wow

so, i've been wanting to push the boundaries of my final fermentation time, which is the period of time that bread develops its flavor, where the crumb structure and texture is determined, and how the crust develops. the final fermentation for this boule was 20 hours, and i have to say, the crust and crumb of this loaf was pretty, well, wow.

here's what: if you start feeding your starter twice a day starting today (saturday), you can have this bread for christmas day. that's what i'mmunna do. i'll make one for my friend jen too (yes, you can just double the formula). together we'll rip off pieces of it and dip it in our christmas soup. after our hot chocolate. and presents.

here's a snapshot of your schedule in case you do want to make it: 1) feed the starter twice on saturday, 2) then twice on sunday - like 8am and 3pm, 3) then start the levain on sunday night like 11pm or midnight, just before bed (be sure you feed the starter again after you rob it for your levain. yes, it's fine if you feed your starter 3x in a day. and yes, it's fine to feed your starter spaced apart by, oh, i don't know, 6, 7, 8 hours. if you have a good strong starter, it will be fine, i do it all the time, it makes her good and robust and ready for action) 4) start the dough on monday morning, like 7am or 8am, even 9am, but you will have to determine the best time by the health of the levain 5) and bake the bread tuesday morning, after a full 20 hours of fermentation.

oh, hey, a note on shaping. when forming your dough into a boule, be sure to get it as round as possible, because when it's resting in its hammock, it is going to retain the shape that you shaped it in. that means, if you left it knobby or misshapen, that's how the bread will bake up. when i shaped this loaf, i remember thinking that i should give it a couple more twists to round it out. there was a little 'point' on one side of it, and i used it as an opportunity to see if it would round out in the bowl. one would think, right?

alas, it will not, so, if you want a perfectly round boule, 1) make sure that you don't over-hydrate your dough 2) be sure that fermentation is complete from levain through final fermentation 3) be sure to take care when shaping the boule. it's not that i mind a little funkiness to the shape of my bread, after all, it is rustic. i just thought you might want to know. little tweaks in this experiment, yeah?

so, this just about uses up all of my BRM light spelt. i wanted to do a post about it because there it is, on the supermarket shelf, it is its own product, and perhaps you were passing it by all these long months thinking 'what is 'light' vs. white vs. whole? how will it behave? should i try it?'

light spelt is a cross between whole and white spelt. bob sifts out enough bran to lighten the flour (personally, himself, just kidding. is there even a real bob? or is he like aunt jamima? a mere mascot to make us personally connect with his flour? yeah, too much time on these here hands...) so you get to eat a 'white' bread that won't make you feel so guilty. not that i feel guilty about eating white flour. what's the point in that? guilt is overrated. just drop it and you'll be fine.

back to bob and his flour. verdict? i personally appreciate the flour. flavor: when i took my first bite, i literally said 'wow'. the crust: was earth shattering, the crumb: was perfectly gelatinized. so there's that. and here's this.

city bread, in light spelt

THE NIGHT BEFORE DOUGH DAY

make your levain:

37g starter
111g dark rye flour, i used BRM
111g h2o

mix this together to make a paste and ferment. mine took 7 hours 15 minutes.

DOUGH DAY

make the dough:

259g levain
367g h2o
275g BRM light spelt flour
275g KA bread flour
12g sea salt

mix together the levain, the flours and water until it reaches a shaggy mass. autolyse for 1 full hour. after autolyse, squish the salt into the dough with your hands.

begin the bulk fermentation. for the first two hours of the bulk fermentation, you will perform a series of turns every half hour at room temp. for the last two hours, pop the dough in the fridge and allow it to ferment, untouched.

after the bulk fermentation is complete, turn the dough out onto a counter dusted with brown rice flour, gather it up into a loose round and let it rest for 10 minutes. after it has rested, shape it into a boule, focusing on getting it as round as possible if you wish. But don't go too crazy. you don't want to compact the dough after it has developed such lovely gases or risk tearing the 'skin'.

pop this into a bowl lined with a linen that has been dusted with brown rice flour, pop in the fridge and ferment for 20 hours.

