10/22/2010 - Pain de Campagne

I took a break from sourdough and made something completely different. This bread is made with standard bread flour with a little bit of whole wheat flour mixed in. Peter Reinhart suggests creatively shaping this dough, and I was excited to try shaping an épi, or sheaf of wheat.

This dough is made using a batch of pâte fermentée ("old dough"), a firm pre-ferment that is made the day before and refrigerated overnight. The pâte fermentée actually makes up just over half the total volume of the dough. I mixed and kneaded mine, and let it rise. Then I turned it out onto the counter and divided it into three equal portions. I shaped these into long, thin baguettes and let them proof on the baking sheet. I did the final shaping while the oven preheated. An épi is shaped using a kitchen scissors, and it was actually very easy to do. Starting at the top, you make deep cuts almost all the way through the baguette at a diagonal to the baking sheet. Then you fan the cut pieces of dough out to either side as you move down the baguette. This bread is baked hearth-style, and mine baked pretty fast because of the shaping.

I loved how these turned out. The épi makes for a very elegant presentation, and it's a neat way to make pull-apart rolls. The flavor and texture were both very good, and I liked the touch of whole-wheat. One thing I didn't like was the dullness of the crust. This is generally how my hearth breads tend to look, and I think it really detracts from their quality. A couple of days after making this bread I made a batch of kaiser rolls. I tried lightly misting them with spray oil immediately after removing them from the oven, and I was very happy with the results. They weren't greasy at all, just a little softer and more pleasant to look at and to eat. Although they are made with steam, kaiser rolls aren't a hearth bread; I think I may give the spray oil a try on the next hearth bread I make and see what happens.

10/18/2010 - Poilâne-Style Miche

The brief introduction to the Parisian baker Lionel Poilâne that prefaces this formula illustrates one of the reasons that I find bread so rewarding, so worth making. Peter Reinhart calls Lionel Poilâne the most famous bread baker in the world, and he elucidates what it is about Poilâne's method that makes this so - his understanding of fermentation, his commitment to using the finest ingredients, the careful training he gives the bakers working under him. After reading this excerpt, it is striking to note the ingredients that make up a Poilâne-style loaf: whole-wheat flour, water, and a little salt. No yeast is even required, as this bread relies on wild yeast for leavening. From these few ingredients, bread can be made in the style of the most famous bread baker in the world. Before I was a mommy, I was a biologist. I was trained in reductionism. I was taught to assume that a complex system was equal to the sum of its parts. If you understand the parts, you understand the whole. Now, this assumption may be a necessary one in the laboratory, but it seems to me that the best and most real parts of life completely contradict a reductionist viewpoint. What I love about making bread is that you get so much more out of it than you put in. Whole wheat flour, water, salt. From the simplest of ingredients is fashioned a living dough that, when handled properly, may yield a world-famous product.

Now that I've waxed poetic, I will tell you that I did not actually make this bread correctly. I think I must have left my sourdough barm on the counter too long after I refreshed it, because when I made the firm starter for this bread, it never really achieved a full rise. It should have doubled within 4-6 hours. After 7 hours mine still hadn't doubled but I went ahead and put it in the refrigerator. The next morning when I made the final dough, I spiked it with a little commercial yeast to make up for my sluggish sourdough barm. I figured it was better to cheat a little than to have a flat loaf of bread. This formula makes a large batch of dough and it was a bit of a challenge to work with, but still doable. I kneaded it and let it rise for several hours. Then I formed one large ball and placed it in my biggest bowl to proof. After an hour and a half of proofing, I turned it out onto a baking sheet, scored it, and baked it hearth style. I've kind of gotten away from using my stone just because it's easier to bake bread on the baking sheet. And this loaf was so heavy I didn't really care to try to transfer it from sheet to stone and back again.

This loaf was very large and impressive (so large it baked for over an hour!). The flavor was good, but it was a little dense for my taste. I think that may just be the nature of 100% whole wheat bread. I also found the crust to be too hard. The hardness of the crust combined with the large size of the loaf made slicing it a little difficult. However, my two-year-old loved it. J4 actually used it to bribe him into eating eggplant. If that endorsement doesn't make it world-famous, I don't know what will.

