A Loaf of Bread (Sourdough Pagnotta), A Jug of Wine, A Book of Verse And Thou...

...Beside Me, Singing In The Wilderness ~Omar Khayyam

You know what happens when serendipity meets innovation? I don’t always know the answer to that either but sometimes, it results in an incredible loaf of sourdough bread! I recently experienced a most excellent outcome as the result of combining techniques described in two recipes for bread; Sourdough Pagnotta and the so called, New York Times No Knead Bread, so popular today among many home cooks.

My good friend, at another site, kindly amended a recipe for Sourdough Pagnotta that has quickly become B’s and my favorite bread of all time. The pagnotta has a rich, creamy texture, also known as crumb, while the crust is thinner and crispy. It’s the perfect thickness. Thick enough for crunch and thin enough that it won’t send you to the dentist for bridge work while you are eating it. That’s got to be great news, right?

The pagnotta is a very dense bread and the holes in it aren’t quite as open as other artisan loafs, at least mine aren’t. But, you just can’t beat this bread for having an easy recipe. It takes precious little effort to mix and prepare the dough and tastes delicious and flavorful. It’s great artisan bread for only pennies on the loaf. It’s also a versatile bread, taking well to variants like asiago pagnotta, roasted garlic pagnotta and black olive pagnotta. I have even done a really awesome tasting apple, smoked bacon and caramelized onion pagnotta bread that turned out so well!

It’s a high hydration loaf. This means that it has a higher percentage of water than other sourdough recipes. I believe a standard sourdough has around a 60-65% hydration and this is closer to 85% or 90% hydration. Scary to work with the first time but once you know the ropes about working with wet dough; it’s a piece of cake. Hmm, maybe not a piece of cake but it surely is a great piece of bread!

I had wanted to bring you the history or origins of this bread. But what I found is pagnotta is the Italian word for bread! So essentially this is one of many recipes for a loaf of sourdough Italian bread! Here are a few other words for bread from other countries.

bread in Afrikaans is brood
bread in Dutch is mik, brood
bread in French is pain
bread in German is Brot, Brot, panieren
bread in Italian is pagnotta
bread in Latin is crustum, panis
bread in Spanish is pan

And here is your bread quote for today!

There is hunger for ordinary bread, and there is hunger for love, for kindness, for thoughtfulness; and this is the great poverty that makes people suffer so much.

~ Mother Teresa

This bread is perfect for sharing with your special someone. B, my best friend and partner in crime and I love to eat it dipped in olive oil seasoned with a touch of balsamic vinegar, a pinch of salt, fresh ground black pepper, shaved parmesan, and a touch of basil. A wonderful, full bodied cabernet or other rich wine and a few roasted olives or grape tomatoes dipped in olive oil and salt make a great accompaniment to it as well. Add a slice or two of dried aged salami and a couple of black seedless grapes and you have a romantic picnic for two! The pagnotta is also wonderful as a bread accompaniment to any kind of meal you can imagine, roasted meat to casserole and everything in between! Mangia!

Sourdough Pagnotta
By Bill Wraith
Yield: 1 Large Loaf or 2 smaller Loaves

Ingredients:
400 grams fresh 100% hydration starter (my starter was taken out of the
refrigerator after having been refreshed 3 days earlier. I probably should
have used more recently refreshed and vigorous starter) (14.5 Ounces)
650 grams water (22.831 Ounces)
700 grams KA Organic AP (24.587 Ounces)
50 grams KA rye blend (optional - substitute white flour, whole wheat, or
other) (1.756 Ounces)
50 grams Heartland Mills Golden Buffalo flour (optional - substitute white
flour, whole wheat, or other) (1.756 Ounces)
18 grams salt (1.264 Tbsp)
300 grams pitted halved olives (I used calamata olives) - this is an optional
ingredient. (10.537 Ounces)

Method for making bread:
Mix:
Mix ingredients until well integrated and there is some resistance to stirring.
Cover and let rest for 30 minutes.
(Bill’s Note: I think there was slightly too much water for my choice of flours and maybe because of the olives, which made the dough harder to handle. This was very slack dough. I would use a little less water next time, but I'm reporting this as I actually did it.)

