Tonight (Feb 5,2010), I mixed up the dough — all the starter above (8oz @75% hydration), 12oz of water, 18oz of bread flour, 2tsp salt, 2Tbl of EV olive oil, and 1Tbl honey (recipe says 1.5Tbl, my bad). Large bowl, wooden spoon, mix it until bored or tired. let it set for 15 minutes. Using a flexible plastic scraper, I did my best to fold the dough in the bowl for a minute or two. It’s a wet dough and I’m not using a stand mixer, so more stretch and folds will be needed, IMO. I’m kind of off track from the recipe. 2o minutes later, I put a few Tbl of EV olive oil on a rimmed sheet pan. I scooped the dough onto the pan in the center and dipped my hands in the EVO in the pan and did a stretch and fold. Put the pan in a plastic tall kitchen bag (pay more for food grade if you like). Two more stretch and folds, 30 minutes apart. I could have done more stretch and fold sessions and if baking bread, I would have but with all the olive oil used, it’s never going to get that bread dough strength, nor should it. I rolled the dough into a tube on the pan with oil and cut into fifths. I cut a few bits from the bigger one to add to the smaller ones until they were mostly equal in volume. Yes, I could have weighed them but that requires more clean up than I want. It was easy to shape the 5 balls into rounds with all that the EVO in the dough. After a couple of hours more on the counter in the garbage, I decide then first rise was complete. I can’t explain how I knew that. I could be wrong but it’s roughly close to what the recipe calls for. A final shape into balls and into the fridge.

Tomorrow, I might bake a couple. I might not. I went looking for parchment paper which would good for this application instead of the unwieldy peel. Not to be found in two stores. I’ll have to use the peel. This time, I will not use bread flour to lubricate the peel — that didn’t work for me last time and I can’t recommend that.

I’ve got a half recipe rising in the fridge, to be baked tomorrow or the day after. I don’t use a stand mixer for kneading and it’s a little too wet for hand kneading so I did a couple of stretch and folds of the soft sticky dough in the bowl, 10 minutes apart, more or less. Low and behold, it became a manageable dough without too much dough sticking to me. I divided it into sandwich bags (3 for the half recipe).

Two days later (Jan 12, 2010), the dough doesn’t appear to have risen much in the fridge. That bothers me. Unless it grew and then fell and that would be a different problem. Never the less, one must continue. I took my 3 dough pancakes and shaped them into balls for the 1 1/2 hour rise. There was some gas bubbles on the surface so there was some rising in the fridge and they are holding their shape fairly well. Those are good signs.

OK, truth be told, I pulled one baggie out yesterday for a few hours of counter squatting and it did nothing. So I put it back in the fridge. So I have two bags that didn’t deviate from the recipe and one that did. It was obvious when I shaped one into a pizza, and the next into a calzone and the wrong fellow into a calzone. I topped the pizza and baked it and appearance wise, it’s a winner. The first calzone baked up kind of OK – I want a new recipe for calzone dough. The bad dough calzone was indeed a mess to work with. Looks OK when baked and I’ll eat it but it’s not right.

That means Reinhart’s pizza recipe works. For pizza! calzones? maybe. The pizza was very good. Really, it was very good! Best pizza I’ve ever made. Crisp crust, not too thick or too thin but with chew and some texture. Around here, it’s artisan quality pizza. Boise happens to be home to one the few certified Neapolitan pizza makers in the US and mine (Reinhart’s) was almost as good as theirs. With a wood fired oven of my own, and some practice it might be close.

The first calzone isn’t going to be of that quality. The second calzone, the one I dinked with probably won’t be either. I didn’t say they will be bad. I’m using the Foodie measuring stick which only has 3 ticks: Perfect, Nearly Perfect and You Fail. That’s the foodie scale and thats the measure that is used in a lot books and internet posts. You can eat eat very well in the “You Fail” zone but the foodies don’t want to admit that.

Did I mention it was the best pizza I’ve ever made and almost the best pizza I’ve eaten!? If I spend 3 times more on ingredients it would be in the Perfect zone. That wouldn’t be cooking cheap, though. Nearly perfect at low cost is fine by me.

[Jan, 14. 2010]
I didn’t freeze the baked calzones. I just wrapped them in foil and put them in the fridge, like you would with left over pizza. Heat the oven to 350 and warm them up for lunch(es). Damn, it’s still good bread. That means this recipe has to replace my bread machine easy but sucks recipe. It takes an over night nap in the fridge so it’s two days long (or up to 4 days he says) which is fine by me. Sometimes I start something and change my mind about eating it that night.

