Country Bread with Bran

This is a recipe or formula quite similar to a previous effort. I thought that it might just kind of pancake out when it hit the baking stone but as the pictures show, it held its own. It had a slightly high hydration and some bran but the flavor wasn't bitter and does well for a sandwich.

Starter
140 g at 80% hydration

Soaker
40 g bran
40 g hot water, soaked for two hours

 Main Dough
270 g bread flour
248 g water at 80F
90 g stone ground whole wheat
All of starter
All of soaker
9 g kosher salt

There was a snowfall of 2-3" last night that brought the neighborhood birds back. While some have adopted us for our free lunch at the feeders, the more casual visitors have joined in the noise making. We are now regularly seeing goldfinches try to work their way in to feed. It also appears the red breasted woodpecker and northern flicker woodpecker both have mates or at least informed a friend of the buffet. A large group of starlings, at least 60 to 80 or so, were in the yard yesterday but gone today. They may be back Tuesday along with some blackbirds when more snow is expected.

I've got two loaves working for tomorrow night's Superbowl table over the river in Farley, MO. One is a sourdough light rye with caraway seeds and the other a variation on Rose Beranbaum's Tyrolean Multigrain Torpedo. Either one should go well with some smoked pork shoulder.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Slow Sponge Rye Rolls

 It tool a while but I finally got around to using Rose Beranbaum's sponge directions for a project. I hadn't been inspired by it the first time I read her "Bread Bible" but something sank in this time around.

It's  relatively simple and quite logical once you think about it and apply it. You use all the water, 1/3 of your total flour, and no more than 1/2 the suggested yeast for the loaf size.  Then you mix up the sponge, blanket the sponge with the remaining flour and yeast, cover, and let it do its magic for at least four hours or more. When your ready to mix, add your salt, mix, and start your bulk fermentation.

That's an abbreviated description of the process. As you'll read, I used a small amount of my active dry yeast in the sponge only. I wasn't in hurry and even went so far as to place the bowl downstairs in the 62F basement air and then into the refrigerator after a while. It worked for me. I also added the rye flour and a pinch of caraway seeds to the sponge. It seems like I just can't leave a recipe alone.

Sponge
245 g water at 85F
52 g stone ground rye flour
48 g bread flour
3/8 tsp active dry yeast
pinch of caraway seeds

Flour blanket
250 g bread flour


7 g kosher salt
5 g caraway seeds

The dough was scaled out to 150g pieces, shaped and proofed in my couche. Baking was 30 minutes at 425F on a baking stone. The finished rolls had a light, tender and moist crumb with mild rye and caraway flavors.

I think that I'll repeat this recipe for a larger single loaf for a Superbowl Sunday dinner to go along with smoked and pulled pork. I think its worth doing over.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Country Cracked Wheat with Spelt Loaf

A little bit of spelt in the flour mix does add a measure of anticipation while the loaf in the oven. The aroma that slips into the kitchen environment just makes my nose perk up and my expectations rise. It's a good thing.

I noticed my container of spelt in the fridge while I was rummaging around for the cracked wheat and decided that another free style loaf surely wouldn't hurt. When I hot soaked the cracked wheat, I thought that I might end up with a rather flat loaf due to a climbing hydration level that I hadn't considered before the improvising but it did work out for me. As evidenced in the pictures, the crumb looks fine and the oven spring worked out as well. Yes, the loaf did pass the taste test of Mrs PG.

Starter
140 g at 80% hydration

Soaker
60 g cracked wheat
60 g very hot water
Cover and soak for 4 hours. Most of the water should be absorbed.

Main Dough

260 g bread flour
60 g stone ground whole wheat flour
40 g spelt flour
244 g water at 85F
All of starter
All of soaker
9 g kosher salt
1/2 Tbs organic honey

The weather outside hasn't been very consistent. Yesterday, the temperature hit 57F with high winds and today only 22F with light winds. No signs of any plants or flowers sending up shoots or signs of green yet. Several goldfinches have started feeding in the past couple of days and a rare sighting of a bluebird, supposedly a year round resident, occurred Sunday. A few starlings are outside right now, gobbling up any and all seeds dropped from the feeders by the sparrows.

