The Mile High City

After a chaotic spring and early summer, I'm back in Denver.  I'm still settling in, but I've got my kitchen mostly sorted out, and I'm back to bread baking!

The first bread I baked in my new kitchen was just a basic white bread out of The Joy of Cooking.  At that point, I hadn't yet gotten a sourdough starter going, and I didn't have a pizza stone to attempt anything tricky that needs a more stable oven temperature.  I was just craving something delicious and homemade, and even something easy and basic can scratch the itch in a pinch.

The first loaf of bread I baked in my new home

Eventually, I got my kitchen sorted out, including replacing my pizza stone and getting my new, Denver-native starter all bubbly and smelly.  I've just gotten to the sourdough section in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, so the first new bake I tried once I got my setup back together was Reinhardt's recipe for a simple, white sourdough.

The recipe calls for a pre-ferment stage, taking the starter from a very loose barm to a much firmer traditional starter stage before chilling overnight.  If you look closely, you might notice that the starter ball doesn't look like a pure white bread.  That's because the barm stage is made from a combination of rye and whole wheat flours.  The bran present in the whole wheat and dark rye flours provide an injection of natural yeasts (combined with whatever yeasts are present naturally in the environment) to get the starter going.  Natural yeasts are especially fond of rye flour, so I like to add some to my starter periodically (assuming I have any around).

The firm, traditional starter before its overnight chill

You can still see a hint of the whole grain flour in the dough in the photo of the dough in the banneton prior to turning out (below, left).  

The dough after turning out and immediately before
going into the oven.

Finished dough after rise and just prior to turning
out

I elected not to score the boule before it went into the oven to preserve the spiral pattern from the banneton.  I expected that there might be a crack, but the loaf rose a lot more in the oven that I had expected, so I ended up with more of a series of tears than a crack.  It looks artesian and authentic, which I do like, but I think in the future, I'll have to skip the spiral pattern and do a proper scoring.

And for sure I'll be making this recipe again.  It was a delicious loaf, and the sourdough flavor was tangy and delicious, despite the newness of the starter.  I'm curious how it'll taste with a more mature starter after the lactobacilli have had a little more time to multiply.

The crumb on the finished sourdough

In any case, I ended up with a crunchy exterior and a soft, open crumb.  It wasn't quite as aerated as a professional sourdough you might find from your local bakery.  I think I may have underworked the dough, so the gluten wasn't quite developed enough to form the long strands that give professional sourdough its internal structure.  While the dough passed the windowpane test, I'll have to remember that it needs more robust gluten when I try it again.

I've also taken my first crack at my usual 100% whole wheat sourdough that I've been making for years.  Working in the high desert requires more water in the dough due to the low humidity in the air, so my recipe has been re-balanced compared to how I used to make it in Brooklyn.  The higher water content tends to make it sticky and a little more difficult to knead during the initial preparation, but it also rises a little more readily because the dough is more slack.

My first attempt at my usual 100% whole wheat
sourdough in my new kitchen.

I've also found that kneading the dough at the time of first preparation and then letting the complete loaf ferment in the refrigerator overnight yields a tastier loaf than the original preparation, which called for an additional infusion of flour—followed by kneading—on the second morning.  By letting the finished dough ferment overnight, I can retain more of the fermentation gases in the dough when I reshape it prior to placing it in the proving basket.

You'll note the un-interrupted spiral pattern on the exterior of the finished sourdough.  Because the natural yeasts do not create as vigorous of a rise, the loaf is much less apt to split in the oven, so scoring the dough tends to be more artistic than essential for proper baking.  This may mean that I can let the dough rise more before placing it in the oven, and I confess that I often lose patience before the loaf has completely risen to fill the proving basket, which the sourdough did quickly.

I suspect that I can probably allow the loaf to rise longer, and I'll have to try getting up early one morning and seeing how far I can push the dough.  One reason that I always hesitate to let it go too far is prior experience with whole wheat loafs that have collapsed in the oven due to over-proving.

