Farine

Crazy for Bread

Baking with natural starters: a bread workshop in Victoria, BC

I may not be a wiz at math but I know a winning formula when I see one! Take two experienced and passionate bakers, mix in two eager helpers, sprinkle with six enthusiastic baking students. Add two very active homegrown natural starters (one white, one rye), four completely different doughs, a copious dose of elbow oil (the students mixed everything by hand), a dash of late fall weather and a lovely Victoria farmhouse. Let the whole thing ferment, dusted with bread love and lore, and what you get is a fantastic introduction to baking with natural starters.


breadsong with the 80%-rye bread and Diane with the Norwich Sourdough

The workshop was the brainchild of two of my baker friends, Diane Andiel and breadsong. Diane is a full-time community programmer for the district of Saanich in Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia; she is also a farmer (she raises cows, goats and chickens) and a baker. She knows all the slow-foodies there are to know on the island and they all know her. Many of them buy her bread every weekend. A British Columbian as well (albeit a mainlander), breadsong is a marathon baker and born instructor who loves nothing more than sharing both what she makes and what she knows. She is also a full-time certified general accountant and a member of the team of volunteers which standardizes formulas for the Bread Bakers Guild of America.
Taken separately neither of them might have been bold enough to take on teaching a bread class but put the two of them together and all bets are off. Emails pingponged for weeks across the skies of British Columbia, from misty shores to mellow valleys, from pregnant fields to pounding surf. Formulas fluttered back and forth; some were forcefully driven to the ground; others blew slowly away, never to be seen again; four made the final cut: Diane’s version of the Norwich Sourdough, Jeffrey Hamelman‘s 80% rye (a honey-walnut-spice variation), his whole wheat multigrain and Ken Forkish‘s 75% whole wheat.
On the actual eve of the workshop, as dusk darkened the windows, four women could be seen sitting around the kitchen table: Diane and breadsong, Melanie (a baker from Northeastern Washington who had come to help) and myself, the designated blogger. A giant platter of homemade cookies was brought in from the cold; mucho munching ensued, fueled by steaming tea and riotous retelling of bread (mis)adventures. Then we all got down to business: breadsong made final adjustments to the class handouts; Diane mixed a batch of Norwich sourdough, then shaped the one that had fermented all day and set it to proof. Melanie and I started scaling the ingredients for the doughs which were to be mixed in the morning.

A variety of grains was set to soak…

…spices were roasted and ground for the rye bread…

…and the various levains got fed.

Then, save for the silent squish of slowly rising dough, the house hushed for the night.

Things picked up fast in the wee hours of the morning: doughs needed to be mixed and set to ferment for the students to later shape, proof and score, proofed loaves had to be baked and everything step and ingredient checked and re-checked and checked again.


At 9 the students filed in. Although they were all there for the same reason (to learn how to make naturally leavened bread), their motivations varied: some had mastered yeasted breads and wanted to “graduate” to levain; others had never baked bread but loved the idea of making everything from scratch; one had just gotten a stone-mill grinder and wanted to switch to whole grains; another had a gluten-sensitive wife and was hoping that naturally leavened breads would be easier for her to digest, etc. But one thing was clear: they were all determined to make the most of the workshop.
By way of an introduction, Diane explained that the class was an experiment as neither she nor breadsong had ever taught bread making before. She stressed that since sourdough baking couldn’t possibly be a one-day project, the students would see all the steps of the process but not necessarily in chronological order. Two doughs were ready to shape and the students would start with that; then they would mix four doughs from scratch. The most urgent task was to shape the Norwich sourdough which had bulk-fermented (a technical term for what the students might already know as the first rise) overnight.


Shaping


Two things to remember when shaping:

  • Keep your hands dry and floured
  • Don’t use too much flour on the bench (the table or countertop) or you will compromise the crumb (since the gluten in the added flour isn’t given a chance to develop)



Desired dough Temperature

Mixing




Dough development

Fermentation & temperature

By the time the various morning tasks were done and over with, everybody was both famished and excited. Lunch was vegetable soup and Norwich bread, followed by tea and cookies made with homemade butter. Talk about keeping the troops happy!