I suppose you could use the bread machine for parts of it but why bother making the timing harder? You don’t need a stand mixer either. You need a bowl, a wooden spoon, some sandwich bags and fridge space. A plastic dough scraper will reduce cursing and a digital scale will help even more. It’s a wet dough. The difference between 67% hydration and 70% is a different bread. Depending on humidity and room temperature, it’s going to be different. 65% in a humid area is just barely manageable, 70% in a dry area feels differently. You’ll never know with out scales. OK, really experienced bakers who produce a couple of hundred loaves a day would know “the feel” (hint: they have scales)

Sourdough has a long rise time so it’s actually more forgiving on timing errors than commercial yeast. You should buy his book but I will share a short version of the half recipe I used and procedure I used.

In a medium size mixing bowl, add 8.5oz of luke warm water. Add 1/2 tsp yeast, 1 tsp table salt, 1 Tbl of honey, 1 Tbl of Olive Oil (a decent EVO you like) Stir it if you like. Add 12oz of bread flour and with your wooden spoon, mix it a lot, until you get bored (a couple of minutes). Let rest 10 minutes. It’s a sticky mess. With the dough scraper fold the dough in the bowl onto it’s self from all four sides, scoop underneath and invert. Do this stretch and invert two more times, 10 minutes apart. The dough will become less sticky. With oiled or watered hands, divided the dough into thirds on the counter. Spray some cooking oil into 3 sandwich bags and put the dough chunks into the bags and refrigerate them for a day or four (2 for me worked). I know you think that can’t be right. It is.

Next Day (or so), remove the dough bags from the fridge and the dough from the bags. With oiled hands shape them into balls on the counter and cover with plastic for an hour and half. (they won’t rise as much as you are used to). Preheat your oven to as high as it goes (might take an hour) . After 90 minutes of rising, shape it – make a pizza round, top it lightly and bake until well browned (10 to 20 minutes), perhaps with burned spots on the puffy parts. It’s actually very easy and it’s unlike any yeast recipe I’ve used before. I baked on parchment paper on a sheet pan, but my oven has a pizza stone (cracked in half) for thermal mass and my oven might go to 550 at the top. Might not.

One final note to add. This is very wet dough. It is hard to shape. Expect a failure or two.
Since I wrote the above, I’ve made this with a bread machine and it was fine (slightly different) and a stand mixer, also slightly different.

It does take forever to make a dozen or even a half dozen if you do a shallow pan fry as I do. Create the filling the day before and make the dough, fill, fry, and freeze the next day. Then again, leftovers have never tasted so good. Sadly, there’s no way to tell you how much filling you need

Experienced bakers (not really me) might see what’s happening in the ingredients. To me, it’s a rich dough but not too heavy and surprisingly doesn’t taste of the lard in the dough or the oil it was fried in. It would probably work for sweet fillings too, but I don’t do sweets.

I often do a half recipe (beat 1 egg really well and divide that). Here’s the full recipe.

3 Cups flour (all purpose)
1.5 tsp salt
.75 tsp baking powder.
6 Tbl of lard
1 egg
.75 Cup milk

Turn on the burner to heat the skillet of oil (7 or 8 on the knob for me on the small electric burner in an 8″ skillet with 1/4 to 1/2 inch of oil).
Mix flour , salt, baking powder in a bowl.
Cut lard into dry ingredientss until until course meal size (its a pie dough, maybe a bit finer, don’t worry).
Beat egg and cold milk together. Gradually add to dry ingredients, mixing into a thick dough. You could let it rest a few minutes if you feel the need.

Divide into 12 pieces. Roll each into a 5 inch circle (or rectangle or some other shape). You may need a floured surface or rolling pin. May not. It’s more like biscuit making than pie dough. In the center add 1/4 Cup of your filling. Seal edges with egg wash

Fold and crimp with the tines of a fork or what ever you pastry sealing technique you prefer. I roll and and pinch (may not need the egg wash, just saying)

Fry in the oil until a medium golden brown. Turning once. A few minutes per side. Depending on the burner and pan and amount of oil you might have to turn the burner up, or down. Not to worry, even the bad ones are pretty damn good.

