The Spores and the Stone

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about my battle with tiny mold spots on my rye bread.

I had been storing my bread in a one-gallon zip-lock bag, but by the end of a week, I was getting speckles of mold.  I decided to try storing the bread in a paper grocery bag.  That solved the mold problem, but the bread was stale in just a couple of days.

A web site suggested storing the bread in a cotton bag that they would be happy to sell me.  I had a hemp bag from a pair of Earth shoes (yes, they still make those) that I bought a few years, ago.

That worked a little better than the paper grocery bag, but still, by the end of a week, I had a rye flavored rock for the last few slices.  Not only that, but the bag was just a little bit bigger than my loaf of bread, so getting it in and out when the loaf was new was a problem.

This week, I am going to try a hybrid approach.  I just baked a loaf of bread, and I wrapped it in a cloth dish towel.  I plan to keep it there for a couple of days, but a the first sign of staleness, I'm going to put in in a zip-lock bag.  Stay tuned.

Mr. D's Coffee Cake revisited

This post is not related to sourdough.  I described in a previous post, a coffee cake made by my college fraternity's cook, Mrs D.  The original recipe has a step involving a butter, sugar, and cinnamon, mixture with which I've never been quite clear about what to do.

Mrs. D’s Coffee Cake
Cream these items together
Sugar	1 Cup
Butter	2 Tbl
1 Egg
Add to that mixture
Milk	1 Cup
Flour	1 ½ Cup
Salt	½ tsp
Baking Powder	2 tsp
Pour into a well-greased 9x9 baking pan.
Cream the following ingredients together until all of the butter clumps are gone.
Sugar	½ Cup
Butter	1 Tbl
Cinnamon	1 Tbl

Those last three ingredients go on top of the coffee cake, but do I put them on before baking?  Do I melt them to make a glaze?  If so, do I put that on before or after baking?

I've tried it just about every way.  None of them have quite matched my memory of Mrs. D's coffee cake.  I have found that putting it on top of the batter, makes the cake gooey.  This time, I decided to save this sandy mixture until the cake was baked and just sprinkle it on top.

Astute readers have probably noticed that there aren't any baking instruction in the above recipe.  My original copy of the recipe said to bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  The middle never seems to be cooked when tested with a toothpick.  The same was true for this batch.  I immediately put the cake back in the oven for another 10 minutes.

Sprinkling the second mixture on top after baking is the closest that I've come to my memory Mrs. D's coffee cake.  However, all of that crumbly goodness falls off when I eat a piece.

Next time, I'm going to try putting the whole shebang back in the oven for a minute or two after I sprinkle.  My next try at this recipe is going to be

Mrs. D’s Coffee Cake
Cream these items together
Sugar	1 Cup
Butter	2 Tbl
1 Egg
Add to that mixture
Milk	1 Cup
Flour	1 ½ Cup
Salt	½ tsp
Baking Powder	2 tsp
Pour into a well-greased 9x9 baking pan.  Bake for 40 minutes at 350°F
Cream the following ingredients together until all of the butter clumps are gone.
Sugar	½ Cup
Butter	1 Tbl
Cinnamon	1 Tbl
Sprinkle on top of the cake after baking and put it back into the oven for a few minutes.

Spores

While "Spores" is a very entertaining song by John Forster (Listen here on Spotify), they are no friend to my rye bread.  I've been having trouble, lately, getting through a week without mold finding its way onto my bread.  This particular mold shows up in tiny spots all around the loaf.

Those little spots can be easy to miss for my eye, but my taste buds certainly notice them!

It's a shame to have to throw out any of this tasty bread, so I am going to try experimenting with my storage method.  Up until now, I have been putting the bread into a gallon-size zip lock plastic bag--often while it is still warm.  That leads to some moisture in the bag that keeps the bread from going stale, but also promotes the growth of SPORES.

Maybe it's the season.  I hadn't seen this problem during the summer, but lately it has been happening to every loaf before it is a week old.

