I've been baking sourdough bread at Estella's Cafe now for more than a month, and I'm having a great time. I started baking sourdough bread at home about a year ago out of frustration, because there was not a good sourdough loaf to be had in this city (Las Vegas, NM.) The breads which have been baked locally are almost exclusively sandwich-type loaves in the Wonderbread tradition, which is to say soft, smushy, characterless things that you could likely compress into a doughball smaller than your fist. .
That's not my kind of bread.
Here's my criteria for a decent loaf.
1). The crust should be dark and substantial. Not burnt and not bulletproof, but it should be boldly and unashamedly crust. Crust carries much of the flavor of the bread, and the taste of a good crust has notes of coffee, toast, yeast,perhaps even dark unsweetened chocolate. Those flavors don't develop until the crust is dark. Wimpy, pale, soft crust is not a sin, that would imply some carnal gratification; it is simply an error and a disappointment.
2). The crumb. It should be cream colored (if it's a white bread,) with a pleasant chew and mouthfeel, not starchy. It should have holes or pockets of various sizes, and the starch should be gelatinized to the point where you can look inside the bubbles and they are glossy, slightly translucent. The flavor also should speak not only of wheat, but of the mysteries and complexities of fermentation.
Pretty simple, right? Achieving this consistently is not as simple as you might think.The arena of artisan bread is one in which subtle differences in process or proportion can make major differences in quality, and a good loaf is slow food at its slowest. The bread I bake at Estella's takes three days to produce. Anything less and the quality would suffer.
Day one is the making of the preferment, which would also be called a "poolish." This is a mixture of starter, water and flour much wetter than the finished dough. It is an environment in which the wild yeasts introduced with the starter can be fruitful and multiply, and begin building complexity of flavor as well.
Day two is when salt,additional flour, and sometimes other ingredients are added to the preferment and the resulting mixture kneaded to develop the gluten. This dough is a high-hydration dough, and kneading it on a floured board would introduce additional flour, thus reducing the hydration. So the dough is kneaded in the bowl, by hand, using traditional hand techniques for developing gluten in high hydration doughs. This usually takes 15 minutes of vigorous hand work. The dough is then placed in an oiled bowl, covered. and placed in the refrigerator for 24 hours of delayed fermentation. During the delayed fermentation, the yeast is largely dormant but the enzymes secreted by the yeasts continue to work, metabolizing the starches in the dough, lowering starch content, raising sugar content, and continuing to develop complexity of flavor.
On day three, the dough comes out of the fridge, and is shaped into loaves. It is then allowed to rise for several hours before being scored and baked.During the baking, the bread "springs," as the yeasts multiply like mad in the heat before finally dying at a temperature slightly under 140 degrees fahrenheit. if you've been paying attention, you know that this is the last of several fermentations which this bread undergoes. There are technically five fermentations occurring here from starter to finished loaf.
On any given day, I am usually working with bread at all three stages of the process, in order to produce fresh-baked bread on a daily basis. It's worth it. This is the way that bread has been made for centuries, and it's still the best way.
That's not my kind of bread.
Here's my criteria for a decent loaf.
1). The crust should be dark and substantial. Not burnt and not bulletproof, but it should be boldly and unashamedly crust. Crust carries much of the flavor of the bread, and the taste of a good crust has notes of coffee, toast, yeast,perhaps even dark unsweetened chocolate. Those flavors don't develop until the crust is dark. Wimpy, pale, soft crust is not a sin, that would imply some carnal gratification; it is simply an error and a disappointment.
2). The crumb. It should be cream colored (if it's a white bread,) with a pleasant chew and mouthfeel, not starchy. It should have holes or pockets of various sizes, and the starch should be gelatinized to the point where you can look inside the bubbles and they are glossy, slightly translucent. The flavor also should speak not only of wheat, but of the mysteries and complexities of fermentation.
Pretty simple, right? Achieving this consistently is not as simple as you might think.The arena of artisan bread is one in which subtle differences in process or proportion can make major differences in quality, and a good loaf is slow food at its slowest. The bread I bake at Estella's takes three days to produce. Anything less and the quality would suffer.
Day one is the making of the preferment, which would also be called a "poolish." This is a mixture of starter, water and flour much wetter than the finished dough. It is an environment in which the wild yeasts introduced with the starter can be fruitful and multiply, and begin building complexity of flavor as well.
Day two is when salt,additional flour, and sometimes other ingredients are added to the preferment and the resulting mixture kneaded to develop the gluten. This dough is a high-hydration dough, and kneading it on a floured board would introduce additional flour, thus reducing the hydration. So the dough is kneaded in the bowl, by hand, using traditional hand techniques for developing gluten in high hydration doughs. This usually takes 15 minutes of vigorous hand work. The dough is then placed in an oiled bowl, covered. and placed in the refrigerator for 24 hours of delayed fermentation. During the delayed fermentation, the yeast is largely dormant but the enzymes secreted by the yeasts continue to work, metabolizing the starches in the dough, lowering starch content, raising sugar content, and continuing to develop complexity of flavor.
On day three, the dough comes out of the fridge, and is shaped into loaves. It is then allowed to rise for several hours before being scored and baked.During the baking, the bread "springs," as the yeasts multiply like mad in the heat before finally dying at a temperature slightly under 140 degrees fahrenheit. if you've been paying attention, you know that this is the last of several fermentations which this bread undergoes. There are technically five fermentations occurring here from starter to finished loaf.
On any given day, I am usually working with bread at all three stages of the process, in order to produce fresh-baked bread on a daily basis. It's worth it. This is the way that bread has been made for centuries, and it's still the best way.
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