Sour Starter

Good Morning Readers,

I have just returned from a very relaxing trip to visit some family!   Mini vacations are vital to the life of any full-time employee!  A breathe of fresh air away from the daily grind is so refreshing!

And with my new found energy, I want to introduce you to a 5 day process of making your very own sour culture.  This culture that we create will have the capabilities of producing quality products within two weeks.  After that,  it is up to you to take care of it and follow the simple steps I will layout for you.

I have been receiving a lot of question about sourdough cultures!  We have received multiple requests for some of Wheatfield's sour culture, which the answer is, "Yes, it is possible to get some from us"!  With that being said,  it is a process to get some from us and it is only possible if we have extra that day and if you come at the right time.  And for those aspiring bakers out there, it's not a bad option to get some culture from us (but it can feel like a cop-out)!    So, before you come in and get some of our starter, give this a try!  I am positive that making your own sour culture will be an amazing experience that you will not regret!

As I have said before this is a 5 day process and on the 5th day you just keep repeating that step to keep it going, but we will discuss that further on day 5!

Now, to start us of we need to get our M.E.P. (technical speak for Mise en Place - which means everything in place).  This was a term I had drilled into me at school.  Before you start any task, have everything set-up and in its proper place, clean and organized! Trust me -- you will be glad you did!

      Day 1 MEP:
      1. Scale
      2. Flour ( I used All Purpose Unbleached, Unenriched)
      3. Water (Tap Water is fine, bottled would be ideal)
      4. Container with a lid (Preferably a plastic, resealable container)

The sour culture recipe is all in grams, so a scale would be great but not necessary.  I will do my best to use cups as well, but just a disclaimer, it will not be as accurate with cups.  If possible, I would suggest going out and buying a cheap scale at Wal-mart, or a store similar to it.

First, scale out 113 grams (1/2 cup) of water and pour it into the container you plan on storing it in.  You want this water to be around 90 deg.  If you do not have a thermometer just shoot for warm water to the touch.  Nothing too hot,  I would say stay closer to the cool side.  Hot water can be detrimental to the yeast development throughout this whole process.

Second,  scale out 113 grams of flour.  If you are feeling daring you can scale the flour right on top of the water.  I would suggest not doing that until you feel more confident working with a scale.  You can just scale it into a separate bowl and then add it to your water.

The type of flour you use for making your sour culture is also important.  Organic Bread Flour would be the best option but not the only one.  I am using Unbleached, Unenriched All-purpose flour from our flour provider at Wheatfields, Heartland Mills.  This is the same type of flour we use for the majority of the products we make.  King Arthur Flour is a great option that should be available in most grocery stores.  Whatever you choose, make sure there are no additives and it is unbleached.

Third,  mix by hand until all the flour is incorporated and you have a homogenous mass of dough with no lumps of flour.  This step of the recipe has a ratio of 1 to 1.  Meaning there is 1 part of flour to 1 part of water.  If you wanted to you could start a larger culture or a smaller one.  Just make sure use the ratio!  For example, I could do 200 gr of flour and 200 gr water.  If you do attempt to make a larger or smaller culture this will throw off the rest of the numbers I give you throughout this process.  Just a piece of advice, I would keep it simple, say doubling it or halving the recipe if you do want to change it!  It is ultimately up to you! Now, MIX!

Once this is mixed, it will have a paste-like texture.  If the mixture is very stiff and makes a mass that holds its shape,  add water little by little until gets to the proper consistency.  If it is too liquid and runs right off your fingers add flour little by little until it becomes pasty.  You want it to fall off your fingers but still have a little but of structure to it.

Final Step, place the lid on your container and let it sit at room temperature.  That's all folks!  No magic tricks today just let it sit with the lid on until tomorrow!  After I take my pictures tomorrow I will post the next step!  There will not be as many pictures tomorrow so I will go into a little more detail about sour cultures and a few options we can try with the culture!  I hope this will be helpful and fun for everyone reading!

Please post any questions you might have along this adventure!  If I didn't describe something well enough, please let me know!  This is here for you to learn!  No question is too ridiculous!  Trust me I did this for a yr and a half with students and we got some crazy questions!

