A couple of days ago I shared that I got a new oven and in the few days I’ve had it, it has been incredible. So much more capable than my previous oven (even when it was working), I couldn’t be happier with it. BUT it has also meant that I must figure it out it; not how to use it, but the best way(s) to bake bread with it.
For instance, what level should I place the rack? With my first bake, I placed my stone on the middle level. The loaves turned out great, but the crust looked a little dry when I took them out. Did the circulation fan turn on? Did I have enough steam?
Speaking of steam, even though this oven has a steam function, it doesn’t have a separate reservoir and steam generator. You’re supposed to put water on the bottom of the oven. I know, not much different from baking with a regular oven, but the advantage of this new oven over my old one is that this new one can handle high moisture levels; something my old oven couldn’t and the baking cavity finally cracked.
I can see that the fan at the back is going to be problematic. This is probably the culprit behind the dry crust. I will need to find a way to divert the airflow, or move the loaves to either side of the fan so they’re out of the direct path of fan. With my old oven, I draped a sheet of heavy duty foil over the fan area. It didn’t complete block the fan, but it did help to block the direct airflow. But what I think I might end up doing is using a thin metal sheet or some other heat tolerant material that can lean against the back of the oven without completely covering the vents. Since it will be at an angle, it will divert the airflow down. I think that’ll also help bring steam up from the bottom.
Another thing I must figure out is using my baking stone with this oven.
Ah! The things we do for our bread! Figuring our tools out is half the fun!
Yesterday afternoon, my family was enjoying subs that my kids made from the baguettes I had baked the day before. I asked them how they liked the bread and they all said it was great. But one of my daughters asked said, “Dad, we love your baguettes, but can you make a real sour loaf like you used to?” Of course I agreed because any excuse to bake some bread is fine with me.
So, last night, I worked out my formula, then fed my starter in preparation for making the dough early this morning. While I was reviewing the formula, I thought of numerous ways to make bread sourer. But I have a tried-and-true method that will ensure my bread comes out sour. Actually, it’s a combination of things. Here they are:
First, I use mature, unfed starter straight out of my fridge that has hooch formed. I mix the hooch back into the starter, measure out what I need for my recipe, then I feed the starter and put it back into the fridge. I know, it seems counterintuitive, but at the stage I use it, even though there’s still live yeast in the culture, the bacteria have taken over.
Second, the starter is made entirely from whole grain flour or at a minimum T85 flour that still has a substantial amount of germ and husk in it. That’s where the little beasties (bacteria) reside. I will sometimes use a mature rye levain – and always past its peak.
Thirdly, I make a flour blend that is at least 20% whole grain flour. Today I used unsifted 100% organic whole grain Kamut™ flour. In addition to introducing bacteria, it adds a nice nutty component to the flavor profile along with a tiny bit of sweetness. Yum!
I also use a more standard hydration of 70%. This is a little low for the flour that I use which has high protein content. But the lower hydration promotes anerobic metabolism which favors the bacteria.
Next, I use significantly less starter than I normally would for other loaves. Usually, the amount of starter I use is 20% of the total flour, but when I want sourer bread, I reduce the amount down to 12%. This lower amount of starter lengthens fermentation time forcing the yeast to compete more with the bacteria during bulk fermentation. This also promotes bacterial fermentation over yeast fermentation.
Then finally I do a long final fermentation in the fridge for a minimum of twelve hours. This slows down the yeast but lets the bacteria continue doing their thing. Importantly, I didn’t want to completely stop yeast production because it was already slow to start with. So I turned up my fridge temp to 42°F (don’t worry, I have a small dedicated fridge for cold fermentation.
With the smaller amount of starter, bulk fermentation is SLOW. I mixed my dough at 7am this morning and didn’t shape until 6pm! And it was a hot day today. That got me a little worried because with my kitchen ambient temperature at 85°F, I thought it would speed up yeast fermentation. But it looks like there was enough competition from the bacteria to attenuate the yeast activity even at that temperature.
With a lower hydration dough combined with the different ways to promote bacterial fermentation, I had to be extra gentle with shaping. Normally I don’t have a problem degassing the dough because I tend to make loaves that favor yeast production. But with such low yeast activity, I handled the dough much gentler to avoid popping as few bubbles as possible.