This week, I am going to try storing the bread in a paper bag.  It might get stale, and for that matter, it will be exposed to more "spores in the air..." (You've listened to the song by now, haven't you?), but without the trapped moisture, maybe it will last the whole week.  Stay tuned for an update.  A new loaf of bread is still baking as I write.

Update (four days after baking)

Well, so far, I haven't seen any mold, and the bread is getting stale.  I did find this helpful website that discusses how to store homemade bread.  It turns out that their site is also about sourdough, even though I just searched for "bread storage" or something like that.  It talks about the need for air to circulate.  I might try a cloth towel next week, or maybe a cloth bag that I have.

Second update (almost a week after baking)

By the time I finished eating the loaf, it was pretty stale.  So, the paper grocery bag isn't the answer.  This week, I am trying a drawstring hemp bag that a pair of shoes came in.  If that is sort of successful, I might try our local kitchen gadget shop, The Concord Shop, to see if they have something suitable.

I think I've got this figured out

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks.  It's not because I haven't been making bread, but I think I have the process figured out, now.  I have my two favorite recipes, and they are repeatable. Let's review.

First step for all of my recipes is to refresh the starter.  I discard half of the starter that I have in the fridge and add 3/4 cup of flour (4 oz. by weight) and 4 oz. of water (weight and volume are the same for water).  I let that sit in a warm spot for 8-12 hours, usually overnight.  During the summer, I just put it on the counter in the kitchen.  During the heating season, I put it in the basement in the same room that has the boiler in it.

Second step is the make the sponge for the bread recipe.  For that, I stir down the refreshed starter and measure out 4 oz. by weight.  I don't know what that is by volume.  I always measure it by weight, because that is going to be the most accurate.  The volume is about twice as much before the stirring as after.  Not only that, sourdough starter is kind of sticky, so even if I were confident about the volume, too much of it would stick to the measuring cup.

To that 4 oz. of starter, I add 4 oz. (by weight) of flour and 4 oz. of water.  I cover that loosely with plastic wrap and let it sit for 8 hours.  It's the same idea as the starter refresh.  The remaining starter goes back in the fridge.

A note about ingredients.  For the above steps and any part of the recipe that calls for white flour, I use King Arthur bread flour.  I won't accept any substitute.  I'm not affiliated with King Arthur in any way, but their bread flour makes the best bread.  I won't even use their all-purpose flour.  In my mind all-purpose flour is all-purposes except for making bread.  I think it has to do with the gluten content of the bread flour. The person who taught me to make bread (by hand) about 25 years ago told me to use King Arthur bread flour, and I've never strayed.  I use King Arthur for the whole wheat flour, too. King Arthur doesn't seem to make rye flour.  I use Hodgson Mill.

OK, now we have a sponge.  That gets used to make either whole wheat bread:

Whole Wheat, Take 6
Prepare sponge.  When it is ready, put these ingredients in the bread machine with the white flour going in last.  Add the sponge on top.
Water	4 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups
White flour	1  cup
Vital Gluten	none
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

or rye bread:

Ryer Rye Bread, Take 3
Prepare sponge.  When it is ready, put these ingredients in the bread machine with the white flour going in last.  Add the sponge on top.
Water	7 oz.
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Oil	2 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	2 Cup
White bread flour	1 1/3 Cup

I use the whole-wheat cycle on my Toasmaster TBR 15 bread machine for both recipes.

I still haven't perfected the white bread recipe, but I like whole-grain breads.  I'll probably revisit it at some point, but I'm sticking with these two favorites for the near future.

Once the weather turns cooler, I'm going to try making some things other than loaves of bread, like English muffins, bagels, and maybe some sandwich rolls.

Push-button Whole Wheat

I thought I wasn't going to need to make bread until next weekend, but it seems that mold spores decided to eat my last loaf before I could.  That left me without bread and without the luxury of planning a day in advance to prepare everything. To make matters worse, I have a singing lesson after work that will keep me away from home until about 6:30 PM.  That wouldn't leave much time for the bread machine cycle to finish before I went to bed.

