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Five baked loaves, slashed with a well-developed crust in which can be seen some of the many seeds that stud the bread

This is a firm favourite and quite impossible to find anywhere in the city. I’ve been making it forever, based on the original in Hamelman’s Bread adapted for a natural leaven and seven rather than six seeds.

  • 50% wholemeal leaven at 75%
  • 50% strong white flour
  • 20% mixed seeds, soaked (see below). I use oats, corn, pumpkin, sunflower, millet, linseed and sesame.
  • 1.8% salt.
  • 21% additional water (there’s lots in the leaven and the soaker)
  • 5% honey. Optional. I’ve gone off the idea.
  1. Prepare soaker by pouring 125% boiling water over seeds. So, for 200gm seeds, 250gm boiling water. Leave for at least 2 hours.
  2. Mix all ingredients. Knead to incorporate and ensure there is no dry flour. Return to bowl.
  3. Stretch and fold roughly every hour for about 4 hours.
  4. Turn out, pre-shape and rest, shape and proof for about 2 hours.
  5. Preheat oven and a casserole to 220°C. Slash the loaves and bake for 50 minutes, removing the cover and lowering the temperature to 210°C after 25 minutes.
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Two loaves of rye bread, scored across the top, on a dark red checkered cloth with two candlesticks and some other objects in the background.

Two light rye loaves, which could probably have used a little longer proof.

Having recently managed to move this site to a new host, the least I could do is bring it back to a kind of life. I’ve been baking solidly all through its existence, but got out of the habit of posting because I really have nothing new to say. I bake bread. I share it. We eat it. That’ll do.

On the other hand, why not share my formulae here?

Light rye with caraway seeds

  • 40% Whole rye flour, as ripe 100% starter
  • 60% Strong white flour
  • 70% Water
  • 4% Caraway seeds
  • 2% Salt
  1. Mix all ingredients roughly together in a bowl.
  2. Turn out on the counter and ensure the dough is well mixed and uniform.
  3. Replace in bowl, cover, and leave for 50 minutes.
  4. Lightly oil counter, turn out dough, knead hard and fast, about 5 folds, and return to the bowl.
  5. Repeat as required each hour until the dough has doubled in volume.
  6. Turn out, pre-shape and rest, shape and proof for about an hour.
  7. Bake in a covered casserole in a pre-heated oven at 220°C for 50 minutes, removing cover and turning heat down to 200 °C after 20–25 minutes.
  8. Allow to cool at least 18 hours before eating.
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Around this time, as is customary, my little microbial helpers need a dash of tender loving care. The yoghurt has already had two quick passages and is much the better for it. The kefir is about to have its first. But with temperatures in the high 30s°C I wasn’t super keen to look after the bread starters. Of course I could have just refreshed them without actually baking, but where’s the fun in that, and in any case stocks of frozen bread were dwindling fast. So, yesterday I took a look at the stiffer starter.

Old bread starter looking extremely unwell; dark, slimy moist.

It wasn’t good.

The top was dark and slimy, the driest parts powdery (with spores?) and a fair bit of liquid hooch. The smell wasn’t reassurring either. But I’m here to reassure you that all was well and that if you are ever faced with a neglected starter, there’s no need to abandon it.

Turning the lump over, the base was perfectly fine, so I dug out a small spoonful, trying not to break through to the other side. It weighed about 9 gm. I added 24 gm of water and 32 gm of wholewheat flour (preserving the 75% hydration) mixed it up and left it to get going.

One thing about the heat; it got going in a hurry. Three hours later it was light and well aerated. Time for a second build. A single loaf needs only 175 gm of starter, and there was no way I was going to bake two in this heat, so the feed was 75 gm of water and 100 gm of flour.

Again, three hours was about all it took to more than double in volume. After that, I made the bulk dough (50% Manitoba, 50% wholewheat, 2% salt, 70% hydration), gave it a quick knead and left it on the counter for an hour. One set of folds and into the fridge overnight.

This morning I took it out, nicely risen, gently shaped it, placed it in a banneton, and left it for about 90 minutes. Normally I preheat the oven and my Le Creuset casserole for 35 minutes before baking. Given the heat, no way. It has been a long time since I first tried baking from a cold start and only a couple of times since, but saving 35 minutes of oven blasting made it worth it. Lid removed after 30 minutes, baked for a further 20 minutes.

A loaf of bread with four slices, on a cutting board, mozarella and tomatoes on plates in the background

The result was very acceptable. Not as much oven spring perhaps, but plenty, and a nice, even crumb. If this weather keeps up, I will do the same sort of bake when I revive the looser starter.

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A friend kindly gave me a copy of The Perfect Loaf, by Maurizio Leo, and very fortunately there was just about enough room in my suitcase to bring it home with me. The explanatory section at the start is very informative, even if most of it was pretty familiar already, and I did pick up a few new ideas. Still, the proof of the pudding and all that … so I resolved to make his Simple Sourdough.

Continue reading →

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A couple of weeks ago, I read a fascinating post on The Fresh Loaf, in which Kendalman described his interesting approach to stretch and fold and offered an alternative explanation of what is going on, because he believes the conventional view is mistaken. As near as I can tell, he says that there are two glues at work in the dough, a short-acting glue that preserves the shape of the loaf for about 30 minutes, and a longer lasting glue that maintains the whole mass as a whole mass. Stretch and fold activates the short-term glue, holding the loaf together while the bubbles caused by fermentation grow larger. It is the bubbles, ultimately, that give the dough its shape and hold it up.

Nearly round bubbles packed together keep the shape of their gluten foam better than any other bubble shape and the bigger the bubbles the better because that spreads the dough weight over a bigger surface area and so makes it easier to hold up.

Anyway, Kendalman helpfully linked to a video of his procedure, which he calls a kendalroll, that I watched absent-mindedly. The video certainly demonstrated that he got a lovely, well-risen loaf with no kneading and a lot of rolling. Proof of concept, as they say.

Loaf of bread, well-baked, showing impressive rise thanks to rolling method of shaping

A couple of days later I discovered that we were almost out of bread, with a few days still to go before the big weekly bake, so why not give it a go.

I made a standard white sourdough at 75% hydration, mixed only enough to incorporate everything, and then proceeded to roll the log about every 30 minutes. I was a bit concerned that it might take a lot longer than Kendalman’s yeast-powered dough, so I used double my normal amount of starter; pre-fermented flour was thus 40% of total flour.

Rolling the dough is a bit of a messy business, hence the lack of photographs, but it is obvious rolling is building strength and structure in the dough. In the and, after four hours, it seemed big enough to bake. Getting it onto the stone was tricky without being able to simply invert a banneton onto a peel, but I managed.

Halfway through the bake, when I opened the oven to remove the steam pan, I was very pleasantly surprised by how little it had spread. The end result was a really good loaf, with a fine crisp crust and a good, light and even crumb. Judging by the minor blow-out at the bottom of the loaf, I could even have left it to rise a little longer. The gummy bit at the bottom of the crumb photograph maybe confirms this. Very passable.

My kitchen doesn’t really have room for doing more than one loaf this way (whereas bannetons stack nicely), so I cannot see adopting the kendalroll for everything, but for occasions when I want a good white loaf, especially for sandwiches, it is a winner.

Crumb of rolled loaf is mostly even, with small bubbles

Final conclusion: I think I have a better understanding of stretch and fold, and I have a new arrow in my shaping quiver, which is a win all round.

Syndicated from jeremycherfas.net.