Secrets of Fire Island Foccacia and Soudough -- a Baking Class

Carlyle Watt, chief baker at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop, with a batch of sourdough ready to make into loaves.

Fire Island classes serve three purposes -- students learn the secrets of baking delicious things; they go home with plenty of loaves or cookies to demonstrate that they have actually acquired the skill, and they appreciate much more the fact that Fire Island will do all of that baking for them. Along with seven other engaged students, I took Carlyle's class on sourdough and foccacia on December 3. For three hours we mixed, folded, and baked loaves of sourdough bread, and cut up toppings for the trays of foccacia. We left with loaves of fresh bread, slices of foccacia, and our own sourdough starters for many generations of home-made breads.

Shaping and baking sourdough loaves, using dough that's ready for the final stage

Weighing the dough cut from the big chunk above to make individual loaves.

Here's where it starts -- with the scales. Bread-making may be an art, but like other arts, its roots are deeply twined in the sciences. Physics, biology, chemistry, and math are all critical to creating bread that's edible and beautiful. Sciences are precise -- so bread-making starts with weighing everything. Carlyle cut pieces from the mass of dough that he started with, and showed us how to shape them into rounds.

Hands are perpendicular to the table, cup the loaf, and turn it lightly, shaping it into a round. The small pile of flour in the middle of the table is for flouring hands to make the process smoother. The huge bag of organic unbleached white flour that is used in all of Fire Island's  creations is from Central Milling Company in Utah (available at Natural Pantry in Anchorage in more manageable quantities).

Once shaped, the loaves are set in place for their final rise. Carlyle is gently placing a round of dough into a proofing bowl that will give the loaf a classic "boule" (French for "ball") shape with the rings of the bowl imprinted on the final loaf.  Before putting the dough in, he dusted the inside of the bowl with flour so that dough wouldn't stick to it. We also learned how to fold a couche, a heavy piece of cloth so that it would support the rising loaves.

A stack of proofing bowls.

Boules on their final rising.

We baked the boules either in a cast iron Dutch oven, or on a pizza stone in the oven. Here's a close to perfect boule in the Dutch oven where it was baked. The loaves baked on the pizza stone turned out a little flatter than those in the Dutch oven, but just as light and tasty.

Carlyle shows us what it looks like on the bottom when done: well-browned, crusty. When tapped lightly with fingertips, it sounds and feels hollow.

The texture of the sliced bread is open with lots of good-sized holes that have thin membranes. It smells delicious and tastes better. In theory, you would let it cool a bit before slicing, but the class had eight hungry people, eager to taste the fruits of their work.

Mixing and shaping, and raising our own dough.

Measuring water using the scales.

For the next major part of the lesson, we mixed our own dough to take home and bake later, carefully measuring the water first, then the white and whole wheat flours and the leaven (starter), and mixing thoroughly. The dough needed to sit for half an hour so that the flour could absorb water (the technical term is "autolyse"). Next we added the salt and a bit more water, and mixed again.

Mixing the dough -- it's wet and sticky.

Carlyle showed us how to make a sourdough country loaf using Chad Robertson's method of starting with a wet dough, and then folding and resting it several times over three hours. There are many other methods of allowing gluten strands to develop and shape the bread, and the yeasts to work their magic. The yeasts need time to eat the flour and convert its sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol. The proteins that make stretchy gluten hold the carbon dioxide bubbles into place, giving the bread its texture; the alcohol burns off.

Pulling up the dough to fold it over itself eight to a dozen times substitutes for the more traditional kneading to develop the dough.

The folding is gentler, and allows the larger holes and more open texture of the sourdough loaf. If the same dough was going to be kneaded, it would start as a drier dough. After the kneading, the final loaf would have a finer, more even texture.


Making foccacia

Finally, foccacia -- my main reason for taking the class was to discover the secret of this flatbread.

Carlyle made the foccacia dough in an automatic mixer. The ingredients differ in a couple of ways from the the sourdough loaf - the foccacia dough has some olive oil, a very small amount of commercial yeast to keep it more consistent in flavor and texture, and a higher percentage of whole wheat flour to white flour.

