Monday was very much a 'get things ready for Tuesday' sort of day; I took a short wander over to the Welbeck Abbey Brewery & got myself a pot of their finest barm (this one was from one of the pale ales I think), ready for making my beer barm starter. I also made up a batch of brioche, which then rested in the fridge overnight, while my fruit mix soaked in a lovely blackcurrant & vanilla tea. I also made up the levain for my pain du campagne! =)
I did actually get to do some baking on the day; a batch of dinner rolls! They're not the most exciting bread to eat, but it's tricky to get the shaping right so it's worth practising them... I did however, forget to take a picture... Oh well!
Tuesday was a busy, & not altogether successful day...
The major disappointment was my brioche. In previous batches I'd put mixed spice through the fruits before incorporating them into the dough, but yesterday I decided to try cinnamon instead; I prefer the flavour of cinnamon alone to that of mixed spice, & thought it would work well against the vanilla in the tea the fruits soaked in.
The problem is that cinnamon in too high a quantity can denature the structure of the dough, turning it into a mush. Tasty mush, but still mush. I only had cinnamon in at 3%, but that was enough to wreck havoc with my poor brioche!
I baked it off anyway, & while it was tasty, it wasn't right. So I made another batch of brioche! Again this rested in the fridge overnight =)
The pain du campagne dough was really nice, strong but with plenty of extensibility too.
Came out looking rather nice too! I think next time it could do with a longer bake, to get a really lovely dark colour to the crust. My scoring could do with some work too, but then I haven;t had much practise recently...
Really pleased with the texture too. And the flavour is lovely, just the right amount of acidity =)
My beer barm bread was a resounding success too!
I played around with the formula for this one, as the last time I made it I felt it lacked any real depth of flavour. So, this time I used 25% of the total flour weight to create the starter, rather than the 13% called for in the recipe. For the remaining flour in the dough I used 50% Italian flour (for strength), 50% malthouse flour, which contains all the lovely malty flakes (for flavour). Finally, I dropped the water content from 80% to 70%, for a more British texture. I was going to drop it to 60%, but decided to stick to 70%; the flakes in the malthouse flour would have absorbed some of the water anyway.
Here it is, fresh from the oven!
And here's the inside; lovely texture, & masses more flavour this time round. Wayne said I'd pretty much cracked it flavour/texture wise, just need to work on the visual aspects of the bread.
I'd used the stencil I originally created for Wayne, seeing as he said I could keep it, but it could certainly be improved.
Once all that was out of the way, I put down a poolish for some baguettes, & then a biga for some ciabatta, ready for todays baking!
Today was a pretty good day too =)
The brioche was much better today; I dropped the cinnamon down to 1% & the fruits were incorporated into the dough much easier, which made the dough an awful lot easier to shape!
Which meant I could do this sort of thing! (The one on the right only had six balls of dough in instead of seven, like the other two, not quite enough dough for seven in each!)
They baked quite nicely too.
They could do with a lighter colour on top though, & to have more definition between each ball, but that's something I can work on. The flavour is spot on! The cinnamon is subtle, the fruits are juicy, the dough is light, fluffy & rich - divine!
The only problem is, I really like this shape... That's a problem because it means I have to shape the brioche into balls before they go into the tin. Which isn't a bad thing on a normal day, but for assessment, I'm worried it might be a bit much to take on. I'll have over 8kg of brioche dough to work on, & at 100g per ball, that's 80+ balls! Something to ponder anyway...
I was really pleased with the ciabatta as well, especially as it was mixed by hand!
They baked quite nicely, although I think they could do with a darker bake. The texture is great though =)
But again, that could be improved, & a slightly lighter moulding is all it needs!
The baguettes were a sort of success... The dough was great, nice & strong & it pre-shaped nicely. Final shaping was less easy... I think it had a little too long resting; we had a sudden & dire shortage of couches, so I had to go hunting & rescue the couches Wayne had wandered off with...
Again these need a darker bake, & more steam, but they were baked in the Welbeck bakehouse ovens downstairs, which don't come with steam, instead, you have to squirt water into the back of the ovens! The shaping is the most obvious fault on these; Wayne said the scoring was great, & the texture was pretty nice too =)
So the next time I'm back in class after placement, guess what I'll be practising! That's right! Baguettes!
So all in all it's been a pretty good few days =)
Just one more day at School, then we're off on our last placements! Scary really... o.0
But for now, I have an essay to finish, & a brioche loaf to demolish! Hopefully I'll have chance to blog while I'm on placement & let you know how it's all going. First I'm off down South, to spend two weeks at Two Magpies Bakery, then I'm heading back up North to The Bakery Dunbar for my final two weeks. Should be fun!
Catch you soon!
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