The Spelt is Back

  Way, way, way back in the Spring of last year, Mrs PG and I stopped off at Heartland Mill in Marienthal, KS. Part of my purchase was a 2# bag of spelt flour. Upon return to our home, I promptly placed it out of harm's way in the freezer for future use.The future arrived a short time ago when I decided to open the bag and use the flour in a new loaf.

Stylistically, I think it can be classified as either some kind of country loaf or bauernbrot. These classifications have been so loosely interpreted over the years that even a raggedy home baker such as myself can make a claim to either name. As has been said before, if it tastes good, it is good. This has turned out to be a very good bread despite the lack of any name or title.

Once again, I followed my now familiar procedures to prepare this loaf. Because I was already planning to bake a pizza for supper, I did time the proofing of the loaf to take advantage of an already very hot baking stone for better oven spring. The satisfactorily open crumb confirmed my expectations. My slashing doesn't show up well, more camera operator error, but I was trying to get an alternating cut pattern. Maybe it will work out better in the next loaf.

Starter:
160g, 75% hydration white flour starter

Dough:
267g bread flour
100g white whole wheat flour
33g spelt flour
280g water at 85F, plus 10g correction during dough mix stage
9g kosher salt
All of starter
Attention to detail, patience, and time

While there is a new rumor of widespread soaking rains by Wednesday or Thursday, the expectations have inadequate foundation for the moment. Even if the rain does arrive, the current drought and predicted drought conditions through September do not bode well for the greenery in my yard. Our poppy plant has browned out entirely though I have no idea if that means it's dead. We may have had an abundance of day lillies at the beginning of spring but some of the plantings have succumbed to the persistent heat wave. A few of my peonies are fading fast as well. If the peonies hang in for a couple more weeks, I should be able to trim them back and save them for next year. Tonight's local area forecast called for temperatures around 106-108F for Tuesday and Wednesday. That ought to provide a lesson or two in gardening.

The Kansas State University Extension Service will be coming to town next Saturday morning with a class in bread baking. The focus will be on bread shaping and on the utilization of whole wheat flours and grains in breads. It sounds good enough that I'm making the class a kind of gift to myself. The class will be taught by a representative of the Kansas Wheat Commission.

Visitors to the blog this week have included guests  from Ecuador and Ireland .

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

A Fresh Flour Loaf

  Saturday mornings  during the summer time are often spent getting to the Farmers Market early enough to purchase some sweet corn from the Jirak Family. While looking over the other vendors stalls, I happened upon a new business called Family, Grace, and Grains. They sell a variety of wheat berries which they will mill for customers, cereal grains, Bosch mixers, Wonder Mills, and other varied baking supplies. I bought a 5# bag of hard red wheat for $4.50 which I thought was reasonable since they milled it for me right away.

A few hours later, I started my procedure for a simple sourdough loaf that has turned out to be dependable. I built a starter of around 170g at 75% hydration in two stages to get an active sample. When it came time to start mixing the dough, I got my sticky mass stage and let it rest for 30 minutes. Whether I add the starter at the beginning or do the more formal autolyse and add the starter after the rest, the rest works for me. YMMV.

After the rest, I added my salt, mixed at low speed for three minutes, determined it needed an extra Tbs of water, and then mixed at second speed for four minutes. The dough was shaped into a rough ball on a floured surface and then placed into an oiled Cambro container for a three hour bulk fermentation with stretch and folds at 60 and 120 minutes. Preshaped, covered, and rested for ten minutes, Shaped, placed in a brotform, covered with plastic bag, rested on the counter for 30 minutes at room temperature, and then into the refrigerator for a retarded proofing. Because of the heat spell we've been enduring here in Kansas, I decided that the dough could sit in the fridge until the evening to lessen the work load on our air conditioning.The dough came out of the fridge two hours before the bake to finish the proof.

After placing the dough on a sheet of parchment paper, I slashed and loaded onto a baking stone in an oven that had been preheated to 450F. Fifteen minutes at 450F, pulled the paper, turned the loaf around, and continued the bake at 425F for twenty more minutes. The internal temperature was 205F so I turned the oven off and left the loaf on the stone for five more minutes. We like a good crust in this house.

The loaf cooled and rested for about ten hours before I sliced it. It's a good bread. I'm certain that the fresh flour contributes to the slight tang in the crust. The crumb was nicely moist and is neither red wheat bitter or overly sour from the starter. I suspect that people who don't ordinarily eat sourdough bread would notice that aspect at all. This loaf used 33% hard red wheat but I think I can push that percentage up and still get an attractive loaf as long as I improve my technique.