[Update Oct 23, 2009]
I did a batch of 12 turnovers and I fried 6 and baked 6. The baked are OK, just not as good for a couple of reasons: Frying seals up the seams quickly. Backing gives them the chance to pull apart at the seams and ooze the insides onto the hot baking sheet which means smoke (alarms) at 350F. Taste wise, they were fine. Different but fine.

Focaccia 2008-10-09

The green bits are chopped fresh rosemary. Some of the brown spots are grated Asiago cheese. Spinkled with some kosher salt. There are recipes all over the internet. Mine wouldn’t contribute to the worlds knowledge. It’s tasty.

I also scored some Spelt. My sister-in-law got a new grain mill (and the whole grain baking “Jones” needed to grind your own) and she gave me a quart or two of whole grain Spelt flour. I took it home and used my starter for a 50/50 spelt/white loaf. It was OK. A little heavy to work with (it’s whole grain). It tasted OK. Not better enough to trigger my “must explored deeper”. I put the remaining spelt flour in the freezer until inspiration strikes again.

Today, I thought about the other possibility. If it was whole grain, there is going to be yeast in that flour along with all kinds of other microscopic critters that survived the milling. Can I make a sourdough culture? My starter was built out of frozen Rye flour of unknown origins so it’s highly possible.

1 tsp of splet flour. 2 tsp of water. A bit too wet, it’s more a like a slurry. No big deal. The plan is to add a TBL and some amount of water tomorrow. Let that sit, covered, on the counter for another day. Throw half away the next day and replace that with more spelt and water and repeat until it starts to ferment. That might take days or weeks. Then introduce wheat bread flour instead of spelt. If it ferments the wheat flour, then continue to feed the culture with more wheat flour and water.

That’s a lot of ifs. If I get a culture will it be better or worse? I can’t know if I don’t try.

By day two, there was bubbling in the mixture and smelled something awful (I remember my Rye starter at that stage – nasty) On day 3 and 4 it ate a table spoon of spelt, and then later in the day a TBL of AP white wheat, and then another. The replacement of half the previous spelt mix with new wheat helps the smell. Thats normal and encouraging.

Time to get accurate. I removed enough of the mix to leave 2 oz. Added 1 oz of white bread flour and 1 oz of water. A few more days of I tossing half (or more) and replace with equal amounts by weight, then I’ll have, uhm, ah, I’ll have something that’s close to 100% hydration and propagates.

[June 1, 2008[
When I got up this morning, it looked to me that the last feeding might have killed it. It hadn’t swollen liked you expect and no visible bubbles to speak of from looking at the outside. So I left on the counter. Another no show starter. Then I read some stuff that suggested I wasn’t feeding it fast enough. Never to old for some book learning, but dead is dead, I’ll move on. Hours later when it came time to dispose of it in maw of the sink I noticed a thin layer of clear fluid.

Hold on! That’s much different! That’s what starters do when they need feeding. I took a little whiff. Hooch. Yeah! Most of the yucky smell was gone. Consistency of the mix shows that the flour was eaten and broken down. Based on my research I should have used AP instead of bread flour and refreshed it more often. So that’s what I did. I don’t know if it’ll raise bread (CO2), but it eats flour and leaves hooch. That’s a good thing.

I have no idea what “day” it is. I think I fed (not refreshed) the starter with AP flour yesterday. It didn’t look promising and it didn’t smell right enough. I decided feeding was easier than washing it away. Next morning the top of the little jar was laying on the counter like it might have been blown off from CO2 while I was sleeping. Texture was ropy. Smell wasn’t awful. That means there’s yeast in there. They and the lacto-bacillus are finding balance. I removed half of the starter, maybe more – a tsp or two left. I fed it a stiffer mix of AP flour and water (rumor is that makes it more sour). It does smell different from my go-to starter and Captain Ted’s so maybe I really have a new culture from the splet. Too soon to say.

– Nearing the end –
Now it is later by a few days from the above words. I made bread with it. Tastes fine. Sadly, no better than my normal starter and no worse either. Not faster nor slower, nor more sour or different in taste. I wanted a “new” starter with different characteristics. But if you have Spelt flour instead of Rye flour, you can make a sourdough starter. Nothing wrong with learning that.

That’s what I did previously, although not all “bits” of time are equal. With all the water on my hands, its probably closer to 70% hydration but it seems like the same dough as the previous attempt. Indoor temp is a bit lower than then. This time I put the dough in a 4C (plus) Pyrex measuring. It’s roughly 2C of dough. That’s no surprise, it was roughly 2 C of flour and 1 cup of water.