After "developing" the gluten in the dough by continuing to mix it in the machine at a higher speed for several minutes, we set it aside to rise. How to know if it's ready? Carlyle is demonstrating the "window-pane" test -- stretching a little piece of dough gently to see if it can be pulled so thin that you can see through it. When it's reached this stage, it's ready to rest and rise  for about an hour.

After rising, foccacia dough is spread in the baking pan, with a thin layer of olive oil beneath.

The top is dimpled from the pressure of finger tips pushing it to the edges -- the idea is to work gently so that the trapped gasses don't get pushed out.

For toppings we used caramelized onions,

sliced mushrooms, and diced sweet potatoes. Then the dough needed to rise for another half hour before baking.

The mushroom foccacia baked for about 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven. We pulled it out, spread on the caramelized onions, and added some chunks of cheese; then baked it again for about five minutes until the cheese melted.

This is the finished sweet potato foccacia, garnished with arugula leaves, already a quarter gone just a few minutes after it came out of the oven..

Students savoring the foccacia.

My home-baked loaf -- not the perfect shape, but its crumb is very good, and it tastes just like Carlyle's.

For more information about Fire Island classes, click here.   

Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop has three locations now: the original shop at 1343 G Street (the entrance to the shop is around the corner on 14th Avenue), and 2530 East 16th Avenue, just south of DeBarr and east of Lake Otis. The newest Fire Island shares the parking lot, a beer, and much else with Anchorage Brewing. It's at 160 West 91st Street (off King Street).

Pizza for dinner -- just not mine

                                              All of the toppings, ready for the pizza.

May 25, 2013: Not a thing wrong with Bear Tooth pizza -- it's our favorite. But that wasn't the plan for the evening. We were going to have sourdough pizza crust, topped with homemade marinara sauce, fresh shaved Parmesan cheese,  and other delicious things. This time, I was going to pay attention, watch over the rising dough hour by hour, making it my top priority all day long. This time, it would work just right.

                                         Pizza dough, rising.

Except that it didn't. I followed Tartine instructions for basic bread to get three small balls of dough, about 8 ounces each. Then I used instructions for Italian pan pizza for making two of the balls into pizza crusts, and made the third into a small foccacia. So far, so good.

The pizza crusts, like everything else I've tried recently, didn't rise after shaping. I'm perplexed. Up until I shape the dough for its final rise, it's been airy, bubbly, sweet-smelling, with a smooth skin and great form. Until I shape it into crust, or foccacia, or a ciabbata loaf. Then it just sits. After an hour or two, I put it in the oven because it's gotten to be midnight, or company is arriving soon. It didn't rise outside the oven, and didn't have any oven spring either. The bread  that comes out is nicely browned and tastes fine (when I remember the salt), but you would have to say that it's "chewy," as in sea cucumber chewy, or badly-cooked squid. This was the third or fourth try at foccacias, flatbreads, and ciabbatas, and the results have been pretty consistent.

[The foccacia part of this batch of dough had some rise, but I forgot the salt. Bread needs very little salt, but its absence is as noticeable as a wrong note in a violin solo. It lasts longer though -- every bite reminds you that yes, you forgot the salt. Again.]

                                          Foccacia, not for dinner.

Foccacia wasn't for dinner in any case. The guests were invited for pizza, and the pizza dough didn't work at all. Luckily, we had guacamole as an appetizer and that, with a bottle of wine, kept the party going while Jim and one of the guys ran to Bear Tooth for take-out pizza.

Here's my guacamole recipe. No sourdough recipes for a while to come.

Teri's guacamole

The amount of lime juice, salt and salsa that you use will depend on personal taste, and the size of the avocados, which can vary a lot from season to season.

