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Country Potato focaccia

Wouter — Sun, 05 May 2013 19:13:44 +0000

a few slices of potato focaccia

How versatile can a bread recipe be? According to Chad Robertson’s “Tartine Bread” book, very versatile. A good bread dough can be transformed into a pizza, a focaccia, or even a croissant (and with minimal changes, a baguette). The more I bake his basic country bread recipe, the more I’m starting to love the high hydratation level and the long fermentation time. It must be one of the best breads I’ve baked in months, if not a whole year.

The bread recipe itself is very simple: 75% hydratation, 10% wholewheat, 20% preferment 50/50 sourdough, a lengthy fermentation time (at least 4 hours in a kitchen at 19-20°C). Instead of shaping and final proofing, simply place a piece of dough onto a baking tray and put it into the fridge, until an hour before you decide to bake.

Instead of putting your fingers into the dough and using plenty of olive oil and rosemary, we lay thinly sliced potato pieces on top of the focaccia. Chad uses coarse sea salt to dehydrate the potatoes half an hour before you decide to bake. After that’s done, I made some pesto using parsley instead of basil. Add some more olive oil to make a loopy sauce and toss all the potato slices in there to coat them really well.Bake the focaccia as high as you can get your oven (that was 250°C here, 10°C short of the recommended temperature). It will take about 40 minutes for the crust to turn brown. At that time the potato slices should have been cooked well and be transformed into chips, jummy!

There are now two options: you can serve it straight from the oven, or let it cool on a wire rack and slice it then. Either way, serve with a bit of pesto and some salad. You can also cut open your focaccia piece lengthway to reveal a mighty amount of air pockets! It looks and smells amazing. I did notice that freshly baked sourdough does not taste as purgent, or as “full”, as a cooled down loaf.
Next time I’ll try to spread it out more evenly as it rose here and there too high.

Submitted to YeastSpotting.

making bread from croissant dough

Wouter — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:04:13 +0000

How I accidentally baked a dough using croissant dough…

The previous sourdough croissant recipe from Local Breads was jummy but my recent copy of “Tartine Bread” also had a curious recipe for some croissants, using a poolish, sourdough and extra dried yeast. It also uses 40% of stiff unsalted butter to make the layers, but contains much more sugar in the dough and no extra butter. The curious thing about this recipe is that it calls for a bulk ferment before actually starting the lamination, out of the fridge.

This makes the dough very (very) airy and active. It was completely out of control and kept on rising too much to my liking for the intended croissants. I might have not used the accurate amount of dried yeast but I had to do something with the extra dough as when I tried to roll it out, it was way too thick. So what should one do with some left over dough? Bake bread of course! I shaped that into a ball and left it to proof for 2 hours in a banneton. It almost tripled in size, this dough is virtually unstoppable.

Since I actually always make a rustic sourdough loaf with as much holes as possible, I didn’t expect the result to be so soft. The interior is very nice and soft, almost like a typical sandwich loaf, with an even, tight structure (since the air has been slapped out of it after trying to roll it out). The crust was extremely crunchy and sweet due to the extra sugar (it’s an all white loaf). I took some pictures while mixing the 2 preferments, which yields some funny results.

The bread- the recipe

I honestly have no idea how much of the dough I’ve used for the bread and how much for the croissants. All I know is that the croissants where tasty but contained way too much butter as I screwed up the butter/flour percentages by taking away some of the dough. The levain and poolish have been fermented for 4 hours in an improvised proofing chamber (my microwave with a cup of boiling water)

450gr whole milk
300gr mature 100% white levain
400gr 100% white poolish
1kg bread flour
25gr salt
85gr sugar
7gr dried yeast

Enriched easter bread

Wouter — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:56:07 +0000

Happy easter with this enriched jummy marizpan bread!

Happy easter!

Our colleages at The Weekend Bakery posted a lovely looking christmas stollen recipe I neglected to try out during the christmas and newyear holidays. But no fears, in our region we also have a special fruited easter bread for the easter holidays. It contains a lot of dried fruits and is “fruity” in a sense that it’s enhanced with lemon and orange zests.

