Overnight Bread

Overnight Bread

Bread will always be my kryptonite. After a long pause in my bread baking, I started up again with this simple overnight bread. 

Great tasting bread with a good crispy crust. An easier take on a sourdough bread, when you don't have time to bake a Basic Country bread a la Tartine. 

Makes 2 small round loafs.

Ingredients:

• 150 g whole wheat flour
• 500 g all-purpose flour
• 500 ml water
• 5 g live yeast (about ½ teaspoon dry yeast)
• 50 ml sourdough (leaven)
• 15 g salt

Directions:

Leaven:

Feed your sourdough or leaven the night(about 8-10 hours) before you want to start making the dough. 

To test leaven's readiness, drop a spoonful into a bowl of room-temperature water. If it sinks, it is not ready and needs more time to ferment and ripen. If it floats, it's ready to use. As it develops, the smell will change from ripe and sour to sweet and pleasantly fermented.

Bread:

Mix water, yeast, sourdough and whole wheat flour in a stand mixer. Add all-purpose flour and salt, and knead the dough for 10-12 minutes, to build up the gluten in the dough.

Grease a dough-rising bucket  with a thin coat of olive oil. Let the dough rise in the prepared bucket, lid on, for about 90 minutes at room temperature. Place the dough overnight in the refrigerator.

Next take out the dough, and pour the dough on a non-floured kitchen table, divide the dough in 2 and shape them into rounds.

Line 2 baskets with clean kitchen towels, generously dusted with flour. Transfer each round to a basket, smooth side down and let to rest, covered, at room temperature, about 1 hour before baking. Meanwhile preheat oven with the dutch oven to 500℉ (260℃).

Gently flip one bread into heated dutch/french oven. Score top twice using a razor blade matfer lame. Cover with lid. Return to oven, and reduce oven temperature to 450℉(235℃). Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove lid and continue to bake until crust is deep golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes more.

Transfer loaf to a wire rack, and let it cool completely.

To bake the second loaf, raise oven temperature to 500℉ (260℃), wipe out dutch/french oven with a dry kitchen towel, and reheat with lid for 10 minutes. Repeat the bake.

Enjoy!

Sourdough - Keeping and Feeding

A Sourdough man in a cup

I often use sourdough in my baking. I like the texture and flavor the sourdough give baked goods. I started using my sourdoughs 5 years ago, and they are still going strong. I was somewhat unsure how to start my sourdough, so I bought it online at KingArthurFlour.com. I divided it in two, feeding one with rye flour (for Danish rye bread) and one with whole wheat (for breads like Basic country bread a la Tartine). I bake with a young sourdough, which means it has fermented for about 8 hours, making for a mild flavor-profile. The longer the fermentation the more sour you bread becomes.

Many are afraid to bake with sourdough, because they have to maintain and feed it. But here are my tips and tricks to maintain a sourdough. 

Feeding:

Feed the starter every 2-3 weeks or about 8 hours before you need it for baking. If you bake everyday you don’t have to feed the sourdough before using.

If you have a liquid on top of the sourdough, discard this. If you mix it in, your sourdough get way to sour. Discard about half the sourdough before feeding, so you feed about ½-1 cup sourdough. I do not measure this. I just discard about half and do the feeding directly in the storage container.

Rye sourdough:                    

• ½-1 cup sourdough

• ½ cup dark rye flour

• ½ cup all-purpose flour

• 1 cup water

 Wheat sourdough:

• ½-1 cup sourdough

• ½ cup whole wheat flour

• ½ cup all-purpose flour

• 1 cup water

Directions:

Mix well, so all the flour is wet, let stand on the kitchen table for about 8 hour or overnight, fermenting. The sourdough will now be bubbling and smell kinda like beer. Now you can use the sourdough for baking, or store it in the refrigerator. 

When baking save about ½-1 cup of the fed sourdough for your next bake, this will be your new starter.

Keeping:

Keep the sourdough in the refrigerator in a closed container, double the size of the volume of the sourdough. The sourdough will keep in the refrigerator for 2-3 weeks with no feeding. With the long rest in the refrigerator you will have a dark liquid on top, discard this before feeding. (This will keep the sourdough from becoming to acidic.)

If you think your sourdough is gotten too sour to your taste. Just feed the sourdough 2-3 days in a row. This will freshen up the sourdough, and eliminate the harsh acidity you might have in the sourdough. 

Generally I only use "young" sourdough, meaning a newly fed sourdough in my baking.

Levain Bread

Levain Bread

Levain means wild yeast in French, but is also covers the use of sourdough. A bread kan be called a Levain if the amount of compressed yeast (live yeast) doesn't exceeds 0.2%

This Levain is more sour than the breads I normally bake, but I really like the sourness with the rye flour. This bread is a good bread for artisan cheeses or as a side for dinner.

This bread came about by mistake. I was making the leaven for the basic country bread a la Tartine, but I used rye flour instead of whole wheat flour by mistake. So instead of discarding the leaven, I came up with this bread.

Makes 2 breads

Ingredients:

Leaven:

• about 2 tablespoons sourdough (the starter you keep in the refrigerator and feed every other week) 
• 200 g water (78℉)
• 70 g all-purpose flour
• 65 g rye flour

Bread:

• 600 g water
• 10 g live yeast (¾ teaspoon dry yeast)
• 3½ dl (275 g) leaven 
• 3 dl (200 g) rye flour 
• 12 dl (840 g )all-purpose flour
• 1½ tablespoons salt

Directions:

Leaven:

Make the leaven the night before you want to bake the bread. If you like a more sour note to your bread, make the leaven in the morning, and after about 8 hours fermentation, put the leaven in the refrigerator until next morning.