Fold and Rest, Repeat:
Every 30-60 minutes pour the dough out onto the counter, let it spread a little, and fold it up into a ball. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover and let rest 30-60. Repeat this process every 30-60 minutes 3-4 times.
(Bill’s Note: I may not have repeated this enough, given the very wet dough I ended up with. The dough was still too slack later when I tried to shape the loaves.)

Bulk Fermentation:
Place the dough in an oiled rising bucket or bowl. Allow it to rise by double at room temperature.
(Bill’s Note: Actually, I wanted to bake by midnight, so I let it get a little warmer, about 80F, which may have been a little bit of a problem. I think it made the slack dough even a little more slack to also be warm.)

Shaping:
Pour the dough out on the table on a bed of flour and cut in two. Work with each loaf separately. Form a ball by carefully and gently pulling the sides toward the center repeatedly to get some surface tension on the smooth side underneath. Do not overhandle.
(Bills Note: Here I was a disastrous dough handler. I way overhandled it because it was too slack and would not form a ball. It just kept spreading out quickly. Well, I just decided after way too many times pulling at the sides to stop trying and went for flat bread. So, I can't emphasize enough, don't overhandle. Just make that shape and be done with it.

I am doing a second version, and I think I've discovered how to do this. Use thumbs and fingers of one hand to pinch and hold the gathered sides over the center, holding the gathered edges up a little to help the sides stretch and the shape to become more round and taking a bit of weight off the loaf. Use the other thumb and a couple of fingers to pinch a bit of the side, pull the bit out and up and over to the center, stretching the side as you do. Gather that bit in with the first hand along with others as you work your way around the loaf. Try to make it round by gathering a bit from the place that sticks out the most.)

Turn the dough over onto a thick bed of flour with the rough side down.

Final Proof:
Allow the loaves to increase in size by double.
(Bill’s Note: For me, this took about 3 hours. I'm still having a hard time figuring out when these higher hydration loaves have finished proofing. As I said there was too much water, and I never got these loaves to stiffen up very much. They mostly spread out on the counter.)

Bake:
Bake at 425 degrees F.
(Bill’s Note: This took about 25 minutes, and the internal temperature went quickly to 210F, which I've experienced with these flat high hydration loaves. I didn't get much oven spring. I think the over handling was a serious problem.)

Cool:
Allow the loaf to fully cool.

Results:
The flavor was as good as any bread I've made. The crumb was much less open than I had hoped but was soft and flavorful. I think the flatness was because of the over handling and maybe adding too much water to the dough. Maybe another fold or two would have helped. The gluten never really stiffened up enough. Still, this was a great tasting bread. My bad for the handling, but I'm already trying a second one. I also think the olives made the dough wetter, heavier, and harder to handle. The next try will be without olives.

Blue Zebra NOTE:
When working with wet doughs, high hydration doughs, the tendency is to be scared because the dough looks more like a batter than a dough. But be fearless! No worries, mon! The secret is wet hands!

To make it easier for me, I mix the dough in a bowl with one hand. One hand will be a mess; but that’s ok, it washes! I mix the dough initially until it is just a shaggy mess of incorporated flour, water and starter (I go ahead and add the salt…so sue me, I haven’t had a failure yet because of adding the salt at this phase for this particular dough), cover and leave it for the autolyse period. Then I come back and do my initial folding in the bowl!

I pick up a portion of the dough with my hand and stretch high above the bowl as far as it will stretch without breaking the gluten strands! Then I allow it to be pulled into the center mass of the dough. Once that stretch is finished, I turn the bowl a quarter turn (90 degrees) and repeat the action. I will do 8 of these stretch and folds in the bowl at one time, or 2 complete bowl revolutions. I let the dough rest again, covered. By this time, you will have helped form substantial gluten and the batter will resemble a very wet dough rather than a batter.

The next time, I come back to fold the dough, I will pour it out on the counter as Bill describes. It works to use a dough scraper (moisten it with water.) And it also helps to have wet hands. The dough won’t stick to you then. I don’t use any flour on the counter, but since this dough is so wet, I use a light sprinkle on the counter. The wet scraper and wet hands allow you to stretch and fold the dough, pulling gently from the underneath side (the counter side) of the dough with your hand on top of the sheet of dough, guiding it. You try not to flatten or degas the dough while working with it. The gas is what will make great, irregular holes in the final bread.

Here is an excellent video of doing the stretch and fold with a some what dryer dough (lower hydration dough). My friend, Mike Avery, at Sourdough Home developed this video for his student and is an excellent teacher and writer. I highly recommend his books. They are very affordable books and are available as online versions for quick downloads. You can be reading in less than five minutes.