Since the recipe I used is more or less the same as the weekend bakery, I won’t repost it here, just click on the link above to find the recipe details. Since it’s an enriched bread, this means additional fats and eggs have been added to the dough. It indeed contains 40gr of butter and one egg yolk. The addition of fat requires extra kneading for the gluten to fully develop.

Enriched breads (also not unlike croissants) need an extra rising “punch” because of the heavy other condiments. Hence the heavy usage of yeast. Besides the active dry yeast, I’ve also added a sourdough starter of 70gr:

25gr all-purpose flour
25gr water
20gr 100% hydratation white sourdough starter

Let it rise during the night (the kitchen is at 19°C here and the sourdough matured during 10 hours).

How do you get that super brown crust?
Brush the crust with melted butter as soon as it comes out of the oven. No eggs where hurt during this stage!

Variations

Use candied fruit, or other kinds of dried fruit: I’ve also added dadels
If you don’t like the lemony taste, leave out the lemon zest, or use two oranges.
Marzipan can be very sweet, I think I’d like this bread just as much without it.

Correctly scoring your loaf

Wouter — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:29:24 +0000

The importance of scoring your loaf

A nicely risen boule

One of my favourite recipes for baking from a cookbook must me Mr. Hamelman’s “Vermont Sourdough“. I regulary bake wholegrain based breads, including a relatively sour rye bread. But after a while, there’s that craving for something sweet, something with lots of holes and something traditional. I’ve seen it called “country bread“, or “pain de campagne” or “peasant bread“. It’s all the same for a mostly white wheat bread with some rye or wholewheat meal mixed in. Is is said that when farmers gathered their wheat, sometimes a little bit of rye gets between the wheat hulls, that’s why most bakers mix in a small amount of rye.

I have been baking this type of bread for a year now and I’ve made a lot of (stupid) mistakes. One of these mistakes I still make regulary and that is improperly scoring the loaf. What difference can that make, right?
Consider the following pictures.

The first picture was taken about a year ago, when I had no clue what “scoring” actually means. Of course it is not really needed, it won’t change the taste of the bread, but it will change the structure, height and crust of the bread. Because if you neglect to cut your bread properly (or at all), it will explode at an unwanted angle in the oven. The CO2 bubbles the gluten holds will have to come out somehow, and usually this means that the bread will “crack” on the side or at the bottom, where the weak spots reside.

The second and third picture are two loaves I baked this week using the same dough. The boule has been properly cut and the bâtard has not: I made the cut too deep and too steep. After ten minutes in the oven, the bread decided my efforts weren’t worth anything and promptly closed the seam. Whoops. You can see it did not rise much at all compared to the boûle, which expanded enormously.

The importance of baking long enough

You cannot hide the fact that you’re baking with sourdough. You might alter your starter to produce a milder bread (or maybe nobody would notice the difference in taste at all if it’s extremely young and fruity). But a typical sourdough bread produces a lot of blisters on the crust, provided you injected some steam into the oven. If you cooked the loaf well, the crust will be very dark, at some spots it might even be black. And that’s perfectly okay, it might even “break”. You’ll hear the bread “sing” after you pull it from the oven.
If you hear that and see the blisters and smell the rich aroma, you’ve won. Yay!

Sunflower seed rye sourdough

Wouter — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 21:11:18 +0000

It’s still cold outside in Belgium, and the birds are feasting upon endless supplies of seeds we feed them. Lastly, I was thinking, why would I want to give away all those jummy seeds and let the birds grow fat and lazy? I sure could use some sunflower seeds myself, not only to toast and sprinkle upon salads, but also to process into a hearthy rye sourdough bread! Thanks to Mr. Hamelman’s book, I found and altered a formula to my liking.

Baked sunflower rye bread

This is not a heavyweight rye bread as the seeds in the dough also weigh down the bread during the two fermentation phases. It’s roughly 30% wholerye and the rest is all-purpose wheat flour. This could of course be substituted for spelt flour, as long as it’s not wholewheat. As you can see on the pictures, the bread did rise quite well – also partially thanks to my very active rye sour (= starter).

