alfanso's blog

Well, wouldn't ya just know it.  Another day, another Pane di Altamura posting.  With my recent trip down to Lorenzo's in N. Miami Beach (no beach!) and finding a source for semola rimacinata at US$1/pound, I was stocked up and stoked up with all of this durum discussion underway here.  Following David Snyder's posted formula (for the most part) and seeing what Brad (breadforfun) and Abe (A BakEr) were up to, it was my turn to also jump on the bandwagon.

I decided to do concurrent first builds of the biga, just for the experimentation of it all.  One biga with my ever-ready levain fed down to 60% hydration, and the other with my stiff starter, already ~60% hydration.  The levain based biga took 7 hours for the 1st build to double, while the starter based version barely showed signs of life at that point, until it started moving and took a full 12 hours for each of the 1st and 2nd builds.  So I stuck with my levain based version.  2nd build was another 7 hours, however the 3rd build was under 6 to grow beyond doubling.

As an aside, I felt it was time to refresh my starter, which was last refreshed on 02 Nov 15.  But 5 months old and it was still going strong, for anyone who still wonders how long a stiff starter can live a healthy refrigerated life.

I did bump the overall hydration of the dough up to 65%, and also made the mix 25% larger than the formula posted by David, so it clocked in at a total of ~1145g total dough weight.  

One set of 200 French Folds, a 10 minute rest followed by another 200 FFs.  And then left to rise on its own for 5 hours, no stretch and folds, before dividing.  

Being alfanso, once it was shaped and couched, it went into the refrigerator for an overnight nap and was baked this morning, as usual, directly out of the retard.  Also, being alfanso, and liking to change around a thing or two, I decided that these would be shaped and scored as batards.

Abiding by the oven temperatures and timings in David's post, these baked for 15 minutes with steam, and then another 21 minutes, with 2 additional minutes of venting before being removed.  As noted, the dough was quite soft and puffy, and I wonder if my shaping was a tad too aggressive considering the crumb.  But the oven spring was all I could have asked for.  Since I really didn't know what to look for in this bread, nor how it should taste, it was all, and I mean all, new to me.

Due to the retard time, there is a mild SD tang to the bread. 

The first build completes in 7 hours.  The third build in just under 6 hours, but I was late to snap this 2nd picture.  I made a few dozen more grams of biga than needed.  Some biga or dough is always lost to my hands or the workbench or mixing/fermenting vessel, so my habit is to always make a little more than the formula calls for.

The dough after the 2nd set of 200 French Folds, and after the 5 hours of bulk rise at 80dF completed.

Shaped as batards and the double score applied just a minute before entering the oven.

Steam released after 15 minutes, and batards have been rotated front to back & left to right.

The end game.  In this case, the colors are accurate.

alan

The copycat is back, that would be me.  David Snyder's recent post on his work in progress, Semolina Capriccioso, had my brain already plotting a visit to this bread, especially as he described the taste.  I've already professed my adoration for his Sourdough Italian Baguette bread a few times on TFL.  So the wheels encased inside my cranium were turning and I just had to scratch that itch.  Y'all know what I mean!

I was interested in making a trip down to North Miami Beach (hint - don't go there expecting a beach, the name is a misnomer) to the only really real Italian market that I know of in these parts - Lorenzo's.  And here is what I saw.  Ian and other pizza aficionados - I'm talking to you!  5kg bags of 00 pizza flour for US$15.

But that wasn't what I went for.  No, I came home with this:

Lorenzo's has shelves of semolina and semolina rimacinata.  Those plastic containers are full of semolina rimacinata too, but at US$1 per pound.  I didn't see them until I was just about at the checkout counter.  Boy what a haul!  (not to mention the goat butter too)

So off to the task I went.  I used my 50% hydration rye starter for the 50% hydration durum biga in the late morning, and by evening saw no signs of life.   So I started a second biga using my ever-ready 75% hydration levain, fed it down to 50% and built the biga for an overnight ferment.  By early morning it had doubled, as David suggested it should, and so I used that and discarded the rye starter version.  Here are the two bigas at daybreak Easter Sunday:

I reformulated the original formula weight for 50% more than David's and came up with about 1565g for a mix.  Wanting to try my hand at my French Folds at this 80% hydration dough and to not rely on my mixer, I was successful, but added another 100 FFs because the dough was so slack and David wrote that his mixer was whirring for ~12 minutes.  Still, the dough was completely workable by hand, no mixer was employed and it was billowy with some tension .  And this is what the dough looked like after the 400th FF:

I didn't want to interrupt the development of the gluten during the mixing phase, so I added the toasted sesame seeds during the first of the five Letter Folds.  And this is what it looked like just as it was to be retarded.

I figured on 2 600g batards and one ~340g baguette.  The dough was indeed a bit slack and the rolling of the baguette certainly attested to that.  But although the batards were equally slack, they were much easier to form and did not present any problems at all.

At bake time I apparently made the 2 middle scores on the baguette too close together again and the oven spring just blew right past them.  Still need more work on perfecting the double score on batards as these were a little bit too offset in parity.  I think that the shorter scores on this type of dough as a baguette are more iffy than on the batards because the dough is so wet and the seeds also help weigh down the shorter scored flap during oven spring.