Starter:
170g at 75% hydration after a two stage build

Dough
267g bread flour
133g fresh milled hard red wheat flour
280g water at 85F
9g kosher salt
All of starter
Attention to detail, patience, and time

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Catching up with the baking

 I've been remiss at posting due to the purchase of a new computer. The old one was so old that it was an XP OS before the first SP with only 256 MB of RAM before I hot rodded it up to 756 MB. It was slow. The new computer is a quad core with 8 G of RAM and MUCH faster. All of which means I can make my mistakes even faster than before. Setting up this computer was an instruction in why one should seriously consider paying for the transfer of files by qualified personnel.
I found it was possible, though tedious, by assuming the attitude of teenager and saying to myself, "What could possibly go wrong?" I still have some housekeeping utilities to download and a bunch of bread recipes that belong in my Favorites function but so far, so good.  The top picture includes a couple of improvised loaves that were my recovery from some bad calculations for a potato bread recipe. The dough was incredibly wet, almost a batter, so I changed my plans and started heading in the direction of ciabatta type loaf. The crumb was ordinary but the bread was still good enough that both loaves were finished in short order at a party held in the middle of Council Bluffs, Iowa corn fields. The second picture is a plate of strawberries covered with chocolate and some frosting. The host of the party was justifiably proud of her creation.  

The other loaf of bread is another WWW sourdough loaf following the same procedures and using the same ingredients as the loaf from my last post. The only difference was that I used 120g of WWW instead of 115g. The results are just as convincing and it will probably the formula I use for my submission in the whole wheat category at the County Fair.

Our yard has been invaded by Japanese beetles. They have already devastated a decorative planting that I thought was immune to everything but Agent Orange or tactical nuclear weapons. All the leaves have been stripped and many of the interior vines are dead. Personally, I won't miss the plant since it spreads lots of seeds that take root and are impossible to control with out extensive measures such as using a bulldozer.

However, the beetles have since targeted my tomato plants. I used some organic insecticidal soap on the plants tonight but I'm not sure that will do the trick. I may have to resort to other treatments because the beetles do look like they have determination in their DNA.

Visitors from Ethiopia and Indonesia have taken a look at this blog recently.


Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

A Simple Successful WWW Sourdough Loaf

I enjoy using Wheat Montana flours. I first heard about them from a post on "The Fresh Loaf" website and since I was planning on driving up to Glacier National Park, I made a mental note to look for their flour/ gas station/ restaurant conveniently located next to I-80.  It's worth a stop if you're driving by because they serve great coffee and a plate size cinnamon roll. They also had all their products available for sale in the different sizes. A small mill was located by the front door for customers who wanted to grind the wheat they bought in the store. There were also some Wheat Montana delicatessens located about the state. One of those delis was located in Kalispell, MT when Mrs PG and I were staying there during our visit to Glacier NP. That was three years ago and they were doing a brisk business. I hope they're still going strong.

For a while, some of the KC area Hy-Vee supermarkets had the Wheat Montana mills in their stores which gave me access to freshly milled whole wheat or white whole wheat. For the last ten months or so, the local Walmart store has carried five pound  bags of the WM flours which is convenient but lacking the cachet of fresh flour. However, the bags are unique in that they made of a sturdy plastic with a zipper top for storage. That's a thoughtful touch in my book. I like to use their "Natural White" AP flour for my pizza crusts and the "Prairie Gold", a white whole wheat, for bread as I did for the subject loaf.

This was about as simple a sourdough loaf as I've made in a long time. No soakers, no specialty flours, or experimental techniques were involved. I did a two stage build for the starter and used a 30 minute autolyse for the dough. At just over 71% hydration, the dough was only a little bit sticky but handled well. I merely sprayed the loaf before loading. It tastes great and the crumb has stayed moist after slicing. The only change I might try is to do an overnight retarded fermentation. Alas, I haven't given it a name so I'll refer to it as the SSWWWS loaf until I get the urge to call it something else.

Starter
165g of 75% white flour starter, done in a two stage build process.

Dough

285g bread flour
115g Wheat Montana Prairie Gold flour
280g water at 85F
10g kosher salt
All of starter


The enduring heat wave is expected to come to an end tomorrow night with the arrival of a "cold front". I guess that's all relative since the forecast highs will be 86-90F for the next week. That should allow the tomato plants to recuperate and start setting fruit again.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Ring Around the Boule

  Mrs PG wasn't enchanted by this slashing pattern  but I think that it has merit.In particular that allows for expansion during the oven spring phase at the beginning of the bake. It's not original in that I saw a loaf with the circular pattern in Clayton's "Breads of France".