I decided to try my two-step process that I used some weeks ago where I let my sponge mature right on top of the rest of the ingredients.  I tried this with my whole wheat recipe. 

I started by refreshing my starter over night.  Then, this morning, I intended to put all of the ingredients except for the sponge in the bread pan, add the sponge on top, and set the delay timer on my bread machine for about 12 hours.  The idea being that the kneading and baking take between 3 and 4 hours.  That gives the sponge 8 hours to grow

The recipe is

Whole Wheat, Take 6
Remove 4 oz. of starter.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	4 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups
White flour	1  cup
Vital Gluten	none
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

.
Only in this case, I didn't set the sponge aside.  I put all of the other ingredients in the bread pan, with the white flour on top, and the whole wheat flour just under that.  Then, I added the just-mixed sponge on top and set the delay timer to have the bread ready in 12 hours.

My intention, was to get this set up and started before I left for work, and come home 12 hours later, after my voice lesson, to a completed loaf of bread.

Unfortunately (for me, not the bread) I was greeted by a migraine as I was getting ready for work, so I decided to stay home.  Not so good for my head, but it allowed me to document the progress of my push-button bread recipe.

With all of the ingredients in the bread pan and the immature sponge on top, I have this:

After several hours, that grows into this:

After the first mixing cycle (several more hours later), I have a nice looking dough ball.

It sticks slightly to the pan as the paddle moves it around, but it doesn't get stuck.  In the end, I have this lovely loaf of bread.

Technical details

I still have most of last week's loaf of bread, so I won't be making anything new this week.  Instead, I decided to write about the details of my process.  Let's start with my bread machine.  I've been baking bread with a machine for more than 30 years, I think.  The machine that I'm using is a Toastmaster TBR 15.  I was skeptical that this model was still for sale, but sure enough, you can buy it from Amazon.

When I started this sourdough-with-my-bread-machine project, I thought I might have to experiment with the various cycles available from the machine.  I sought out the manual that detailed the times for each of the cycles.  In the end, I just use the whole wheat cycle for everything.

While we are on the subject, I have also standardized on a starter preparation.  Earlier, some of my recipes called for 6 oz. of starter and some called for 4 oz. of starter.  I've found success with just using the 4 oz. procedure for everything.  Now, my standard starter preparation is:

Discard half of the starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour (by weight, that's 3/4 cup by volume) and 4 oz. of water (weight and volume ounces are the same for water).  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Remove 4 oz. of the refreshed starter (by weight) for the recipe sponge.  Add 4 oz. of water and 4 oz. of white bread flour and set it in a warm place for 6-8 hours.  Put the remaining starter back in the fridge for next time.

As I have adapted to my summer schedule (I usually play golf on weekend mornings), I have been allowing more than 8 hours for each step above.  The starter refresh procedure happens over night.  I usually prepare it after dinner, so I don't forget before going to bed.  That has it growing for about 10 hours before I prepare my sponge.  I do that at about 7AM the next morning, and don't get around to making the bread until around 3PM.  That is 8 hours.  I've had good success with this schedule, so perhaps longer growing times for these first two steps are better.

That's all of the details for this week.  Now, I have a question for you.  Who are you?  Every time that I post something to this blog, I see two views within a minute or two of posting.  I suspect that this might be some sort of automatic viewer.  Then, within a few more minutes there are a few more views.  It appears to me that I have a few loyal readers, but you've never left me a comment.  Let me know what you think of this blog.  Is there anything that you'd like to see?

Another 1/3 cup

I've been gradually shifting the white-to-rye ratio in my rye bread recipe toward more rye content.  Last week's recipe came out good, and it is fairly dense, even though it rose well.  I don't think I'm going any farther toward more rye after this week.

