Benito's blog

I wanted a dessert to celebrate an occasion tonight so decided I’d try a different curd than my last one and rather than a pate sucrée used a pate brisée.  For the pastry I decided I would try J Kenji Lopez-Alt’s recipe which I’ll share below.  I was interested in trying his newest recipe because instead of incorporating the butter such that it is in sheets separated by the dough, the butter is first made into a paste with ⅔ of the flour.  Only after the paste is made do you then add the flour, blitz and then fold in the water by hand.  The reasons why are below.

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Easy Pie Dough Recipe - J Kenji Lopez-Alt

WHY IT WORKS

• Using all butter, instead of a combination of butter and shortening, gives this pie dough extra flavor.
• Combining the flour and butter in two distinct phases creates a dough that is tender and flaky yet extremely easy to roll out.
• Using a spatula to incorporate the water ensures flakiness.

What I'm after: The kind of crust that's substantial enough that it doesn't sog-out from a juicy filling but tender enough that it flakes in your mouth into buttery shards. A crust with substance, but not chew. A crust that divides along deep faults into many distinct layers separated by tiny air spaces and that cracks when bent. A crust that is never leathery or pliant, but not so tender or crisp that it crumbles instead of flakes. And of course, it should have a deep butteriness coupled with a balanced sweet and salty flavor.

You see, it turns out that when it comes to pie dough, our existing model has it wrong. In fact, it's not the fat that's coating pockets of dry flour. It's the reverse. It's the flour that's coating pockets of pure fat. With this model, things make much more sense. You can easily and intuitively see how fat gets coated with flour (think about dropping a pat of butter into a pile of flour, but on a much smaller scale), and with this model, when you add water, you are indeed moistening dry flour so that it can form sheets of gluten.

But there's a third element at play here that is often ignored: the flour-fat paste that forms at the interface between the pure fat and the dry flour. With this paste, what you're getting is essentially single particles of flour that are completely coated in fat. Since they can't absorb any water, they end up behaving in much the same way as pure fat.

This over-processed dough is mostly composed of a flour-fat paste. Even without adding water, it'll come together into a ball, though when baked, it won't form flaky layers. Or will it?.

To summarize, here's what we've got as we're forming a pie dough: 

• Dry flour, completely uncoated by fat, that absorbs water when you add it, forming gluten that then gets stretched out into wide layers. 
• Pure pockets of fat that will flatten out into long, wide, thin sheets as you roll out your dough, separating the layers of gluten-enforced flour from each other so that rather than forming a solid, leathery mass, they separate and gently puff as they bake. 
• A flour-fat paste that functions much in the same way as pure fat does. As it bakes, the fat melts and a tiny amount of individually separated flour bits will deposit themselves and become incorporated into the gluten-enforced layers.

And if this flour-fat paste functions similarly to pure fat, doesn't that imply that we can completely replace the pure fat with this paste? Indeed, we can.

This beautiful, flaky pie crust was made with an over-processed dough like you see in the image directly preceding this one. But in order to get this crust, I had to take one additional step: add some more all-purpose flour to the flour-fat paste I'd formed, pulse it a couple times in the food processor just to distribute it evenly, then proceed just like a normal pie dough. I added water, chilled it, rolled it, and baked it.

The Benefits of The Food Processor Method

So that's all very interesting, but the real question is: Why should you care? How does this make forming pie dough any easier?

It does so in two ways. First off, this method completely removes the variability of a traditional pie dough recipe. By weighing out a given amount of flour and fat, combining them together until they form a near homogeneous paste, and then adding the remaining dry flour to that paste, you are very strictly defining exactly how much flour is used for gluten formation and how much ends up coated with fat. No more trying to visually judge whether the fat is properly cut into the flour. No more adding ice water a drop at a time until a dough is formed. The dough comes out the same, every single time.

The other key advantage is that your dough becomes much more pliable. The flour-fat paste formed at the beginning is much softer and more malleable than pure butter, which means that your final dough rolls out smoothly and easily with little-to-no risk of cracking like a traditional pie crust, even without the vodka.