The baguette baked for 27 minutes, the batards for 30 minutes plus a 6 minute oven venting, oven off.

Changes from David's O.P.:

• Used bread flour instead of AP flour.
• Mixed by hand - 400 French Folds (they go fast!  Faster than the time that the dough was in David's mixer.)
• Incorporated the sesame seeds on the first Letter Fold.  More than I imagined once I saw them spread out across the dough.
• Kitchen at ~80dF, therefore 5 Letter Folds at 25 minute intervals.
• Retarded for approx. 10 hours prior to divide and shaping   As I've stated before, the number of hours between retard and shaping is virtually irrelevant.
• After divide, and shaping they went on a couche and back into the retarder for an overnight nap.
• The batards were robust enough to stand up to rolling them on a wet paper towel and then in a plate full of sesame seeds.

Baked straight out of the refrigerator, no warmup.  Here the steam had just been released. 

The taste is lovely!

April 2 update:  I re-formulated to exchange the 50% hydration semolina biga with my own 75% standard levain.  I also adjusted the final dough amount of flour and water to abide by the 60% durum flour in the mix and also to maintain the 80% hydration level.  As I didn't perceive any benefit to the sesame seeds inside the braed, so I also eliminated that as well.  

For a first run, I kept the total dough weight down to 2x500g batards.  More experimentation with larger batards will soon be underway.  And then I can write up a little more about it.  Just one picture from this run should demonstrate that the results are about the same, and the bread is just as delicious.

alan

As of late I've been moving towards a double score on my batards rather than what has become my standard single score.  I am pleased with the results I've seen so far.  The trick, and it is a learned trick, is to keep both blooms as consistent with each other as possible rather than having one big bubble of a bloom and one not so much.  I'm getting there.  And another trick to now put into my bag.  More practice will have to happen to lock it in.

Hamelman Pain au Levain with mixed starters

alan

David Snyder's marvelous and "whimsical" boule 75% AP / 25% Semolina Durum creation.  But somehow transformed to baguettes and batard here!  How can be?  An incredible snap to the crust and a semolina nuttiness inside.  Good stuff.  

Just because...

Crumb shot added.

After returning from my trip out west and meeting with David Snyder on his home turf I couldn't wait to hit the oven running, so to speak.  But what to do?  I was torn between a bake of David's SJSD's and Hamelman's Pain au Levain w/WW.  There are no losers here.  But in the end the Pain au Levain won out.  I've yet to get a bad bake from these.  Easiest dough on earth!

alan

A recent post by Stan Ginsberg on his Berliner Landbrot apparently had David Snyder by hook line and sinker, and he posted his version on TFL too.  I figured that I'd give it a whirl myself.  Now I don't have much experience with breads that are heavily reliant on rye flour, just about never do boules, and had to search the back of the closet for my used once before proofing basket.  But I was game.

Except that those few breads so dependent on a preponderance of WW and/or rye seem to be too earthy and "barn-like" for my palate.  So I decided to back off the rye and the hydration and rejigger the formula.  I also only had Arrowhead Mills rye flour, which does not list what type of rye it is, neither on the label nor website.  Another change for me is that I had only used the mixer (my "trusty" old KA) for ciabatta prior to this bake.

So here goes - substituted Bread flour for AP, some type of rye flour for white and medium rye flours and lower hydration. My little newborn baby boule just emerged from the oven scant moments ago, so it will not be cut into for hours yet.  It seems that I didn't get quite the same loft as either of the two I modeled it on, and my suspicion is that my proofing basket is a little too wide for the dough, which did spread out in the basket during proofing.  These go right onto the baking deck, I'm not much of a Dutch Oven kinda critter.

alan

Kinda Berlina Rye (Berliner Landbrot)

by Stan Ginsberg, mod. Alfanso

Jan/Feb. 2016

This is a modification to Stan Ginsberg’s 90% rye flour, 82%hydration rye bread.

At 67% rye flour and 75% hydration.

One oblong batard or boule – Action happens fast – mise en place.

Cannot be easily mixed by hand.

Timing

Day 1 – Make Rye Sour – 10 minutes (overnight or 10-12 hours)

Day 2 – Autolyse Mix, Ferment– 1.5 - 2 Hours plus ~45 – 50 minutes to bake

1. Dissolve the rye sour in the water in bowl.
2. Add the rye flour and mix well.  Will be only slightly sticky
3. Cover the surface of the sour with a thin layer of rye flour.
4. Cover and ferment.  The sour will only grow by 1.5x - 2x.  If necessary, refrigerate overnight.

