Maintaining Levain

I keep two pounds of starter on hand in my fridge. I prep my starter the night before I am going to use it. If the starter has been in the fridge, I pour off any accumulated alcohol into the sink and discard half of the starter by weight, then replenish what I removed with equal amounts flour and filtered water.  

I leave it on the counter overnight. The starter usually spills out of the container overnight, so putting the container on a piece of parchment paper makes next-day cleanup easier. 

The next morning I remove a pound for baking, and add a fresh 8oz. of water and 8oz. of flour to my starter container, let it sit for 3 hours, and then I pop it back in the fridge. 
Some other helpful hints: 

•  Always maintain at least a pound of starter. 
•  If you bake every day, you don't need to refrigerate the starter; and if you use it often, you won't need to throw away any, you can use the pound you would otherwise discard. 
•  If I am going to need more than a pound, I build up my starter mass over a few days, doubling its mass each day.  I don't discard any starter when I do this, I just keep adding more mass. 
• I always discard any gray, discolored starter from the top before using it. 
• And finally, I don't discard the starter down the sink, as I'm afraid it could accumulate in the drain lines.

California Homemade Food Act

Reposted from Mark Stambler's post on LABB Meetup site:

"Governor Brown signed the California Homemade Food Act this morning [21 September 2012]. It goes into effect January 1, 2013. 

We'd like to work with the Health Department to figure out a way to make sure the law goes into effect swiftly and fairly. Please leave comments and suggestions below. Again, many thanks for all your help." 

A wonderful example of our democracy at work -- special thanks to Mark for getting the ball rolling, to the Sustainable Economies LAw Center for all their help, and to California Representative Mike Gatto for introducing and championing the legislation over the past 9 months or so!

The text of the law is available here. 

LABB Bake Sale

Check in table.

A couple of weekends ago, Mark Stambler and members of the Los Angeles Bread Bakers organized a renegade bake sale to benefit attempts to pass a cottage food law in California that would legalize bakes sales, and the direct and indirect sales of bread and other safe foods.  


Currently, food cannot be sold unless it has been prepared in an inspected, commercial kitchen.  This include breads, cookies, jams, and other foods that are commonly sold at bake sales, fundraisers, etc. 


More than 30 states have laws in place that allow home-baked goods to be sold either directly to consumers or through retailers or both, but California is not one of them!

Sweets for sale.

A bill has been introduced by Rep. Mike Gatto (AB 1616) and has cleared the Assembly Health Committee. If you are interested in supporting this bill, please encourage your friends and neighbors to have a bake sale!  

We were able to organize our sale in less than six weeks, with only two meetings, and a flurry of emails.  The bake sale raised $3000 to support the Sustainable Economies Law Center's work on the bill, and it was a lot of fun! 


More about the proposed law can be found here: http://www.theselc.org/cottage-food-laws/

Club Buy

A little over a ton of flour after being delivered in LA to be divided among members of the LA bread Bakers.

I now have 50 pounds of High Mountain, 25 pounds  of ABC, and about 15 pounds of medium ground, whole wheat flour to play with. All of the flour is organic, all from Central Milling in Logan, Utah by way of Keith Giusto Bakery Supply in Petaluma, CA.

The quality of this flour is wonderful, and being able to buy in bulk keeps the cost under $1 a pound.  LABB members ordered 40 bags of flour; hopefully we will be able to do another buy in about 3 months -- or sooner.

Pizza Dough Mixing

For those of you not taking notes at the workshop on the 18th, here is the mixing schedule that we used for the pizza dough:

• mix pre-ferment + flour + water (no salt) on low for 4 minutes
• 20 minutes bulk ferment, covered
• add salt and mix on medium 6-8 minutes
• 45-60 minutes bulk ferment
• One fold
• Return to bowl for 30-45 minutes
• Quick shape & divide
• shape into 10oz. balls, cover and retard at 40° for 90 minutes
• pull the dough from the retarder 1-1.5 hours before baking.

And here are some other notes:

• Desired dough temperature is 76°
• Hydration was 70%
• Salt was 0.5% (a scant tablespoon)
• Friction factor for the KitchenAid mixers is about 20°

We rushed the retard part on Saturday.  As a result, our dough developed a little less flavor than it might have with a longer retard, but gluten development didn't suffer at all, so, yes, you can push the times.

