Tartine Bread Experiment

yes. i have been baking...

2015-05-27T11:55:00.001-07:00

a few people have written and asked where i went. i'm still here, still baking. but no new post-worthy developments. i hope you are all happily baking too!

DECEMBER 2017 UPDATE: I have begun posting again on Girl Meets Rye! xo

New Post On Girl Meets Rye: David Lebovitz's Olive Crisps

2014-10-10T10:45:00.001-07:00

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking here or the post title below.

To the staff of life!

xo David Lebovitz

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: Bird Seed Bread

2014-09-10T14:09:00.001-07:00

To the staff of life!

BIRD SEED BREAD

New Post On Girl Meets Rye! Focaccia: A Continuation

2014-09-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

To the staff of life!

Focaccia: A Continuation

New Post On Girl Meets Rye: Focaccia Pericoloso

2014-08-18T19:18:00.005-07:00

To the staff of life!

Focaccia Pericoloso

New Post On Girl Meets Rye: Wild Rice & Bay Fendu

2014-08-03T13:50:00.004-07:00

Indeed, you have arrived at the Tartine Bread Experiment, but I am no longer posting on this site. The good news is that I am keeping all posts in tact here for my readers, and I am still baking and experimenting loads! Most of my experiments are my own breads, so I didn't think it was fair to keep calling this blog the 'Tartine' bread experiment for those of you who are looking to solely master Chad's lovely breads.

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking the post title below.

To the staff of life!

Wild Rice & Bay Fendu

New Post On Girl Meets Rye: Pane Siciliano (and A New Michette)

2014-07-20T22:32:00.003-07:00

To the staff of life!

Pane Siciliano (and A New Michette)

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: A Cake For Molly

2014-07-14T00:54:00.001-07:00

To the staff of life!

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: 100% Red Fife Walnut : Hand-Milled, Hand-Bolted

2014-06-24T16:08:00.002-07:00

Indeed, you have arrived at the Tartine Bread Experiment, but I am no longer posting on this site. The good news is that I am keeping all posts in tact here for my readers, and I am still baking and experimenting loads! Most of my experiments are my own breads, so I didn't think it was fair to keep calling this blog the 'Tartine' bread experiment for those of you who are looking to solely master Chad's lovely breads.

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking the picture or title of the current post below.

To the staff of life!

100% Red Fife Walnut : Hand-Milled, Hand-Bolted

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: Farro & Garlic Scapes

2014-06-21T18:30:00.003-07:00

Indeed, you have arrived at the Tartine Bread Experiment, but I am no longer posting on this site. The good news is that I am keeping all posts in tact here for my readers, and I am still baking and experimenting loads! Most of my experiments are my own breads, so I didn't think it was fair to keep calling this blog the 'Tartine' bread experiment for those of you who are looking to solely master Chad's lovely breads.

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking the picture or title of the current post below.

To the staff of life!

FARRO & GARLIC SCAPES

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: Red Fife Scones

2014-06-08T19:32:00.000-07:00

Indeed, you have arrived at the Tartine Bread Experiment, but I am no longer posting on this site. The good news is that I am keeping all posts in tact here for my readers, and I am still baking and experimenting loads! Most of my experiments are my own breads, so I didn't think it was fair to keep calling this blog the 'Tartine' bread experiment for those of you who are looking to solely master Chad's lovely breads.

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking the picture or title of the current post below.

To the staff of life!

Red Fife Cream Scones with Turkish Apricots & Thyme

New Post on Girl Meets Rye: PIE

2014-05-31T17:44:00.001-07:00

Indeed, you have arrived at the Tartine Bread Experiment, but I am no longer posting on this site. The good news is that I am keeping all posts in tact here for my readers, and I am still baking and experimenting loads! Most of my experiments are my own breads, so I didn't think it was fair to keep calling this blog the 'Tartine' bread experiment for those of you who are looking to solely master Chad's lovely breads.

All new experiments will be posted at 'Girl Meets Rye', and I will continue to make announcements on this page so you know when a new formula has arrived. You can get there by clicking the picture or title of the current post below.

To the staff of life!

PIE

Girl Meets Rye Signature Pie: Allium & Comte Cheese

On y va!

2014-03-18T10:32:00.001-07:00

Girl Meets Rye!

Hello everyone! Just a heads up that I will no longer be posting at this address. I love Chad and the book, but I have decided to take up a name all my own. I am keeping the content alive at this address because we covered a lot of ground with our personal experiments and formulae as well as those using the Tartine book. I have moved the last three of my experiments to the new blog for a fresh start, since they best represent all of our hard work and discoveries and the direction of our new bread path.

Meet me at our new home by clicking Girl Meets Rye or the photo below.

To the staff of life!

Girl Meets Rye

The Lazy Loaf, in BoorenKaas & Scallion

Bolted vs. High-Extraction Flour and a New Michette

2014-03-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

In Today's Post:

New Blog Name
High Extraction vs. Bolted Flour
Michette in Einkorn
Jovial Einkorn

This is a big and important post for a couple of reasons. The main reason is because I really want to talk about the difference between bolted and commercially milled high extraction flour, and to that end, I have a really fabulous and important experiment for you.

100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette

But first, let's get today's business out on the table. As you can see, I have changed the name of my blog. This is not a new idea for me. It's a long time coming, and I wanted to do it during the last leg of the blog but never did. And yes, it has a story. Everything does, right?

It's not just a name change, mind. If you will recall with the last leg of the blog, I was compelled to do my own thing. More of my own thing than Tartine's thing really. Oh, I am going to keep doing Tartine Book 3 breads, but I want to do dive into other people's stuff too. Hamelman, Forkish, Peterson, my good friend Joe. You know. The lot. And so, it is not 'goodbye' to Tartine by any means. I want to be clear about that. We have only just begun, after all (and baguettes are next, grrrr.). No, this is rather a grander encompassment of the bread community. So many people have really fantastic breads to share. But more importantly, so many of my very own loaves are being built over here, as they were with the last leg of the blog. I put a lot of work and time into my experiments. The breads that you see are what I arrive at sometimes many bread trials later, and given the work that my own bread takes, I think they deserve their own platform, so the name change is really a validation of those efforts. Tartine has been a huge inspiration for me, but I feel like I want to fly (again). My dad used to say that I'm like a wild horse. I heed to no one else's call. I do my own thing. I live my life on my own terms. For better or worse: I. am. wild.

100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette

And so, on y va! As the French say, or 'here we go'. You and I and the task at hand. I have lots of ideas swirling round my head, yeah, some of which you have already seen, and we are going to systematically see what comes of all of the 'what ifs' that are bouncing round. Of course we will continue working with our KoMo mills, but we are also going to work with store-bought flour, as I know that not everyone is going to want or be able to get a mill. It's a lofty investment that set me back quite a bit too, but I felt that it was worth it to elevate the challenge of the blog and my bread path. You should know that just because you do not have a mill, you will not be left out of the loop. I want to keep working stuff out with store bought flour because sometimes I'm too lazy to mill my own. And frankly, it's a really loud machine, so sometimes I simply cannot, unless I want to be evicted from my apartment for milling spelt at 5 a.m. After all, we learned in the last post to either mill and use our flour straight away, or let it age for at least three weeks. So, we don't want to mill the flour the day before or we end up with flattish loaves. So, on occasions of laziness, respect of neighbors, and our newfound erudition about freshly milled flour, store-bought is the train upon which we will forge on. It is also important to use store bought flour because it behaves so differently than freshly milled, and we are discovering so many fantastic millers who are making gorgeous flours for us, so with all of this in mind, we get to keep our bread kitchens diverse. The world is our floury oyster.

So, I'm glad you're here with me, back at the page. Embracing not the flight from Tartine, but the embrace of our very own experiments and the ownership of the work that goes into them. It's your energy that keeps me going. All of the comments and emails and hoorahs. I need them. You are what make me want to do this, right. You are my bread friends, Josh and Joe, Alicia, Yuvall, Stephanie, Jorg, Elie, Christian, Michalis and Judy, Marie and Katie Chang. All of you. Friends.

Now with all that out of the way, lets talk about the difference between bolted and high-extraction flours.

100% Bolted Einkorn Michette

So, here's the thing. I have been experimenting with 'high-extraction' flour both commercial and that which I have bolted myself using a series of sifting screens. And like everything made by hand, the bolted flour is a wholly different creature than what you can purchase, thus, will behave differently in your breads. In short (which will be elucidated further in a moment), commercially-milled high-extraction flour behaves halfway between a white flour and a whole grain, but bolted flour behaves like a whole grain flour with wings.

100% Bolted Einkorn Michette

That is to say that we get the health benefits of whole grain baking by using bolted flour, but we also get a little more loft than a loaf of 100% whole, unbolted flour. Thinking about it this way, a whole white flour loaf will be lofty with an open crumb, a bread using high-extraction flour will give you a light crumb, but a tad less irregular, and a bit less open than a white flour loaf, while our bolted flour gives us a more tightly knit crumb than that but one that is tender and fantastic and far more open than a 100% unbolted whole grain bread. Finally, a whole grain, unbolted loaf (when done correctly) will give us a really serious but lovely, hearty bread with a tight crumb.

I have been over here milling and bolting away (with this experiment alone, I went through a case of Jovial whole einkorn berries), and in my many bolting experiments, I arrive at anywhere from 36% to 47% extracted flour (on average it weighs in at 42%-47%). That means for every 1,000g of milled grain, I get anywhere from 360g - 470g of flour. So far I have bolted hard red spring wheat, hard white spring wheat, rye, spelt and now with today's post, einkorn.

'Chaff' & Bolted Einkorn Flour

Bolted flour comes out so finely textured that one would think it would behave much like the commercially made high-extraction flour, but it does not. It actually contains more bran than a commercially made high-extraction flour, and I have come to think of it as a whole grain flour when used in my breads, albeit a lighter one. You can really feel this when you mix up your dough. It's also darker in hue. With red wheat, the bolted flour is a lovely russet color, einkorn and spelt make a gorgeous creamy flour, and bolted rye is the loveliest silver, and these colors only become more prominent when you mix up your dough, which means that we have some pretty high percentages of bran in our bolted flour.

Bolted Einkorn & Whole Grain Einkorn Flour

When you mix up a dough using commercial high-extraction flour, the dough looks like a white flour dough (though more golden), and the texture is more on the white flour side of things too, right, so the gluten structure is much less hampered by the sharp grain edges that we see in loaves of whole grain. Just a note, Jovial einkorn high-extraction flour, which is what I used for this experiment, is labeled 'all-purpose flour' on the bag, which hints at its capabilities.

In regard to high-extraction flour, the thing we have to know is that a milling house is going to have sophisticated technology to precisely sift out just the bran (generally 80% - 90%), leaving behind a flour of purely endosperm and germ with a precisely quantified percentage of bran (yes, they have the ability to pull out all of the germ in this process).

100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette

When we use our screens to bolt flour, we are sifting out the larger particles indiscriminately, and that could be endosperm, bran and germ, so it's hard to quantify what our extraction rate really is. And there is simply no way that we can pull out the germ first. Indeed, when you inspect the 'chaff' that is left behind, you can certainly see tiny particles of endosperm along with the more fibrous bran. But this sort of rudimentary technique works to our favor in my opinion, because the flour that it produces is extraordinary.

As you can see in the photos above, the finished loaf using commercial high-extraction flour has a decidedly open crumb, though as you can also see, you will not be making 'white bread' even using it at 100%. The one that employs bolted flour is much tighter, much more uniform, but the texture is still unbelievably light and tender. No density at all. I am really enjoying the breads made using bolted flour, and the process is really rewarding. It makes one feel like absolutely involved in and in total control of their bread making. They have added a whole new and exciting vein to my bread repertoire that I would otherwise not be able to get with store-bought flour, or stoneground flour that I have milled myself, but otherwise not bolted. The breads that it makes are true whole grain breads, and out of all the loaves I have baked up in the past few weeks, these are my favorites, truly exhibiting the sweetness and the nuances of the grain.

50% Bolted Einkorn & 50% Whole Stone-Milled Einkorn

Now that I am confident of my findings, in ensuing posts, I will distinguish between the two types of 'high-extraction' flours by using specific terminology: if I am using that which I have handmade, I will call it 'bolted' flour, and if I am using commercially milled high-extraction flour, I will call it 'high-extraction' flour.

We cannot forget that there is also the 50/50 white/whole grain mix that Chad describes at the start of the book which he says can simulate high-extraction flour. With this mix, I have found that it definitely lightens the crumb because of the white flour, but the crumb is more uniform and tighter than if we were using all white flour, because of the quantity of whole grain. Lightening our loaves is the job of high-extraction flour, and to this end, it works, but I personally don't think that it's a stand-in for commercial high-extraction flour, given the research that I did to find out exactly what high-extraction is, and given my experiments with both (I have also experimented with another brand of high-extraction flour aside from Jovial). And it doesn't compare to bolted flour in terms of flavor or texture. This week alone I made 8 loaves with a focus on nothing but high-extraction, bolted flour, and 50/50 mix, and the results are always in favor of the bolted flour, with the high-extraction coming in second. Both make for a unique crumb that you cannot simulate with the 50/50, and without question, produce far more flavorful breads.

100% Bolted Einkorn Michette

I also like the fact that our bolted flour is still a whole grain flour. With the 50/50 flour, even as it is supplemented with 50% whole grain flour, it doesn't cancel out the fact that you are still using white flour in your baking, so if you are looking to avoid using white flour in your breads, the 50/50 flour mix is not an attractive option. I have no objection to white flour. I luckily do not have health or weight issues or food issues like carb phobia, and I am no purist, even if I was raised by hippies and continue to eat like one. Bread is an asset in my life, and sourdough bread, in my opinion, removes all of the negative aspects of white flour breads because it is a fermented food. It is like raising eyebrows to the fact that Kombucha is made with sugar. All that aside, I have an increasing interest in making true whole grain breads, what's more, whole grain breads that aren't leaden loaves like so many can be if one does not know how to handle them skillfully.

In my humble opinion, I would suggest first trying your hand at bolting your own freshly-milled flour, or perhaps even your store-bought flour (I have not tried bolting store-bought whole grain flour yet, but I will do, and share the results). Next I would use commercial high-extraction because in this flour, none of the germ is removed in the process, and the texture of all of my breads using it thus far have been really gorgeous. Jovial is a good place to start.

If you do use bolted flour to make your breads, just be aware that you are going to have to treat it like a whole grain dough in terms of hydration percentage and handling, and expectations of the final loaf, which is to say that the crumb will be tighter/more even and certainly darker than white flour bread (it all comes out looking like a 100% whole grain bread, because, well, it is), but will successfully lighten your loaves without sacrificing nutrition or flavor.

