Whole Wheat Baguettes

Since my last post, I've made a habit of weekend bread-making (at least for the last two weekends). Last weekend, I made a larger batch of 4 baguettes using the Pain l'Ancienne Recipe -- this time switching to a 5 parts white : 4 parts whole wheat flour combination (mostly because I ran out of hard white bread flour).

From what I understand, whole wheat is not meant to rise as much as white flour given the lower gluten content. My experience last weekend was mixed -- the overnight rise in the fridge was quite aggressive, but despite the large overnight rise, the crumb in the finished bread was more dense than in the all-white baguettes made last month. This may have been from the 20 minutes of kneading when I prepared the dough (I've read that longer kneading times result in more dense crumb) but was surprising given the extent of the first rise.

But who cares - the bread tasted great. I was able to give away a baguette to my parents, our friends Rich and Anne, and as a parting gift to our friends Marie-Eve and Rick who are moving to Chicago. Bread makes a great gift, or at least it does in my case since my friends are so shocked that I've actually started making bread. No one had 30 in the "age at which Rob will finally make bread pool". I've also discovered that people don't mind if you stop by unannounced when you give them free bread. A few pictures of last week's bread below.

Dough after overnight rise -- bubbling with whole wheat goodness.

Finished baguettes. The whole wheat content also seems to result in a darker crust. Even though it was almost a 50/50 mix, the crumb had a good, strong whole wheat taste to it.

This weekend, I made it to Rube's in the St. Lawrence Market to pick up several pounds of organic hard white flour, as well as some organic hard whole wheat flour. Even though I'm keen to start on some other recipes, work is looking busy this week, so I decided it wouldn't be a great week to go through the process of bringing a sourdough seed culture or starter to life. So, this week's offering involved more baguettes -- this time with a 350g white 100g whole wheat mix, and a smaller 2 baguette batch. One baguette will be staying with us, and we'll be giving away the other to our good friends Jim and Sarah, who have shown an interest in my bread making and have accepted my minor obsession with the Queen & Beaver.

These are the large glass containers we picked up from IKEA today to store the copious amounts of white and whole wheat flour I bought yesterday. I think they're great, and Lisa enjoys them as well since it eliminates the leaky plastic bags of flour that have been dusting our pantry (in our case a 10-inch wide cupboard). I hope that they also provide Laura with some comfort that she's not the only person who enjoys containers and order.

This week's bread cooling. I've tried to up the artistic flair of the bread and have gone with "X"s instead of diagonal cuts. Next weekend I will be carving in Greek symbols to mark the sovereign debt crisis and my nerdiness.

This week's bread with some pecorino from the market.

Philly Weekend

My wife and I were in Philadelphia this past weekend visiting our Austrian friends Hannes and Anita. The weekend consisted mostly of catching up, eating and drinking beer in the sun -- a few food shots from the trip below. If you've never been to Philly, it's worth a visit - Spring tends to spring a several months earlier than in Toronto making April and May a great time to visit.

Spring in Rittenhouse Square

Brunch at Sabrina's in the Italian Market (9th & Christian). Great Eggs Benedict.

Pecorino ahead of bowling in the Northern Liberties. Pecorino is the name of a family of hard Italian cheeses made from ewe's milk [1]. I learned this evening that a ewe is a female domestic sheep. Ewe learn something new every day.

Bread from the cheese shop. My attempt to link this post back to bread.

Challah French Toast at Marathon on the Square (19th & Spruce). It tasted as good as it looks.

Lisa's much healthier breakfast - Bagel, Lox, Cream Cheese, and Beet Salad, also at Marathon on the Square, and (according to Lisa) also delicious. It's been a big week for my food vocabulary as I didn't really know what Lox was. Apparently, Lox is a salmon fillet that has been cured. It is traditionally made by brining the salmon fillet in a solution of oil, water, salt and spices (not to be confused with smoked salmon, which has been cured and then hot or cold smoked)[2].

Great weekend, even with the flight delays on the way home.

Much Improved!

Last week's kids-size baguettes have given way to larger adult-size baguettes this week. After getting back late from a BBQ late on Friday night, I spent 30 minutes at 1am mixing and kneading some dough using the same recipe as last week. Except this time I increased the flour base to 425g (ratios for the other ingredients were the same, except for an extra 1-2g yeast) and also spent ~10 extra minutes kneading, which passed quickly given that there as much more fermented product (beer) in my stomach than in the dough. As before, I covered the dough with plastic wrap and tucked it away in the fridge for the night.