I usually do a 70% hydration with high-protein flour (Central Milling High Mountain, Giusto's Ultimate Performer, or Tipo 00 pizza flour will all work).  Avoid adding flour after the first mix; it's okay to adjust consistency by adding water during either mix.

I posted the XLS file that I use to calculate specific dough proportions on the LA Bread Bakers meetup page under "files."

Desired Dough Temperature (and other stories)

The issue of "desired dough temperature" just came up on the LA Bread Bakers page so I thought I'd post my interpretations of Jeffrey Hamelman's formula(s) from his book "Bread."


It's pretty simple concept with two key variations: there are separate formulas for calculating dough that uses commercial yeast, and dough that uses a levain, poolish, starter, or sponge.  All the formula does is compare the average temperature (in Fahrenheit) of the target desired dough temperature, to the average of the temperatures of the components of the bread.  The output of the calculation is the water temperature.


The calculation also takes into account a nifty fudge-factor called "Friction Factor" which is different for hand mixing and for each type of mixer.  Mixer manufacturers often publish the "friction factor" for their mixer.  For example, my Electrolux is usually listed as having a friction factor of 6°, whilst I usually use 12° for handmixing.  Some standing mixers can impart as much as 24° into the dough during mixing.


To do the calculations you will need:

• a food thermometer with a range between 40° and 200° (a barrista-style one works well)
• some way to measure the ambient temperature of the dough prep space
• the estimated friction factor of your mixer (use 24° if you don't know)
• the desired dough temperature (use 76° if you don't know)
• a calculator and/or paper and pen

It might seem kind of complicated, but in practice it's straightforward.

Here are the formulas: (Because this is computer-land, the * means multiply, everything else is a minus)

Formula for bread with a starter:
(Desired Dough Temperature * 4) 
- Ambient Room Temperature 
- Starter Temperature 
- Flour Temperature 
- Friction Factor      
= Water Temperature

For dough with commercial yeast:
(Desired Dough Temperature * 3) 
- Ambient Room Temperature 
- Flour Temperature 
- Friction Factor      
= Water Temperature


Example for a dough with starter:
Desired Dough Temperature = 76°
Ambient Room Temperature = 72°
Starter Temperature = 74°
Flour Temperature  = 68°
Friction Factor = 6°


(DDt*4)-ARt-St-Ft-FF=Water Temperature
(76*4)-72-74-68-6 = Water Temperature
304-72-74-68-6 = 84


So in this case you would want to add water that is about 84°


Once the dough is fermenting, take the temperature again.  If the dough temperature is above or below the target, you can adjust the friction factor up or down a bit to compensate.  For example, I use a friction factor of 4° for dough made in my particular mixer and usually end up with a final dough temperature of between 75° and 77° for dough with about 70% hydration.

Oven up and running again

Saturday night I made 100 ounces of dough for pizza with these proportions:

pounds	ounces
1	0.0	levain
3	1.3	Flour
2	2.7	Water
0	1.0	Salt

Which was almost the same as the focaccia dough (75% Hydration) I described in the earlier post.  Because of time constraints I had to make the dough the night before, fold, divide, and shape it, and put in the fridge overnight.  The dough was in the fridge from 12-midnight until about 2:30, when I pulled it out and started the oven fire.

I wasn't too happy with the results.  It was just too wet to easily work with -- especially for kids and neophytes.  The extensibility was fine, but  something was amiss.

Also, the oven took FOREVER to heat up!  It wasn't ready for the first flatbread until almost 5:30 -- it took nearly 2 1/2 hours to reach full temperature, and then I had trouble keeping it hot.  This is only the second weekend since the holidays that we used the oven, so it's probably drawn a lot of moisture into the insulation.  Last year it took three, successive firings to get the oven to behave.

Luckily, the pizzas tasted great and we had cake friends and wine, so who's complaining!

Focaccia al Silverton

Thursday was my daughter's Jr. High School graduation.  A party was held at one of the graduates homes to celebrate.  Originally the plan was to make pizza in their wood-fired oven, but under the influence of Nancy Silverton's recently published focaccia recipe, we decided to try that instead.