Speaking of, the flavor of my bolted flour breads vs. those that use commercial high-extraction is incredibly different. For instance, in these loaves, the earthy flavors of the grain were definitively more 'present', the minerality and nuttiness profound. The Jovial high-extraction loaves, while delicious, had more herbaceous and even floral flavors. I think I mentioned that Jovial high-extraction flour is really intriguing. It arrives compacted, almost crumbly, clay-like and dense. It has a remarkable, resinous aroma, and I will keep my larder stocked with it because it has such a unique character. But it does make a powerfully flavored loaf, so take that into consideration when pairing it with other grains. You don't want to add it to a loaf where it will compete with the dominant grain, like, say, rye. Two strongly-flavored flours in one loaf might not be a great idea.

So the bottom line is that there is a difference between bolted and high-extraction flour, one that cannot be ignored, and the two, in my opinion, should not be confused nor used to supplant one another. Further, the 50/50 is not a viable stand-in for either. I think it's too dangerously close to simply lightening a whole grain loaf with the addition of white flour. Not a bad thing, but definitely not what we are trying to accomplish here in our pursuit of other worldly (commercial high-extraction flour indeed makes an 'other worldly' loaf) or whole grain breads. In the move to higher percentages of whole grains in our breads, white flour sort of hampers us from becoming masters of skillful fermentation and the knowledge of a given grain. I think that we should trust our experiments rather than automatically build white flour into our formulae when we have at least two other options available to us. But I think that that is the issue here. Experimentation. If you don't experiment it's very easy to fall back on white flour, which is not a terrible thing. White flour makes lovely breads. But whole grains throw a whole new learning curve into your bread baking, and you have to be up to the task, because even though it is simply flour, water, salt and yeast, it is also technique, and time, and ingenuity that create a fine loaf of bread, and further, the delicate balance of these components.

I will confess, you must educate yourself before endeavoring to increase the percentages of whole grains in your breads. My suggestion is to approach this one grain at a time. Each grain behaves differently than the next, so take your time and get to know their characteristics, first by reading as much as you can, then empirically. I would never have known about the nature of einkorn had I not first read about it and then worked with it right after that. And I could never have known about the temperamental nature of it in terms of hydration unless I actually made up a dough, preferably one that used a higher percentage of it so that the true nature of the flour was exhibited. Using white flour in your baking keeps you shielded from the true nature of the grain because of its power. It becomes a crutch (a delicious crutch, but a crutch nonetheless). A loaf of bread that takes 100g rye to 400g of white flour is not a rye bread. A loaf of bread with 70% rye flour is a rye bread. A loaf of 100% rye bread is a work of art.

Let me stress the importance of also building upon knowledge that you have already acquired. We are not reinventing the wheel here, but we are capable of making it stronger, better, faster, more attractive. Hopefully when you read any bread book you will not see the formulae as 'recipes' but elevated starting points so that you may produce your own bread within a given 'theme'. It is several years of working with different flours, hydrations, and my specific environment that I continue to build upon. And, as I have mentioned, I test breads however much is necessary to arrive at a formula that you all can reproduce at home without error. One advantage to baking my breads is that I am a home baker so it's likely that my environment is fairly close to yours. I am not really interested in owning a bakery. I am interested in making bakery-quality breads in my own home. I push the boundaries of my limits and make the most of what I have - some old pans, stained pizza stones, and a really, really crappy oven. What I produce is my bread, my way, and I believe that this is why you meet me here every week (or thereabouts), well, that and because we are learning all of this together. I trust that most of you all probably don't want to own your own bakery either. So then, this blog is for you. When the time comes that I can install a wood oven in my yard (or even have a yard to begin with!), then I will take my bread in another direction. But for now, this is it, and it's just want I need.

100% Einkorn High-Extraction Michette

Onward.

When working with any bread that calls for high-extraction, whether in the Tartine book or any other, take a step back and look at the formula, try to get a sense of what the finished loaf is intended to be, and then decide which route to take. You have some options. One will work.

About bolting flour. So, with bolting, you want to mill a flour to only a slightly coarser grind than your milled flour. If you have proper screens, you will let the screens do the work for you. You want to mill as much of that endosperm as possible since this is the gluten powerhouse of our flour (even those with limited gluten), and so you want to have as much access as possible to it, and that means milling as finely as you can. If you mill too coarsely, your endosperm will end up in tiny beads and get trapped behind the screen along with the bran and be subsequently discarded. Wasteful. I have been bolting mine first with a #30 then a #50 screen with excellent results. You will still have a fair amount of bran and germ left in the flour, though the flour is exquisitely fine. Once you mix up your dough, you will see what I mean.

With these loaves, I used all Jovial Einkorn. This interesting little grain is small, teardrop shaped, and flat. It is one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat along with emmer wheat, and Jovial's einkorn is not hybridized. Einkorn is actually the German name (literally 'single grain') for this ancient wheat, in Italian it is called farro piccolo. Einkorn wheat is recommended for people with celiac's disease and gluten intolerance, as its form of gliadin is not as aggravating as the gliadin in other wheat varietals.

The bolted flour yield for this einkorn was on the low end of the scale that I mentioned above, probably due to its small size and bran to endosperm ratio. I sifted it through first a #30 screen then a #50. I also used their high-extraction flour. Each yielded excellent results. Their whole einkorn produces a nutty, earthy loaf of bread with a gorgeous ochre crumb and shattery crust.

Be prepared to get your hands dirty with all of this because einkorn is a very difficult grain to work with if, especially if it is overhydrated, and it does not take much to go too far. If you think that rye doughs are sticky, just wait until you work with einkorn. Because of the stickiness factor, I was overzealous in my flouring of le banneton, thus the snowy loaves. Alas, an easy fix.

Einkorn does develop gluten, unlike rye, however, so turns are necessary and do add to the strength of the dough. Just beware with hydration. It sneaks up on you. Start with a conservative hand, say, hold some of the water back at autolyse, because you can always add more later at salt, right. Einkorn takes a while to absorb all of the water, and by the time it has finished autolysing, if you have added too much, you are basically going to be fighting with a very sticky dough. This is not the flour to be pulling your high-hydration rock star moves on. My first high-extraction hydration percentage was a mere 77.5%, and working with it, it felt like a 100% hydration dough. Very hard to fold, handle and shape, a beast if ever there was. I must admit, I cursed it and had little faith that it would amount to anything at all. Alas, I was happily proven wrong.

77.5% Hydration, 100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette

When I took it down to 68%, which is low even by my conservative standards, the dough was much more pleasant to work with. Gluten development was much more evident, and the dough showed promise (no cursing) as it grew during the folds in bulk.

68% Hydration, 100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette

I hope this clarifies some things for everyone. There is not a lot out there about einkorn. The breads that I found all employed commercial yeast or healthy amounts of white flour to temper the intractability of this little grain.

We have found, and empirically so, that there is an undeniable difference in the employment of these three 'high-extraction' flours in our loaves and that we really cannot just exchange one for the other so simply. For me, the clarification in differences between bolted and high-extraction flour has opened up a whole new and exciting avenue on this path to making extraordinary bread, so I am glad that I took on this experiment. It is my goal to keep you completely informed about the breads I am baking through rigorous and dedicated testing so that you all continue to turn out incredible loaves with as little error as possible.

Finally, to those of you who have reached out to me in the past couple of weeks, please forgive my late response. I have about a dozen emails to catch up on, and I will get back to you this week, I promise. It is on my list of things to do. I would rather send you a response with undivided attention than a quick reply that will not help you along your bread path. You emailers know who you are ;)

Here are the findings for our three new breads. A 100% hand-bolted Jovial einkorn flour bread, a 100% Jovial einkorn high-extraction flour bread, and a bread that employes half hand-bolted Jovial einkorn flour and half whole, freshly stone-milled Jovial einkorn flour.

Have a look:

100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette, 77.5% hydration

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

For the levain, you will need

75g Jovial high-extraction flour

75g h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine fermented for 8 hours 25 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

370g h2o

500g Jovial einkorn high-extraction flour

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

When your levain is properly fermented, dissolve it in the water and mix it together with the flours and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this:

Autolyse for 30 minutes. After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough until it's fully incorporated work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation. Here you will perform a series of turns every half-hour throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk. If the dough puffs up and you find it too difficult to perform the turns without deflating the dough, then you can let it finish its fermentation untouched. It will be fine. Einkorn produces such a slack dough though, there will be paltry inflation of the dough, so you may be able to do turns throughout or a least the better part of the 4-hour bulk. Use your judgement.

Just a note, the dough will be very sticky/glue. It will appear to have very little gluten structure, even with your folds. For the first three series of folds, I extended my number of folds until the dough felt like it was gaining strength. The dough smells cherry-almond like and will be golden in hue.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, it will still be very slack and almost formless. It will be very shiny, and even look gluey. It's ok. Forge on.

Turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour, or some brown rice flour.

Shape into a loose round. Let it rest for 10 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 10 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Unearth the dough by placing a sheet of parchment over the mouth of the dough bowl, then place a peel over this and quickly invert the bowl so that the dough ends up sitting on the paper and the peel, seam side down.

Snip the thing in some divine manner. A note, with very highly hydrated loaves or slack dough loaves, I find it best to snip vs. slashing the dough to prevent bleeding. Slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I baked mine to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

100% High-Extraction Einkorn Michette, 68% hydration

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

For the levain, you will need

75g Jovial high-extraction flour

75g h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

315g h2o

500g Jovial einkorn high-extraction flour

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

When your levain is properly fermented, dissolve it in the water and mix it together with the flours and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this:

This lower hydration dough will not be nearly as sticky to work with than the higher hydration dough, nonetheless, it is einkorn, so it will be more sticky than even a high-hydration white flour dough. It will also appear to have very little gluten structure, even with your folds. For the first three series of folds, I extended my number of folds until the dough felt like it was gaining strength.

Turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour, or some brown rice flour.

Shape into a loose round. Let it rest for 17 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 10 hours 15 minutes.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I baked mine to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

100% Hand-Bolted Einkorn Michette

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

For the levain, you will need

75g Jovial hand-bolted, stoneground einkorn flour

75g h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine fermented for 8 hours 25 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

315g h2o

500g home-stoneground and bolted einkorn flour

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

When your levain is properly fermented, dissolve it in the water and mix it together with the flours and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this:

Turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour, or some brown rice flour.

Shape into a loose round. Let it rest for 17 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 10 hours 15 minutes.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I baked mine to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

100% Einkorn Michette

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

For the levain, you will need

75g Jovial home-stoneground einkorn flour

75g h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine fermented for 8 hours 25 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

315g h2o

250g home-stoneground and bolted einkorn flour

250g home-stoneground einkorn flour

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

When your levain is properly fermented, dissolve it in the water and mix it together with the flours and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this:

The dough may appear stiff, but it is very sticky. If you find that it is underhydrated at salt time, add more water, but trust me, employ a modest hand. Begin with perhaps 10g more water, work that thoroughly into the dough, and see what you get from that. Add water in these tiny increments, always working the water thoroughly into the dough before adding more.

Autolyse for 30 minutes. After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough until it's fully incorporated work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation. Here you will perform a series of turns every half-hour throughout half of and quite possibly the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk. If the dough puffs up and you find it too difficult to perform the turns without deflating the dough, then you can let it finish its fermentation untouched. It will be fine.

Turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour, or some brown rice flour. Shape into a loose round. Let it rest for 17 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff. Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 10 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Snip the thing in some divine manner. A note, with very highly hydrated loaves or slack dough loaves, such as einkorn, I find it best to snip vs. slashing the dough to prevent bleeding. Slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I baked mine to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

To the staff of life!

Sidebar Sunday: Happy Accident 100% Sprouted Rye

2014-02-24T22:28:00.001-08:00

Hi. Yes. I am aware that it's Monday. I will get my Sidebar Sunday to actually land on Sunday. Eventually. And just a quick note. My last two posts here have been breads of my own design, so, in these instances, this is not really a 'Tartine Bread' experiment, I am aware. Those of you who know me know that I experiment a lot with my own thing so you are going to see a lot more of it (I had actually considered changing the name of the blog and completely going down my own bread path with it, but then the new book came out and I could not resist). I love where my own experiments take me, and the only thing better than developing new breads and new techniques is sharing them with all of you. When I was a kid, I would always ask my dad, 'but what if?' And so this blog is more about the 'what if?' for me, right, what if I did things my way instead?

One thing you should know is that when I put up a post, I have experimented with the bread that you see, some of them many times over. Some of them work straight away because I try to build upon what I have already accomplished in calculations for my next idea. While I love Chad's book, I'm also no different than Chad, or any other serious baker for that matter, in that I want to find my own expression with bread. And the only way to do that is to step off of the path and seek it on my own. One of my strongest interests is to work with completely whole grain breads, and I am experimenting with ways to do that so we don't end up with brick-like loaves at the end of a bake. I think that this post along with my last post proves that it can be done, and I am on a mission to keep working with 100% whole grain breads that achieve excellent oven spring and great taste/texture.

Happy Accident 100% Sprouted Rye

I will probably never own a bakery (my friend Joe will fulfill that dream for us both some day very soon), but I can promise you that because I invent things in an environment similar to your own, you will probably have good luck with the things that I post. So far, knock on wood, I have not received one email or comment with a complaint that one of my breads did not work. My worst nightmare is posting something that will turn out to be a flop for you.

Speaking of accidents, let's get on to this happy accident rye.

So, you know what they say. If it looks like a chicken and talks(?) like a chicken, it must be a chicken, right. Well, here's what happened to me a bit ago: I was generously gifted two bags of grains from one of my favorite millers, 'To Your Health', right, a bag of sprouted rye and a bag of sprouted spelt. I decided to work with the bag of spelt about two weeks ago, and when I really inspected it, it looked suspiciously like rye. Now, I have been working with grains long enough to know the difference between them, alas, I took the label for its word. Perhaps it was some sort of special blue-grey spelt that looked like rye and smelled like rye and talked like rye. After all, To Your Health makes some damn-near holy flours, I would not be surprised if they were peddling some almost extinct strain of spelt that no one else in the world was in possession of.

Onward.

Thank goodness I decided to make a rye levain for the spelt bread that I had in mind before I went to bed. The next day I milled the damn-near holy, blue-grey, extinct spelt. Of course, it looked uncannily like rye flour, concrete gray flecked with gunmetal.

When I added it to my levain/water mixture all doubt was removed: This was rye. Of course it was rye! I knew it all along. Ah, but here's me making lemonade:

So, instead of pitching what was sure to be a thirsty, unruly beast (250g freshly milled, and 250g freshly milled and hand-bolted RYE), I decided to forge on without a safety net. At this point my hands were plunged wrist deep in it, so I could not reach for Reinhart or Hamelman, and I didn't have a free hand to text my friend Joe to bail me out (again), so I decided to do what I do best. Experiment. Why not. It was 5 a.m. and I had nothing better to do. Well, OK, sleep. Sleep would be something better. But enough grousing. The call of bread and all that.

I decided to see what would happen if I did a bulk ferment as I usually do (obviously no turns were going to be happening here), skip the bench, and shorten my final. I did all that. And man. Oh man! The results were fantastic!

