Sourdough Boules

Last night I decided to make a second attempt at sourdough loaves.  My sourdough starter has been growing and fermenting for over a week, and I thought that it was time to try again.  This batch started off promisingly - the sponge grew quite a lot between Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon when I started to work on the bread.  For the sponge (a mixture of starter, flour, and water that ferments and rises overnight), I used white bread flour, rather than all purpose flour.  For the dough, I used mostly all purpose flour, substituting about a half cup of rye flour and some ground flax seed for added fiber.  The loaves are delicious, but still not as airy as I want them to be.  The dough didn't rise as much as I had hoped it would during the initial rising periods.  Then, after I shaped it into loaves and wrapped it in towels to rise again, the dough expanded a lot on the sides but didn't rise up.  I think that next time I need to place the loaves in small bowls for the final rising period so that they are less likely to spread outward.

Don't get me wrong, the sourdough is DELICIOUS.  It is heaven slathered in butter (or in white bean spread for the vegans out there).  But I'm just not satisfied with the loaves.  They are too crispy outside and too spongy inside.  Oh well, better luck next time! 

Happy Birthday to Me!

Thanks to my wonderful friends - and to the Avett Brothers - for a fantastic birthday yesterday.  And a special thank you shout out to my roommate Brooke for making these delicious cupcakes.

Sourdelicious!

Even though I just created my sourdough starter on Saturday, and my recipe says that it won't be ready to use for bread for at least a week, I threw caution to the wind and started working on my first sourdough loaves yesterday.  From start to finish I failed to follow the recipe accurately and was generally acting like an enthusiastic incompetent, rather than the organized, disciplined person I'd like to become someday. 

I started by making the sponge from a ladle-full of sourdough starter and a whole bunch of flour on Tuesday morning.  If I had read the recipe accurately, I would have realized that I was supposed to let the sponge grow overnight, so I really should have started it on Tuesday night.  As it was, I didn't get around to working on the sourdough loaves until about 2pm on Wednesday.  During that time, my sponge had grown until it spilled out the sides of the bowl it was rising in, and then deflated a bit, and I have no idea how this has affected my bread. 

However, this has been a learning experience, if only about the amount of time and planning it takes to make a sourdough loaf, and I'm glad that I did this over the past two days, so I have an idea of how to budget my time in the future.  This afternoon, I made the dough and kneaded it by hand until it was smooth and stretchy and basically passed the windowpane test.  After ten minutes of kneading, the dough failed the windowpane test twice.  So when it mostly passed the test after about twelve minutes of kneading I decided to give up, for fear of overkneading the dough.  I theorized that it may have failed the test because the starter was so young and not enough yeast had grown yet, but I'm still not sure exactly how the amount of yeast affects the gluten in the dough.

After kneading, I shaped the dough into a round and let it rise for an hour.  My recipe - from the River Cottage Bread Handbook, more or less, since I subbed different types of flour - suggested letting the dough rise for four one-hour periods, reshaping the round between rising periods.  I did that, and the dough seemed to rise significantly during that time.

However, by the time I had shaped the dough into baguettes in anticipation of one final rising period before baking, it was seven at night and I was starving.  (I'm currently studying for the Oregon Bar Exam, and so I don't get out of the house much, especially not to buy food.)  That's when I realized that my recipe said to let the dough double in size, which could take anywhere from one to four hours!

I ended up cooking the first baguette after about one hour of rising, which was not enough to make it as light and airy as I wanted it to be.

I baked this loaf on my new baking stone (actually a paving stone purchased at Home Depot for $7.87, as opposed to $40 at a cooking supply store) in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then at 400 degrees for another 20 or so minutes, then at 350 degrees for a few more minutes.  I loved the golden brown crust, but the consensus (between me and my excellent roommate, Brooke) was that the crust was too hard after the bread had cooled.  The inside of the loaf also seemed a bit undercooked.

After I removed the first loaf from the oven, the other two loaves had been rising for nearly two hours, and had grown substantially (although I'm not sure they had doubled, exactly).  I decided to pop them in the oven while the stone was still hot, and hope for the best!  For this batch, I baked them at 450 degrees for about ten minutes, then reduced the heat to 350 for about 20 minutes.  After that, I reduced the heat to 300 degrees to prevent the crust from getting as hard as the previous loaf, and baked for a few more minutes.  Brooke and I both knocked on the loaves to test whether they sounded "hollow".  She said that they definitely sounded hollow, while I wasn't sure I liked what I was hearing.  We decided to take them out of the oven after about 35 minutes of total bake time.  They looked lovely.

