For several years, one of the constants in my bread baking was to use Dakota Maid bread flour. I found that in baking a sourdough loaf using the 1 part by weight 100% hydration starter, 2 parts by weight water, 3 parts by weight flour guidelines, I could get a dependable dough that resulted in a flavorful loaf, regardless if I used hard red or hard white whole wheat flour at a 15% quantity. I don't recall ever baking a straight bread flour loaf although it was possible.
I found the DM BF in Omaha at what are now named "Family Fair" supermarkets. Whenever Mrs PG and I went to visit her family, I would pick up 1 or 2 10# bags and haul them back. When the world changed back in March 2020, the supply line stopped because most of Mrs PGs family are in "at risk" groups of one fashion or another and we've stopped visiting Omaha until conditions improve. Fortunately, when the DM flour was gone, King Arthur bread flour was once again available on local supermarket shelves.
The KAF BF required some experimentation to find a recipe that brought consistent results to the dough. Presently, I'm simply using 10 grams less water which works but I think I may have to go to 15 grams less to get what I'm looking for. So, I had been using 110g starter, 220g water, 330 flour initially and the first adjustment was to use 210g of water with 205 g as my next target. It's not a big deal but when baking only one loaf a week, I can't claim to have a "Eureka!" moment after the first effort.
110 g 100% hydration starter
210 g water at 82F
30 g KAF white whole wheat
20 g hard red winter wheat flour
280 g KAF bread flour
8 g kosher salt
I'm also working on some adjustments for my pizza dough after getting a few clues from some good people in Steamboat Springs, CO. I had been using a base recipe as follows,
300 g KAF AP flour
210 g water at 82F
6 g kosher salt
3/8-1/2 tsp IDY, divided
I did vary from that base by using 30 g of either semolina, whole wheat, white whole wheat, or whole rye flours with similar results for the handling qualities of the dough. There were more than a few pies where I used the "oil spot kneading" procedure I mentioned in an earlier post.
The clues I carried back from Colorado go something like this,
75% bread flour
25% Typo 00 flour
64% water at 100F
5% sugar
3.6% salt
1.3% active dry yeast
The flour weights don't bother me but everything else is very different from what I'm used to seeing and reading. To me, and I could be wrong, the ingredients look like they're meant for a enriched dough New York City style crust if that makes sense. The 100F water and sugar appear to be intended for a single fermentation dough without an overnight stay in a cooler for a retarded fermentation. While my breads usually have only 2% salt by weight, the 3.6% salt by weight seems to be meant to add some extra flavor to the dough. The 1.3% ADY could be compensation for the salt's potential to slow down fermentation or it could just be that in making dough for a restaurant, measuring a large quantity or just ripping open a bag of yeast or two is adequate if your mixing up fifty and more pounds of dough. Time is money in the restaurant business.
The obvious procedure for me is to not introduce more than one change at a time and take notes. In order to bring these quantities down to what I would need for my usual 300 g of flour, I need to use 15 g of sugar, 11 g of salt, and 4 g of ADY. Changing the water from 210 g down to 195 g is where I'll start and after seeing the resulting dough, its handling qualities, and end product flavor, I'll move on to adding the sugar which should result in a faster fermentation and a darker edge or cornicione. The salt and ADY quantities seem excessive but I'll wrap my head around those in a few weeks when I see what happens with changing the hydration and adding some sweetness to the dough.
My garden is almost done for the year. The tomato plants are slowing down and looking rather scraggly. The peppers aren't particularly prolific this year but I have enough for me. Mrs PG is no fan of peppers.The cucumber vines have been taken out already. I had too many to begin with and I think that their tangled mess cut back on production. Fortunately, the basil and rosemary are just fine and should be a blessing until the first frost. The average daytime temperatures have dropped enough that I'm out of excuses not to clean up the flower beds and seek out the little tree saplings that are hiding among the remaining flowers and weeds.
One more oddity to discuss here. I had been using a Lamson offset handle bread knife for a while. After a lot of use and sometimes abuse, it lost its edge and began tearing the loaves. I replaced it with a Mercer knife of the same style that I saw on Amazon and have found it useful, especially so since it only set me back $17. One of these days I'll go all out and buy an expensive model but for now, the bread doesn't know the difference and I'm not telling..
Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.
Added Stuff, 24 OCT 2020: This week I baked another of my usual 85% BF/ 15% WWW loafs using the KAF BF and didn't make an adjustment in the water. I didn't do it deliberately, it was just a case of oversight on my part. By the time I caught on, it was too late and too much work with too little reward to adjust so I just let it go and hoped for the best possible outcome. By the time I was ready to shape, the dough was reasonably strong enough to shape without drama. The finished loaf did spread out a little bit but I wasn't looking at a pancake. I've done worse.
So what's my analysis? The obvious guess is that the flour and resultant dough handles differently in a lower room temperature situation. The difference in relative humidity could be in action in this situation. These aren't bad things, I just need to try baking the loaf again using the same procedures to see if the results are any different.
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