 

10/14/2010 - Pumpernickel Bread

Yes, I have officially made the bread with the coolest name. This bread is begun the day before baking with a rye starter composed of sourdough barm, pumpernickel-grind rye flour, and water. The barm acidifies the rye flour, activating enzymes for flavor and improving digestibility. My starter fermented at room temperature for almost six hours and then went in the refrigerator overnight. The next day I combined it with the remaining ingredients to form the dough. Pumpernickel bread has a couple of unique ingredients. One is cocoa powder, which is added for color but also affects the flavor. The other is rye bread crumbs. Since we didn't particularly care for the 100% sourdough rye bread, I have a good supply of rye bread crumbs in my freezer that fit the bill. After mixing and briefly kneading my dough (briefly since rye doughs become gummy with too much kneading), I left it to rise for two hours. I then divided it in two and shaped and panned my loaves. I'm not actually sure how long they proofed, although I am sure it was much longer than they were supposed to. I baked them as instructed and didn't notice any ill effects of the extended proofing.

We enjoyed this bread. I think it is my favorite rye, although we did like the New York Deli Rye as well. How much we enjoyed this bread may be due to the way we enjoyed it - if you're going to bake pumpernickel bread, how can you not make Reubens? Yum!

10/11/2010 - Panettone

Although it is not listed with the sourdough breads, panettone is made with a wild-yeast sponge of barm, milk, and flour. The formula calls for a cup each of golden raisins and a candied fruit blend, but PR notes that dried fruit may be substituted as well. I opted to make my own blend of dried apples, cranberries, and cherries to add with the raisins.

The day before baking, I made the wild-yeast sponge mentioned above and let it ferment at room temperature for four hours before refrigerating it overnight. I also combined my dried fruit and soaked it overnight with lemon and vanilla extracts and half a cup of white rum. Then next day, I mixed the dough. This is an enriched dough, with butter, egg, and sugar. It is partially mixed and then allowed to rest for 20 minutes so that the gluten can begin to develop before the butter and fruit mixture are added. During kneading, a cup of almonds are added as well. My dough rose slowly, as is normal for a dough rich in butter, and then I divided it into two balls and placed them in parchment lined cake pans. These proofed for two hours, and then were baked for an hour and a half at 325 - the lowest temperature at which I have ever baked bread.

I was excited to try this bread. I've never been a big fan a fruit bread, but lots of yummy things went into this and I just knew that it HAD to be better than fruit breads I have had before. But it turned out a lot like other fruit breads. I mean, it was good for a fruit bread, but it was definitely still in that category. We ate about half of one loaf and were kind of done. There is a grace note following this formula with instructions for making Holiday Bread Brûlé - basically fancy bread pudding, using panettone. I scooped out the insides of my loaves, mixed up the custard base, poured it over the scooped bread, and baked it at 325 for an hour. I skipped the part about letting it cool and then sprinkling it with sugar and caramelizing it under the broiler, but I'm sure that's lovely too. We ate it just plain, and it was very good. The best bread pudding I've ever had, in fact. J4 doesn't normally like "soggy bread dishes," but he liked this one, and J5 thought it was cake.

10/9/2010 - Potato, Cheddar, and Chive Torpedos

If we didn't find the cheese bread we were looking for in the roasted onion and asiago miche, we found it here. This is another mixed method bread, incorporating sourdough barm and spiked with commercial yeast, and it is a quick and easy one day formula.

I chopped and boiled a couple of potatoes, and set out a cup and a half of barm to warm to room temperature. I reserved the potato water, since it is used for the water in this formula. An hour later, I began mixing the dough. For this formula, half of the flour, the yeast, potatoes, and half of the water are mixed and then left uncovered for 30 minutes. Then the remaining water and salt are added. Chopped fresh chives are added during kneading, and then the dough is left to rise. Once my dough was doubled, I divided it in two and flattened each piece into a rectangle. I laid slices of cheddar cheese on the dough and then rolled it up, jelly-roll style, and laid the loaves on a sheet pan. They proofed for about an hour and then I scored them and baked them hearth style.