This may seem complicated because I explained each item, but it’s not. Here’s everything I talked about in summary:
Use unfed starter
Use a whole grain flour starter
Use a flour blend that includes some whole grain flour
Use a lower hydration (68%-70%) to promote anerobic metabolism
Use less starter
Do final fermentation in the fridge for at least twelve hours
As I said, it’s not complicated. You can even skip some of these things. But from experience, I know doing those things above will create a sour loaf of bread!
How Sour Is Sour?
All that said, my technique above favors lactic acid production rather than acetic acid production. Lactic acid is sour, but it doesn’t have a bite, like acetic acid. The loaf above is high in lactic acid. Its sourness comes off as nutty and fruity as opposed to vinegary. I prefer this kind of sourness because there’s a complexity in the flavor profile. If I want a tangier loaf, I’d use a stiff starter that favors acetic acid production, but I’d use a bit more than a liquid starter.
Baguettes de Tradition. These are typically same-day loaves. They naturally don’t have the depth of flavor of ones made from a long fermentation, but they are excellent for sandwiches and for dipping! Notice the shallow ears. This is a trait of this style. Fermentation is fast with these and when they bake, they spring quickly, usually blowing through the ears.
OMFG! It has been a long time since I’ve baked anything meaningful other than a couple of Pain au Levain in my Dutch oven on my Traeger grill. And the reason for that is because my ovens have been broken for a long time. They were still usable for some basic baking, but not for bread as they wouldn’t hold temperature consistently enough for bread baking.
But yesterday, my new double wall oven unit got delivered and installed. So, this afternoon I made baguettes! I haven’t made baguettes in a couple of years, so I was a little apprehensive. I didn’t know if I remembered the shaping technique. But I needn’t have worried because muscle memory took over and they turned out great!
The thing about baguettes is that making the dougn and going through the fermentation process is a no-brainer. Where it gets extremely difficult is in the shaping. That’s the part I was worried about. And though I was slower at shaping than in the past, I still had it!
Admittedly, I’ve lost my baker’s hands. Deftly handling dough without it sticking to my hands was a little challenging. But then I was expecting that and had a bowl of water handy to keep my hands moist. As I bake more, they’ll return. It just takes repetition.
And speaking of repetition, I recently started lurking in the bread forums again. It has been as if I never stopped reading them. Anyway, the answer to most folks’ questions is simply this: Repetition. There’s simply no substitute for getting your reps in, especially with baking. And as with any craft, repetition not only builds your skill, but it also builds your intuition and feeling for handling and processing dough.
And though I haven’t seriously baked bread in a couple of years, because I made countless loaves in the past and built up my skills through repetition, while I was a bit rusty with the mechanics, I still had the feel for the dough. It was wonderful!
A little overproofed and a bit mishapen due to the loaf being longer than my Dutch oven, but it still turned out great with a nice, fluffy crumb.
When you get into any hobby or craft, it so easy to dive down deep into the minutiae and explore every aspect of the craft down to the nitty-gritty. I can’t tell you how many rabbit holes I’ve gone down in my pursuit of bread baking knowledge. I’ve read countless books, blogs, and academic papers. I’ve experimented with a bunch of different techniqes and even taken classes.
All that knowledge is great and I encourage everyone to learn about different techniques and methods. Even delve into the food science part of it. All it does is help you become a better, more adaptable baker.
And speaking of techniques, I finally tried a technique that I kept forgetting to try, and that’s the 1:2:3 method. Basically, it’s measuring the amount of starter, multiplying that by two to get your water, then multiplying the starter amount by three to get your flour amount. For salt, multiply the flour amount by 1.8% (0.018).
This is what it looks like in real numbers:
Starter
165g
Water (2x starter weight)
330g
Flour (3x starter weight)
495g
Salt
9g
Total Loaf Weight
999
Assuming you’re using a 100% hydration starter, the recipe above will create a 71% hydration loaf.
BTW, I have a calculator available for this. I know, it’s just 1-2-3, but the cool thing about the calculator is that you can set different starter amounts to achieve the loaf weight you want without having to work it out on paper.