The final bread was not overly acidic. It was just acidic enough (I really have good luck with low-acid, or rather, 'adequately acidic' loaves). The flavor of the grain was pulled out at max level, that is to say that it was all earth and mineral and sweet hay. The texture was moist but not dense. I will say that you are supposed to wait for 24 hours before slicing breads with a high percentage of rye. I didn't experience any of the 'gumminess' that can come from breads that are not given ample time to cool and redistribute moisture throughout. I waited about 8 hours and I suggest you wait at least this long before slicing to avoid the unpleasant textural issues one faces with ryes whose crumb is not fully set during an adequate cooling period.

The crust was crisp but tender, not even an echo of toughness. And I finished a quarter of the loaf both plain and with some cured salmon, cucumber, red onion, fennel and a drizzle of homemade creme fraiche. I also achieved more oven spring than anyone could hope for with a 100% whole rye loaf.

As you can imagine, I had visions of rye possibilities dancing in my head after this so I schemed up another loaf. This time I had a little more time to think through some sensible design rather than wing it with my hands swallowed up by the quicksand that made for such a lovely loaf. This time I milled up my rye, 250g freshly milled, 180g freshly milled and bolted with the #50 screen, 120g freshly milled and bolted with the #30 screen for a complexity of textures. I toasted up some sunflower and pumpkin seeds, plumped up some sultana raisins and added them to the dough. I long-fermented the levain, 9 hours, because it was uber stiff, shortened the autolyse to 30 minutes and the bulk to 3 hours, and my final fermentation was 7.5 hours.

Intentional Sprouted Rye with Seeds & Sultanas

The crust was great. A teensy bit stronger than the first loaf but only because of the raisins, which happens with fruited breads. The sugars create sort of a 'caramel' that hardens when it cools in the spots with fruit, even with white flour breads, alas, I think that we all know this. The crumb was really moist and evenly textured. Truly a lovely bread that hit the spot because I had a sweet tooth this afternoon after I baked it. Lovely with tea, and I can't wait to have it with butter tomorrow morning. I have some exciting experiments in mind for this loaf that I will pass on when I come back around to it

The thing is, I have always been told that 100% rye loaves are tricky. They don't work. They make crusts like tree bark. The formula to arrive at any worthy one is long and tedious and even then it may turn out to be something to build a house with rather than eat. And none of that was true for my loaves this week.

About the grains. So, I have waxed poetic over and again about To Your Health flours, well, the rye that I used for these loaves of bread have proven that their grains are as fantastic as their flours. They sell online, though you can find it at Whole Foods, which I never do, because they mill their flour to order and I would rather have it fresh. When I opened the bag of rye the heady aroma of sweet hay and freshly-cut grass and lovely quince came rushing forth. What a fabulous nose! The flavor translation in bread, while obviously delicious, is definitively earthy, clean and sweet, herbaceous and spicy all at once. I have baked with rye flour that has tasted really strong, almost dirty, and bitter, but not To Your Health. Neither their rye berries nor their flour have these unpleasant flavor profiles. So, I forgive them for mislabeling my little bag. It allowed these two new breads to be born.

After having the intentional rye, here is what Christina, one of my dearest friends, said about it: 'This is the best bread I have ever eaten. Seriously'.

Seriously. Here are the formulae for your two new ryes, one accidental, one intentional, both the start of a rye journey that I have been dying to travel down. The wheels are turning bread friends. And we have only just begun.

Have a look.

Happy Accident Rye

The night before dough night, make your levain:

10g 100% rye starter
75g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour
75g h2o

Mix together the above until you arrive at a very stiff paste. This is a stiff levain, so it will need to ferment longer than your more liquid levains. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

DOUGH DAY

250g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour
250g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour, bolted with a #50 screen
330g h2o
12g kosher salt, I use Diamond

After the levain has fermented adequately, dissolve it in the water, add the flours and vigorously mix by hand, raking and squeezing the dough with your hand shaped like a claw for about 3 or 4 minutes.

Autolyse for 30 minutes. After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough and repeat the vigorous 3 to 4 minute claw-handed mixing. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation. Leave it be for 4 hours. The dough will expand just a bit. It will get a little 'puffy' looking rather than getting that intense and obvious expansion that you see with higher gluten flours.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour. With wet hands, lightly pat and shape into a round, then pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

The dough will have expanded a bit, but will not have increased enormously in volume. It will feel firm but alive. Rye is as serious grain with almost zero gluten development capability, so you are going to get a modest amount of expansion during final fermentation. Expect that. If you have done things successfully, you will still achieve lovely oven spring. Just keep moving forward with it. This is the nature of rye. Once it is baked, you will see the magic happen. I promise!

Slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

Toggle the oven between 450 and 475 until the boule is reaches internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least 8 but preferably 24 hours before slicing.
.

Intentional Rye with Seeds & Sultanas

The night before dough night, make your levain:

11g 100% rye starter

78g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour

78g h2o

Mix together the above until you arrive at a very stiff paste. This is a stiff levain, so it will need to ferment longer than your more liquid levains. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

200g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour

180g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour, bolted with a #50 screen

120g hand-milled To Your Health sprouted dark rye flour, bolted with a #30 screen

360g h2o

65g toasted sunflower seeds

65g toasted pumpkin seeds

190g sultana raisins, soaked in hot water for about an hour, then squeezed of excess liquid

11g kosher salt, I use Diamond

After the levain has fermented adequately, dissolve it in the water, add the flours and vigorously mix by hand, raking and squeezing the dough with your hand shaped like a claw for about 3 or 4 minutes.

Autolyse for 30 minutes. After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough and repeat the vigorous 3 to 4 minute claw-handed mixing. When you are done mixing, incorporate the seeds and sultanas into the dough. Now it's time for the 3-hour bulk fermentation. Leave it be for 3 hours. The dough will expand just a bit. It will get a little 'puffy' looking rather than getting that intense and obvious expansion that you see with higher gluten flours.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour. With wet hands, lightly pat and shape into a round, then pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 7.5 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Toggle the oven between 450 and 460 until the boule is reaches internal temp of 207 degrees. You must keep this temp on the low side so that the interior thoroughly bakes. If you blast the oven, the loaf will burn and the crumb will remain underbaked. Now is a good time to use your Thermoworks instant read thermometer. Mine took a total of one hour and 10 or 15 minutes to get there.

Cool on a wire rack for at least 8 but preferably for 24 hours before slicing. This is a heavy loaf of bread due to the addition of fruit and nuts, so it needs time to set.

The Accidental Photos

To the staff of life!

Sidebar Sunday: Michette

2014-02-18T19:13:00.000-08:00

So, we have Flashback Fridays where I revisit oldies and goodies, make amends with breads that I ruined, or say bonjour to those breads I never visited at all (Yikes! Sorry neglected breads!). And now we have Sidebar Sundays where I get to do my own thing sans Chad. I'm sure he won't mind.

Oh, and yes. I am aware that it is Tuesday. Sorry. I'm a little late. But you'll forgive me, I know.

In this post:

Green flour: what is it?
Freshly milled flour: to age or use fresh?
What the chemicals in our store-bought flour mean
Bluebird Grain Farms hard white spring wheat
Bad news baguettes
Introducing Michette, my newest love child

So, baguettes are a tricky thing. They take a lot of experimentation to master them. And this is why you don't see a baguette post today. Actually, I'm a few days behind on a new post because I did attempt the baguette formula (15 baguettes!) but I had trouble with it, so I decided to go back to the drawing board and come round again next week with it.

I think since I have always been less than thrilled about working with commercial yeast, the baguette appeal has been less than lustrous for me. I have admittedly approached them a little half-heartedly, if not with heels staunchly digging in the sand. Not just this week, but generally.

Like most of my baguette attempts (I've only ever had two successful attempts), this last batch was OK. But only just. We ate them, but we were not dazzled by them. The crust was too strong, as was the crumb, they took up too much time and space, and the shaping, oi. I'm not a good baguette shaper. At the end of the baguette day I felt disappointed. Alas, it has been a very long time since I had a bread mishap, so, I let this go as a much needed bread (life) experience, and instead of skirting the baguette issue, I decided to simply dig in from here on out. It is said that that the thing one holds the most aversion to is the thing that shall free him or her. Actually, I think I'm making that up, but it feels instinctual that this should be true. So, okay, I'll dig in... starting next week. In the meantime, I am tickled pink to share my new love child with you.

Michette

So here's me making lemonade: about four weeks ago I set out to create my own 100% whole grain, 100% white wheat bread, that was not flat or hard or gross. I wanted it to be made completely with home-milled grain both whole and hand-bolted (the old-school way of making 'high-extraction' flour; we are going to talk about this later). I wanted it to have a fantastic shattery crust and a really fragrant and exquisitely flavored crumb. What you see above is my first go round, and I must say, the crust was as shattery as a girl could hope for, and the crumb was so lovely and light and moist, I can't even explain the texture. It was gorgeous. And the taste of it, why, my first nibble was delightfully fruity! Alas, my little loaf was flattish. Not flat, mind, flattish.

And you know me, I simply had to get to the bottom of it, so I phoned my friend Joe, a professional bread baker in New York, and gave him my formula from start to finish. The first thing Joe said, because he has a masters in diplomacy, was: 'I love the crumb of your new bread. It is more reminiscent of a French miche, which has a tighter crumb and lower profile.' Thus, my sweet Michette was born.

But then he got down to brass tacks. After reviewing my formula, he said that the culprit could be one or a combination of these things: overfermentation, because freshly milled flour can sometimes ferment faster than flour we get at the store, and green flour.

Wha, who, huh?

Yes. Green flour. I was as much in the dark as you, so I set out to do some serious research, and here is what I found:

Green flour, as it is called, is freshly milled flour. So, the flour that we freshly mill at home, or the flour freshly milled at a flour mill is considered green. The reason why we need to discuss this is because as home-millers, the properties of green flour seriously affect the outcome of our breads. Let me break it down simply.

When grains are freshly milled, the gluten content is immature and will behave poorly in bread baking as it is not strong enough to raise our dough properly. This is evident in poor oven spring, flat loaves, dense crumb and tough crusts. So, we must oxidize (age) our flour before its use (there is one loophole to aging, which you will discover as you read on). Oxidation of flour occurs like this: the thiol groups and sulfide bonds are proteins in flour. When flour is oxidized, meaning, when oxygen penetrates it, these two groups strategize and create disulfide bonds. It is this disulfide bonding that strengthens gluten bonds in the flour itself, which later allows gluten strands to develop favorably, thereby strengthening the dough. When flour is not properly oxidized, the disulfide bonding remains fractional, thus the gluten will not be properly developed when the dough is mixed, resulting in weak dough structure and the aforementioned issues. Granted, the flatness of my pretty Michette was not what I consider catastrophic, and the crust and crumb were simply splendid. I just knew she had more potential.

So, here's the scoop on the aging process. Commercial milling houses age their flour with various chemicals that oxidize the thiol groups of proteins in flour, namely gaseous chlorine, used primarily for cake flour, which acts as a whitening agent, and 'matures it' swiftly, meaning that it stabilizes the flour so that it behaves more consistently; and benzoyl peroxide which artificially and instantly oxidizes other white flours thus strengthening the gluten bonds and whitening it. Both of these artificial oxidizing processes speed up the disulfide bonding and result in flours that can be used immediately in bread baking so the flour mills don't have to spend money on the most costly and healthful way to age flour: time.

Unfortunately, these bleaching agents adversely affect the flavor of the flour by destroying the carotenoid pigments in it. These pigments are what cause a creamy color in unbleached flour and the smell of bread when it's baking. The more carotenoids in flour, the more flavor and nutrients there are.

Next up is ADA (azodicarbonamide), also known as 'Maturox'. This chemical oxidizes the thiol groups of proteins in flour and strengthens the dough just like the processes above, but it is a swift-acting agent, meaning that it is activated and works in the early part of dough makeup, which can wreak havoc for bakers who use slow fermentation processes, i.e., artisan bakers who use pre-ferments. While it does cause bread to achieve immense oven spring, it is best used in breads that require very short fermentation times, i.e., commercial bread making facilities would benefit from using ADA in their non-artisan breads because they don't slow-ferment their beads. Flour that has been conditioned with ADA has to be legally be labeled 'bleached'.

Bluebird Grain Farms Hard White Spring Wheat Berries

Another really scary chemical used in baking in the United States is potassium bromide, or 'bromate'. You have seen non-bromated flour and bromated flour on the shelf. Potassium bromate 'conditions' flour and allows bread baked with it to achieve immense oven spring. But it comes at a price: it's carcinogenic. Studies have shown that it creates tumors in lab rats and has consistently demonstrated a link to cancer. Bromates are banned in Canada, Europe and Japan, but as mentioned, can still be used in the United States. However, California's Prop 65 has recognized its carcinogenic properties and requires all baked goods and flours containing bromate to bear a warning on their labels if sold in California, but only if the levels exceed an approved level, meaning flours and baked goods can contain below the approved amount without stating so. In response, most California bakers have switched to bromate-free flours because of the warning label requirements. But frankly, it's alarming that we still allow it at all. America. Big business. What is good for the consumer is often secondary.

Finally, another way to age flour is by the addition of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). Vitamin C really tautens your dough, seriously hampering extensibility. Evidently it improves oven spring and I have read that bakers can add it to the dough later in the mixing process to this end. It doesn't seem like a positive tradeoff to me, even if it is an innocuous addition. If I have to fight with my dough, it seems like a rather unpleasant option.

OK. If you are now totally freaked out and overwhelmed about aging your flour or disenchanted by home-milling, you shouldn't be! There are two natural and easy ways to circumvent the lack of oven spring, dense crumb and tough crust using home-milled flour. One is time, the other is speed, and this is the focus of today's experiment.

So, onto that.

I set out to do an experiment with Joe's theory, beginning with the green flour issue. My adorable Michette above was used with flour that I milled one morning then used the next day, about 15 hours later. Evidently, if you mill flour and use it after 8 - 12 hours, an enzymatic situation happens which results in the flattish loaves. HOWEVER, if you mill grains and use them straight away, whatever enzymatic situation that occurs after 8 - 12 hours that causes angry loaves does not occur, and your loaves will happily achieve great oven spring.

Michette, fresh

Alternatively, if you cannot use your flour right away (within the first 8 - 12 hours of milling), you can age it simply by putting it in a paper bag for at least 3 weeks (or you can do what I did and just put it in a jar and cover the mouth of it with cheesecloth so that oxygen can enter). Oxygen will gently penetrate and 'age' your flour, and all of that disulfide bonding will successfully occur, thus resulting in strengthened dough and fabulous oven spring. I had great results by aging my flour for 3 weeks and 2 days in a wide-mouthed jar which I covered with cheesecloth.

Michette, aged

Both of the new Michettes achieved excellent oven spring, as you can see. So, Joe was right about everything, and this is not the only time he has come to my rescue. I am so lucky to have access to a professional bread baker so that when things go awry I can get answers quickly, or be led in the right direction. There is nothing more frightening than having questions without the prospect of answers, or worse, conflicting answers that you have discovered on the internet.

Thank you Joe!