On Butter, Shortening, and Lard in Pie Dough

The question of which fat makes the best pie crust is prime stomping grounds for eternal debate between bakers, and it comes down to a battle between texture and flavor.

Butter

• Pros: Excellent flavor. Forms distinct, large, flaky layers once baked.
• Cons: Difficult to work with. Butter melts at a relatively low temperature (below body temperature) and has a very narrow workable range. It's also got a relatively high water content (around 15–17%), which can cause excess gluten to form and turn your crust leathery if you aren't careful.

Shortening

• Pros: Very easy to work with. Produces crusts that are extremely tender once baked.
• Cons: It has very little flavor of its own. (This could be a pro, if you want a neutral-flavored crust.) It's also soft over a wide range of temperatures, greatly increasing your chance of overworking your dough and turning the resulting crust crumbly instead of flaky.

Lard

• Pros: The best for working with—it has a wide workable temperature range and is not nearly as soft as shortening. Creates very tender, flaky crusts once baked.
• Cons: Unless you slaughter your own pigs and render your own leaf lard, or you have access to a good butcher, it's extremely hard to find high-quality lard. The stuff sold in supermarkets has a very savory, porky aroma, which makes for very porky-tasting crusts. Unless you're making savory pie, that's not generally desirable.

Because of these various characteristics, many recipes call for some combination of butter and shortening. In that case, shortening is so much softer than butter at room temperature, it's much more likely to form the fat/flour paste while the butter remains in discrete chunks. However, when using the method I've outlined above, you can cut the amount of shortening down to nothing, if you'd like. Depending on how tender you want your crust to be, anywhere below a 4:1 ratio of butter to shortening will work. To be honest, most of the time I'll make all-butter crusts, simply because shortening is just not something I keep lying around the house.

Tips For A Perfect Pie Crust

Finally, let me offer you a few tips to make the most out of your crust, no matter what recipe you decide to use.

Weigh Your Flour

Get yourself a scale. Honestly. Do it. You will not regret it. Measuring dry ingredients—anything more than a few teaspoons—by volume is simply not accurate. Depending on how tightly packed it is, the weight of a cup of all-purpose flour can vary by as much as 50 percent. 50 percent!!! No such problems with a scale. Five ounces of flour (the equivalent of one cup) is five ounces of flour, no matter how tightly it is packed.

Use a Food Processor

If there's one reason to own a food processor, it's to make pie dough. Nothing is as efficient or as consistent at cutting fat into flour. A stand mixer will do the job reasonably well; a pastry cutter will, too, though it requires much more work. You can even get a great dough using just your fingers. But, for the sake of pure ease, if you've got the processor, use it.

Keep Your Dough Cold

Just like with grinding meat, the key to great pie dough is to make sure that your fat doesn't melt too much. If your home is hot, make sure that you chill your dough as you work with it. In the summer with my oven on, the apartment pushes 80°F (27°C). Under these conditions, I'll put my dough back in the fridge three times: for 10 minutes immediately after incorporating the fat, for at least 2 hours after forming the dough into a disk and wrapping it, and for another 10 minutes after draping it in the pie plate before trimming and fluting the edges.

Use a Spatula to Incorporate Water

Your processed flour and butter are sitting there in the bowl of your food processor and you're tempted to save yourself a bit of cleanup by just adding the water directly in there, right? Don't do it! Sure, it'll work out okay, but you won't form nearly the same level of flakiness as you do if you incorporate with a spatula. Here's what a crust made 100% in the food processor looks like:

Compare that to the crust I made with the spatula:

See the difference? By using the spatula to fold the water into the dough, you're even more likely to end up with flaky layers.

Use a Tapered Rolling Pin

While a ball-bearing-based heavy-duty cylindrical rolling pin might fit in a Norman Rockwell painting, the slender, slightly tapered French-style rolling pin offers far more control when rolling dough, is easier to clean and store, and is usually cheaper.

And that's basically all I know about pie crust.

For a more traditional dough that's extra flaky but a little less beginner-friendly, check out our old-fashioned flaky pie dough.