Mix all the ingredients well in a bowl, and let the leaven rest covered on the counter for 8-10 hours. To test leaven's readiness, drop a spoonful into a bowl of room-temperature water. If it sinks, it is not ready and needs more time to ferment and ripen. If it floats, it's ready to use. As it develops, the smell will change from ripe and sour to sweet and pleasantly fermented.

This time I just used 275 g of the sourdough 8 hours after the feeding instead of making the leaven.

Bread:

Next morning:

In a large bowl, pour in the water, yeast, sourdough, and rye flour, mix it well. Add salt and  the all-purpose flour a little at a time, until you have a firm but slightly sticky dough. You might not need all the flour.

I always knead my doughs in my stand mixer, and I knead the dough for about 8-10 minutes until the dough is a bit shiny and elastic. 

Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and let the dough rise for about 4 hours.

Pour the dough out on a non-floured kitchen table, divide the dough in 2 and shape them into rounds.

Line 2 baskets with clean kitchen towels, generously dusted with flour. Transfer each round to a basket, smooth side down and let to rest, covered, at room temperature, about 3 hours before baking.

Baking the Bread:

Twenty minutes before you are ready to bake the bread, preheat oven and dutch/french oven to 500 degrees, with rack in lowest position.

Gently flip one bread into heated dutch/french oven. Score top twice using a razor blade matfer lame. Cover with lid. Return to oven, and reduce oven temperature to 450℉. Bake for 20 minutes.

Remove lid and continue to bake until crust is deep golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes more.

Transfer loaf to a wire rack, and let it cool completely.

To bake the second loaf, raise oven temperature to 500 degrees, wipe out dutch/french oven with a dry kitchen towel, and reheat with lid for 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

This post has been submitted to the Yeast Spotting Site.

Breakfast Sourdough Rolls

Breakfast Sourdough Rolls

I have a love of bread, for the most part I prefer more rustic bread like sourdough bread. But baking my favorite bread takes time. So I had to try to make some easy sourdough rolls, and here is what I came up with. A rustic crisp roll with flaxseeds, whole wheat, oats and sunflower seeds.  

Makes 8-9 rolls.

Ingredients:

• 5 g live yeast (½ teaspoon dry yeast)
• 80 g (¾ dl) mature sourdough*
• 4 dl (1⅔ cup) cold water
• 50 g rolled oats
• 2 teaspoon (15 g) sea salt
• 150 g whole wheat flour
• 345 g all-purpose flour
• 40 g flaxseeds 
• 40 g sunflower seeds 

Sprinkle:

• rolled oats or rolled spelt
• rice flour

Directions:

In a large bowl, pour in the water, yeast and sourdough, and mix it well. Mix in the oats, whole wheat flour, flaxseeds, sunflower seeds and salt. Add the all-purpose flour a little at a time, until you have a firm but slightly sticky dough. You might not need all the flour.

I always knead my doughs in my stand mixer, and I knead the dough for about 8-10 minutes until the dough is a bit shiny and elastic. 

Put the dough in another bowl, wiped with some olive oil. Seal the container with plastic wrap (or my favorite Press'n Seal), and leave to rest for an hour on the kitchen counter. Put the dough in the refrigerator for 12-20 hours.

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit for at least 1 hour. 

Preheat you oven and Pizza stone to 500℉ (260℃). 

Pour some rice flour and rolled spelt on the kitchen counter and gently scrape the dough out onto it. Cut the dough in 8-9 pieces and put them on a plate sprinkled with some cornflour, so the rolls don't stick.

Place the rolls on the pizza stone and let them bake for 15-20 minutes.

Let rolls cool before serving.

Enjoy!

* If you don't have a sourdough, use 15 g live yeast or 1½ teaspoon dry yeast

The Danish version

Surdejsrundstykker 

Surdejsrundstykker

Ingredienser:

• 5 g gær
• 80 g (¾ dl) surdej**
• 4 dl koldt vand
• 50 g havregryn
• 2 tsk (15 g) havsalt
• 150 g fuldkornshvedemel
• 345 g hvedemel
• 40 g hørfrø
• 40 g solsikkekerner

Drys:

• havregryn eller speltflager
• rismel

Fremgangsmåde:

Rør gær, vand og surdej sammen i en skål. Tilsæt fuldkornsmel, havregryn, hørfrø, solsikkekerner og salt og rør dejen sammen i en røremaskine. Tilsæt hvedemel lidt ad gangen, men kun nok til du har en fast med stadig let-klisteret dej. Det er ikke sikkert du skal bruge alt melet.

Ælt dejen i røremaskinen i ca 8-10 minutter ved medium hastighed indtil du har en blank elastisk dej.

Når dejen er æltet godt, kommes den i en skål smurt med lidt olivenolie. Dæk skålen til med plastikfilm, og lad dejen hvile på køkkenbordet i ca 1 time. Kom dejen i køleskabet i 12-20 timer.

Tag dejen ud af køleskabet og lad den stå ved stuetemperatur i mindst 1 time.

Forvarm ovn og bagesten til 260℃.

Vend dejen ud på et bord drysset med rismel og speltflager. Skær dejen i 8-9 stykker, og sæt dem på en tallerken drysset med majsmel, så de ikke sætter sig fast. Overfør bollerne til bagestenen, og bag dem i 15-20 minutter.

Velbekomme!

Hvis du ikke har en surdej så kan du erstatte det med 15 g gær eller 1½ tsk tørgær.

This post has been submitted to YeastSpotting

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