This batch definitely didn't have as hard a crust as the first, and the inside was fluffier, but it still didn't seem cooked enough inside.  The loaves were also a little bit too salty.  I think that what I've learned from this is that: 1) I need to wait until my starter grows more wild yeast; 2) I need to let my dough rise until it is truly doubled in size, no matter how long it takes; 3) I need to use less salt than the recipe calls for; and 4) I need to follow my new temperature guidelines rather than those provided in the recipe.  I think that the main reason that my loaves don't seem well enough cooked is that they are too dense.  If I let them rise longer (and if the yeast is more active), I think that they will cook more thoroughly.  They'll also probably make a better "hollow" sound!

Finally, even though the loaves weren't perfect, Brooke and I were able to eat a fabulous (if bizarre) dinner of sourdough baguette, cheese, pepperoni (for her), artichoke hearts, tomatoes, and sliced melon.  And now that we've eaten all the food in the house, I think I have to go to the grocery store tomorrow.

Peer Pressure

My mom peer pressured my into buying this awesome cake stand at Ikea.  Even though I'm trying to save a little money, I fell completely in love with it.  It is perfect for displaying the fruits of my labor (not to mention the awesome cake my friends are making for my birthday next week!)  Incidentally, this lovely contraption also keeps bread and cake quite fresh, but its visual charms were what won my over initially.

Sourdough Starter

This weekend I didn't get a lot of baking done because my mom came to visit and we were way too busy sightseeing and doing home improvement projects.  Thanks to her, I almost have a finished kitchen table and chairs (which I bought unfinished nearly a year ago).  I have to varnish two more chairs and I'll be back in business (and I'll be able to have friends over without being a coaster fiend). 

Anyway, I did have a chance to start a sourdough starter, which so far has been a lot of fun.  A starter is kind of like a pet, in good and bad ways.  You get to watch it grow and play with it every day, but you also have to remember to feed it every day or it gets cranky.  So far, I have fed my starter twice, and I have to feed it again tonight.  According to the River Cottage Bread Handbook, I'll be able to start feeding it less frequently after about a week, and I am really looking forward to that!  The great thing about a starter is that every time you have to feed it, you have to get rid of half the starter (usually by baking a loaf of bread).  The awful thing is that, when it's time to feed the starter, you have to bake, or miss out on a chance for fresh bread.  I plan to manage my starter so that I only have to feed it once every week or two, so that I can make more than just sourdough loaves.  As much as I love the idea of growing my own wild yeast (and I REALLY love that idea), I know that I won't want to eat sourdough every single day, not to mention that I have actual pets to take care of. 

This is what my starter looked like when I was ready for its second feeding.  It smelled horrible - first like rotten eggs, then like yeast, and finally like burnt rubber.  Apparently this smell is how I'll know when it's ready to be fed in the future - I just hope all the varnish fumes didn't mess with my sense of smell too badly.  I don't want to spend weeks waiting for my bread starter to smell like furniture!!

Focaccia Redux

Last night I made a new loaf of focaccia using the recipe that I ruined last week.  This one turned out light and airy and delicious (not to mention beautiful)!  Now, part of the point of writing this blog is to learn as I go by keeping a record of my successes and failures and noting the tweaks I made to the recipe to achieve these results.  The problem with this loaf is that I made at least three changes in the recipe and my process from last week, so I'm not sure which one (or ones) was the ticket.

First, the recipe called for bread flour, but the last time I made it I decided to use the all purpose flour I usually bake with.  It's higher in fiber and is pretty fine, so I didn't think it would make that much difference as long as I sifted it.  This time I stuck to the recipe and used bread flour.  I also added a bit more water when I noticed the dough was stiff, unlike last time when I tried to follow the measurements rigidly.  I just followed my gut on this one and it produced much more workable dough.

Second, I kneaded the bread for even longer than last time.  I initially learned that overkneading was fatal for bread, and my understanding was that you could overknead bread pretty quickly.  This may have led to some of my bread failures in the past.  This time, I kneaded the dough for over ten minutes, and I used the windowpane test to see if dough was elastic enough.

The windowpane test involves taking a small ball of dough, flattening it, and then stretching it out until you can see light through it (so it looks like membrane).  If the dough breaks before you can see the light through it, it's not elastic enough.  I didn't grow up cooking and have never taken a cooking class, and I had never heard of this test before a few days ago!  One of the most important things I'm learning from the River Cottage Bread Handbook is the "why" of baking.  In the past, I've read cookbooks and followed recipes, but never understood why I was kneading bread, or adding one particular ingredient at a specific time, and thus I didn't understand why some of my recipes failed and others succeeded.  In other areas of cooking, I love to experiment and fiddle with recipes, but I was following bread recipes mechanically - just hoping for good results.  Now that I'm learning more about gluten and how it's developed, I can anticipate a future in which I'll know whether my bread is going to rise properly and whether the recipe will turn out the way I expected.

