For Pop

I'm back! Listen, life sometimes gets in the way of, well, life. It's been months since my last post. But many things have happened in my world between my last communiqué and this. Rest assured I have been baking weekly as I always have, and I've been experimenting with new flours and formulae. The difficult side of things is this: I began a new job which seriously slowed my roll with my writing for several months, no bueno, and then my father died. He died. And I still can't believe it. My father was my dude. He was the dude! He was a vegetarian of 40 years, he wore snazzy tweed things and leather patched elbow things, and he had a country house where he spent much of his time noodling about. I get my serious noodling ability from him.

Now my pop is gone. It has been months since his death and I'm still crying. Last night I cried because I could not share my bread with him. Bread that he would have loved. It was my renewed sadness (did it ever end?) that brought me to this post today. It's funny, lately I have felt like something is missing in my life and I haven't been able to put my finger on it. I realized today that it's him. He's what's missing. And he is never coming back. So, I'm baking this bread in his honor. It's a revisitation really, of my (now famous, amongst friends anyway) City Bread, in Rye, my staple loaf. Incidentally, my father loved rye.

Since we last spoke I've begun experimenting with flours. For this round, I am using sprouted rye flour milled to order by To Your Health, a sprouted flour company. Sprouted flour, in conjunction with using a sourdough starter, is supposed to be more digestible, even for people with gluten intolerance. My friend Gina, who has difficulty with commercial breads, has happily reported that the bread that I bake doesn't incite any allergic reactions at all.

As well, some time ago I switched my main starter to 100% rye, which I adore, and my family of starters keeps growing. It's lovely to have a library of starters for a given type of bread, and it turns out that your starter REALLY loves sprouted flour, so you may replace your usual flour with sprouted flour to feed your starter without fear. Since I've been using it to feed mine, they are sweet-smelling with complex, fruity, and even floral notes. How pleasant.

I plan to post regularly again, since my life is starting to gain at least a modicum of normalcy, and I'm really excited to experiment and share this leg of my bread journey using new flours with everyone. Flour is, after all, the artisan bakers medium, one that I think is going to open a whole new world for me.

I'm going to stop here and exercise brevity with this come-back post. A moment of silence for my pop. He was cool and I loved him. I don't think I will ever stop.

Pop, this bread is for you.

XO

The Formula

This formula makes two 77.6% hydration, 26.5% whole grain loaves. The total weight of the dough is 2005g. This City Bread, in Rye has reached its peak because I've noodled with its development for quite a while now.

For the dough:

230g 100% dark rye levain (formula to follow)
750g filtered h2o
820g A/P (I use BRM organic)
180g sprouted dark rye flour (I use To Your Health) (Hey, I have used used both BRM and Arrowhead Mills organic rye flours with great results if you don't have sprouted)
25g fine sea salt

For the levain:

30g 100% hydration, sprouted dark rye starter
100g filtered h2o
100g sprouted dark rye flour

Levain, just mixed

The night before the bake, make the levain like this: In a large bowl (one that will accommodate the total volume of the finished dough), mix together all of the ingredients listed above for the levain, cover tightly. Let it percolate overnight.

Fully developed levain - after 9 hours

The next day, dissolve the levain in 700g of the filtered water, add the 820g AP and 180g sprouted dark rye flours, and mix it all up into a slurry. Autolyse for an hour. Why? Autolyse is a technique that allows the flour to fully absorb the water, making for a more complex loaf in terms of texture and flavor.

Dough just mixed and ready for autolyse

Onward.

After the hour, add the sea salt and the remaining 50g of water, squishing it all together with your fingers until it is a smooth, cohesive mass. Now it is time for the 4-hour bulk fermentation, the first 2 hours of which, you will perform your turns, one turn per half-hour.

Here is a snapshot of my schedule:
7:00 - 8:00 - autolyse. 8:00 - add salt. Turns at 8:30, 9:00, 9:30, 10:00.

