D Acres Blog: Bread & Yogurt: A Tutorial for Beginners and Aficionados

In response to the success of our joint Bread Baking and Yogurt Making workshop last week, Scott and I have developed the following step-by-step instructions for preparing these staple foods. Not only will the newfound skills allow for greater culinary sovereignty and gustatory delight, but they provide the opportunity to share the knowledge and nutrition with family, friends, and neighbors. Enjoy!

PART I: BREAD

D Acres’ Bread Recipe

This bread baking recipe is adapted from “Tartine Bread” which is a fantastic book. Here is a link to the book: http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780811870412-0

For this recipe, you will need the following tools – a digital scale, a large mixing bowl, a rubber spatula, a dough spatula, and a bench knife. For baking it would also be good to have a dutch oven or another oven-proof pot with a tight fitting lid.

Making this kind of bread requires three basic steps – first, you need to create a starter. Second, you manage the yeast and bacteria in the starter and third, you create the dough, shape it and bake it into a loaf of bread.

Making the Starter

Making the starter beings with making the culture. The culture is created when flour and water are combined and the wild yeast and bacteria that is present in the flour and the air begins to ferment. In order to make the starter, mix together 100 grams of white bread flour and 100 grams of whole wheat bread flour. Then combine the flour mixture with 200 grams of warm water and mix together with your hand until you have a thick, lump free batter. Then cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rest in a cool, dark place until bubbles form around the sides and on the surface, about 2-3 days. A dark crust may form over the top. Once bubbles form, it is time for the first feeding.

To feed the starter, discard about 80 percent of it and replace with equal amounts of water (40%) and a 50/50 white/wheat flour mixture (40%). Mix it together, using your hands, until themixture is the consistency of a thick, lump-free batter. Repeat every 24 hours at roughly the same time of day for 2 or 3 days. Once it ferments predictably (rises and falls throughout the day after feedings), it's time to make the leaven.

Making the Leaven

When preparing to make the dough, it is best to use weight measurements. The night before you plan to make the dough, discard all but 1 tablespoon of the matured starter. Feed it with 200 grams of the wheat-white flour mixture and 200 grams of water. Cover it with a kitchen towel and let it rest in a cool place for 8 -12 hours. By morning, the leaven will be aerated by the wild yeast activity and the volume will have increased by 20 percent.

Making the Dough

Gather the following ingredients for mixing the dough:

Ingredients	Quantity	Percentage
Water (around 80 degrees)	700 grams plus 50 grams	75
Leaven	200 grams	20
Total Flour	1,000 grams	100
White Flour	900 grams	90
Whole Wheat Flour	100 grams	10
Salt	20 grams	2

It is best to think about bread baking in terms of weights and percentages. The flour, no matter what quantity is used, is the constant 100 percent against which all other ingredients are weighted and considered.

When you have gathering the ingredients together, pour 200 grams of the leaven into a large mixing bowl and add 700 grams lukewarm water - about 80 degrees. (The water should feel cool to the touch because our body temperature is 98.6 degrees.) Stir with your hand to disperse the leaven.

(Save your leftover leaven; it is now the beginning of a new starter. To keep it alive to make future loaves, do one feeding of flour and water and keep the starter in your refrigerator until you are ready to bake again.)

After you have dispersed the leaven, add 1,000 grams of flour – 900 grams of white flour and 100 grams of wheat flour – to the mixture. Mix the dough with your hands until no bits of dry flour remain. Let rest in a cool place for 35 – 40 minutes. Then add 20 grams of salt and remaining 50 grams warm water and incorporate them into the dough. Work the salt and the water into the dough with your fingers to incorporate.

Transfer the dough to a clean plastic container or a glass bowl. Cover it with kitchen towel and let rest for 30 minutes. The dough will now begin its first rise or bulk fermentation where it develops its flavor and strength. The rise is temperature sensitive; as a rule, warmer dough ferments faster. Ideally, the temperature should be around 80 degrees to accomplish the bulk fermentation in 3 to 4 hours. If your room temperature is cooler, you can put your dough in your oven next to a pot of boiling water. This will raise the ambient temperature of your oven.

Instead of kneading, you can strengthen the dough through a series of "folds" in the container during bulk fermentation. You should fold the dough every 30 minutes for the first two and a half hours. To do a fold, dip your hand in water to prevent sticking. Grab the underside of the dough, stretch it up, and fold it forward over itself. Rotate the container one-quarter turn, and repeat. Do this 2 or 3 times for each fold. After the 3 hours, the dough should feel aerated and softer, and you will see a 20 to 30 percent increase in volume. If not, continue the bulk fermentation for 30 minutes to 1 hour more.

When the bulk fermentation is complete, pull the dough out of the container using a dough spatula onto an un-floured surface. Lightly dust the dough with flour and cut it into 2 pieces using the bench knife. You want to incorporate as little flour as possible into the dough. Using your hands and the bench knife as needed, work the dough into a round shape. Tension will build as the dough slightly anchors to your table surface as you rotate it. By the end, the dough should have a taut, smooth surface.

After this first shaping, let both rounds rest on the work surface for 20-30 minutes. During this period, the dough will relax into the shape of the thick pancake.

Dust tops of rounds with flour, cover with a kitchen towel, and let rest on the work surface for 20 to 30 minutes.

