Bread - What are you baking today…..
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In the face of such half arsed efforts the only thing to do was double down and try something even more challenging [emoji1]
I have a rye starter (very acidic, very tasty) and a spelt starter (mild and more lactic to taste, but really powerful), but no wheat starter.
Having read the Forkish book recently I decided to follow his method for developing a starter with an eye on baking his Overnight Country Blond (the recipe caught my eye because it reminds me of my wife when we were first dating [emoji6]).
We have had some lovely weather here so the starter required feeding twice a day and grew fat, bubbly and potent in now time. I prepared for what would be my first pure levain bake in about six weeks and was excited.
The Forkish recipe is different to how I’ve baked with levain before. It called for an overnight bulk ferment at around 20C and a 3-4 hour proof the next morning. I knew I was in trouble when the mixed dough came in at 29C… the room temp was high after a sunny day, so the only thing to do was find the coolest place in the house and cross fingers. In retrospect I should have just stuck it in the fridge.
The bulk ferment ended in a lovely bubbly, smelly dough, but it was running hot still.
Despite passing the finger dent test the dough was obviously too active during proofing so I shortened the time to two hours and got it in the oven. It was like soup out of the bannetons and the results were predictable.
At least it looked nice from the top down.
I was gutted. However despite the flub, it tasted great. Tangy and mildly acidic but with a buttery depth to it as well. I need to be more aware of room temperature next time and adjust my timing accordlingly.
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It is a consolation…
I’m in the habit of having two doughs on the go at the same time, basically because of the small army living here. That complication affects my timing and coupled with the higher ambient summer temperatures is clearly my issue when it comes to the lack of oven spring. Time and temperature... the fifth and sixth ingredients.
The overnight country blond was my first stab at a new method with a new starter so with the benefit of hindsight I can live with the failure.
80% white biga is a safe place for sure. Happy baking.
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Well, we'll need to see the crumb…
I'm pretty happy with this one, it was done in a Dutch Oven):
This one was done in the steam oven and looks challenged in comparison:
Normally I would brush off as much flour as I could before putting into the oven, but the dough was spreading so fast I couls see it flattening, so had no time for de-flouring (I set that one up for you Reuben)…
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the dough was spreading so fast I could see it flattening, so had no time for de-flouring…
There should always be time for a bit of de-flouring. On the other hand, if things start losing their rigour, then «use it or lose it» is a good motto to live by…
(I couldn’t let you down).
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agreed that Le Creuset is not worth the $$. I got mine at Homegoods (a discount home store) for around $70 for an 8-quart and its lasted years and years.
I baked up some sourdough burger buns. I kept them soft by substituting Whole milk for water, and then brushing them with butter when they came out of the oven to cool.
Farmers market pickles, colby jack cheese and heirloom tomatoes from our deck garden along with the Grass fed beef patty and we have dinner. We did a side salad instead of fries and we tried to have some restraint.
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Poolish is like a Biga, no biggie
So like Biga that I decided to do it alone and move the Biga to a Sunday bake, after the Country Blonde. Makes more sense in terms of scheduling.
I’m also going to move away from The Forkish method of an overnight bulk ferment with the country blonde, and instead do an evening bulk ferment and an overnight proof in the fridge.
The only question now is whether one, two or all three of the bakes are going to go tits up.