I used my stainless steel Dutch oven to cook this bread because I don’t have my cast iron Dutch oven here. I used the lid for the first 30 minutes and then baked it another 30 minutes without the lid. I cooked the bread for one hour at 460 degrees F, and the final internal bread temperature was 211 degrees. It was perfect even though there was a rather large hole immediately under the top crust. I could have collapsed it with a pin to let the air out but was in a hurry to bake it for dinner.

I hope you will try this bread. Even though I cut into it before it was fully cooled, you can see how moist this bread is and in my opinion, it has much more complexity than the No Knead To Knead bread that is so popular right now. Read more->

Vermont Sourdough - A Southern Bread?

You know, the birthday celebration for Julia Child got me thinking. Julia wanted to let every American housewife know and understand that cooking flawlessly brilliant meals was at their fingertips; that everyone could do it. She was living proof. Clearly, more of her books and t.v. rubbed off on me than imagined, because that’s the basic premise for this blog. I want everyone to understand that good food, no, awesome food is easy. With a minimum investment of time and money, anyone can make incredible food; food that feeds the soul. The hardest step is to get over your fear of whatever you’re “askeered of” and do it quickly!

My greatest fear was fear of yeast and all things involving kneading and rising. I always assumed that yeasted items were fragile and depended so tightly on measures and rules and it frankly scared the bejeezes outta me. I avoided it like the plague. Our family was not a family who baked other than the basic biscuit, good old fashioned pie, occasional muffin or cake and maybe a quick bread or two at Christmas. But with the exception of one batter bread, aptly named “Dilly Bread”, because of the loads of dried dill in it, we never saw loaves rising on the counter.

But I knew I had to conquer my fear and de-mystify the process of baking if I was ever going to be able to do what I wanted most. Namely, I wanted to quit spending the outrageous sum of money per loaf for “artisan bread” from the market. I am a tightwad. Frugal doesn’t even come close to my relationship with money and yet, I never seem to have any extra – no matter how tightly I close my fist. I come by this honestly, unfortunately. Few people know, now thousands will know, that for most of my life growing up, we had very severe money issues and were even homeless for almost a two year period, save for the charity of friends and family who let us live with them and who lent our dad money when he lost his business.

It seems like life was divided for me – b.w.d. and a.w.d. or “before Wawa died” and “after WaWa died”. Wawa was Dad’s mom, our grandmother, who lived with us from before the time I was born until the day she died. She died handing me a glass of orange juice at the breakfast table, one Sunday after Church, in September. It felt like all the kids left in the house (my oldest sissy had married and moved away only months before) as well as mom and dad, had a mysterious shake-up and reversal of fortune from that moment onward – but that will be another post. Needless to say, I learned the value of a dollar as a very small girl and it was a large and painful lesson, especially for me and my sissy, A!

So back to bread…curmudgeonly begrudging $3.00/loaf for bread, I determined to make it myself or die trying. I believe fear is the worse part of baking. Bread dough and bread recipes are not shrinking Southern violets. They are fairly tolerant of great abuse and in fact are amazingly resilient: under kneading, over kneading, lack of moisture, over hydrated, cheap flours, chlorinated water, filtered water, over proofing, under proofing, under baking, over baking, you name it! The dough will rise and transform into bread through baking, given enough time and patience. Even the worst loaf of homemade bread on the worst day will taste better than the best store bought bread on any given day. I promise.



The real secret to baking is to have mentors, or people who have been there, done that. They will hold your hand, wipe your brow – metaphorically or even virtually and basically reassure you that God is in his heaven and all is right with the world. Thanks to the internet there are whole sites dedicated to nothing but bread baking and these sights are populated by fantastically talented amateur and professional bakers, alike.

I encourage you to find one of these sites. Face your fear. Then break out the flour, water, salt and yeast and have a bread orgy! That $3.00 loaf will cost you about $0.20 cents to make and take you about 15 active minutes of cooking once you learn the methodology or as Julia said, “Once you learn the techniques, you will free yourself from recipes.” Well, maybe not quite! Baking bread will always at minimum require that you apply a balance or ratio of ingredients, but master the techniques of baking and you will be free to experiment with a window of grace attached. Bon Appetit!