So, to sum things up here is what you want to do when working with freshly milled flour:

1) Mill and use your flour straight away, before the enzymes that wreak havoc on your loaves kick in. So, the sooner the better, but not after 12 hours, and your loaves will achieve fine oven spring (I personally would mill right before I was about to make my dough. Why wait even an hour?)

2) If you cannot use your flour right away, then age it for at least three weeks in a paper bag or a jar covered with a piece of cheese cloth to the same end.

I should also note that the original Michette was fermented for 18 hours, and with the final two, I reduced the final fermentation to 11 hours. A smart move, and Joe was right. My had original Michette overfermented. A note here. This is not true of all breads made from freshly-milled flour, but with white wheat, I have noticed that it ferments very quickly. The timing seems to be much more in the realm of my high-percentage ryes, which I ferment to about 9 hours. I would not push this loaf past an 11-hour fermentation. I have made hard red wheat breads with freshly milled flour and employed long fermentations with fine results. With white wheat, assume that it will (even commercially milled) ferment quickly. I will be experimenting with long fermentations and other grains in upcoming posts so you can have some sort of fermentation gauge for your own loaves using freshly milled grains.

Some of you have been emailing me about your flat loaves. I am hoping that perhaps this post has shed some light on this issue if you are milling your own flour.

Oh, before I get on with the formula, I wanted to talk about the wheat that I used.

For all of these loaves of bread I used 100% Bluebird Grain Farms hard white spring wheat whose plump grains smell fabulous and sweet like wet hay. It's very fresh, and you know this because when you mill it, you have to put it on a coarser setting because fresher grains are more hydrated and don't mill as well in the KoMo mill on a fine setting. Even setting it to a coarser grind, however, you end up with a very fine flour. As you can see from all three loaves, it mills up beautifully. The loaves were fantastic - mild, fruity, gorgeous tasting breads, all three with uber brittle crusts and a very moist crumb. I could not have chosen a better white wheat for my Michette. I traditionally bake rye loaves every week as my mainstay breads, and I have to admit, my 100% whole grain Michette is my new weekly bread of choice.

Have a look.

100% Bluebird Grain Farms White Whole Wheat Michette

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

For the levain, you will need

75g Bluebird Grain Farms home-milled hard white spring wheat

75g h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine fermented for around 7 hours.

DOUGH DAY

For the dough, you will need

All of the levain

350g - 389g h2o (see note on hydration just below)

206g Bluebird Grain Farms home-milled hard white spring wheat
294g Bluebird Grain Farms home-milled hard white spring wheat, bolted with a fine-meshed sifter

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

A note on hydration.

So, whenever you review a formula, before just dumping the suggested amount of water into your bowl of flour and levain, approach it with a conservative hand. Depending upon what sort of flour/grain you are using, you will probably need more or less water than any formula calls for. For instance, freshly milled flour is is warmer than flour that has been sitting on a shelf if you use it relatively quick after milling (I swear by my Thermoworks instant read thermometer for taking temps now. It's fast and accurate), and is always a little more thirsty. This is where your extraordinary baking powers come in. I always approach the hydration in any formula mindfully. If Chad calls for 400g of water in a loaf, I always start with 325 or 350 and work up from there. You can always add more water to a formula at the dough makeup stage, or salt stage, but you can't remove it. Speaking of, the salt stage is actually a great place to think about additional water because it helps disperse the salt, and the dough has relaxed enough so that you can really feel if it needs to be further hydrated. I think the biggest mistake people make is adding too much water early on. The dough is a far different creature at dough makeup stage than after the autolyse. It may seem stiff at first, but autolyse really relaxes the dough and gives you a true snapshot of the hydration of it. For instance, in my aged flour and original Michettes, I used 350g of water, but in the Michette where I milled the flour and used it straight away, I needed 369g. And I am making yet another Michette as we speak using flour that I milled and sifted only 15 minutes prior to making the dough, I started with 369g of water, but added another 20g at salt stage because the dough was a little too elastic for my taste. Be flexible when it comes to hydration!

About bolting your flour: The old-school way of making 'high-extraction' flour.

Your flour will mill up from your grains gram for gram. So, for the 206g of home-milled flour, you will need 206g of grains. But for the bolted flour, you will need about 60% more whole grains than called. To bolt, you simply need to grind the grains on a wee bit coarser setting than you would your flour. Set a drum fitted with a fine-mesh screen (I used a #50 here) over a bowl large enough to hold the drum. Now using your hand, swiftly sweep it back and forth and in circular motion over the flour, applying some pressure to encourage it through the mesh. The fine flour will fall into the bowl. Keep going until you can no longer coax any flour from the chaff. After bolting, you will arrive at 42% - 47% of flour, what remains is this gorgeous 'chaff' that you can use later to dust your loaves with.

freshly milled

sifting screens

winnowing

bolted flour

chaff

Back to the formula.

When your levain is properly fermented, dissolve it in the water and mix it together with the flours and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this.

Autolyse for two hours. After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough until it's fully incorporated work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation. Here you will perform a series of turns every half-hour throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk. If the dough puffs up and you find it too difficult to perform the turns without deflating the dough, then you can let it finish its fermentation untouched. It will be fine.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with some of the 'chaff' that you saved from bolting your flour.

Shape into a loose round. Let it rest. Drape with a damp paper towel to keep it from forming a skin. Mine rested for 10 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with your leftover chaff.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 11 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Slash or snip the thing in some divine manner, then slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. With white wheat, a golden blush is lovely. I bake mine to an internal temp of 210 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

MIGNON MICHETTE

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Michette - 10 hour Final Fermentation, Fresh-Milled Flour, 389g water at dough makeup:

To the staff of life!

Buckwheat with Toasted Groats & Crème Fraîche

2014-02-05T15:53:00.001-08:00

Buckwheat is not a grain, it's actually a seed, and it is not a grass like wheat, it is indeed related to sorrel and rhubarb. The reason why buckwheat is not the most popular little seed, despite its sundry assets, is because its cultivation faced a serious decline in the 20th century with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizers required by other hearty staples (corn and wheat) to feed our hungry and growing world. Buckwheat does not do well in nitrogen-rich soils. In fact it grows admirably in soils that are not so rich. It's a shame that we aren't turning our attention to its cultivation because it begs only a short growing season, so it can be squeezed between the growing of other crops, advantageous to the farmer who has some space between plantings. It also establishes quickly, grows rapidly and abundantly for a quick and fruitful harvest, and successfully subdues other noxious weeds making it a great plant for pesticide-free gardening.

Now that you have all that info, you should also know that it's incredibly healthful with it's complete amino-acid profile and antioxidants. Excellent.

The flavor of buckwheat is really intense, so a little goes a long way, and as Chad points out, it has no gluten so contributes even less structure than rye, so too much involvement within a loaf will result in a weakened dough. Chad suggests using not much more than 5% buckwheat flour in your dough lest you run the risk of a flat loaf. I, being a rebel, defied him and added a whopping 7.8%. OK, maybe that's not terribly rebellious. I just had this idea at the last minute, see, as I was mixing up my dough, I thought I might mill up a few grams of the toasted grains and add that to impart a more nutty flavor. And here's why. For this loaf I milled my own flour using Bob's Red Mill whole buckwheat, but the hull has been removed, so the little pyramidical seeds are cream and green colored resulting in a blonde flour. You can indeed find whole buckwheat with the hulls intact, but I didn't have any on hand, so my resolution to what could have been a missing flavor element to my loaf was to toast up fifteen additional grams of the seeds, mill them and add them to the dough. Boy, did this turn out to be a swell idea, because it imparted a gorgeous nuttiness to the handsome loaf.

Tartine Buckwheat with Toasted Groats & Crème Fraîche

I should mention that the reason I decided on the toasted flour addition was because I did a little research on store-bought buckwheat flour. Turns out that the buckwheat flour that you see in the market is this gorgeous gray color with flecks of black because millers mill up denuded grains and hulls separately then add a quantity of the milled hulls back into the flour to impart color, flavor and a little more bran. Milling the whole seed with the bran intact would result in an incredibly heavy flour. So if you decide to mill your own using whole buckwheat with the bran intact, you might consider sifting out some of the bran to lighten up the flour a bit.

Not only did this bread turn out to have a rather interesting flavor profile - musky, nutty, a little floral, decidedly sweet - but it also achieved a gorgeous loft and a fabulously brittle coat. The thoughtful addition of crème fraîche resulted in a tender, really moist and just rich enough crumb, and the contribution of the whole toasted groats as a soaker was brilliant. I figured that it would easily become one of my favorite Tartine breads, and my friends are already asking when I'm baking the next loaf.

Moving right along.

I used Heartland Mills high-extraction flour, which is called 'Golden Buffalo' in their online store, for this bread for a couple of reasons. First, it weighs in at 90% extraction, and since high-extraction comprises half the total flour weight, I wanted to use it rather than Jovial which is 80% extraction. I thought it would be lovely to have just a little more bran in the bread. Second, while I adore Jovial high-extraction flour its flavor is much more pronounced than Heartland Mills, and I didn't want it to compete with the special and unusual flavor of the buckwheat. I find HM high-extraction to be a little sweeter and Jovial to be a little more resinous in both the nose and the palate, both wonderful attributes, but things that we should take into consideration with regard to the overall bread. I think that Jovial is really well-suited for breads whose main flour has a sweeter profile. At first glance and taste I quickly realized that it was a sound choice.

I must confess, I'm really exhausted today, so in keeping with the virtues of brevity, I'm going to give you the details of our next bread and hit the hay!

Have a look.

Buckwheat with Toasted Groats & Crème Fraîche

MAKE YOUR CRÈME FRAÎCHE

1 cup heavy cream

2 TB buttermilk

24 hours before you plan to make your dough, combine the heavy cream and buttermilk in a glass container, cover with cheesecloth and leave it on the counter to ferment for 24 hours. It will thicken and become mildly acidic with a pleasant creamy almost citrusy aroma. Once fermented, refrigerate until ready to use.

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

75g BRM home-milled hard red spring wheat

75g 68 degree h2o

10g 100% hydration, 100% wholemeal rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine took 7 hours 45 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

For The Dough:

450 70 degree h2o

250g high-extraction flour, I used Heartland Mills 'Golden Buffalo' at 90% extraction

225g KA bread flour

25g home-milled BRM buckwheat flour

15g home-milled BRM buckwheat flour from groats that I toasted first

35g wheat germ

12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

Additions:

69g toasted whole dehulled buckwheat groats

Enough warm water to cover the toasted groats

35g crème fraîche (see recipe above)
(Use the rest of your crème fraîche in the cake that I developed for my friends at Community Grains. It's listed here on Farm to Table Geek, my other blog, and here at Community Grains. Seriously. It's the best cake you will ever make).

Dissolve all of the levain in the water, then mix in the high-extraction flour, the bread flour and both the toasted and raw buckwheat flour by hand. Autolyse one hour.

While the dough is autolysing, soak the toasted buckwheat groats with enough warm water to cover, set aside.

After the autolyse, drain the soaked buckwheat groats, squeezing out as much water as you can, and mix them together with the crème fraîche. Now squish the salt into the dough until thoroughly incorporated, then fold in the soaked groats and crème fraîche mixture until it's fully incorporated and the dough arrives at a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation.

Every half hour, perform a series of turns throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with brown rice flour, and shape into a loose round. Let it rest. Drape with a damp paper towel to keep it from forming a skin. Mine rested for 25 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with brown rice flour. Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 14 hours and 25 minutes.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Dust the dough lightly with brown rice flour then unearth by placing a sheet of parchment over the mouth of the dough bowl, then place a peel over this and quickly invert the bowl so that the dough ends up sitting on the paper and the peel, seam side down.

After the steam, remove the fat end of the dutchie, then stack the pan over its mouth to create a buffer between the hot stone and the bread. This will help keep the bottom of your bread from blackening. Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I aim for chestnut-colored.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour and a half before slicing.

MUCH ADO

To the staff of life!

Roggen Vollkornbrot (well, almost)

2014-02-05T00:24:00.001-08:00

Technically speaking, this brot (bread) is made with roggen (rye), and since I milled the flour myself, it is indeed vollkorn (wholemeal). So, this is my roggen vollkornbrot, perhaps just not a völlig roggen vollkornbrot.

OK. Enough of that.

So, the next bread in Chad's fine achievement is a 20% rye, but since I used a 100% rye levain and my rye starter, it came out to be 30.8%. This does not include the whole fermented rye berries that I added.

The thing about rye flour is that it's challenging to work with, right, so you're doing your turns, thinking: 'Man, this is sticky! This will never make a decent loaf of bread!' Alas, you are not doing anything wrong. Don't be tempted to add more flour (or water). It is the nature of the roggen beast. Indeed, those loaves with very high percentages of rye require the use of a mixer to work the dough. Luckily I have a bit of experience with rye because I bake weekly loaves of rye bread. I love it specifically for its temperamental nature because when I'm working with the sticky masses of dough and later pull out out an amazing loaf from the oven, it makes me feel a little like a badass.

30.8% roggen vollkornbrot

Since I am used to working with rye, I had to up my game by adding the fermented whole rye berries (our guru teaches us how to work with fermented grains later in the book, but hints at trying our hand at it now with this loaf). All I have to say is this: Thank you Chad. I can't imagine making another loaf without them.

If you decide not to add the fermented rye berries you will have to adjust your hydration, so plan for that. But seriously, it was so easy. All I did was soak some rye in water at room temp for three days, giving it a quick stir every day and the end result was much more amazing than I had anticipated. Of course the details of the whole deal is outlined in the formula below.

Carrying on.

I milled my own flour again for this bread with much anticipation. Because of the relative high percentage of rye here, I really wanted something special so I chose my small, precious bag of Bluebird Grain Farms heirloom rye. Their farmer has been growing this nonhybridized rye for 40 years. Cool right, to know that you've got a dedicated guy on the backend making this happen for your special loaves of bread. And I wish I could adequately describe this bag of rye. The grains are plump and gorgeous, like they were freshly harvested. It's like a sack of little blue sapphires. Seriously. It's nonpareil.

Oh, if you don't have your KoMo yet, Bluebird also sells flour on their website, and they mill it to order so when you get it, it's uber fresh. Their price points are fantastic as well, so I find myself using their grains frequently. I love the beans out of them not only because their grains are incredible, but because the people who own the company are terribly nice and super attentive to their customers. They're located in Washington, so if you are located up that way, you will find their flour and grains more easily in markets because they have an eye on keeping things local.

Rye breads are not typically dense if made properly, but the crumb is pretty even, especially with higher percentages of it. So don't expect a very open crumb when you bake this up. The reason why is because of the mineral content in rye. The higher the mineral content in a flour, the greater the decrease in bread volume. High mineral content is directly related to the amount of bran present in a flour. The sharp bran fragments cut away at the gluten structure thus tightening the crumb and decreasing the volume.