I did some calculations based on the LA Times article and determined that her hydration was 75% +/- with about 2% olive oil, salt, and about 3% rye flour added.  I swapped whole wheat for rye (as I didn't have any rye in-stock) and using my standard starter (levain), mixed up two batches of dough the night before for a total of 180 ounces of dough.  I let this ferment on the counter for an hour and a half, then did a fold, and put in a dough tub in the fridge overnight for a retarded ferment.


My friend Andrea did something similar, but an 80% hydration and 30% wheat flour.


In the morning I pulled the dough from the counter, let it warm up, and then did another fold. I trucked the dough over to her house about three hours later and divided it and did quick shapes into 18-ounce balls.  


The balls were placed seam-side down into 12" pans that had been filled with about a quarter cup of olive oil.  After resting for about 30-40 minutes we started topping them with onions, peppers, olives, tomato, and herbs.  all in all, we made about 30-40 focaccia, and then cooked them over the next few hours 6 at a time in her oven.


The flavor was great -- but I think next time, we will cut back on the olive oil, significantly. 

photos: K. Labby

Changes

Summer is officially here--but the big news is three 3'x12' planters on the garage roof. I spent the Memorial Day weekend filling them with tons (literally) of dirt and my daughter planted beans, squash, corn, and some greens in two of the beds. The third bed will be planted with vegetable starts from the nursery.


The garage roof is flat, nearly 1000 square feet and gets full southern exposure to the sun year-round. It's also protected by a short bluff from Sant Ana winds, but gets the evening breeze to relieve the afternoon heat. Pretty much perfect!

In a month or so, I hope to be serving a pizza topped with squash blossoms from my own garden, plus easy access to basil and other fresh herbs.

Windy City Pizza....

...with a twist -- the winds are the Santa Ana kind, and the city is LA.  That means the sauce will be on the bottom, too.

Figs are on the menu tonight with onions & Gorgonzola (or goat cheese), and some wild rocket on top.
 
I expect the usual pesto & mozzarella pizzas will make an appearance as well.

Some bread baking is also on the agenda: a ciabatta and two loaves of whole wheat sourdough -- all made with natural levain.

Never Again, Again.

Here is a link to the King Arthur organic high gluten flour mentioned in a comment to my last post -- I had no idea this product even existed until yesterday.  Perhaps I will have an opportunity to do a side-by-side comparison soon like I did with the Caputo Tipo 00 flour -- fun!

In the meantime, I need to get the protein content of my levain back up a few notches.  It looks like it's right around 13% right now, two feedings with 14% should pull it back to 13.75%.  Where would I be without spreadsheets!

Never Again

Last Sunday I fired up the pizza oven for the first time since July.  I've been out of flour for a bit and decided to to try making dough with the King Arthur's bread flour.   The dough itself seemed great, though a little stickier and with more rise than usual; I shaped it and put in the fridge to ferment, but as soon as we started working with it, problems.

First, the gluten strands hadn't really developed as much as I was used to.  The dough was very hard to work and had too much spring-back -- with a 9-oz. ball, I couldn't shape a pizza larger than 8" (usally I get a 10"-12" pizza out of that much dough), and two pizzas tore while shaping.  I had trouble getting the pizzas off the peels due to sticking, and once the pizza's went in the oven, they cooked very strangely -- burning on the outside, but not cooking fully inside.

So I'm going back to the Giusto's Ultimate Performer that I've had such success with in the past -- and to guarantee that I won't run out, I picked up a 50-lb. bag at Surfa's ($68)!  It's going to need to live in my office until I can find a container big enough to store all that flour ( I wonder how many gallons of flour 50 lbs. is?)

Pizza Picture

Second try with the Electrolux resulted in this nice looking and great tasting squash blossom & burrata pie. Scorched it just a wee bit. :)

A New Floor

One mistake I made building my original oven base was placing the slab too low.  It ended up being about 1/4" below the level of my patio slab, and thus a water collector on rainy days.  To make matters worse, weep holes in the block walls ended up letting water into the wood storage area from the surrounding soil.  This is now fixed. 

I placed and additional 3 cubic feet of concrete on top of the existing slab in the storage area.  Th e nw concrete raises the floor about a half inch, and id sloped to drain to the front.

