Cold Front

Approaching weather (yes L.A. has weather) is pushing our now-customary Sunday night bake ahead one night to Saturday. It's 60° in the backyard now, and it will probably drop into the 50s by the time I am ready to bake, so the plan is to go for a big, hot fire that will bake pizza and keep us warm.



Today's dough recipe (by weight) was as follows after the jump:

• 2 lbs. levain @ 80% hydration (made the night before from the mother)
  
• 1 lb. 12 oz. flour
• 1 lb. 4 oz. water
• .04 oz. salt

I use Jeffery Hamelman's dough temperature formula from his book Bread: [(target dough temp * 4) - (water temp + flour temp + levain temp + friction factor) = water temp]. My target dough temperature is 76°. This morning, the kitchen, levain, and flour temperatures were all around 65; allowing for about 10° for hand mixing friction, I calculated a water temperature of 99° [(76*4)-65-65-65-10=99]. The dough temperature at the bench rest was 76°—spot-on!

I mixed the ingredients by hand in a bowl for 3 minutes, then turned it out onto a floured surface and hand mixed it for 15 minutes incorporating flour as needed for workability. After a bench rest for about 2 hours, with one fold after one hour, I pre-shaped the dough into a batard-like shape, and divided it into 10, 8.4 oz. pieces. These were then shaped into balls, and put seam-side-up into plastic containers that had been rubbed with olive oil. The covered containers were put into the fridge for a long, slow ferment.

The flour used in the dough was a combination of Giusto's high performer & the no-name Ralphs-brand bread flour (which I use in the levain). My target hydration is 75%, but I usually end up needing to add some flour during the hand mix, it seems that the final dough has been coming out at around 70% hydration.