Refrigerate the dough immediately after the final turn for 2 hours. After 2 hours, take the dough out of the fridge, pour it out onto the counter using your flexible dough scraper (carefully, you don't want to destroy that lovely network of gluten that was just painstakingly developed). Divide the dough in two equal pieces. Just eyeball it, you don't have to weigh it. Gather each together into loose rounds and let it rest on the bench for 30 minutes.

After the 30-minute bench rest, form the dough into two tight boules. Generously dust two linen cloths with organic brown rice flour, drape this over two bowls large enough to accommodate your soon-to-grow boules, then gently place the dough into the bowls in their linen cradles, smooth side down.

Fold the loose ends of the linen up over the top of the boules, cover each bowl with a plate, pop in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours, or overnight if you please. The loaves featured in this post proofed in the fridge for 10 hours.

Fully-proofed dough

An hour before you plan to bake, preheat the oven (550 degrees) fitted with a baking stone, and slip in two cast iron dutch ovens. You want these dutchies to be smokin' hot. Makes for a divine crust.

When the oven is good and hot, pull the dough out of the fridge, working with one at a time. Cut a piece of parchment large enough to fit over the bowl, place it over the bowl, place a peel over the parchment then carefully invert the dough onto the peel. Remove the bowl and the linen.

Dough waiting on the peel

Score your loaves with your signature score.

Scored loaves, waiting for the oven

Pull one hot dutchie out of the oven, and remove the lid. Jerk the peel so that the dough slides effortlessly into the shallow half of the awaiting pan. Careful! The pan will burn the crap out of you if you accidentally touch it. It's red-hot. Cover with the deep half of the dutchy and slide it into the oven. Repeat with the second loaf.

Lower the oven to 500 degrees. Bake the loaves covered for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the deep lids from the dutchies **lift the lids carefully, better yet, use oven mitts.

Loaf after 30 minutes of steam

The steam can deliver a nasty burn when it escapes from the removed lid! Slide the lidless dutchies back into the oven, lower the heat to 450 degrees, and bake till espresso-brown.

Mine baked for another 40 minutes, and I turned the pan 180 degrees at the half way mark because the back of the oven is always hottest and will blacken the backside of the loaves if you don't.

Cool on a wire rack, of course, and try to wait at least an hour before slicing.

The Headshots

City Bread salad with dandelion greens, tomatoes & a kick-ass basil-almond dressing

To the staff of life!


This blog post was shipped off to Wild Yeast Blog's Yeast Spotting.

City Bread, An Accomplishment

City bread, round one

I've been wanting to make a bread that is not quite as hearty as Tartine's whole wheat, and definitely something with an earthier more wheaty flavor than the country loaf. I also like my bread with a bit of bite, though I know that in France that the mark of a great baker is one who produces loaves with imperceptible tang. I'm a San Franciscan. We can take a little sour with our bread, and frankly, the chewy texture that comes with long fermentations - which also leads to a more sour bread - is one of the primary reasons I started baking my own sourdough at home.

The bread of my dreams is one that I remember when I worked at Oliveto. I was addicted to it. It was wheaty with a lovely tang. The texture was incredible, chewy, bold, and the crust was incomparable.  I'm sure it was Acme or Grace, perhaps one that Oliveto had commissioned the bakery to produce for their dining room. Grace and Acme are two bakery giants over that way. There are actually many impeccable bread bakeries back home aside from Tartine. If you ever take a trip to the Bay Area, be sure to map out a bread tour. Many of the bakeries are in the East Bay.

City bread, round two

I've not gotten around to trying to make my dream bread because I really wanted to keep moving along on the proper Tartine path. Alas, sometimes no matter how diligently we stroll down one path, there will always be another that beckons us, and sometimes we must follow, even if we don't realize why we've made the detour until we are half way down the road.

I think the Universe wanted me to work on this loaf in my mind, because I ended up making it when I made a chanterelle pizza for my last post by accident. Here's how it went: I know Chad's bread measurements for all of the breads up to the variations on whole wheat by heart, as well as the method that he outlines in his book. Last week I woke up at 6:30 in the morning to make the dough for my upcoming round of pizzas (I skipped over those, so I'm backtracking a bit). I was so tired that morning that I mismeasured the flours, et voila! I ended up with my dream bread. Sort of. The first round was the debut loaf, great for pizza crust, but as a boule, the method needed to be adjusted (and no, you will NOT see the pictures for that inaugural loaf!). I have since done two more rounds of the bread with adjustments, which are the makeup of this post.

