The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Benito's blog

Benito's picture
Benito

I seldom make boules, so I decided I need to brush off some of the rust on that skill and also had long wanted to make a bread with sundried tomatoes, so here is my take on this.

 

For one loaf only. Total weight ~ 900 

340 g white bread flour 80% total

87 g whole wheat flour 20% total 

Total Flour = 427 g

 

Total water 307 g 78% hydration  (82% hydration first time)

 

Final dough for mixing

340 g white bread flour

49 g whole red fife flour

water 294 g (none reserved - add levain and salt without reserved water) 78% hydration

I added another 5 g water with the levain to mix and more with coil folds so estimate 82% hydration in the end

2% salt.  8.54 g

Diastatic malt 0.5% 2.14 g

76 g Levain  1:2:2  17 g starter, 34 g whole wheat flour, 34 g water

 

Inclusions

Sun dried tomatoes chopped 20% 85 g

Shallot chopped and raw 10% 42.4 g

Herbs de Provence 1%. 4.24 g (3.09 g used)

Mixed together and placed in a bowl to be added during lamination

 

I did an overnight build of the levain starting with fridge cold water and an hour in the fridge taking it out to a cool room temperature at bedtime.

 

The final dough was mixed including the salt again with fridge cold water and placed in the fridge for 1 hour taking it out to a cool room temperature at bedtime.

 

In the morning the levain was just past peak and was immediately mixed into the saltolysed dough, Rubaud mixing was employed for 5 minutes to ensure the levain was well mixed and some gluten was starting to be developed.

 

Bulk Fermentation was done at 82ºF for the duration. 

 

After a 30 mins rest a strong letter fold on the counter was done.  30 g dough was removed, folding it several times to get a good ball shape and placed in the aliquot jar.  I have posted about this elsewhere so refer to that post if you are interested in learning more.

 

After another 30 mins rest a lamination was employed.  Use the lamination to add the inclusions in three parts to ensure that they are evenly spread throughout the crumb when baked.

 

Another 3 coil folds were employed at 30-45 mins intervals until a good windowpane.

 

Bulk fermentation continued at 82ºF until the aliquot jar showed a 60% rise.  The dough was then immediately shaped and placed into a banneton and placed into the fridge at 2ºC overnight.

 

The next morning, oven was pre-heated at 500ºF and the steam set up was done for steam baking.  For boules I use my steam set up instead of my dutch oven which is oval.

After 1 hour of pre-heating my dough was removed from the fridge and immediately flipped onto a parchment lined peel.  I brushed off the rice flour and scored the boule trying a spiral for the first time.  I usually brush water on liberally at this point but in the fuss of doing a spiral score for the first time I forgot.

 

Load the dough ensuring that the steam set up is going and bake at 450ºF for 20 mins.  Remove the steam set up and then drop the temperature to 420ºF turning on convection and bake for another 20-25 mins turning halfway through until crust is a mahogany colour and baked through.

My adding inclusions during lamination video

 

My shaping a boule video

I didn’t achieve good oven spring.  I suspect I degassed the dough too much during shaping.  I am obviously rusty at shaping a boule.  Hope the crumb isn’t too bad as a result.

Benito's picture
Benito

These are my first go at an all white flour 10% protein, in this case from Quebec, that is sourdough and no commercial yeast.  After the good results I had with the sesame semolina sourdough baguettes without commercial yeast I decided I needed to give it a go again but with the Quebec white flour.  These are essentially Abel’s baguettes au levain without the commercial yeast and hydration increased to 70% during bassinage and finally encrusted with poppy seeds.  So I’ll just call them Yorkville Baguettes since that is the neighborhood that I live in ?

These were done in my now usual fashion with very little intervention, so only Rubaud mixing when adding the salt to ensure that it is well mixed.  There were no slap and folds done.  I did my usual two coil folds, in between telemedicine appointments (don’t tell my patients) so not quite at the usual 50 mins intervals.  Bulk fermentation was monitored with an aliquot jar once again ending when the jar showed a 20% rise.  The dough was put into a 2ºC fridge for bulk cold retard and stayed there for a bit more than 24 hours.

The following day I did a pre-shape into loose cylinders followed by a 25 mins bench remembering that the last time I used this flour it was extremely extensible.  Shaping when pretty well for me and these were each then dampened on a wet towel and “rolled” on a cookie tray with poppy seeds.  They were transferred to my floured couche seam side up thinking that the weight of the dough would help press the poppy seeds firmly into the dough to help attach them.  They were given a 40 min bench rest.  With 10 mins left to the bench rest the oven was turned on to pre-heat at 500ºF.  At the 40 min mark the baguettes were put back into the fridge to firm up and stayed there for 40 mins.