Method

1. Mix rye sour and leave overnight (10-12 hours) to ferment
2. Dissolve yeast in warm water.  Add rye sour by breaking into walnut sized pieces.  Hand mix to squish rye sour into water.
3. Add flours and mix thoroughly. Machine mix for 6-8 minutes on low speed!  Dough will push away from center of bowl and adhere to sides.  Scrape down regularly.  Will be fairly sticky.
4. Add salt. Machine mix two minutes more.  Dough will be tacky & smooth.
5. Oiled bowl, cover.  Rest for 20-25 minutes.
6. Dough (sticky and soft) onto a wet surface and use wet hands to shape it into a boule or oblong batard.
7. For batard, dough onto parchment paper supported by couche.
8. For boule place into rye floured proofing basket.
9. Final covered proof 45-50 minutes at room temperature.  TURN OVEN ON NOW!  Dough will almost double with cracks and/or bubbles.
10. Preheat oven to 485F.
11. Bake with steam at 485F for 10 minutes, rotate and reduce temp to 410F and bake 35-40 minutes more. 

Make no mistake.  dabrownman is a puppeteer, a master manipulator, one who is capable of, and who garners great pleasure in takes unfair advantage of those weak of will and of mind.  Like me! 

In my most recent post, he once more "challenged me" to create a baguette using David's SJSD formula as a framework, but to up the hydration and the whole grain.  So I ask and beseech you, dear reader, what am I supposed to do?  The man's bidding.  (actually I think that it is his nefarious furry baking assistant who really pulls his strings as he dances to her every whim.)

So here we have it, a formula so far removed from the SJSD that it really isn't.  A wayward stepchild at best, and best kept in the darkened back room.  Using my own stiff levain as usual, I bumped the hydration from 72% to 78%, and the whole grain from ~11% to 25% split evenly between WW and rye.

The dough was quite wet even with the whole grain, which I assumed would soak up some of the added moisture.  But it seemingly didn't.  The dough was fairly goopy and was too difficult to French Fold as I usually do, so I had to split my FF activity into three, 15 minutes of rest time apart.  It rose nicely between letter folds, but those were also very slack.

A bit of difficulty with scoring them with my scores inexplicably going off to one side.  That is not my typical M.O.  The batard score seems okay even as the lame dragged, but as you can see, barely bloomed.  The less said about that, the better.  But none of these bloomed as anticipated.

1x600g, 3x300g.  There is a distinct sweet taste of rye, and the crust has a really nice snap to it.  However, I won't be revisiting this one again.  But - if one does not seek, one does not find.  In this case I suppose that also applies to dabrownman, who sought out a sucker, and found one in - me!

alan

As the primary season for the next US president officially kicked off this evening (although there has been ad nauseum preening and jockeying going on for a year already), I decided to throw my support behind the candidate most suitable.  I can't really decide on one, although I'm leaning toward the tall dark handsome candidate by just a hair.

I'm not talking about a Democratic or Republican candidate.  I'd be out of my mind to go down that wormhole in public.  No, no.  I'm talking about the All-World candidate for all around most pleasing dough for us home enthusiasts to get our hands on.

The contenders are: In this corner we have the mostly AP flour king - The David Snyder SJSD, a resilient and delightful piece of dough to craft, not to mention to eat.  And in the opposing corner - the Whole Wheaty king of the hill - Jeffrey Hamelman's Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat, another dough that brings sheer joy to the hands of all who craft it.

So, what the heck brought on this stream of unconsciousness writing you ask?  Well, I just knocked off another batch of the Pain au Levain, and I just can't get over how good that dough feels.  I'd mentioned previously that it just about wants to shape itself.  Well, here we go again.  1x600g batard, 3x300g baguettes.  My own stiff levain, post bulk rise was retarded for maybe 12 hours before the divide and shape, then back into the icebox for another 10 hours before being swallowed up by my oven directly from the refrigerator.  (once more, I 'never' bench proof anymore, no finger dent tests, no clock watching, no nutin').

And so it is up to you, dear voter.  To get cracking and try one or both of these if you haven't already been a convert. Based upon what I see at the TFL polling station, there is ample evidence to suggest that many are already thrilled with this pair of candidates.

alan

Gosselin levain baguettes with Whole Wheat

Referencing back to David Snyder's wonderful levain version of the also wonderful Gosselin baguettes, I decided to make another change and subbed out a bunch of the AP flour for Whole Wheat.  This brought the whole grain, including what is in the levain itself up to ~33% of the total flour.  A pretty hearty version.

My baguette scoring skills are pretty good and I usually get a fine oven spring and bloom.  Consistent results with relatively little spacing between the scores themselves.  In this case, the scores were so close together that half of them were not able to keep their integrity and, quite literally, burst at the seams.  As easy as pie to see in the photos.  Scores  too close together, bloom being so robust, or a little of both?  It isn't hard to see where the scores were overmatched by the oven spring.  The handsome fellow in the foreground has an accidental bloom so large it might be mistaken for a luggage handle.  But...that is not what I was after. 

My standard 75% hydration levain goop with added grams of water to get the overall total dough hydration back up to ~75%. 1 batard @ ~600g, 3 baguettes @ ~300g.  Also employed my standard method of retard, shape after a few hours (time frame irrelevant) back to retard (time frame somewhat irrelevant) and finally baked directly out of the refrigerator.  

Works like a charm - except for the breaching of the scored lines part of the business.  Oh well, live learn and eat more bread.  As I mentioned to bread1965 in his recent post - it's a hobby!

alan

Plus one little batard...

Used my own levain on these.  3x300g, 1x550g.

alan