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Chris Hennes

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  1. Chris Hennes
    Sourdough with Pressure-Caramelized Grain Inclusion The actual recipe in the book is very parametric, just calling for a grain inclusion, with it left up to you which grain and how to cook them (they provide tables, of course). I pressure-caramelized Bob's Red Mill's "Grains of Discovery" 9-grain blend. It contains whole grain hard red wheat, whole grain brown rice, whole grain oats, whole grain rye, whole grain triticale, barley, whole grain kamut khorasan wheat, whole grain buckwheat, sesame seeds. This gets added to the sourdough during the folds. It resulted in a quite slack dough and a bit of a flattened loaf, but again the flavors and textures were amazing, exactly what I wanted in the bread. I think I'd probably add even more of the inclusion next time, and obviously I'm going to experiment with different grains and cooking techniques. I'm going to get a lot of mileage out of this recipe. The loaf: The crumb:
  2. Chris Hennes
    Modernist Country Bread Yesterday I posted about the direct (non-Modernist) version of this loaf. The Modernist version is a sourdough and includes a couple tweaks, including Transglutaminase RM (yes, meat glue!). Obviously, as a sourdough it's got better flavor than the direct version, the taste is terrific, it really emphasizes the flavors of the whole wheat and rye flours and just turns everything up to eleven. The Modernist touches focus on texture and are very successful. This is a very light, high-rising, beautiful loaf. A winner on every dimension. Pre-slash (the loaf on the right, on the left is the grain-inclusion loaf): Slashed: Final loaf: Crumb shot:
  3. Chris Hennes
    Huitlacoche and yellow corn sourdough What a terrific flavor for bread! The huitlacoche puree added to the dough gives is a great earthy taste and an intriguing dark color. I'd definitely serve this one to guest with a Mexican-themed dinner. The little bits of yellow corn made it a bit of a challenge to work with, but the flavor pops they add were fun, if not a focal point. I'll probably omit them next time and just go with the huitlacoche-flavored sourdough. I proofed this loaf the same way as the chocolate cherry, so it suffers from the same thick-skin problem, leading to a blowout. Whoops. Ready to load into the oven: Freshly baked: Interior:
  4. Chris Hennes
    TL;DR: Four breads, four winners. Chocolate Cherry Sourdough One of the more exotic sourdough inclusion and flavoring variants was published in the New York Times a few weeks ago. It wasn't high on my list to try, but I figured on a weekend where I was making six different breads, I could risk abject failure on one of them. It turns out I need not have worried, the bread is actually delicious, albeit ugly as ^&*(. I made one key mistake, which was to not cover it thoroughly enough during its final proof, leading to a thick skin that results in some blowout. The bread has a huge quantity of inclusions which makes it relatively sweet, even with no sugar in the dough. So I wouldn't serve it with dinner, but it would be wonderful with coffee for dessert (or just out of hand fresh from the oven, which was today's plan). Here's the proofed loaf just-pre-slashing (along with its neighbor in the oven, the huitlacoche sourdough... more on that next): Baked: Sliced: I should add that this dough was quite the challenge to work with due to the inclusions, so shaping it properly was hard.
  5. Chris Hennes
    Well, I have three suggestions: Make thousands of them. Only photograph the one that looks the best. Crop your photo to only show the good part. (More seriously) Make a longer rectangle than is typical for shaping a loaf so you get a tighter spiral. I do this in multiple stages so the gluten can relax between stretchings. I bet a tiny bit of Cystein would do the trick, too.
  6. Chris Hennes
    Is your objection just the shape of the spiral, or are there other changes you'd make to the loaf?
  7. Chris Hennes
    OK, here goes nothing... the oven is preheated, the doughs have had their final proof (overnight in the fridge), time to get them into the oven. First up, the chocolate cherry and the huitlacoche, formed as 500g loaves.
  8. Chris Hennes
    Did someone call? Obviously these are on my list to try...
  9. Chris Hennes
    The sourdoughs are shaped and are proofing (overnight at 39°F), and the direct country bread is done: The flavor of this one is good, for a direct loaf. It's got a lot of whole wheat and dark rye in it, so even though it's very fast to make (something like five hours beginning to end) it's relatively flavorful. I'm not terribly happy with the uneven crumb, however. I'm looking forward to comparing it to tomorrow's levain-based version.
  10. Chris Hennes
    It's amazing how fast the direct country bed is ready for final proofing: only two folds, and then a half hour rest and then shape and final proof. Compared to the other loaves I'm making (all sourdoughs) this is blazing speed. Here's the preliminary shaping step: Then folded into their final boule shape and proofed in bannetons: Meanwhile, the sourdoughs:
  11. Chris Hennes
    It depends on how you measure it, I suppose, but well over 50% of the recipes have some whole grain involved and there are many recipes that have no white wheat flour in them at all. It's pretty comprehensive (obviously, at 2600 pages!).
  12. Chris Hennes
    Here are the various inclusions of the day: Dried cherries and 65% dark chocolate "chips" for the chocolate and cherry sourdough Yellow corn for the huitlacoche and corn Pressure-caramelized 9-grain "Grains of Discovery" blend from Bob's Red Mill for the grain-inclusion sourdough Here are those three doughs right after the inclusions were added, prior to their additional four-edge folds:
  13. Chris Hennes
    I can tell you the dough alone smells wonderful, even made with canned huitlacoche (which is all I can get here).
  14. Chris Hennes
    Today is a big baking day for me: I've got five different doughs in progress... The big bowl is the direct country bread from the contest. The other four are Modernist Country Bread Sourdough with caramelized grains Sourdough with chocolate and cherries Sourdough with huitlacoche and yellow corn
  15. Chris Hennes
    That, I cannot deny.
  16. Chris Hennes
    It's group B2 right now, and is being considered for upgrade only for direct oral dose: when baked in bread the KBrO3 is converted to KBr. From Kurokawa Y, Maekawa A, Takahashi M, Hayashi Y. Toxicity and carcinogenicity of potassium bromate--a new renal carcinogen. Environmental Health Perspectives. 1990;87:309-335: That said, I'm unable to track down any studies on the toxicity and/or carcinogenicity of potassium bromide.
  17. Chris Hennes
    Do remember that there are multiple types of home bakers. I am interested in the finished product: if getting a better finished product requires measuring things to the hundredth of a gram or sixteenth of a teaspoon or whatever, I'm game. If it requires me to use a written recipe instead of memorizing things, I'm OK with that. This is particularly true because I'm emphatically not interested in just making the same bread over and over. So yes, there are home bakers who consider it a point of pride that they make good bread without tools or recipes. If your goal is to be able to make a great sourdough by eye and feel, go for it. But please don't disparage those of us who use recipes and measure ingredients as though we are somehow lesser cooks.
  18. Chris Hennes