Norwich bread

Two student-shaped loaves

breadsong’s rye bread

Each and everyone of the students took home two containers of starter (one wheat, one rye), some rye flour, two fully baked loaves (one Norwich and one 80% rye) and two doughs to finish fermenting, then shape, proof and bake at home (the 75% whole wheat and the whole wheat multigrain), all wondrous presents for a bread lover and would-be sourdough baker. But as exciting as all these goodies were, the most precious thing the students left with was surely this advice from Diane and breadsong. Reflecting on their experience, they said that what had helped them the most over the years was:

  • Properly maintaining and caring for their sourdough starter (wheat, rye)
  • Using a scale (weighing ingredients) and a thermometer (to monitor dough temperature)
  • Allowing flour time to fully hydrate (as an aid to mixing)
  • Calculating water temperature prior to mixing
  • Controlling fermentation: maintaining appropriate temperatures when fermenting the starter and the dough 
(a Brød and Taylor proofer is a useful tool); 
  • Properly developing the dough when mixing
  • Watching the dough, not the clock, to determine whether it has fermented (risen) enough
  • Baking with steam.
I couldn’t agree more.

Maintaining a rye starter and preparing for a bake

When breadsong took the lid off her container of rye starter during last month’s Baking with Natural Starters Workshop in Victoria, BC, there was a collective gasp of surprise then a few seconds of reverent silence before we all exclaimed about the extraordinary honey-like aroma. Breadsong took a long sniff and said that while she had sometimes detected beautiful fruity aromas in the heat of summer, she had never picked up on such a honey scent before. We speculated about what might have caused it: it could have been a simple mass effect (she doesn’t usually mix such a large amount of starter); it could have been the flour (she had been stayting with Diane for a couple of days and using Diane’s rye flour instead of the one she uses at home; it could have been the presence of countless wild yeast cells in Diane’s kitchen. We may never know. What I do know for sure is that I have never seen or smelled such a rye starter as hers. So of course I asked her if she could explain in details how she cares for her starter and what she does to prepare it for baking. Below is what she wrote back. Thank you, breadsong!

“When I took Jeffrey Hamelman’s rye breads class, he recommended a schedule for maintaining a rye starter at home. I try to follow a similar schedule, feeding my rye starter every other day when I am not baking.  If planning to bake, I’ll increase the feeding to daily, then twice-daily feeding, just before building a rye levain for a bake.
When well-cared for and regularly fed and refreshed, the rye starter contributes lovely aroma and flavor to the baked rye bread, so I try to keep up the feeding schedule. I can’t always maintain this schedule if time is short or if away travelling, but the rye starter seems to bounce back quickly when the feeding schedule is resumed.
The rye starter is maintained at 100% hydration, with feeding being equal parts rye starter, water, and flour (30g rye starter + 30g warm water (un-chlorinated) + 30g whole organic whole rye flour). The top of the starter is dusted with rye flour after feeding, to help make the starter’s expansion and ripening more visible. I place an elastic band around the container, at the level the starter is right after feeding, to help me see how much the starter rises while fermenting.
Temperatures in the low 80’s are recommended dough temperatures for sourdough rye breads in Jeffrey Hamelman’s book, so  thought I’d try 80F as a target temperature for fermenting the rye starter when getting closer to bake day, to try to make sure the rye starter has lots of vigor prior to building the rye levain.
I aim for a rye starter temperature of 80F after feeding. If I’m not planning to bake soon, I let the rye starter ferment at room temperature  until the rye starter has peaked or matured (has domed, doubling in height compared to its height in the container when freshly fed; has cracks on the surface ;  with lots of fermentation bubbles visible along the sides of the (clear) container it is fermenting in). After the starter has peaked, I refrigerate it to prevent the starter from over-fermenting before the next feeding (I don’t like how the starter’s consistency breaks down when it over-ferments).
When getting closer to bake day, I use the Brød and Taylor proofer to keep fermentation temperature of the rye starter at 80F – the rye starter really seems to be happy at this temperature.
As an example of the feeding schedule I use, to prepare for a Sunday bake:

  • Monday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until  it peaks, then refrigerate
  • Wednesday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until it peaks, then refrigerate
  • Friday morning, feed starter and let ferment at room temperature until it peaks, then refrigerate
  • Saturday morning, feed starter and let ferment at 80F until it peaks, then leave at room temperature
  • Saturday evening, feed starter (upping the quantities, if necessary, considering the amount of rye starter needed to build the rye levain); let ferment at 80F until it peaks, then leave at room temperature
  • Saturday night or early Sunday morning, when rye starter peaks, build rye levain for Sunday bake (fermenting at 80-83F preferably, sometimes fermenting at a cooler temperature, hoping to time it so the rye levain will be at its peak at a convenient time for mixing)
  • After building the rye levain, feed rye starter and let ferment overnight or until it peaks, then refrigerate until Monday morning.  If building a rye levain of 100% hydration or less, will dust the top with rye flour to help make the starter’s expansion and ripening more visible.”