As before, I am moving 1/3 cup of flour from the white column to the rye column.  This week's recipe is

Ryer Rye Bread, Take 3
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	7 oz.
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Oil	2 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	2 Cup
White bread flour	1 1/3 Cup

The water content might not be exactly as above.  When I was first adding ingredients, I mistakenly put in two teaspoons of salt.  At that point, I had only added the water, oil, and salt, so I dumped the whole shebang and started over.  Since the pan was wet from the residue of what was dumped, I only added 6 oz. of water.  I figured there was probably an ounce or a bit less still stuck to the pan.

After the first mixing cycle, I have a nice cohesive dough ball.  It's rather coarse, but it didn't take any tinkering to get to this state.

An hour later, after more kneading, it has spread out a bit, but isn't as limp as last week's dough at this point in the process.

The result is just what I was looking for.  It's a little shorter than my previous loaves, but still well risen.  It still has that silly hairdo.  I might try to figure out how to fix that in the future.  For now, I just cut it off and call it a hamburger bun.

Ryer rye, take 2

My last few rye bread loaves have been rising remarkably well.  The recipe started out as something that I called rye-flavored white bread. For good health, I'd like to eat more whole grain flour than white flour. Plus, I like the flavor of rye. On the other hand, I am aware that 100% rye recipes can be hard to distinguish from stones. So, my strategy is to gradually shift the white to rye ratio until the loaf comes out too dense.  This week, I am moving 1/3 dup from white to rye compared to my last rye loaf.  My recipe is now,

Ryer Rye Bread, Take 2
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	7 oz.
Salt	1 tsp
Caraway seeds	1 Tbl
Oil	2 Tbl
Vital gluten	2 tsp
Rye flour	1 2/3 Cup
White bread flour	1 2/3 Cup

Now, I'm up to a 50-50 ratio of white to rye if you don't count the white flour that goes into the starter.

During the first mixing cycle the dough looked pretty good, but it was tending to stick in the corner of the pan.

I scraped the bits that were clinging to the top of the pan and that bit that was in the back right corner and attached them to the dough.  I sprinkled a little white flour into the pan, similar to what I would do to the counter if I were kneading this by hand.  The amount of the sprinkle isn't significant enough to add to the recipe.

After an hour the dough ball looked a little limp, but I decided not to tinker with it.

It was still sticking to the side of the pan, and it hadn't picked up some of the flour from the earlier sprinkle. I suspect that it didn't spend too much time in that back right corner. Nevertheless, I decided to leave it alone and hope for the best.

Here's the final product:

That's another healthy rise.  Next time, I'm moving another 1/3 cup of flour from the white to the rye.

Whole Wheat Reproduction

Last week's whole wheat loaf was perfect.  The only problem was that it took a lot of adjustments along the way to get there.  This weeks goal is to reproduce that success in a more hands-off manner.  Last week's beginning recipe was

Whole Wheat, Take 5
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	5 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 cups
White flour	½ cup
Vital Gluten	1 Tbl
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

I forgot to add the vital gluten, then I added ¼ cup of whole wheat flour and ¼ cup of white flour twice plus some more white flour to get the dough to the right consistency.

This week, I am eliminating the vital gluten on purpose, adding more flour and slightly less water to start.  My new recipe is

Whole Wheat, Take 6
Remove 4 oz. of starter from the fridge.  Add 4 oz. of white flour and 4 oz. of water.  Set in a warm place for about 6-8 hours until it doubles in size.  Then, add
Water	4 oz.
Whole wheat flour	2 ¼ cups
White flour	1  cup
Vital Gluten	none
Salt	1 tsp
Oil	2 Tbl
Honey	¼ cup

The dough ball looks pretty good during the first mixing process.  It is just a little bit sticky, but not so much that it gets stuck in the corner while the paddle is trying to knead it.

I peeked in a half an hour later and the dough had started to take on the blob shape that had me worried last week.  I tried pinching it, and it felt OK, so I'm not going to tinker with it.

After the second kneading cycle, it looked more like a ball.  I think it's going to work out.

It came out pretty well, but it seems to be yielding to peer pressure from the rye breads and donning the pompadour hairdo.