Whole Wheat Sourdough with Toasted Walnuts and Cracked Wheat

This is the perfect bread to serve with flavorful cheeses and pâtés, along with fall fruits, such as apples, pears, and grapes. It is great thinly sliced and toasted. The crust is nice and crunchy, and the crumb has a wonderful toasted walnut flavor. 

Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Most of the time, I like making big crusty loaves of lean sourdough, but sometimes it's nice to have a loaf that produces evenly shaped slices for sandwiches. This bread is the best of both worlds (and it makes excellent grilled cheese sandwiches).

This bread is also very good at helping us practice "delayed gratification." The dough requires about six hours of rising. Studies have shown (citation should go here) that individuals who are good at delayed gratification are more successful (it has something to do with toddlers and marshmallows). I vote for baking more sourdough bread just to practice delayed gratification.

It's worth the wait.

Soft Sourdough Sandwich Bread

Adapted from Wild Yeast. Makes two one-pound loaves.

Ingredients

622 g bread or unbleached all purpose flour

323 g water

16.2 g salt

65 g room temperature unsalted butter

31 g honey

33 g milk powder

411 g fed 100% hydration sourdough starter

Instructions

• Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer on low with the dough hook until it comes together. Add more flour or water by tablespoons as needed. If it is humid, start with about 300 grams of water.
• Mix at medium speed for about seven to ten minutes. 
• Scrape the dough into an oiled bowl or dough rising bucket and allow to to rise for three hours, doing a stretch and fold (see the video in this post for a demonstration of the technique) at the one hour and two hour mark.
• Scrape the dough onto a lightly floured surface and divide it in half. 
• Form the dough halves into rolls, spray with spray oil, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rest for about 30 minutes. 
• Spray two 8 1/2 by 4 1/2 bread pans with spray oil. 
• Shape the dough into loaves by flattening it, tightly rolling it (imagine a jelly roll with no jelly), and placing it into the loaf pans. 
• Spray the loaves with spray oil, cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until the dough crests by about 1 1/2 inches above the top of the pan, about 3 hours. 
• Place a pizza stone, if you have one, on the lower middle rack of your oven, and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place a broiler pan on the lowest rack. 
• Place the loaf pans on the baking stone or rack, pour one cup of boiling water into the broiler pan, and shut the oven door. Reduce the temperature to 400 degrees F. 
• Bake the loaves for 25 minutes, removing the steam pan at 15 minutes. 
• Remove the loaves from the pans and place them directly on the stone. If you don't have a stone, place them on a sheet pan. This will brown the crust. 
• Bake for 20 minutes more, until golden brown, and the internal temperature of the bread reaches 200 degrees F. 
• Cool completely on a wire rack. 

Italian Challah

Back in January, 2012, Anthony, a member of the Artisan Bread Bakers Facebook page, posted this recipe for our Bread of the Month. He calls it Italian Challah because, while the recipe is his Italian grandmother's egg bread (Nana's egg bread), it is remarkably similar to a challah recipe he found in a 1960s cookbook. Anthony is a professional baker (and a cool guy) so who am I to question the name?

Italian Challah

Ingredients

500 g unbleached all-purpose flour

11 g kosher salt

10 g active dry yeast

15 g extra virgin olive oil

15 g sugar

215 g warm water (120 - 130 degree F range)

1 large egg

1large egg yolk

1 large egg for egg wash

Sesame or poppy seeds (optional)

Instructions

• Prepare a 9 inch by 5 inch loaf pan with spray oil.
• Add the flour, salt, yeast, olive oil, and sugar into the bowl of a stand mixer.
• Add the egg and the egg yolk.
• Add the water.
• Stir the mixture in the bowl with a large spoon or dough whisk just to moisten the dry ingredients.
• Using the dough hook attachment, mix the dough on the lowest settings for 2 to 3 minutes. 
• Knead the dough with the dough hook for 15 minutes at the speed you normally use for bread that doesn't strain your mixer. 
• Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with plastic, and allow to rise until doubled.
• Divide the dough into three even pieces, shape into long strands, and braid the strands. 
• Tuck the ends of the braid under, if your braid is longer than the pan, and place the dough in the pan. 
• Cover with plastic wrap and allow to double. The dough should crest above the top of the pan. 
• Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F and place a pan on the lowest rack. 
• Whisk the egg and brush over the dough. Sprinkle with the optional seeds. 
• Place the loaf on a rack above the empty pan, and toss some water into the empty pan to create steam. 
• Bake the loaf for 20 minutes, rotating the loaf at 10 minutes.
• De-pan the loaf and bake for 5 minutes more on a sheet pan to brown the lower crust. Loaf should reach an internal temperature of at least 195 degrees F. 
• Cool completely on a wire rack. 
• Enjoy! Thank you Anthony!