In any case, I think I've found my next project: How far can I push the whole wheat sourdough before it collapses in the oven?

Until next time, I remain your intrepid bread lover.  Ciao!

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Crash and Burn: Spectacular Sourdough Failure

I recently experienced an epic failure on my bread journey.  For the first time in forever, I had a bake turn out so badly that I judged it inedible, and I had to throw it away.  We'll call this "pulling an Ian".

During my recent life upheaval, I was forced to abandon my sourdough starter.  I had to hop on an airplane with nothing more than what I could fit into my checked luggage, and while I was fond of my  starter, it wasn't important enough to rate any of my extremely valuable luggage space.  As a result, I had to try to grow a new starter.  

I thought I remembered the procedure to get one going, so I tried to do it from memory.  One thing that I distinctly remember from the last time I cultivated a new starter, several years ago, was that a hint of acid in the first feeding can help promote the growth of the right lactobacilli to give the usual sourdough flavor and prevent the growth of "bad" bacteria that will spoil the dough.

As far as I can tell, I followed the correct procedure, but something definitely went wrong.  By day four, the starter was bubbling away, so I discarded half (usual procedure) and fed it again.  By the next day, it smelled absolutely perfect, and it was bubbling nicely, so I planned to start my dough on day six.  I'm not sure what went wrong, but the starter didn't bubble much on mixing day, and the dough rose extremely reluctantly.  You can see the results below.

Something went wrong following the last feed of the starter, so it never really got rising again, even though it smelled right.  As a result, the dough didn't rise properly.  I tried shaping it anyway, hoping it would rise in the pan, but that turned out to be a mistake.  I used Pam instead of butter to grease my bread pan, and I basically ended up frying my dough instead of baking it.  I tried a piece when it came out of the oven, and it was horrible.  In fact, it was completely inedible, and I had to discard it.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly where I went wrong and constitute a new starter.  I tried again after this disaster, using pineapple juice (the recommendation from The Bread Baker's Apprentice) instead of lime juice and whole wheat flour instead of bread flour.  Whole grains flour is generally better for starters, because the bran of the wheat kernel carries a healthy dose of the wild yeast that gives sourdough its life.

I guessed that this "more correct" procedure would yield a more successful starter, but the opposite occurred.  The second starter stubbornly refused to activate, and it actually spoiled on day five before I could notice any significant activity.  I had to discard it again, and I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong.  I'm guessing it's an issue with the temperature in my kitchen retarding the growth of the yeast, so I'll have to figure out how to get a better temperature control for my fermentation.

I'll update when I know more.  Until then, happy baking.

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Irish Soda Bread: A Saint Patrick's Day Treat

My life situation has recently changed unexpectedly, and as a result, I've temporarily lost access to all my cookbooks.  Thus, I'm shifting away from my march through The Bread Baker's Apprentice for a while, and my bread journey is going to be more of a random walk for a while.

Chocolate chip soda bread.  Note the scoring on top to release the steam.  Also note that we were hungry and decide to cut into the finished loaf before I managed to get a picture!

For St. Patrick's Day last week, I decided to try something entirely new: soda bread.  Soda bread is very different from "normal" bread in that it uses a chemical leavening agent (baking soda) instead of yeast.  Thus, it's similar to cake in some respects, though the dough is denser and more chewy than is usually desirable for a cake.  Like most breads, soda bread can do well with a wide variety of fillings.  In my case, I decided to go for a dessert soda bread, so this one is filled with chocolate chips.

This was my first time making a soda bread, and one of only a handful of times I've ever eaten it.  The first time I ever tried it was during a massive snowstorm when I was a kid.  In predictable fashion, everyone went out and bought up the entire stock of staples from all the local grocery stores.  Unfortunately, due to their work schedules, my parents got to the stores after the zombie hoards had feasted, so they were able to buy neither bread nor yeast.  Thus, my siblings and I got to eat soda bread instead of the regular stuff for a day or two.