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups (12.5 ounces; 350g) all-purpose flour, divided, 233 g with the butter and 117 g after.
• 2 tablespoons (25g) sugar
• 1 teaspoon (5g) kosher salt; for table salt use same weight or half as much by volume
• 2 1/2 sticks (10 ounces; 280g) unsalted butter, cut into 1/4-inch pats (see note)
• 6 tablespoons (3 ounces; 85ml) cold water

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Directions

• Combine two thirds of flour  (233 g) with sugar and salt in the bowl of a food processor. Pulse twice to incorporate. Spread butter pats evenly over surface. Pulse until no dry flour remains and dough just begins to collect in clumps, about 25 short pulses. Use a rubber spatula to spread the dough evenly around the bowl of the food processor. Sprinkle with remaining flour (117 g) and pulse until dough is just barely broken up, about 5 short pulses. Transfer dough to a large bowl. 
  

Sprinkle with water. Then, using a rubber spatula, fold and press dough until it comes together into a ball. Divide ball in half. Form each half into a 4-inch disk. Wrap tightly in plastic and refrigerate for at least 2 hours before rolling and baking. 

When ready to shape the dough, pull out one ball, set it on a well-floured work surface, and sprinkle with more flour. Use a tapered rolling pin to start rolling the dough out into a circle, lifting the dough and rotating it while rolling to achieve an even shape. Continue rolling, changing the angle of your rolling pin as you go to get an even shape and thickness. The finished dough should overhang your pie plate by an inch or two. 

Pick up the dough by carefully rolling it around your rolling pin, using your bench scraper to help lift it off the work surface. Unroll it over a pie plate. Gently lift and fit the dough into the pie plate, getting down into the corners. 

For a single-crusted pie, use a pair of scissors to trim the dough so that it overhangs the edge by 1/2 inch all around. For a double-crusted pie, at this stage, fill it and drape your second round of pie dough over the top. Trim it to a 1/2-inch overhang along with the lower crust. Either way, tuck the overhanging edge(s) under itself all the way around the pie. 

Flute the edges of the pie crust using the forefinger of one hand and the thumb and forefinger of the other. The single-crust pie shell is ready to be blind-baked or filled. For a double-crusted pie, brush with an egg white, sprinkle with sugar, and cut vent holes in the top with a sharp knife before baking. 

Special equipment

Food processor, tapered French rolling pin

Notes

For a slightly more tender crust, replace up to 6 tablespoons of butter with vegetable shortening. Pie dough can be frozen for up to 3 months. Thaw in refrigerator before rolling and baking.

The following is how I baked the pie crust fully.

PROCEDURE and BAKING 

1. Roll out dough 2 inches (5 centimeters) larger than the size of your pie pan. Gently place it in a chilled pie pan. Flute or crimp the edges. The dough may shrink some in the bake so be sure it extends all the way to the edge of the pie pan.
2. Dock the dough by lightly piercing the bottom and sides with a fork.  Dock well not lightly - when I docked lightly the bottom crust blew up higher than the sides
3. Cover with plastic and place in freezer until frozen (at least 30 minutes). The freezing helps with the shrinkage of the crust during the bake, although there may still be some.
4. Remove plastic wrap, and cover dough with a sheet of parchment paper (or aluminum foil) that is cut about 2 inches (5 centimeters) larger than your pie pan. Be sure to cut the paper large, as you need enough above the rim of the pie pan so you can lift the hot pie weights out. You don’t want to spill the beans into the pie crust or onto the floor, which I learned the hard way.
5. Fill with pie weights of choice.
6. In an oven preheated to 375°F (190°C), bake the pie shell for 20 to 25 minutes.  Other bakers bake at 425ºF for 15-17 mins (Erin McDowell)
7. Remove from oven, and carefully take out the parchment paper and weights. If a bit of the dough has stuck onto the backside of the parchment because of the weight of the beans, no one will ever know if you scrape it off and gently pat it back onto the spot in the crust where it came from. Keep the pie weights for your next blind baking session.  At this point you can brush with a beaten egg white to protect the crust if you like.
8. Put the pie back in the oven and bake for another 10 minutes at 325°F (162°C) to dry out the crust more and give it a golden color.
9. Remove from oven and cool completely before using.