Focaccia | Tuesdays with Dorie

This week the Tuesdays with Dorie group is baking focaccia. This recipe was created by Craig Kominiak, one of the contributing bakers for the book, Baking with Julia (as in Child) edited by Dorie Greenspan, and based on the PBS series of the same name. I've been having a lot of fun viewing the various videos online before baking the dish of the week.

Focaccia you say? I do have some experience making focaccia, (see my post on roasted pepper and chili focaccia, onion and sage focaccia, fresh berry focaccia (which actually involves this dough), and Bread Baker's Apprentice focaccia.

This dough consists of flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil, and is mixed for about 10 minutes in a stand mixer until it is glossy and elastic. Judging from the PBS video of Craig Kominiak making this bread, I would guess that my dough was a little more hydrated than his. I chose to leave it that way because I wanted to see if I could develop a very airy focaccia.

How did this recipe differ from the description in the book? Well, my first rise took 15 minutes when it was supposed to take an hour and a half! What? I checked and rechecked the yeast amount and know I was accurate so I have no idea why this happened. My second rise took 20 minutes while it was supposed to take about an hour. Yikes! This one liter of dough was suddenly 4 liters.

At this point, the dough is divided into three pieces, bagged, and cold fermented over night in the refrigerator to develop flavor.

What did I do differently from the recipe? Instead of baking the breads on the baking stone, I baked mine on oiled quarter sheet pans. I even baked one in the toaster oven. (The same one in which I baked my last post, the Boston cream pie. I'm still very excited to find out that my toaster oven can properly bake cakes and breads). Actually, the one baked in the toaster oven baked faster and browned better. Hmmm.  Also, rather than stretch and slash the dough to get it to the desired size as described in the book, I used my fingertips to dimple it and slowly coax it to the edges of the pan.

Suggested way to season the focaccia breads:  Infuse some olive oil with crushed red peppers and brush it on top of the breads. Sprinkle the loaves with some chopped fresh rosemary and sage, a light dusting of crushed dehydrated onion and garlic, and a light sprinkling of sea salt. So good.

For the complete recipe:  Please visit Wandering Through...  To see others' experiences and ideas with this recipe, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie site and check out the links.

Sharing with Yeastspotting.
Sharing with Tasty Thursdays.

Boston Cream Pie | Avid Baker's Challenge

Each month of 2013, the Avid Bakers are baking a different recipe from King Arthur Flour.  This month's recipe is Boston Cream Pie.

Norwich Sourdough

If you saw my post about sourdough with walnuts and raisins, you know that I am "coping" with an oven that suddenly went haywire. While the problem has been diagnosed, we have to wait for a (very expensive) part. Five days and counting. This raises a few questions. To wit:

1. Will I have to eat (gasp!!) store bough bread? 
2. Will a cake bake in the convection roast mode?
3. Will I finally learn how to use my convection microwave?
4. Can I bake bread in my toaster oven?
5. Will I need medication? 

Desperate times, people. Desperate times. 

Thank goodness I have some baking adventure photographs saved up for times like these. Like this Norwich sourdough bread. It was given this name by Susan of Wild Yeast to honor the Vermont hometown of King Arthur Flour. Susan adapted this recipe from Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.  This bread is the perfect hearty everyday sourdough.

Norwich Sourdough

Yields two two-pound loaves, or several smaller loaves.

Ingredients

900 grams unbleached all purpose flour

120 grams dark rye or pumpernickel flour

600 grams of room temperature water

360 grams fed 100% hydration sourdough starter

23 grams salt

Instructions

• Add all of the ingredients except the salt to the bowl of a stand mixer and mix on low for about a minute.
• Let the dough rest for 30 minutes.
• Add the salt and mix with the dough hook for 3 to 4 minutes. 
• Place the dough into a large oiled shallow bowl and allow to rise for 2 1/2 hours, doing two stretch-and-folds at 1/3 and 2/3 the way through (50 and 100 minutes), keeping the dough in the bowl. 
• On a floured surface, gently divide the dough into two parts, and shape into balls. Allow the dough to rest, covered loosely in plastic wrap, for 15 minutes. 
• Shape the dough into boules or batards, place them in floured bannetons or linen lined bowls, cover with plastic wrap, and allow the dough to rise for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. 
• Preheat the oven with a baking stone on the second lowest rung and a broiler pan one rung lower to 475 degrees F. 
• Turn the dough out onto a parchment lined cookie sheet or pizza peel and slash the dough. 
• Drag the parchment onto the stone, add one cup of boiling water to the broiler pan, shut the oven door, and turn the temperature to 450 degrees F. 
• Bake for approximately 40 to 50 minutes (use your instant read thermometer to test the dough), until it reaches an internal temperature of about 200 degrees F. 
• Remove the loaves from the oven and cool them completely on a wire rack. 