As for processing, we don’t need no stinkin’ processing. Just kidding… Once you have your ingredients measured, throw them all together in a bowl and mix them. That’s right, no autolyse. You can if you want, but it’s really not necessary. I used a stand mixer and mixed until the dough started climbing my hook (about 4 minutes).
Bulk ferment until the dough has expanded about 50%-75%. For me, that took about three hours in an oven with the light on. Fold every hour until the dough has built up strength. It only took two folds for my dough to develop good strength. After that, I gently shaped the loaf (no preshape) into a batard, then put it in a banneton and let it rest overnight. Bake it like you normally would.
That’s the process I used in a nutshell. But honestly you can use whatever method you want. For me, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible.
Circling back to education, as I mentioned above, acquiring knowledge makes you better. The more you know, the better you can adapt to different conditions and situations; the better you can recognize and identify issues that may come along. Especially with baking bread, as they say, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, and it’s important to at least be aware of the different approaches available.
The reason I’m saying this is because I’ve seen so many folks who’ll latch onto a particular method or technique or belief and become so parochial and dogmatic about it that they close themselves off from learning anything else. But bear in mind that bread has been baked for thousands of years and in all sorts of conditions and environments. Don’t get so fixed on a particular method. Try different things out.
What I love about this 1:2:3 method is its simplicity. I’ve got my own recipes that I just know by heart, but a method like this makes it super-easy for anyone, especially new bakers, to execute. And think about this: You can apply this method with a poolish or biga. Those are just preferments, but prepared in a different way. The link to the calculator I made for this also allows you to specify the hydration of your starter. So, for instance, if you’re using a 75% hydration biga, it’ll calculate the correct amount of salt. You can still use the 1.8%, but the calculator, does it more accurately, considering all the flour that’s used in the recipe and not just the starter X 3.
The pictures above depict two types of bread. One is a rustic Batard and the other shows baguettes. Here’s the thing: These were made using the same dough formula!
Here’s the formula that I used:
Flour
100%
Water
75%
Salt
2%
Yeast
0.5%
Levain/Preferment
20%
This is a hybrid sourdough in that I used just a tiny bit of commercial yeast to help boost the rising action of the dough. Technically, it’s not needed, but it helps with timing.
For the batard, I used 70% White Bread Flour and 30% Kamut flour. On the other hand, the baguettes were made with 100% Azure Standard Bread Flour which is similar to a T85 flour (the “Ultra-Unifine” milling process doesn’t remove all the germ and bran like regular white bread flour).
I’ve also made these loaves using the exact same flour blend. But even with the same type of flour, these loaves taste wildly different from each other. The Batard has a soft, airy, and slightly tart, chewy crumb while the baguettes are crusty with a fluffy crumb. They may come from the same type of dough, but the techniques and processes used to create the loaves are quite different.
The Batard uses an overnight, retarded fermentation in the fridge, which promotes lactic acid bacteria activity, giving the dough a slightly acidic twang. The baguette dough, on the other hand, is made and processed the same day with a dough temperature between 78℉ and 82℉ which promotes yeast activity. Same dough formula, different results. That said, I could’ve made both types of bread from the exact same batch of dough and still achieved different results.
The reason is because oftentimes it’s merely the techniques and processes employed that will differentiate one type of loaf from another. And this is where a master dough formula comes in handy. Most home bakers start out their baking journey experimenting with different recipes they come across. But those different recipes have different ratios of ingredients. That makes it challenging to understand what effects variances in the parameters might cause.
But when you use a master formula, it helps you understand the effects of tweaking ingredients in the formula because you’re always starting from the same place. Furthermore, a master formula helps you master the processing of the dough. As a fairly high-hydration dough, it can be tricky to work with, especially for beginners. But with repetition, it gets easier and easier to work with.
I’ve made all sorts of bread from the formula above from sourdough boules and batards to baguettes and pan loaves. And I believe that using that formula over and over again helped accelerate my learning!