For the Grapefruit lemon curd

• 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 2 medium lemon for ¼ cup juice
• 1 cup pink grapefruit juice, preferably freshly squeezed
• 8 large egg yolks
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher 
•                 Optional a few drops red food gel colour

I also used the zest of the grapefruits 

Make the curd:

• Melt 8 tablespoons unsalted butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Meanwhile, place 1 cup granulated sugar and 1/3 cup cornstarch in a small bowl and whisk to combine. Juice 2 medium lemons until you have 1/4 cup juice.
• Reduce the heat to medium-low. Add the sugar mixture, lemon juice, 1 cup pink grapefruit juice, 8 large egg yolks, and 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt and optional red food colour gel to the butter. Continue to cook, whisking constantly, until the curd begins to thicken, 1 to 2 minutes.
• Switch to a silicone spatula and continue to cook, stirring constantly (be sure to get into the edges and corners of the pot), until the curd thickens and fat bubbles begin to break the surface in the center of the pot, 2 to 3 minutes.
• Place a fine-mesh strainer onto the crust. Pour the mixture through the strainer and press through the strainer into the crust (make sure to scrape the underside of the strainer). Spread into an even layer and discard the contents of the strainer. Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the filling. Refrigerate until cooled completely, at least 2 and up to 24 hours. 

For this curd since it is fully cooked you will need to fully bake your crust not just par baked.

For the Swiss Meringue, I used Stella Parks’ recipe.

Yield 8 cups enough to generously top a 9 inch pie

1 cup | 8 ounces egg whites, from about 8 large eggs

1¾ cups | 12 ounces sugar or Roasted Sugar (page 102)

Consider reducing sugar as the meringue is very sweet.

½ teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher salt (half as much if iodized)

¼ teaspoon cream of tartar

¼ teaspoon rose water, or seeds from 1 vanilla bean (optional)

Key Point: With gently simmering water, the meringue should cook fairly fast. If you find the temperature climbing too slowly, simply crank up the heat.

Fill a 3-quart pot with 1½-inches of water and place over medium-low heat, with a ring of crumpled foil set in the middle to act as a booster seat. In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine egg whites, sugar, salt, cream of tartar, and rose water or vanilla bean (if using). Place over steamy water, stirring and scraping constantly with a flexible spatula until thin, foamy, and 175°F on a digital thermometer, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and whip on high until glossy, thick, and quadrupled in volume, about 5

minutes. Use immediately.

TROUBLESHOOTING

If a speck of yolk slips into the whites, fish it out with an egg shell. If the yolk can’t be neatly removed, reserve whites for Tahitian Vanilla Pudding (page 255) or White Mountain Layer Cake (page 110), and start fresh, as fat can inhibit both the volume and stability of meringue.

Oil-based extracts, like lemon, orange, and mint can destabilize the meringue. Use sparingly and fold in by hand when the meringue has finished whipping.

I reduced the sugar from her recipe as I always find meringue cloyingly sweet so I used 1.25 cups instead of 1.75 cups of sugar.

Here is the video I made recently to show the steps involved in making my 100% whole wheat sourdough Hokkaido milk bread.

Please enjoy.

You might enjoy reading the article I wrote for Breadtopia Whole Wheat Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread

Benny

This is the video I just created to show how I’m currently shaping and scoring my baguettes.  There are so many different ways to do this and I don’t pretend to be a master of any of them.  I am using the technique that Scott Megee shows in his video and this is only my second time using it.  I am quite pleased with the quality of the baguettes I made using this shaping method. 

Hope you enjoy the video.

Benny

I’m continuing to explore the uses for the stiff sweet levain and today’s bake is my first use of it in a baguette. So I made adjustments to the Yorkville Sourdough Baguette recipe (the original recipe is posted here Poppyseed Crusted Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes – Breadtopia)
to accommodate the stiff sweet levain and to increase the hydration somewhat. I have gradually been changing how I develop my dough for baguettes. I have found so far that I can more thoroughly develop the gluten early on allowing me to do a longer final proofing (increased aliquot jar rise from 30 to 35% at time of baking). By doing this I can open up the crumb whilst achieving the grigne and ears that one desires in a baguette. In order to combat the dough being less extensible from the greater dough development I have gradually increased the hydration now up to 74%.