Maintaining a white starter and preparing for a bake

If there is a secret to Diane Andiel‘s gorgeous breads, it is that her wheat starter is extraordinarily vivacious. If it were a person, it would be a soprano! It erupts into singing bubbles any time she walks by, you know that slight “crushing paper”sound a starter makes when it is happy? You have to see it (and hear it) to believe it. I asked her how she maintained it and being a woman of few words (but action galore), she wrote back what follows:

I keep the starter on a twelve- hour schedule for at least three days leading up to a bake. Morning and night it is refreshed so that it will do what I need it to do. When I am not baking for a few days, I will feed it once a day or refrigerate it for three or four days without feeding.
I keep it on my kitchen counter and do not worry about the temperature of the room. In winter at night the kitchen is very cool and in the hot summer I must be more observant because it will move much faster and may require an extra feeding.
The ratio we used in the class to build the levain was 
100 % flour
120 % water
20 % liquid starter
This levain had twelve hours to ferment before being added to the final dough.

No pampering, no frills! Tough love rules! I find that very interesting especially if you consider the extent of the tender loving care breadsong bestows on her own starters. And yet, both get wonderful results. From my own experience as a baker, I would say that starters are a bit like kids. They like a routine and they like limits. I once had a starter that I normally fed once a day. Having read somewhere that starters are happier and more energetic when fed twice a day, I put it on a morning and evening schedule and guess what? It was never the same after…
But since the starter I am now using is Diane’s (she gave me some to take home), rest assured I shall stick to the two-meals-a-day schedule: I want it a soprano too!

Related posts:

The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day


As indicated in my last post, I haven’t had a chance to bake much from Jeffrey Hertzberg’s and Zoë François’ new book, The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day, since I bought it last week but I like what I have seen so far.  The two recipes I tried yielded very good bread.
The knot and the two batards shown above were made from one batch of European Peasant Bread: they had a nice flavor (the dough calls for a bit of dark rye flour and a bit of whole wheat flour and the long slow fermentation does add a welcome complexity). As for the loaf below, it was baked this morning from what was left of the Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Bread dough and I already know it will be excellent.

Plus I like the whole idea of mixing dough at my leisure, then letting it cold-ferment for a long while (sometimes up to two weeks) to finally bake from the fridge whenever we need fresh bread. I am sure it helps to have a bit of baking experience, especially when it comes to shaping and such. However experience is what one get by actually doing, observing, experimenting, taking notes, etc. If you don’t like the way a bread turns out, change something (hydration, room temperature, rising time) next time around and see what happens! For instance, I already know I will make my next batch of peasant bread a little bit wetter to try and get a slightly more open crumb.

I bookmarked several breads from the book, including the Wisconsin beer-cheese bread, the sauerkraut rye, the Moroccan anise-and-barley flatbread, to name just a few, and I am looking forward to giving them a try. Kudos to Jeff and Zoë for providing bread-lovers with a “real bread” alternative to industrial bread, especially in areas where artisan bakeries are few and far between, and for empowering all of us home bakers who are looking to make a variety of good breads with minimal fuss!

