Itterating

My absence here indicates one of two things. I've 1) lost steam and stopped baking, or 2) been so caught up in it that posting is more of a distraction. The latter is actually the case. Once I have more of a method and someone to photo/video the process, posting will go much more smoothly. Here are some of the things I have been working on figuring out: 
1) refreshing my sourdough - what % of water works best? I've decided on a 70% water to flour for my starter. This makes it much easier to incorporate into the dough since I don't have a mixer. Another starter quandary was how often to refresh. It seems that refrigeration is the best option here. Refresh, put in cooler, take out 6-12 hours prior to using for a dough.
2) using my sourdough starter to start other starters. Lots of starts, no stops there apparently. I've tried this with rye, wheat, and teff. Teff, as stated in the last post, is by far my favorite, but the other two offer their own unique flavors and personalities. I've gotten some positive feedback for my wheat starter, but it did not do well rising the dough. The best thing I've found to fix this is to start the wheat starter with a teff one. duh.
3) refrigeration of doughs. I've been playing around with bulk fermentation in the cooler vs. dividing and shaping loafs before putting the dough in the fridge. The second option seems to be the best, though the first option works - especially if it has a teff-based starter. It was beneficial if I was short on time, say, mixing a batch to close to bed-time. With bulk fermentation, I mixed the dough, let it rise for an hour and a half, folded it, and stuck it in the cooler. If I waited to divide the dough before refrigerating, it would have cost me an additional two hours of sleep. But dividing the loafs first is best because all you have to do is take them out of the fridge and let them finish proofing for a few hours - there's not really any additional work involved. Plus, you can leave them in the cooler for up to two days if the temp is at or below 45 degrees.
4) mixing methods - I've finally settled upon a tweaked version of the bertinet method (see video from earlier post). Now I'm trying to figure out the biggest batch size I can do using this method. I'm up to a six pound batch now, and I think I'll be able to do a ten to twelve pound batch at maximum. This would allow me to produce eight loaves at a time! And give me a decent upper body workout.
5) steam methods - I think for now I've settled on dumping about 6oz of water in the oven, 3oz on each side wall. I really should get a spray bottle. I imagine the current way is not very good for the oven floor.
6) there are a few other odds and ends that I have incorporated into my bread production that have helped efficiency, but I'll get to those once I have another post up depicting the creation of bread.
7) future considerations... I'm about to experiment with freezing my dough. I'll divide it first and put the loafs in molds before plastic wrapping them, or using some other way of making them air-tight. This way I could potentially increase my production quite substantially, but without increasing the amount of hands-on time spent. 
Anyway, this has been in part an update, but mostly just an excuse to put off running in rather warm weather. So before it gets any hotter, adieu.

St. Elmo Sourdough with Teff Starter

I've just discovered something about teff flour that, to me, is pretty amazing. Teff is a grain best known for its use in Ethiopian dishes, most notably the flat bread injera. I started experimenting with teff because I loved the flavor of injera the first time I had Ethiopian food - a very rich, sour flavor with intriguing hints of yogurt. I've used it as a starter a few times, but only noticed this morning that it has a rising capability seemingly akin to yeast. I wish I had taken a few pictures yesterday when I began my teff starter (1:1 flour water). I put about an ounce of my sour starter in the teff mixture at 8:30AM, and after I had incorporated the flour, water, and starter, the contents took up maybe an inch and a half of the container. By 12:00PM the starter had tripled in size filling at least six inches of the container, which isn't too uncommon for even a normal sour, but still very good action. By about 9:00PM that evening, I mixed my dough using 6 ounces of this teff starter (which smelled almost exactly like yogurt at this point) and 8 ounces of my sour starter. The formula was for a rye starter sourdough, but I substituted the teff starter for the rye. The dough was predominantly bread flour, but had a small amount of rye flour in it as well. I let the dough autolyse for about 20min after roughly mixing it together, and then kneaded it for 15min until I had decent gluten formation. I put the dough in a covered bowl and let it rise for an hour. When I checked it to give it a fold, the dough had doubled in size! I folded the dough, and put it back in the bowl for another hour. It doubled again! I let it sit for a final hour before dividing it and it still doubled. I divided and pre-shaped the dough and let it rest for about 15min before shaping and putting into loaf pans. I then covered these with plastic and placed them in the cooler at about 1:00AM, the loafs sitting a good inch below the top of their molds. I woke up today at 8:00AM and took the molds out of the cooler to find that the loafs had risen to the tops of their molds. This is with no yeast at all. I let them warm up at room temp. until 10:30AM, and the loafs were a good half inch above the tops of their molds. I've not seen this kind of action in traditional yeastless sourdough breads, so I was pretty excited.