The recipe

Sourdough

200gr wholerye flour
160gr water
10gr rye starter at 100% hydratation

As you might notice, that’s a very low amount of starter compared to other breads. I was a bit worried that the yeast might not have enough time to lift the bread but I gave the sourdough 15 hours at the kitchen table and it was just fine.

Soaker

167gr rye flakes (like muesli) – I didn’t have these at that moment so used oatmeal
167gr water

If you’re using flakes that are not very soft, consider using boiling water.

Final dough

633gr bread flour
150gr toasted sunflower seeds
470gr water
20gr coarse sea salt
2 teaspoons blackstrap molasses
sourdough & soaker

Remarks

What’s the baking procedure?

More or less the same as I employ on every bread. I did try to use a bulk fermentation of 3 hours and a final proofing of 5 hours in the fridge. The final proofing time would be on the low side considering the low temperature so I let the bread warm up for 1 to 2 hours before baking. I normally bake straight from the fridge – this was not the case here.

What’s typical about this bread?

I found the bread to be extremely tasty due to the toasted seeds. I think if you did not toast the sunflower seeds the taste might have been a bit more mild. I love the combination of the tangy rye sourdough and the seeds. I think I’ll miss the presence of seeds if I were to bake a simple rye bread next week!

The bread did rice extremely well in the oven, thanks to the high amount of white flour, but partially also thanks to the right amount of rye sour and unusual proofing time. Something to try again next time!

Also published on YeastSpotting.

Dreikornbrot

Wouter — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:12:42 +0000

German multigrain bread – “Dreikornbrot”

Dreikornbrot, freshly baked.

Why is this multigrain bread so typical “German”? Because the preferment has been made with a rye sourdough starter which has been fermenting for 24 hours to get that nice extra tasty acid flavor. It’s not a very heavyweight rye bread (60% is still white flour). The flax, sesame and sunflour seeds make it colorful and extra tasty but are also the reason why the structure of the crumb is not too open.

The recipe

Preferment – 24h before final dough

10gr rye sourdough starter @ 100% hydratation
25gr wholerye meal
15gr water

Seed mix – soak 24h before final dough

3x28gr seeds of your choice (I’ve used flax, sunflower and sesame seeds)
175gr water

Final dough

seeds + preferment
300gr water
300gr strong white flour (spelt or wheat)
200gr wholegrain rye meal
10gr salt

The recipe is based on a version found in Mr. Daniel Leader’s book “local breads”. He also uses (fresh or dried) yeast which of course we refuse to do – one of the reasons this bread has to rise that long. Do notice that only 50gr preferment has been used, which is realtively low compared to other sourdough breads I’ve posted here. Give it enough time to rise!

Depending on what you wish to aim for, you can knead for a very long time untilyou’ve achieved maximum gluten development, or just long enough. The more you’ll be kneading, the more it’ll be a sandwich loaf with a soft crumb but a tight structure. Rustic breads need less intensive kneading.

The crumb

There’s still 60% of white flour in there, but the crumb is not very open. This is because of the lack of gluten in rye meal and of course the presence of the seeds which act as extra weight the yeast has to push up during the fermentation process. You can keep this in mind by for instance adding extra yeast or letting it rise longer. I used a ferment and bulk phase of 2 hours which is not long enough, sadly. Something I need to keep in mind next time!

Luckily the bread had a very good oven spring as seen in the first picture. The bread ended to be darker than in the book because I’ve used black sesame seeds which tend to color the crumb.

Sourdough Croissants

Wouter — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 12:32:33 +0000

Freshly baked, lots of fat, jummy!

What’s more tasty than a croissant with some strawberry jam on a late sunday morning? I still need to find out. Of course these delights need to be made, store bought croissants are jummy but you don’t quite get that much satisfaction out of them after a few chomps. Since we’re always taking about sourdough on this site, why not try some sourdough laminated dough? This is really quite a challenge so if you’re not patient enough, look for someone who is willing to do the baking for you!