Last important note -you want to do this at the same time everyday! This is crucial to the outcome and life of your culture!  So, pick a time that will work for you everyday for the next week or two!

Have a wonderful afternoon and bake like you love it,

Josh

Garlic and Basil Sourdough

Good Afternoon Followers (and those just tuning in for the first time),

Today, we have some photos of our Garlic and Basil loaf.  Last night, while I was doing some research I found a blog with a roasted garlic loaf that had a very unique topping.  When I was first admiring the loaf, it looked like a stencil, which I have some experience using, but the photos that followed showed me something quite different.

The baker used fresh herbs on top of the loaf, which then proceeded to dry out during the baking process.  This leaves you with a gorgeous natural design on top. It can also be used to help identify what is inside the bread.  This technique is used more so in pastry baking.  An example would be when you're making a carrot cake with a nut filling. You would want to top it with some of the same nuts that are used in the ingredients to let the customer have a preview of whats inside! This is usually only important in the case of a severe allergy, but can also be used for aesthetic appeal- and thats what we will use it for in this case!  ( I have recently discovered that it i, in fact, possible to have an allergy to basil.  I am guessing it is not that common, because I have never heard of anyone having it!  But with that being said it now makes this bread topping multi-functional!

Sooo,  I will now take you through the process of stenciling your breads or placing a creative design on top.

First step, make bread to apply this technique to!  Sounds basic, I know, but the process of making bread is very complex!  Usually, I like to use sourdough because of the crust color of the finished loaf helps accentuate the stencil! As the title hints towards, we have used Garlic Basil dough. (side note: we use local basil in this bread!)

This boule was kept overnight in our retarder sitting in a round wicker basket for its necessary fermentation time.  When the dough was proofed to its proper size it was then turned out of the basket onto the peel for finishing or scoring.  In this case,  I used a water bottle to spray the top of the loaf.  The spraying of the loaf is for two reasons: a) to help dissolve any flour left on top from the basket, and b) to allow the flour or any other topping to stay in place!  I then placed the fresh basil on top in a decorative fashion.

After placing the basil on top, I then sifted enough flour to lightly cover the whole loaf and the herbs.  If too much flour is sifted on top the loaf can easily become in-eadible.  You want to add just enough to have an appealing look but not too much that you can see clumps of flour all over the top.  This may take some practice!

The last step before baking is scoring.  There are many options for this step.  I decided to go with a 45 degree angle all the way around the basil to help lift and display all the work I put into this design.  There are other options available to you as well.  Two that I like are either the "fan style" of scores reaching up to the basil from the base, or the "box style" with straight 90 degree cuts around the basil. 

The finished product!  The basil shrunk and lifted leaving a very nice outside flour line around it! Overall, the loaf came out very nice with a great score that lifted evenly all the way around.  Really achieving the desired affect.  This technique can be time consuming, which means it would be very difficult for large production needs! I hope this was helpful and interesting! Also, if you are reading this on Wednesday the 25th you can stop in and check out this loaf in the display window,  and why not just pick up a Garlic and Basil loaf while you are looking!

Thanks for reading,

Have a wonderful day!

Sprouted Grain Bagels

The photos are finally up!  These are the sprouted grain bagels I mentioned before and hopefully some of you got to try a bite!  I came in early Sunday to try one, toasted it up and put a little butter on it, and see how it was.  The bagel had a very subtle sweet aftertaste but with little sprouted grain flavor coming through.  It was a little of an up and down ride from the excitement of a great looking final product to a let down from final flavor that just doesn't meet your expectations.  Don't get me wrong it was a good bagel, just not 'the one' I want it to be.

So this means more testing!  At this point I need more Sprouted Grains which will be the next post, What are Sprouted Grains and why should I eat them?  Personally they just taste much better, but I will actually give some facts to support my opinion!

Now, this bagel started for me about 6-7 months ago when I was a Teaching Assistant at The Culinary Institute of America.  My Chef was very good at randomly just dropping thoughts and ideas to let me chew on and see what I did with them!  One day I was working on a Sprouted Grain Sourdough and he just mentioned, "could you imagine a Sprouted Grain Bagel?"  He left it at that and never said anything else about it.  So the thought process began and all the questions floated in!  Can I just add the grains to the regular bagel dough?  Should I just wing it and see what happens?  Wait, what about salt? Grains will need more salt.... How much more salt?