At the time, I remember thinking it was extremely weird.  And if you don't know what to expect, it absolutely is.  The texture is much softer than "normal" bread, and it's denser, to boot.  I may have had soda bread a handful of times since then, but none of them particularly stand out.  I've definitely never made it before.

All of that is just to say, I had pretty much no idea what I was doing when I jumped into last week's bake.  I dug up a recipe from the internet and just rolled with it.  I'm pretty sure I got something wrong, because the dough was much wetter than described by the recipe, so I wasn't able to knead it much, and the shaping went somewhat wrong.  My guess is that I either missed adding a half cup of flour (I don't think so) or that the recipe developer did not share my standard practice of trying not to compact flour when measuring by volume (possible).

In either case, I ended up with a dough that was pretty much impossible to shape properly.  Without a round baking pan or the ability to form the dough into a proper disk, I ended up pushing the dough into a rectangular cake pan.  It went okay, as you can see, but the process of forcibly spreading a wet dough into a buttered glass baking pan meant the bottom inevitably stuck.

Since I was just baking for myself and my family, a stuck bottom isn't the end of the world.  Obviously, there will be lots of room for improvement the next time I try a soda bread.  And there will be a next time because even with my beginner's mistakes, this was good bread.

Until next time, happy eating.

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A Year in Bread

Sunset from my new home in Denver

Far too long ago, I promised a COVID mega-post.  Life has been even more insane in the past six months than it was during the first 6 months of the pandemic.  That sounds odd, I know.  At least for the first six months, however, I had the same job and the same home.  Since my last full post, our dog got very sick, Jess and I moved to Denver, and I left my teaching job at CUNY.  All of these have been major disruptions, and life feels very different now than it did almost a year ago when my department chair told me at 3 PM that classes were going to be suspended starting at 6 PM and that we shouldn't come to campus until informed otherwise.  I've never been back.

Throughout all of this, I've continued to bake.  I love bread, and it's been one of my most important outlets during this difficult period of my life.  Thus, at long last, here is the COVID mega-post.

My year in bread

For Christmas in 2019, Jess bought me a bread-baking class at Le Pain Quotidien in lower Manhattan.  The class was scheduled for Saturday, 14 March, which was three days after my department chair told me not to come to campus the next day.  Everyone was really uncertain what was coming next, and the subway ride to the bakery was eerily quiet.  There were still lots of people around, and a few had masks, but no one knew yet whether they were effective.  It feels weird to admit that I didn't wear a mask.  In fact, everything was so uncertain that I actually called the instructor to make sure that class was still on that day.  It was.  That was my last day of "normal" activity before NYC seemed to completely come apart, and I remember almost everything I did that day.  One of those things was that I managed a good baguette for the first time, though I admit that I had serious professional supervision.

The finished focaccia

Once things calmed down enough that we felt safe having 1-2 people come visit us, I frequently tried out new bread recipes on our friends.  I made bagels repeatedly over the past year, including a fun Thanksgiving Day breakfast.  The bagels have been a pretty big hit, and I personally really enjoyed the cinnamon buns and the focaccia.  Jess absolutely raved about the pain a l' ancien, and I can't say that I disagree.  It was nutty and rich with a pretty amazing crunch.

We left New York at the beginning of August to drive to Denver.  By sheer happenstance, the last two recipes I made before we had to pack up the kitchen were Kaiser rolls and Marbled Rye, two New York staples.  The marbled rye recipe calls for a very dark ingredient to lend color and a bit of extra punch in the flavors.  I didn't have any of the preferred ingredients, so I had to substitute regular cocoa.  It's plain from the picture that the dark rye lost a lot of color during the baking, through it still tasted great!

Marbled Rye

Lavash crackers

One of the first recipes I attempted in Denver was Lavash crackers.  By strange coincidence, one of our Denver friends happens to love them, and she seemed reasonably pleased with the result.  I think the centers probably needed to crisp up a little more, but the edges were very clearly done and were in danger of catching by the time I pulled out the crackers.  More rolling next time!