The recipe

Sourdough

You’ll need 100gr liquid levain (white wheat), between 100 and 130% hydratation.

final dough

280gr whole milk
7gr instant yeast (dried, granulated)
500gr all purpose flour – strong flour will help with the rise but will resist more during lamination. It’s up to you…
60gr unsalted softened butter added to the dough
15gr granulated sugar
10gr salt

Extra ingredients

You’ll need 200gr of unsalted butter in block form for the lamination process and
1 egg for 2 egg washes before final proofing and before putting them into the oven.

Forming the butter block

The process

Making laminated dough involves a couple of steps you’ll need to repeat a few times.

Make the dough

Don’t forget to make the sourdough 12 hours before you plan on making the dough. Add everything to a mixing bowl and knead a few minutes. The dough will be a lot drier than your usual rustic sourdough – this is normal. You should get some gluten development but don’t sweat it – folding the dough will strengthen it later on.
Put the dough into the fridge for at least 2 hours. It will not rise much.

Make the butter block

Take out 200gr of unsalted butter, put it between two baking parchment papers and slap it with the rolling pin! Yay! This is fun, right? Your end result should be a square block of 13x13cm. Put it back into the fridge with the dough to make it cold again.

Folding after incorporating the butter

Folding the butter into the dough for the first time

Take out the dough and roll it out to form a rectangle of 13x25cm. Put the butter square on one of the sides and fold the dough over te butter. Pinch to completely “lock in” the butter. After that, be careful with that rolling pin! You’ll need to expand the folded rectangle to about 25x35cm, but if you’re working too harsh, the butter will explode in your face.
Another word of warning, depending on your kitchen ambient temperature: if you notice the dough or the butter starts warming up, put it back in the fridge at once and wait for another hour! You can even use a frozen rolling pin to reduce the friction temperature.

If the rectangle expanded correctly, you can now fold it for the first time, like a letter: 1/3d, and 2/3d over the first 1/3d. If you’re unsure, watch the video at the weekend bakery. Your first fold is done! Put it back into the fridge for 12 up to 24 hours.

Cut out triangles from the laminated dough.

Fold it two more times

After it’s been resting for at least 12 hours, repeat the fold process two more times. Remember: if you feel the need to chill the dough again between two folds, then do so! Otherwise the butter will start leaking and you won’t have a nice and airy structure later on in your baked croissant.
Time to shape some crescent moons!

Shape the croissants

Cut out nice and even triangles (not like I did in the picture…) and roll them up like little croissants. Give them a first egg wash to avoid dehydrating them while proofing. The croissants will need to be proofed for at least 3 hours at 20°C. It’s very difficult to overproof laminated dough due to the high amount of fat present in the dough. That’s why sourdough alone is hardly enough to leaven them and additional yeast is usually required.

Out of the oven. Smells great!

Time to bake croissants, finally!

Before putting them into the oven, give them another egg wash. Bake the croissants at 200°C for 30 to 35 minutes – keep an eye out when they brown sufficient in the oven. Congratulations, you’ve baked your first batch of laminated dough! Bon appetite!

Depending on your lamination skills (by that I mean controlling temperature, being precise with folding and rolling) and the butter quality, you’ll have varying results. Cut open a croissant and hopefully it will look like a nice honeycomb and smell amazing. If not, try another brand of butter or stronger (or less strong) flour next time.

The internals of my croissant

Submitted to Yeast Spotting.

Horst Bandel’s Pumpernickel

Wouter — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:13:48 +0000

Coarse wholerye bread topped with old cheese

If you ever want to bake a bread that takes more than four hours to bake, this is the recipe you absolutely have to try. Given you’re willing to put the required effort into it, and by that I do not only mean baking! Pumpernickel bread is a heavy wholerye bread baked in a rectangular tin pan, or a “pullman pan”, with a closed lid. This gives the characteristic squarish look to the slices.