One problem solved (I hope)

Got a Mixer!!

Electrolux Assistent; Ebay.  It was just delivered today.
I'll try it out this weekend with a little test mix.  Looks, and runs like new.

Squash blossom & burrata pizza and more...

There is a somewhat famous place here in LA that makes this pizza.  Squash blossoms were in the market, so I made a version.  I also made one with pesto sauce instead of red.  The other  pizza in the picture is a vegan version with spinach and squash blossoms, olive oil and sea salt.

Also on the menu were squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta, dipped in a light batter (seltzer, salt and flour) and fried in olive oil.  Easy to make and wonderful to eat.

Finally made somethiing besides pizza.

My daughter (12) made two berry galettes which we baked in the oven. A galette is a rustic tart or pie made with a very simple, sweet pie crust.  Ours will filled with blackberries and strawberries; and raspberries and apricots.

After all our pizzas were cooked for the night, I scooped out the hot coals into the ash can and brushed the interior clean, then waited for the temperature to drop from 600-ish to the 450-500 range, which took about a half an hour with the door open.

We popped the galettes in on cookie sheets and let them bake with the door closed for about 20 minutes or so until they were brown and crusty and oozing delicious-smelling berry juice.  Then we ate one for desert still warm from the oven.  To paraphrase WCW: it was delicious.

Really need to make a door

Without a door I can't bake real bread, and do other fun stuff. 

I spent a chunk of time today researching oven doors--particularly a door that could be made of fire resistant glass.  There are two transparent ceramic materials that can be used NeoCeram and PyroCeram.  They are rated to sustain constant temperatures 1290 and 1400+ degrees Fahrenheit, receptively.  They are also quite expensive; a door my size would cost about $200, or more, just for the glass alone plus cutting and drilling charges. Here's a link to a  glass door design posted on the Forno Bravo forum

The glass door would look great and let me monitor the fire from inside the kitchen and...it's just too expensive. So...

Option 2: oak.  I would need 10 linear feet of 4/4 oak by 6" wide to fabricate the main door panel, plus a foot or two more for a handle & brace.  If I do the oak door, I would back it with sheet metal and a layer of insulation.  That's about $40 of oak, plus a couple dollars for the sheet metal and the installation is "in-stock" in my shed.

Baking with Ralph's

Last couple of weeks Surfa's has been out of pizza flour, so I've been baking with the next best thing: Ralph's Bead Flour.  At $2.99 for 5 pounds, you can't beat the price.  True, it doesn't have the elasticity and extendability of the Giusto's flour that I prefer, but it's much better than any other brand-name bread flour I've ever tried.

In fact, I'm eating some leftover Ralph's-crust pizza right now; the crust is slightly chewy, but a bit heavier than the Giusto's-flour crust, but the color is wonderful and the flavor is pretty good, too! 

It seems that crusts made with the Ralph's flour benefit from extra-long, retarded ferments. My latest batch was (accidentally on purpose) refrigerated overnight due to a last minute baking-related schedule change.  It also seems to handle heavy toppings very well.

Give it a try if you can.

Materials List For My Oven

Includes materials to build the foundation slab, block base, and oven:

Oven Itself:
220 Fire bricks (I have about 30 left, but many are damaged)
3 50lb buckets of refractory mortar
2 bags of portland cement (I used 1.5)
1 bag of fireclay
50 sq ft (1 box) 1" ceramic insulation blanket (8lb)
2 pieces 2" thick ceramic insulation board
36" simpson class-a flue w/ base & cap
1 tube liquid nails
1 tube furnace cement
Misc screws, anchors, wire, etc.

Block Base:
39 8x8x16 block
4 8x8x8 block
3 bond beam block (for lintel)
5 bags mortar (3 for block mortar, 2 for stucco scratch & brown coats)
1 bag (4 cubic feet) vermiculite (for dome insulation)
50 bags of ready mix (6 bags were left over)
6 #4 bar
2 pieces 10 Ga 8x8 welded wire mesh (slab reinf)

Concrete Forms:
24' of 2x6
1 4x8 sheet of 3/4 plywood
4 12' 2x4 for shoring