City bread, round two, closeup

What I've come up with in this bread is one that is just wheaty enough, the crumb is open, it's chewy and with a touch of sour. Because I like my bread with a little tang, and with a chewier interior, I am going to continue to experiment with longer fermentation times and, primarily, fermenting and proofing in the fridge.

The thing I love best about baking bread is that it mimics life. No two loaves are the same, nor are two days, nor two moments for that matter. Bread, and life, can be begun over again, adjusted, manipulated, contemplated, a strategy forged to make it better suited to your preference. Each effort is a building block of self-understanding. There are no mistakes. Only lessons and new beginnings which are better than those before, because we've grown so much wiser than even one day ago, and can make better choices down this path. That is a monumental gift given to us that sometimes we forget. But when we remember, it reminds us  of the malleability of our lives, the magnitude of our strengths.

City bread, round 1, closeup

This bread is my new City Bread, my fork in the road, something to call my own. I've been working hard to understand how to work with dough, how to yield to it and listen to what it needs rather than beating it into submission, or meeting it with deaf ears. I have been diligently following the Tartine book for a while now, and I needed some deviation, something that would give me permission to experiment, a strategy to alter the landscape of my life and remind me that I have many more choices than I've been willing to see. And I've needed some successes to lend my life some purpose.

This past week I've had multiple successes with my bread as well as my writing, I feel accomplished, and I've been able to share them, both, with my friends and now you. I think that it's crucial to design a life where you have daily accomplishments. Your spirit does not measure the size of them, all it knows is that you were successful. Hooray! And when we feel successful every day, it propels us to a place of continued striving. It allows a sense of purpose to fill us. The goal is to attain little accomplishments every day - a good workout, a loaf of bread - to keep up the momentum. And you have to acknowledge them too. There is no virtue in belittle an accomplishment or telling yourself that you could have done more. That tells your spirit, every day, that you aren't successful, or grateful for that matter. And I don't know about yours, but mine does not thrive in a dampened world. Our spirits need support and nurturing, we have to be kind to ourselves while we have the privilege of being here.

Crumb from round two

Here is to everyone who might find themselves at the fork in their road. Whichever route you take, may it lead you to a greater understanding of who you are. May you have successes every day that know no measure, and may you never forget to praise yourself for them. If you don't the accomplishment was not worth pursuing to begin with.

Here is my City Bread, in two rounds. Quite an accomplishment, if I do say so myself!

ROUND ONE

Begin this bread the night before with a levain. For round one I made a whole wheat levain, as I usually do, with my 100% hydration rye starter. Instructions are below.

700g bread flour

300g whole wheat flour

800g h20

200g whole wheat levain

20g salt

To make the levain, in a bowl, take one tablespoon of your active rye starter and mix it with 100g h20 and 50g each AP and whole wheat flour. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm spot in the kitchen to ferment overnight.

The next morning:

1) Dissolve the levain in 750g of water, then stir in the whole wheat and bread flours until it's a shaggy mass. Autolyse for 1.5 hours.

2) After autolyse, stir in 20g of salt and the 50g of remaining water. Vigorously mix this with your hand until all of the water and salt is incorporated, and the dough becomes a smooth mass. Let it rest for 30 minutes, our fermentation has begun.

3) After 30 minutes of rest, perform your first series of turns (there are four total). Dip your hand under the dough, then pull the bottom of the dough over the top, turn the bowl 1/3 turn and do this again. I fold the dough like this for a total of 3 times. Cover with plastic and rest for 30 minutes.

(turn two) After 30 minutes, repeat the turns as you did above. (turn three) For the third series of turns, be more gentle with the dough. As you can see, it has become more aerated, and the gluten structure is developing. You do not want to collapse those lovely gas chambers. (turn four) For the last series of turns, be very, very delicate with the dough. Perform your turns gingerly, or you risk deflating the dough.

