Yes my friends, the time has come to embrace the natural . . . to shake off the yoke forced upon us by the tyranical commercial yeast barons. . .
You'll have to forgive me, this is why my wife doesn't allow me sugar after 9:00 pm.
Bad jokes aside, it is a nice change of pace to be working on sourdough breads again, they are wonderfully flavorful and have a longer shelf-life than their commercially yeasted cousins. This is all thanks to the use of natural yeast in the form of a starter also known as levain. As I was preparing for this post I realized that while I have explained many aspects of technique and materials I have failed to talk at ALL about one of baking's most important ingredients: yeast. Every formula you have thus far seen on the this blog has used commercial yeast as its only source of leavening, but there are a number of types of yeast available on the market:
Cake Yeast - comes in foil wrapped blocks, and before I got more experience as a baker I thought of this as the real-deal yeast that was probably used at all the professional bakeries. Turns out not to be the case. Why not? It is highly perishable, and as a result can yield less consistent results. You still may see older recipes which ask for it, but I'd google some conversions rather than worrying about getting your hands on it.
Active Dry Yeast - This is the only yeast I interacted with growing up, in its iconic little foil packets. It contains little oblong granules of live and dead yeast cells with some growth medium thrown in for good measure. It is the least perishable form of yeast living for up to a year at room temperature, or over a decade frozen. It does however need to be rehydrated (or "bloomed") before incorporating it in a recipe, and can suffer thermal shock if this isn't done at the right temperature.
Instant Yeast - This is what I (and the bakery I worked at) use. It is very similar to active dry yeast, but has smaller granules and a better percentage of live to dead cells. It is more temperamental than active dry about storage, but when kept in the freezer like I keep mine . . . well lets just say I bought a pound of it when I left the bakery 2+ years ago, and haven't had to buy more. It also has the considerable advantage of being able to be added directly to the dry ingredients without having to concern yourself with blooming it.
So if I'm not using my beloved tyranical instant dry yeast what am I using? This:
If you guessed a blob at the bottom of a piece of tupperware, you get a gold star for the day! This is my starter, and though it may not look like it, it may older than I am. I received a bit of starter from one of my colleagues at the bakery which he had been using regularly for many years.
Keeping a starter alive is not a terribly complex process, though it does take consistency. At the bakery the main levain we used (both white and rye varieties) were fed 3 times a day every day, and over time that yields an amazingly consistent culture. When I am not using my starter regularly (as has been the case for the past few months of bread blogging) I refresh it a handful of times a week.
A refreshment involves moving a small amount of the developed levain to a new tub, adding fresh flour and water, mixing it together then letting it ripen for 6-8 hours. If you aren't planning on using it for a while it can be placed in the fridge after it has ripened.
In order to get my starter back up to speed for the coming formulae, I have been refreshing it 3 times a day 2 to 4 days a week for the past few weeks. Most importantly I always refresh it at least 3 times consecutively before the final build for a recipe.
The final build is very similar to the preferments used in the earlier bread logs. They vary from liquid builds (much akin to the poolish) to stiff builds (like the biga). Unlike their predecessors however, they comprise the entirety of the yeast used in the formula.
. . . enough with the back story. The formula for this week is a predominately white flour dough with a bit of whole rye added for flavor and extensibility. By in large, the process of working with a naturally leavened bread is like that of what you've seen in prior posts. The only really changes are that of degree. The extra enzymatic activity and acidity of the dough slows down the doughs development which requires extra autolyse and mix times and possibly additional folds during bulk fermentation. Beyond that, the bulk fermentation and final fermentation tend to be a bit extended.
I chose to make 5 smaller loaves so that Whit could share them with her co-workers. It also allowed me the opportunity to play with my shaping and slash patterns.
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These are the 3 batards. The outer two were a longer pointed shape the inner obviously more stubby. I did a single slash on the stubby one, a double slash on one of the tapered:
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Then I decided to try something different with the last tapered batard and tried some cuts with scissors:
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Yeah that didn't pan out so well, but it still tasted delicious! The cuts I made were at too steep an angle and their own weight resealed them before they could spring open in the oven. This yielded an overly dense loaf. It is easy to see the difference in volume in this side by side shot.
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Lastly, I made a couple of boules and was sure to give them decently deep slashes:
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My moderate scissor technique aside, the bread turned out quite well. Baking it also reminded me how much I love the smell of sourdough bread fresh out of the oven. That tangy acidity courtesy of the cultures lactobacilli is unmistakable even in the aroma. In the next few days I'll be posting a video breaducation post of the mixing process I taped during this bake, so keep your eyes peeled. One last thing before I go. I need a name for my starter, so I'm going to open it up to my 5 or 6 readers out there to propose suggestions. Just leave your ideas in the comments below!
-Vino
Here are the details from the bake:
Room Temp: 75.7
Water Temp: 65.7
Flour Temp: 78
Preferment Temp: 85.2
Final Temp: 80.5 (target 76)
Autolyse: 30 minutes
Mix: Standard incorporation + 2 minutes at speed 2, cut on bench, 2 minutes at speed 3
Bulk Fermentation: 2 hours with folds at 30, 60, and 90 mintues
Bench Proof: shape, 15 minute rest, shape, 2.5 hours for the batards, and around 3 hours for the boules with 0 minutes in the chiller
Bake: ~25 min @ 460 degrees
Steam: Spritzed bread, steamed on load and for 30 seconds after. and added skirts of tinfoil inside the oven to slow the venting.
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