The recipe

If you’re interested in baking it yourself, I recommend you check out the various blog posts at The Fresh loaf: for instance:

The recipe is again from Mr. Hamelman’s “BREAD” book - I’m actually trying to bake through the whole book! And I’ve never tried a coarse high percentage rye bread before so the challenge was on.

Sourdough - 100% hydratation

150gr wholerye meal
150gr water
30gr mature rye sourdough starter

Let it sit for 14-16 hours to develop a nice sour tang. For sour rye starters, I usually even let the sourdough build up for up to 24 hours (at 19-20°C Max.) just because I love the flavor. You cannot do this with a white flour starter because they are a lot less flexible.

The “special” required integredients

100gr Rye berries soaker

The rye berries are “whole” berries, unprocessed. These berries are normally ground to the coarse wholerye meal used in the final dough. Pepare the soaker the same time as preparing the sourdough. Just soak them in 100gr water. Before using the berries, cook them for about an hour. The berries are pictured in the upper left.

100gr Old bread soaker

There’s a tradition in bread baking which employs the usage of old bread in a new batch of dough. To further enhance the taste, toast the old bread in the oven. I’ve used 100% wholewheat sourdough slices which taste excellent on themselves. Pepare the soaker the same time as preparing the sourdough. Soak the old bread in boiling water, as much as needed. Before using the old bread in the dough, squeeze out as much of the liquid as needed. Keep the liquid and use the water in the final dough as needed.

125gr Chopped rye

Simply chop 125gr of rye berries yourself on a cutting board. Make sure you chop them as tiny as possible! I tried using a small kitchen machine but grinding that did not work out too well. You should also soak the chopped rye overnight, otherwise it’ll be a bit too hard to bite into.

Final dough

125gr high gluten bread flour
125gr rye chops
50gr water
10gr seasalt
All of the above

Do notice this is without additional yeast. I’ve used a bulk fermentation of 2,5h at 19°C. The dough should be wet and very sticky, kneading it a long time will not be needed – there will hardly be any gluten to develop.

The final dough, after proofing.

Baking the loaf

The loaf should be baked in a “pullman pan“. The bread will not rise a lot in the oven, so it should proof very well before putting the loaf into the oven. The baking process is very long, to replicate the overnight bake in the cooling wood fired oven in classic bakeries. Pumpernickel loaves are usually baked at night. At home you can create more or less the same environment by baking it a full hour at 220°C and lowering the temperature to 135°C, baking it for another 3-4 hours.
I did not have a pullman pan, so I simply put some aluminium foil on top of the loaf. After 4 hours, I switched the oven off and let it sit there for another hour.

Let the loaf cool completely after removing it from the oven (by removing it from the pan of course). Wait for at least 24 hours before slicing into the bread, to allow the internal structure to settle.

The lovely coarse crumb.

whole rye-wheat combi

Wouter — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 21:46:21 +0000

This is a variation of Mr. Hamelman’s “Whole-Rye and Whole-Wheat Sourdough Rye bread”. It contains 50% wholemeal flour and 50% strong white flour to help it rise, with a preferment of 25%.

Still very airy for a 50% wholemeal bread!

Formula

Sourdough

250gr wholerye flour
210gr water
2 tablespoons of a mature 100% liquid rye sourdough.

Final build

500gr strong white flour
250gr wholewheat flour (finely ground)
470gr water
15gr salt

I’ve adopted my regular bread formula for the fermentation and proofing times – this means fermenting for 3-4h (it’s winter and our kitchen is at 19°C, so you might even want to ferment it longer!). Final proofing has been done in the basked in the fridge during the night. I baked them cold (still don’t own a baking stone yet…)

Please remember there is no added yeast to this formula, as opposed to Hamelman’s sourdough rye breads in his book “BREAD”!

Taste

This bread reminds me of a combination between the 50% wholerye walnut bread and Vermont sourdough. It seems to build up a nice tang the more you let it stand on your kitchen counter – and it tastes even better after 2 days of baking, amazing!

A nice trick I’ve learned to prevent the bread from drying out too quick: leave it with the cut side down on a cutting board! This prevents the moisture from leaving the bread. This bread will keep for more than 5 days!