Five ripe avocadoes in large pieces (halves or quarters), skin and pits discarded
Two to four tablespoons Nellie Joe's key lime juice
One tablespoon salt
One eighth to one quarter cup finely chopped fresh cilantro leaves
Eight ounces medium spicy salsa from a jar (Fresh salsa tends to be too watery, and the flavors aren't blended as well as salsa from a jar)

Combine in a large bowl, and chop.  The real secret -- the final guacamole should  be a bit chunky. I use a Foley nut chopper (you can find them on eBay and the like), you could also mash with a large fork, or  anything that will leave you with some pureed avocado and lots of pieces of different sizes. Think coarsely chopped nuts, or Grape Nuts. Because the textures are varied, the individual tastes comes through, with an underlying smooth base of flavor. Serve with your favorite chips.

Followup note, November 7, 2013: An experienced baker told me recently that the key to a light sourdough crust or bread is to provide a really moist environment -- not just in the oven, but during the final rise. I haven't tried that yet, but will rejoice and post the results if it works.

The neighbor's no-knead bread

                                          Mark Titzel's no-knead bread, fresh from the oven.

Our neighbor Mark across the street and I debated last week about sourdough vs. Jim Lahey's No-knead breads. Mark wins this one hands down. He came over this evening bearing a rounded perfectly-crusted, never-kneaded loaf, hot from his oven. It made me think that while I'm learning sourdough, maybe I owe it to myself to try this tasty and relatively simple bread.

Mark said that he used the well-known Jim Lahey recipe for 18-hour no-knead bread that was published in the New York Times in 2006 (see below). Since then, Mr. Lahey has published a book, and demonstrated and written extensively about his method.

I'm a complete beginner at breads, and especially at being able to understand the intricacies of 21st century artisan breads. My first loaves, and most of them for the next several decades came from the Rombauers' 1967 "Joy of Cooking." Those were days of milk, sugar, and butter in the bread, even the French bread (click here for a slight variation on that recipe) that today would have simply water, flour, yeast and a bit of salt (click here for a more modern recipe for French bread).

A few weeks ago,  Alyeska Bake Shop gave me some of their sourdough starter, and it couldn't just sit in the back of the fridge. I got busy reading and working with a whole new set of recipes, techniques, and terminologies -- folds, levains, preferments, Dutch ovens, bread stones, and more. I'm too much of a novice to compare the No-Knead technique with the variety of ways in which artisan breads rise and are kneaded, and proofed and baked. But there are similarities. Both the Lahey technique and sourdough breads rely on long fermenting times to give them more complex flavor. Both call for baking breads in ovens much hotter than those recommended in the early "Joy of Cooking." They do without the sugar, butter, and milk that seemed to be standard for the 1960s recipes, and work their wonders with flour, water, yeast and a bit of salt.

                              The no-knead bread -- a light crumb and thin, crisp crust -- ready for jam or cheese.

Suffice it to say that Mark's gift was both beautiful and delicious. Jim and I have been nibbling away all evening, and are looking forward to toasting this and slathering it with butter and homemade raspberry jam (or maybe Matanuska honey) for breakfast on Mothers' Day tomorrow.

Baking the Perfect Loaf of Bread at Home

Formula and Process created by Jim Lahey, owner of Sullivan St Bakery

Formula: 

3 cups (430g) flour
1½ cups (345g or 12oz) water
¼ teaspoon (1g) yeast
1¼ teaspoon (8g) salt
olive oil (for coating)
extra flour, wheat bran, or cornmeal (for dusting)

Equipment: 

Two medium mixing bowls
6 to 8 quart pot with lid (Pyrex glass, Le Creuset cast iron, or ceramic)
Wooden Spoon or spatula (optional)
Plastic wrap
Two or three cotton dish towels (not terrycloth)

Process: 

Mix all of the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Add water and incorporate by hand or with a wooden spoon or spatula for 30 seconds to 1 minute. Lightly coat the inside of a second medium bowl with olive oil and place the dough in the bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest 12 hours at room temperature (approx. 65-72°F).

Remove the dough from the bowl and fold once or twice. Let the dough rest 15 minutes in the bowl or on the work surface. Next, shape the dough into ball. Generously coat a cotton towel with flour, wheat bran, or cornmeal; place the dough seam side down on the towel and dust with flour. Cover the dough with a cotton towel and let rise 1-2 hours at room temperature, until more than doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 450-500°F. Place the pot in the oven at least 30 minutes prior to baking to preheat. Once the dough has more than doubled in volume, remove the pot from the oven and place the dough in the pot seam side up. Cover with the lid and bake 30 minutes Then remove the lid and bake 15-30 minutes uncovered, until the loaf is nicely browned.