I had fun with this loaf in that I just played it by ear again and ended up with a variation on my wheat germ loaf from a while back. I thought I had aimed at a 70% hydration dough but I'm not tasting that higher moisture level in the crumb. Perhaps my expectations are on the high side in this situation.

Starter:
160g at 75% hydration, fed with 75% organic AP and 25% whole rye, in a two stage build.

Soaker
100g whole wheat flour
40g BRM wheat germ
                                                                  140g water at room temperature
                                                               
                                                                   Dough
                                                                   300g bread flour
                                                                   180g water at 85F
                                                                   All of starter
                                                                   All of soaker
                                                                   9g kosher salt

My next off the wall project is a couple of loaves of potato bread. The recipe has been around for a while and I have yet to see it written down in weight measurements. Here's what has been handed down to me in volume measurements.                                      
                                                                   3 C. AP flour
                                                                   1/2 C. mashed potato
                                                                   1 C. water from cooking the potato, 
                                                                   cooled to less than 105F
                                                                   1/2 Tbl salt
                                                                   1 Tbl Butter

Many of the recipes I've seen on the internet call for a baking temperature of 375- 400F.

There was a surprise rain shower on Saturday night that dropped 1/2" of rain but that hasn't been enough to cheer up the local gardeners, myself included. There are signs of mole activity around the back of the house and it perplexes me as to how they can dig through the baked, dry, and hard soil. There's got to be a high level of determination in those critters.
I'm very pleased with cherry tomato plant now that it's producing for me. A healthy handful of them, some diced onion, a sliced cucumber, and a little bit of vinaigrette dressing makes for a healthier addition to my lunchtime 1/2 sandwich than the usual tortilla chips and salsa. It's a start at eating a little bit better, not a slow dance with asceticism.

By some odd chance, viewers from the PRC, China, have found this little corner of the internet.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Using a Whole Wheat Starter

Just for the fun of it, I decided to use some Dakota Maid whole wheat flour for a two stage build starter for this loaf. There wasn't anything particularly difficult in doing that but I should mention that the result was smaller in size than if I had used some white flour.

It turned out to be a nice loaf, suitable for how we eat bread here with the exception of Italian foods. I have healthy basil, rosemary, and sage plants now for either a pan Marino loaf or foccaccia. 

Starter
170g, 80% hydration starter made with whole wheat flour
in two stages

Dough
20g whole wheat flour
40g whole rye flour
340g bread flour
280g water at 85F
10g kosher salt
All of starter


Presently, we're in the middle of a prolonged drought accompanied by a vicious heat wave. The daily high temperatures have been between 94-104F. Because the night time temperatures aren't all that cool, the tomato plants won't be setting fruit until this heat spell breaks for a few days. I don't know about the chile peppers and how they'll do but I haven't given up on watering them. When I bake these days, it's usually after 6 PM but the room temperatures are still at 80F or so which means I read more about baking than actually get the opportunity to do so. The County Fair is scheduled for the first full week in August so I need to bake to get the creative and competitive spirit going.

Recognition goes out to the brave souls from Israel and Bangladesh that stopped by to look at this little corner of the internet.  


Comments, humor, and questions are welcome 

It shoulda been a ciabatta! With apologies to Marlon Brando!

I would rather say that I've been learning from experience with the last few loaves than to say that they've been bad. Despite my use of baker's math, the hydration levels didn't turn out to be anywhere expectations.

The first loaf here was in the style of my Pain Complet au Son yet despite using similar ingredients, differences in procedures brought about a dough that was slack and wet. I did consider just cutting two log shapes and placing them on a floured towel for proofing. Instead, I tried the Tartine shaping style and placed the dough in a towel lined brotform for a retarded proofing. As long as practice makes perfect, then hope does truly spring eternal for me with this formula. Getting good oven spring when I use wheat bran in the loaf may take eternal practice. 

The second loaf is a French Country Loaf with Poolish that I made for a party at Rob's house in Farley, MO. I followed the 1-2-3 method that I've often used with sourdoughs. Using a poolish with this type of bread does seem to work when shelf life isn't a priority. While I wasn't 100% happy with the loaf, a tight crumb, most of party goers didn't notice and left only crumbs by the time dessert was served. That was good enough for me but there is always room for improvement.

My gardening has produced better results than my baking. I picked my first ripe tomato yesterday and it was excellent. There are more to follow soon and I'm particularly interested in the "Tommytoes" cherry tomato plant. It's supposed to be resistant to the "early blight" disease that has been troubling my garden. The chiles are just about on time rather than ahead as the other plants have been due to the warm winter.