The third change I made was just taking a more relaxed approach to baking.  I'm often short on time and, if bread doesn't quite look like it's risen enough, I sometimes force myself on to the next step anyway.  Last night I was sharing the kitchen with my mother, who is visiting from Massachusetts.  After I kneaded the dough and left it to rise on the counter, I let my mom take over to make us dinner while I went to work in the garden and find us a bottle of wine.  I ended up letting the dough rise for longer than the recipe specified, and let it more than double in size.  It was also nearly 100 degrees in my kitchen, which probably didn't hurt.  Honestly, I'm not sure why we were baking bread and cooking a hot dinner last night!

Finally,  although the recipe instructs to cook the bread at 500 degrees for ten minutes and then 400 degrees for another ten, I cooked it for just ten minutes at about 450 or 475, and it came out perfect.  At five minutes I rotated it, although my oven heats pretty evenly.  The crust is golden and just barely crisp, and the inside is incredibly fluffy.  Last night, we sopped up the sauce from our Greek Shrimp with it, and this morning I ate a slice buttered with my fruit and coffee!

Birthday Madness!

Yesterday was my friend Brooke's birthday, so I focused my baking time on the cake and pizzas for her party.  The theme of the party was black and white - everyone had to wear black and white and the minimalist decorations included white luminaries - so she asked for a simple chocolate cake with white vanilla frosting.  We were worried that the white cake would be too boring, so we chose red frosting for the message!  After I finished the writing, we thought that the cake still looked a little boring, so we decided to "class" it up with chocolate shavings:

These turned out pretty cute and super delicious, and the cake eating was a huge success.

I used another recipe from the River Cottage Bread Handbook for the pizza dough, and it worked like a charm.  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the pizza as I spent most of that phase of the party kneading and spreading pizza dough.  My only word of advice is not to have a "Create Your Own Personal Pizza" party if you tend to be controlling about your kitchen!

Update:  I just got a picture of one of the personal pizzas from my friend Becca.  It looks just as delicious as it tasted.

Happy Fourth of July!

In honor of the fourth, and to finally use up a big bag of cherries we picked in the Yakima Valley last weekend, I made a nice patriotic cherry cobbler last night.

The recipe was from my old standby, the Joy of Cooking, and it came out nearly perfect, except that it wasn't juicy enough for my taste.  This was probably because I reduced the sugar, since the Bing cherries were already insanely sweet and ripe, forgetting that the sugar helps the cobbler get gooey.  Still, I sneaked a few bites last night and it is delicious.  I'm tempted to eat some for breakfast!

Mmmm!  Take a look at that golden, sugary crust!

Basic Loaf

Sadly, I have no pictures of the basic white/whole wheat blend loaves I made last weekend, because we ate them so quickly! This was another recipe from the River Cottage book, and it turned out very nice sandwich bread. I used a mixture of beer and water as the liquid and a mixture of white and whole wheat flour to give the bread more fiber without making it taste like cardboard. I also added a bit of honey to sweeten the dough, as I prefer a slightly sweeter wheat bread. This bread was not exciting enough for me - I'm the kind of person who would sit around and eat plain bread all day as long as it had a strong flavor and good texture, like sourdough or olive bread - but I can see making large loaves of it on the weekend to use for sandwiches throughout the week. Sliced very thin it was excellent for cheese and veggie sandwiches (and I'm sure it would taste very good with ham or smoked turkey, too.)

Focaccia

This focaccia looks lovely, but it's actually hard as a rock. As I type, my teeth are sore from trying valiantly to eat a cheese sandwich on it!

A few weeks ago, I bought the River Cottage Bread Handbook. It is a lovely book, full of beautiful pictures, delicious sounding recipes, and technical descriptions. Unfortunately, it doesn't translate perfectly from a professional kitchen in the English countryside to my somewhat inadequate Portland, OR, kitchen. I think that I'm going to have to experiment with the temperature settings given with these recipes until I get them just right.

In the past, one of my downfalls has been my love of experimentation. Before I've really mastered a recipe, I'll start messing with it, subbing ingredients or changing volumes, which makes it hard to figure out what's working and what isn't. Since I've had the River Cottage book, I've tried to follow the recipes scrupulously, but I find it hard to resist the urge to add more liquid to almost every recipe. This may be a difference in the types of flour available in the States, or in the tools I'm using in my kitchen, which "might not" be top of the line. I think that this focaccia is suffering from being too dry before cooking and from being cooked too long or at too high a temperature. As my roommate mentioned, it's also suffering from "not enough rosemary." I'll try it again this weekend.