A reminder if you aren’t familiar with the stiff sweet levain about the science behind how it allows you to bake a sourdough bread with less acidity. As you know it is the LAB that create most of the acid in our sourdough breads. The LAB are more affected by the dehydrating effects of low hydration and in particular the osmotic pressure exerted by sugar. So by using a levain with a sugar concentration of 50% in this case and a hydration of 60% one can create a sourdough bread with less LAB and thus less acid. For my all white levain, the starting pH was 4.93 and the pH at peak was only 4.37. That is a drop of only 0.56. In general, my levains at peak would have a far greater drop of between 1.0-1.3 in pH so that is quite remarkable that the levain pH dropped by so little.

In addition, the dough when mixed with this levain had a starting pH of 5.52, again this is an all purpose flour with essentially no bran to buffer the acid. At the time of baking just the pH was about 4.5. Again this is remarkable as typically for mostly white flour breads the pH at bake for me would be lower around 3.8 or so. That difference of 0.8 is substantial and the baguettes should still have some complexity of a sourdough but have less of the sour tang if you aren’t interested in that profile to the flavour of your bread.

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Overnight levain
18 g starter + 16 g white sugar + 23 g water + AP flour 51 g. 78°F

Fermentolyse - mix 378 g water with all the levain, salt 11 g and diastatic malt 5.7 g to dissolve, then add 521 g AP flour to combine. Slap and fold x 100 then add hold back water 23 g gradually working in until fully absorbed then slap and fold x 100.

Bulk Fermentation 82*F until aliquot jar shows 20% rise.
Do folds every 30 mins doing 2-3 folds
Could do cold retard at this point for up to overnight. (Aliquot jar 20% rise)

Divide and pre-shape rest for 15 mins
Shape en couche with final proof until aliquot jar shows 35% rise then cold retard shaped baguettes en couche for at least 15 minutes for easier scoring.

Pre-heat oven 500F after 30 mins add Silvia towel
Transfer to peel on parchment
Score each baguette and transfer to oven bake on steel
Bake with steam pouring 1 cup of boiling water to cast iron skillet dropping temperature to 480F
The baguettes are baked with steam for 13 mins. The steam equipment is removed venting the oven of steam. Transfer the baguettes from the baking steel to next rack completing baking directly on a rack to minimize the browning of the bottom crust. The oven is left at 480ºF but convection is turned on and the baguettes bake for 10 mins rotating them halfway. The oven temperature is then dropped to 450ºF and the baguettes rotated again if needed and baked for another 3 mins to achieve a rich colour crust.

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I love miso if you haven’t noticed from some of my posts including my most recent Miso 100% WW Sourdough.  Not running out of miso requires advanced planning for a couple of reasons.  First it takes about a year to ferment the rich red miso that I love and having the koji rice on hand to make the miso.  We have a sake maker here in Toronto in the Distillery District which is a good walk from where I live and that is where I have purchased the frozen koji rice.

Making miso is actually quite simple the Aspergillus oryzae does most of the work albeit slowly.  For those unfamiliar Aspergillus oryzae is a type of mold that is really important in Japanese cuisine.  It is needed to ferment the soybeans to make miso and also to make good soy sauce.

Rather than post the recipe I followed again I’ll just link to my previous post which has all the details.

Homemade miso recipe.

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Koji rice and salt

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Cooked soybeans in food processor

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processed soybeans

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Using my home fermented miso I decided to try using it with a 100% whole wheat sourdough bread which I hadn’t tried before.  

If you’re interested in making homemade miso here is the post where I started a new batch most recently with a link to the detailed post outlining how to make it from scratch.

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Notes 9% miso, homemade miso 4.9% sodium 

Sift all flour for final dough.  Scald bran with double its weight in boiled filtered water, allow to cool and hydrate overnight.

Build stiff levain, ferment at 74°F for 10 hours overnight.