I finished digging up this year's garlic crop which had some oddities that I can't recall seeing before. A few of the soft neck type plants had seeds forming in the necks. A vendor at the Leavenworth Farmers Market told me that will happen on occasion. The seeds can be planted in the fall but it will be about three years before there is head of garlic that is of sale size. Doing that hardly seems to be worth the effort unless you're really hardcore curious to see if that's true or if your food supply is so tenuous that everything counts.
My hard neck garlic plantings also had some surprises for me. About a third of the cloves that were planted produced bulbs that sent up two or more scapes. Since I've forgotten the names of the varieties I planted, it isn't possible to figure out whether it is something due to the particular strain, the winter weather, or just a coincidence.
The garlic will take another week or so to dry out in this hot weather that we're experiencing in Kansas. I've somewhat foolishly given four classes to both crops. The largest sized bulbs will be set aside for my next years crop. Big bulbs come from big cloves. The next size is still big enough for seed usage but if no one wants to plant my garlic, I'll keep it for eating. At the third level down is garlic that isn't a pain to peel for use in cooking but not worth bothering to plant. The smallest bulbs will be given away. I'll have more than enough to plant, plenty to eat, and enough to give away and spread the love of good garlic.

My thank you note goes out to the page viewer from Slovenia that dropped into this obscure corner of the internet.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome

Another Big Biga Experiment

  Despite my preference for sourdough loaves, I sometimes lack the self discipline to resist playing with my abundant supply of active dry yeast. It's a shopping at Costco kind of thing I guess.

This loaf started off with a 70% hydration biga, or preferment if you'd rather, that contained 50% 0f the flour in the loaf. I was aiming at a 70% overall hydration to see If I could get an open crumb when I used high extraction Turkey Red flour in the biga. I even added another 15g of water during the mixing which should have given me a 74% hydration. When the mixing was done, the dough was somewhat sticky but not difficult to handle. The fermentation was good, shaping was easy, and I proofed for at least 1 1/4 hours before loading in the oven.

Biga
200g bolted Turkey Red Flour
140g water at 85F
1/2 tsp active dry yeast  
After mixing, the biga sat at an 80F room temperature for 6 hours

Dough
200g bread flour
140g water at 85F
1/8 tsp active dry yeast
7g kosher salt
All of biga

I mixed the biga, bread flour, and water together for about a minute and let the mass rest for 20 minutes. Then I folded the salt into the dough and sprinkled the ADY over the top of the dough. I mixed at first speed for three minutes and then went to second speed for another three minutes. After that, I turned out the dough, shaped it into a ball, and placed it into my oiled Cambro container so I could monitor the progress of the fermentation.

I did a S&F at 45 minutes and 80 minutes. Total fermentation was 2 hours. A preshape, covered rest of 15 minutes, and shaping followed that. Proofing at room temperature for 1 1/4 hours led to a preheated 450F oven for 15 minutes.  A quick turn around of the loaf and lowering the oven to 400F for the last 20 minutes gave me a loaf that had an internal temperature of 205F.

There are several things that I could do differently the next time. First, use less yeast and a longer rest for the biga. While I could change to whole wheat flour I don't think using it in the biga needs to change. Shorter mixing times might lead to a better looking crumb as long as I match that with less handling of the dough. The proofing time definitely needs to be extended.

Using a large percentage of fermented flour in a loaf isn't that difficult though recipes using the big biga aren't very common. Fortunately, with few and simple ingredients required, bakers can just figure out their own after the first or second recipe they follow.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

A Pain Rustique Variation

Posting about this particular loaf has been a PITA in that twice my  pictures made the transition from the Picassa blog link to the posted page but the text didn't. When your typing style is hunt and peck, that's frustrating. I have to find a work around that's faster than what I've done so far.

The loaf is only adequate because I didn't follow the proper procedures from the recipe in J Hamelman's "Bread". I plead guilty to over thinking on this loaf. Shaping was supposed to be minimal, almost like a ciabatta loaf. Proofing, according to the directions, is a brief 45 minutes at room temperature. I used a retarded proofing and probably didn't help my cause.

Here are the ingredients and some notes on the procedures. I see potential but I'll have to find it in the "do over" loaf.

Poolish
70g bread flour
90g white whole flour
40g rye flour
200g water at 85F
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/8 tsp active dry yeast
If using ADY , hydrate it in the water before mixing the ingredients. After mixing, cover the poolish and rest at room temperature for 12-14 hours.

