Yesterday I made the second batch of blended white flour/whole wheat flour sourdough sandwich bread. It came out pretty well. Here are the proportions:
1 1/2 cups sourdough starter
1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
1/2 cup milk
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
1 Tablespoon butter
1 cup whole wheat flour
5 cups white all-purpose flour
mixed together, sprinkled with two heaping Tablespoons kosher salt and left alone for one hour... then kneaded (working in another two cups or so of white flour) for fifteen minutes. It rose for about five hours. Shaped into sandwich loaves and placed in well-buttered medium pans, it rose another two hours or so in the oven with a pan of steaming water before being baked at 350 degrees (stayed in the oven, with the water removed, during the preheating time) for about an hour.
This time everything came out wonderfully except that the oven bounce (the rise in the first part of baking) was pretty weird. The loaves were close together in the center of the oven, and they each split along that inside edge and pushed out as if they were trying to touch each other. It was too late by the time I noticed, but they're still good; just a little awkward looking.
Next time: separate them in the oven before turning it on.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Baguettes 2
Rose the baguettes for eight hours while at work, then baked them at 425 degrees for about 25 minutes, spraying the oven walls with water a few times in the first half of the baking. The long rise in the baguette pan caused a bit of trouble: the loaves stuck pretty hard to the pan, and stayed soft, almost like muffins, on the bottom. I put them back in the oven, upside-down on the rack, for ten more minutes. That was too much; they're a little scorched and the crust is too thick. Also, the scores I made in the top crust didn't open.
Next time: draw the scores more nearly lengthwise, instead of crosswise. Flour the pan more thoroughly, and maybe try to loosen the loaves or even turn them over just before baking.
Next time: draw the scores more nearly lengthwise, instead of crosswise. Flour the pan more thoroughly, and maybe try to loosen the loaves or even turn them over just before baking.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
sourdough baguettes
Today:
1 1/2 cups starter
1/2 cup cool water
3 cups white flour
mix together, sprinkle with 1/2 Tablespoon salt. Leave for 15 minutes. Knead for ten minutes. Divide in two, let rest 15 minutes, shape into baguettes. Leave in pans to rise for 7? 8? hours.
1 1/2 cups starter
1/2 cup cool water
3 cups white flour
mix together, sprinkle with 1/2 Tablespoon salt. Leave for 15 minutes. Knead for ten minutes. Divide in two, let rest 15 minutes, shape into baguettes. Leave in pans to rise for 7? 8? hours.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Hooray for White Flour
This time it came out well. Here's what I did:
1 1/2 cups starter
1 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup milk
1 Tablespoon butter
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 or 5 cups white flour (King Arthur all purpose, though it's not locally grown wheat)
...mixed together with a dough hook, sprinkled with 2 Tablespoons kosher salt and left to rest for an hour. Then I kneaded it, put it in a greased bowl and let it rise for about five hours. I greased a couple of small loaf pans and shaped sandwich loaves, warmed the oven (just warm-- like 80 degrees or so) and let them rise again for about two hours. Took them out of the oven, preheated to 350, put them back in and baked for forty-five minutes with a pan of hot water making steam underneath them for the first half.
Next time: use more water, like 2 1/2 cups, to have enough dough for the large loaf pans. Leave the bread in the oven while it's preheating, but take out the pan of water (it seems to encourage an uneven rise). Maybe spray the oven walls with water early on, instead.
The last batch of pancakes didn't have any baking soda, and I liked them better. One funny thing the soda seems to do is make the cakes dry out really fast while you're cooking the first side. Without soda, they're not as bubbly, but I did the fold-in-beaten-egg-whites thing and they came out great. Next time they'll be half-and-half white and whole wheat flour (decadence!).
1 1/2 cups starter
1 cup lukewarm water
1/2 cup milk
1 Tablespoon butter
2 Tablespoons maple syrup
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 or 5 cups white flour (King Arthur all purpose, though it's not locally grown wheat)
...mixed together with a dough hook, sprinkled with 2 Tablespoons kosher salt and left to rest for an hour. Then I kneaded it, put it in a greased bowl and let it rise for about five hours. I greased a couple of small loaf pans and shaped sandwich loaves, warmed the oven (just warm-- like 80 degrees or so) and let them rise again for about two hours. Took them out of the oven, preheated to 350, put them back in and baked for forty-five minutes with a pan of hot water making steam underneath them for the first half.
Next time: use more water, like 2 1/2 cups, to have enough dough for the large loaf pans. Leave the bread in the oven while it's preheating, but take out the pan of water (it seems to encourage an uneven rise). Maybe spray the oven walls with water early on, instead.