Finally they were baked as usual with steam at 480ºF for 13 minutes and then 10 mins at 480ºF rotating them at the halfway mark then the temperature was dropped to 450ºF and the baguettes were given another 3 minutes and then they were done.

Final Dough

475 g 10% white flour 

311 g water autolyse

9 g water bassinage

5.22 g diastatic malt

9.38 g salt

95 g Levain built with 12 g stater 45 g water 45 g white flour 10% protein

Overnight levain build with cold filtered water, refrigerate levain and then take out of fridge before bedtime.

In the morning dissolve diastatic malt and levain in water.  Then add flour and mix to shaggy mass.  Rest 20 mins then add salt and gradually add bassinage water, do Rubaud kneading for 4-5 mins until dough is smooth.  

Remove approximate 40 g of dough and set up your aliquot jar.  How to use an aliquot jar.

Ferment at 82ºF, after 50 mins do coil folds, then after another 50 mins do another coil fold.  Once the aliquot jar shows a 20% rise the dough is placed into the fridge until the following day.

The dough is divided and pre-shaped as loose cylinders and left to rest covered at room temperature for 30 mins.  The dough is then shaped, placed on a wet towel and rolled in poppy seeds.  Finally they are placed on a floured couche seam side up and left at room temperature for 40 mins to proof.  

With 10 mins left of bench rest the oven is started 500ºF to preheat.  When the 40 mins of bench rest is completed the shaped baguettes are placed in a bag and returned to the refrigerator for 30-40 mins to chill to make scoring easier.  Once this time is over the baguettes are scored and immediately placed on the baking steel and boiling water is added to the cast iron skillet.  The Sylvia towel with boiling water was placed in the oven 30 mins prior to baking time.

The oven temperature is jacked up to 525ºF to get the burners to activate immediately and then once activated dropped to 480ºF.  The baguettes are baked with steam for 13 mins.  The steam equipment is removed venting the oven of steam.  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.

Pre-shaping

Shaping video

Scoring Video

Benito's picture
Benito

This is my first ever cinnamon raisin bread if you can believe it.  It was feeling very autumnal here in Toronto when I started working on this loaf, but today it will reach a high of 26ºC and feel very summer like.  I followed the general outline for this bread on The Perfect Loaf by Maurizio’s, but used my usual dough development with a bench letterfold, lamination then coil folds.

Total Formula

Bread Flour 66% 290 g 

Whole Red Fife Flour 34% 152 g includes levain 

Total flour = 442 

Cinnamon 1%

Raisins 20% 

Water 81.5%

Salt 2%

8% prefermented flour

 

Levain Build

1:2:2 

Need 70 g levain 

15 g starter, 30 g water, 30 g whole red fife

 

Dough Mix

Bread Flour 290 g

Whole Red Fife Flour 117 g

Ground Cinnamon 4.5 g

Raisins 86 g

Water 325 g

Salt 8.55 g

Diastatic malt 0.5% 2.21 g

Levain 70 g

 

Do overnight levain build and overnight saltolyse 

Also soak raisins in rum or bourbon overnight 

I’ll add the cinnamon and raisins during lamination

 

I used 76 g levain and added another 6 g water with it to mix.

So total flour = 445 g

Total water after levain mix = 369 hydration 83%

 

Overall I’m pleased with the bake but will reserve judgement until after it is sliced, the crumb tells all yes?

 

 

Benito's picture
Benito

This time I used yellow miso which is milder in flavour than the more assertive red miso I usually use, only because red miso was unavailable the last time I bought miso.  Also my homemade miso is far from ready yet needing many more months to ferment.  The furikake I bought for this bake didn’t have the bonito flakes in it so instead was a simpler seaweed and sesame seed.  The furikake is so delicious with just steamed rice and that is what I usually eat it with.

I made a pretty big mistake when mixing this dough.  I was doing my recent overnight process of levain build and saltolyse (salt in autolyse) which I’ve been having very good results with recently.  The main reason for doing this was to give me more time in my day to do other things by having the levain build and be ready by the morning.  However, when I mixed the water into the flours I kind of felt that it seemed wetter than usual but didn’t think much of it because it was late and I was tired.  It wasn’t until the next day after adding the levain and trying to slap and fold that I knew for sure that I had made a mistake somewhere.  In reviewing my notes and formula I realized that I had added the total water which includes the water in the levain instead of the water for the mix.  So the dough was in excess of 90% hydration which for my flours 80% bread and 20% red fife was way too much for them to absorb.  Not sure if this would work, I measured out 75 g of whole red fife and gradually sprinkled this in and mixed until the dough came together.  I added about 60 g of this flour in and did a quick calculation that the hydration was down to 80% but the whole red fife was up to 39%.  So if anything now the hydration is a bit low for the flour.  Oh well, what can you do.  I just hope there aren’t pockets of raw flour or bits of hard dough in the crumb of this bread.