                                                     This is my sourdough starter

I used about an ounce in the teff/water mixture

This is the resulting teff starter

                                         A view after I used most of it. Smelled just like yogurt.

Look at these guys! No yeast!

 

And the side view better illustrates the rise. Maybe even more than a half inch.

This bread also has one of the richest, most intricate sour flavors I have tasted. I am definitely going to explore the possibilities of teff further!

Who Kneads a Mixer?

And now for something completely different! (Bear with me, I'll probably shift gears like this often) Here are a few great clips portraying the original (and better, though less practical) method for mixing. The second video makes me want to build my own wooden trough and wear a white tunic.

Who needs a mixer? Not you. Just a little more time and exertion. Believe it or not, the dough comes out much better, and the bread is much more satisfying when you eat it. At some point I'll get a video up of my own method. The top video shows the Bertinet method, which is for doughs of higher hydrations. I don't know what method the second video shows - I just thought it was pretty cool. For most of the doughs I've been doing lately I haven't needed the gluten formation the guy in the first video is going for (he wants a very stretchy, fluffy dough). I usually mix the ingredients together roughly and let them autolyse for about 20 minutes. The ingredients all settle together and save me some work. After the autolyse, I use a combo of fold/stretch/roll. Anyway, I suppose my next post should provide a tangible example of a practical application for hand mixing. Perhaps with the beer bread formula?

Spent Baguette: The process

 There have been a few compliments of the spent grain baguettes, so I will show how it went here. I used a formula from Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking that she got from The Acme Bread Company. I don't feel that sharing the formula here would be proper, but others haven't had such scruples, as you can see here. I've tweaked the recipe a bit, obviously with the spent grain, but also instead of making the old dough I just used some of my sour starter in combo with the poolish.

Yeast and water mixture. A number of formulas call for this step, but I've found it largely unnecessary.

Here I've roughly mixed the flour, salt, and yeasted water mixture. I let it autolyse for about 30 min.

This is my poolish after about 12 hours.

A look from above - nice and bubbly

Adding the poolish to the autolyse. I added about 4oz of sour starter at this point too.

Here is a frozen chunk of spent grain a few hours before I made the dough.

I soaked the grain for about an hour so that it wouldn't sop up all the hydration in the dough.

Grain after soaking.

Poolish, sour, and grain all mixed in. As you can probably see it's rather soupy.

After kneading for about 10 min. 

After proofing and turning thrice at 20 minute intervals, I divided the dough into 12oz pieces. 

They enjoyed each other's company. 

Shaped into baguettes and covered with plastic wrap so as to keep them from drying out. 

Final rest before baking. 

Trayed up. Unfortunately I broke my baking stone a while back. 

They can sense that the end is near. 

And the final product. Not as much color as I would have liked, but not terrible for a home-bake. 

These are excellent with a sharp cheese and, of course, beer. Since making these I've found two formulas I like better for the beer bread idea. When I finally get one I like, I'll stop fixating on the whole beer bread thing and move on to something else.

