What are You Baking the Week of May 10, 2020?

[Mike Nolan]

As we cut further into the chocolate chip challah, we're finding that the center is a little underdone, so if you make it, keep the size reasonable; a long loaf is OK, a fat one could have the same problem. Any time you bake with chocolate, you're always dealing with having the dough done without scorching the chocolate.

I like the taste of this bread with just a touch of cinnamon in the dough, I'm thinking I may try to convert this recipe into a cinnamon-raisin version.

[aaronatthedoublef]

The sourdough is really sour (this is a good thing). The two boys like it. The girls do not. I can make it less sour by shortening the rises but I am not sure how much less.

I'll make pizza dough today. I may make challah too but I need to see about time.

[kimbob]

Glad your sour dough came out to your liking. About 25 yrs ago I did the sourdough thing with catching the wild yeast, feeding the starter, making bread, etc. Then I realized I don't really like sour dough that much and asked myself why I was going to all the trouble! Lol never made it again.

[Mike Nolan]

Sourdough is one of those things that can be really good or really bad, and the really bad ones seem to dominate the market around here. Sometimes I think they just throw a handful of citric acid powder or vinegar in the dough and call it sourdough.

My wife can't tolerate the local sourdoughs, though she does just fine with the breads when we've been in San Francisco, where our younger son lives. So far she hasn't had a problem with the sourdough baguettes I've been making, they're not heavily 'sour'. I need to make a batch that doesn't also use some commercial yeast and see how those come out.

There is a fair amount of research on sourdough and glycemic index, it can temporize the peak in blood sugar associated with eating carbs. (Semolina has similar tendencies.)

[aaronatthedoublef]

As Mike says, not all sourdoughs are created equal. In our town I've only found one sour sourdough. Most are pretty mild. A local bakery owner I know told me people here don't like the hard sour but a bakery up in Rhode Island delivers and sells out of a couple dozen loaves a day at the two local Whole Foods.

My sons and I like it. My wife and daughter do not.

And I can use a sourdough starter and still make a milder tasting bread if I shorten the proofing time. And that may be the real reason my baker friend makes a milder bread. It takes me three days to develop the flavor for a deli rye. But I'll play with it more, especially if it has potential health benefits!

[Mike Nolan]

I believe the sourness also has to do with whether it has a microculture that is dominated by lactic aid producing bacteria or acetic acid producing bacteria. My starter is running a pH of about 3.5, which I believe is fairly sour for a starter, but it doesn't have a really sour smell to it. The wheat-base starter I kept in the fridge back when I was testing recipes for ABED had a vinegary smell to it, this one doesn't.

When I feed my rye starter, it start out with a color that is sort of a light grey with a hint of brown in it, but after it has aged a day or two it develops a color that definitely has some red in it.

[Mike Nolan]

My wife wears one of those continuous glucose monitors, you get really interesting information from them about how your body deals with carbs, you can see her blood sugar spike up after a meal that is heavy on carbs. But a pasta meal made with my semolina egg pasta doesn't cause a big spike, it goes up, but over a longer time frame and not quite as high.

[BakerAunt]

In order to use King Arthur’s Baker’s Bucks before they expired back in April, I added Pompanoosuc Porridge to my cart. On Friday I decided to make some for breakfast and for baking KAF’s Pompanoosuc Porridge Bread. I cooked a half recipe of the porridge that morning but discovered after I took out a cup of it that there was only about ¼ cup for breakfast. For the bread, I made a few changes (didn’t see that one coming, did you?). I replaced 1 cup of water with buttermilk, which I mixed with the porridge. I used the water for proofing the yeast to clean out the bits of syrup still in a jar. I replaced the sugar with 1 ½ Tbs. dark maple syrup. I replaced the butter with 1 ½ Tbs. olive oil. I reduced the salt from 2 ½ tsp. to 1 ½ tsp. and the yeast from 2 tsp. to 1 ¾ tsp. I let the Zo do the kneading. The first rise was 90 minutes (69F in house); the second rise was 50 minutes (70 F). I use the baking bowl I bought from King Arthur, which I grease and sprinkle with farina. I did crosshatch slashing. After 40 minutes (second rack up), the bread was only at 157F. I baked for another 10 minutes to 199F. (The recipe says 190F, but I like my bread a little browner, and my experience is that the bread bowl requires increased baking time. The bread has a center height of 4 ¼ inches, thanks to the bread bowl, but it does have a “belt” around the sides due to the oven spring taking it above the bowl. I look forward to cutting into it tomorrow.

[BakerAunt]

I decided on Friday afternoon to try the Hazelnut Pain au Chocolat but with vanilla rather than hazelnut. I replaced the 5 Tbs. of butter with 3 Tbs. canola oil. I reduced the salt from 1 ¼ to 1 tsp. I used Special Gold yeast, so I halved the amount for 1 ¼ tsp. My chocolate sticks are old, but they still smell like chocolate, so I went ahead and used them, two per roll. The first rise took an hour, as did the second rise. For shaping, I rolled each quarter portion into a 34.5 cm x 10 cm rectangle, then cut into three strips (at 11,5 cm and 23 cm.) Yes, you can use the inches given, but it is so much easier in metric. I used two sticks of chocolate per roll. It is a sticky dough. I rolled it on a Silpat mat, with saran over the top, using a smaller rolling pin (from a ravioli set). Before baking, I sprinkled with some coarse white sugar but did not do brush them with milk. I baked on the third rack up in my oven, so it is a bit above halfway. I let it bake for 23 minutes but perhaps could have removed them slightly earlier. (It will depend on your oven.) After 5 minutes, we each bit into one. The bread is so soft and the chocolate so melty. Clearly, we each had to have another, as just out of the oven, they are at their best.

[Mike Nolan]

Chocolate, if it is stored properly, lasts a very long time, several years. Even if the outer surface develops a white powdery look (fat bloom), it is still edible and if melted, as would occur when you bake pain au chocolat, you won't know the blooming had occurred.

Like any fat, cocoa butter can go rancid, but it is not common. A bigger problem is bugs, they like chocolate. (So do mice, as I found out a few weeks ago.)

Cocoa butter has six states, alpha-1 through alpha-6; the higher the number, the higher the melting point.

The normal state of the cocoa butter in well-tempered chocolate is alpha-5, which is solid at room temperature but melts in the low 90's, so it melts on the tongue. The alpha-6 state can develop if chocolate sits for many months, it is a bit harder than alpha-5, so the chocolate can lose its ability to have a clean 'snap'.

[Italiancook]

That's good to know about the fat bloom, Mike. I've been known to throw out chocolate that had the white powdery look.

[Mike Nolan]

I made some levain in preparation for making baguettes tomorrow, and I also made the pizza dough for tomorrow night's pizza party.

[BakerAunt]

I'm pretty sure this chocolate has been around for more than a few years. It has been in the refrigerator. It does have the bloom, but I knew that wasn't a problem.

[aaronatthedoublef]

My sister-in-law threw out a bunch of chocolate at my mom's because she thought it was moldy when it was bloomed. My wife almost did the same at our house.

My dough is rising in the refrigerator. I am not doing anything special this week although right now we have nothing for a meatzza so one more veggie I suppose.

[Mike Nolan]

I picked up some garlic-free Hillshire Farms pepperoni yesterday, I'm hoping it is fairly mild. (Most of their sausages are.)

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