And the recipe began.  I tested it out every Friday for my early morning Saturday bakes and ran into a lot of hydration issues and salt content issues.  The Sprouted Grain mass is fairly sticky and wet but not runny so its a weird trade-off for flour and water!  But as the weeks went on and I gave the test runs to all my surrounding Chefs to try and get feedback.  I started to refine the recipe into a great product.  A few weeks before I left my position at The CIA, there was a large baking exam at the school that we needed to produce some specialty products for breakfast and lunch and I figured what better time to break out some yummy bagels.  There happened to be some very well known bakers there for judging and they got to experience The Sprouted Grain Bagel in all its glory!  That bagel that morning came out fantastic, size, shape, color, and the flavor where all exactly where I wanted them to be!  This was an exciting day for me and I got some really good feedback on the bagel,  I was fairly proud!

After all this I expected it to translate over to wherever I wanted to break this bagel out again. Unfortunately, yours truly,  did not put my final changes down on paper!  Bummer, I know but that has just led to more R and D here, which is great but with a limited supply of Sprouted Grains!  So now the process starts all over again from sprouting to grinding to baking!  And you get to be brought along for the whole shindig! Photos galore and hopefully helpful info galore!  I have recently contacted some of my previous Chefs to see where I can get some very reliable and accurate info on Sprouting Grains for you and we will have a few different posts on this topic!

Make sure you stop by the bakery and see what we have going on!

Have a great Monday!
Josh

CB#: 7176589011

The start of a New Journey

Good Afternoon readers,

My name is Joshua Pickens and I have recently come to Lawrence, KS to fill a vacant Head Baker position.  In the short time I have been here and been involved in the bakery specifically the bread department I have come up with a few ways to connect with our customer base this being one of them!  A blog is something new to me (hence the title) and will be a work in progress!  Please bear with me!

The idea to start this blog came when I was given my job description here.  I have been tasked with product development and down the road starting bread classes for the public!  Now what is important to start these two things is  I need to know what the consumer wants.  This got me thinking about many different ways to reach you whether it be surveys or word of mouth or just taking shots in the dark and just throwing stuff out there to see if it is successful or not! The last option did not seem too business savvy so we dropped that one.  As this process of pondering continued I was at home reading one of my favorite blogs and the though hit me why not start a blog about Wheatfields!  It is an easy(and free) way to get in touch with customers and get instant feedback.  It is also a great way to help you feel connected to what we all do here.

We are all very passionate about what we do and we want to share that with you and allow you to see a side of the bakery that you might not have ever gotten the chance to see.  We will post product photos,  maybe even some action shots!  We want you to see how much time and effort we put into making the best  product possible for you!

This blog will also be used to educate you on all the different aspects of baking such as the basics of shaping a loaf of bread down to the different types of flour we use and why we use them.  This blog will help me dig into some much needed research to give you answers to any questions you might have.  Many questions come in all the time from allergies to what is sourdough?  I will do my best to answer your questions as quickly and as detailed as possible even if that means research which I love to do!

There will also be surveys given out to see what you think about new products we are developing!  Like right now we just mixed a new bagel for employee taste testing to see if it is something we want to serve as a special!  It will be a Sprouted Grain Bagel.  If all goes well tomorrow you should see that at the counter by next week.  But we will post photos of new products, which hopefully tomorrow I will have some of this bagel for you so you can see and comment! There has also been the idea of a "Baker's Choice" bread on Fridays and Saturdays which I think should be starting with the previously mentioned bagels.  Also I have mentioned bread classes,  we would love to start a few bread classes during or slower season but we need to know what kind of class you would enjoy for example maybe a 1 day baguette class or a weeklong classes involving the full spectrum of classic french style breads to pizza and beyond!  These classes would probably involve mainly hands on teaching but with some sit down and quick note taking sessions!  But to do all this we need your feedback and when the time is right the surveys will be posted and make sure to get as many people involved as you can! The more the merrier!

So here we go this journey is about to begin and ohh yeah Welcome to the Wheatfields Blog!