Sourdough thrives at Wild Oven Bakehouse in Juneau, Alaska

Sourdough thrives at Wild Oven Bakehouse in Juneau, Alaska

A February day's offerings at Wild Oven Bakehouse, Juneau, Alaska. [Photo, Teri Carns, 2013.]

Wild Oven Bakehouse in Juneau, Alaska is home to naturally yeasted breads of uncommon deliciousness. Daniel Martin, founder and chief baker, talked in a recent email about his house starters and the techniques behind the satisfying foccacias, hearty peasant breads, and traditional Chinook sourdoughs.

"A woman in Juneau gave me my starter. It was in moderately decent condition compared to the neglected starters in most people's refrigerators, and I brought it into vigorous health in about a week.

If you want to produce a starter with good yeast activity you have to 'build' it, not just 'feed' it. The microorganisms in sourdough (wild yeast and lactobacteria) grow exponentially:  1 cell makes 2 cells makes 4 cells makes 8 etc.  This will happen every couple of hours in an active, room-temperature starter, so if you want to provide enough food for the organisms you have a to build your starter exponentially.

Here's a rough example of how we would build our starter in the evening (6pm) to be ready to make bread with at 6am: 1 lb.  active sourdough  +  4 lbs. whole-wheat flour  +  4 lbs. water   =   9 lbs. of finished starter. We mix the starter with cool water (about 50 degrees) and in a warm bakery, the starter is about 70 degrees by 6a.m. That should give you a sense of how much room you need to allow for the wild organisms to thrive.

Absolutely anybody can grow their own starter from flour and water and nurture it into vitality in a month or less. That it means that everyone on the planet can harness microorganisms to make sourdough bread (and other fermented foods) without any proprietary knowledge or materials and with no additional cost.  Fermentation is free. I make bread with Wild Sourdough Culture because I believe such bread is superior in flavor, nutrition and keeping quality to rapidly risen, vapid american-style yeast breads.

The ideal loaf is a hearth-baked bread with a dark brown crust color which freely emanates the peculiarly intoxicating bread-aroma which is absent or subdued in breads with under-baked, pale crusts and which is often overwhelmed by the dead-yeast aroma of typical yeasted breads.  The crumb (that is, everything inside the crust) should reveal lots of medium and large sized holes.  This is achieved by an adequately proofed, very wet dough and facilitated by the use of sourdough.

Kalamata olive and rosemary loaves from Wild Oven Bakehouse. [Marilyn Holmes photo, 2010.]

The flavor should be mildly sour, with no yeasty taste whatsoever, and rich in the complex, indescribable flavors only attainable by proper use of wild sourdough culture.  The bread will be chewy.  I prefer the more tender texture achieved by use of whole grain flours.  Such breads will also keep way better, as long as adequate (as in "lots") of water is used in the dough.

Get your hands dirty (dough hooks are for sissies).  You will develop a feel for the bread more readily by hand-mixing.

Use a drier starter and a wetter dough.  If your starter is like pancake batter it's too wet.  Mix your starter so that it is like a very very wet dough.  Use your hands and a bowl or small bucket to mix.  Whole-grain flour mixes way more easily and has more flavor and nutrition.  It also ferments more quickly--naturally, it has more life in it.

About wet dough:  your dough should be so wet that it wants to stick to everything--your hands, counter top, etc.  It will be hard to work with and shape and you will only get comfortable doing so by making many, many loaves.  I was probably on my 300th loaf before I stopped wanting to pull my hair out.   Remember this: if it's easy to work with, add more water.

Some other tips:

Build your starter twice a day if you are using it daily and don't refrigerate it for more than a week without a build.  Build a stagnate starter at least three times before using it.  If you don't see lots of yeast activity (i.e. gas bubbles), give it more time and more builds.

