Where does it all Start....When will it end?

It starts when you foster, give life to, propagate and maintain your very own natural leaven in your own kitchen making it truly your own. When will it end? This is a bread blog, I'll leave the metaphysics to others.

So, creating a Pure natural leaven or starter, using only flour, water and the wild yeast that is floating in the air and clinging, dormant, to unbleached flour.

I've spoken of Maple my natural leaven that was born in 2005 and has flourished ever since giving rise to many hundreds of loaves. This is how it is done:

The method I used, back in 2005 to create Maple, is the “high hydration” method, also known as the “poolish” method where a slurry of flour and water is mixed together, roughly 1:1 flour to water, with flour added as necessary to achieve a pancake batter consistency. Higher hydration creates a more amenable environment for fermentation than lower hydration. One discerns fermentation by observing bubbles in the batter, increasing volume of the batter and a tangy smell after 2-4 days.

Mix 1/3 cup white unbleached AP flour with 1/3 cup filtered water in a small see-through plastic container, blend (I use a plastic chop stick) adding ½ teaspoons of flour if needed until it is the consistency of pancake batter, scrape down the sides with your chop stick and let it to sit uncovered on your counter top for 4 hours then seal with plastic wrap.

The next day, 24 hours later more or less, observe your batter, if any water has risen to the top pour it off then stir the batter vigorously with the chop stick. You are accomplishing two important things. First you are aerating the mixture and secondly redistributing any wild yeast that has begun to take root. Recover with plastic wrap and let it sit for another 24 hours.

By day three you should be seeing some activity, maybe just small bubbles, maybe dramatic volume increase.

If you are seeing small bubbles but there is no dramatic change in volume then add 1 heaping tablespoon of flour, stir vigorously with the chop stick recover and let it sit another day. After 24 hours there should be discernable activity and you can proceed to developing your starter. If not then it is not meant to be, throw it out and start a new batch.

If the mixture has grown considerably -- 1 ½ to 2 times, has lots of larger bubbles and is giving off an unmistakable yeasty smell then you know that you have an active colony of wild yeast in the batter. Now we start the process of developing the starter.

Stir it down, discard ½ of the stirred down batter

and add 1/2 cup flour and 1/3 cup water to what is left. Stir vigorously. Now that the yeast is alive and active we are adding less water relative to flour. We are now looking for stiffer dough, with a consistency more like peanut butter. Recover with plastic wrap and let it sit over night. 24 hours later it should have grown dramatically.

Stir it down with the chop stick, discard ¾ of the stirred down dough and add 1/3 cup water and 1/2 cup flour (adding small amounts of flour or water as needed to achieve the peanut butter consistency) to what is left. Stir vigorously. Recover with plastic wrap and let it sit over night. Again, 24 hours later it should have grown dramatically. Stir it down with the chop stick, discard 9/10 of the stirred down dough and add 1/3 cup water and 1/2 cup flour (adding small amounts of flour or water as needed to achieve that peanut butter consistency) to the small amount left. Notice that each day we discard more of stirred down starter while adding the same amount of flour and water. That 1/10 of remaining starter has active wild yeast in it. Flour is its food source; water gives it a moist medium to flourish in. To create a vigorous starter that you can bake with you need to concentrate and ‘train’ your yeast to quickly multiply and populate any fresh flour that is added to it. This process is called refreshing: adding a disproportionate amount of flour (1/3 cup, and water of course) to the relatively small amount, 1/10, of the stir down that is left.

Continue the daily refreshing until your starter at the minimum doubles with in 8 hours. At that point you will have a ‘vigorous starter’, one that will leaven bread.