Soaker
40g wheat germ
40g water at room temperature.
Start soaker about 6 hours after the poolish is mixed and leave at room temperature.

Dough
200g bread flour
70g water at 85F
1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 tsp kosher salt. Total weight of salt for the loaf is 7g.
All of poolish
All of soaker

Cucumbers have finally started showing up on my vines. They are a tangled mess even though I'm trying to use a trellis type system to support them. They won't need any more fertilizer for a while. The garlic isn't quite ready yet. I've dug up a few and they are still on the small side. All my peppers are starting to show fruit with the jalopeno plant being the first to deliver the goods. All my time spent staring at the tomato plants hasn't moved matters along there. I do, however, expect to have some ripe tomatoes by 4 July. A farm located by the Lawrence, KS airport is delivering its first pickings from the sweet corn crop today. A truck farmer at the local Farmers' Market has predicted that he'll have sweet corn, the "Temptation" variety, for Wednesday's market.

For me, fresh sweet corn says "Summer in Kansas" more than watermelon or a cold beer after mowing the lawn. Not that there's anything wrong with watermelon or cold beer but I can get both of those all year long. Fresh, local sweet corn is special.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Road Trip Report and Honey Wheat Germ Bread

Mrs PG and I are back from a road trip to New England to visit my parents and attend her nephew's wedding in Troy, NY. I didn't seek out any local flours or notable bakeries this year but I did add some new pieces to my collection of baking equipment. My father donated a recipe card stand that keeps my papers off the counter and away from spilled flour or water. At a store in Vermont called Basketville, I bought a grapefruit knife. It looks like a double serrated edge steak knife with a tipped up end of the blade. I thought it also looked something like a lame so I put down the required $2.59 for purchase. I tried it out on the subject loaf of this post and it seems to work well enough on my first effort.

The big addition is the cherry wood bowl that I found at Peterman's Bowls and Boards in Turners Falls, MA.
www.spencerpeterman.com
It's about 14" wide with a not too shallow depth to the bowl that should lend itself to the minimal handling procedure for making bread as described in this post from The Fresh Loaf site.

     http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22990/illustration-stretch-and-fold-bowl

The steps describe what happens after you've mixed your dough to the prescribed "shaggy mass" and left it to rest for 20-30 minutes under a cover of some sort. I have yet to try the method myself but plan on doing so once I've treated the bowl with enough food grade mineral oil. Reports on that will be posted in the future.

The pictures of a loaf of my sourdough version of an  Abfrisch (Bohemian Bread) as posted by Plotzblog were unceremoniously and unfortunately deleted due to my operator error with my new camera. The Google translation wasn't entirely clear but I took some guesses on this 46% rye bread and got some pleasant results. You can find the recipe in Plotzblog's post on "Wild Yeast" or try to find it at his blog. Plotzblog has posted many different German, Swiss, and Austrian recipes that may interest bakers that are willing to take some guesses with the translation. If you can read the posts directly in German, you'll have it made in the shade.
The subject loaf is something that I worked out on my own. I have no idea if someone posted or published something like this before but I think that any novice sourdough baker should be able to figure this one out and replicate it well. It's a great loaf for sandwiches or with a healthy schmear of peanut butter.

Starter
175g of 66% hydration white flour starter

Soaker
100g stone ground whole wheat
30g wheat germ
100g water

Dough
300g bread flour
178g water at 90F + 15g (1 Tbs) for correction
10g kosher salt
1 Tbs local organic honey
All of soaker
All of starter

I think the crust turned out well with good thickness and crunch. The color is probably due to the honey in the dough but that doesn't need to be fixed from my perspective. Hamelman's "Bread" has a suggestion for toasting the wheat germ used in one of his recipes. That sounds like an excellent idea to try in a future loaf.

Out in the garden, everything grew up while we were on the road. The tomato plants are about 4-5' tall and more like bushes than anything else. My snow peas didn't do well in the heat so they're on their way out. The dill and cilantro plants look like someone fed them plant steroids. That's OK for the dill, I guess, but the cilantro is too tall to use for food so after it goes to seed, I'll pull it out. Fortunately, nothing is wrong with the basil, oregano, rosemary, or sage. They all look like they're ready to contribute to some focaccia or ciabatta. The lawn already has cracks in the soil due to the dry conditions. Yes, Kansas could use some rain here but elsewhere in the state, the wheat harvest has begun earlier than usual so not everyone would agree with me on that wish. For some information on the progress of the harvest, sometimes called "The Big Haircut", go to www.kswheat.com.

New page viewers have originated in Hong Kong, New Zealand, Sweden, and Taiwan.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.