here is Sandra's own follow-up SJSD.

And the lead picture is Sandra's SJSD with caraway seeds inside.  She baked this one just the other day, and I think the results are so incredible!  She is a gifted painter, ceramist and cook.  It won't be long before we add bread baker to the list.

As for us?  Headed out to an acquaintance's house full of folks for Christmas Day celebration, I baked these in my new-found variations on a theme - fat baguettes: more semolina sesame and SFBI Pain au Levain.  Four for them, two for our aunt & uncle and two for us.  Baked a shade lighter than I typically would as not everyone is a fan of my favored dark crust.  I think that I'm having a little problem with self-control...

My wife made this Mexican chocolate roll for her share of the baking. 

 alan

Since picking up those 20#s of semola rimacinata from Laurenzo's, I've been on a semolina baguette tear.  After baking a bunch of baguettes and batards for the Laurenzo's I've had a few more bakes.  Mostly out of want (wont?), or is that desire?  Dunno.  But I've moved the dial a bit.  Instead of my typical 350g - 375g baguettes, I bumped them up to be "gros baguettes" - big boys weighing in 100g heavier each.  So all of these weigh in at about 450g-475g.

My wife was headed north to see her folks and asked me to bake up a mess o' those semolinas for them, and I added on a bake of SJSD's.  Just because.   She didn't take them all, so I was left to suffer with a few.

I thought that the Laurenzo's would like another dose of the semolina after I got positive feedback from them last week.  And I figured that I'd also bake up a foursome of WW fig-pecan too, as a kind of an accompaniment.  Just because.  Still on the Gros Baguette theme.

My final note on my formula sheet for the WW fig-pecan bread is "bake them darker than you think you should"

alan

A trip down to that fabulous Italian grocery store, Laurenzo's, a week ago to pick up more durum flour.  20 lbs. in three buckets, because a 50 lb. bag is just way out of my league.  

The owner asked if I was making pasta.  No, bread.  After some shop talk and few snapshots, he said that his dad would love some of the sesame semolina.  Could I bake some for him?  Why, yes.  And I added an olive levain to boot, just for fun.  

And it was fun to schedule the two breads as overlapping projects.  Both baked this morning.  The olive dough sheds nary a film of moisture onto the couche, so I shaped and couched them last night and baked them first thing this morning.  Once the couche was dry I then did the same with the still bulk semolina dough.  Having only one official couche, I decided to plan the activities with just that one linen.

And another thing.  Recently there was lively discussion on TFL about what is an "Italian bread" with different camps of thought coming from folks here.  While I had his ear last week, I asked David what he thought an "Italian bread" was and his reply was "whatever you grew up eating".

After delivering these to David he thanked me with a few articles from his store that are too generous to mention.  Let me just say that it was an uneven barter.

SFBI Pain au Levain w/caraway seeds.  Inside and (clearly) outside.

I'm the man.  And I went overboard on covering the batard with caraway seeds.  Decided for the first time in my still nascent caraway seed career to NOT use a cornstarch glaze on a bread containing them.  Well, instead I used a similar method to the sesame seed coating technique.  Roll shaped dough on wet paper towel, then roll in seeds.  For the baguettes, I only sprinkled seeds on top of the moistened dough.  But for the batard, I decided to go whole hog and roll the moist dough in the plate of caraways.  The result was a bit shocking to see.

I did post these on here once before with caraway seeds, but the image of the batard was enough to drive me to another posting.  The seeds were so heavily covering strangling the batard that I could hardly see my score.  And indeed, it did not bloom with the oven spring that I typically expect to see.

355g x 3 baguettes, 650 x 1 batard.

Crumb shot added...

Finally sliced into the batard.  With just the edges chock full of caraway seeds, it doesn't seem so nefarious.  