Slip the dough scraper under each to lift it, being careful to maintain the round shape. Flip rounds floured side down. The final shaping involves a series of folds. Each fold builds tension inside the loaf so that it holds its form and will rise significantly during baking. It’s a bit difficult to explain how to do this but I’ve found a video of it being done by the author of Tartine Bread. The baker does it quite fast so you’ll have to watch it several times but here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIIjV6s-0cA

In a small bowl, make a 50/50 mixture of rice flour and whole-wheat flour. Line two medium baskets or bowls with clean kitchen towels and generously dust them with the flour mixture. Using the bench knife, transfer each round to a basket, smooth side down, with seam centered and facing up. Let the dough rest at room temperature for 2-4 hours before baking.*

Baking the Bread

Twenty minutes before you are ready to bake the bread, place a dutch oven or oven-proof pot with a tight-fitting lid in the oven and pre-heat the oven to 500 degrees. The oven rack should be in the lowest position.

While the oven is pre-heating, gather the tools you will need for baking – heavy oven mitts, rice four or corn meal and a razor blade to score the top of each loaf before baking.

Dust the surface of one of the loaves in the basket with rice flour. When the oven reaches 500 degrees, put on the oven mitts and carefully remove the pot or dutch-oven and place it on top of the stove and remove the lid. Use caution when handling the pot – it is 500 degrees and you can easily burn your hands.

Carefully inverting the bowl or basket, turn the loaf into the heated pot. Score the top twice using a razor blade. Cover the pot with the lid. Return it to oven, and reduce oven temperature to 450 degrees. Bake for 20 minutes.

Carefully remove lid (a cloud of steam will be released). The loaf should have risen significantly but the color should be pale and shiny. Continue to bake the loaf until it reaches a golden brown color – about 20 -25 minutes.

Transfer loaf to a wire rack or lean the loaf on its side so that air can circulate around the bottom. The loaf should feel light and sound hollow when tapped. Let it cool.

To bake the second loaf, raise the oven temperature to back to 500 degrees, return the dutch oven or pot to the oven and reheat it with the lid on for 10 minutes and repeat the baking process.

*The entire process from start to finish takes 8-10 hours. For many of you, setting aside this amount of time for bread baking will be a challenge. So here is a suggested schedule that might makes things easier. Mix the leaven on Friday morning before you go to work. When you get home from work, you can do the bulk fermentation and shaping and be finished by around 9:30 or 10 PM. You can then delay the final rise by placing the dough, in the baskets or bowls, in the refrigerator overnight – for 8 to 12 hours. The cool environment slows, but does not stop, the fermentation. After 8 to 12 hours, the bread develops more complex flavors and gives you, in my view, a better final product. First thing on Saturday morning, heat your oven to 500 degrees and do the baking then. That way, you will have fresh baked bread on Saturday morning and it won’t cut too much into your day.

Like anything else, it takes a little while to get the hang of this. If you have any questions or run into any trouble, please feel free to give me a call at 786-2366.

Good luck!

Scott

___________________________________________________________________________

PART II: YOGURT

1. Obtain a starter culture. This can be yogurt from a previous batch or good quality, plain yogurt (preferably local and grass-fed) bought from the store.

2. Pour milk into a pot and heat GENTLY on low flame to 180ºF.

Monitor with a candy thermometer and stir often to avoid scalding or boiling. This may take 20-40 minutes depending on the quantity of milk, so remember to check back frequently!

3. At 180ºF, remove from heat and let cool to 110ºF.

4. Here's the ratio of starter culture to milk:

For every ONE QUART of milk, stir in ONE TABLESPOON of yogurt starter.

Adding more starter will counterintuitively result in a runny yogurt, so less is more in this case. To obtain a thicker, tangier yogurt, you can add only ½ tablespoon instead of 1.

5. After incorporating the starter, pour the milk back into a jar, cap, wrap with a towel to insulate, and place in a warm spot for 8-10 hours. Ideally and if possible, store the jar in an enclosed space (e.g., a cooler, hot box, or an oven with the pilot light turned on) to give the lactobacilli in the starter a consistently warm, insulated environment to proliferate.

6. After 8-10 hours, check on your yogurt. If the consistency, flavor, or texture is less than ideal, don't worry! There are many factors that take time to fine tune and adjust according to your preferences and the environment in which you're making the yogurt. The process is one of trial and error-you can follow the directions meticulously yet still obtain an undesirable outcome. The two most important elements to a successful yogurt are an active starter culture and temperature; consider these two factors when troubleshooting.

The yogurt is still edible even if did not amount to what you were expecting. Use it in soups, cereal, or chilled as a smoothie-it still contains the pro-biotic content of yogurt, but the microorganisms of the yogurt were outcompeted by those pre-existing in the milk, creating a thin consistency (this is why LESS starter is best!)

7. Refrigerate the yogurt and enjoy! It will keep for 1-2 weeks. If you're satisfied with the finished product, be sure to save a few tablespoons as starter for your next batch!

COTTAGE CHEESE PRIMER

Contrary to popular belief, soured milk can be used to create a multitude of traditional dairy products. To make cottage cheese:

1. Leave soured milk at room temperature with a loosely fitted cap for

1-3 days, or until the solids, or curds (think Little Miss Muffet!) separates from the liquid, or whey.

2. After 1-3 days, strain the milk through cheesecloth (you can affix it with a rubber band or string around a pot) or a fine sieve for 8-10 hours, until most of the whey has been filtered.

3. Scoop out the curds and add honey, salt or dried herbs for flavor.

The whey is very rich in protein and can be used in cooking, lacto-fermenting vegetables and fruits, soaking grains and nuts, or drinking plain for a nutritious boost of enzymes, vitamins, and pro-biotics.