This time I want to test whether I’m over proofing on the bulk fermentation (first rise). There’s three different tests that yeast bakers may use all in the same recipe. They go by time and temp. 1.5 hours at 80F, Until doubled (a visually tricky measurement in a bowl with slopping sides) Or until you can poke it a quarter inch and the indentation remains. “The touch”

Sourdough has it own time schedule so you can’t go by the clock. This test is about my hypothesis that stronger flours need less time in the bulk rise than “normal” bread flour, and higher hydration makes the strong flour dough more amenable to quicker “dough rot” or break down the gluten (the dough becomes wetter and will stick to you when you poke it). That’s the test.

I let the dough rise for 2 hours and 15 minutes. It passed the indentation test. I did not wait for a double or triple. It went from 2 Cup to 3C. Last I did the math, that’s a half, not even close to a double. I covered the bowl in plastic wrap and put it into the fridge until the next day.

The next day, I took it out of the fridge and shaped in to a round (boule) and let it rise on some parchment paper (over an inverted baking sheet). Easy to shape and seam, I got a nice smooth skin. It took about 3.5 hours to rise to the proper “touch”. It was cool inside the house, below 70. I did the full steam treatment because it looked like it would be a good loaf and worth that small effort.

Plenty of oven spring, almost a sphere in fact. Looks good from the outside although it’s a bit smaller than previous loaves. It feels as a little more dense when hefted. That’s probably from the shorter bulk rise and the cold shaping. The slashes filled in of course, I may give up on that sub goal. The bottom of the loaf (where the seam was) is promising. It started to blow out on the underside in a couple of places, probably at the seams. I can definitely see gluten strands. A very pretty loaf of bread. I probably won’t take a picture, there’s plenty of those.

Somethings I won’t know until I slice it. What I do know is that a 5 to 6 hour, triple in size bulk ferment works against me, at least with the KA BF. I know you can free form a loaf without a banneton or form if you do a proper shaping and the dough hasn’t started to break down. (I knew that before but it’s always nice when it works). If I remember correctly, using 10% to 50% of whole wheat to AP has the same effect – Easy to over proof and it changes how the dough feels at similar hydration levels compared to most bread flours (or KA AP). I’d say I’ve learned a lot. Good thing too because I still got 4.75lb of the KA BF to use.

[Much Later]
It was decent bread but it wasn’t developed quite enough. Bit more time on the first rise I think.

1.5 oz W. 3.0 oz of BF + 1/2 Tbl of half awake starter. I want 20% of my final 24 oz. I’t’s very firm (dry) but given time, the starter will eat it and make more starter. Six hours in and it is doing something. I’ll give it at least that many hours. It’s cool tonight down around 70 inside and headed for mid 50’s. No hurry, I’ll be asleep.

I let it set on the counter for a long time. It had done its job much earlier. This is thick enough that I tore it up in bits with my hands and added that to 8 oz of water in the mixing bowl. I added 11 oz of the King Arthur Bread Flour. Roughly 65% hydration, and a 20% inoculation.

I kneaded it by (wet) hand for a few minutes, added the salt, knead a bit, rest, knead. 20 Minutes total because that’s all my love a kneading will allow.

I let it rise for about 5 hours, it’s more than doubled but doesn’t pass the touch test. Fearing another over proof, it went into the fridge. I no longer believe I know what I’m doing,

Turns out the wheels came of the axle one wheel at a time. Over proofed the bulk ferment, over proofed the final rise and I couldn’t get it out of the banneton which left a hunk of glop on the peel. The oven was heated so I baked it. It looked like wet ciabatta and as it turns it out, that’s exactly what it was. Not a lot of oven spring. Butt ugly on the outside since I didn’t bother to glaze or spritz with water or set up a steam pan.

Hours later, I cut into it. Big tunnels, holes of all sizes, shiny gluten webs. Tastes great and has some chew back on the inside. A nice ciabatta no question. Problem is that wasn’t what I wanted to make. It’s also a clue I can use.

My bakers arithmetic could have been erroneous and the recipe was wetter, [higher hydration %] than I calculated. It wouldn’t be the first time that happened. Maybe my wet hands knead in too much water. It doesn’t take much water to go from 65% to 70+.

I suspect the strong King Arthur’s Bread Flour (14.5% protein claimed) is helping me make these errors and to learn more. It sucks in the water so even a wet dough (65%) is reasonable to knead by hand. It’s also quicker to rise and easier to over proof if you miss the shorter window between just right and too much. The lower hydration preferment also masks what’s happening in the dough. That’s my theory this week.