The last batch of pancakes didn't have any baking soda, and I liked them better. One funny thing the soda seems to do is make the cakes dry out really fast while you're cooking the first side. Without soda, they're not as bubbly, but I did the fold-in-beaten-egg-whites thing and they came out great. Next time they'll be half-and-half white and whole wheat flour (decadence!).
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Sourdough Pancakes
Yesterday morning I made some pancakes using the crabapple starter-- I liked them, and Kate ate them so she must have liked them all right.
I've used up my bag of Gleason's whole-wheat bread flour. Right now the flour I'm using is milled at Butterworks Farm and grown somewhere in Quebec. So, not strictly localvore, but I'm giving myself a lazy pass (it works like this: "I'm a basically happily lazy person and should give myself credit for finding and using flour that's at least local to the Northeast"). Since our localvore challege week starts today, I have to exert myself slightly more and give myself a "wild card" exemption for it-- but I don't mind.
So, the pancakes: I just halved a recipe from Sandor Katz's cookbook, except I didn't halve the butter or the egg (not much sense trying to use one-half a chicken's egg, and somehow I'm all out of quail eggs, and more butter is a good thing for pancakes). They were all-whole-wheat pancakes, but came out pretty light and tender, I thought. Used a bit of baking soda, which according to the recipe is there to cut the sour taste of the starter, but I think it must also play a big part in leavening the cakes. (Baking soda combines with the acid in the sourdough to produce carbon dioxide bubbles in the batter.) I don't think I'd mind sour pancakes-- maple syrup, after all-- and I'm curious to see if the recipe would work as well without the soda, depending more on the yeast for leavening. Maybe I'd have to help it out with the egg separation thing (mix the yolk into the batter, beat the white separately and fold it in just before cooking)-- I actually kind of like doing that, and for a small batch of pancakes it's not really any more work than beating the egg whole, mixing it in, getting out the soda, measuring it, mixing it with water, and folding that in. The other thing I'm going to do next time is put in some blueberries. I'll have to ask Kate if blueberries we picked in Pennsylvania are okay for the localvore challenge.
I've used up my bag of Gleason's whole-wheat bread flour. Right now the flour I'm using is milled at Butterworks Farm and grown somewhere in Quebec. So, not strictly localvore, but I'm giving myself a lazy pass (it works like this: "I'm a basically happily lazy person and should give myself credit for finding and using flour that's at least local to the Northeast"). Since our localvore challege week starts today, I have to exert myself slightly more and give myself a "wild card" exemption for it-- but I don't mind.
So, the pancakes: I just halved a recipe from Sandor Katz's cookbook, except I didn't halve the butter or the egg (not much sense trying to use one-half a chicken's egg, and somehow I'm all out of quail eggs, and more butter is a good thing for pancakes). They were all-whole-wheat pancakes, but came out pretty light and tender, I thought. Used a bit of baking soda, which according to the recipe is there to cut the sour taste of the starter, but I think it must also play a big part in leavening the cakes. (Baking soda combines with the acid in the sourdough to produce carbon dioxide bubbles in the batter.) I don't think I'd mind sour pancakes-- maple syrup, after all-- and I'm curious to see if the recipe would work as well without the soda, depending more on the yeast for leavening. Maybe I'd have to help it out with the egg separation thing (mix the yolk into the batter, beat the white separately and fold it in just before cooking)-- I actually kind of like doing that, and for a small batch of pancakes it's not really any more work than beating the egg whole, mixing it in, getting out the soda, measuring it, mixing it with water, and folding that in. The other thing I'm going to do next time is put in some blueberries. I'll have to ask Kate if blueberries we picked in Pennsylvania are okay for the localvore challenge.
Friday, September 4, 2009
Last night at 10:30 I shaped the Reinheitsgebot dough (which had risen since that morning at 9) into two loaves, put them in the pans, and set them to rise overnight. This morning at 7:00 I scored them and put them in a 350 degree oven for thirty-five minutes, turning the loaves at the fifteen-minute mark like I did with the crabapple loaves yesterday.
I just ate a slice of the Reinheitsgebot, with butter, and another slice of the crabapple, toasted with butter, to see what the final differences were. They both rose about the same in the oven, strongly but a little wildly, and looked about the same, but smelled and tasted different: the crabapple loaves smell pretty strongly savory, like cheese, while the Reinheitsgebot loaves are much milder. Both are okay, but not great: I still think they're a little under-done, and both rose sluggishly in the pan until they were in the oven, at which point they went nuts and rose hugely in the center but barely at all at the ends. And the cheesy taste of the crabapple loaf worries me a little-- it didn't at first, but it seems stronger today than yesterday, and Kate raised her eyebrows at it.
