Bread Titanic

Unmitigated disaster. Well, maybe that's a bit melodramatic -- but my Sunday breadmaking did not really get off of the ground. I set my dough out for its first rise, using the 1 starter : 1 water : 2 flour ratio from the Ruhlman blog (+15-20 minutes of kneading) ... and the dough never really rose.

On the first rise the dough jumped a modest 25-50% in size (after 12-15 hrs), but when I tried to handle it for punching down in preparation of the second rise (proofing) it was still fairly dense and very very sticky. After setting it out for proofing it did not rise again. It just dried up. And eventually became pocked with finger holes from our poking it to check if it was rising (which it wasn't). So, on Monday I was forced to abandon ship on this attempt. Given the lack of a strong rise, I suspect the problem was with my starter (not active enough).

(New home for my sourdough)

For attempt #2, I'll be taking a stab at a slightly less ambitious but exciting sounding bread, Pain a l'Ancienne (French bread) which uses instant yeast and will substantially shorten timelines and eliminate the need for a pre-ferment for now. I find I'm having trouble ensuring that I'm available for the feeding times, and refrigeration seemed to throw everything off.

I must admit that one of my first thoughts following the failure of my bread was that this is a disaster - it will be really disappointing for the followers of my blog (all three of them at the moment...) who were so looking forward to bread over the weekend. But, ironically given my passover entry, my bread did not leaven - and I reminded myself that my quest for bread is as much about the journey as the final result. Although, it would be nice to have some edible milestones during the journey, but all in time I suppose.

Stay tuned -- there will be bread on this blog soon. My bread titanic has only hardened my resolve. I sense greater success with French bread given the lower cultural distance.

Breaking Bread

One of my co-workers, Alex, correctly pointed out that the timing of my first stab at bread-making falls, somewhat ironically, on the Jewish holy day of passover (otherwise known as the "Feast of Unleavened Bread"). Thousands of years ago when the Temple in Jerusalem was standing, families were required to make a sacrifice of lamb or goat at the temple (the "Pesach sacrifice") and eat it that night. The sacrifice could not be offered with anything leavened (another word for fermenting or causing dough to rise) and would be eaten together with matzo (unleavened bread) [1]. Interesting. That said, as an Anglican I don't celebrate passover, and I tend to think of Anglicanism as 'religion without rules', which suits me fine given that my once a year trek to church on Christmas Eve probably wouldn't impress JC / God if I were a catholic. I guess I have Henry VIII to thank for freeing up my Sunday mornings for baking and for some fine HBO programming.

Update on Bread Attempt #1

It looks like the timing of my first boule will likely fall into tomorrow. I'm having a bit of trouble reviving my starter after a few days of refrigeration and a big reduction and feeding (1 part starter : 1 part flour : 1 part water) yesterday morning. I also went on a search for flour this morning after dropping my wife off at the library, and ended up on the bottom floor of the St. Lawrence Market where there's a small colony of bulk food stores. I was in the first store and found a bin of 'hard' whole wheat flour next to a bin of whole wheat flour. After my experience with spelt flour last weekend, I opted for the normal whole wheat flour and bought two bags. No big deal. Then I walked out of the store and saw that there was a specialty flour and grain store right next door. They had a number of bins labeled whole wheat flour and unbleached 'hard' whole wheat (bread) flour. After second guessing some of my earlier flour choices I picked up a large bag of unbleached 'hard' white bread flour.

A few hours and a wikipedia and Bread Baker's Apprentice stop later I learned that:

1) Hard flour, otherwise known as bread flour, is high in gluten content (12-14%) and has elastic toughness that holds its shape well once baked. Important fact. I've tried to adjust my starter by feeding it today with the unbleached hard white flour.

2) Unbleached flour has more of a brown tint caused by beta-carotine. Using bleached flour doesn't seem to impact the recipe, but the beta-carotine improves flavour and aroma. Given the choice, unbleached seems like the way to go.

