Bread plays

All my bread from the last batch is gone and I had actually fun eating it. The pure sourdough breads tasted better than the ones with the extra yeast- because the extra yeast had left behind a tiny but discernible yeasty taste and it's not necessarily a good taste. So I decided the extra yeast was not be worth it. Sourdough alone can do the job, and it actually tastes better.

Another thing I could not help noticing is how quickly bread ages. It tastes like something from paradise when it is still warm from the oven. It tastes great the next day, and so-so on the next. Any additional days and you just hope to get done with it and move on to a new batch. However in the long run, I want to only bake once a week, or twice at the most if somebody else will be eating, too. Meaning I need to figure a way the make the bread taste great for longer. Which, though, is a quest for the future because today's quest was to make even more bread.

My first dough was the standard fare: Add the starter to four cups of wheat flour (unbleached, all purpose) and two cups of water, mix well, let sit. I have to admit the "let sit" part has become a little informal lately. I literally let it sit over night. And since I had to go to work the next day I had it in the fridge for ten more hours after that. Needless to say, my dough was very bubbly after that.

After that came the fun part: I separated the first dough into four equal batches for further experimentation. To the first part I simply added another cup of all purpose wheat plus a quarter cup of water, plus a teaspoon of salt. This mirrors my standard formula, and meant to represent my control experiment.

In the second batch I used rye flour instead of wheat, and also added that extra quarter cup of water and the salt. Rye breads (or rather, half and half) are pretty much the norm where I grew up in southern Germany, and I was curious whether I would get anything resembling the taste of home.

Batches three and four resembled batches one and two (i.e. one wheat, one rye) but with a twist: I cut  about 6 oz of bacon into little pieces, fried it, and used the fat to brown two medium onions (also cut into little pieces). The result, fried bacon pieces, browned onion pieces, and a fair amount of fat I added in equal proportions to my batches three and four. Before forming the loaves I let each batch sit for another night, followed by another day in the fridge.

I formed loaves from each of my batches, put them into their baking forms, and once again let them sit. Actually, I went for a run while they were sitting and when I run I tend to run for a long time. Meaning these loaves had been sitting for about three hours when I got back and were about twice the size they had started with.

The baking was the normal fair, 45 minutes at 400°F, in accordance with my observations the last time I baked, and the same for each of the loaves. And the result has been very pleasing to say the least:

The straight what loaf is to the left and the straight rye is next to it. Then the bacon/onion wheat, and the bacon/onion rye is all the way to the right. Looking at the loaves from the side

reveals first of all that my score marks were ineffective. Both wheat breads broke up wherever they wanted instead along the score marks. But that's easily fixed- I just need to score after forming the loaves next time rather than waiting until just before I put them into the oven.

More interestingly, wheat dough obviously rises more than rye, so (keeping everything else equal) wheat bread is fluffier and rye bread is denser. The bacon/onion breads to the right look bigger than the straight breads to the left but I think that just reflects the added volume of the bacon and the onions. But it is certainly safe to say the addition of the bacon and the onions did nothing to impede the development of the dough.

Best of all, all breads taste great. Even the straight wheat is an improvement is an improvement over last time, most likely on account of the extra five minutes in the oven. The rye bread is great too and I would say better. The rye seems to go well with the sourdough flavor- positively a keeper recipe. And the bacon/onion loaves are just delicious, both of them! Like bread with built in Schmalz. I can't really decide which one is better but it is safe to assume I am going to go with this combination again, in the not too distant future!

So what will I take away from this experiment? Here are the most important observations:

• I good sourdough bread takes two days to make. It's only about an hour's worth of work and the dough will be sitting on the counter or in the fridge almost all of this time but still: The dough needs time to develop.
• Pure wheat dough rises more than a wheat-rye mixture. I could imagine a pure rye bread would turn out extremely dense but that's of course just speculation at this point.
• Extra non-starchy adjuncts like bacon and onions do not affect dough development. If anything then the extra fat made the dough easy to work while kneading and making the loaves.
• Score the bread immediately after the loaves are formed. The score marks won't do much good after the dough has fully risen.

And this is about it for this time around. I found a great new recipe and I learned something about baking with rye bread. And I am sure I'll come up with some neat new experiment the next time baking time comes around. Stay tuned!