For the next batch, I'm going to try to get the starters working a little faster by feeding them twice a day rather than once. I might also use a little less starter per loaf. And I think I'll try a couple of adjustments to the baking: the final rise I'll do in the oven with the light on, to warm everything up, and then I'll bake for, say, 45 minutes at 325.
I just ate a slice of the Reinheitsgebot, with butter, and another slice of the crabapple, toasted with butter, to see what the final differences were. They both rose about the same in the oven, strongly but a little wildly, and looked about the same, but smelled and tasted different: the crabapple loaves smell pretty strongly savory, like cheese, while the Reinheitsgebot loaves are much milder. Both are okay, but not great: I still think they're a little under-done, and both rose sluggishly in the pan until they were in the oven, at which point they went nuts and rose hugely in the center but barely at all at the ends. And the cheesy taste of the crabapple loaf worries me a little-- it didn't at first, but it seems stronger today than yesterday, and Kate raised her eyebrows at it.
For the next batch, I'm going to try to get the starters working a little faster by feeding them twice a day rather than once. I might also use a little less starter per loaf. And I think I'll try a couple of adjustments to the baking: the final rise I'll do in the oven with the light on, to warm everything up, and then I'll bake for, say, 45 minutes at 325.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Two Crabapple Sourdough Loaves
This will be a little rushed because I have some errands to run.
After rising for about five hours in the pans, the two crabapple loaves went into a 350 degree (F) oven for 35 minutes. I scored each loaf with a razor blade, lengthwise along the top. The loaves switched places in the oven and turned halfway around after fifteen minutes of baking (well, they didn't do it themselves: I did it).
The bread smelled great almost as soon as it went into the oven: sweet, sour, toasty, fermented. When it came out, I did the thump-check (tapping the bottom of the loaf to see if it sounds hollow, which supposedly means it's done), took the loaves out of the pans and wrapped them in a cotton cloth on a wire rack to cool. After half an hour (well, twenty minutes... maybe fifteen) I took the more beautiful of the two loaves and cut five slices off for my lunch: one plain, one with butter, one with butter and cherry tomatoes, one with cheddar and cherry tomatoes, and one with butter and maple syrup. VERY GOOD. The bread was still pretty hot, and moist enough inside that I'm not sure it was really all-the-way cooked. I've never quite trusted that thump-check. Also, I was pretty careful to keep the scores shallow-- around a quarter-inch-- and I think that was a mistake; one score never really opened, allowing the bread to tear while baking along a side corner, and the other opened WIDE along the score line, tearing more than I wanted it to.
On the campaign-finance thing: of course, it's more complicated than I thought (and almost certainly still more complicated than I now think, having educated myself on Wikipedia). As far as I can tell, the basic argument against reform is this: restrictions on how much money people can give to political campaigns, and on advertising for political causes, infringe on those people's right to free speech. I suppose that's true-- but in effect, it means that most people are denied a "right" granted to anyone with enough cash. That is, the right to speak one's mind isn't quite the same thing as the right to speak one's mind on prime-time national television. Is it?
After rising for about five hours in the pans, the two crabapple loaves went into a 350 degree (F) oven for 35 minutes. I scored each loaf with a razor blade, lengthwise along the top. The loaves switched places in the oven and turned halfway around after fifteen minutes of baking (well, they didn't do it themselves: I did it).
The bread smelled great almost as soon as it went into the oven: sweet, sour, toasty, fermented. When it came out, I did the thump-check (tapping the bottom of the loaf to see if it sounds hollow, which supposedly means it's done), took the loaves out of the pans and wrapped them in a cotton cloth on a wire rack to cool. After half an hour (well, twenty minutes... maybe fifteen) I took the more beautiful of the two loaves and cut five slices off for my lunch: one plain, one with butter, one with butter and cherry tomatoes, one with cheddar and cherry tomatoes, and one with butter and maple syrup. VERY GOOD. The bread was still pretty hot, and moist enough inside that I'm not sure it was really all-the-way cooked. I've never quite trusted that thump-check. Also, I was pretty careful to keep the scores shallow-- around a quarter-inch-- and I think that was a mistake; one score never really opened, allowing the bread to tear while baking along a side corner, and the other opened WIDE along the score line, tearing more than I wanted it to.
On the campaign-finance thing: of course, it's more complicated than I thought (and almost certainly still more complicated than I now think, having educated myself on Wikipedia). As far as I can tell, the basic argument against reform is this: restrictions on how much money people can give to political campaigns, and on advertising for political causes, infringe on those people's right to free speech. I suppose that's true-- but in effect, it means that most people are denied a "right" granted to anyone with enough cash. That is, the right to speak one's mind isn't quite the same thing as the right to speak one's mind on prime-time national television. Is it?
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