Dough after the first two series of turns

Dough after the last two series of turns

The dough, during the turns, has been fermenting for two hours. Let it rest for 15 minutes at room temperature.

4) Pop the dough in the fridge and let it ferment for another 2 hours and 15 minutes.

A note on fermenting and proofing: The weather is hot where I live at the moment, which makes a huge difference in fermentation and proofing times and refrigeration is the best method to employ to keep the dough from overfermenting or overproofing.

5) The dough has been fermenting for a full 4.5 hours. Scrape it onto a workspace.

6) Divide the dough into two pieces, shape into loose rounds and let them rest on the bench for 15 minutes. It's hot here, anything more than that is too long, which is why we are preshaping very casually. If you want a longer bench rest, then preshape your dough a little more tightly.

Make sure you cover the dough while it rests on the bench so that it does not form a skin. I just inverted a couple of bowls over it.

7) Shape the dough into boules, then pop them into linen lined bowls dusted with rice flour. Pop the bowls into the fridge and proof for 3 hours 30 minutes. I had a guest coming over, so I cut the proofing time short. I really wanted to proof for at least 4.5 hours, but, well, there's that.

8) 20 minutes before you plan to bake the bread, preheat the oven to 550 degrees with your combo cookers inside.

9) When the combo cookers are hot, and the oven is sufficiently preheated, gently invert your bowl onto a peel that you have dusted liberally with semolina so that it will snap right off of the peel.

10) Score the loaves, then get them into the combo cookers, get the lids in place, turn the oven down to 450 degrees, and bake for 30 minutes to steam the loaves.

11) After 30 minutes, remove the lid of the combo cooker and bake for however long it takes to finish. I think mine took another 35 minutes. The temp of the bread upon removal was 215 degrees.

I apologize, but I didn't take proper pictures of the interior. All that was left to photograph was this chunk, and you can see that the side has gone dry. But I wanted you all to see the crumb nonetheless.

Verdict

Crust: super shattery. I gave a loaf to my friend, and a half loaf to my neighbor and they raved over the crust and the crumb. The bottom crust was awesome. Crumb: Open. It was tender and with just the right amount of 'sourdough chewiness', which is what draws me to this bread. Flavor: Earthy. Wheaty. The wheat was just assertive enough without being overpowering. I am looking for a bread that is bit more sour, which is why I did round two and increased the proof time by an hour. But this bread as it is is pretty perfect when you are looking for a loaf that is mildly sour. This loaf would be perfect with membrillo and manchego cheese. Ease of handling with the dough: Simple. Notes: I would love to see this bread with a little more tang to it. In round two, I increased the proof time a bit to see if I could accomplish this. See round two below

ROUND TWO

Begin this bread the night before with a levain. For round two I made a rye levain with my 100% hydration rye starter. Instructions are below.

On bake day, gather together these things:

700g bread flour

300g whole wheat flour

800g h20

200g rye levain (instructions just below)

20g salt

Make the Levain:

1) To make the levain, in a bowl, take one tablespoon of your active rye starter and mix it with 100g h20 and 100g of dark rye flour. Cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm spot in the kitchen to ferment overnight.

Levain, the morning after

The next morning:

2) Dissolve the levain in 750g of water, then stir in the whole wheat and bread flours until it's a shaggy mass. Autolyse for 1.5 hours.

Dough just mixed

Dough after autolyse

3) After autolyse, stir in 20g of salt and the 50g of remaining water. Vigorously mix this with your hand until all of the water and salt is incorporated, and the dough becomes a smooth mass. Let it rest for 30 minutes, our fermentation has begun.

Just salted dough

Dough after being salted and rested

4) After 30 minutes of rest, perform your first series of turns (there are four total). Dip your hand under the dough, then pull the bottom of the dough over the top, turn the bowl 1/3 turn and do this again. I fold the dough like this for a total of three times. Cover with plastic and rest for 30 minutes.