Another matter is that rye is high in pentosans, a substance that contributes to the high water absorption in rye breads. The pentosans compete with the glutelin (the second protein in rye flour which functions similarly to glutenin in wheat flours) and gliadin in the flour for moisture, and we all know that hampered absorption of water means hampered gluten development. Be advised, however, that over-hydrating your dough is not a resolution to the greedy pentosans. If you over-hydrate your rye dough, you are going to end up with a sticky hot mess. I have found that it's just really vital to autolyse your rye doughs amply. I mean, all of the doughs on this blog are autolysed amply because it results in better bread all around (proper autolysing = better flavor, better crumb and crust texture, better oven spring...), but if you ever (secretly) cut corners when making your bread, no cheating on this one.

Finally, the pentosans are super fragile, so you have to be gentle when working your rye doughs. Overworking it causes the characteristic stickiness to get worse because the flour unknits as the dough is worked. So, no aggressive folds guys. You can't build gluten in this loaf by the sweat of your brow, you have to rely on enzymatic activity to do the work. Your job with rye bread is to control fermentation so that it does not overproof (more on this in a sec).

As you can see, this loaf achieved gorgeous oven spring because I was gentle with the dough, I also autolysed for a full hour, and my final fermentation was about half of what I would employ for a wheat-based dough. Speaking of...

When fermenting your dough here, try sticking to a modest duration. Because rye has more sugars than wheat, rye doughs ferment more quickly than wheat doughs and you run the risk of overfermenting. This coupled with the pentosan issue and the high mineral and bran content of whole rye and you are challenged on multiple sides with the prospect of a flat, gummy loaf. My final fermentation was 9 hours. Incidentally, the high sugar content is the reason rye flour is so fabulous for starters. It supplies an enormous amount of food for our fragile cultures to get off the ground, and more easily than flours that don't contain as much. Rye also accounts for a stiffer starter and levain, but more so with home-milled rye flour than store-bought, so you will have to adjust your hydrations depending on if you are home-milling or using store-bought dark rye. Not all dark rye is wholemeal, see, so it's not going to contain as much bran as home-milled flour. This is another argument for either owning a KoMo, or making sure than you get your flour from reliable millers who mill their grain in entirety.

When planning this bread, start fermenting your rye berries when you begin your 3-day twice-a-day starter feed, since it takes that long to fully ferment. Then you can refrigerate it overnight when you build your levain, and pull it out on dough day, adding it to the dough straight from cold.

Have a look.

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Roggen Vollkornbrot
(makes one loaf)

RYE BERRY FERMENT

Begin this rye berry ferment three days before levain day.

125g gross Shrot, or, rye berries that have been cracked coarsely with your KoMo (also called 'rye chops' if using store-bought). I used Bluebird grains heirloom rye and cracked it in my KoMo
250g 75 degree h2o
15g active 100% hydration, 100% vollkorn starter

Dissolve the starter in the water, then mix in the coarsely cracked rye (rye chops). For the next three days, stir it twice a day. The ambient temp of my house was 71 degrees. Perfect fermentation temp. The mixture will have a sweet, fruity, creamy smell throughout its fermentation and will be only mildly sour smelling. It will become milky and soft as the days wear on.

Pop it in the fridge after the third full day and build your levain.

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

75g Bluebird Grain Farms wholemeal rye flour
75g 68 degree h2o
10g 100% hydration, 100% wholemeal rye starter

Mix together your levain ingredients and ferment. Mine took 7 hours 15 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

386g 70 degree water divided into 350g + 36g measurements
200g high-extraction flour, I used Heartland Mills 'Golden Buffalo' at 90% extraction
150g KA bread flour
100g home-milled Bluebird Grain Farms heirloom wholemeal rye flour
50g home-milled BRM red spring wheat flour
35g wheat germ
250g of the fermented rye berries (save the remainder and add it to your pizza dough)
12g kosher salt, I used Diamond

Dissolve all of the levain in 350g of the water, then mix in the flours and finally the fermented rye berries by hand. Autolyse one hour.

After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough with the remaining 36g of water until it's fully incorporated and work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the bulk fermentation. Mine took 4 hours 20 minutes because it's been cool here, so fermentation in all stages of my bread making these days has been a little slow. Check yours at 4 hours, it could be ready then.

Every half hour, perform a series of turns throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk. The dough will be sticky and feel a little heavy, but not unpleasantly so. Do your best in handling the dough gently. Remember, this is a fragile dough. It may seem like it's not going to amount to a lovely loaf of bread, but trust me when I say that this is the nature of rye flour. It is exactly as it should be: sticky and dense, without the gluten formation that is so evident in doughs comprised of all wheat flour.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with brown rice flour, and shape into a loose round. Let it rest. Drape with a damp paper towel to keep it from forming a skin. Mine rested for 15 minutes.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with brown rice flour and spread with rye flakes. Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 9 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Dust the dough lightly with brown rice flour then unearth by placing a sheet of parchment over the mouth of the dough bowl, then place a peel over this and quickly invert the bowl so that the dough ends up sitting on the paper and the peel, seam side down.

Slash or snip the dough in some lovely pattern, then slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

After the steam, remove the fat end of the dutchie, then stack the pan over its mouth to create a buffer between the hot stone and the bread. This will help keep the bottom of your bread from blackening. Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I aim for chestnut-colored. When I took the temp of my bread with my Thermoworks instant read thermometer, it registered as 212 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least TWO HOURS before slicing. Rye needs more time than most breads to cool.

Et voila! Bread!

This bread was more mild than you might expect with the double fermentation. Sweetish and nutty, clean earthy flavors with a moist and tender crumb that was not in the slightest gummy, sticky or compact. The rye berries melted right into the crumb. A glorious revelation, this fermenting of grains. I have added grains to breads in the past with less than happy results (they were always too hard), so this seems to be the way to go. The finish of on the palate was pleasantly sour. Just so you know, rye breads are always higher in acid than wheat sourdough breads, so expect a little more kick. But it is just this increased acid that makes for a loaf with incredibly long keeping powers. You will be eating it in a week's time. That is if it lasts that long.

The crust shattered when cut, the only hamper to that being the rolled rye flakes, which did come out a little more toothsome than I would have liked. I should like to try another brand that rolls their flakes thinner next time. And there will be a next time.

VOLLKORNBROT

To the staff of life!

Flashback Friday: Tartine Country Bread

2014-01-31T15:16:00.001-08:00

We've come a long way, haven't we? So, it got me thinking, right, that it would be fun to celebrate this road so travelled in some way. Then I had an epiphany. I decided it would be a hoot to start Flashback Friday posts, you know, to revisit some old faves from Book Two, perhaps visit some things that I never got to at all, rectify some things I did altogether wrong.

And timing is everything.

This week I got a few emails from new bakers asking for my advice about which loaf on the blog to try first. Et voila! The perfect week to start our Flashback Friday posts, and so why not begin with the most famous loaf of them all, the Tartine Country Bread. It's the most challenging for new bakers with new starters to master, and the most elementary bread in the book. I remember my first one. Not bad, considering. I remember how over the moon I was when I pulled it out of the oven and the crust sang, just like Chad said it would, and the crumb was open, just like Chad promised. It was a little flat, I remember that, and a little wonky-shaped. But it was perfect. And I loved it. It's that loaf of bread that kept me going.

I always like to tell people new to bread baking to choose something simple. Something that won't fail. There is nothing more fantastic than pulling that first perfect loaf of bread out of the oven. It's the one thing, the only thing that will keep you baking. My father used to say: 'You need some successes so you have a reason to keep moving forward'. Daddy was always right.

So, with this wisdom ringing in my ears, I decided to bake up two loaves, one done my old-school way with a higher levain percentage, for old time's sake, yeah, and because I think it works really well with new starters so it's easy for people new to baking. I call it my Tartine Country Bread with training wheels...

Tartine Country Bread with 250g levain (a.k.a. the 'Training Wheels' loaf)

And then I baked one for when newbies have gathered more confidence (by the way, I'm still a newbie), one with a smaller levain. And lo! She ended up looking like the most gorgeous moon.

Tartine Country Bread with 150g levain (a.k.a. 'La Bella Luna')

Training Wheels grew fabulous ears, and La Bella Luna left my friends moonstruck by her beauty. Both were fabulous in flavor with a light crumb texture, and each yielded an uber shattery crust. Hooray!

Oh how we struggled at the start but today we can do this one with our eyes closed. Damn we're good.

P.S., you don't have to be a newbie to make these two loaves. They are equally as fabulous for bakers with lots of loaves under their belts.

Have a look.

Tartine Training Wheels Loaf
This formula makes one loaf

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

You will need:

50g 100% hydration dark rye starter (mine is made with BRM home-milled dark rye flour)
50g Community Grains hard red winter wheat flour
50g KA all-purpose flour
100g room temperature water

Mix the levain ingredients together until you reach a paste. It will be thinnish, like this:

Mine fermented for 7 hours and 20 minutes. You will know when it's ready, because it will look like this:

DOUGH DAY

You will need:

All of the levain

450g KA Bread flour

50g Community Grains hard red winter wheat flour

330g h2o

12g Diamond kosher salt

When your levain is properly fermented, mix together the levain, the flours, and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass. It will look like this:

Autolyse for 2 hours.

After the autolyse, the dough should have expanded and look smooth and elastic like this:

Squish the salt into the dough until it's fully incorporated work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation (I got a phone call toward the end of my bulk and mine fermented for 4 hours and 30 minutes! But it was fine. Yours will ferment for about 4 hours).

Every half hour, perform a series of turns throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with brown rice flour.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 16 hour and 23 minutes.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Slash the dough in some divine manner, then slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, and steam for 15 minutes at this temp, then turn the oven down to 475 and steam for another 15 minutes.

Toggle the oven between 460 and 475 until the boule is baked to desired darkness. I find that it's almost impossible to go as dark as Chad's without drying out the loaf in a home oven. So I aim for chestnut-colored.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

Training Wheels (are hot)

La Bella Luna

This formula makes one loaf

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

You will need:

10g 100% hydration dark rye starter (mine is made with BRM home-milled dark rye flour)

75g BRM home-milled hard red spring flour

75g room temperature h2o, mine was 71 degrees

Mix the levain ingredients together until you reach a paste. Mine fermented for 6 hours 30 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

You will need:

All of the levain

450g KA Bread flour

50g BRM home-milled hard red spring flour

377g h2o, mine was 72 degrees

12g Diamond kosher salt

When your levain is properly fermented, mix together the levain, the flours, and the h2o until you reach a shaggy mass.

Autolyse for 1 hour 15 minutes.

After autolyse, squish the salt into the dough until it's fully incorporated work the dough into a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation (mine actually fermented for 4 hours 23 minutes because the dough was a little on the small side. It needed a little more time).

Every half hour, perform a series of turns throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with brown rice flour.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 20 hours.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

La Bella Luna!

To the staff of life!

Wheat-Rye 10%

2014-01-28T16:37:00.001-08:00

This week's experiment:

- Extended levain fermentation. Just how far can we push it? And how do we achieve it?
- The question of raising bread. How much levain do we really need?
- High-extraction flour. What's accessible, and what does it mean for our breads?
- This week's grain grower: Bob's Red Mill hard red spring wheat and rye.

Can I just say this: never bake when you are tired. I baked six loaves yesterday with a full schedule of all kinds of other stuff. And man, I am exhausted! Alas, here I am with the next loaf of bread.

So, here's what happened. I was planning my bread day, right, with just three loaves, the wheat-rye 10% with two different levain types - one using a higher percentage of starter like I usually do, and one using a lesser amount, as Chad writes about (more on this in a sec) - and one other loaf just for kicks. So, just three loaves of bread. Doable. Certainly.

Well, I miscalculated the maturation time for my levain, so instead of, say, a 6 or 7-hour fermentation, I couldn't get to it for 11 hours. Mon Dieu! is right. My first reaction was to just pitch the levain and just start over again, but then I thought: wait a sec. This is a great experiment. Let's see just how yielding our levains are... but then, if it didn't work I would have no post for this week. So, I made another round of three levains, just in case, this time fermenting them in what I think is an 'ideal' timeframe, about 6 hours.

Six loaves. I ask you, dear reader. What was I thinking?

Alas, things came out smashingly! And I learned how to control the fermentation of my levain, a whole new level of skill to make baking conform to my schedule, and to keep my levains from fermenting too quickly when the weather starts to get warm.

Tartine's Wheat-Rye 10% with extended (11-hour) levain fermentation, and a more modest levain amount

Speaking of fermentation, I also wanted to try my hand at reducing the amount of starter I use to make my levains, and to decrease the amount of my levain.

You know, when I first started Tartine Bread Experiment, my starter was a sluggish thing. It took forever to get going. And when I finally started making bread, I was so new to the whole thing that, well, you know what kind of bread you turn out as a new baker with a new starter. Flat loaves and all that. I assumed that the way to rectify this was to increase the amount of starter and levain in my breads. Even though I knew the whole premise of Tartine Bread was a French-style loaf whose flavors were based on coaxing the sugars out of our grains rather than bread whose flavor came from a huge amount of sourdough (which I actually don't care for). My compromise was to increase the amount of starter without going too overboard.

Chad's formula uses about 15g of starter to make 400g of levain, 150g of which you use to make two loaves of bread, the rest becomes your starter for ensuing loaves. I will admit that my method was a happy accident. It worked swimmingly. Even though my breads have used 40-50g of starter to make a 240-250g levain, my bread is not unpleasantly sour at all. I think my modest hydrations have kept it in check, and I think because I increased the overall amount of flour/water to the seed starter amount, it somehow balanced out. The breads I have been making have indeed been really flavorful, totally balanced. But lately I have been thinking, now that I have this uber powerful starter, do I really need to keep up with this much larger levain? Which brings us to the next experiment today.

I decided to make a bread whose levain employs my usual ratios - 40g starter, 100g rye flour, 100g h2o, using the total levain amount, along with one whose levain employs 10g starter, 75g rye flour, 75g h2o. (Oddly, the result was 150g of levain, not 160g. Hm. Where did that 10g go?)

Both breads came out fabulously, and interestingly enough, not terribly different in terms of flavor. I milled my own grains for this, Bob's Red Mill hard red spring wheat and rye. The flavors of both loaves were clean, earthy and sweet, a little back note of honey. The crust was smoky, rich. Just enough acid, really balanced. The most obvious flavor difference was that the acid of the larger levain loaf lingered just a hair longer than the one using less. The lingering flavor of the lesser was more sweet. The loaf with the smaller levain got a bit better oven spring than the one that employed a larger levain. Both crumbs were exquisite - tender with glossy gas chambers.

While the loaf with the lesser levain was able to bulk ferment at room temp (ambient temp about 72 degrees), the one with the higher amount of levain was only able to do half of the bulk at room temp, then I had to put it in the refrigerator for the remaining two hours. The one with the lesser levain was able to be turned throughout the full 4-hour bulk fermentation, the refrigerated one was left unturned for the last two hours.

Tartine's Wheat-Rye 10% with extended (11-hour) levain fermentation, and a larger levain amount

Both of the loaves above used a levain that fermented for 11 hours, as you can see, with pleasing results.