For my birthday, Jess bought me a very nice bread box.  Up until then, we'd just been keeping bread in plastic bags on our counter.  (Pro-tip: NEVER store fresh bread in the fridge.  It goes stale much more quickly due to the low moisture environment.)  The picture shows my fancy new bread box, filled with three different bakes that I prepped around Thanksgiving.  I admit, I probably went a bit overboard, but Thanksgiving comes only once a year!

My new bread box
Clockwise from the top left: brioche rolls, whole wheat sourdough, everything bagels.

Eggplant sandwich

Around Christmas, I made two different recipes.  I had previously tried pane siciliano, but I got the shape wrong, and I wanted to try again.  Despite the poor swirl on the first shape, we both liked the flavor, and agreed that these baby loaves make great sandwich bread.  For Christmas Eve, we did roasted eggplant and browned mushroom sandwiches with parmesan cheese and a garlic mayo.  Yum!

For Christmas Day itself, I made my first attempt at panettone.  For those of you who know your Great British Bake Off, no, I didn't cool it upside down.  Paul Hollywood would probably hurt me, but I doubt he reads this, so I'm pretty sure I'll get away with it.  I have to admit, it wasn't my favorite bake ever.  It was tasty, but the booze-soaked fruit gave it a little more zing than I prefer.  I don't think it's going to become a Christmas tradition.  Maybe this year I'll try a stollen instead.

Just this past weekend, I prepped Vienna bread, shaped into baguettes.  It was supposed to be a different recipe, but I realized too late that we had used up our semolina flour making Roman gnocchi (also highly recommend, BTW), so I had to improvise.  The next recipe in the book that needed the biga I had already prepped was the Vienna bread, so that's what happened.  The Vienna bread is a lightly enriched dough, so it gives a really soft crumb, but you still get that nice crispy exterior.  The texture was, admittedly, fantastic, but the flavor wasn't anything to write home about.

Vienna bread baguettes

I decided that I prefer a lean dough for baguettes, and I think Jess probably feels the same.  If you look closely at the photo, you can see some fabric peeking into the top left corner.  One of our friends bought me a couche as a going away present when we left New York.  It was a great gift, and it's made it a lot easier to shape baguettes without them sticking.

The past twelve months have been a heck of a journey, and life's about to get even crazier.  I'm definitely going to keep baking, if only to help me stay sane.  I'd ask you to wish me luck, but the last time I tried that, COVID happened.  So wherever you are out there, I hope you and your loved ones are well.  Break a leg!

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Ciabatta: The Baguette's Touchy Cousin

Since the delicious experience that was challah, I've been engaged in a multi-week foray into ciabatta.  My first exposure to a ciabatta recipe comes from watching the bread week episode of The Great British Baking Show.  In the U.S. version of the show, it's from season 1; I believe that's series 4 of the BBC version.  In the season 1 masterclass, Paul Hollywood walks through his procedure for how to make ciabatta.  His technique involves carefully shaping the dough after the first rise without knocking out much of the air.  This allows for a quick second rise, a flavorful loaf that retains all of the fermentation by-products.  It also produces lots of oven spring.

The finished plain ciabattas, shaped using the Hollywood method

 I've previously attempted ciabatta several times, and it's really tricky to get a beautiful loaf using this method.  The Bread Baker's Apprentice does not recommend Hollywood's technique, so it includes a longer second rise.  The...Apprentice also includes multiple variants on the standard ciabatta, and I've attempted two.  The first one was the standard ciabatta using the Hollywood technique.  For the second attempt, I tried a mushroom-enriched ciabatta using the Reinhardt method.  I'll be comparing the two techniques as I discuss my results.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice includes instructions for two different versions of the ciabatta dough.  The two variants employ different pre-ferment stages.  One uses a biga, which is basically a ball of regular dough.  The other uses a poolish, which is far looser and much easier to integrate into the dough.  I've tried both, and I like the poolish better, so I've used that method for both preparations.

Crumb on the plain ciabatta. Note the large, irregular air holes.