    Lasagna Wars

    Chris Hennes replied to a topic in Cooking

    I wonder if you can improve the aesthetics by actually increasing the texture of the top, which would also give the added bonus of more crispy bits, and more color variation.
  19. Chris Hennes

    Lasagna Wars

    Chris Hennes replied to a topic in Cooking

    I think that style of lasagna is a totally different beast. I cannot imagine adding a red sauce to Bugiali's lasagna, it just doesn't work like that.
  20. Chris Hennes
    Here's 24 hours of my levain's cycle in five seconds:
  21. Chris Hennes
    They've got a pretty good chunk of info in the books on the use of the term "autolyse" and how various references use it differently and assert different reasons for it. It's an interesting read.
  22. Chris Hennes
    Oh. I wouldn't worry too much about how much it grows. I think mine might about double in volume over the course of 24 hours, but it's not like it goes crazy. Bubbles look good to me. I'll post a lime-lapse of my starter in a bit, it's almost feeding time here.
  23. Chris Hennes
    This is an interesting experiment: that's the same ratio I'm using, just a larger batch. What day are you on now?
  24. Chris Hennes
    Every 24 hours, give or take fifteen minutes. What are the actual weights you are using (levain/flour/water) to feed?
  25. Chris Hennes
    They (of course) suggest a couple possibilities, but their favorite is 55°F on a 24-hour feeding schedule. I'm growing mine on the kitchen counter and it's plenty happy at the roughly 70°F that entails.
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