You can use wheat, white, spelt and rye pretty interchangeably in your starter based on what the flour composition of your final product should be. The different flours will ferment at different rates so keep that in mind. From most to least active you have:

whole rye

whole wheat/whole spelt

white

Get a cast-iron non-enameled lidded dutch oven or "combo cooker"  and learn how to use it. You will get phenomenal results.

Buy this book: "Tartine Bread" by Chad Robertson.  He is as dedicated and accomplished an artisan baker as exists in this country.  And damn he makes some sexy bread."

Daniel Martin pulls loaves of kalamata bread with olives and rosemary from the oven. [Photo by Marilyn Holmes, 2010.]

Wild Oven Bakehouse is tucked in below the Observatory Bookshop at the corner of North Franklin and Third (299 N. Franklin). [Photo by Teri Carns, 2013.]

Contact Wild Oven Bakehouse at bread@wildoven.com, or (907) 321-6836

To learn how flour and water becomes
WILD OVEN bread,

check out the facebook album "Behind the Bread."

The official state microbe?

Microbes gaining status – will they be official state representatives?

Image from http://www.yeastgenome.org/.


Yeast takes wheat, and grapes, and many other grains and fruits, and turns them from serviceable foods to nectar and ambrosia for the gods. The formal name for the microbe that gives both bread and beer their effervescence and intoxicating qualities is Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Saccharo = sugar; myces = fungus; and cerevisiae = “of beer.” Not coincidentally, it’s the same yeast that makes wine and ethanol, and it plays a supporting role in the culturing of some types of cheese.

Now Oregon may give Saccharomyces cerevisiae some earthly status. Oregon state house representatives passed a bill to name S. cerevisiae as the official state microbe on April 16, 2013. If the state’s Senate passes the bill and the governor signs it, Oregon will be the first state with an official microbe.

Although Oregon chose S. cerevisiae because of its connection with the microbreweries for which the state has become famous, other states might choose it for their own reasons. Iowa could adopt S. cerevisiae to represent the importance in the state’s economy of the ethanol from corn by S. cerevisiae’s hard work. California could select S. cerevisiae because it makes possible both the wine and sourdough bread that bring the state renown (although the wine connection becomes more difficult to argue each year – now, all fifty states have wineries using local fruits).

Wisconsin came close to being the first with an official microbe, Lactococcus lactis, the cheese microbe. But the Wisconsin Senate disagreed, and L. lactis continues its labors on Wisconsin’s behalf without formal recognition.

Hawaii, too, has considered the wisdom of establishing a microbe, Nesiotobacter exalbescens , in the world of symbols  that states select to characterize themselves. Unlike Saccharomyces and Lactococcus, Nesiobacter’s claim to fame is its rarity, rather than its everyday usefulness. It lives only in one  super-salty lake on an obscure island, and is of greatest interest to astrobiologists. The Hawaii legislature has yet to take action on Nesiobacter, and it, like Wisconsin’s Lactococcus, must live out its microbial adventures without recognition.

You can buy a plush Saccharomyces cerevisiae for your child’s stuffed toy collection [it looks a lot like a snoutless hamster], or earrings made in the shape of budding yeasts. You can buy it dried, in the form of sourdough starters or beer or wine yeasts, or check out the website showing experiments of all sorts that rely on it. Even without the status of Oregon’s official microbe, Saccharomyces cerevisiae will continue to entertain and nourish us in a multitude of ways.

A map of sourdough starters for sharing, in the Czech Republic

Sharing sourdough starters is a time-honored tradition. Tonight I gave part of the starter that the Alyeska Bake Shop shared me on Easter to a friend down the street. They got it in 1964 from the Sourdough Lodge  on the Richardson Highway near Gakona, Alaska, and the Lodge folk in turn got it from "a fortune-seeking gold miner" in the late 1800s. Thus, a map published by Matador Network on March 18, 2013 struck a chord. The author, Tereza Jarnikova, described it as:

"Sourdough bread is made using naturally occurring yeast. The process involves making a mixture of flour and water and waiting for natural yeast and bacteria to come hang out with it. Once this happens, the dough can start rising, but it can be a painfully slow and ornery process, so it’s much easier to just get a piece of naturally yeasted dough (called a starter) from someone who has one and then keep it alive. Enter the sourdough map, which maps people in your neighbourhood who have a sourdough starter and are willing to share it. The heartening and fascinating thing about it all is the sheer number of participants — from the map it looks like no matter where you are, there is someone within ten kilometers of you who will help you bake homemade bread. Here, in our little forgotten country of the Czech Republic, invisible in the streets, is a whole army of people who care about homemade food. The project is simple and brilliant and fills me with some small amorphous optimism about the world."