(turn two) After 30 minutes, repeat the turns as you did above. (turn three) For the third series of turns, be more gentle with the dough. As you can see, it has become more aerated, and the gluten structure is developing. You do not want to collapse those lovely gas chambers. (turn four) For the last series of turns, be very, very delicate with the dough. Perform your turns gingerly, or you risk deflating the dough.

Dough after first turn. Already developing great gluten structure

Gluten structure after the first turn

Dough after the second turn. Excellent gluten development

Gluten strength after the second turn

Dough after the third turn. Super aerated

Dough after fourth turn. Nice fermentation here

The dough, during the turns, has been fermenting for two hours. Let it rest for 15 minutes at room temperature.

5) Pop the dough in the fridge and let it ferment for another 2 hours, for a total fermentation time of 2 hours and 15 minutes.

After 2 hour refrigerated fermentation

6) The dough is ready to be turned out onto a workspace. I don't normally flour my workspace, but I did this time and I didn't like it. I don't like the risk of incorporating raw flour into my dough, so I scraped it up as best I could, and worked on a naked bench.

7) Divide the dough into two pieces, shape into loose rounds and let them rest on the bench for 15 minutes. It's hot here, anything more than that is too long, which is why we are preshaping very casually. If you want a longer bench rest, then preshape your dough a little more tightly.

8) Cover the dough with bowls to prevent it from forming a skin while it rests on the bench.

9) Shape the dough into boules, then pop them into linen lined bowls dusted with rice flour. Pop the bowls into the fridge and proof for 4 hours. I wanted to go longer, but I don't think the dough could handle it. I really pushed the fermentation at room temp with the hot weather today. When the weather gets cooler, I am going to push the proofing time to see what sort of flavor develops with lengthier proofs.

Dough in linen before proofing

Dough fully proofed

10) 20 minutes before you plan to bake the bread, preheat the oven to 550 degrees with your combo cookers inside.

11) When the combo cookers are hot, and the oven is sufficiently preheated, gently invert your bowl onto a peel that you have dusted liberally with semolina so that it will snap right off of the peel.

Dough on the peel

12) Score the loaves, then get them into the combo cookers, get the lids in place, turn the oven down to 450 degrees, and bake for 30 minutes to steam the loaves.

The two loaves after 30 minute steam

13) After 30 minutes, remove the lid of the combo cooker and bake for however long it takes to finish. These loaves took another 36 minutes. The temp of the bread upon removal was 215 degrees.

Verdict:

Crust: Super shattery. Very nice. Great bubbles. Crumb: Relatively open. And it was tender, a little more than the wheat levain based bread. It still had a lovely chewiness to it. This is the perfect egg salad bread.

Flavor: Beautiful. Earthy. A little more sourness than the loaves in round one. The rye definitely comes through in this bread, and I think it contributes to the tenderness of the crumb. Dough's ease of handling: Simple.

Notes: I really wanted to try a rye levain with this bread to see what sort of flavor it would contribute to the finished loaves, and to see what sort of latitude I had in handling the dough (i.e., how it would affect fermentation and proofing times). The rye was perceptible, but it made the fermentation and proofing time a little more precarious, simply because of the weather here (it's been close to 100 degrees). I would love to see if I can create a 'sister' bread to this one with a little more tang. This bread itself was perfect, and I would not change a thing (hang on to the formula above!), but if I wanted a more assertively tangy bread, I would reduce the room temp fermentation time in hot weather. Say, pop in in the fridge after the third turn when it starts to really take off. That way the fermentation time can be pushed (might be easier with the formula in round one, because rye ferments more quickly than wheat, though I think the small contribution of rye here would not pose too much of an issue for experimentation's sake), as well as the proofing time. I am going to experiment next with fermentation and proofing times, always in search of a bread with just enough tang and chewiness. I will post my findings as soon as those loaves are done. The temperature is supposed to come down quite a bit here in L.A., so that will affect room temp fermentation times. Keep this formula. It's definitely a winner.

To the staff of life!

This post was taken to Wild Yeast Blog's Yeast Spotting. These loaves were inspired by Tartine Bread book's breads.