As you continue the refreshing process the starter becomes more and more vigorous.
Here is a refreshment done at 8:31 AM:

11 Hours later, this is not vigorous enough

After a couple more refreshing cyles:

A mere 5 hours later:

Now you have a starter that will leaven bread:

By the way, if you are in the Washington Dc area pick up a copy of Flavor magazine available for sale at local Gourmet stores. Check out the article "Taming the wild yeast" It shows me, Pedro Pan and my bread in all its glory! Otherwise check out the Magazine website in July when the article will be posted on the site: http://flavormagazinevirginia.com/

Basic White Maple Boule/Batard

Now don't get confused, Maple refers to my 6 year old Natural Leaven Starter (wild yeast - some people refer to it incorrectly as a sour dough starter), not to some flavor or sweetener.  This is the basic thing baby:  flour, salt, water and wild yeast.  Before the 20th century and industrialization, this was the only way bread was leavened.  It's been this way for 6000 years, since the dawn of  human society.  Then came the modern age with all of its demands for efficiency, reliability and instant gratification.  Thus commercial yeast was born, basically yeast on steroids and about as appealing.

So Here is my recipe and methodology for the Basic White Maple Batard.

 I suggest that you read the recipe then watch the slide show at the end.

Pedro Pan’s Basic White Maple Batard Recipe for a 2.5 (+-) lb loaf or 2 1.25 lb loaves

Timing

12-36 hours to invigorate a refrigerated starter or a vigorous starter that was refreshed 8 -16 hours previously

14-16 hours (overnight) to no –knead raise the bread dough

3 minutes fold/ shaping

20 minutes resting

1-2 hour 2^nd rise

45 minutes baking

Actual hands on timing:  about 20 minutes including clean up

Do the timing math:  when do you expect to bake?  Back out 17 +_ hrs, that’s when you start your initial mixing of the dough.

Equipment

Mixing bowl large enough to accommodate a tripling of the initial bread ingredients.

Flexible plastic bench scraper and a very robust one piece rubber spatula.

Shaping vessels: bowls, plates, colanders that are similarly shaped but slightly smaller in size/diameter than the baking vessel you will be using.  Preferably with gently sloping sides to contain the soft dough.  Colanders are ideal for round loaves; oval plastic baskets like you get in fast food outlets for 1.25 lb oval loaves or large oval serving platters for 2.5 lb oval loaves.

Baking vessels: cast iron casserole, stainless steel pot, ceramic bakers etc, must have lids. For the 2.5 lb loaf: if round they will have to be at least 10 inches diameter, if oval 11-12 inches long, must be tall enough to accommodate the bread growing while baking --  min  6 inches deep.  For the 1.25 lb loaves: round 7 inch diameter if oval 9-9.5 inches long,  4 inches deep.  Baking vessel must be able to withstand very high temp (500 degrees).

Tightly woven dish towels or other cloth (pros use canvas) no terrycloth.

Cooling rack

Ingredients

1+ cup stirred down Vigorous Starter (90% of the last refresh)

2 Cups purified, spring or de-chlorinated water

4 +- cups bread flour plus extra for surface dusting and shaping vessels.

