Act I: Golden Raisin Bread
This bread is the first mixed yeast bread I've done on the blog, utilizing both instant yeast akin to the first posts and my starter like the most recent breads. This serves not only to ensure a lively dough with a quick development, it also mitigates some of the acidity we would have from using levain alone.
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Like the currants used in the currant hazelnut bread, I chose to rehydrate the raisins, which gives them a better texture and decreases the likelihood of them turning into little charcoal briquettes in the oven. This isn't asked for in the formula, and is definitely not required, but it was the way we always dealt with our raisins at the bakery, and I'm used to the way they incorporate when they've been hydrated so I stick to what I know. The other addition for this dough was rolled oats.
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Like most grains, the rolled refers to the level of processing it has been put through. put in order from least processed to most processed it would look something like:
Whole Oats => Steel Cut Oats => Rolled Oats => Instant Oats => Oat Flour
In this case processing doesn't necessarily mean there have been mad scientist-esque experiments run upon it, just that it has been ground, par-cooked, or cut to facilitate quicker cooking. Being toward the middle of the spectrum you can deal with rolled oats in a number of ways depending on the end result you have in mind. If you want for instance to have more textural difference you could incorporate your oats with the rest of your dry ingredients. For this bread, we were looking for the flavor of the oats and not necessarily the texture, and so the oats were allowed to soak in the doughs water for 15 minutes prior to the rest of the dry ingredients being added.
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The raisins were added after the full mix had been done. I cut the dough and added the raisins incrementally to speed up the incorporation, but I still wasn't able to get the kind of overall distribution I would have liked.
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It does however make a rather pretty picture so I thought I'd include it :). The bread turned out well. With the luck I have had volume wise in the past few logs I thought I would try again for a fendu style loaf:
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Fendu Can Do! For those of you just happening upon the blog a Fendu loaf, is a boule which is bisected with a rolling pin then put in a proofing basket. This bisect acts as a natural weakpoint during the bake so the bread expands naturally from that line, without needing to be slashed with a razor. For the second loaf I made a batard which I slashed with a straight lame, I was pretty happy with the look.
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Before After
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Last is the obligatory crumb shot:
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All in all it was a tasty bread. I would be curious to try it a gain using levain alone, adding perhaps a small amount of honey to work in tandem with the raisins to offset the tartness of the starter . . . ach ruminations for another day! If you want to see the details for this bake it will be with the other details at the close of the post.
Curtain Falls - End of Act I
Intermezzo - The Pearl in The Pearl
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Whit and I recently got back from a trip to Portland, OR to see my sister / brother-in-law and meet our brand new nephew Ollie. Though that may have been the main purpose for the visit no visit to Portlandia would be complete without heading to the pearl district to oogle things we can't afford, go to Powell's City of Books, and get some bread at The Pearl Bakery. The last of which brings back memories of my bakery days.
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Here I am with a mouth full of ham and gruyere croissant. Though it is a larger operation, the Pearl makes some very similar breads to what I used to make back in the day, from baguettes with poolish to large rustic Italian loaves.
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That is the mezzo pugliese we bought to go with the mushroom risotto I had in the works for dinner that night. Tis a very pretty sight, and delicious to boot! I also picked up part of a pullman loaf of Vollkornbrot. Pullman pans are long sealable metal loaf pans that are used for certain kinds of rye breads. The name roughly means whole-grain bread, and they aren't kiddin':
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Apart from being packed with seeds and grain, it is INCREDIBLY dense. That 4x4x7 loaf weighed in at two pounds! Not surprisingly buying a whole loaf would be a bit overkill, so you actually purchase the bread by weight. I have some pullman loaves of my own to look forward to in the months to come, that's right, Rye is on the horizon.
End of Intermezzo
Act II - Olive Levain
In addition to galavanting about the countryside, we had a visit from one of our closest friends the past week. In honor of her trip I let her pick the bread, thus Olive Levain! This was another nostalgic bread as it is quite similar to the Kalamata Olive Bread we made back at the bakery. The base dough is pretty similar to the Vermont Sourdough from a few posts back, but substituting whole wheat for rye flour, and reducing the salt content to compensate for the saltiness of the olives.
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There are the stars of the show. After checking them to be sure the pits had all been removed, I spread them out on some paper towels to get rid of some of the extra moisture, to lower the likelihood of them becoming projectiles as the loaf starts to bake.
I also opted to go for a long cold rise in the refrigerator, rather than allowing them to fully proof at room temperature. Particularly with sourdoughs, this can really enhance the flavor of the bread. In order to do it well however you need to know what kind of temperature you have in you fridge. Enter the fridge thermometer:
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This was far fancier than I had originally aimed for in a thermometer, but it does have some nice features, such as tracking the high and low peak temperatures, so you can seen what range your fridge runs at. As for how to retard your bread, just be sure it is covered well so as to avoid drying out, and chuck it in!
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Ultimately though the crumb looked good I didn't get the volume I would have liked, and I suspect it has to do with the proofing. The next cool proofing I do, I will let it do 1/3 of it's proof at room temp before committing it to the chill chest.
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Here are the finished loaves followed by a final shot of the two loaves side by side:
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For some reason the last photo made me think of a famous bit of art, so I had a little bit of photo shop fun.
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Coincidence? You be the judge . . . I'll leave you with that haunting image and a promise to be back more regularly as things calm down here at the homestead. Thanks for reading.
Curtain Falls
Credits
-Vino
-Grant Wood
-Yeast
Here are the details from Bake 1, Golden Raisin:
Room Temp: 75.2
Water Temp: 62.6
Flour Temp: 73.5
Preferment Temp: 75.6
Final Temp: 79.3 (target 76)
Autolyse: None
Mix: Standard incorporation + 3 minutes at speed 2, cut on bench, 2 minutes at speed 3
Bulk Fermentation: 1.5 Hours
Bench Proof: shape, 10 minute rest, shape, 1:15 total
Bake: ~28 min @460
Steam: Spritzed bread, steamed on load and for 30 seconds after.
Here are the details from Bake 2, Olive Levain:
Room Temp: 76.3
Water Temp: 57.7
Flour Temp: 73.9
Preferment Temp: 77.0
Final Temp: 76.5 (target 76)
Autolyse: None
Mix: Standard incorporation + 3 minutes at speed 2, cut on bench, 3 minutes at speed 2, cut on bench, 2 minutes on speed 2 +1 minute on speed 3, Incorporation of olives by hand
Bulk Fermentation: 2.5 hours with folds every 35 minutes
Bench Proof: shape, 10 minute rest, shape, 16 hours in the fridge
Bake: ~45 min @ 460 degrees
Steam: Spritzed bread, steamed on load and for 1 minute post