Recent visitors to my obscure corner of the internet include page views from Croatia, Libya, Lithuania, and South Africa.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Comfort Food Loaves Repeated

My usual entryway into posting isn't working today so rather than letting even more work backup in the camera, I've decided just to post these pictures, yellowish fluorescent cast and all. There are worse things in life to bear.

These two loaves are repeats of earlier projects that I thought would pair well with the kind of cooking I've been doing lately. Dishes like a Yankee pot roast and white chicken chili need breads with flavors that can match up well. The first is the repeat of my Pan Campesino recipe,

http://chaosamongstthefloursandflowers.blogspot.com/2013/10/pan-campesino-prototype.html

My first attempt used a couche during the proofing and this one used an overnight retarded proof in a brotform because I was hoping for something that would stand up better. I may be barking up the wrong tree here and should consider small boules as is typical of the bread.

This second loaf is a lean hearth bread with seeds. The original recipe is here,
http://chaosamongstthefloursandflowers.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-lean-hearth-grains-bread.html

I like this bread. It has a nice chew to it and has flavor spectrum, if that's the proper description, that pleases Mrs PG and is useful for all sorts of purposes.

The notorious "polar vortex" weather has passed and we are now heading into a slight warming, 40s and 50s for high temperatures, for a few days. A massive starling vortex descended on our pear tree and cleaned out the little sterile pods on the branches. They must have been convinced they did a thorough job in less than a day because they haven't been back since.

During the last few days some blackbirds and cedar wax wings made brief visits. I haven't noticed anything truly exotic or out of place, though there are no hawks in the local sky right now. There's a bald eagle viewing event in Lawrence, KS on the 25th of this month. They nest in the trees on the banks of the Kaw River, just downstream from the old Bowersock dam.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

No Knead Pizza Crusts

 Lately, I've been playing around with two formulas for no knead pizza crusts as opposed to the "sponge crust" that I worked with in one form or another for the six months or so. The first one that I tried was an adapted for yield size from a recipe I found in the March 2013 King Arthur catalog. The second formula is an adaptation of a recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's "The Bread Bible". Most of what I did was to merely double the quantity of ingredients since her desired crust size was about ten inches. By doubling the ingredients. I can cover a 10x13 jelly roll pan. I'm sure Ms Berenbaum would recognize her recipe in a heartbeat if she were to stumble across my obscure corner of the internet.

"The Bread Bible" is turning out to be an interesting book. My first time around, I had to read it within the time constraints of a library loan. Now that I've actually bought a copy, I've had time to read and digest concepts more thoroughly. The book appears to be written as something approachable for raggedy home bakers such as myself as opposed to "Bread" by Jeff Hamelman which is aimed as either a textbook or more towards professional bakers. I haven't lost out on a thing by having bought and read both books.

The King Arthur formula is written as a much faster process to dough time. It can also be used a focaccia style flat bread without losing anything in the translation, just dress it in the appropriate toppings and go to town.

293 g KAF All Purpose Flour
187 g lukewarm water
4 tsp olive oil (about 20 ml)
5 g non iodized salt
3 g instant yeast

Optional
1/2 TBS grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp Italian seasoning