My mother always chided me not to play with my food.  So I guess this is my version of payback!

alan

Last week I tried my hand at the Hamelman Semolina Levain bread with 125% bread flour liquid levain.  With semolina coarse grain #1 used instead of the powdery durum, for experimentation.  And it worked out, mostly just fine.  But the flavor just wasn't grabbing me.  Hence take 2 here has a few changes, while keeping everything else the same.  

I substituted out the bread flour in the levain and used rye flour.  Also went back to using the durum rimaccinata flour.  For a final change from last week I dumped my raw sesame seeds and used toasted seeds instead.  And I think the whole process went along just dandy.  Once again the oven spring blew past a few of my score lines, but in the realm of heartaches, it sits pretty low on the disappointment scale.  Still too recent out of the oven to break into.  But I think that the flavor will be heartier than before with the addition of the 15% rye.

365x3 baguettes, 650x1 batard

Crumb shot of the batard added.

Ciao bambini, alan

rushyama recently posted a beautiful semolina sesame levain.  Kismet, but that isn't what had me geared up for this bake.  It had already been earmarked as my next bake.

For this bread, a search of TFL yields one clear use of semolina coarse #1 way way back.  This specific bread in baguette form?  Only David Snyder seemed to make it.  Mixed by hand? Who knows, but probably not many if any. 

So, while not groundbreaking, at least I think that I cornered the market on a Hamelman-hand-mixed-semolina-coarse-grind-baguette-levain.  That and a few dollars will buy me a ride on the NYC subway system.

Mr. Hamelman fancies the 2 stage 125%hydration Bread Flour build levains for a number of his formulae.  This is new territory for me, but I quickly got the hang of it with my version of his olive levain.  My wheelhouse is the 75% hydration mixed flour variety.  A very slight, but nonetheless, learning curve. 

Just to be ornery, and curious, I wanted to see the effects of using semolina coarse grind instead of the standard durum rimaccinata flour.  And while I got a fairly good oven spring, the crumb is a bit on the dense side.  Is it the product of the grain or something more nefarious afoot?  Nothing to baseline it against so far.  

This is a 67% hydration, 40%BF / 60% semolina dough  The mixed dough was soft and malleable with a moist, but not wet, feel.  Onto the specifics and my standard violations of the original formula:

• Autolyse just the semolina with all final dough water for 30 minutes.
• Add Bread Flour and liquid levain, autolyse for another 30 minutes
• Add salt.  200 French Folds.  5 minute rest, 200 more French Folds.
• 3 Letter Folds on the bench at 40, 80 & 120 minutes.
• Overnight nap in the refrigerator.
• Early AM divide, pre-shape and shape onto couche.  Back into refrigerator.
• Bake at 460dF.  13 min w/steam, 15 minutes more, 2 minutes venting.
• 365g x 4.

Not enough successful experience with durum baguette scoring in the very few times I made durum baguettes before.  Especially the seeded breads which have a tendency to fight getting a good bloom on a baguette.  Not so here.  I have to say that this is my best scoring of semolina/durum baguettes so far, although once more a few too close together score lines merged.

crumb shot added...

Not terribly open crumb.  Still do not have a fix on whether I should expect more from this dough in baguette form.  I'm past pining for a seriously open crumb, with few exceptions.  I would have liked to see more openness, and for their weight and size they perhaps should have been bigger.  But this is more of an observation and not a complaint.  If I have my druthers, I'm more in the camp of wanting to see the crust develop a beautiful bloom and grigne.

alan 

Hamelman Olive Levain Baguettes redux.

What happens when I get inattentive during a step.  In this case, the seam wasn't sealed tightly on this one, or more likely didn't go on the baking peel seam side down.   Or both!  Fortunately these are few and far between.  It will still be a tasty treat.

From the top angle view - all seems to be dandy.  This time I used better quality olives so the taste should be improved as well as upped the hydration by about 2-3%.  I really can't say with any accuracy, I just added a few extra grams of water.

360g x 4 baguettes.

SFBI style pain au levain at 80% hydration.