Sharing with Susan of Yeastspotting. Head over there to see amazing breads shared from around the world. 

Sourdough Bread with Walnuts & Raisins

This is great bread. I'm just saying. And, yay, I had all of the ingredients!

I was a little worried about the medium rye for a while. I have a written inventory of all of the different flours I've got in the house. Pretty organized, right? Except I couldn't find the book in which I wrote the inventory....

I found the dark rye, the white rye, the pumpernickel. Where is the medium rye? (first world problems!). I was getting ready to combine some dark and white rye (although I'm pretty sure that's not exactly a substitute, I'm not a rye expert) but then, eureka, I found it at the bottom of the garage refrigerator, a refrigerator that was purchased specifically to support my ingredient habit. If I had more room in my garage, I'm not ashamed to say that I would add a freezer.  Fortunately, reason prevails. So far. We still use the garage for the purpose for which it was intended. Cars. Imagine that.

There was also some additional drama. As I dumped the loaves out of the bannetons onto the baking stone, my oven began to go a little bit crazy. It suddenly insisted on baking on "convection roast" at the wrong temperature. I got it to bake (actually convection roast) at the correct temperature, but every time I opened the oven door, it would revert to 375 degrees F. I was going to spray the oven interior to add additional steam, but I was so freaked by the turn of events, that I skipped that. I did, however, fill a steam pan with boiling water.

A baker with a wacko oven? This is just not going to work. I definitely regret having just one oven (first world problems again).

Fortunately, the loaves came out beautifully. They baked a lot faster that the recipe described. Thank goodness for the instant read thermometer. The bread was getting really brown so I decided to take its temperature. This bread was ready way before it was supposed to be. The bread actually took about 15 minutes less time to finish baking.

Interesting. While I'm not happy with the turn of events, I might actually experiment with the convection bake and roast modes once we get this beast repaired.  Now, how will we get a technician out to the house to get this thing fixed in time for some baking projects I have urgently planned (more first world problems)?

This bread is "mixed method," which means it involves both natural yeast and commercial yeast. It takes two days to make. On the first day, I made the levain, which is made from a sourdough starter. On the second day, I mixed the levain into the rest of the ingredients. If your sourdough starter has not been fed for quite a while, feed it the day before you make the levain.

Sourdough Bread with Walnuts and Raisins

Ingredients

Levain

82 grams unbleached all purpose flour

41 grams water

66 grams sourdough starter

Dough

308 grams unbleached bread flour

119 grams whole wheat flour

47 grams medium rye flour

3/4 tsp instant yeast

13 grams salt

All of the levain

341 grams water

95 grams coarsely chopped walnuts

95 grams raisins

Instructions

To make the levain:

Add the ingredients to a one or two quart bowl and mix until incorporated. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and ferment at room temperature for 8 hours or overnight. 

To make the bread:

In the bowl of a stand mixer, whisk all of the dry ingredients except the raisins and walnuts. Add the levain and the water. Mix in the levain and the water with a large spoon or dough whisk. Mix with the dough hook on low or "stir" for one minute. Increase the speed to the next level and mix for 15 minutes. Lower the mixer speed to the lowest level and add in the walnuts and raisins. Mix for one minute, remove the dough, and knead by hand until fully incorporated. 

Place the dough into an oiled container and allow to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until almost doubled. 

Gently deflate the dough and divide into two even pieces. Shape into boules.

Allow to ferment for about 60 to 90 minutes, until doubled. 

Bake the loaves in a 450 degree oven on a baking stone with a steam pan for 40 to 50 minutes. 

Or maybe convection roast for 30 minutes?  

This recipe is the January bread of the month (the BOM) for the Facebook Artisan Bread Baker's group is Sourdough Bread with Walnut and Raisins. Darlene posted a photo of her bread and I asked her if she was willing to share the recipe with the group for the BOM. Thank you Darlene for a wonderful contribution.