Later Note: This post has lingered in an incomplete state for months.  In fact, I'd forgotten about it since February.  I'm posting it now in the state where I left it.  I'll include the plain and stuffed ciabatta images in my upcoming mega-post.

Challah

The crumb on the finished challah

Following my success with the casatiello in my previous post, I was somewhat trepidatious about trying challah.  I've never done a braided loaf before, and I hadn't so much as braided hair since my sister was little.  Nevertheless, this bake came out a smashing success!  I'm thrilled with the taste of this bread, and I'm happy with its look, even if it's not absolutely perfect.  I definitely want to try a braided loaf again.  I've even been thinking about trying a more complicated structure than a simple three-stand braid.  That's not to say that everything went perfectly, as I'll explain, but the process went smoothly enough that I was really pleased with how it came out.

The mixed and kneaded dough, awaiting its first proof

Like the casatiello and the brioche before it, challah is an enriched dough.  However, unlike those prior assays, challah is enriched with egg yolks rather than butter.  This lends the challah dough a beautiful, rich, yellow-orange color.  You can see the deep color of the final mix in the picture at right.  The egg yolks also give the finished bread a more complex flavor than the brioche.  The trade-off for that deeper flavor is that the challah isn't quite as tender or flakey as brioche, but in my opinion, it's well worth the swap.  The inclusion of eggs rather than butter also makes the dough significantly easier to work with.  With the brioche, the butter had to be kneaded methodically into the dough a little bit at a time.  For the challah, the egg yolks simply go into the dough along with the other liquid ingredients.  The kneading process is therefore much faster and less messy.

The proofed dough prior to shaping

The first and second proves on the challah were unremarkable.  Unlike the dense, buttery dough of a brioche, the challah dough did not need an especially long time to rise fully.  That means that challah doesn't need a long, overnight fermentation like some of the breads I've previously attempted.  In fact, the entire process took less than 8 hours.  In my kitchen—slightly warm at the moment due to the hot-water heating system installed in my apartment building—the challah only needed about 40 minutes complete each of the first and second proves.  In fact, that was not noticeably longer than a standard white loaf would have needed.  It was only the shaping stage that deviated from the bread-baking norm.

Completed braid prior to second proof

Challah bread is traditionally formed into a braided loaf.  This was my first time trying any sort of braided dough, so I opted for a very simple three-strand braid.  While the actual braiding went without difficulty, I didn't quite manage to get the initial shaping of the strands right.  A properly shaped challah should be fatter in the middle than at the ends, so The Bread Baker's Apprentice recommends making the individual strands fatter in the middle and thinner at the ends.  I didn't manage to get that shaping correct, and instead I ended up with strands that were fatter on the ends than in the middle.  The result of that error led to a braid that looks neat enough, but it lacks the classic roundness you see in a really perfect challah, as you can see in the picture at right.

I imagine that this is a circumstance where practice will make perfect.  I definitely plan to try a braided loaf again, perhaps even with a more complicated braid.  I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll manage a better shape next time.

The finished loaf.  Note the glossy sheen caused by the egg wash.

Even without a perfectly rounded middle, the finished loaf came out looking fairly nice.  The oven spring on this bread took me by surprise.  It plumped up noticeably compared to how it looked prior to going into the oven.  The recipe called for an egg wash after the second rise and immediately before baking.  This is also my first time trying an egg wash, and the glossy sheen it produced on the bread surprised me as well.  I'm thoroughly pleased with the taste on this bread, and I like the way it looks, even if it's not a perfect example of the style.

The next stop on my bread odyssey is ciabatta.  I've actually tried ciabatta before, and I can get decent by not great results.  The thing I struggle with most is getting the characteristic shape correct, and that's one thing I'll be focusing on next time.  The Bread Baker's Apprentice actually has a couple of different variants on ciabatta.  I'm going to attempt the regular version first and then a recipe that includes some tasty fillings.  Wish me luck!