2 teaspoons salt

1-2 T Corn meal for the shaping vessel

1. In a large ceramic or plastic bowl add water and 90% of your starter. Take the remaining 10% starter, refresh it and set it aside for cold storage and the next bread you bake. In a separate bowl whisk the 4 cups flour with the 2 t salt.  Now whisk the starter and the water together until blended.   Add the flour then using a robust rubber spatula begin mixing the dough in the bowl. Your goal is to distribute and evenly moisten the flour making sure there are no dry spots or pockets of flour.  Start at the edges incorporating the flour and liquid, then begin reaching the spatula down and folding and turning the dough over, if the dough becomes impossible to work, add a little water (1 teaspoon at a time), if it is too wet add a little flour (1 teaspoon at a time) and after about 2 minutes of mixing you should have a shaggy, moist, evenly mixed dough.  You have not and will not knead this dough; your goal is to achieve a consistent even distribution of the flour and water.  It should be dry enough to hold form (not so wet it puddles out) but still glisten with moisture.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and set on a counter top for 14-16 hr.
2. The next day, 14-16 hours later it will have almost tripled in size and the surface will be smooth and lumpy with bubbles.  The mass itself will be very soft, pillowy and wobbly.   Flour a surface area and with a flexible plastic dough scraper, start at one edge of the bowl and gently scrape the dough out of the bowl onto the flour being careful not to deflate the dough. No punching down of the dough here.    Dust your hands with flour and very gently extend the oval mass into to a rough rectangle, using your scraper (here it is useful to have a steel bench knife), one side at a time slide the bench knife under the smaller ends of the rectangle and fold them over the center of the dough.  Picture folding an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper prior to inserting it into an envelope. Always being careful not to deflate the dough.  Dust hands with flour again and gingerly pick the whole mass up and turn it over seam side down.
3. Place a dish towel in your Shaping vessel and generously coat the surface that will contact the dough with a 50/50 blend of flour and corn meal, accommodating for the dough to rise.   It is very important to generously coat every part of the cloth that will come into contact with the dough as otherwise the wet dough may stick to the cloth, causing a big problem later when try to invert the dough into your baking vessel—err on the side of too much!
4. Using just enough flour to prevent dough from sticking to your hands gently and quickly shape dough into a ball or oval  (depending on the shape of your shaping vessel) tucking the dough under so any seams are on the bottom.  Place the dough seam side down in the prepared Shaping vessel.  Cover loosely with another dish towel set aside to rise for 1-2 hours (in this second rise you are looking for about a 25%-35% increase).   .
5. Preheat oven and baking vessel. Put the baking vessel and lid into the oven and turn it on to 500 deg.  Give yourself at least 30 minutes to thoroughly pre-heat both oven and baking vessel before baking the bread.
6. When ready to bake (one way to determine a dough’s readiness is to poke a finger into it to a depth of ¼ inch, if it springs back it is not ready, if the indent remains, it is ready to be baked) and the dough has risen more or less 30%, carefully remove super hot baking vessel from oven and place it on top of the stove.  Lift your Shaping vessel with risen dough and gathering the kitchen towel tight with your fingers place it very close to the edge of the baking vessel and tip it over the baking vessel allowing the bread dough to plop gently down into the baking vessel, seam side up. Taking care not to burn yourself on the hot edges.  Do not slash the top of the dough, the seams will open to allow gas to vent and create a very dramatic and unique finished loaf, place the hot lid on top and return it to the oven.
7. Bake time:  If 12.5 lb loaf, bake covered 30 minutes, reduce temp to 450, remove the cover, bake uncovered 10 minutes, remove loaf from vessel place on oven rack and bake 10- 15 minutes  more.  If 2 1.5 lb loaves, bake covered 20 minutes, reduce temp to 450, remove the cover, bake uncovered 5 minutes, remove loaf from vessel place on oven rack and bake 10-15 minutes more. The reason for baking covered is that the steam escaping from bread creates a moist environment inside the covered vessel and this is vital for initial oven spring and crust development.  The reason for uncovering and eventual removal from the baking vessel is to allow the steam to dissipate and for the crust to brown uniformly.
8. When bread is done it should have a nice brown crust, will register between 208 and 215 degrees on an instant read thermometer. Remove from the oven immediately and set on a rack to cool.

Whence the wild Yeast?

My first experience baking bread was in college in the 70's.  Appropriately given the time frame my muse and spiritual guide, my bread bible was the The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown.  This was the wholesome, flavorful and sturdy bread created and consumed by the Zen monks and students when they are not meditating at the Zen Mountain Center in Tassajara Springs, Carmel Valley , California. And incidentally an important source of income in that the bread was very popular with visitors.
This is for the most part bread pan bread.  I made a lot of loaves, did a lot of experimenting (very much encouraged in the Tassajara ethos) and learned a lot about baking bread, well, sandwich bread anyway.  No matter what you put in it:  raisins, cheese, nuts, olives, fruit, no matter how much you blend and mix flours it still got baked in bread pans and came out with uniform, soft crumb and no crust to speak of, and while there is absolutely nothing wrong with it...over the years i realized that it did not satisfy my instinctive, basic, ingrained food memory of what bread should be...and I just didn't  want to eat it.

So fast forward 25 years to 2005.  The bread revolution is well under way in America, you don't knead to be in NY, LA or San Francisco to be able to buy excellent crusty European style hearth baked baguettes, boules and batards.  Even at supermarkets, OK-- the high end ones anyway, one can get a decent baguette.