This bread was excellent. It gives me a good reason to keep a sourdough barm in my fridge. And I am becoming much more comfortable with the barm, so I find that idea less daunting. I would change two things next time. First, I think I will mash the potatoes rather than leaving them in chunks. Second, I want to try to have the cheese reach further into the ends of the bread.

10/2/2010 - Roasted Onion and Asiago Miche

I'm trying to get smart about this sourdough thing and make two breads back to back when I refresh my barm. There is a three day window in which the barm is good after it is refreshed, and since some formulas take two or three days to make, they are pretty easy to stagger their starting day in that window so that they'll be baked a couple days apart.

This bread is made using a mixed leavening method, which means that it is leavened with wild yeast in the sourdough barm and spiked with commercial yeast as well. On the first day of the three day process, I added flour and water to some of my sourdough barm to make a sponge, which fermented on the counter all day and then sat in the fridge overnight. I also chopped and oven roasted an onion, which made my house smell fabulous. The next day I started by chopping up some fresh chives and scallions. Now, J4 and I both grew up calling scallions "green onions", and I must confess that we inadvertently both did google searches to make sure that they were indeed one and the same. He was at work, I was at home, we had a phone conversation afterwards, it was a little ridiculous. But now that we know they are the same, we are henceforth calling them "scallions," which we believe to be the snobbier of the two terms. Anyway, I mixed my dough with gobs of lovely, fresh, fragrant green in it, and it was so pretty that I took a picture.      

That dough also contains a cup and a half of asiago cheese, but it is far less noticeable. I kneaded the dough, let it rise, shaped two large rounds, and put them on a baking sheet in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning they were pretty huge and touching. I proofed them at room temperature for two hours and they were even more huge and touching. Then came the fun part. Following PR's instructions, I brushed the loaves with olive oil and then pressed my fingertips into the dough, making deep dimples all over its surface. I sprinkled another cup and a half of cheese over the loaves, and then topped them with the roasted onions. These were baked hearth style for 40 minutes, during which time they had sizable oven spring which left them even more huge and touching. About halfway through baking I separated them and they were fine. These came out of the oven with a whopping 11inch diameter. They looked like thick, pillowy pizzas.

This bread was yummy, but it wasn't what we expected. J4's comment? "I thought this would be cheese bread with onions in it, but it's onion bread with cheese in it." And that sums it up. We enjoyed it (and are still enjoying it), and it was fun to make. I'm guessing I probably won't make it again, but if I do, I think I will top the bread with the roasted onions first and then the cheese so that the onions don't get quite so done.

9/30/2010 - 100% Sourdough Rye Bread

Next on my list of sourdoughs: 100% sourdough rye. This is one that I was not excited to make. The description preceding the formula says that rye has so little gluten that it's hard to develop structure and lift for a pleasing crumb without adding wheat flour, and then goes on to say, "However, there are many people who love dense rye bread." I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be one of those people. When I say that a bread is "dense," I don't mean it as a compliment.

This formula can take two or three days; I made it in two. The first day, I mixed the firm rye starter, combining some of my refreshed sourdough barm with rye flour and water. I should note that I used my regular sourdough barm, made using wheat flour, so this technically isn't 100% rye bread. But it's close enough. This starter fermented at room temperature until doubled, which took close to 6 hours, and then was refrigerated overnight. While my starter was rising, I mixed up the soaker from equal parts pumpernickel-grind rye flour (which is a coarser grind than standard rye flour) and water. The soaker sat at room temperature overnight. The following day, I mixed the dough and briefly kneaded it. Apparently if you over-knead rye dough it gets gummy. I have no experience with this, but I'll take PR's word on it. I did not enjoy working with this dough. The lack of gluten gives it a completely different feel that that of normal yeasted bread. I let the dough rise to double, then shaped my two loaves and left them to proof. I baked them hearth style directly on the pan they proofed on.

As expected, I didn't care for this bread. It was dense. Also, I didn't like the flavor. I can't think of any redeeming qualities that can make up for bad flavor and texture. J4 and J5 both liked it, so I guess the flavor and texture weren't necessarily bad, just not to my liking. This is one that I'm checking off the list and never revisiting.