On Saturday, I removed the dough from the fridge at 12.45pm before heading to a late lunch, gave it 4 hours to rise (vs. 3 hrs last week), shaped it into 2 baguettes (vs. 3 last week) and then baked them at 4.45pm. The other adjustment I made was to pre-heat the pizza / baking stone for longer, which seemed to solve the problem of having the dough retain too much moisture on the bottom (there was still some moisture, but much less than last time). The combination of the longer first rise time and the extra heat also seemed to result in a better oven rise. The finished product was highly satisfactory.

Dough part-way into first rise

Shaping into baguettes. Gentle!

Finished product cooling.

Delicious bread with nice air pockets.

At Last ...

Bread. Finally. Following last weekend's bread titanic, I needed a bit of a break from bread. Lisa and I took in a few movies from the sofa, and I started reading an all-consuming book about Columbine (fascinating). I made it back to bread making on Saturday afternoon.

As mentioned in the last post, I decided to focus on a slightly easier recipe for attempt #3, Pain a l'Ancienne, from Peter Reinhart's Bread Maker's Apprentice ('the book'). Last time, the process was a mixed bag of steps from assorted recipes and message boards, and it was tough to know where things went wrong. By using the book, mistakes would be easier to diagnose, and the steps in the book are explained in great detail, which as a rookie baker is helpful.

Pain a l'Ancienne

Bread flour 100%

Salt 2%

Instant yeast .7%

Water (approx.) 79.6%

On Saturday, late afternoon, I carefully measured out all of the ingredients and mixed them in a bowl (n.b. I went with 385g of flour). I then hand-kneaded for a while. It must have been 15-20 minutes. As per the instructions, I continued to sprinkle in flour and kneaded until the dough didn't stick to the sides of the bowl (but still stuck to the bottom) and then set the ball into a different, lightly oiled bowl, covering it with plastic wrap and tucking it into the fridge for the night.

(My dough in its refrigerated chamber)

At 7.15am the next morning, I hopped out of bed, removed the bowl of dough from the fridge, and then removed myself from the land of the conscious, diving face first back into bed [1]. By 10.15am the dough had almost doubled (time was up, we needed to be at my parent's place for brunch by 11.30am), and I moved it to a floured (err, over-floured) countertop for cutting and shaping into baguettes. I went with three thin baguettes thinking they would rise quite a bit more in the oven. I pre-heated the oven, baking stone, and steam pan to 500*F, and moved the strips and baking parchment dusted with cornmeal onto the baking stone. I then added a cup of water to the steam pan (creating copious steam), tossed small amounts of additional water against the sides of the oven twice at 30 second intervals and then changed the temperature to 475*F, baked for 9 minutes, rotated the parchment 180 degrees and then baked for an additional 15 minutes. The baguettes were not a deep brown yet, so I left them in for a few more minutes before taking them out. That's when I noticed that the bottoms of the baguettes were still moist and sticky. I entertained a quiet moment of frustration and unkind thoughts, which thankfully passed quickly. I suspect that baking them on the parchment resulted in their retaining moisture on the bottom (the tops were golden brown), but it could also have been that the baking stone was not hot enough yet. I put the baguettes in for an additional 5 minutes at 425*F, and then flipped them upside down for 3-4 minutes.

By that point we were already pushing 11.20am, so I jumped in the shower and asked Lisa to take them out of the oven after the last 3-4 minutes were up. When I came out, the baguettes were on a cooling rack and looked great. The smell of fresh bread was also pretty awesome.

(2 1/2 baguettes - the smallest is half-eaten - we couldn't wait for it to cool)

(Decent crumb - still a bit doughy towards the bottom, but some air pockets)

(Thick, flavourful crust. A bit of over-zealous flouring on the counter during shaping left it powdery, but much more artisanal looking!)

The baguettes hadn't risen nearly as much as expected in the oven, so they were somewhat emaciated looking. Next time, I'll shape the dough into two larger baguettes instead of three smaller ones, but we finally had bread! And an Easter brunch to get to.

We took two of the three baguettes with us and they were a hit. My 3 1/2-year-old nephew consumed two thirds of the larger of the two baguettes and he normally doesn't eat anything. He wants one for his birthday. Probably not as much as he wants new Playmobil, but if I judge this effort through my unabashedly direct nephew's response it does mean that my third attempt at bread-making was a success [2]. There are a few lessons in the experience, but one is that if your bread ends up more miniature than expected, share it with someone with a small mouth and small hands.

Notes:

[1] At 8.30am I made my way back into the kitchen to check on the dough. The bowl was still somewhat cold and the dough had not risen very much, which was a bit disconcerting given that I needed my dough to rise so I could bake it before brunch! To speed up the process, I turned the nearby gas stove on low, which added a bit of extra heat to the kitchen, and sped up the warming process for the bowl and the dough. Not very scientific, but it seemed to work.

[2] As of 6.30pm this evening, the bread is all gone.

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)