Day 6 5/27

Light Rye (NY Deli) #1:

20% dark rye flour.  20% levain with a little supplemental yeast.  Shaped and baked as a country loaf.  Caraway seeds added.

Very nice flavor.  As is typical in this style, the caraway distracts from the flavor of the rye flour, but it's hard to complain because this is my favorite type of bread for sandwiches.  As it was made with levain it tasted better than your average deli loaf.  This bread would work very well with grains, dried fruit, perhaps even gruyere.

Black Bread #1:

20% dark rye flour.  20% levain.  3% cocoa powder, 18% black coffee and 3% gin give this bread it's character, along with caraway.

I learned this recipe under the name "russian black bread" from my previous mentor and it was a favorite of ours.  It is reminiscent of pumpernickel but is not technically pumpernickel.  The unique additions give a haunting flavor and color.  I would add molasses next time and use a different spice - perhaps juniper.  Also I would bake it in the pullman pan.  Would work very well if any of the restaurants wanted a bread to go with a smoked fish course.

 

Marbled Rye #1:

Folded various sized pieces of both of the above mentioned breads into each other.  Pretty simple actually.

Looks very neat and I think would sell well eventually, but not as of the beginnings of the bakery.  This technique can be extrapolated though in various ways...

 

Baguette #5

Moved away from poolish for this iteration.  Went for 20% levain and 20% pate fermente.  .3% yeast, cut in half from the previous recipe.

Best baguettes yet.  The flavor is certainly where I want it, and fresh out of the oven it is very nice, with the toasted starch aroma good baguettes have (think popcorn, sort of.)  Color was the best, and I don't know if it's because of the change of pre-ferments in the recipe or my loading-steaming-baking-venting routine is getting smoother.  500 more bakes will iron that out :)  Crumb was more lace-like, but not absurdly open.  Now I need to repeat this.  I used a shape I saw in a spanish bread book where the ends are left alone so they have little knobs.  Unique and attractive.  Could be used for a different bread that we want in the baguette general shape but need it to be differentiated in some way.