Of course, I did a boat load of research at 5:30 in the morning to try to manage this levain so that it would have a chance of being viable. I discovered a few really useful things for all of us. The first is that if you are managing a stiff levain, then it will need to/can ferment longer than one more liquid. Since I am milling my own grains for both my starter and my levains, they are very, very stiff (you will undoubtedly find this to be true as you get into milling your own gains), almost to the point where I was tempted to add more water to it. Even at 100% hydration, both my starter and levains seem to be more like 70% hydration. So, this stiff starter turned out to be work to my advantage when I found myself faced with this long-fermented levain situation. Thank goodness I didn't add more water to it at the start, though I was awfully tempted to.

Oh, side note, lots of you have emailed me about when your levain is ready to be used, and some of you mentioned that you were not having success with the float test. That's one way of testing the readiness of your levain, but another way to determine it is that with a more liquid levain, you know that it's ready for use when it's all bubbly and sweet/sour smelling (click here for a picture of a more liquid levain). With a stiffer levain, it puffs up into a little dome like this:

very stiff levain just mixed looks like this

fully fermented levain, puffs up like this

The next thing I discovered about extending the maturation time of your levain is that if you cool it down it will slow the fermentation, thus, extending its time of viability. This does not mean that you refrigerate it. You should not refrigerate a burgeoning levain. Since I forged mine early in the morning (seriously, 5:30 a.m.), I put them out on the porch where it was 58 degrees (it was 72 degrees in my house). Out on the porch, they got a good 4 hours of retardation before the thermometer registered 72 degrees, whereafter I brought them back inside. After this, I am only assuming that the ambient temp hovered around 72, because I left and would not come back for another 6 hours.

So, the finding for this experiment is that if you need to extend your levain, take it to a coolish spot, like the basement. And you are in good shape if you have a stiff levain to begin with because they take longer to ferment. I also read that you can add a pinch of salt, no more than .2% of what you would use in your final dough, to the levain to retard it. But that seemed like a drastic measure and another experiment for another day.

Onto the third loaf. Chad's wheat-rye 10%. Here I employed the same smaller levain as described above, and fermented it at an ambient temp of 70-72 degrees for 6 hours, the duration of time that I had originally thought would bring my levain to viability. I milled my own grains for this loaf too, Bob's Red Mill hard red spring wheat and rye. The resulting loaf was gorgeously developed. Fabulous oven spring. Beautiful tender crumb with floral(!) notes, good acid oddly a hair more than the two above, but only just, and a smoky crust.

All of the crusts were brittle and shattered when cut, by the way.

Tartine's Wheat-Rye 10% with 6-hour levain fermentation, and a more modest levain amount

Today, our experiments with both reducing the seed amount of starter in our levain and extending the fermentation time of it was a major success. I will keep experimenting with reducing the amount of seed starter and levain in subsequent loaves to see just how low we can go. Our goal as bakers is to coax the flavors out of the grains, and to skillfully ferment and strengthen dough, not to use our starters as a crutch to raise our breads.

About the flour for these breads. As I mentioned, I milled my own Bob's Red Mill grains for the whole-grain wheat and rye, for the bread flour I used King Arthur, and for the high-extraction, I used Jovial which is this fantastic golden cast and smells really earthy and minerally. The texture is really interesting too. It's almost clay-like.This is my first venture with purchased high-extraction flour and I am really pleased with it. I will be trying another brand with our next loaf. There are such a scarce few, right, so I got them and will be trying them all.

What does high-extraction mean anyway? Well, if you're confused, you are not alone. One would think the more bran you extract, the higher the number. But that is not the case. Commercial millers are able to obtain 72%-75% of white flour from 100 pounds of wheat berries. Thus the extraction rate of white flour is expressed as this percentage, so, all-purpose flour or bread flour would be called 72% extraction, or 75% extraction. From here, the higher the percentage, the more bran particles are present in the flour. Whole wheat flour, for example, is represented as 100% extraction, and when you purchase high-extraction flours, they are usually an 80% - 90% extraction rate. So, not quite a while wheat flour, but not a white flour either. Rather somewhere in between. With high-extraction flours you get the best of both worlds, a flour with the raising powers of white flour and the nutrition and flavor of whole grain flour. It also opens up the crumb a bit in breads that use a high percentage of whole grain flour. Just a recap, white breads rise higher than whole grain breads and have a more open crumb because there are no sharp bran particles to cut at the gluten structure thus tightening the crumb.

Speaking of. Let's talk grains.

All of the grains that I mention in my blog, whether whole or milled into flour, are grains that I have personally worked with and love. I realize that this is a huge sort of confusing area for new bakers. Perhaps you know what type of flour or grain to use now, but whose? The go-to flours are Bob's Red Mill, Bob's with the advantage of also supplying us with whole, organic grains, Arrowhead Mills and King Arthur. All three brands are highly accessible for consumers across the United States, so if you are baking from this blog in the middle of the country and have limited access to or awareness of 'boutique' grains, you have access to these giants. I have had success with all of them, and I have a special love for Bob's Red Mill. They offer a huge variety of organic grains and make quality organic flours. Their flours and grains are the foundation of my baking pantry.

The good thing about a larger company is the price point. Perhaps if you don't have huge stores of money to put into your breads and you are indeed baking near-daily, you can use the small boutique grain companies as special additions to your baking schedule, and rely on, say, Bob's Red Mill for regular baking. I don't have a lot of money and find myself juggling happily between the two.

And on that note, lets talk about the small growers who dedicate their companies to the revival of heritage grains. I am going to give you a nutshell view of which I have used here, but each subsequent post will be dedicated exclusively to a given company where I will go into detail about the attributes of the grains and/or flours that they offer.

Heritage grains take your baking to a precious level. I have a serious respect for the smaller producer who wants to bring something special to the table. They are the growers of the 'lost' grains, referred to as 'heritage', and despite being in the shadows of the giants, persevere in their continued growth and revival of 'new' grains. Because price really is a factor for me, and perhaps with many of you, I do treat them as special, having them when my budget allows, and also really paying attention to the varietals that I am working with, the practices of the grower and the mills, and the history of the grains and the farmers who are growing them. While I can't afford to bake them several times a week, they make regular and happy appearances in my baking schedule, at least once weekly, and I am always kept in the loop about what's out there in the grain world. I also do a fair amount of research about the flour and grains that I use. I figure that if I am going to pay a bit more money for them, I owe it to myself to know who I am supporting so I can feel completely educated about my baking.

Here are the companies whose grains and flours I use regularly, listed alphabetically:

Arrowhead Mills - A wide selection of flours available at whole foods. Great quality. I have used their all purpose, rye, and whole grain pastry flours with excellent result. I have also used their brown rice flour which I have found to be great for dusting loaves of bread, because the grind is rather coarse, to give my loaves a rustic look. (I have used it in pastries, but find it much too coarse, even sifted. You are better off using a superfine brown rice flour for pastries). A ubiquitous company with a quality product that can make several of the breads in Chad's Book Three.

Bluebird Grain Farms - One of my absolute favorite companies. Gorgeous grains. I have used their Emmer farro both in bread and whole and it's incredible. I will be experimenting with their hard red spring and hard white spring wheats as well as their very special heritage rye and 'Einka' farro - their Einkorn wheat - this next few weeks, and writing a dedicated post so that you can see for yourselves how special they are. They also mill their flour to order, which means the most fragrant and freshest flour you can find. They are also really nice over there, which always wins me over.

Bob's Red Mill - My mainstay. Bob's Red Mill has been my go-to since I began the blog, and I will continue to use their grains and flours. I have been feeding my starter Bob's organic dark rye flour for years with consistent results. It's available, and affordable, and every bread that I've made using their flour has been incredibly successful. I really like their light spelt flour, a product that I have only ever found on their website. It makes a fantastic bread. For such a large company, Bob's Red Mill offers an impressive array of whole grains and flours and adheres to milling practices that I respect. They are so nice, and extraordinarily attentive to their customers. If you have any questions, they respond immediately. I'm not surprised that Bob's Red Mill comes through with flying colors with their whole grains since I've had such good luck with their flour. Incidentally, I am really focusing on companies that use milling practices that benefit the consumer. That means cold stone milling of grains in their entirety. I think I talked about this before, but many companies mill their flour with metal, then sift out the bran and germ, only adding the germ back into the white flour (not necessarily from the same wheat berries that they extracted it from), and omitting the germ. The germ is where the majority of the fats of the berry live, and they remove it because it spoils quickly, thus shortening the shelf-life. It's advantageous for flour companies to produce flours with a long shelf life. For you and me that means stale flour and less nutrition. Companies like Bob's Red mill mill the whole berry in tact. An eye on the health of the consumer rather than their bottom line. I like that.

Community Grains - My very good friends. I don't even know where to begin. As you know from this and my other blog Farm To Table Geek, I am a faithful supporter of Community Grains. Their milling practices are non-pareil, which I talk about here. Bob Klein, who founded the company and who also owns Oliveto where I cut my teeth as a young chef, makes some of the most incredible whole wheat flour and pastas that you will ever have, and I must be honest, I use no other brand for my whole wheat flour. They also make a mind boggling Floriani red flint polenta and grow gorgeous beans. Indeed, I am making a pot of their chestnut beans as we speak, with plans to toss them with their whole wheat fusilli tonight for dinner. The post will be up on Farm to Table Geek soon. You can purchase their goodies online at Market Hall, a gorgeous little European-flavored market below Oliveto.

Heartland Mills - I finally used my HM high-extraction flour (called 'Golden Buffalo') and I could not be more pleased. The flour is indeed golden and the high mineral content is evident. The extraction rate is 90% here. Love that.

Jovial - They grow and sell Einkorn, a non-hybridized wheat that some say people with gluten intolerance can happily eat. I will be doing several experiments with Jovial's Einkorn berries milled in the KoMo mill as well as their Einkorn high-extraction flour that I used in this post. So far I have found their high-extraction flour to work beautifully for Chad's bread, many of which call for it. Just a note, when you purchase Jovial high-extraction, it does say 'all-purpose' on the label. I confirmed with them that it is indeed a high-extraction flour at 80%, but it can also be used as an all-purpose flour in your other recipes.

Mendocino Grain Project - A gorgeous little organization that grows sustainable grains (and legumes), and supports Northern California grain growers by harvesting, cleaning and milling their crops. They are located in Ukiah, and their focus is on local distribution via 'Grain Share', a program set up so that a portion of their annual grains harvest can be purchased by harvest members. You must subscribe to partake in their program, and they give preference to people living in Mendocino County (their goal is to support local farmers, reduce carbon footprint, and support the local food economy). Each share offers about 110 pounds of grains, including hard red wheat, durum wheat, rye and several others. Members pick up their allotment at one to two month intervals or all at once at a determined location. They also offer half shares. I received some coveted Red Fife from them recently, which is unfortunately not offered this year, but which I have been dying to work with. So expect a post about it soon!

Timeless - I stumbled upon Timeless and had no idea what I was in for. They produce a gorgeous heritage barley like you have never seen called Purple Prairie, which is indeed purple. I will be working with it in the next month, as well as their farro and a very special Durum-Iraq wheat. You can purchase the farro and barley online.

To Your Health - one of my absolute favorite companies that mills the most intensely fragrant sprouted flours you will ever find. Their spelt and rye flours will change your perception of fresh flour. I have been using them for about two years now, and when I received my first few bags from them, I never looked back. I opened the bag of spelt and it was like inhaling toasted hazelnuts, and the rye was equally nutty with notes of fresh hay. And when you bake with them, the resulting loaves taste like the hazelnuts and hay that you smell in the raw flour. Indeed the coolest thing about To Your Health is that they offer sprouted grains and sprouted grain flour, and I seriously thank the Universe that I stumbled across this company. Their sprouted spelt and rye meant weeks of gorgeous loaves using nothing but. A number of Chad's formulae call for sprouted grains, which you can sprout yourself, of course, and To Your Health is a good go-to source when I get to those loaves. They mill their flours to order, which accounts for their heady aroma, but you can also purchase it at Whole Foods now. If you can wait an extra few days to get your flour, do yourself a favor and buy it online.

As I experience more grain companies I will keep you in the loop with new posts. I have my eye on a couple more companies, but I do like to try the flours and grains before I recommend them. When I do, you will be the first to know. I will add to the list here, as well as any new posts that I use them in.

With all that said, here are the details of this weeks loaves!

Tartine's Wheat-Rye 10%

This formula makes one loaf

MAKE YOUR LEVAIN

10g 100% hydration 100% dark rye starter (I use BRM home-milled dark rye to feed mine)
75 BRM home-milled dark rye flour
75 h2o, 71 degrees

Oh, just a note, I recently got a fabulous Thermoworks Thermopen so that I can keep track of my water temps. It's way more accurate than my dial-thermometer and reads temperatures within seconds. In the future I will be recording the temperature of my dough through its fermentation for you all.

Onward.

Mix the levain ingredients together until you reach a paste. Ideally, you will plan to ferment your levain for 6 or 7 hours. If you must extend the fermentation, keep it in a cool place. Depending upon what type of rye flour you are using, and if you are able to keep it cool, you may be able to extend it up to 11 hours. This particular levain fermented for 6 hours.

DOUGH DAY

50g BRM home-milled dark rye flour
50g BRM home-milled hard red spring wheat
200g Jovial Einkorn high-extraction flour
200g KA bread flour
402g h2o, divided into 377g and 25g quantities
35g Wheat germ
12g Diamond kosher salt

When your levain is properly fermented, mix together 150g of levain, all of the flours, the wheat germ and 377g of water until you reach a shaggy mass. Autolyse for one hour and ten minutes.

After the autolyse, squish the salt into the dough with the remaining 25g of water until you reach a smooth mass. Now it's time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation.

Every half hour, perform a series of turns throughout the entire bulk fermentation, taking care not to deflate the dough as you near the end of bulk.

When bulk fermentation is accomplished, turn the dough out onto a workspace dusted with brown rice flour, and shape into a loose round. Rest for 20 minutes. I cover mine with a damp paper towel to keep it from forming a skin.

After the bench, shape the dough into a taut boule and pop into a banneton or a bowl lined with linen that you have dusted with brown rice flour.

Pop in the fridge and ferment. Mine fermented for 17.5 hours, but I make a sort of demi-rye often, and have excellent results with 10, 12 and 15 hour ferments. Rye breads do not want to be pushed too far at final fermentation. The enzymatic activity in rye dough is really vigorous. Also know that the higher the amount of rye flour in the bread (i.e., if you are indeed using your 100% rye starter, and a 100% rye levain) the more enzymatic activity you will have, and the faster it will ferment. With this additional rye, you are pushing this loaf from 10% rye to just about 22.25% (Total flour for this loaf 578g, and of this the rye content is: 3.3g rye flour in the 100% starter, 75g rye flour in the levain, 50g rye flour in the final dough for a total of 128.3g of rye flour vs. 50g of rye called for in Chad's formula), so keep this in mind when you are doing your final fermentation. This loaf will also be a bit stickier than you may be accustomed to. This is the nature of rye (though with this particular loaf, the dough was not difficult to manage at all). If you want to cut down on the rye in this loaf and keep it closer to the 10% rye in the book, make your levain using a different flour. Some ideas are 100% whole wheat, 100% white flour, or a 50/50 blend of white/wheat.