Scroll down for the map:

Najděte si ve svém okolí člověka, který se s vámi podělí o kvásek!
 Nenašli jste špendlík ve svém městě? Prohlédněte si úplnou verzi kváskové mapy!

Foraging for a sourdough link

Lichens for dinner? Pine bark petit fours? Fireweed shoots and fiddlehead ferns? These appeared on the menu from Faviken Magasinet, as reported by FoodSnob blog, but could have been foraged from my backyard woods in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska which lies at nearly the same latitude as Jarpen, Sweden. Although no restaurant in Anchorage routinely serves lichens or fireweed shoots, many serve sourdough bread, also found at Magnus Nilsson's "superlocavore" Faviken Magasinet.

The sourdough appeared in a description of a May meal prepared by Mr. Nilsson. Many of the courses offered -- Wild Trouts Roe served in a Warm Crust of Dried Ducks Blood  for example, or pine bark petit fours for after dessert presented bits of nature that I don't usually think of as edible. The methods of preparation were equally unfamiliar. Shavings of Old Sow and Wild Goose featured thinly-shaved pork from a sow that had been hanging to dry for two years, and slices of goose that were aged for nine months. Many of the other ingredients saw their beginnings in previous years -- the "mature fermented mushroom juices from last year," and the duck egg and sour milk liquors. Some dishes, particularly the scallops, were still alive when cooked at the table before the waiting diners, or, like the fireweed, had been foraged earlier the same day.

Intriguingly, the sourdough bread was one of the few things served at the meal that would have been recognized and served without fanfare almost anywhere, especially Alaska. Made with 200-year-old sourdough from the chef's grandmother, flour from wheat grown nearby, and the grandmother's kneading trough, the end result was more about tradition than about emphasizing creative and minimalist presentations.  "Bröd och smör: Tove’s Bread and the Very Good Butter. As the bread was brought out, an old kneading trough was shown off. It was served with a story. This was the same tray that once belonged to Magnus Nilsson’s grandmother and her grandmother before her; it still harbours traces of the same sourdough culture she used – now over two hundred years old. The family connection does not end there: with this ancestral starter, flour from Järna near Stockholm and from an island in lake Storsjön processed together at a mill in Östersund, he uses his wife’s recipe to bake a pain au levain loaf that possessed a thin yet crunchy crust and dense, dark yet moist and fluffy crumb. It was simply excellent. The very good butter (its official name here), from close by Oviken and with a texture like melting cheddar, was superb too." [from the Food Snob blog review]

The degree of focus on terroir -- "the sum of the effects that the local environment has had" on the taste and qualities of a food, and attention to preparation of food found at Farviken Magasinet might seem limiting to most Alaskans, even those who work with the same principles of eating local foods. Kirsten Dixon, one of the state's better known chefs (she recently appeared on the Today show) and cookbook authors creates with foods found in Alaska, but happily combines raw seaweed pulled from the Tutka Bay beach with flax seed, sun-dried tomatoes, lemon juice and cayenne pepper into sea crackers that have their roots in half a dozen different climates.

From her perspective, Alaskan cuisine is based in the many cultures that have left their mark on Alaska -- the Alaskan Native peoples, the Russians, Asians, and the gold miners. She sees sourdough as representative of "hearty and determined pioneers." Swedish cuisine as re-imagined by Mr. Nilsson with his innovations at Farviken Magasinet draws on local ingredients and techniques that have been used for generations within that one country, including his grandmother's sourdough. And thus the sourdough bread that links the two cuisines is just as at home in the Alaskan repetoire as it is in Jarpen.