In the morning, add miso and salt to the water and dissolve.  Then add the levain and break down the levain as well as you can.  Add all the sifted flour and mix well until no dry bits are left. After 10 mins of rest start gluten development with slap and folds then gradually add the hold back water in several aliquots using Rubaud to fully incorporate the water well.  Then do additional slap and folds until good gluten development.  Add the scalded cooled bran through a series of stretch and folds, may do Rubaud and slap and fold kneading until the bran is well incorporated.  Bench letterfold, remove aliquots and measure pH. Then at 30 mins intervals do coil folds until good structure is achieved.

Once the pH has dropped by 1.0 then shape the dough into a batard and then start final proofed shaped and resting in a banneton.

Once the pH has dropped by a further 0.3 it will be time for baking.  Place the dough in the freezer when the pH drops by 0.25 and then pre-heat oven at 500°F with cast iron skillet in the oven and set up for open steam baking.  30 mins prior to baking, pour 1 L of boiling water into metal loaf pan with Sylvia towel and place on baking steel on the lowest rack of the oven.

Once oven reaches 500ºF turn dough out of banneton, brush excess rice flour off, score and then brush with water.  Transfer to oven.  Pour 250 mL of boiling water into the cast iron skillet on a high shelf, high enough that the dough have fully bloom.  Drop temperature to 450ºF and bake with steam for 25 mins.  Then vent oven and remove all steaming gear and drop temperature to 425ºF.  Bake for another 25-30 mins rotating as needed.

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I’ve never made hot cross buns before and have only had supermarket ones that I never liked. Having a new appreciation for candied peel I decided that I would try my hand at developing a formula for a sourdough 100% whole wheat version. This is my 1.0 version and first try at them.

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For 9 buns in a 9 x 9” square pan

Add zest of one large orange or lemon to dough

Overnight Stiff Sweet Levain fermented at 76-78°F
14 g starter + 14 g brown sugar + 19 g water + 42 g whole wheat flour

Tangzhong prepared the night before and refrigerated
25 g whole wheat flour + 123 g milk (skim to whole)
Take butter out in the morning.

Final Dough
120 g milk (could hold back 10-15 g of the milk) + 100 g eggs (2 large eggs) + all Tangzhong + all levain + 1.65 g diastatic malt (optional) + 4.82 g salt + 21 g sugar + 285 g whole wheat flour + 70 g butter

Egg-milk wash
Mix 1 egg + 1 tbsp of milk

Lemon Icing
1 tbsp lemon juice + ½ cup icing sugar

Instructions
Levain
Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth.
Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.
At a temperature of 76ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak. For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak. The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.
Tangzhong
In a sauce pan set on medium heat, stir the milk and flour until blended. Then cook for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature. You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it, ensure that it is covered to prevent it from drying out.

Dough
Prepare the dried fruit (currants, raisins or blueberries) mist them with water then microwave for 15 secs. This will quickly plump them up without them later adding more hydration to your dough.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 10 g of milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar, diastatic malt, zest and levain. Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces. Next add the flour and vital wheat gluten. I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas. Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes. Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins. You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing. Next drizzle in the melted butter a little at a time, or alternatively add room temperature butter one pat at a time. Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the butter at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling or adding in more butter. Once all the butter has been added and incorporated add mixed peel and currants and continue to mix until well incorporated. Increase the speed gradually to medium. Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins. You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane. You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 2.5-3.5 hours at 82ºF. There may be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape. Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer. Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pan by greasing it or line with parchment paper. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour and using a bowl scraper remove the dough from the bowl placing it on the counter. Next divide the dough into 9 equal pieces and shape each into a tight boule. Place each boule into the prepared 9” x 9” pan. Cover and start final proof at 82°F for 5-7 hours, the dough will start to almost fill the pan when final proof is complete and will pass the finger poke test.

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Bake

Preheat your oven, with a rack in the lower half, to 350°F (175°C). You should aim to start preheating your oven about 30-40 mins prior to the dough being full proofed. Once your oven is preheated, remove your pan from its bag, slide it into the oven, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

The rolls are finished baking when the tops are well-colored and the internal temperature is around 195°F (90°C). Remove the rolls from the oven and let the rolls cool completely before piping on the lemon icing crosses otherwise the icing will melt.

