Adventures in Cooperation!

After a somewhat busy and rocky start to my last school semester, I have finally found the time this Saturday morning to make some bread in my co-op. Hooray! I am sticking to the book this time, but using half whole wheat, as per the co-op's preference.

Soaker:
29 1/8 c. WW flour (local and organic, so lots of hull and crunchy bits)
14 3/4 c. water (I didn't really measure the temperature, but I was trying for 77)

I let this rest for about a half hour while I measured the rest of the ingredients and traipsed all over campus trying to find salt.

Dough:
soaker
7 c. water
28 c. white flour (probably 3/4 King Arthur Sir Galahad and 1/4 organic)
7 3/4 T. salt
5 7/8 T. yeast

I kneaded it 5-10-5-10-5 and put it in an oiled tall container to rise. I'm a little worried about the temperature in the kitchen. I tried to measure it, but I think all of our thermometers are vaguely broken, so I covered the container in a plastic bag, put it in a corner near the oven, and am hoping for the best.

The result...

Well, the 100% whole wheat was a disaster. Okay, not a disaster, per se, but really not what I was hoping for. Pros: it had a really nice, thick, crunchy crust, a soft crumb texture, and a nice flavor (enough salt! And WW tastes great). Cons: it felt like a brick. The loaves hardly rose at all, in or out of the oven, and I gave them almost 8 hours in a warm place. I don’t think I killed the yeast, because they were still rising a little bit before I finally got fed up and put them in the oven.

What I think I could do to change it is this:

1) Maybe try adding a little bit of white flour, or using WW bread flour rather than just the regular stuff.
2) Increase the proportion of water. I had to add about a third of a cup anyway, because the flour would just not incorporate. Ideally, I’d like to only go up to about 75% water (this means that the amount of the water in the mix is 75% of the weight of the flour), but with 100% WW, I realize I may need closer to 80%.
3) Suck it up and let it rise longer. What I really should have done, I think, is let the shaped loaves proof overnight. I was both impatient and afraid that they wouldn’t rise if I put them in the fridge, or would overproof if I left them out. But in retrospect, overproofing probably would have been better than what I got.
4) Increase the amount of yeast by a little bit.
5) Let the soaker warm up before I mix up the final dough. I think the fact that I started kneading when the total mix was only 62 or so degrees was not really helpful for yeast happiness.

At least I know that the soaking works wonders, and that the amount of salt is right.


On a happier note, a few days ago, my mom and I went to a commercial kitchen supply store, which was amazing. I felt like a kid in a candy store. My mom really wanted to buy a pizza stone, which I greatly appreciate, as I’ve been using it for bread to great effect. I wanted some French fry baskets to use as couches (pronounced “kooshes,” and used to help loaves keep their shape while proofing). We both got what we wanted, plus I picked up a dough blade for 3 bucks (!) and splurged on a canvas pastry bag, which I plan to use to make éclairs and cream puffs. I think I may have to break the rules of this blog to write about them. And then, while I was making preparations for baking my first loaves, I found a broken half of a cutting board my mom had lying around, and I’ve been using it as a peel (that thing you use to put bread or pizza into the oven directly onto a stone). It’s perfect! Which is great, because before this I was trying to slide a sheet of parchment with two unbaked loaves on it onto a 400-degree baking sheet in a 400-degree oven. Not the smartest thing I could have done. Bottom line: I love kitchen toys, and commercial kitchen supply stores. And I should wait at least a year before going in one again.

My first try

Well, okay, so that's a lie.  I can't really count the number of loaves of bread I've baked in my life, over a summer of working in food service and a semester baking 20 loaves a week in a food co-op and numerous home baking exploits.  However, I am a haphazard baker by nature, which sometimes presents me with pleasant surprises, but always is frustratingly inconsistent.  So, my new project is to bake a whole bunch on my own, and record my processes and results while messing with different variables.  Hopefully I'll end up with something I like consistently :-)

Previously, I've used the basic recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book.  The book is amazing, and has lots of great recipes as well as a beautiful poem about leftovers.  However, this basic bread recipe leaves something to be desired.  I've found it to be rather dense and wet, with a thin crust.  It also uses sweetener, which is fine, but is difficult when one wants to remain vegan, cane-free and cheap (yes, molasses is a viable option, but it colors and flavors the bread in a pretty intense way).  So, as the title of my blog states, I'll be reverting to using only four ingredients for a while - flour, water, salt and yeast.  I will vary the types of flour I use, the length of fermentation (resting and rising), the temperature ingredients are at, and to a small degree, the proportions of the ingredients.  So, without further ado...

My First Attempt at Long-Fermentation Bread

Well, I should preface this account with the statement that my first mistake here is measuring the ingredients by volume rather than weight.  I know, I know, I know...it's totally inaccurate and variable.  But I can't really afford a scale, so it'll have to do.  What I've been doing is calculating recipes by metric weight, and then converting them to US volume measurements using www.gourmetsleuth.com.  Not perfect, but it works in a pinch.  The recipe I used is as follows: 

500 g whole wheat flour (4 cups)

350 g water (1.5 cups)

10 g salt (1.3 tsp)

5 g yeast (1.25 tsp)

So, my second mistake was probably jumping into this project with 100% whole wheat bread.  What can I say?  I got excited!  I started by soaking half of the flour in an equal weight of water overnight, so it could hydrate.  This definitely helped; already I've noticed that the gluten strands aren't breaking as often as I usually notice with whole wheat dough.  I then mixed this mixture (cold, directly out of the fridge, another mistake) with the remainder of the ingredients, all at room temperature except for the water, which was about 80 degrees F.  I kneaded this for 4 minutes, let rest for 7, kneaded for 4, let rest for 8, and kneaded for another 4.  I really intended for all those times to be longer, but I got tired (my counter is about 7 inches too tall for me, and if you've ever kneaded 100% whole wheat dough, you'll know that it takes quite a bit of effort) and impatient.  It is now rising for 3 hours, next to the wood stove (probably 85 degrees F).  It's been 2.5 hours.  Though the texture has changed quite drastically, it still hasn't risen all that much.  I'll probably turn it after another half hour, and give it another hour after that to rise.  We'll see what happens...