So, my starter is now a mish-mash of whole wheat and unbleached hard white flour. Photo below:

We'll see what happens. I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm on-track to produce some kind of bread Frankenstein tomorrow. I may also be starting starter #3.

postscript - Remember to kill the lights for Earth Hour tonight at 8.30pm

Notes:

[1] Good wikipedia entries on passover and matza

No Soggy Sandwiches

I'm very picky about sandwiches, and was contemplating the qualities of a great sandwich the other day. The short list I came up with included:

i) Toasted bread - No soggy sandwiches here.

ii) Hearty meat - I have a preference for leftover chicken or turkey that, while not necessarily fresh, usually seems to taste better than most deli-style meats.

iii) Great sauces - I'm partial to mayonnaise or jam. Or both at the same time. [1]

Over time I've honed my pickiness into a club sandwich recipe that seems to channel my preferences into the unicorn of sandwiches (at least my unicorn -- there are no doubt many people who prefer soggy unicorns / sandwiches).

Rob's Club Sandwich

Ingredients [2]

2 slices of 12-grain bread

1/2 fresh vine-ripened tomato

freshly sliced roasted chicken or turkey

2 strips of bacon

small handful of mixed green salad

mayonnaise

raspberry jam

Directions (not that you need directions on sandwich construction)

1) Pre-cook the bacon in a pan (very important - raw bacon is markedly less tasty)

2) Pre-toast the bread (this minimizes sogginess)

3) Construct the sandwich layering bread (bottom slice) - chicken - bacon - tomatos - lettuce - bread (top slice) with mayonnaise and jam generously spread on the downward facing side of the top slice

4) Eat. Groan. Lick crumbs off of plate.

Starter update

After an uneventful initial 24 hours of stagnation, my starter sprung to life on day two. After three feedings it is looking wildly active. Picture below.

Unfortunately, I'm running low on flour and even lower on time to bake over the next few days, so I'm wrestling with strategies to keep the starter alive until the weekend. This is complicated slightly by the fact that I now have a lot of starter. Will likely need to reduce and re-feed. Perhaps refrigerate for the night as well. That said, with the starter now active, delicious bread seems only a few days away.

Notes:

[1] I've had a few comments about the jam/mayonnaise combination. It dates back a few years - I was on a British Airways flight from London to Munich when the stewardess rolled down the aisle with the lunch cart. I'm generally fine with airline food, but the lunches are not normally very good (other than Porter Airlines). However, on this flight the stewardess handed me a box that contained a roast turkey sandwich with tomatoes, lettuce, and cranberry sauce on multi-grain bread! A bit soggy, but the cranberry sauce otherwise made it. It turned me on to the concept of some kind of jam or cranberry sauce on a meat sandwich. As for the mayo, I just like it.

[2] For those in Toronto, the Healthy Butcher sells delicious pork strip bacon and freshly cut roasted turkey (including a sun-dried tomato version)

In Search of Yeast!

Yeast is not a popular topic amongst guys. A small minority of guys with deep knowledge of brewing get quite excited about all things yeast, but for most it tends to conjure up awkward silences and visions of a women's health area of the drugstore that they try and avoid.

But, from what I gather so far about baking (and I have not yet been much of a gatherer), yeast is really the star of the show. For those not knowledgeable about yeast (like me prior to my wikipedia visit earlier this week), they are micro-organisms - a type of funghi - that are used in various processes that require fermentation.

In baking bread, yeast is used as a leavening agent where the fermentation process converts sugars in dough into carbon dioxide and ethanol, creating gas pockets that heat up causing the dough to rise. Baking the dough interrupts the fermentation process mid-stream. When baked, the yeast in the dough dies, the ethanol evaporates, but the air pockets remain leaving your bread soft and spongy and preventing your bread from having the flat, thick density of a hockey puck.