1. Mix ingredients together to make a slightly sticky soft dough. Cover and let rise 30-45 minutes depending on room temperature.
2. Place dough in a well oiled half sheet pan and let rest 10-15 minutes.
3. Pat and stretch the dough to cover the bottom of the pan. Cover and let rest for 30-40 minutes.
4. Preheat your oven to 425F.
5.Dressing for focaccia. The dough will already be oily so top the dough with coarse sea salt and if desired, grated parmesan or romano cheese. If you want to use herbs, wait for about 12-14 minutes into the bake before adding to avoid burning the herbs. You can dimple the dough if you wish before dressing the dough.
6.Bake at 425F, adding herbs if you choose at the prescribed time, for at least 22 minutes and a golden brown  crust. Remove from pan with a sturdy, wide spatula to cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes
7. Dressing for pizza. Sprinkle a thin coat of grated cheese over the top of the raw dough. Par bake for 5-8 minutes. Proceed to dress with a thin coat of sauce, a thin sprinkling of either grated cheese, some pepperoni, and a sprinkling of mozzarella cheese.
8. Bake for 15 minutes and turn the pan around to bake for another 15 minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden brown. Cool on a wire rack for 10-15 minutes before slicing.

Ms Berenbaum's crust is the formula for the Hawaiian style pizza pictured at the top of the post. Her procedures are different but also produce a pretty good crust. I've substituted either rye or whole wheat flour for up 15% of the total flour in my crusts. She recommends as long a fermenting period as possible, up to eight hours, but it can be used after only one hour. The olive oil isn't added directly into the mixing bowl in this recipe. Instead, it 's placed in the fermentation container to oil the container and dough.Leftover oil is to be poured onto the sheet pan or pizza pan to coat the surface. I used my jelly roll pan when making a pie with this formula.

226 g KAF AP flour
158 g lukewarm water
7 g non iodized salt
4 g active dry yeast or 3 g instant dry yeast
4 g sugar (I used some brown sugar because it's on hand)
20-30 g olive oil for fermenting container

1. Hydrate active dry yeast if using. Mix ingredients in a bowl into a shaggy mass.
2. Pour the oil into the fermenting container and spread around. Oil a spatula to help lift the dough into the fermenting container, coat the dough and cover the container.
3. Leave your container at room temperature for 30-60 minutes, depending on your room temperature, until the dough looks puffy. Refrigerate for 6-24 hours and then take out of refrigerator at least one hour before shaping.
4.Gently place the dough on your pizza pan or jelly roll pan and use any leftover olive oil to grease the pan. Wait ten minutes with dough covered.
5. Stretch the dough out to cover the bottom of the pan, waiting five minutes or so if the dough resists, then stretching again.
6 Cover your pan and let the dough rise for 45-60 minutes. After thirty minutes, preheat your oven to 450F.
7. Sprinkle the top of the dough with grated parmesan or romano and par bake for five minutes. Dress the dough with your sauce, scatter some mozzarella over the top, thinly add some of your favorite toppings. Too much isn't a good thing here.
8. Bake for 10 minutes and turn pan around. Pizza is done when the cheese is melted and golden brown, about ten to twelve minutes more. Cool on rack for AT LEAST 5 minutes, 10 is better, before slicing.

If you try these formulas, I hope you'll leave a comment or your suggestions for a better pizza.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

A Sourdough Multigrain Loaf

While this particular loaf didn't break any new ground, I did find that I'm getting better at utilizing King Arthur Flour AP. There's a reasonable shape  and good oven spring to go along with a moist, tender crumb. The multi grain cereal flakes don't show up well in the pictures or even upon personal inspection. I have no explanation for that other than I need to add more cereal.

Soaker
60 g Montana Milling 9 grain cereal
45 g water at room temperature

Starter
150 g at 82% hydration, 75% KAF AP/ 25% white whole wheat   

Main Dough
240 g KAF AP
120 g Dakota Maid Prairie Gold white whole wheat flour
244 g water at 85F
All of starter
All of soaker
10 g kosher salt

While the number of birds feeding doesn't quite rate as as an irruption, the finches and cardinals showed up for some serious dining before the storm. The forecast calls for freezing drizzle, sleet, and anywhere between 3-8" of snow. If there really is that much snowfall, I'll finally get to use my snow blower to clear our driveway. We have a short driveway so it only warranted an electric snow blower but that's better than putting my back into clearing the surfaces in temperatures under 20F. I've already done the rain, sleet, and snow thing for the USPS for 27 years and tomorrow looks like a good day to be retired.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Cracked Wheat Country Loaf Prototype