BAKE DAY

one hour before you bake, preheat the oven to 550 degrees. make sure your stone and both halves of the combo cooker are in there too.

after a FULL HOUR (i'm serious), unearth the dough onto a peel lined with a piece of parchment, score the dough in some lovely pattern, then slide it into the shallow half of the combo cooker.

pop on the top half and turn the oven down to 475 degrees. steam for 30 minutes.

after the steam, remove the top half of the combo cooker using an oven mitt to avoid a nasty steam burn.

turn the oven down to 450 degrees and bake until the richest marron.

to the staff of life!

this post has been exhibited on Susan's wild yeast blog. thank you susan, for giving us a platform to share our bread!

JUST A LITTLE MORE

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.

In a rye mood

Dear Bread,

Hey. Me again. So, here we are at the end of this part of our journey, and I must say, being with you, Bread, has taken me down one of the most splendid forks in my private little road.

You've taught me so much Bread, and I feel that I've gotten to know you so well, what makes you thrive, what makes your spirit wane. I know how the warm weather makes you ornery, uncooperative, and frankly a little gassy. I know how you prefer to be handled gently, in private, even though you flaunt yourself with lovely frocks as though you want the world to believe that you're impenetrable and immune to defeat.

Most significantly, you've taught me patience Bread, and that alone has allowed our relationship to flourish. I know now that you need a lot of time and space alone to energize, and when I don't push you too hard, you are a reliable partner who feeds me everything that I could possibly ever need. Bread, I'm just going to say this, while our romance is stronger than ever, you've also become my closest friend.

I'm so glad that we've recorded our romance and shared it publicly, aren't you Bread? Its kept us accountable, and I love to be able look back and see all that we've learned together, all the wonderful ways that we've grown.

I hope that other people have been able to learn from our lessons too Bread, and I think they have, because they email us and encourage us to keep going with our relationship. Sometimes they give us advice, and even ask us for a few tips to keep their own relationships alive and strong.

I know our romance has not always been smooth sailing, we've had our ups and downs. You know, the silly little phase where I wouldn't touch you at all, and then those moments when I forced you to drink too much water because I thought it would be good for your complexion, and instead you almost drown. But you always forgave me Bread, you always gave me space to noodle around, even though you foresaw that some of the things I was doing was going to yield unsavory results. You somehow knew that if I was not allowed to make those mistakes, I would never truly understand you.

Now I see that you were trying to teach me that even though sometimes things are challenging, if we see our difficult moments as learning experiences instead of failures, together we can flourish.

So, today I'm in a rye mood, because we've come this far and now we have to take things to another level. I've gotten comfortable, I will admit, but you're right, we have to keep challenging one another if we are to stay interested enough for this thing to grow. What did you say to me the other day? Something about not always knowing where the path will lead, and that if we trust in one another, we are destined to become part of something that is so much bigger than ourselves? I don't know Bread, you are just so wise, and sometimes I don't fully understand.

I'm ready Bread, to move on to the next phase, a deeper place, and I'm honored that you feel that I'm worthy enough to meet some of your dearest friends. Brioche, the rich prima donna, and Croissant, the little prig, and that English chap that you lovingly call 'Muffin', they sound like such an interesting bunch. I'm glad that you warned me that they can be a temperamental lot, fussy sometimes, uncompromising at their worst, but I promise I will do my best to try to understand them too. I know that once I've won their affections, they will be putty in my hands, just like it was with you.

You know, Bread, even though I'm scared that we are getting more serious, I think that with all that I have learned from you that we have a good chance at success, and I think that our love will be everlasting.

I just want you to know that loving you has made my life so much better, and as our bond deepens, I know that as long as we are committed to learn from one another, this relationship will take us to places that not too long ago I had only dreamed of.

I love you Bread. Then, now, always.