Not my style, and too lazy, I guess.  Earlier this week SteveB posted his magnificent 80% hydration pain au levain, which disappeared all too quickly from the current Bread Browser images.  I'd been making a few different versions, including my take on David Snyder's take on an SFBI pain au levain.

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow and on any flight day involving more than a few hours of travel I'll pack my usual favorite travel sandwich of PB&J.  We ran out of bread, oh the horror, and I was on the cusp of buying a bread when Steve posted his delight.  

I was intrigued by the usage of a drywall blade which he employed, in maintaining a mostly hands off approach while shaping and applying surface tension to the batard.  I had a shorter version of that type of blade in my tool kit, needed comestibles for the flights, and a bit of an urge to give it a go.  

I upped the hydration on the SFBI pain au levain from the formulated 68% to 80%, quite a leap.  And so I employed the drywall blade...

• Gold Medal Bread Flour
• my stock 75% mixed flour levain
• Held back ~40 or so grams of water during the autolyse, then double hydrated when I added the salt.
• 300 French Folds with a 5m rest between
• Letter Folds at 40, 80 and 120 minutes.
• Retarded overnight, shaped at 7 AM, baked at 1 PM
• Couche rather than a banneton (I was worried about the dough sticking, but this time sprinkled rice flour on the linen rather than nothing or AP flour.  Did not stick.)
• ~750g x 1 batard
• 460dF, 15m steam, another 20 m bake, 2m venting

And now - I don't have to go down to the market for a bread!

 alan

I did my due diligence searching for anyone who had made this bread either without using a mixer or had made this as baguettes.  My search came up empty on both accounts.  So it was high time to take the plunge.  This is my first bake from Mr. Hamelman's book, although I did bake two of his pain au levain breads from formulae posted by someone somewhere on the Web.  This bread has a combination of castelvetrano and kalmata olives.

I'd never worked with as stiff a dough before, by at least 4-5%.  This one clocks in 63% hydration, and performing French Folds on this bread was akin to performing French Folds on a flaccid basketball.  The dough sure was stiff and I did't know what to expect down the line.  But the results are quite satisfying, and as with all of the breads that I've made for the first time, I really didn't quite know what to expect.  But the dough became more manageable and extensive between folds1 and 2 and more so on the final fold.  

Shaping was a cinch, and the amount of oven spring speaks for itself.  The crust has a satisfyingly sharp snap to it and the amount of olives, 25%, pretty much guarantees some olive in just abut every bite.

I didn't want to risk blowing the whole bake on baguettes that might have turned out to be trash-worthy, so I hedged my bets with 2 stubby baguettes and one batard.

Changes from original formula included:

• Resized the dough amount to 1000g total.
• "Autolyse" without the called-for salt.
• Hand mixing rather than by machine.  150 French Folds, a 5 minute rest and then another 150 French Folds.
• Olives incorporated at 1st set of Letter Folds instead of at end of mix.
• 3 Letter Folds instead of 1.
• 2 hr. bulk fermentation instead of 2 1/2 hrs.
• Overnight retard and bake straight out of retard rather than bench top proof and bake.

 2x350g baguettes, 1x750g batard.  13 minutes steam: baguettes total bake time- 28 min.  Batard total bake time - 33 min + 2 min venting.

For comparison I made 2 125% liquid levains concurrently.  One using my 60% stiff rye starter and one using my standard 75% mixed flour ever ready levain. 2 builds, just as Mr. Hamelman suggests.  As I discovered, the ever ready levain based mix outpaced the stiff rye contender easily.  Not only was the top populated with a lot of frothy bubbles after each build but it grew significantly more.  The levain on the right was used in the mix.

after first build (~8 hrs).

after 2nd build (~3-4 hrs).  I knocked back the growth on the right one before realizing that I wanted to take this picture, so the delta between the two is even more pronounced than the picture indicates. 

alan

as we pack up this morning to get out of the way of Hurricane Matthew.  On our way to friends on the Gulf Coast.

SFBI Pain au Levain.  2x350g, 2x605g.