Tweaks
So, you’re probably wondering what kinds of tweaks you can make to the formula. I’ve already mentioned a couple above, but let’s just put them all together here. Now mind you, what we’re not going to do is alter the ingredient amounts. To help put more context, here are ingredients by weight to produce one kilo of dough:
Flour
512g
Water
370g
Salt
11g
Yeast
3g
Levain/Preferment
114g
Total Yield
1010g
The extra 10g in the total yield is to account for loss during processing
So, what can you do with one kilo of dough? Well, lots of things. You can make 10 buns. You can make a nice pan loaf. You can make 4 demi baguettes, or you can make a single rustic boule or batard.
But those really aren’t tweaks. I’ll list a few things you can do:
One thing to tweak is the flour, blending different kinds of flour to create different flavor profiles. My favorite blend is using an organic T85 type of flour I get from Azure Standard called their Ultra-Unifine Bread Flour and combine that with Kamut, or Whole Wheat, or Rye, or even Durum flour in varying ratios.
Another thing you can do is play with the fermentation. Do a cold, ovenight bulk fermentation (I do this with baguettes). Do a cold, overnight final fermentation (especially good for rustic loaves). Or even do a delayed fermentation.
Something not that obvious but will have huge effect on your bread is the dough temperature you maintain. For quick bread such as baguettes, as I mentioned above, a dough temperature between 78℉ and 82℉ promotes yeast activity. Going with a lower temperature will slow things down but favor bacterial activity.
You can also play with the levain or preferment. Both are technically preferments, but a levain specifically means a preferment made from a sourdough culture. But you can use either a levain or a poolish.
With either the levain or poolish, you could play with their maturity. Typically, you use mix in a preferment at the peak of its activity. But you could let it go past its peak as well. Don’t worry, the yeast will not be dead, they will just have run out of food. Putting them in contact with a new source of food will wake them up. But in the meantime, more organic acids will form.
That’s just a few things you can do. But even with just these things, you will be amazed at the wildly different bread you can make. And remember, the formula is the same!
I know, I know, more philosophy. But I’ve shared almost all my recipes on here so I want to take some time to give back to the community and share my thoughts and whatever wisdom I’ve gained, especially for those who are new to making artisan bread. In particular, I want to discuss something that every experienced baker knows: There are no shortcuts in baking. If you want to bake great-looking and great-tasting bread, there are certain steps you have to follow. There’s no getting around them.
I’m bringing this up because I’ve gotten comments or been in discussions with people who don’t get this. They’d love to bake bread, but want things to be simplified. They want the process to be easier. And it’s not their fault. We live an a world where we have instantaneous information at our fingertips and readily available things. We’ve become accustomed to – and perhaps a little complacent in – being able to get many things done in our lives quickly. But arts and crafts; those things that we make from scratch require the development of skill and, let’s face it, lots of repetition.
Think about the words: Artisan bread. The operative word in that phrase is “artisan” which implies art or artistry. To do any kind of art requires development of skill. For instance, for a painter to get the right color and hue, they must understand how to mix paint colors to achieve it. “Blue” to a painter isn’t just a single color, even if the primary is a specific shade.
Likewise, in making bread, there are certain, specific ways a baker processes and works dough to create various kinds of bread. There’s no getting around those steps. Also, there’s no getting around the time it takes to execute those steps. Experienced bakers learn the processes and inherently know that they must follow those procedures if they are going to be successful. It’s like the painter mixing colors. There’s a prescribed way of doing things. Detract from that and the desired effect, or loaf in the case of bread, won’t turn out as expected.
So, especially for folks who are new to baking artisan bread, I realize that it can be a little overwhelming at first. There are usually lots of steps in making any kind of bread. But as I said, there are no shortcuts. Slow down. Put on your patience hat and as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, trust in the process. After a while, all those steps will become second nature. You won’t even think about them. You’ll just do them.
As I returned to baking bread in earnest after a long hiatus, and “in earnest” that meant baking every single day, not just the same kind of bread, but many diverse kinds from French to Italian bread. For instance, I learned to make ten distinct kinds of baguette. I learned to make several traditional Italian loaves. I had four active starters that were optimized for different outcomes (sourness, fast rise, etc.). But here’s the thing: Other than buying simple implements such as a Danish dough whisk or some good scrapers or getting a baking stone. I didn’t get a new mixer or other high-end equipment. I baked everything in my standard electric oven.