Oh the other secret I learned? You have two choices with dough/gluten development. You can either knead the heck outta it and challenge the gluten, building protein strands as you go or you can let time and hydration do the dirty work and develop it for you. Guess which one I choose? :D

Vermont Sourdough Bread
By Jeffrey Hamelman – Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes
As posted by Weavershouse on another site
Yield – 2 loaves (batards)

Ingredients:
LIQUID-LEVAIN BUILD:
150 grams Bread flour (5.269 oz)
188 grams Water (6.603 oz)
30 grams Mature culture (liquid) (1.054 oz)

FINAL DOUGH:
750 grams Bread flour (26.344 oz)
100 grams Whole-rye flour (3.512 oz)
462 grams Water (16.228 oz)
19 grams Salt (1 TBSP + 1 tsp)
338 Liquid levain (all less 30 g) (11.872 oz)

Method:
1. LIQUID LEVAIN:
Make the final build 12 to 16 hours before the final mix, and let stand in a covered container at about 21 °C/70°F

2. MIXING: Add all the ingredients to the mixing bowl, including the levain, but not the salt. In a spiral mixer, mix on first speed just until the ingredients are incorporated into a shaggy mass. Correct the hydration as necessary Cover the bowl with plastic and let stand for an autolyse phase of 20 to 60 minutes. At the end of the autolyse, sprinkle the salt over the surface of the dough, and finish mixing on second speed for 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. The dough should have a medium consistency. Desired dough temperature: 22 °C/ 76°F

3. BULK FERMENTATION: 2 1/2 hours.

4. FOLDING: Fold the dough either once (after 1 1/4) hours) or twice (at 50-minute intervals), depending on dough strength.

5. DIVIDING AND SHAPING: Divide the dough into 1.5-pound pieces shape round or oblong.

6. FINAL FERMENTATION: Approximately 2 to 2 1/2 hours at 22 °C/76° F (alternatively, retard for up to 8 hours at 10 °C/50 °F, or up to 18 hours about 5,5 °C/42 °F).

7. BAKING: With normal steam, 240 °C/460 °F for 40 to 45 minutes. More often than not, this bread is retarded before the bake. The result is a loaf with moderate tanginess and a sturdy crust that conveys a lot of bread flavor.

Blue Zebra NOTE:

I followed the directions without any tweaks and folded the bread twice after the autolyze period: at 1 hour and at 2 hours. It rose to double in about 3 hours. I divided, rested, shaped and did a final rise of about 2 hours and baked.

This bread was only slightly tangy because I did not retard (refrigerate) the dough following the bulk fermentation. Had I done so, I believe it would have had a much more sharp, sourdough flavor. The texture of the crumb, while not as open as I’d like, was lovely – tender and moist. The crust crunched with just the right thickness and sharp crackle. You could actually taste the color brown when you bit into it. What does brown taste like? Brown tastes like a good piece of toast. Brown tastes like oven-ny goodness. This truly was the best sourdough bread I’ve baked and the prettiest. Hope you will give it a try! Oh, and I used my hands to mix and produce this bread. It still only took 15 minutes of active time, so don't be discouraged if you do not own a Kitchen Aid or other stand mixer! Also sourdough starters can be purchased online from several sources or you can start your own. Mike Avery is an excellent teacher for this Also, a great tool to have at your fingertips is this nifty gram converter. It doesn't take into account specific gravity of an ingredient but here's where I draw the line in the sand. If I need to be talking and thinking in specific gravities, then the recipe is doomed to failure before it hits the mixing bowl. As you can see in the first piccy of the bread...we managed just fine with this little tool. :D However, if you need more precision, here is the gram converter for specific ingredients.

Here's a little toast and jam as requested by my friend browndog! The jam is storebought *wah* but it is good, B assures me. It's peach amaretto with pecans. Now I can say, the peach and pecans are definitely Southern and even Texan. Our peaches from Fredricksberg and Fairfield are equal to any Georgia peach you want to try.

Read more->

The Summer of Sourdough

I tend to catalog the passing of time by key events that happen within each year. Just as 1969 is remembered as the "Summer of Love" to so many American baby boomers, 2007 will be remembered by me as the "Summer of Sourdough." I gave birth to a one ounce jar of odorific yeasty joy about two months ago after determining that I would no longer be held hostage by my fear of yeast and breadmaking in general. Armed with a set of tongs, a clothespin for my nose and a pair of safety goggles I began my intrepid experimentation with sourdough starters.