It’s milder than 50% wholerye thanks to the addition of wholewheat though.
Submitted to Yeast Spotting.

Reactivating a dried starter

Wouter — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 18:49:28 +0000

Congratulations, you’re now a proud owner of a million of sleeping bacteria! How can we reactivate this dried sourdough starter? The starter is made of water & flour that has been fermenting for days. By doing this, the wild yeast cells that were present on the grain berries themselves have been activated by eating through the sugars in the carbs (the flour).

Sourdough starter in powder form

Step 1: add water

The starter has been made by adding as much flour as water. This means “100% hydratation” – the percentage is the amount of liquid compared to the flour. When we mix 50gr of flour and 50gr of water we get a hydratation level of 100%. A standard yeast bread you can find in any bakery is usually made with 55% hydratation. Baking a rustic bread on a stone wood fired oven usually takes at least 65%.

The more water, the more holes and character the bread will get, but the more difficult it is to shape the loaf.

Sourdough bread is made by making a “preferment”, usually a made a day before (12h). This is 15 to 30% of the whole dough amount that has been fermenting further by a portion of the “mother” sourdough starter. This preferment is used instead of the regular (commercial) yeast which is available in dried or fresh form. Natural yeast made out of sourdough needs to rise a lot longer because the yeast cells are not that strong but there are a lot more different types of bacteria present – hence the dramatically improved taste. (and holes)

There are “stiff” starters of 50 to 60% hydratation, and there are “liquid“ starters of 100% to 125% hydratation. This dried sourdough portion was originally 100% hydratation (easier to dry!). Wet preferments are also called “poolish” preferments. Italian stiff preferments are called “biga“.

Add a tablespoon of water and a teaspoon of the dried sourdough powder. Mix well until it’s a watery, white substance. Wait for a few hours.

Step 2: add flour type and choose a hydratation level

100%: add 20gr water & 20gr flour to the mixture.
50%: add 10gr water & 20gr flour to the mixture.

The powder is in this case based on wheat. You can also add rye meal if you like a more sour tang to your bread. Actually, everything ferments, even rice or chickpea flour. Traditional sourdough starters in France are stiff wheat ones, those of Germany are wetter rye ones. It’s a matter of taste, you can of course experiment with both.

Drying the liquid sourdough takes a few days.

Add for example 20gr of water and 20gr of white wheat flour to the mixture. Mix well and leave for 12h on kitchen temperature.

Step 3: It’s alive! Bubbles and a nice smell!

If after 12 hours there’s still little activity, don’t panic. This depends on the room temperature, the water, the flour and the hydratation level. Rye sourdough is usually a little faster and stiff starters are slower. Liquid starters are usually ripe sooner, meaning they will need to be refreshed more often if you intend to use them, otherwise there will not be enough strength left.

The starter is alive.

It’s now time to use the starter to make a preferment.

Step 4: use your new mother starter!

Making a preferment is very simple. Take a portion of your new mother starter (usually 30gr) and mix this with more water & flour. Leave it to rest for the night. Done! 12H later you can start with the final dough.

But how do I bake with this stuff?

The best help we can be to you is providing you with the right links:

Step 5: how do I store my starter?

Every time I bake bread, I pull my starter from the fridge. I do this weekly, but the starter can be kept for up to a month in the fridge without feeding it in the form of fresh flour, which is essentially sugar.

When I use a portion of the starter, I feed the rest by adding some more water & flour, letting it rest for a few hours (or a whole night if I’m lazy), and simply putting back the container into the fridge. It’ll sleep nice and tight until the next bake.

If you don’t want to bake or don’t have any plans to do so soon, it’s advisable to feed your starter once in a while to keep it “fresh”. Artisan bakers in France feed their own sourdough starter for example every eight hours. They do not miss a single feeding. They never keep it at a low temperature, because the yeast cells will need some time to become very active again. Amateur bakers like us can use the lower temperature to temporary slow down the bacteria.

Feed your starter once a week and keep it in the fridge.

Bon apetit!

Pain au levain with lots of holes!