After finding some cracked wheat in an organic bulk food bin, it was only a matter of time before I started to experiment with it. Some searching through the Fresh Loaf website and Hamelman's book "Bread" led me to believe that a hot soak would be a good choice for getting the cracked wheat in shape for inclusion in a loaf. I didn't find any great difference in the flavor and can't tell whether I need to simply use a higher percentage in comparison to the flour or if I should use all dry yeast rather than including a sourdough starter.

Overall, the loaf still tasted pretty good. On the "Yeast Spotting" blog site, another home baker submitted a recipe for a cracked wheat bread to be baked in a pan rather than free form on a stone. A comparison of ingredients and procedures may help the development of this particular recipe which is essentially a pan de campagne with cracked wheat added.


Starter

140 g at 82% hydration, fed with 80% KAF AP, 20% organic whole rye flour    

Soaker
40 g cracked wheat
40 g very hot water
Covered with plastic wrap and cooled to room temperature

Main Dough
260 g KAF AP
80 g white whole wheat flour
20 g organic whole rye flour
240 g water at 85F
9 g kosher salt
1 Tbs organic honey
1/4 tsp active dry yeast
All of starter
All of soaker

The cold weather has very much diminished any interest in working outside in the yard. The forecast calls for a few days this week where the afternoon temperatures may be in the 50s, giving me some time to do some minor clean up work of branches and leaves. There are quite a few geese flying over head lately but they may not be migratory flocks. Geese have adapted quite well to the misplaced generosity of people who feed them. I say misplaced because the geese leave quite a mess wherever they land. There have been some hawks perching on lamp posts on the nearby hill south of our property. I haven't seen very many goldfinches in the yard lately but the surplus of sparrows more than makes up in distraction and noise for any absent variety of bird.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Practice Loaves

The onset of cold weather is a convenient subject for blame for my less than enthusiastic baking these past couple of weeks. Its more realistic to say that I need to get more practice and perhaps a few new recipes to spark up some more curiosity. I borrowed C Field's "Italian Baker" from the local library which has been the source of a couple new future projects and I'm just about to delve into my new copy of RL Beranbaum's "Bread Bible". I've found a range of organic bulk food selections at a nearby Hy-Vee Supermarket at reasonable prices which means I can now add cracked wheat, pepita, and roasted sunflower seeds to my baker's toolbox of ingredients. Those breads should be developing after the new year.


The set of four soup bowl breads started out as a sourdough loaf and then became an experiment for making a break apart loaf. I had seen something in C Hitz's "Baking Artisan Breads" where he took pizza dough portions, proofed them, and then used a bench scraper to make some indentations in the top of the dough just before baking. The goal was to have a bread that could tear apart easily into four or six parts. I did the bench scraper thing but must have missed an instruction or two because the indents didn't stay. Instead, I got some very nice mini bowl sized loaves, I wouldn't call them Pugliese, that have been just fine for eating with pasta. The leftover loaves froze very well.


Starter
130 g at 75% hydration

Main Dough
360 g KAF AP
244 g water at 85F
8 g kosher salt
All of starter

Yield: 3 200 g and 1 140 g small boules.

The next two loaves were baked for a Christmas party on Saturday night for the local Democratic Party organization. The first is a pane cassericio, a homemade bread, or pagnotta. The name gives a lot of latitude to bakers and I stretched that latitude into a loaf with a recipe that kind of developed in the back of my head. If I chanced upon something that looks similar to a recognized style of bread, it was strictly accidental but do leave a comment at the end of the post to let me know.

