Category Archives: Bread

More Vermont Sourdough..

I blame the starter, it wanted to bake, it was begging me to use it. I hadn’t planned on baking more of the same this week.

I made one of the variations on the Vermont sourdoughs the Mellow Bakers are working on this month;  the one with increased wholegrain. I had some wholemeal flour from Melin Llynnon, a restored Welsh windmill on Angelsey which,  ‘ was known as ‘Môn Mam Cymru’, the ’Mother of Wales’ or ‘The Breadbasket of Wales’  because of its capacity to produce wheat and bread flour in great abundance.’ I also used a little spelt and rye to create a good mix of grain.

One day I would like to tour around all the working mills, large and small that are left in England and Wales.  Anyone like to join me?   Like some people dream about bee keeping, I dream about a mill :)

Quick dough notes:  I used a lot more water than the recipe gives as the flours were very thirsty,  and I  added a small pinch of commercial yeast needing to bake the loaf mid-afternoon.  This gained me about an hour and might have helped aerate the loaf a little more.

A small portion of baker’s yeast, up to 0.2 percent can be added to a levain dough without any noticeable changes in the bread’s sourdough characteristics. This small amount of yeast will have a slight impact on fermentation and dough volume.    Jeffrey Hamelman. Bread P. 152

The bread had a really hot full bake and the crust is a little scorched, but we enjoy a rich dark crust;  Chewy, smoky and nutty with a sweet, well risen middle and an interesting texture from the coarse particles of bran speckling the crumb.   This goes on my bake again list!

My vorpal blade went snicker-snack

Sometimes it really does feel as if I am in Wonderland, with all the unpredictability and excitement of Lewis Caroll’s seminal poem Jabberwocky.

I’m wondering if there is somewhere out there a book or a blog or a site that anyone has come across just with scoring patterns, showing direction of travel, angles, what letters work as scores and so on.  I do a lot of staring at photos of finished loaves trying to figure out what the start pattern might be.  The distortion of the oven spring is what gives the grace and liveliness to the pattern but it is one of those things that is hard to guess from the finished look and one of the things that potentially frustrates most.

All that work making the dough, nursing it through its long proves, handling, folding and shaping,  and then the  great hurdle of preparing it for the oven and  getting it into the oven is quite a trial too, big high hydration loaves collapsing while you look at them….. many cries of nooooo-oooo… my favourite being when they spread over the side of the stone and descend towards the oven floor.  :o

I want to be a contemplative taoist baker not a wild eyed combatant standing in uffish thought in front of the worktop and waving my vorpal sword.

Anyway it’s Jeffrey Hamelman’s  pizza today, no need for the razor blades to come out :) I’ve got some lovely marinated artichokes, the mozzarella, rocket in the garden – it’s looking good so far…..

What’s your jabberwocky moment in the kitchen, my baking friends?

Jeffrey Hamelman’s Vermont Sourdough

This is the famous sourdough formula from Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman. It’s a 65 per cent hydration pure sourdough made with organic white bread flour and a little whole rye, water and french sea salt and a liquid sourdough levain.

I rebuilt my usual white sourdough to the required hydration of 125% over 24 hours and ended up with a much looser and frothier starter than I normally use. I’m not sure that my palate can distinguish between a sourdough made with a liquid and a stiff starter. Hmm.

Usually I keep my starter at about 90 per cent hydration. I don’t bake every day, so I find it keeps better in the fridge when there is more flour than water in the mix. It usually sits quite happily in the fridge for about five days, then after seven days or so a layer of hooch appears on the top and if I am sensible I discard and feed at that point whether or not I plan to bake. The hooch takes much longer to appear on the rye starter, I don’t know why they are so different but they are.

I mixed the dough up and following the instructions, left the salt out and left the dough for 45 minutes before gently kneading it into the dough.  I used some quite coarse grey french sea salt which has a wonderful flavour.

I was very interested to feel the way the dough softened and changed as the salt dissolved into the dough. Before the salt went in it was very tough and not very extensible, once I had worked on it for about two minutes I could feel it change, fascinating!  I did the usual light kneading and then I left it to bulk prove with one fold after 90 minutes.

I made two 750 g boules, let them relax a little, shaped them again and put seam side up into  two linen lined bannetons heavily dusted with rye flour for the final prove.  Covered with shower caps and…

..back to the poodling pool to throw squeaky toys and have a dabble myself. Pretty mellow for a very hot Friday afternoon in the suburbs…. a hot air balloon or two passing overhead…

Only too soon it was time for heating the oven and the slashing……I did a finger test and figured the dough had almost doubled and the dough felt good and bubbly…

One of these days I will try and work out how to take pictures and slash at the same time, but this was not the day…sorry….

This time I thought, how about a J and a B. Can’t be too difficult can it? The S worked pretty well the other day, surely I can slash any initial on the bread.  Pride comes before a fall…..that was almost impossible. I need to go back and practice calligraphy I think. Not my finest moment, but hey you win some you lose some :)

You can see the results here. So you see the S the other day was a fluke!

I had to bake the B in the top oven as there wasn’t room in the bottom one for two big round loaves.  I can’t get steam into the top oven easily and you can see the difference, I reckon J sprang about an inch more in height and the slash of the lower part of J opened up beautifully,, B looks OK but is not as well risen. Steam really does make a huge difference! Believe in the steam, get it into the oven somehow. Iron trays, spray bottles, japanese rocks. wet flannels, well maybe not the latter, but get the steam in there. It only has to be there until the bread has sprung and begun to take on colour, then you can open the door and let it all out again, it will have done its job. I also think something mysterious happens to the temperature in my oven when I go from 220 C to 230 C.  I certainly can’t use 235 C which is what JH’s temperatures translate to.  230 C gives the very dark crust you see on J and the flour on the top has caught slightly.

As this bread wasn’t retarded the taste was mild and cool,  a little dryer than the Bristol sourdough which has olive oil worked into the dough, with good umami flavours from the very dark crust adding to the general happy mouthfeel of this bread.  It’s the sort of bread that if you didn’t know it had rye in it or you didn’t know it was a sourdough you would probably not really think about it at all.  It’s just a good bread!

The notes that accompany the recipe are beautifully and carefully written, you learn so much from reading this book. Go on, join the Mellow Bakers and have a go at some of these wonderful breads. It’s easier than it looks, (apart from carving your name with pride!)  And, if you’re looking for the recipeso as to dip your fingers in the flour for the first time, try Susan on the WildYeastBlog.com site – her Norwich Sourdough is derived from the Vermont sourdough.