I mostly mixed by hand but also used a mixer for specific kinds of dough. For that I used my trusty KitchenAid Artisan 5-quart mixer; yes, even for large batches when I had to make bread for a shelter. In those cases, I had to make several small batches of dough. And since I only had two ovens to work with, I had to work out timing. And though I was tempted to get a spiral mixer (I still dream about it) and a dedicated bread oven (I will get that in the next year or so), I still got by with what I had. And I made some incredible bread. My thought was that if I learned how to use what I had on hand, there wouldn’t be much I couldn’t do.
But I think a major reason keeping me from getting higher end equipment was that I had worked out a process and got so proficient and efficient with it that I didn’t feel a pressing need to buy new gear. Honestly, I’d forget the new stuff and would only remember when I deliberately thought about how nice it would be to have a spiral mixer or dedicated bread oven. And that leads me to the reason I wrote this post in the first place.
There’s an urban legend about the famous violinist Izthak Perlman who broke a string during a concert, then proceeded to finish the concerto playing only on three strings. At the end of the piece, he spoke to the audience and said, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
No one knows whether the story is true, but the quote is inspirational, nonetheless. And I think of it when I’m evaluating buying new equipment. Granted, there are times when there is an absolute necessity to get some new gear, especially if you’re replacing broken equipment. But for other, more aspirational items, can you still perform with what you have? I will be honest with you that that quote has saved me thousands of dollars, not just in bakery equipment, but also in guitar and golf and even home appliances.
Look, I’m not saying that you must be cheap. If you have the means to get the top-of-the-line stuff, go for it. But will those aspirational things improve your process to a significant degree? At least for me, as I had my process down, I didn’t think they’d help to a large degree. Even with my micro-bakery where I was baking more bread than most home-based bakers, the higher end gear became more “nice-to-haves” rather than “must-haves.”
And to be honest, in the end it’s all about the dough. A great mixer will help in mixing the dough, but after that, there’s no other equipment you need to develop you bread dough. A dedicated bread oven will certainly provide much more consistency than a normal home oven, but if you know your oven and you’re only baking limited quantities, the benefit of a dedicated oven will be minimal at best. Besides, if you screw up your dough, no amount of high-end gear is going to help you.
An early batch of baguette from the holidays. Whew! I was little rusty!
Over holidays, I baked quite a bit of bread; mostly baguettes, but I made other types of loaves as well. But here’s the thing: All the mileage I put on my ovens completely messed them up and one oven no longer holds temperature consistently and the hinge on my other oven broke so I couldn’t use it. I tried to make baguettes on my stone, but they turned out horrible. So I had to turn to my old metal baguette pans. Those never produce great results, but they’re what I had on hand. And I trudged forward thinking about the Izthak Perlman quote.
And I was okay with the results, even though I knew they wouldn’t be as optimal as I would normally get with a stone. I was making music with what I had left!
In addition to baking, I barbecue a lot. And one thing I’ve learned in making great bread and great barbecue is to have the patience – and trust – to leave your dough or meat alone. Especially with baking, sometimes it’s SO tempting to check how your baking is going, but temperature fluctuations can have a deleterious effect on your bread. So, as in the words of Nancy Reagan, “Just say no!”
In the first 10-15 minutes of baking, when you’re applying steam to certain bread, opening your oven will release the steam and your bread will not get oven spring because it’s the steam that keeps the crust moist and allows the bread to expand. Talk about killing a bake!
Several people have asked me why their bread doesn’t spring much, and many times I find out it’s because they open their oven door to see how their bread’s doing. I know, it can be tortuous to have to wait, but if you have a little trust in the process, you’ll be rewarded. Remember the saying, curiosity killed the cat.
I had to learn lots and lots of patience when I started barbecuing in earnest. For instance, a pork butt requires at least 12 hours. A brisket can take up to 16 hours! Of course, there will be times when basting or spritzing the meat is necessary, but in between those times, I’ve had to learn to just let the meat cook, lest it come out tough and chewy, and no one want that.
So, have some patience, trust in the process, and let your dough do its thing!
