Reinhart's Sourdough Hearth Bread in a Casserole Dish

Reinhart's Sourdough Hearth Bread

made (Lahey-style) in a Casserole Dish

So here again, fast on the heals of the blunderbread (which, despite its name, tasted okay and didn't last long), I am making another sourdough hearth bread, using Reinhart's recipe.  However, I am not making it on a stone (so is it still a hearth bread?), but am using Lahey's method of baking it in an enclosed pot within the oven, so that moisture is retained during the initial part of the baking, and the oven rise is more dramatic.  My hope is that there will also be less sag in the loaf, because the pot will shore up the sides -- although now that I've got the hydration correct, that should be less of a problem.

There are a couple of problems with this approach.  The first is, it is very difficult to score the loaves properly in the casserole dish, because things have to happen quickly when the time comes to plop the dough into the pot.  You have to get that lid back on fairly quickly, or you are losing moisture.  You have to get that pot back into the oven fast, or you are losing heat.  You could, I suppose, forget about taking a picture for posterity.  But I chose instead to forego the scoring, which meant these loaves blew themselves apart where-they-will.  That is a common feature of my Lahey loaves.

The second problem is, how hot should I make it?  Reinhart gives some direction on how hot the oven should be for his hearth-baking (hot!), but it is not the same temperature that Lahey advises for his recipes (also hot, but not quite as hot).  The timing is approximately the same though, for Reinhart and Lahey's loaves.  I opted to use Reinhart's temperature for the initial baking, but to back it off to Lahey's temperature about 10 minutes into it.  So the temperature for the final baking, where the lid comes off, is somewhat less than Reinhart advises.

Ingredients

I left all the ingredients out at room temperature for 24 hours, whether or not I should have.

I set the containers on a high shelf, atop the quilting frame, to get them out of the way

It was a new sourdough build, and the yeasts were active.

The soaker saw some fermentation: you could even see little ponds of hooch forming already here and there.  I divided up the soaker equally between the doughs.

These loaves are made identically, except the longer one has some agave and oil.  The boule-shaped loaf has no optional ingredients at all.  This time no extra water was dumped on them accidentally.

First I mixed up the one with agave and olive oil.  It also got some extra yeast, so this loaf is a hybrid of wild and commercial yeasts.

Then I mixed up the one with no optional ingredients.  I did find that the dough with no sweetener or oil was fairly dry and required me to wet my hands once to get all the flour incorporated.  That's all it required though.

Method

I bulk fermented and proofed it as Reinhart would have us do.

Forming the dough: First, the batardy shape:

Then the boule:

During the last 30 minutes of the proofing in baskets, I preheated the oven with 2 casserole dishes in it, to 500 degrees F.  As stated above, I plopped them into the hot pots and closed them without scoring the loaves, expecting them to blow apart wherever they would.

The boule wasn't in the middle of the dish, so would bake a little unevenly

That gives the loaves this sort of haphazard, rustic look.

The temperature was turned down to 425 degrees F ten minutes into the baking.  Then minutes later, the lids came off and the bread was baked another 15 minutes.

Getting them out of the casserole dish required a bit of persuasion with a spatula, always dangerous.

I took them outside to the picnic table for a few shots.  The sun was going down in a brilliant blue sky -- the first lovely day in a week or more of rain.

The loaves look and smell wheaten.


Results

Sliced into the unenhanced loaf the next morning.  Despite its misshapen appearance, the bread's crumb looks similar to the bread I made the other day with my blunder -- perhaps even a bit of a tighter crumb. I suspect that this is because the blunderbread I made the other day had a longer bulk fermentation (it could, of course, and this one couldn't.  Why?  Because all the material in this loaf is already fermented, and I had to add extra wheat to that blunderbread to get it to adhere together.)

The crust is substantially crunchier.   I suspect that this is merely a result of how it was made (and perhaps how hot I made it).  Depends upon what you want in a bread, I guess.  I enjoy this.  My mother-in-law would break her tooth on it.

Tastes okay.

Notes to Myself

• These look okay.  But the crust might be a trifle too crunchy.  Would it have been better to try to rub something on them, to moisten them during the last few moments of the baking?  Recently Shao-Ping -- who is easily THE BEST bread-blogger in the world today (even if she claims not to like the taste of whole wheat breads, and even if she has decided she cannot get the bread results she likes by using 100% whole grains, and even if she claims to be burning herself out recently!) did an interesting looking garlic-wash during the last 5-10 minutes of baking.  That looked good.  Try that some time.
• What have you decided, about keeping the sourdough starter out for 24 hours?  Probably not the best idea, but because of my working situation, and my full fridge situation, I couldn't really correct this.  Next time, I think I'd like to leave it in the fridge after 2 hours of room temp, if at all possible.  It wasn't, this time.
• Now I've made this a few different ways.  I know I haven't mastered it, but I'm comfortable with the possibilities.  Time to move on.

Lahey-style rye bread with whole wheat and rye kernels

Good for what ails ya?

I was so ill this past weekend that I could barely raise my head off the pillow.  I called in sick to work, two days in a row, something I can't remember doing ever.