But what about me, the home baker? Was I sentenced to a life of relatively bland sandwich bread?  Or, as I began to read some of the excellent artisanal bread gurus and leaders of the bread revolution, people like Nancy Silverton and  Peter Rheinhart, must I jump through all these very complex hoops in order to make a decent European hearth bread at home?.  I did, I tried, I succeeded, sometimes...it did not always seem worth it -- I mean with all the hoop jumping.

So the dilemma:  How do I make fantastic European Style Hearth bread --  with a multi-textured crumb, big holes ,small holes,  a blistered and caramelized crust where the sugars have have darkened and made the crust brittle, explosive, where chips of crust literally explode around the bread knife as it cuts the bread.  A loaf that has blossomed in the oven and the expanding gasses have made it craggy and monumental and dramatic.  Finally a complexity of flavor extracted just from flour, water, salt and yeast, a complexity of flavor that only comes from a long slow development, a complexity that is not easily described that changes from bite to bite, loaf to loaf, day to day.  In short, the kind of bread you can't wait to eat, but you feel you really should take a picture first.  How do I do it without giving up my day job?

The answer my friends is blowin' in the wind, well part of it anyway.

Around this time, 2005 I read John Thorne's excellent essay  "An Artisanal Loaf" that can be found in his book Outlaw Cook.  I got 2 very important things from this essay:  first a description, outline, encapsulation from a far better writer than I of a philosophy of bread making that so closely mirrors my own that it was kind of eerie.  especially since I hadn't really  thought about it until  that reading.  The second thing is my treasured Maple, the natural leaven culture that I fostered on my kitchen counter inspired by him.  Notice that I call it a "natural Leaven Culture",  not a sour dough starter.  My bread is not sour, i don't want sour dough bread,  I want naturally leavened bread, bread leavened with the natural yeast that lives in the air and lies dormant in most dry milled unbleached flour.  I named Maple after the street I live on:  Maple Ave.  because maple was fostered on my counter top on Maple Ave.  Born in 2005, maple is going strong in 2011.

Back to the philosophy of bread:  it should be worth doing.  It should satisfy on more levels than just taste and appearance, it should feel right right down to your bones.  It should be easy, and not command an excess of your busy day!  If it takes three days to make and requires a whole bunch of equipment, techniques and mail order flour and etc etc it ceases being the staff of life and becomes something else all together.  It should stand alone!  White flour, yeast (in this case natural leaven), salt and water.  It should be sweet and nourishing and complex.  It should be delicious, it should feel like home.  I'm not saying you can't add a cup of whole wheat flour or raisins or cheese or walnuts or whatever your imagination and your larder will allow, I do all the time.  So, yes, experiment, tweak,  and play with the bread, but if your basic loaf doesn't stand alone, and exceed your expectations...Why bother?  Guess I've always been a one-loaf-kind-of-guy. 

So I had a natural leaven - Maple - bubbling away on my counter top or lying dormant in my fridge.  I had a philosophy that seemed so perfect and natural I could swear I thought it up myself.  what I didn't have was a methodology or results that matched that simple yet to date unattainable ideal.


Enter Jim Lahey of Sullivan Street Bakery in Manhattan and Mark Bittman food writer of the New York Times, Wednesday, November 8, 2006, Bittman's article "The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do The Work" featuring Lahey and the No-Knead Bread recipe.  Talk about an AHA moment.  I found my methodology.  At first I followed the recipe and made good/great loaves with commercial yeast.  It wasn't until I thought: "why don't I try it with Maple, instead of commercial yeast?"  that I actually began to think that I could attain the unattainable and make excellent bread that exceeds my expectations every time.  Believe it or not, it took months before I thought of incorporating Maple into the no-knead method - DUH.

 A few refinements, some trial and error and  today 5 years later whenever I want, with a minimum of muss and fuss I make a boule/batard of european hearth bread that is better than anything I can buy at an artisanal bakery.  A loaf that delights, surprises, satisfies at the deepest levels, is almost orgasmic when fresh, develops character with age, makes great sandwiches, toasts beautifully and freezes well.  Things being relative, what else can one ask for in life?

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