The resulting dough was over 1 kg so the largest loaf I’ve made.  I wasn’t expecting much from this but I think it turned out better than expected considering the early error I made, but the crumb will tell all.

Miso was increased to 5.6% to try to bring out the flavour.  Furikake was added during the lamination but I forgot to add more after the letterfold so there still isn’t as much as I had planned.

Benito's picture
Benito

Back at the same sesame semolina sourdough baguettes but with some changes to try to improve the crumb. So I made some changes in the hopes of achieving a more open crumb. The first significant change I made was to delete the commercial yeast altogether, this change was made by accident and wasn’t planned as removing the commercial yeast wasn’t something that I thought would improve the crumb.  In fact, I thought that the addition of commercial yeast was part of what was giving my an open crumb.


I increased the hydration from 67 to 71% and I also reduced bulk fermentation rise in the aliquot jar from 25 to 20%. My thinking there was increasing hydration is often one route to open crumb as long as you handle the dough well. The reduction in bulk rise was done to make dough handling easier. You see, when I had to transfer the shaped dough to a tray with a wet towel and roll it, then transfer it to the tray with the sesame seeds and roll it, I found that the dough felt like it was getting degassed and stretched out too long. So reducing bulk made the dough much easier to handle this much and once seeded and in the couche the dough was 16” long, the max for my baking steel. Finally to compensate for the reduced fermentation I added a 30 mins bench rest in the couche followed by my usual 30 minute chill in the fridge. The fridge time is intended to firm the dough up to make it easier to score.
I think my changes were very successful and I’m quite happy with the improvement in the crumb compared to my first set. Leaving out the commercial yeast didn’t have the negative effect that I expected in making the crust thicker nor did leaving it out make the crumb less open.

Benito's picture
Benito

I’ve wanted to make a mashed potato bread for some time and just got around to it.  This has 25% butter mashed potatoes, 82% hydration, 9% prefermented flour.  I did an overnight levain build which grew to over 3x and was used young just as the dome started to flatten.  A saltolyse was done also overnight, both starting in the fridge to slow things down.  The mashed potatoes were added to half the dough after Rubaud mixing when the levain was added.  Then was fully mixed with slap and folds on the counter.  The two halves of the dough were combined using a lamination and then the black pepper and fresh rosemary were added during lamination as well. Three coil folds were done.  I was aiming for a 60% rise in the aliquot jar because that is what seems to be ideal, however, for some reason the bulk was going really fast and I was late to shape the dough and there was at least a 65% rise by the time bulk ended.  I believe evidence of the over fermentation can be seen in the lack of ear and relatively poor oven spring of this bake.  It also has more slopping shoulders than I like.  I suppose the 25% mashed potatoes may also contribute to this, but I don’t think so.  

This bread smells so good right now with the rosemary and black pepper aromas filling my kitchen.  I will bake this again and watch bulk more closely than I did this time to get a better bake.  There’s always room for improvement.

Benito's picture
Benito

 

Here is my take on Alan’s (Alfanso) Sesame Semolina Baguettes.  I used his formula generally but made a few changes.  I added 0.07% IDY and also did an overnight Saltolyse and levain build.  I forgot how low hydration this was going to be so in the future I wouldn’t do the overnight saltolyse and would  instead just mix the levain IDY water and flours in the morning then add salt 20 mins later.  I ended bulk at 25% rise in the aliquot jar and placed the dough en bulk in the fridge until the next afternoon.  26 hours or so after the start of cold retard the dough was divided and pre-shaped and left to rest in loose rolls for 20 mins.  Shaping was a bit of a mismash of different shaping techniques but I think I like shaping ala Abel the most and will try to stick to that in the future.  These were very easy to roll out to 16” and in fact with the first one I had to cut one end because it rolled out to 18” way too long for my steel.  It was a challenge to roll these on the wet towel and roll them in the sesame seeds, each time I felt like I was degassing them a bit and then stretching them as well.  I wonder if the next time I was to make these again, if I should proof to 20% and then after shaping let them have a bench rest at warm room temperature to try to bounce back a bit from the shaping, wetting and sesame seed applications.