Making bread -- especially a Reinhart loaf or any other loaf that required 2 days or more of prep -- seemed such a daunting task, it was virtually impossible.

But as I started to get a little bit better, and was able to stand upright again, I stumbled to the bread drawer only to find that I was down to my last inedible crust of rye bread.  Here I was jonesing for bread, and this chunk of rye was so tough I couldn't cut through it, let alone bite into it.  Oh, I tried, but the effort required to eat it was making my head spin.  How was I going to get this monkey off my back, with no bread fix in sight?

I needed an oral exorphin injection before long, as I hadn't eaten much of anything in days.  I found myself reaching for Lahey's book.  I would make his rye bread.  Sure, the dough still had to sit and wait 12-18 hours before I had bread in my hands.  I was hoping that I would be a bit better in that time frame, and more able to perform the sacred duty of "stretch and fold" that the Lahey breads require.  All I had to do the first day was read the recipe through light-sensitive eyes, stir the ingredients, and crawl back to bed.


Mixing it

That is why I didn't weigh anything, I was too ill to waste time with that, but I did grab my camera for a couple of shots as I tossed ingredients together using volumetric cups and spoons.

End of mixing, Day 1.

But even though I was sick, I had to change the ingredients a little bit.  Instead of 2 1/4 cups of bread flour, I used 1 1/4 cups of all-purpose flour and 1 cup of whole wheat flour (you know I was sick when I kept SOME all- purpose); instead of table salt I used kosher salt; in addition to 1/4 tsp of yeast, I added the same amount of my "home made yeast" from some old dried sourdough (made using Nils Schöner's techniques).  And I added 1 cup by dry weight of rye kernels which I had previously cooked in the pressure-cooker for 50 minutes.

I very nearly used some cold yogi ginger tea instead of water, but I wimped out on that taste experience.  Maybe its because I have been drinking it while sick, and I didn't want to be reminded of a sick food.

 This is about 16 hours later.

 After a few stretch and folds I put it in its basket.

 Two hours later, the dough is ready to go into the casserole dish.

 Before Baking.

 After baking 30 minutes, lid on, 23 minutes lid off at 475 degrees F.

Results

The dog took it easy on me when I walked her around the block after baking this loaf: I think she knows I am sick (she hides when I cough).  The reason I mention the walk outside, though, is that when I returned home, there was a distinct sour note that I could smell from the bread that I hadn't noticed while it was rising and baking.  Perhaps that is because my smeller is off.

 Looks okay, tastes blah

I waited about 3 hours to slice into it, and I was hopeful that the bread would taste good.  But it is amazingly bland.  It is nicely moist, and it has some nice textures from the extra cooked rye kernels I added.  But those rye kernels seem to have added no flavour at all.  Maybe using kosher salt meant there was not quite enough salt to give it that bite, who knows?  Or maybe it is just my own tastebuds that are compromised, after being sick for a few days.

But this is one tasteless bread.  Not very inspiring fare, for one who is (hopefully) on the mend.

Notes to Myself

• Try soaking those pressure-cooked rye kernels in juice of some sort, like Nils Schöner does in his excellent rye breads.  We have some crab apple juice that we made in the dampfentsafter that will certainly give this bread some flavour: I've been drinking a lot of it lately, 'cause I feel it has a lot of vitamin C and it seems to be helping my sore throat.
• Omit the bread flour, or all-purpose flour.  
• Get the right weight of salt: the kosher salt is chunkier than table salt, so that is going to throw off the recipe.  Of course, you knew that, you just were too sick to care at the time.
• Wait another day, rye is said to improve in flavour after a day.  Of course, there is not that much rye flour in this loaf.  You should increase the amount next time you make this.

Pizzadough Recipe Whole Wheat Bread

 Pizzadough Recipe Whole Wheat Bread

This is just Lahey's basic Pizzadough recipe, only I have substituted whole wheat flour for the bread flour.  I actually intended to make this into a pizza, but we made another batch using all purpose flour for that meal.  So I had this dough left over: it had actually been sitting in a covered container over 24 hours before I decided to just make it into a bread.

I shaped it into a sort of elongated boule and let it rise again in a floured basket.  I baked it free standing on a hot stone with steam for 15 minutes at 475 degrees F and then another 30 minutes at 450 degrees F.

During the busy Christmas season, it was a very quick bread to make, and although it was nothing special, it filled a void when I had to take a sandwich with me while I worked nights.

This bread staled quickly.

Notes to Myself

• This was made with 500g wwflour and 300g water, so is only 60% hydrated.  Even still, there was quite a bit of sag once the dough fell free of the basket, and only barely enough oven spring for the scores I made in the loaf to fill in. How to get the hydration level up, but get less sag?  The whole wheat does not allow me to shape the dough nicely: the gluten cloak is not nearly elastic enough, tears far too easily. 
• Question: did letting the dough sit for such a long time before deciding to bake make it better or worse? 
• This is essentially a no-knead bread.  Would a gluten cloak have formed if I had kneaded it?