Onward.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Dust the dough lightly with brown rice flour to get a cool dusty bottom like Chad's bread in the last post, then unearth by placing a sheet of parchment over the mouth of the dough bowl, then place a peel over this and quickly invert the bowl so that the dough ends up sitting on the paper and the peel, seam side down.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

THE SLEEPY HEADS

To the staff of life!

Guest Baker: Chad Robertson

2014-01-19T21:38:00.003-08:00

So, a few of you have emailed me about Chad's extended autolyse, an arena new to me as well. I wanted to know what he meant by 'overnight', further, if we add the levain before or after autolyse is accomplished. So many questions swirling all round us, so I decided to defer to Chad himself for a method that would shed some light on things.

Of course, he could have sent me an email with a quick bullet-pointed method. Instead, what I got was a beautiful photographic explanation, proving once again that our Guru is all about style and grace.

(And the answer is yes, yes I do have a bat phone to call him when my dough is in danger).

Have a look.

Weigh out the flour and 80 degree water for the dough.

Mix up the flour and 80 degree water by hand until you arrive at a shaggy mass.

NOTE: We do not add levain or salt at this stage with this extended autolyse. Furthermore, to clear up any confusion, this does not change that we can add levain to our shorter autolyses, as Book Two and Book Three both instruct, and as directed in all of the other posts on this blog. This post is to clarify the longer autolyse that Chad mentions on page 23 of Book Three. You will find happy results with both methods.

Onward.

Cover the dough. Chad puts the bucket of dough into another container to insulate the resting dough, then places it on a high shelf where it's warmer. The key with this extended autolyse is to not let the dough get cold. This is a whole different animal here. When we are in the fermentation stage of our dough, going cold works to slow the fermentation of bread, thus allowing flavors to develop. With autolyse, the goal is to make the dough more extensible, and warmer temps help with this process. Why do we want extensible dough? Because extensible dough opens up more during baking, which is how we get that coveted open crumb. When the levain is added later, the acid will counter the extension benefits of autolyse, building and strengthening the dough. At the end of final fermentation, these two environments (autolyse, without added levain / fermentation of the dough once levain is added) create a balanced dough both extensible and elastic.

A note here, you should ferment your levain when your autolyse is working so they arrive at completion at the same time.

Chad's autolyse was 8 hours.

Salt and levain at the ready.

Amalgamate the salt and levain into the autolysed dough.

2 hours bulk/ 3.5 hours bulk with stretch and folds until the dough becomes too tight to fold without pressing out the precious gasses. Chad's bulk was about 4 hours at 77-78 degrees ambient temperature. But this is where your prowess as a baker comes in. You have to learn to read your dough, right, so Chad's was ready at around 4 hours, maybe yours is ready at 3.5. Once you learn to read the signs of your dough, you will be turning out better and better bread with each session. Perfectly fermented dough looks like it's 'ready to go'. It's filled with gasses, it has increased by roughly 30 percent. When you touch it, it will feel springy and alive. Dead dough feels flaccid, weak. It does not hold a dome. It oozes rather than remaining taut. Dough that is not finished fermenting during bulk is small. It's still energized and springy, but it has not quite filled with gasses and expanded to its potential. It needs more time.

Get the dough onto a worktable. Divide. Preshape into a loose round in prep for bench rest. The more meticulous you are in your preshape, the longer the bench. I personally gather up the ends to the center of the dough with an easy hand. I don't want to press the gasses out of the dough after 4 hours of first fermentation.

This particular dough was benched for 15 minutes. Chad stresses the importance of 'proper curve retention' on the edge as the preshaped round of dough relaxes and spreads. A dough that is flat at point of contact with the bench means that it's underactive or underfermented, underdeveloped or too wet. Overfermented dough will stay very tight and round like a ball, and will start tearing on the surface as the high acid breaks down the gluten earlier than desired.

Speaking of hydration. Start with a modest amount of water in your dough, right, because you can't take it out, but you can always add more water at the start of dough if you need it, or even at the salt stage. Chad hydrates at 80% - 85% at dough time then based on how the dough feels -- and many variables will determine this: ambient temp, type of flour, strength of starter -- he will add more in increments. He pushes hydration to its limits, yeah, but it's always determined by the needs of the dough in a given bread. So, learn to read your dough and use any bread book or formula as a guideline rather than a bible. Your environment is much different than mine or his, so you have to make adjustments to accommodate it. You can make a Tartine Country loaf at 80% one week, then 88% the next. Listen to your dough, be flexible, and with this skill, you will truly learn bread.

Seam side up, into the banneton for final fermentation. After 4-hour refrigerated final fermentation.

Dust the bottom of the dough with rice flour. Chad gets his dough into the Dutchie first, then slashes. I slash first, then into the Dutchie it goes. I also use a lodge combo cooker because I find that it's easier to get the dough in and out. Many burnt knuckles made this piece of apparatus a necessity. So be careful if you are using a deeper Le Creuset! Oh, and a word on cheap Dutchies, over time the hot temps we use for bread will break down the enamel in the pot. I have ended up with enamel from the pot baked into my loaves. No bueno. This does not seem to happen with Le Creuset, so, if you are using enameled Dutchies, I think you get what you pay for.

Onward.

Have a look at Chad's 'slashes'. Here, rather than actually slashing with a razor, he snips the dough using a scissors, sort of in the manner of snipping an epi, and makes what I call his 'Stegosaurus' pattern (and yeah, he does this pattern in the bakery).

I always bake right from cold, as does Chad. He clarifies: baking from cold helps keep the loaf from burning since they always bake from so hot from the start. This ensures that they get enough oven spring from their super hydrated doughs.

Oven and Dutchie are preheated at 500 with stone in oven. Steam at 500 degrees for 15 minutes, turn oven down to 475 degrees, steam for another 15, uncover, bake out till chestnut colored at 460 degrees.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing. I mean it.

To make this loaf, use the Ode To Bourdon formula in Book Three. Remember to autolyse warm and adjust your hydration percentage and fermentation times to suit your environment.

I will be back next week with some information about grain companies. I promise!

To the staff of life!

(All photos in this post ©Chad Robertson)

Chad's Ode

2014-01-10T15:23:00.000-08:00

None of my whole grains have arrived yet (and when they do, man alive! do I have a post for you). But I desperately wanted to make bread. All week its been gnawing at me. So I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to work with the book using some hard red winter wheat flour that I got from my friends at Community Grains, since not everyone is going to run out and buy a flour mill. I stopped by Oliveto recently and Bob Klein, who owns Oliveto and founded Community Grains, was lovely enough to give me some hard red winter wheat to play with. How could I resist? Community Grains is now available at several Whole Foods and some specialty stores. The link above will direct you to their website where you can get it online. They have also listed a number of stores where you can find it here.

This particular wheat is milled from California-grown Red Wing with 13.61% protein. It's 100% stone milled on a granite wheel at temperatures below 110 degrees. Cooler milling temperatures mean that less of the grain's vitamins are destroyed in the process. As well, the wheat at Community Grains is milled without separating the germ, bran and endosperm at any point during the milling process. And here's some news: many companies separate the germ, bran and endosperm in the milling process then later combine the bran and endosperm to make 'whole wheat' flour, leaving the germ out because it can go rancid quickly. This separation process means longer shelf-life for companies but less nutrition for us since it is the germ that contains most of the grain's nutrients and fats. 'Whole grain' flour by definition is a flour where the grain has been milled in its entirety - 100% of the germ, bran and endosperm. 'Whole wheat' flours are not whole grain flours if the grain is not milled in its entirety. Just some food for thought when you reach for your next bag of flour. Know your miller's practices if you want to be confident about the nutrition of your flour, not to mention flavor.

Tartine's Ode to Bourdon loaf, 83% hydration

Onward.

In the first Tartine Three loaf, Chad has tempered the more stalwart flavors of red whole wheat with white whole wheat. Though I happen to find bitterness agreeable. Dandelions are my favorite greens. Campari is my favorite drink. When I hear of people talk about the unpleasant bitterness of whole wheat bread, I don't understand. All that aside, I do like the idea of using white winter wheat in bread because I think it lightens the loaf. Not only aesthetically, but I think that it opens up the crumb in what could otherwise be a very serious bread. It's like 'the other white flour'.

For the white whole wheat flour I used Bob's Red Mill hard white wheat and the marriage of the two flours was harmonious indeed. The nuances of the red wheat shine through here where they might otherwise be clouded by its own bitterness. A temperance that hinted at so many possibilities, so many ideas for later loaves. And so I think you are going to see it make regular appearances in our bread lab.

In keeping with this decision to start with pre-milled flour, instead of sifting out some of the bran to make high-extraction flour - which is near impossible to achieve if you are not milling your own flour and able to control the coarseness of the grind - I decided to go with Chad's suggestion of mixing 50/50 whole grain and sifted strong flour, in this case I used King Arthur bread flour. In the future I am going to work to control the extraction rate through sifting, but when I began this post, my screens had not yet arrived, and since I really wanted the first post to be about using pre-milled flour for people who don't want to mill and sift their own, I figured that it's most logical to make our high-extraction flour using this method because this is probably how you will do it yourselves.

Aside from the welcome addition of higher percentages of whole grains in our breads, in this particular experiment I wanted to try my hand at a couple of different things, namely shaping, making high-extraction flour, and sorting out all of this autolyse business. Actually, let's start there.

To refresh everyone's memory, on the first leg of the experiment, I routinely used one-hour autolyses. It worked for me, so I just carried it over from loaf to loaf. Sometimes I would go a little further. I have gone to an hour and a half with fantastic results. In Book Two, Chad calls for a twenty-five to forty minute autolyse, and now with Three, he comes along and blows our minds with an overnight autolyse. To begin our experiment, I used a conservative hand. Three-hour autolyses for the first round of loaves. I think that through the last experiment we all learned that it's best to start conservatively and push the boundaries gently. It's easier to make adjustments this way because narrow parameters are more manageable. The narrow margins allow us to focus on specific things. When we experiment too widely within a given bread we can get lost, never able to determine what went wrong in the broad sea of variables. Within this new autolyse question, I wanted to keep in mind that our bread is already really time-intensive, so if we can achieve happy results with lesser autolyse, then let's do that, right?

PLEASE SEE THE NEXT POST FOR AN EYE OPENING UPDATE ON AUTOLYSE

In our next post I am committed to try some longer autolyses for the sake of the experiment, but unless this new extended autolyse manages to part the sky and sea, then I think this may be one area of my bread where I am willing to be practical. I like the idea of being able to make bread in a manageable time-frame. I have worked out a schedule where if I rise early, I can make a levain in the morning, work the dough in the afternoon, proof it in the fridge overnight then bake the loaf by noon the next day. This round of loaves found smashing success with a three-hour autolyse, and it fell within a reasonable time-frame, so instead of baking at noon, I could conceivably bake at around 2pm, still enough time to have bread for an afternoon charcuterie and cheese plate.

About this new extended autolyse. I was a little worried about the possibility of overproofing dough, but I kept a close eye on it as it was hydrating, and it expanded at a comfortable rate. That is to say that it didn't blow up too quickly as I feared it might, possibly resulting in an exhausted final dough. Contrarily, at the end of the autolyse, it had increased just enough and became very much alive. At the end of the bulk fermentation, the dough had easily increased by about 30% as you can see in the photos below, and at the end of the final fermentation, accomplished overnight in the refrigerator, the dough had expanded impressively and yielded a really fantastic loaf. Smoke, hazelnuts, sweet molasses, notes of coffee. A good round flavor with all of the loaves, thanks to the white wheat, yeah, but with varying degrees of sourness due to the varied hydrations employed in each one, which you will read about below. The loaves also achieved fine oven spring (more on this with regard to shaping), and the crumb texture was really light and tender with a ruddy hue and a really brittle crust. It's actually a little hard to believe that these loaves are almost completely whole grain, the only white flour being 125g, or 25%, contributed by the high-extraction flour.

81% hydration

To start, I used refrigerator-cold water in both the levain and the final dough, and to be safe, I planned my bread day to start early in the morning so that autolyse through bulk could be accomplished at cool room temperature. The ambient temperature during autolyse was around 64 degrees then crept up to around 70 by the time bulk fermentation finished.

Given the cooler weather, I decided that it was safe to extend the autolyse at room temperature when I was poised originally to mix up the dough then send it immediately to the fridge. I figured that if it started to get too wild too quickly I could always pop it in the fridge. You know what a fan I am of the refrigerator for controlling fermentation. Though it turned out to be just fine with a moderate ambient temp. Maybe I'm a sissy. I don't know. I will tell you this, Chad and Lori are no sissies. His kitchen is warm, and when I arrived there were seriously hydrated pools of dough rubbing shoulders on his bench. I will admit, it made me panic a little. It also made me feel ridiculously conservative. I know it's a fine line between high hydration and madness, so I'm out to find out where that line is.

Chad and his team are daredevils with hydration, which is what produces the bread that all of us are striving to achieve - shattery crust, chewy interior whose flavors reveal all of the nuances of a given grain's terroir. So with this first experiment I added different quantities of water when adding the salt to the dough to see what the outcome would be. These first loaves are weighing in at 79% hydration (this is the suggested hydration that the book calls for in the 'Ode' loaf), 81% hydration, and 83% hydration. And while I don't think that any of these hydrations are out of control, I definitely fumbled during shaping, which, as you know, has an enormous effect on oven spring. If you don't shape your dough tightly enough, it will spread rather than spring. But if you shape it too tightly, you risk pressing out all of the precious gasses that the dough has developed through its several fermentation processes, resulting in a compressed crumb. I didn't shape tightly enough, thus found myself perilously close to flat loaves. The thing that saved me, even with the highly hydrated doughs, was the incredible elastic powers of the flour that I used. Even with the higher hydrations, the dough was active and tight and expanded impressively during the final fermentation.

79% hydration

For this round of loaves, I experimented with the Tartine method of shaping, a method admittedly foreign to me, and I don't think I got the dough tight enough. In the long-run, I think this contributed to the relative flatness of the loaves. I have found that when I shape in my usual way, my bread comes out with a much higher dome even with my high hydration and whole grain breads. My practice is to shape the loaves by twisting the boules on the bench, the friction at point of contact tightens the dough into taut rounds. My friend Joe Bowie, a professional baker in New York, stresses the importance of getting the boules nice and tight. When I watched Lori shape the dough at Tartine (which was exactly how Chad teaches us to shape in his books), she managed to get the dough much tighter than I did with a few deft moves, even though it was clearly very hydrated. And when Crystal lined the fully fermented dough on the belt that fed them into the oven, they were really rambunctious masses with temperamental personalities. They were not these prim, well-behaved spheres that I had imagined they might be. When the bread came out of the oven, the oven spring was incredible and the loaves were gorgeous. Rustic, reddish-brown and enormous, their shapes were wonky and fantastic, not neatly shaped boules and batards. It made me think that I need to let go of the idea of making this 'perfect' bread, right, to just let myself go wild with it.

I think I need a little more time to fine-tune my wild side.