Tartine Country Loaf, In Rye

FOR THE DOUGH
800g h20
200g rye levain (see below)
830g KA bread flour
170g Bob's Red Mill medium rye flour
20g salt

FOR THE LEVAIN
15g active rye starter
100g h20
50g Bob's Red Mill medium rye flour
50g KA AP flour

1) Make the Levain:

Levain in full bloom

Dissolve 15g active rye starter in 100g h20. Stir in 50g medium rye flour and 50g AP until you arrive at an amalgamated paste. Let this ferment overnight. My levain is usually in full bloom in 8 hours.

2) Dissolve the levain in 800g of h20. Stir in the 830g bread flour and 170g rye flour with your hands until you reach a shaggy mass. Autolyse for at least an hour.

Dough ready for autolyse

3) Squish the 20g of salt into the dough with your fingers until it is fully incorporated, let it rest for 30 minutes.

4) After 30 minutes, you will perform 4 series of turns every 30 minutes, which will comprise 2 full hours of your fermentation. Perform your turns like this: dip your hand under the bulk of the dough, and fold the bottom up over the top of the dough, give the bowl a 1/3 turn and repeat until you have done this three times. Be gentle with the dough. You are not kneading, you are stretching the dough and organizing the gluten molecules into long strands. The dough will strengthen via fermentation. Forget about all of the Cranford BBC movies on PBS where those 19th century women beat the crap out of their dough to illustrate hard livin'. Gentle and patient is the name of the game here.

Rye flour is extensible, rather than elastic, as shown here

5) After 2 hours of gentle turning, let the dough ferment unmolested for another 2 hours at room temp if it's cool enough in your area.

Dough after first turn

Dough after 4 hour fermentation

6) After the 4 hour ferment, turn the dough out onto a well-oiled (or floured, your call) workspace.

7) Divide, shape into loose rounds, and cover with 2 bowls for their 15 minute bench rest.

8) After the bench rest, shape into boules, then get them into bowls that have been lined with linens dusted with brown rice flour. Pop them into the fridge for a 4 hour proof

9) With 25 minutes left of your proof, preheat your oven to 500 degrees with two combo cooker sets inside. After the dough is fully proofed, cut out a square of parchment, place over the mouth of the bowl, and invert the bowl onto a peel. Remove the bowl and the linen carefully (in case there are any sticky spots, you don't want to yank the linen off too hard and rip the dough).

10) Score the dough, slide it into the shallow part of the hot cast iron pan, mist with a water bottle set on the MIST setting. Cover with the deep part of the comb cooker. Turn the oven down to 450 degrees and bake for 30 minutes covered.

11) Remove the cover from the combo cooker, then bake until done. My bread took another 40 minutes for an hour and 10 minute total bake.

Verdict:
Crust: I think this is my best crust so far. So brittle, it was hard not to slice into it the night of the bake. But I had to wait till the morning light to photograph it for you all.  Crumb/Flavor: Earthy, nice bit of tang, super complex and absolutely delicious. I will pose this question: to degas or not to degas. There are two schools of thought. Some people do, some people don't. I never degas, and with this bake I did. I think that it smashes all of the gas chambers and minimizes the open crumb. I don't think I will degas again. I don't recall the Tartine book saying that we should degas, but I've been reading about all these bakers degassing here and far and decided I might give it a try. I don't like it! And I don't think I will do it again. Anyway, back to the crumb. Full gelatinization was realized, the crumb was chewy and awesome. Great with a ripe brie that I had on hand. Ease of handling dough: Super simple. Just keep in mind that working with rye is a different animal. It's going to feel more 'gummy' than you might be used to because of rye's extensible properties. That means that it's not elastic, like wheat flour (meaning, it stretches when you pull it, rather than snapping back). Bench notes: I didn't like that whole degassing thing, so I want to try this again without doing it to see if it will lend to a more open crumb.

To the staff of life!

This rye post was sent off to Wild Yeast Blog's Yeast Spotting.