No-Knead Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Bread

Remember Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s lovely chocolate currant bread in How to Make Bread? Maybe because of the cold snap that hit most of the country, including our state, and maybe because there are few things more comforting than the aroma and taste of chocolate when the outside world freezes up, I had a sudden craving for that bread when we came back from our Thanksgiving family visits. However I knew there was no way I could make it until I got my levain (starter) going again and since said levain had been quartered in the fridge for a couple of weeks, I also knew it was going to require some tender loving care over the course of a few days before it got back to its usual ebullient and efficient self…
Meanwhile, what could I do? Mix a poolish, let it ferment overnight and use that instead of levain? Sure, and I would have done just that if, on the plane ride home, I hadn’t read the Kindle version of Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François’ appealing new book, The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day, and bookmarked a double chocolate bread which seemed rather similar to Hadjiandreou’s (minus the currants) but required neither levain nor poolish. It did require a long cold fermentation though. Impatience and curiosity had a go at each other within my head for a few seconds and curiosity won. I decided to give the Artisan-in-Five recipe a try.
The result is spectacularly tasty, even if a bit less complex than the levain version. The crumb is both soft and ever so slightly crunchy and the dark chocolate flavor is to die for. I attribute the almost imperceptible crunch to the sugar I used: with the drop in temperature, the hummingbirds had been feeding like crazy and most of our regular sugar had gone into making nectar for them. I didn’t feel like driving to the store just for sugar, so I settled for evaporated cane juice sugar which we had in stock. It doesn’t seem to melt in quite the same way but I actually love the crunch.
Despite the fact that I only used half the amount of sugar indicated in the original recipe, the bread eats like chocolate cake (with less fat) and is so easy to make that even a beginner should have good results.
One thing to keep in mind if you decide to try your hand at it though: do not treat time indications as gospel truths. I am sure that all the recipes in the book have been thoroughly tested and re-tested but they haven’t been tested in my kitchen in the winter, using the flour available to me. If I had followed the recipe to a tee, I doubt I would be as satisfied as I am with the result. So instead of going by the book, trust your eyes and hands. To give you an example, the dough sat on the counter for close to twenty-four hours after mixing before it had risen enough to be put in the fridge (instead of the two hours indicated in the recipe) and, on Baking Day, the shaped loaves proofed for two hours (instead of forty minutes) before they were ready to bake. Depending on where you live and a myriad of other factors, you may have a different experience. If you have the patience to jot down flour brand, dates, times and temperatures and if you make the recipe over and over (which you may well do if you get hooked), you will learn more about the interplay of these factors. In the words of Adam Gopnik (in Bread and Women, a piece he wrote recently for The New Yorker and which, sadly, isn’t available online in its full-text version), “Bread dough isn’t like dinner food, which usually rests inert under the knife and waits for you to do something to it: bread dough sits there, respiring and rising, thinking things over.” In my experience, the more a baker knows about the way dough thinks, the easier it becomes for her to humor it and get good results.
Jeff and Zoë kindly gave me permission to blog the recipe providing I used my own words. Please note that I adapted both the ingredients (using less sugar and a different salt) and the method. For the original recipe, I refer you to the book and, for more info regarding the “Artisan in Five” method, to the Breadin5 website and corresponding YouTube videos, including this one.



Ingredients: (for three 300g-loaves)

(The formulas were created using BreadStorm)

By weights

By percentages

Method:

(The dough is made a few days ahead of the actual baking day)

  1. On Day 1, I mixed the liquid ingredients in a large bowl (using water at 100°F), then added yeast and sugar
  2. I added in the remaining dry ingredients (flour, salt and cocoa) and mixed well, using a dough whisk.  Even though the whisk helped a lot, at the end I had to use my hands and since my wrist is not strong enough yet to hold the bowl firmly for long, the cocoa powder wasn’t perfectly blended in, which really doesn’t matter. A case can actually be made for the white swirls, don’t you think? Next time, I might just stop blending in the cocoa a bit sooner…
  3. I covered the bowl loosely (the dough needs some oxygen at this stage) and let rest at room temperature (which was 65°F on that day). According to the book, the dough will rise and collapse within about two hours but I suppose it depends on the season and how warm your house is. In my case, after two hours it was going nowhere fast. In fact, it took almost 24 hours to rise
  4. Once it had more than doubled and looked like it could do no more, I put it in the fridge, tightly covered this time
  5. The authors suggest using the dough within a five-day period: accordingly I used two-thirds of  it on Day 3 and will use the rest by Day 5. Following their instructions, I dusted the surface of the dough with flour. Then I scooped out 600 g of dough which I divided in two. I loosely shaped two boules which I let rest at room temperature on a floured countertop, covered with a plastic sheet
  6. After thirty minutes I shaped one piece of dough as a bâtard and the other one as a boule and I sent them to rise on a board covered with flour-dusted parchment paper. I placed the board inside a large sealed plastic bag, put a space heater in the little laundry room (which doubles as my bakery) so that the room temp rose to about 73°F and I waited. The loaves took over two hours to proof (rise). (You know they are ready to bake when they jiggle as you gently shake the board.) At a lower room temperature, the process might have been even longer
  7. Meanwhile I had preheated the oven (equipped with a baking stone) at 350°F. Before sliding the loaves onto the baking stone, I brushed them with a bit of melted butter and sprinkled them with pearl sugar
  8. I baked the loaves for 50 minutes (a good way to know when they are baked through is to take them out, hold them upside down and knock on the bottom with your knuckles. If they give a hollow sound, they are done. If not, bake a while longer)
  9. I let them cool overnight on a rack before slicing one of them open.

For those of you who are using BreadStorm (including the free version), please click on this link to import the formula so that you can scale it up or down as desired.