Biga
100 g bread flour
70 g water at 85F
1/4 tsp active dry yeast

Main Dough
300 g bread flour
210 g water at 85F
20 g Non-fat dry milk powder
8 g kosher salt
1/2 Tbs olive oil
All of biga

The last loaf was another "Singing Rye" loaf that I've described in an earlier post (26 NOV 2013). It was gone long before the last crumbs of the Pane Cassericio bounced off the plate. I was the well pleased recipient of several compliments for the rye loaf so I think I can say that recipe is good to go now. I even bought four ounces of caraway seeds this morning to make sure that I'm ready for any future requests.

Recent drop ins to visit my obscure corner of the internet include page views from Finland and Oman.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

       

A Singing Rye for the Bake Sale

Thursday was the first day of the Bake Sale for the Cushing Hospital Volunteers and as in the past, I donated a couple of loaves. That meant I got to go further along in my experiment with KAF AP flour. Just for fun, I also aerated the poolish I used in both breads. It looks like I got good oven spring but I couldn't inspect the crumb. The light rye with caraway loaf, the obviously under proofed loaf, sang out loud after I took it out of the oven. I think I'll repeat that loaf after Thanksgiving to see if I've got something going on with that recipe.

Pain Italien

Poolish
90 g KAF AP
90 g water at 85F
1/8 tsp active dry yeast

Main Dough
310 g KAF AP
122 g 1% milk at 85F
60 g water at 85F
1/2 Tbs (7.5 ml) olive oil          
8 g kosher salt
1/2 tsp active dry yeast

Light Rye with Caraway

Poolish
72 g whole rye flour
18 g KAF AP
90 g water at 85F
pinch caraway seeds

Main Dough
310 KAF AP
182 g water at 85F
8 g kosher salt
7 g caraway seeds
1/2 tsp active dry yeast

The third loaf is one that I baked for home consumption. Its a 33% whole wheat sourdough that I aimed at a 70% or so hydration to see how the KAF AP based dough would handle. I found that the dough was a little bit sticky but not impossible. The crumb has been consistently open throughout the loaf after it was baked. Shaping wasn't my strong point on this particular day but that comes with the territory. I may have to try a smaller loaf or two and then work up in size after more practice with the KAF AP.

Starter
145 g at 80% hydration

Main Dough
240 g KAF AP
120 g stone ground whole wheat
232 g water at 85F
7.5 ml (1/2 tsp) organic honey
9 g kosher salt
All of starter

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.

Mona's Memorial Breads

These three pictures are loaves that I baked for a post memorial service cocktail party. Mona-AKA Polly and sometimes Penny- Long was my friend Rob's mother. Mona was one of the last of the traveling vaudeville performers before WW2. She played trumpet, always enjoyed a glass of good wine and the occasional taste of Canadian whisky, was a raconteur and a memorable woman.

Rob predicted that there might be as many as fifty people attending the party so I baked three loaves. The first was a 70% hydration Pain Italien with wheat germ. The second was supposed to be a large multigrain wheat baked in a pan but since I already had the couche out, I split the dough into two smaller loaves for proofing in the couche. The third loaf  was a sourdough pain de campagne or French country loaf. No crumb shots were taken.


Now, I've also been playing with KAF AP rather than my usual Dakota Maid bread flour. The results show that I'm still adjusting to the difference in the flours. Shaping is more critical with the AP so I've been using the bandwidth to get tutorials from Youtube on shaping. KAF AP is now available in ten pound bags locally at Walmart so it behooves me to learn quickly. The DM is bought up in Omaha, three hours drive away, when we visit Mrs PGs family there. There is a difference in the taste between the two but not a difference in quality. I may be splitting hairs here but for me, the two companies are marketing their products to different niches. There's plenty of room for both of them.

Some more of our feathered friends are starting to return to the bird seed buffets that we offer in our yard. The first that I noticed were goldfinches, then came the titmice, and as of yesterday morning, a northern flicker. They're all fun to watch.

This little obscure corner of the internet has had a guest page view from Austria.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome