April 27, 2014
by Neil
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Light Rye Yeast Bread Baked on Stone

As a follow up to the previous post about using a wet yeast dough, stored over several days in the refrigerator, I decided to try another variant using the same basic recipe from the same book, “The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day”. This time I went with around 150g of rye flour instead of the usual whole wheat/rye mixture I used the first time. The results were very good. I don’t use carroway seeds in my ryes, primarily because my kids won’t eat the bread then (I personally love it that way).

The results were just as good as the previous round of baking, as can be seen from the photographs that follow.

15% Percent Rye Loaf

15% Rye Loaf, Sliced

April 5, 2014
by Neil
2 Comments

First New Yeast Bread on a Baking Stone

It has been a long time since I posted to this blog. Not because I wasn’t baking mind you, but because I had nothing new to add and had little time for experimentation. Things changed recently and I have found myself experimenting again.

I recently bought another baking book called, “The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day”. This is a reprinted edition of an older work. The main premise of the book is that in 5 minutes of active effort, you can have fresh bread every day. To be fair, even though I am quite experienced, I probably still invest more like 10 minutes, but that is still not much for good bread each day. The trick behind it, is to make a lot of dough, and use smaller portions of it to make loaves each day, leaving the remainder to continue improving in the refrigerator. They also use a wet dough approach, like most sourdough artisan bakers.

I made up a peasant loaf recipe, with their standard peasant dough combination, which is not terribly different from some of my lighter mixed grain breads. I then let it rise for about 3 hours (my kitchen is considerably cooler than most US kitchens appear to be, so 2 hours is too short). After that, I placed a lid over it (not tightly, just as I do for sourdough) and placed it in the refrigerator to develop over night. The next morning I sprinkled some flour on the top of the dough, and using a serrated knife cut off around 500g of dough (around a third). I did a very quick shaping into a boule and placed it on the peel, which had been liberally dusted with cornmeal, to rest for 90 minutes.

Peasant loaf on the peel

At 50 minutes I turned on my oven with the stone and the tray for the water already inside. I have a gas oven and need to set it to Gas Mark 9 (highest temperature) for 40 minutes to get it to roughly 235° C (baking temperature, my oven doesn’t get hotter).

Once the oven was ready, I dusted the loaf on the peel fairly thoroughly with flour and using a serrated bread knife, I cut several scores in the top of the dough, roughly 1 cm deep.

Scoring the bread

Loaf fully scored resting on the peel

Using the peel I then placed the loaf on the baking stone in the upper middle of the oven and poured about a cup of hot tap water into the pan below to provide for steam. The oven door was then closed to retain the heat and moisture. I set timer for 35 minutes and let it bake.

I then removed it from the stone using the peel (with a little help from a metal spatula). The result was everything you could hope for. It looked great, and after giving it an hour or a bit more to cool on a cooling rack, it tasted great!

Finished bread on the peel

40 percent wholewheat sourdough pancakes banner

December 2, 2012
by Neil
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40% Whole Wheat Sourdough Pancakes

It has been quite a long time since I posted anything new to this blog. Not because I am not baking, but I haven’t had time to do much of anything particularly new.

This recipe is a new take on the first sourdough pancake recipe in my blog. I have wanted to switch it to being measured by weight rather than volume for some time. So this time around, I not only used 50% whole-wheat flower, I also adjusted the measurement of everything into weight units.

The night before:

Approximately 150g or so of starter (basically I use whatever is left in the jar after refreshing for a bread baking cycle).
375ml water
200g whole wheat flour
300g white bread flour

Just before cooking:

1 egg
167ml milk
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp sugar (brown or white)
1 tbsp sunflower oil

Once the starter has risen adequately, mix the egg, milk, salt, baking powder, sugar and oil in a separate container. Heat the pan to the appropriate temperature (a drop of water will bounce around the inside of the pan, not just fizzle). Once it has reached the right temperature, mix the egg and milk mixture into the starter and stir vigorously to spread it throughout evenly. Then cook normally on the griddle (use a ladle to drop batter onto the griddle). Once the top is showing holes fairly completely, turn over and cook until done.

The new recipe was just as tasty, if not more so, as the previous one. The results speak for themselves.

40 percent wholewheat sourdough pancakes

July 26, 2012
by Neil
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Rye and Whole Wheat Sourdough Bread

It has been a while since I last posted here. Not that I haven’t been baking, but I haven’t been doing anything new. Yesterday I decided to try out a new combination, so the results of that is reported here. The idea was to produce a rye bread that wasn’t quite as heavy as a pure rye and which would actually have a more varied structure like that found in wheat breads.

The recipe I came up with looks like this:

200g Starter
800ml Water
400g Rye flour
400g Stone ground whole wheat flour
200g Strong white bread flour
19g Salt

To begin I refreshed my sourdough normally the night before (170ml water, 100g white bread flour, 100g whole wheat flour). The following morning, I placed 750ml of water and 200g of the starter (the remainder was put away for the next time) into the mixing bowl. I thoroughly mixed the sourdough witht he water, then added 400g of rye flour, 400g of stone ground whole wheat flour, and 200g of strong white bread flour. I then measured out 19g of salt to be added later.

The dough was then thoroughly mixed together then allowed to rest for 30 minutes. Then the salt was added together with the final 50ml of water and it was mixed into the dough. I then gave it another 30 minutes rest.

After the rest I gave it the first turn. This was certainly trickier than a normal wheat bread, since the influence of 40% rye flour made the gluten quite fragile. Rye doughs normally don’t get any turns at all, so with this much rye, care was essential. I turned the dough roughly every 15 minutes for 5 turns. Each time it was a little easier to do the turns.

After the fifth turn, I left it to do the bulk fermentation for 5 hours. I then turned it out onto the work surface, floured it and split it into two pieces, and did an initial shaping. This was also more complicated than normal, the dough was still quite moist and didn’t hold together like a typical wheat dough. After letting it rest on the work surface, covered, for 10 minutes, I did the final shaping and placed the loaves into two round bannetons dusted with rice flour. These were the covered and allowed to rise for 2 1/2 hours more.

I then baked them in the usual way, 20 minutes with the cover on, 25 minutes with the cover off. The result can be seen below. The taste was great, the structure is more reminiscent of a wheat bread but it has a strong rye flavor and the center of the bread is moist like a pure rye loaf.

All in all, it worked out well.

Rye and whole wheat sourdough bread

Rye and whole wheat sourdough bread sliced

March 16, 2012
by Neil
1 Comment

100% Whole Wheat Hearth Bread

I recently acquired a new book on artisan bread baking that I have tried a few things from. The advantage is that I don’t need to have already set up my starter to make a levain in order to bake tomorrow morning. These recipes mainly use yeast rather than sourdough, and can be whipped up fairly fast and put in the refrigerator overnight or for up to four days. The book is called “Peter Reinhart’s artisan breads every day”. The following recipe is based on one from this book.

This whole wheat yeast hearth bread recipe makes 2 loaves.

Ingredients

1000g whole wheat flour
18g salt
36g brown sugar
11g active dry yeast (I use Allinson’s which is meant to be rehydrated before using)
780ml lukewarm water
36g sunflower oil

Mixing the Dough

Mix the wet ingredients together in one bowl. Whisk the dry ingredients together in a largish mixing bowl. Pour the wet ingedients into the dry and mix thoroughly (using either a wooden spoon or a mixer with paddle on low) for 1 minute. Make sure the dry ingredients are completely incorporated into the wet. Allow it to rest for 5 minutes.

After initially mixing the dough

Mix for 2 minutes further by hand or with mixer using dough hooks on medium-low. The dough should be slightly sticky (like a normal sourdough dough from my other recipes). Mix for another 4 minutes and in the final 20 seconds do so quite vigorously (mixer on medium-high).

After all mixing is done

Using the same technique mentioned in the Seeded Sourdough Bread – A Complete Walkthrough article, turn the dough using both hands 4 times, once in each direction. Allow it to rest for 10 minutes, and then repeat (do this in total 4 times). This is done to develop the gluten and provide structure to the bread.

Two-handed turning technique

After this, place it immediately in the refrigerator in a tightly sealed bowl overnight or for up to 4 days.

The turns are finished, ready for bulk rise

On the day you intend to bake, take it out of the refrigerator 3 hours before baking time. I did this the next day. The result is shown below:

After the bulk rise in the refrigerator

Lightly flour the work surface and then using a curved bowl scraper, pour the dough out onto the work surface. Split the dough into two parts, and shape into two loaves, as shown.

Splitting and shaping the loaves

Dust two bannetons with rice flour and place each loaf into one.

In the bannetons for the final rise

Baking

Allow the loaves to rise covered until they are roughly twice the size (2-3 hours). The loaves may look like this:

The fully risen loaves

Preheat the oven to 230 C (mine takes 40 minutes to get to that temperature) together with the combo cooker. Take the smaller part out, tip the first loaf into it, score the top in a pattern of your choice with a razor blade or similar sharp tool, cover with the larger portion, and put it in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes with the lid on, then 25 minutes with the lid off. Cool on a rack.

The loaf cooling

Put the combo cooker back into the oven for 10 minutes to reach temperature again, and then repeat with the second loaf.

Conclusion

The bread came out really good. It doesn’t have the texture and structure of a sourdough loaf, but it tastes good and is excellent sandwich bread. Certainly my kids liked it and it is a reasonable substitute if I haven’t had time to prepare a leaven. I will undoubtedly be baking this again.

The final results, sliced

Neil Robinson

On the trail of great bread!