Jim Lahey's Sourdough Bread and Recipe

[Pete-zza]

Bloomberg features Jim Lahey's sourdough bread, at:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-27/new-york-s-bread-master-teaches-you-how-to-make-easy-sourdough

Peter

[jsaras]

Hi Peter,

Is this math correct?

[TXCraig1]

The crumb in the loaf captioned as "exceptional sourdough bread" looks absolutely terrible.

[mitchjg]

The crumb in the loaf captioned as "exceptional sourdough bread" looks absolutely terrible.

Yep, looks like one of my mistakes more than a nice bread.

The video recipe and the written recipe are not the same.  The timetable in the video and the amount of SF is much shorter/less than in the recipe.  The written recipe is actually a very standard looking same day sourdough. 

I have made a zillion of them that are around 25% starter (as a % of total flour) - this one is 100 grams out of 350 flour (300 flour + 50 in the starter) which is 29%.  Initial and final proof totaling around 5 hours.  So, the written recipe is very nice but no big whoop.  The approach in the video looks awful.

[Pete-zza]

Hi Peter,

Is this math correct?

Jonas,

Jim Lahey mentioned that his starter is a "biga", although what he shows looks to be wetter than a true biga. However, many people use the term biga as a more or less generic name for a wet preferment. For purposes of conversion of the printed recipe to baker's percent format, we can treat the starter as a poolish, as you did. I also assumed that Jim was using a regular salt. Of course, you can use an amount of Kosher salt that is equivalent to table salt.

Here is what I came up with:

Total Formula: Flour (100%): Water (80%): Salt (1.71428%): Total (181.71428%): Preferment: Flour: Water: Total: Final Dough: Flour : Water: Salt: Preferment: Total:

350 g  |  12.35 oz | 0.77 lbs 280 g  |  9.88 oz | 0.62 lbs 6 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.07 tsp | 0.36 tbsp 636 g | 22.43 oz | 1.4 lbs | TF = N/A 50 g | 1.76 oz | 0.11 lbs 50 g | 1.76 oz | 0.11 lbs 100 g | 3.53 oz | 0.22 lbs 300 g | 10.58 oz | 0.66 lbs 230 g | 8.11 oz | 0.51 lbs 6 g | 0.21 oz | 0.01 lbs | 1.07 tsp | 0.36 tbsp 100 g | 3.53 oz | 0.22 lbs 636 g | 22.43 oz | 1.4 lbs  | TF = N/A

Note: The preferment (poolish) is 50% flour and 50% water and is equal to 28.5714 % of the total formula flour.

I should note that the flour blend numbers may not be as clean as I noted because the flour used in the King Arthur starter called for in the printed recipe is a basic white flour that is unbleached and enriched:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop-img/labels/1443556031700.pdf

Peter

[parallei]

Yep, looks like one of my mistakes more than a nice bread.

Exactly.  Hate those huge tunnels.  After hearing under-fermented, over-fermented, the moon was in the wrong phase.......What finally worked for me was a bit more aggressive final shaping.

[Rolls]

To his credit, Jim Lahey has done much to inspire people to try baking bread and pizza at home.  IMO the value of his recipes lies mostly in their simplicity and accessibility rather than the quality of the finished product.


Rolls

[parallei]

To his credit, Jim Lahey has done much to inspire people to try baking bread and pizza at home........

Rolls

Absolutely.  Many people, myself included, started to figure out what one could do at home with Lahey's no-knead boules.  Bittman sending it around the world via the NYT didn't hurt either!

[Jersey Pie Boy]

Me too, Paul! It set me on the path to both bread and pizza...Because the recipes are so simple, even at the beginning you can get decent results instead of discouraging failures. There's a lot to be said for that!  If I'd even considered say, Tartine, or Scholl's at the beginning,  I probably never would have kept at it.

[Pete-zza]

As I noted at Reply 4 at https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=12651.msg121358;topicseen#msg121358, I once met Jim Lahey outside of his bakery when he tried to talk me into taking one of his courses. He struck me as a nice, unpretentious type of guy. I'm glad to see the degree of success he has achieved. I also had a chance to talk to one of his bakers who told me that they used commercial yeast as well as sourdough in many of their breads. I had asked about that method because the breads did not have an overly pronounced sourdough flavor.

Peter

[HansB]

Me too, Paul! It set me on the path to both bread and pizza...Because the recipes are so simple, even at the beginning you can get decent results instead of discouraging failures. There's a lot to be said for that!  If I'd even considered say, Tartine, or Scholl's at the beginning,  I probably never would have kept at it.

Absolutely.  Many people, myself included, started to figure out what one could do at home with Lahey's no-knead boules.  Bittman sending it around the world via the NYT didn't hurt either!

Me too. His No Knead pizza recipe was one of my first successful pies after all of the recipes I tried that start with, "use one packet of active dry yeast."

[parallei]

Me too. His No Knead pizza recipe was one of my first successful pies after all of the recipes I tried that start with, "use one packet of active dry yeast."

I still make his no knead pizza bianca to stuff goodies in!

https://www.pizzamaking.com/forum/index.php?topic=1464.msg94887#msg94887