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Casatiello

And I'm back.  January is a sort of intermezzo for me, because it's a long period between semesters when I don't have any real, formal structure to my time.  This year, January simply re-enforced a lesson I've learned about myself before, though I need periodic reminding: I have a hard time getting motivated when I have long periods without a deadline.  I get bored without a specific structure to my time, and in my boredom, I tend to putter around without doing anything productive.

That is to say, it's been a long time since I last posted.  I'm hoping that the renewed structure to my weeks, now that the spring semester has begun, will help me keep on schedule.

This week's bread is casatiello.  It's an enriched dough similar to brioche, though it doesn't pack in quite as much butter as the brioche from my previous post.  Casatiello is a stuffed dough, which Peter Reinhart likens to a savory panettone.  The conventional stuffings include both cheese and smoked, dried meat.  Typically, it includes provolone cheese and salami, though the recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice lists several possible substitutions for both the meat and the cheese.

Crumb of vegetarian casatiello, highlighting the chunks of mushroom

I'm a vegetarian, so any of the traditional smoked, Italian meat products like salami or prosciutto weren't going to work for me.  Instead, I used browned mushrooms to provide the umami in my preparation.  I first came across this idea about 6 months ago in a recipe from Bon Appétit magazine for a mushroom bolognese sauce.  Since then, I've been hooked, and browned mushrooms have become a regular part of my diet.  In this instance, I used a combination of cremini and shitaki mushrooms with the stems removed.

I love dairy too much to go full vegan, so I opted to use my cheese selection to bring in some of the smokiness that browned mushrooms, despite their glorious umami deliciousness, cannot provide.  Thus, I replaced the provolone cheese in the recipe with smoked gouda.

Tuscan countryside in October, as seen from Florence

Peter Reinhart writes in The Bread Baker's Apprentice that when eaten cold, this bread is very much like a sandwich in and of itself.  Having tasted this bread, I can definitely understand what he meant.  When Jess and I visited a small town called Greve in the Tuscan countryside, we stopped at a famous sausage shop that will cut you slices from huge sides of smoked meat to create your sandwiches.  While this bread wasn't quite as magical as a sandwich of freshly sliced meat under the afternoon sunshine of a Tuscan autumn, it definitely reminded me of the experience.

Obviously, I plan to make this bread again!

Contrary to what one might expect for such a delightful bread, this recipe was relatively simple compared to many of those in The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  The entire process from starting the sponge to slicing and eating took about seven hours.  There was no cold, overnight fermentation that many of the recipes in the book require.  The starter was a simple sponge that came together without much fuss, and the lower butter content in the dough made the kneading and shaping process much easier than for the extraordinarily rich brioche I previously prepared.

The finished loaf, fresh out of the oven

The traditional preparation for this bread calls for placing the dough in tall, thin paper bags and letting it rise inside the bags.  I don't have paper bread bags, so instead I opted for the much easier cake pan option recommended in the recipe.  Regrettably, the experience of trying to get brioche to rise led me to dramatically over-estimate the rise time on my casatiello.  Some combination of less butter and possibly a warmer kitchen led the dough to over-prove dramatically before I was ready to get it into the oven.  The result is what you see at left.  Instead of a nice, round loaf, I ended up with a mushroom.  It's still a cool shape, and of course it tasted great, but it was less visually striking than I was hoping for.  That's definitely a lesson I'll need to remember next time I make this recipe.

While I love the bread, and the quick, simple recipe is quite convenient, I'm not entirely convinced that those two things are beneficial when found in combination.  This bread was so delicious that I finished the entire loaf—mostly by myself, because Jess was on a trip—in about two days.  It made a wonderful meal replacement and a tempting snack.  Once I finish my journey through The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I think I'm going to have to be very careful about how often I make this recipe.  If not, I'll get very fat.

This bake was a resounding success, and I definitely understand Peter Reinhart's claim that he receives more compliments from readers regarding this recipe than for any of his other formulas.  Next week is yet another enriched dough.  This time, it's going to be challah.  I've never tried a braided loaf before, so this will be another fun, new challenge.  Wish me luck.

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