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Tomorrow is Pie Day 3.14, what do you have prepared to celebrate? Instead of a double crusted pie I decided to bake a tart today (Pie day minus 1 = 3.13 ). The lemons looked really good yesterday at the market so decided upon a lemon tart which uses a pate sucrée pasty.

I like an extra lemony and tart curd so my curd has a bit more lemon zest and a bit less sugar than I usually see in the lemon fillings in recipes.

For the pastry - pate sucrée

75g icing sugar
250g plain flour
125g butter
1 large egg, beaten (plus 1 large egg white, depending on consistency)

Put the icing sugar, flour and butter into a food processor and blitz to breadcrumbs. Continue to blitz, and gradually add the whole egg until the dough comes together. You may need to add a little more egg white. Form the dough into a little round, cover with clingfilm and rest in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Roll the dough out to 12” diameter between two sheets of parchment paper (keep one for later). Transfer to the tart pan. Dock the dough.

Chill it again for 30 minutes. Pre-heat your oven to 350F (180C) while the tart dough is chilling in the pan. When the oven is ready line the top of the crust with parchment paper and place pie weights or dried beans to keep the pie crust from puffing when baking.

Bake the pâte sucrée for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the parchment paper filled with weights and bake for 15 more minutes, until the edges of the crust are golden.

Set the tart shell aside to cool (still in the dish). Leave your oven on at 350F/180C.

In the meantime, make the lemon filling.

Grab a fine-mesh strainer before you start and have it ready within arm’s reach.

For the lemon filling :
1 cup (250ml) lemon juice (about 4 lg lemons)
Zest of 2.5 lemons (organic lemons)
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
1/4 tsp table salt
¾ cup (170g) unsalted butter, cubed.
4 large eggs + 4 large egg yolks

In a medium saucepan (no heat yet), whisk together the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, salt, egg yolks and eggs. Add the cubed butter and turn the heat to medium. Whisk slowly until the butter is all melted. Continue whisking steadily until the mixture thickens to a thin custard consistency. This took about 20 mins.

Immediately pass the lemon filling through the fine mesh strainer, directly into the tart shell. You may require a third hand to help get all the curd out of the pot into the strainer. Tap the tart on the counter a couple of times to eliminate air bubbles. Using an offset spatula (or back of a large spoon), smooth out the top of the filling. Bake the tart for 5-6 minutes, until the filling has slightly set and turned slightly deeper in color.

Set aside to cool for at least 30 minutes. Enjoy slightly warm or chilled.

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I am presenting this bake of my 3.0 version of this bread to show how it does without any added VWG.  As I suspected the VWG really helps with getting the super tall loaf that I love seeing.  Without the VWG, the loaf is a normal profile, neither tall nor short.  I’m not mad at it.  It’s good to know that VWG isn’t absolutely required.

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For 9 x 4 x 4 “ pan

Overnight Stiff Sweet Levain fermented at 76-78°F 

14 g starter + 14 g brown sugar + 18 g water + 41 g whole wheat

Tangzhong prepared the night before and refrigerated 

28 g whole wheat + 142 g milk

Final Dough

184 g milk (reduce to 174 g if not using VWG) + 1 large egg (53 g) + 24 g sugar + 5.56 g salt + all Tangzhong 

+ all Stiff Sweet Levain + 331 g whole wheat flour + 7.08 g vital wheat gluten (optional) + 1.91 g diastatic malt (optional)

+ 52 g butter

Pre-bake Wash 

• 1 egg beaten

• 1 Tbsp milk

Post-bake Wash 

• 1 Tbsp butter (optional)

Instructions

Levain

Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth. 

Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.

At a temperature of 76ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak.  For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak.  The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.

Tangzhong 

In a sauce pan set on medium heat, stir the milk and flour until blended. Then cook for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl.  Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature.  You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it, ensure that it is covered to prevent it from drying out.

Dough

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 10 g of milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar, diastatic malt and levain.  Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces.  Next add the flour and vital wheat gluten.  I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas.  Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes.  Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins.  You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing.  Next drizzle in the melted butter a little at a time, or alternatively add room temperature butter one pat at a time.  Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the butter at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling or adding in more butter.  Once all the butter has been added and incorporated increase the speed gradually to medium.  Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins.  You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane.  You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.  This is a good time to add inclusions such as my favorite black sesame seeds, that way they do not interfere with the gluten development.  If you add inclusions mix until they are well incorporated in the dough.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 2.5-3.5 hours at 82ºF.  There may be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape.  Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer.  Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pans by greasing them or line with parchment paper.  