Having never baked anything with semolina to such a high percentage before I didn’t know what to expect, but the dough was nice and extensible. The flavour of this baguette though, for a sesame seed fanatic is just outstanding.  I’m not sure what the Semola Rimacinata is contributing for flavour but this is my favourite tasting baguette I’ve ever made.   I dare say that it tastes better than the sesame baguette I used to buy at my favourite local bakery Blackbird.

The crumb has a lovely yellow hue from the Semola and is nice and tender without too much chew.  The crust is very crispy with that amazing sesame flavour.

I have a line of dense crumb near the center of the baguette that when I examine it closely, I can faintly see white flour.  I suspect that the dense crumb section is because of raw flour that got into the middle of this baguette when pre-shaping or shaping.  I’ll need to be a better job of brushing off the excess flour.  If it wasn’t for the yellow hue of the semolina I would never have seen this line in the dense area.  I wonder if this causes some of the density in baguette crumb we see?

Anyhow, these baguette taste so good I just downed out plain no butter or anything for dinner.

Benito's picture
Benito

We loved the Kamut flavour in the last loaf I baked last week but wanted a stronger flavour from the Kamut.  This week I decided to inch up they percentage of Kamut to 30%.  Still being unsure about going higher because I wasn’t sure how thirsty Kamut is and what effect on the gluten it would have.  I increased the hydration to 78% with the assumption that more whole Kamut would make the dough thirstier.  I still think that the Kamut adds a lot of extensibility to the dough and doesn’t seem that thirsty compared to other whole grains.  I’d love to know what other more experienced bakers of Kamut think.

For convenience, I recently have been experimenting with overnight levain builds since I’ve been doing that for the baguettes and now also with overnight modified autolyse.  Based on Trevor Wilson and Chad Robertson if I’m not mistaken, if doing an overnight autolyse do it cold and add salt.  The idea being the salt and cold will slow the effects of the amylase enzymes, (saltolyse is what I’ve been calling it).  I’ve been pleased with doing the overnight because it means that I can bulk ferment in the morning and then do final shaping in the early afternoon instead of in the evening and then have a longer cold retard overnight period which should enhance the flavour of the bread as well as improve the blisters in the crust.  This time I didn’t brush water on the crust because I wanted to see if the longer cold retard would give me good blisters without that step.  I’m not sure if it did or not, you tell me.

Another thing I changed is the degree of bulk fermentation.  Last week I bulked to a 50% rise in the aliquot jar and I thought that the crumb was a bit tight and wanted to see if pushing the bulk would open it up more.  This week I bulk fermented to a 60% rise and shaped then and gave it a short 15 minutes bench rest before putting it into the fridge for 18 hours. During the time it took to shape and bench rest the aliquot jar showed a 65% rise.  I’m hoping that the crumb will be more open when I slice the loaf later.

I made a couple of videos the first showing my shaping and the second my scoring.  My scoring wasn’t perfect as it took three goes to get the centre score deep enough.  It would have been better to be only one cut to score but I wasn’t aggressive enough with my first go, I usually do better.

Shaping Video

Scoring Video

Benito's picture
Benito

We LOVED the blueberry rhubarb galette I made last week so much I had to make it as a double crust pie this week to bring to friends.  Because of the pandemic we haven’t seen our best friends since 2019.  We are allowed to have a bubble of 10 people but haven’t really taken advantage of this so far.  

I wanted to see if replacing half of the water in the Bravetart all butter crust would make it even more tender.  I used to make a vodka pastry that was half shortening and half butter.  I really didn’t like the idea of eating shortening with the transfers so I wanted to find another pastry recipe so started to use the Bravetart recipe.  I remember that pastry as being a bit more tender than the Bravetart all butter pastry.  I wonder if it is because of the vodka or not.  Supposedly the vodka interferes with gluten formation in the pastry, does anyone know if that is true?  Anyhow, I will know tomorrow when we get to eat this delicious pie.

Benito's picture
Benito

This is my second go at baking a 20% Kamut sourdough. I wanted to try an overnight levain build and saltolyse (autolyse with salt included) because it would allow me to get the bake done on the same day as the mix while still including a short cold retard.  I think this actually works out quite well and I may continue to do this int he future.  I once again used the aliquot jar and ended bulk fermentation when the aliquot jar showed a rise of 50% and after final shaping did a short bench rest of 15 minutes.

The formula was included in my last post of this sourdough so I won’t rewrite that here.

 

Pages

Subscribe to RSS - Benito's blog