A holiday week for Alison; a week of baking for me, plus a trip to Oxford to meet up with fellow UK TFL members and enjoy real quality time.

Here is the baking side of things:

Firstly I made Borodinsky on Wednesday 15th Feb, as my "show and tell" loaf for the UK meet.   My project is to turn this and other high rye loaves into 100% rye and eliminate the wheat portion.   Alison is avoiding wheat, and I am aware that there are numerous customers out there with similar aspirations.   To do this I need to source bulk quantities of light rye.   No changes made at this stage to the current formula.

Thursday 16th Feb was a much bigger baking day.   I began with a new rye formula; Moscow Rye.   This uses caraway seeds along with red rye malt.   It is all rye!   I used only the Bacheldre Dark Rye, and I also used a soaker plus the sponge to adopt the full 3 stage process.

Moscow Rye 15 – 16.02.2012

Rye Sour build:

Method:

• Build the sourdough as described above.   Make the “scald” as follows:   combine the caraway and the red rye malt and dark rye flour.   Weigh the molasses into a pan, add water and bring to a rolling boil.   Tip this onto the flour mix, and add any extra boiling water if there is evaporation.   Stir well to ensure full gelatinisation.   Cover and cool.
• Once sufficiently cool, add the scald to the sour to make the sponge.   Cover and leave to ferment for 6 hours.
• For the final paste combine the sponge with remaining flour and the salt, mix with the paddle beater in an upright machine, 2 minutes on first speed and 2 minutes on second speed.   Add water if needed [I added 220g which is 11% on flour].   Scrape down the bowl to ensure thorough mixing.
• Bulk proof for 1 hour with DDT at 28°C.
• Shape into a large Pullman Pan, plus a large and small bread pan prepared with lining of butter and coating of rye flour.
• Final proof for just 1 hour at 28°C, then bake.
• Pre-heat the oven to 280°C.   Load the pan, apply steam, and turn the oven down to 100°C.   Keep a supply of steam in the oven and bake for a total of 6 hours.
• Cool on wires; wrap in linen and leave 24 hours before cutting into the bread

I baked everything else in the wood-fired oven, as follows:

Gilchesters’ Miche/Boules 15 - 16.02.2012

Makes 2 Miches, 1 large and 2 small Boules

Levain build:

Method:

• Build the levain, see description above.
• For mixing, first of all mix on first speed for 3 minutes with a hook attachment, then autolyse the Gilchesters flour with the water only for 1 hour.
• Add the levain and the salt.   Mix on first speed only for 10 minutes.   Dough Temperature 26°C.
• Retard overnight.
• Bulk prove the dough allowing recovery to ambient; approx. 2 hours.  
• Scale and divide as above.   Mould round and rest for 15 minutes.   Prepare bannetons, re-mould dough pieces and set to final proof.
• Final proof DDT maintained at 26°C, for 3 hours.
• Tip each loaf out of the banneton onto a peel, score the top and set to bake on the sole of the wood-fired oven.   Small loaves bake in half an hour, next biggest takes 40 minutes and the biggest loaf took around 50 minutes.
• Cool on wires.

White Bread

This bread turned out with a lovely cracked crust; I made 1 large and 2 small loaves.

The sponge was fermented overnight; the Gilchesters' flour produces distinctly "off-white" bread, but these looked attractive once baked.

Wholemeal Bloomers

I made these as 4 large bloomers, baked on the sole of the oven.   The spring in the oven was really pleasing, producing a very light bread for a 75% wholemeal loaf.

Croissant etc. with Sponge

My base recipe for laminated yeasted dough   And I have adapted the formula to use a sponge where 20% of the total flour becomes pre-fermented.   I’m still to be convinced on the sponge, as I believe it makes the laminating process somewhat more difficult; the jury is out on this!

Method:

• Make the sponge the night before and leave to ferment slowly.
• For the dough, blend the milk powder and salt through the flour.   Weigh very cold [I pre-chill the water overnight] water into the mixing bowl, and dissolve the fresh yeast into this.   Add the sponge and the dry ingredients.   Mix with a hook attachment for 3 minutes on slow and 4 minutes on second speed, scraping down the bowl as necessary.
• Cover the dough and store in the chiller for half an hour, and meanwhile cut the butter into slices and roll between 2 plastic bags to create a pliable sheet of butter.
• Roll out the croissant dough so that the slab of butter fits onto two thirds of the dough slab.   Fold the butter in letter-style to create 2 layers of butter.   Rest for one hour in the chiller.
• Turn through 90° and roll out to the same size as before.   Fold the dough in 3 for the first turn, then chill a further hour.   Repeat this 3 more times to give 4 x ½ turns in total.   Rest a further one hour
• I then split the dough into 3 sections and made 14 Pain au Chocolats, 12 Pain Amandes and 14 Croissants.
• Glaze each finished unit with egg, dip the Pain Amande in flaked almonds and set to proof for 45 minutes.
• I used the electric oven to bake these on convection heat setting at 210°C for approx 15 minutes each tray.
• Cool on wires

Bara Brith [Speckled Bread, or, Welsh Tea Bread]

Method:

• Soak the fruit overnight in freshly brewed boiling hot strong tea.   The liquor should just cover the fruit.
• Drain off the liquor from the fruit and reserve both parts
• Make the ferment and leave, covered in a warm place for 40 minutes
• Cut the butter into small cubes, combine flour, mp, salt, spice and sugar.   Add the ferment and mix in a machine with hook or paddle beater to form a soft and well-developed dough.   Add the reserved tea liquor as needed to let the dough down.
• Ferment for half an hour covered.
• Cut the soaked fruit into the dough
• Rest 20 minutes, then process.   I made 3 large round loaves, Panettone-style, scaled around 800g each.
• These were baked slowly in the wood-fired oven.

The breakfast pastries went in the freezer, except a few left as a gift for my Sister-in-Law and Niece who came to look after our cat for the weekend!   One Bara Brith for Mark, "mine host" at the Bear and Ragged Staff in Oxford.   That apart, all the rest of these breads were sold on day of production, even though I only had orders for 7 loaves; the rest went too.

Today's baking made it to the freezer, ready for the Farmers' Market coming up on Friday.   I made the following:

 Breads for Monday 20^th February 2012

Rye Sour built with 40g stock, plus 300g Dark Rye and 500g water, fermented overnight.   Wheat Levain built with 40g stock plus 600g white flour and 360g water, fermented overinight.   The Biga was also fermented overnight.

Ciabatta Dough

I made 15 x 250g Ciabatta breads, plus 3 x 900g sheets of Foccacia [Red Onion and Feta; Olive and Feta; Rosemary and Rock Salt]

Pain de Campagne with Mixed Leavens

I made 2 Miches plus 1 large and 3 small Boules.

My brother and sister-in-law sent me 5kg of T55 flour as a birthday present recently.    They have been staying in the Dordogne for most of January, and eventually he came across this flour which he was confident would be good for me to work with.

I’m going to use up the other 4kg on Thursday!

Some business on the baking front, with lots of ideas about how to take “Bread and Roses” forward too.   The studying needs more priority, of course.   ‘Twas ever thus!

Happy Baking Everybody!

Andy