Portuguese rolls

[aaronatthedoublef]

Hello,

Does anyone have a simple recipe for Portuguese rolls or bread? A friend is looking for one. I looked on the guild website and found one that looks a little complicated for a novice. Does anyone have a simple recipe.

Thanks

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[Mike Nolan]

Is this the sort of roll you're looking for:

https://leitesculinaria.com/282693/recipes-papo-secos-portuguese-rolls.html

This recipe reminds me of the Pao Frances link I posted earlier today, the dough recipe seems fairly standard (and this recipe and the one I posted earlier are quite similar to each other), the way it is shaped and risen appears to be key.

As someone who firmly believes that shape is the aspect of bread that gets the least attention with regards to its impact on taste, I'm always interested in a new form or shape.

[BakerAunt]

Aaron--If you go to the baking thread for November 14, 2021, or just put Portuguese bread into the Nebraska Kitchen search engine, there is a recipe that Italian Cook asked about and eventually baked. The discussion extends over several threads, as Cass called me and dictated some suggestions for me to post for Italian Cook. She baked it, and her husband particularly liked it.

She has a link to the recipe she used.

[Mike Nolan]

Here's the post with the link to the Portuguese bread recipe

https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/#post-32028

Here's the post with Cass's recommendations:
https://mynebraskakitchen.com/wordpress/forums/topic/what-are-you-baking-the-week-of-november-14-2021/page/2/#post-32092

Note that this recipe is for a single loaf, not individual rolls.

[Italiancook]

Mike's right, Aaron, the recipe I used is for 1 loaf. It makes a beautifully large boule.

If you explain to your friend that this is a batter dough, not a traditional, stiffer bread dough, you friend will be on the right track. Therefore, it's best to mix it in the stand mixer for the first rise.

The best way I found to add flour to the dough is to scrape the battered, risen dough onto a floured board with a plastic bowl scraper. Use the bowl scraper to lift up the dough -- it's too sticky to handle at that point -- and toss flour under the dough. Use the bowl scraper to knead the flour into the dough. Keep doing this until you have a normal bread dough & go forward with the process.

I've never baked a braided bread, so this is the most beautiful loaf of bread I've baked. It's the largest boule I've ever made. My husband goes ape when he sees the final, baked product. He said it reminds him of the ones the baker made at the bakery he started working at when 12-years-old.

Oh, yes, it tastes delicious, too!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. Thanks IC. I'll see my friend tomorrow and talk to him. I also need to see if he wants this or the sweet kind of Portuguese bread.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Mike, the post on baker's math is good. When using a guild recipe it really is the only way to go. Scaling down from 13 kg of flours is easiest if figure out if you start with how much flour you want to use and figure the percent for everything else. The guild recipe I found makes around 18 kg of dough.

The thing I need to figure out now is how to account for a biga/poolish. If I use 250 g of starter at 100% hydration mixed with flour and water at 75% hydration how does that affect the rest of the mix. If I use flour and water at 65% hydration, is the overall mix 70%?

I'll talk with my friend on Wednesday

[Mike Nolan]

I can't answer your question because I don't know the total amount of dough. If the preferment makes up 50% of the total dough that's a somewhat higher net hydration than if it makes up 25%.

If you want to use a biga or poolish with a formula that doesn't already have one, just subtract those ingredients (flour, water, yeast, etc.) from the total. There's no firm rule on how much of the total flour needs to be in the preferment, I've seen recipes as low as 5% and ones as high as 50%.

For example, suppose you have a poolish that is 75% hydrated. You want to add 150 grams of the poolish to your recipe.

The formula for the poolish is:

Flour: 100%
Water: 75%

Total: 175%

So, your scaling factor is 150/175 or 0.857

So you've got 85.7 grams of flour and 64.3 grams of water in the poolish. Subtract those from the rest of formula.

Yeah, I'm ignoring the yeast here, but you could add it and change the total. It'll change the amount of flour and water by just a few grams. (If there's 3% yeast in the poolish the flour becomes 84.3 grams and the water becomes 63.2 grams.)

If you're dealing with a sourdough starter, the yeast percentage is essentially an unknown. Most multi-stage Guild recipes seem to just ignore the amount of yeast in the starter.

I've got an outline for a post dealing with altering the stages of multi-stage formulas separately (to vary the amount of water in the preferment, for example, or to use an existing starter with a known hydration level.)

The challenge is to come up with examples that don't make the math seem more complicated. I also try to make my examples ones that someone could actually bake.

Spreadsheets or similar tools specifically designed for bakers are really helpful and most bakeries use them. (One of the more popular ones just went out of business, though.)

[Mike Nolan]

I'm tempted to try making both Portugese rolls (not the sweet ones) and the Pao Frances recipe I posted last week and see if they're as similar as they seem. But that's a lot of bread!

[BakerAunt]

I thought that I would throw in this link to another kind of Portuguese bread. It's from the blog by a local organic farmer/baker:

Cranberry Broa

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