Lightly flour the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide it into four. I like to weigh them to have equal sized lobes. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Using a rolling pin roll each ball out and then letterfold. Turn 90* and using a rolling pin roll each out to at least 8”. Letterfold again from the sides so you have a long narrow dough. Then using a rolling pin, roll flatter but keeping the dough relatively narrow.  The reason to do this extra letterfold is that the shorter fatter rolls when placed in the pan will not touch the sides of the pan.  This allows the swirled ends to rise during final proof, this is only done for appearance sake and is not necessary.  Next roll each into a tight roll with some tension. Arrange the rolls of dough inside your lined pan alternating the direction of the swirls. This should allow a greater rise during proof and in the oven.

Cover and let proof for 6-8 hours at a warm temperature.  I proof at 82°F.  You will need longer than 6-8 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350F and brush the dough with the egg-milk wash.  Just prior to baking brush with the egg-milk wash again.

Bake the loaves for 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 190ºF, rotating as needed to get even browning. Shield your loaf if it gets brown early in the baking process. After 50 mins remove the bread from the pan and bake a further 10 mins by placing the loaf directly in the oven on the rack with the oven turned down to 325ºF. You can brush the top of the loaf with butter if you wish at this point while the bread is still hot to keep the top crust soft.

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This next one is for comparison, this one used the VWG.  There is quite a difference between the two and the only difference is the 7.07g of VWG.  So if you want a really tall loaf, use the VWG with this small amount you cannot taste it.  However, you can easily see the difference it makes.

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I’ve made my country sourdough recipe numerous times in the past, but I’m always tinkering with my formulas. This time I employed both a stiff sweet levain (I didn’t want this bread to be sour) and I also added an egg. The addition of the egg is said to improve oven spring and may help with achieving a thinner crispier crust given the additional fat. An egg is approximately 74% water so if you’re adding an egg to one of your formulas reduce the hydration by 74% of the weight of the egg that you add assuming you wish to maintain the hydration.

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Overnight levain
15 g starter + 21 g brown sugar + 27 g water + 45 g whole wheat flour
Ferment 78°F overnight

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In the morning mix 1 lg egg and 324 g water. Add salt and all the stiff sweet levain. Breakdown and attempt to dissolve the levain.
Add whole wheat and whole rye flours. Then finally add bread flour and mix until no dry flour remains. Measure pH
Fermentolyse for 20 to 30 mins.
Knead dough well until at least moderate gluten development, can use French folds or stand mixer.
Do a bench letter fold. Extract aliquot jar doughs one for rise and one for pH.
Every 30 mins thereafter do coil folds until the dough is strong and holds its shape well.
Rest for the remainder of bulk until an aliquot jar rise of 40-50% the shape the dough. Follow the pH to ensure that the pH isn’t falling too much allowing gluten degradation.
Once shaped place in banneton. Allow further bench proofing until rise of 80-90% before either baking or overnight cold retard.

Pre-heat oven to 500°F with cast iron skillet in the oven and set up for open steam baking.
30 mins prior to baking, pour 1 L of boiling water into metal loaf pan with Sylvia towel and place on baking steel on the lowest rack of the oven.
Once oven reaches 500ºF turn dough out of banneton, brush excess rice flour off, score and then brush with water. Transfer to oven. Pour 250 mL of boiling water into the cast iron skillet on a high shelf, high enough that the dough have fully bloom. Drop temperature to 450ºF and bake with steam for 25 mins. Then vent oven and remove all steaming gear and drop temperature to 425ºF. Bake for another 25-30 mins rotating as needed.

The stiff sweet levain did create a less acid dough. The dough started with a pH of 5.88 after mixing which is quite high for a dough with so little whole grain. At the time of cold retard the pH had fallen to only 5.34. Typically I would see a fall of between 1.1 to 1.3 at this point.

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