I believed with enough perseverance and patience (neither of which is my strong suit), I could breathe life into inanimate flour and water. And I did! Along the way however, my starter, nicknamed Sir Stinksalot went through many phases before he became a bonifide sourdough levain. Some of his nick names have included such heralded titles like General Chaos, Mister Meaner and just general, all around, "Stinky" for short.

I am no authority on sourdough and am certainly not an acclaimed baker, by any means. I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of cook and in my experience that type of attitude rarely bodes well for baking. Baking is an exact science as much as an art. Working with yeast is even more of an artful science and when you get to the subset of natural levains or natural yeasts like sourdough, the bar rises exponentially and almost exists in a completely alternate world. I am happy to say, however, that with the exception of several unintended "door stops" and "bricks" and a few over-zealous toxic spills resulting from overly-risen preferments onto innocent counter tops, there have been very few casualties in this combat zone I call "The Sourdough Wars." Mostly we've just had many loaves of mediocrity and the biggest reward thus far is being able to make the claim that I am baking bread that only costs about $0.25/loaf. Compared to $3.00/loaf - that's gotta be worth somethin', right?

B usually knows when to shut up and take one for the team. I think it's a certain "get off of my cloud" look I wear that warns him I might possibly be in the throws of channeling Elle May Clampitt or something. He says very little about uber-dense bread and brickets loosely referred to as biscuits. He is a good sport. And clearly he loves my attempts at penny-pinching. They are usually as successful as my zany and impractical get-rich-quick schemes and ideas for new businesses...um, which isn't "very!"

I was particularly pleased (not to mention blown away) this morning to have succeeded so spectacularly with the English Muffins pictured above. I got this recipe from a friend of mine, Katie, who participates at another site and she makes wonderful bread or at least, she makes wonderful pictures of bread! Tending to trust her accounts as accurate, I'm thinking if this recipe is any judge, she DOES make excellent bread.

The texture of the crumb is moist and light at the same time - unexpected, really. They have enough body to act as a great "delivery system" for yummy things like egg, bacon and cheese while still retaining a delicacy you just don't find in a store bought English muffin. I made homemade egg mcmuffins for breakfast and they tasted soooo awesome! My McMom would be proud. Mickey D eat your McHeart out! Here's Katie's recipe:

Katie's Sourdough English Muffins
Makes about 12

Ingredients:
1/2 C starter (mine is a 100% hydration "white starter" from all-purpose flour)
1 C milk
2-3/4 C AP flour
1 TBSP sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
Semolina or cornmeal, for dusting

Method:
Combine starter, 2 C of flour and milk in a large bowl. Stir to combine, cover with plastic wrap, and leave out for 8 hours or overnight. After the overnight rest, add remaining flour, sugar, salt and baking soda and mix well. Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes. Roll out to 3/4" and cut with a biscuit cutter into rounds. You can re-roll the scraps, but you may need to let the dough rest before cutting more muffins from them. Place muffins on a piece of parchment dusted with semolina and let rest for 45 minutes. Spray griddle or skillet lightly with spray oil. Heat griddle to medium and cook muffins for about 6-8 minutes on each side, or until browned on the top and bottom and cooked through. These have great griddle spring and rise quite a bit during the "baking". Split with a fork and enjoy with your favorite topping! I don't even toast them if I want to eat them right off the griddle--they don't have that raw taste that store bought English muffins have.

Blue Zebra NOTE: I rolled my muffins out to 1/2" and set them on a parchment paper lined pan that had been sprinkled with cornmeal. Let them rise to a little less than double in about 45 minutes to an hour. The recipe made 12, as promised. I used a cast iron skillet to cook them. They fit 3 to a pan and I'm able to control the cooking better than I can in stainless or on the cast iron griddle. I don't use any oil, just the age-worn "seasoning" that remains on the cast iron. I cook them over medium to med-low for about 2-3 minutes per side. You have to have the heat strong enough for a good rise but low enough so they don't burn on the bottoms. Once done, remove them and place on a cooling rack. When all 12 are finished, I pop the rack directly onto my baking stone in a pre-heated 350 degree oven and finish cooking them for 4 minutes. Remove from the oven and let them cool. Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven, right Pillsbury Doughboy? Enjoy! Read more->