Spent Baguettes

The spent grain baguettes were a minor success, though I was not impressed by their flavor. This was largely due to the bland formula - I am currently working on a poolish-levain hybrid dough that I put in the cooler overnight. If the flavor here is more developed, I'm going to try the spent grain baguette again, but mix the portion of grain into the poolish when I start it. Hopefully this will draw the grains' flavor out even more than simply mixing it into the dough. I am also going to use hops-infused water for half the dough's hydration and an ale for the other half. This should solve the blandness problem. For another level of complexity, I am going to eventually try a teff poolish or sourdough. I think it's bitter-sweetness will complement the beer flavors well. If I like the taste of my hybrid french bread, I will put the formula here, and when I get a beer baguette that I am satisfied with I will put a formula for it here as well.

Pan biére

I am currently in the midst of making some french baguettes into which I will be mixing some spent grain I obtained from an awesome neighbor who brews his own beer! I will post the formula if it comes out well. If it doesn't, I'll keep trying until it does.

Levain

Levain has been the key to baking bread for thousands of years. As you can probably tell by the name, "levain" is related to "leavening," which means adding a yeast culture to your dough so it will rise. Clearly mankind didn't always have tidy little dried yeast packets that could rise bread in less than an hour. Levain is how we used to get our yeast, and even though it is very simple, it takes a long time to develop a culture of yeast. That's why, if you're familiar with your Bible stories, God told the Hebrews to make unleavened bread at passover - so they wouldn't have to wait forever to eat and leave!

Instead of continuing on with levain's insipid background, let's get down to actually making the stuff.

What you will need

1 part         flour

1/2 part      water

nonreactive container

How to do it

As stated earlier, this is easy - it just takes some patience. 

1. The first and most important thing is to use filtered water. Either buy some from the store, use a water brita (I'm not entirely sure the brita works), or boil your water and let it cool. The reason for this is to get rid of some chlorine and fluoride that will discourage or prohibit any bacteria formation (the yeast culture) from developing.

2. The second most importnat thing is to use small amounts of flour and water. You may want to begin by using just two tablespoons of flour and one tablespoon of water - you are only trying to develop a culture at this point so you can go for volume later. So here, just use two tablespoons of flour and one of water.

This has almost doubled in only three hours

3. Mix these ingredients in your nonreactive container (one with a lid, or you can use plastic wrap to cover) until it is a smooth mixture with no lumps of dry flour. Then put the lid or plastic wrap on.

Recently refreshed levain

4. Hurry up and wait. You will now let this sit for about three days, so if you are forgetful like me, you may want to label the container with the date that you first mixed your levain. At the end of the third day, and this is the part that explains why you only want to use a small amount of flour, toss out half or your mixture. If you have a compost heap, great! Add it on. If not, trash. After you do this, add another two tablespoons of flour and one of water (make sure this is still filtered or bottled water).

Levain in the freezer

5. Repeat this process about five times (about 15-21 days). Depending on where you live, you may start developing a culture faster. What you are doing is giving a developing yeast culture fresh food so it can grow bigger and stronger. By the end of this time you should at least see some bubbles on the surface of your levain culture (this is carbon dioxide). Probably you will also notice that the culture is growing about 1/4 to 1/3 its size after you've refreshed it. Once it has doubled in size, you will want to start refreshing it every day, otherwise the culture will run out of food and will start to die on you. It will probably take at least 21 days for your culture to get to this point. Once your levain is doubling in size every day, it is almost ready to use in a batch of bread.

6. Once you have tenderly grown your levain to the ripe old age of a month, take a glass of water and scoop a spoonful of the levain into it. If the levain floats, this means it's generating enough carbon dioxide to rise a loaf of bread. If it's not quite there, let it strengthen for a few more feedings and repeat the test.

Frozen levain

7. Now you can use your levain in some dough! More on recipes later, but for now if you don't plan on using this levain right away, scoop it into a tupperware container, put a lid on it, and shove it in the freezer. While you will not be able to take it out of the freezer and use it immediately, you still have a culture you can refresh - it will only take a few feedings for it to     double in size.