I need to devise a test for one or maybe two of these variables. The single stiff preferment is easier than my other methods and I do like easy. I’ll keep that. I’ll keep the same flour and water oz in the dough and knead with wet hands. That’s all like this loaf of bread. What will I change then?

I’ll measure the bulk ferment. I know I did that before and the results weren’t what I wanted or expected. I’ll free form the loaf. If there’s a chance I’ll over proof and end up with ciabatta, lets make a free form ciabatta and not screw around with sticking to the banneton.

[Day 1]
Start with a tablespoon of starter, add 1 oz of water and 1 oz of unbleached bread flour, mix well and if you’re like me, forget you did that for 12 hours.

[Day 2]
Add 3 oz of water and 3 os unbleached bread flour and when it doubles (not many hours – 4 maybe?) mix up the following:

8 oz of the 50/50 sourdough starter from above (i.e. all of it)
6.25 oz of water
5 oz of bread flour
5 oz whole wheat bread flour
1 Tsp Kosher salt (1/2 tsp table salt?)
1 or 2 Tbl of honey. I didn’t measure. More than 1 Tbl though

In a bowl, mix the starter and water, add honey and salt and stir well to distribute all those things. Add the flour, mix until bored (minute or two) and let set for 15 or 20 minutes.

With wet hands, knead in the salt if you forgot it. Hey! It could happen. Skip this step if you’ve been paying attention.

Cover, stretch and fold dough every 30 minutes 3 or 4 times or 5. Put in a oiled covered bowl to rise until doubled or better, unless it looks for feels like it’s about to break down. Four hours if you need to a number but my starter and your starter will be different.

I’m going to put it in the fridge (the retard phase) because I don’t want to be baking at 3:00AM. The next steps are dividing, shaping. final rise and baking. I’m leaning towards a loaf pan but I could lean somewhere else tomorrow.

There’s no fat in this recipe, it’s a bit higher in hydration than my 70% but the whole wheat sucks up water, and the honey could slow down or alter the sour critters. Or not.

The bread turned out fine. Good enough to freeze but not really good enough to rave about. Just OK. More salt might be needed.

A month or so back, I saved a ‘chef’ from a batch of sourdough bread and I kneaded in as much flour as it could absorb and then wrapped in layers of plastic wrap and it’s been in the fridge for a long time. I’ll use that instead of the jar of starter. After weeks (or months?) the chef is actually pretty sticky. It did grow a bit in size in the fridge. I only needed half of it to start my normal 1 oz of flour and 1 oz of water. It’s going to take some extra time I think to get the next chef working (compared to the more liquid starter like I have in the jar. The smell is subtlety different, not better or worse, just slightly different. That may not carry over to the final loaf.

It took a long time to get the chef to consume the 1 oz of flour and 1 oz of water so I went to bed. It took some time to consume the 3 oz of flour and 3 oz of water at the next feeding. It’s taking some time for the first rise after mixing all the ingredients. I’d like to bake this off tonight even though it will be very late, but I’ll up with the BBQ smokers anyway. The recipe, I just took the one out the bread machine cookbook and adjusted it for the amount of starter, and going for 60% hydration. For that 8 oz starter of starter, that was 11 oz of bread flour, 5 oz of water and the shortening, sugar, salt, milk power for a 1.5 lb loaf. I even used the bread machine to knead it.

The bread is being extremely slow about rising. I won’t be able to bake it tonight. It’s rising but very slowly. I’ll have to retard. Something happened in the chef that I saved and strong yeast activity is not one of it’s attributes.

I divided the dough in into 6th’s. Rolled them a bit and placed them on a baking sheet. . I put that in a plastic garbage bag and the into the fridge.

Meanwhile, mix the egg and the milk in a small bowl. Tip the contents of the frying pan into a large bowl, and pour the egg and milk over all. Stir in the flour, and season with salt and pepper. Add the herbs, if using.

You may need more milk to make a soft dough. Allow it to stand for 1/2 an hour.

Dip your hand into cold water and roll the mixture into a dozen small balls. Put a pot of salted water on to boil, if there isn’t a simmering soup pot waiting. Drop little balls of dough into the boiling salted water or the soup. Poach them for 10 to 15 minutes, until they are light and firm and well risen.

Yield: 12 dumplings Time: 1 hour