One of my favorite breads that I purchase from Jim Lahey’s Sullivan Street Bakery to bring back to Texas with me whenever I visit New York City is their walnut-raisin loaf. It is a round, dark, fairly flat loaf with a good amount of chopped walnuts and raisins and what appears to be a faint taste of cinnamon. Like the bakery’s other breads, it is based on using organic flour, water, a natural starter, salt and yeast (commercial). Although I had not tried the No Knead dough method before, I decide to try to replicate the walnut-raisin-cinnamon loaf using a modified form of that method. I also decided that I would use only a natural starter for leavening purposes and, for this purpose, I resurrected my Camaldoli starter that had lain dormant in my refrigerator for several months.
I started by using the weight measurements that appeared in Reply 43 at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php/topic,4114.msg35679.html#msg35679. Then, using the new preferment dough calculating tool at
http://www.pizzamaking.com/preferment_calculator.html, I calculated the ingredients I would need to make the basic dough based on a starter (the Camaldoli starter) used at 20% of the total formula flour and having a water content at 60%. To compensate for expected dough losses in the bowl, I used a bowl residue factor of 5%. I ended up with the following dough formulation:
Total Formula:
Flour (100%):
Water (80.2326%):
Salt (1.86046%):
Total (182.09306%):
Preferment:
Flour:
Water:
Total:
Final Dough:
Flour:
Water:
Salt:
Preferment:
Total:
|
451.5 g | 15.93 oz | 1 lbs
362.25 g | 12.78 oz | 0.8 lbs
8.4 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.5 tsp | 0.5 tbsp
822.15 g | 29 oz | 1.81 lbs | TF = N/A
36.12 g | 1.27 oz | 0.08 lbs
54.18 g | 1.91 oz | 0.12 lbs
90.3 g | 3.19 oz | 0.2 lbs
415.38 g | 14.65 oz | 0.92 lbs
308.07 g | 10.87 oz | 0.68 lbs
8.4 g | 0.3 oz | 0.02 lbs | 1.5 tsp | 0.5 tbsp
90.3 g | 3.19 oz | 0.2 lbs
822.15 g | 29 oz | 1.81 lbs | TF = N/A
|
In the course of preparing the dough, I made several changes to the basic No Knead method. First, I used organic all-purpose flour. In my case it was the King Arthur "Artisan" organic all-purpose flour, and it was sifted before using. Second, I replaced part of the formula flour with vital wheat gluten (Hodgson Mills brand) in order to increase the protein content of the all-purpose flour to a bread flour level (12.7%) and to hopefully increase the volume rise of the dough to compensate for the leadening effects of the addition of a fair amount of chopped walnuts and raisins to the dough. I used November’s Mixed Mass Percentage Calculator at
http://tools.foodsim.com/ to apportion the total flour between the KA organic flour and the vital wheat gluten. The amount of VWG was about 8 grams, or approximately 3 teaspoons.
Third, I used a more or less classic autolyse, with a rest period of about 20 minutes after the VWG was whisked into the water in a large bowl and the bulk of the flour had been mixed together in the bowl, using a sturdy wooden spoon. I followed these steps with the addition of the starter (about 5 T. and 1 t.), a tablespoon of nondiastatic barley malt syrup (Eden brand), the remaining flour, and the salt. The barley malt syrup was used to provide a bit of sweetness to the finished loaf and to help increase the browning of the crust to achieve the characteristic dark brown color of the Sullivan Street Bakery walnut-raisin loaf. The syrup would also produce a darker colored crumb as is also characteristic of the Sullivan Street Bakery walnut-raisin loaf.
Once the dough was complete, I put it into a lightly covered container and then into my ThermoKool MR-138 unit, set at 75° F (for a typical photo of the unit, see
http://www.focususa.com/showpage.asp?categoryid=14&category=personalcare&subcategoryid=275&subcategory=travel&itemid=2953&template=product_info.htm). Since my Camaldoli starter was still a bit on the weak side after several months in the refrigerator, I did not know how long it would take for the dough to rise and develop bubbling at the upper surface of the dough to tell me to proceed to the next step. In my case, it took about 28 hours, with the bulk of the activity taking place in the final few hours. I would estimate that the dough increased by about 50-60%. The dough was then brought to my work area and I kneaded about one teaspoon of ground cinnamon into the dough, which was very soft and wet at this stage, along with about 3 ounces of chopped walnuts and 7 ounces of raisins. The cinnamon was added at this stage rather than earlier because I had read that there is a component of cinnamon, cynnamic aldehyde, that can adversely affect yeast performance. The chopped walnuts and raisins were worked into the dough using a pair of bench knives (a.k.a. bench scrapers) only. Because the dough was very wet, especially before I added the walnuts and raisins, whenever I felt I had to touch the dough to shape it a bit, I used wet hands so that the dough wouldn't stick to my fingers.
To bake the loaf, I decided not to use the method used most commonly with the No Knead dough but rather to use my baking stone, and to bake the loaf on parchment paper. This is a method that I believe Rose Levy Berenbaum mentioned in her blog on the No Knead topic, and to me seems to be a more sure way of handling and baking the dough than using the types of baking utensils and associated dough handling methods discussed by those who have experimented with the No Knead method. In lieu of the bran flakes that Sullivan Street Bakery appears to use on the bottom of their walnut-raisin dough before baking, I used a seven-grain mix that was the closest I had to the bran flakes, but which appears to include bran flakes as part of the mix. I scattered some of the grain mix on a piece of parchment paper, which had been put on my peel, and deposited the wet dough mass on the parchment paper for the final 3-hour rise period.
About an hour before the conclusion of that period, I preheated my baking stone on the middle oven rack position for about an hour at 500° F. At the same time, I placed a pie tin filled with stones on the lowest oven rack position so that they would also heat up along with the stone. Just prior to loading the dough into the oven, I poured water into the tin with the stones to create a moist oven environment for the dough. After loading the dough into the oven, I lowered the oven temperature to 450° F, and for a couple of times thereafter within the next five minutes, I spritzed the sides of the oven with a spray water bottle. The bread was baked for about 35-40 minutes, or until the center was at a temperature of around 206° F.
The photos below show the finished loaf--top, bottom, and cross-sectional views. It had very nice color and was very tasty with well balanced flavors. The baked loaf weighed about 2 pounds 4 ounces and very much resembled the Sullivan Street Bakery loaf in just about all respects, except that it was quite a bit larger. I will most likely tinker with the formulation in future efforts in search for improvement. For example, I might use more cinnamon, barley malt syrup, and nuts and raisins, and possibly try out dried cranberries or cherries. And I may play around with the amount and type of starter used and fermentation temperatures. If I can find a relatively easy and convenient way to use my large oval Creuset pot, I may try that also.
Peter