79% hydration

81% hydration

83% hydration

As you can see from the pictures, shaping and tension in the final dough is critical. I mean, I've always known this, but now I really know it. I managed to shape the loaf with the highest hydration the tightest, and I was rewarded with greater oven spring and less spreading. The 81% loaf fought me most during shaping. There was serious elasticity in this dough - and I was admittedly a little more aggressive than usual with my first two series of turns during bulk which probably accounts for some of its strength. I did manage to get the 79% loaf shaped a little tighter. You can see the difference in the height of the loaves above. The folding method did produce a more rustic shape than I usually get with my twisting method, which I like a lot. But bottom line, whether your aim is a rustic shape or one more uniform, it is crucial to get your dough nice and taut. It's not about the method you choose so much as your success in it.

In the next post I am going to work exclusively with home-milled grains and give you all some resources to source your own. For those of you who do not want to mill your own grains, splurge on the best whole grain flour you can afford. After all, bread is flour and water, so choose wisely and your amazing loaves of bread will be your reward. To be sure, I will always tell you what brand of flour and grain I use in my loaves, including links whenever possible.

Overall I think this is an excellent start to our experiment. The introduction of several different kinds of grains in our bread. Using higher percentages of these grains. Pushing the envelope a bit with hydration. Futzing with autolyze and shaping. I'm feeling confident.

Here are the details of our trio of breads. Please note that all hydration percentages include the flour and water in the starter and the levain, and includes the volume of wheat germ.

The Method

This is our 79% hydration bread, and the one that most closely follows the formula in the book in terms of hydration.

The formula below makes one loaf. Gather together these things:

-250g of levain, formula below
-250g high extraction wheat flour, which is simply 125g bread flour (I used KA) whisked together with 125g Community Grains hard red winter wheat flour
-125g Community Grains hard red winter wheat flour
-125g Bob's Red Mill hard white winter wheat flour
-35g wheat germ
-425g cold h2o (see note below which gives hydration amounts for the 81% and 83% hydration loaves) *
-11g kosher salt

A note on the starter. Mine is 100% hydration, 100% dark rye, and I use Bob's Red Mill rye berries in my Komo mill. Until I got my mill, I relied on Bob's Red Mill dark rye flour to feed my starter.

THE NIGHT BEFORE DOUGH DAY

Make your levain. You will need:

-50g active starter (fed about 6 hours before)
-100g cold h2o
-100g Community Grains red winter wheat flour

Dissolve the levain in the h2o, then mix in 100g of Community Grains red winter wheat flour until you arrive at a paste. Cover and let it bloom. I made mine the night before dough day, so it fermented for 8.5 hours. I have had success with levains as young as 5 hours and fermented for 10 hours. For longer ferments, I advise placing the levain in a cool room to ferment more slowly.

DOUGH DAY

Mix together the high extraction flour, the Community Grains red winter wheat flour, the Bob's Red Mill hard white wheat flour and the wheat germ. Set aside.

Dissolve the total levain in 400g of h2o, then add the flour mixture into this, combining well with your hands. You will arrive at a shaggy, sticky mass. Autolyse in a cool room for three hours. It will swell a bit as the gasses begin to expand and turn glossy and smooth as the gluten begins to develop. The ambient temp was about 65 degrees during autolyse.

After you have accomplished autolyse, squish the salt into the dough along with 25g of the remaining water (see note below which gives the additional hydration amounts for the 81% and 83% hydration loaves)*, and proceed with a 4-hour bulk fermentation, the first 2.5 hours of which you will perform a series of turns every half hour. Take care to handle the dough gingerly during the final turns so that you do not press out the gasses that are developing in the dough. Leave the dough unmolested for the remaining 1.5 hours. It should expand about 30% and when you press it with your finger, it will feel taut and alive. I accomplished my bulk fermentation at room temperature, about 70 degrees.

After the bulk fermentation, scrape the dough onto the bench dusted with brown rice flour. A note on brown rice flour, I used Arrowhead Mills brown rice flour this time around and found it to be much more coarse than Bob's Red Mill organic brown rice flour which is what I normally use. Arrowhead Mills feels more like cornmeal. They both serve the purpose of keeping the dough from sticking to the surface of the bench and the linen-lined proofing cloth. But aesthetically and tactilely I prefer Bob's Red Mill. This comes down to a preference thing.

Back to the task at hand.

Shape the dough into a loose round, cover with an inverted bowl, and rest for 25 minutes. After the bench rest, shape the dough into a round, using whatever shaping method you fancy. You only want to be sure to develop some tension in the dough so that you can achieve optimum oven spring.

Pop the dough into a linen-lined bowl dusted with brown rice flour, seam side up, and refrigerate it for 18 hours. Incidentally, my oven only holds two loaves at a time, so this particular loaf was fermented for an additional hour and a half while the other two loaves baked.

BAKE DAY

Preheat the oven to 500 with a dutch oven and baking stone inside.

Unearth the dough by placing a sheet of parchment over the mouth of the dough bowl, then place a peel over this and quickly invert the bowl so that the dough ends up sitting on the paper and the peel, seam side down.

Slash the dough, then slide it into the shallow half of the hot dutchie. Cover with the fat half, slide it into the oven, turn the oven down to 475 and steam for thirty minutes.

After the steam, remove the lid, then stack the pan over its mouth. This will help keep the bottom of your bread from blackening. Nice move, eh?

Turn the oven down to 450 and bake the bread to desired darkness. I find that it's almost impossible to go as dark as Chad's without drying out the loaf in a home oven. So I aim for chestnut-colored.

Cool on a wire rack for at least an hour before slicing.

*For the 81% hydration loaf, add 40g of water when you add your salt, for the 83% hydration loaf, add 50g more water.

Tasting notes: all of the breads had a lovely tender crumb and brittle crust. I will say that there was a pronounced sourness with the increased hydration loaves. The 79% hydration loaf was pretty mild. It was all about the wheat here and the nuances that come with extended fermentation - notes of coffee and nuts, with just a bit of acid. While neither the 81% nor the 83% hydration loaves were overly sour, it was definitely more prominent in the 83% loaf which I loved. I have been asked about my extended cold fermentations and if they yield sour loaves, and I have never had an issue with excess acidity. I am beginning to think that it may be because I have consistently used moderate hydration in my breads. So, perhaps not so much does cold fermentation yield a more acid loaf as does one that is more highly hydrated, or a combination of the two factors. I actually like the acid in sourdough bread. I know some do not. So, if acid is what you are trying to avoid, you may want to experiment with more modestly hydrated loaves. Out of the three, I preferred the flavor of the 83% hydration loaf. All three had their merits, and I imagined each of them pairing more or less agreeably with different things. The lesser hydrated loaves with charcuterie and pickles, the more highly hydrated loaf with olive oil, parmesan, fresh marjoram and chili. All of them would do well with a fantastic glass of wine.

THE JOURNEY, IN PHOTO

levain, ready

the dough, mixed, the start of autolyse

the dough, after 3-hour autolyse

salt added, elastic dough due to extended autolyse

the turns, first and second series

expanding after third and fourth series

fifth and sixth series, expanding nicely

completion of 4-hour bulk

on the bench

successful final ferment

unearth and slash

THE RESULTS

To the staff of life!

This post was shared on Susan's Wild Yeast Blog

he's so lovely

2014-01-01T12:46:00.002-08:00

so, this is my third or fourth attempt at the first post. i wasn't sure how to begin. then it dawned on me, right, that all of you may want to know that i finally met Chad. as you can imagine, i felt like a thirteen year old meeting, i don't know, who's the most popular rock star these days? i'm too old to know.

and oh. he's so lovely.

as is his crew, who were hard at work when I arrived - Lori, swiftly and deftly shaping a forest of impressively hydrated loaves, Crystal ushering perfectly fermented mounds of dough into the maw of an enormous oven that hissed and steamed like some dark beast. with grace, these women worked, and seriousness. tartine bread is serious, one can be sure of that.

touring the tiny kitchen was like arriving at mecca. dewy and powerfully perfumed, one had the sense of being lacquered with something living, something sensational. i secretly hoped that i could later scrape some of the microbes from my coat sleeves and stir them into my starter. and the starter. a fawn-colored mere simmering in a bucket on a high shelf. when Chad thrust it under my nose, i knew exactly what that bread was going to taste like. the bread. that bread. when Chad gave me a loaf the size of one of the wheels on my '91 honda civic, its bark rugged and swarthy as roasted cocoa beans and festooned with shavings of goldish oat, i had forgotten what tartine bread was, i had forgotten the indescribable essence encapsulated in those holy loaves. though i was quickly reminded when i yanked off chunks and devoured handfuls as i later drove over the bay bridge. imagine: the crust, smoky, dark, chocolate, like some mayan aphrodisiac. and the crumb. oh, the crumb. a glossy, nacreous alveolation that begins with a bit of tang, moves into honey, and finishes long with vernal flora. if you think i'm being irrationally musical, you won't when i tell you that a tartine line begins at 8:30 a.m., and by 9:00 a.m. when they open their doors, the queue has extended up the block, and threatens to wrap itself round the next street over. and it's like this every day. Crystal cannot shove those loaves into her ovens fast enough.

and so this is tartine.

tartine's oat porridge bread

the thing about tartine is that despite its world-famous reputation, it remains humble. our guru was there with his crew - the two Jackie Browns of bread baking doing their thing, and then there were Nick and Richard alchemizing, fermenting. he was wearing a blue knit cap and ample beard, sleeves rolled up and plunged deeply in his work. there was not a lick of pretension about him, despite that together with his wife Elizabeth he owns two thriving restaurants, never mind the three books they've authored, all of which are a hefty force in the world of food writing. and still he took time out to meet an adherent crazy enough to take on two of his books.

which brings me to this really important bit. as soon as i got my copy of three, i immediately knew that i had the green light to get myself a komo mill. i had been wanting one since i began this whole affair, but my bread pursuit was still inchoate, and i could not justify it until i really understood what i was doing. the first few pages of three told me that i couldn't really move through the book without one. so i got a classic. much bigger and far more powerful than i could ever have imagined (plenty of power for what we are doing, you do not need the XL, trust me). i also got a sieve setup with 4 removable screens in 4 mesh sizes to sift the flour and control the amount of bran. as you can see, i already have the mill which i used today for the first time to mill dark rye berries to feed my starter, and all i can say is, damn. i am about to make some serious bread.

i will photograph the other toys when they arrive. but you have the links now so you can get yourself prepared for this part of the journey in the next week or two. i also have tons of information about sourcing whole grains which i will share in the next post. i have some things in the works that will be of interest to you all. i want to say, don't be dismayed by the prospect of sourcing grains. i have narrowed down a nice little list and will include links as well so you don't have to flounder about trying to figure out where to go. and of course, as we move through this part of the journey i will continue to include the source of the grains in a given bread. all of them are available online, which means that you can get them wherever you are in the world.

so lets get started. if we can make bread half as ambrosial as Chad's, then 2014 is going to be one hell of a sweet ride.

to the staff of life!

2014...

2013-12-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

Meet me back here in January. We have a lot of (fun) work to do!

to the staff of life!

2013-06-02T16:35:00.005-07:00

i can't believe that i'm actually saying goodbye. it's not forever, i mean, i will leave this blog up for posterity, but i will no longer be contributing new posts. every fine experiment must come to an end, you know. think of this blog as a book. i refer to it as often as you when i've forgotten a detail, and even chad's book has a final page, as does proust's 'in search of lost time', and we all know how long that book is. in fact, i think that he actually died with a pen in his hand (i'm talking proust here) so, if he was immortal, perhaps 'in search of lost time' would still be in the process of being penned: and furthermore!

parmesan & lucques olive: the farewell boule

in keeping with my nature in never lingering over a farewell, i give you my final post. thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for joining me on this road. thank you for all of the comments and emails about how my blog has helped you overcome your bread fears. this is why i began the blog to begin with, and so, i have accomplished my goal.

i want to thank susan at wild yeast blog who helped me on my bread path from the start, and who gave me a place to share my discovery with you. if not for susan, there would be no tartine bread experiment, because i would never have gotten a starter off the ground (for reals). i also wanted to thank all of the people who have installed my blog on their blog lists, i can't tell you what an honor that is.

they say that 'you are only as good as your last _____', and i am happy to say that not a single person has ever written to me to tell me that their starter or bread did not turn out when using this blog. in fact, every comment has detailed the contrary. we have overcome some mysteries together, we've worked some things out, we have held one another's hand. you, dear reader, have educated me along the way. et, voila! by now i think that we are all chad-worthy bakers.

so this is the moment when the tartine bread experiment is no longer an experiment, but an homage to chad robertson who has opened up the sexy world of bread to people like you and me who never thought making something so divine in our very own kitchens was remotely possible. thank you chad (even though you don't know who the hell i am), and THANK YOU ALL!

francis-olive

ADIEU!

the final formula:

LEVAIN DAY:

the night before you plan to make the dough, make your levain:

50g 100% hydration whole rye starter

100g to your health sprouted spelt flour

100g cold filtered h2o

mix this all up to a paste, and ferment overnight. mine fermented for 8 hours.

DOUGH DAY

all of the levain
360g cold filtered h2o
555g KA bread flour
147g lucques olives*
120g parmigiano-reggiano cheese, chopped into bits
26g good fruity olive oil
11g salt

*the olives weighed 219g before i pitted them. the weight above is the pitted weight.

dissolve the levain in the h2o. mix the flour in until you reach a shaggy mass. autolyse this for one hour.

shaggy mass.

after 1-hour autolyse

after the autolyse, squish the salt and olive oil into the dough with your fingers. now begins the 4-hour bulk fermentation, the first 2 hours of which you will perform a series of turns every half hour; this is done at room temp. during the first turn, fold in the cheese and olives. try to keep the cheese and olives encased in the dough while you are doing your turns.

after the first 2 hours with turns, pop in the fridge for the final 2 hours. after the bulk fermentation, turn the dough out onto a rice-floured work surface, gather it up into a loose round, and rest for 15 minutes. after the 15-minute bench rest, work the dough into a tight boule.

pop the dough into a bowl that has been lined with a rice flour-dusted linen, cover with a dampened square of cheesecloth, and cover with a bowl or a plate. pop in the fridge for 18 hours.

BAKE DAY

an hour before you plan to bake, pop your combo cooker into the oven (your stone should be in there. always, right?) and preheat to 550. when the oven is good and hot, pull the dough out of the fridge.

unearth the dough and score it DEEPLY; slide it into the oven and pop the lid on. turn the heat down to 475 and steam for 30 minutes.

after the 30 minute steam, remove the lid. turn the oven down to 450 for 15 minutes, then down to 425 and bake till golden, maybe another 15 minutes. watch it. the cheese will burn if its baked too long.

verdict: the crust turned out brittle and light, the crumb uber tender and open, and of course, i don't have to tell you how good it is. the 18 hour final fermentation, and the addition of cheese and olive oil make this boule as decadent as it looks. this is the perfect denouement to a wonderful journey.

THE CURTAIN CALL

TO THE STAFF OF LIFE!