Now and then I like to share things I’ve cooked other than bread. But they’re also great to go with bread! This time it’s brisket-style barbecue Tri Tip steak. Tri Tip is predominantly a US West Coast cut, and more specifically, it tends to be a California cut. But if you can find it outside of California, it’s a great cut that can be cooked in a variety of ways.
The traditional way of cooking Tri Tip is over a hardwood pit using indirect heat for the first part of the cook then searing the outside in a sort reverse sear method. This is a method I’ve used for years. But since I got such a great deal on the last two Tri Tips I purchased, I decided to smoke one like I would a brisket to see how it would turn out. As you can see from the picture above, it turned out fantastic!
Here are the steps:
Preparation
Tri Tip is a rather lean cut of meat, but invariably, it will be encasd on one side with a thick layer of fat. So before you do anything, trim the cut, removing the hard fat and silver skin. If you do leave some fat, make sure you don’t leave more than 1/8″.
Next, you should brine the steak for 12-24 hours. With the steak above, I dry brined it with my homemade rub. In the future, I think I will wet brine in a marinade. The reason is that Tri Tip has a loose muscular structure, and even though good cuts have marbling, because of that loose structure, the fat leeches out during a long cook. Wet brining should help bolster the moisture in the meat.
Barbecue!
Like any barbecued red meat, it takes time to cook. For this cut, I used my Traeger pellet smoker:
2 hours on the “Smoke” setting (it’s about 160)
Turned up the smoker to 180℉ and cooked until the internal temperature of the meat read 160℉. By this time, the meat formed a beautiful bark! (~3 hours)
I removed the meat from the grill and wrapped it tightly in butcher paper and turned the temperature up to 225℉.
Returned the meat to the grill then barbecued it until the meat had an internal temperature of 200℉. (~6 hours)
I immediately transferred the meat (still wrapped) to a jumbo ziploc bag, then let it rest for 30 minutes in a cooler. Normally I’d rest it for a couple to a few hours, but it was dinner time and I was hungry! 🙂
As you can see, it was a pretty straightforward process. That’s the beauty of barbecue! In the future, I will definitely dry brine the meat overnight and even inject it to bolster the moisture. The only issue I had with this cook was that even though the meat came out super-tender and moist, I would’ve liked it to be a lot more juicy. Tri Tip has less fat than brisket, so I believe you have to make up for the lack of fat with some other liquid.
That first night after cooking, I just ate it straight with some BBQ sauce and some veggie on the side. But since I still had a bunch of meat left over, it made some great sandwiches the next day!
I’ve gone to my house in Hawaii and so far, I’ve already baked a couple of times and will bake bread yet again for a Labor Day party in couple of days. I got a special request for Labor Day by the host of the party, and my wife’s friend invited us to dinner tonight and asked if I could bake some bread to bring to the dinner. Then my daughter asked me to bake some bread for her because she hadn’t had any of my bread for a year.
It is never a problem for me to bake. I love it and enjoy baking when I have the time; yes, even on vacation. But one thing I haven’t done is bring my starter with me. I suppose could bring a little starter and grow a levain if someone specifically wanted sourdough, but my thinking is that I can make so many diverse types of bread that it seems almost pointless to bring a starter.
Plus, I refuse to let my starter rule my life. Holy crap! I’ve seen people proudly post pictures of themselves in their hotel rooms proudly holding up their jars of sourdough starter that they took on vacation with them so they can feed it. To each their own, but if I’m on vacation, I don’t want my activities limited by my freakin’ starter feeding schedule! I feed my starters (yes, I have anywhere from two to four) before I leave then put them in the fridge. They’ll keep for weeks.
So what did I bake? I made two batches of ciabatta, one for us and one for the dinner party with our friends. For the Labor Day party, I baked two dozen Hawaiian rolls that went perfect with the BBQ short ribs we had. Both of those types of bread just required regular old yeast. For the ciabatta, I made an overnight biga preferment. Wow! Were they delicious.
And the Hawaiian rolls were the hit of the party! They didn’t last at all! They were rich with butter and soft and pillowy. I’m going to have to make more!
Anyway, the point to this is that if you want to bake on vacation and have the means to, go for it. But just remember this: It doesn’t have to be sourdough.
The Dawg House! 