Sauerteigbrot - or 60-40 bread - is my favorite German daily loaf. It has gluten strength and a rye-flavor imbued in every bite. Add in some malzstück to enhance the equation and you get a juicy crumb and lusty crust, enjoyed best when fresh-baked and cooling in the morning light! I finally got around to this method. Hoot, it works!
If you find your sourdough ryes lacking in flavor and strength trying aromastuck. It is a German bread enhancer similar to tangzhong, a water roux with the addition of malt. Its enzymatic activities improve crumb, flavor and shelf life of breads.
Though it's most often made with rye, other flours or grains . I only recently tried it, myself, having been a bit confused and overwhelmed by its preparation, something that includes time, long stirring and closely gauging its temperature. Jumping in to finally try it, my chosen method was with my sous-vide circulator. Only after finishing did I realize that it should be mixed every 20-minutes over three hours at 149 degrees Fahrenheit. Now to mix some dough!
As posted recently, I bought myself a Umaidry kit, a tool to bring professional charcuterie to anyone's kitchen. While my wife complained about the high price, her face broke out in smiles at the delicious results, a bouquet of finely cured meat.
Hearing that Sicilian miller Filippo Drago and his buddy Renato Flaborea were hanging out at at New York's Gustiamo, I decided to head down to hear their take on ancient grains. They have been traveling America's Eastern seaboard on an education tour. Well, they educated me with a wonderful Pane Nero di Castelvetrano made with various ferments. I'm not sure I will ever get an A in replicating it at home but I sure was inspired to try.
Out shopping in Maspeth Queens, I went into a local deli for a sub sandwich and spotted this flour. Fun, no? Light (super-ground) flour, it's marketed for pizza. Who wouldn't want a pizza made from this beautiful bella donna?
While 00 flour can have issues (super-sifted, all-white), it's a basic for pizza dough. Here I tried my rendition of pizza maestro Anthony Mangieri's Una Pizza Napolitano style pizza. Whatever, this flour went home with me and made some great pies.
When it comes to fermentation, I am finally understanding the meaning of the "sweet spot." I achieved it recently with a 50-percent hydrated lievito madre, the classic Italian fermentation vehicle. It's based on an equal proportion of flour and levain with a proportion of 50 percent of that mixture in water. Maintaining 2-3 refreshments within three hour intervals give it a clean taste and rocket-fire propulsion for your final dough. I used it for my holiday panettones and, more recently, a Roscon de reyes. All efforts led to excellent structure and taste. Here's may latest offering, a boulot .
English muffins aren't a bread I often eat or bake. But breakfast visitors, and thoughts of eggs Benedict, led me to visions of their nooks and crannies as perfect for embracing a warm Hollandaise. Also, an email from Andris Lagsdin of Baking Steel featured an English muffin video. And so I made a batch, using a formula from my notes from school that I converted to sourdough.
Here's a non-traditional technique where you use a small percentage (one percent - even a half a percent) of sour dough added to a kilo of flour instead of the standard ratios of anywhere from 10-50%. The idea is to give the dough gluten development through the sourdough's enzymatic activity, from its lactic acid bacteria proteolytic/acidification. Within 12-24 hours, the dough is at the same stage of development of a more traditional (and more labour intensive) method.
This method also lends itself to minimal shaping. And the gentle, long fermentation leads to an open crumb, a beautiful dark crust and the emergence of natural flavors of the delicious whole grains (versus white flours) you're using (hopefully). I learned this reading Respectus Pain, a book first introduced to me by Yohan Ferrant, a baker who uses this masterfully and coined it "do nothing bread." Using it recently, here are some photos of the outcome.
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