Sounds simple, but fermentation is quite complex from what I understand, and requires a delicate balance of yeast, yeast nutrients, enzymes, temperature, and time. If you interrupt the fermentation process too early, the dough won't rise properly and the bread won't taste as delicious because the enzymes in the dough will have had less time to break down the complex starches into simple sugars (some of the sugars become feedstock for the yeast, but much of it is left to contribute to taste and quality / colour of the crust). If you leave the dough to ferment for too long, the yeast will consume too much of the sugar and start producing undesirable by-products creating an alcohol and ammonia-like aftertaste. Lower temperatures generally slow the fermentation process, while higher temperatures tend to speed it up. Different strains of yeast are also more or less amendable to different temperatures. So, it seems the art of breadmaking depends heavily on the ability of the baker to control time and temperature in order to choose the optimal time to interrupt the primary and secondary fermentation process (or so they say -- I guess I will find out). [1]

For my first foray into breadmaking, I'll be making a sourdough boule (aka round loaf). To start with, I'll need to develop some form of sourdough starter using wild yeast. The 'sour' taste in sourdough bread is created by bacteria that feeds on lactic and acetic acids, and since the bacteria takes ~2x as long to do its work as the yeast does to leaven the dough, we need a wild strain of yeast that is a bit more resilient and can endure the long fermentation process. Good sources of wild yeast seem to be purple cabbage, organic grapes, plums, and anything else that forms that white film on the outside.

So, yesterday, I went on a quest for yeast and ended up at the Essence of Life Organic Food Store in Toronto's Kensington Market and picked up a not too sad looking ball of organic red cabbage (and organic deodorant - my wife is now powerless to my earthy scent). They also had organic grapes, but cabbage won the yeast beauty contest this time.

After arriving home, I embarked on my bread making journey by starting my starter. I'm using the recipe from Michael Ruhlman's blog (as suggested by Laura).

Sourdough starter

(from Carrie Thurman's Two Sisters and a Bakery Blog via Michael Ruhlman)

8 oz. unbleached whole wheat flour (by weight)

8 oz. water (by weight)

2 leaves of red cabbage (not by weight)

From what I gather, you basically just mix it in a bowl and let it sit overnight before feeding again. Picture of my 5-minute old starter below: [2]

Much like a pet, I will need to feed my starter with equal parts flour and water every 12 hrs or so, and the recipe suggests I should have some working starter available to start making bread in 48 hours. So the countdown begins! Will keep you posted.

Notes:

[1] Much more detailed discussion of primary fermentation in The Bread Baker's Apprentice

[2] Without going into too much detail, this is actually attempt #2. My first attempt at starter yesterday (after arriving home from my yeast quest) was not a success. I had, for whatever reason, used whole spelt flour instead of wheat flour which I understand does not generate as good a rise and has starch with different water solubility characteristics, which throws off the water/flour formula. My 'spelt' starter was looking pretty terrible this morning, so I cut my losses and re-started with some whole wheat flour this evening. Still not sure what spelt is all about. When I bought it I'm sure I thought it was some high-end super-flour since it was in the baking section of the grocery store and had some mighty nice looking packaging, but boy was I wrong. It's for people who have trouble digesting wheat. You learn something new every day.

Hapless-ness

It all started with bread-making. Last August I read this great post on bread-making on my friend Laura's blog, complete with pictures of this amazing sourdough boule. I decided (in retrospect impulsively) that I too would master the art of bread-making and picked up a copy of Peter Reinhart's The Breadmaker's Apprentice the following afternoon. Despite my clear lack of artisanal skills, my wife and friends were excited about my sudden interest in making delicious bread, and keen to see some finished product - some perfectly crafted boules and baguettes.

Sadly, I made my way through maybe 50 pages before the tome started to gather dust on the coffee table. July became August, and eventually summer made way for Fall and Fall for Winter -- all without bread. I was short on flour, but long on excuses. I would get to it "eventually" [1].

I didn't think much of it until a few weeks ago when I read an essay by Paul Graham about entrepreneurship. In it he argued that the main quality of an unsuccessful entrepreneur is to be "hapless". Or put differently (in his words) "to be battered by circumstances—to let the world have its way with you, instead of having your way with the world."

It was like a smack in the face. I realized that I was hapless. The world had been having its way with me like an angry drunk or a prison gang. Too much "eventually" and not enough "getting to it". Well, this blog is my way of getting around to the things on my "eventually" list.

First up -- making bread.

Notes:

[1] My friends have started a pool on how old i will be when i finally make bread. I'm 30 and I understand the over-under is at ~35.