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Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
This week we’re going to make French Style Sourdough Bread. The idea for this bread comes from a great bakery deli just tucked away off the main campus of the University of Michigan (Go Blue!), Zingerman’s Deli. They make a Chocolate Sourdough bread that is out of this world. It also cost $10 bucks plus shipping so I decided to see if I could replicate the recipe and share it with you.
This bread is all about technique. None of them are hard in and of themselves, but you have to do them all in order to get the fine crumb, the hard crust and the proper proportion of sour and sweet flavors that make this bread such a joy to eat. Being that this is a sourdough it also lets us kick off a few weeks of sourdough recipes since once you have the starter there is no reason not to bake sourdough bread.
Last week I gave you a starter recipe. I am going to give it again since it is an integral part of the bread. Without further adieu, let’s bake!
Sourdough Starter
Ingredients:
1 cup 2% milk (non-fat is okay if that is what you have in the house, don’t use whole milk)
3 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 cup flour
Method:
Sterilize a 1 ½ quart glass, ceramic, rigid plastic or stainless steel container by putting it in boiling water for 5 minutes. Wipe dry with a clean clothe.
While the container is being sterilized, heat the milk to between 90 and 100 degrees (just lukewarm). Remove from the heat and whisk in the yogurt. Pour into the warm bowl and tightly cover. I like to use a container that has an air tight lid, as this is the easiest way, but plastic wrap and a rubber band will get you the same affect.
Place in a warm place (90 degrees) and let stand for 24 hours. The best place for this is your oven with the light turned on. Place the bowl so it is close to the light. After a day the mixture should have curdled. It should be more dense than the milk, but not quite as dense as the yogurt was. If the mixture has a light pink tint to it, the milk broke. Discard the mixture and start over.
If everything looks good, gradually stir in the flour until the starter is smooth and even. Recover the bowl and return to the oven for five days. If you need to use your oven in that time just set the starter near it on the counter and as soon as the oven has cooled down return it to its place under the light.
After five days take the starter out and open the lid. You should have a good strong sour smell and the starter will be thick and bubbly. You can now store it in the refrigerator until you are ready to use it. Be sure to let it return to room temperature before using.
To replenish your starter, add ½ cup of milk and ½ cup of flour to the starter. Stir until smooth and then place in the oven near the sponge. When the sponge is ready, put the starter back in the refrigerator. This will keep a good sour flavor and make sure there is plenty of starter for other recipes.
French Chocolate Sourdough Bread
Ingredients for Sponge:
1 cup Sourdough Starter
1 ½ cups warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
2 ½ cups bread flour (for this recipe don’t use all purpose. We need the extra protein for lift)
2 teaspoons sugar
Ingredients for Dough:
2 package (4 ½ teaspoons) dry yeast
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon baking powder (unlike most recipes don’t cut this down over 5000 feet)
3 cups bread flour
3 ½ oz Bittersweet Chocolate (be sure to buy a good chocolate it makes a huge difference)
1 egg white beaten with 1 tablespoon of water
Baking Pans: 1 sheet pan, 1 broiler pan
Special Equipment: 1 Pizza Stone
Method:
To make the sponge; in a bowl combine the starter, water, flour and sugar. Stir well and then cover tightly with plastic wrap. Place the bowl in your oven with the near the oven light. Let stand for 24 hours then stir down. Let stand for another 24 hours, then it is ready for baking day.
Scrape the sponge into a large bowl or the mixing bowl of your stand mixer. Add the yeast, salt and baking soda. Stir to combine. Stir in the flour, ½ cup at a time, adding more only after all of the flour is absorbed. If you are doing this by hand the dough will get quite shaggy and you may need to work the last bit of the flour in by hand instead of with a wooden spoon. Once all the flour has been absorbed, turn the dough out onto a well floured work surface and let it rest for 10 minutes.
If you are doing this in a stand mixer, use the flat paddle and once most of the flour is incorporated, switch to the dough hook attachment. When all the flour has been absorbed, turn the machine off and let the dough rest for 10 minutes. This will prevent it from climbing the dough hook.
Knead the dough, by hand or by stand mixer for 10 minutes. The dough should be smooth and elastic at this point. Place the dough in a greased bowl and cove with plastic wrap. Place in the oven with the light on.
To get the light crumb we want, we’ll have to beat this poor dough up a lot. Let it rise undisturbed for 20 minutes. Then turn back the plastic and punch it down. Repeat this step every 10 minutes for rest of an hour (you’ll punch it down a total of 5 times).
After the fifth time, cover the bowl and let stand in the oven for 1 hour or until the dough has more than doubled in size.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead for about 30 seconds to get any air bubbles out. Press the dough out with your fingers until it is a disk about 12” in diameter. Break the chocolate up into pieces. I use a choclate bar that has lots of little places to break the chocolate, but you could just cut any bar into ¼ inch to ½ pieces. Spread the pieces evenly over the dough. Press them into the dough so they hold in place.
Fold one side over 2/3rd of the dough then fold the other side over this to make a three layer roll. Knead the dough with a strong push-turn-fold method for about a minute. This will evenly distribute the chocolate in the dough. If there are any pieces that stick out, push them back in.
Form the dough into a ball and place on sheet pan or a peel covered with parchments paper. Cove the dough with a clean tea towel and lets sit in a warm place until it has doubled in volume, about an hour to an hour and fifteen minutes.
Twenty minutes before baking, set your oven rack to a middle position, and place your pizza stone on it. If you don’t have a pizza stone you can still make this bread, it just gives it a little extra lift.
On a rack below the pizza stone set a broiler pan. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees twenty minutes. Five minutes before baking, pour 1 ½ cups of hot water in the broiler pan. Be reasonably careful of the steam this will generate.
Right before baking, slice a tic-tac-toe pattern in the top of the loaf with a sharp knife. Paint the entire loaf with the egg wash. Be sure to keep the reminding egg wash you will need it!
Using the parchment paper slide the loaf onto the hot pizza stone or place the sheet pan on the rack in the middle of the oven. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove the loaf from the oven and paint the entire thing with the remaining egg wash. Bake for another 10 minutes or until the loaf is shiny brown and gives a good hollow sound when thumped on the bottom. Be careful there may be bits of hot melted chocolate on the surface of the bread, don’t burn yourself!
When the bread is done, move it to a wire rack to cool completely. Don’t cut into this loaf early!
When it is done slice and enjoy! This bread is just the right combination of sweet and sour. It makes fabulous toast and freezes really well. If you find it getting a little stale, you can refresh it by putting it or a hunk of it in a 325 degree oven for 8 minutes.
I know this seems like a lot of work, and it is, but the rewards from French Chocolate Sourdough are well worth the effort!
Next week we’ll be killing two birds with one stone and making a Sourdough Pumpernickel!
The flour is yours
10 Comments
Thoughts? Concerns? Tickets to fly to your house and make it for you?
Swoooon
It almost looks like a pound cake, the crumb is such a fine texture. You did good!
Thanks. I am still not as happy with the rise as I could be. I might try this with a sour-Italian next.
Heh. Gotta wait another week to finish the starter.
OT Tried your biscuit recipe last week, and it was quite good. I’m wondering if you have a recommendation for a bread dough that is good for stuffed savories? In the past, I’ve used biscuit dough or pie dough, and neither yields the texture I want, which is flakey without any gumminess at all. What do you suggest?
So your making a pastry with savory filling, right?
You can use the croissant dough from this post http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/33783
or you could use a pastry dough out of the Zuni Cookbook I like for this application:
Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
8 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1 tablespoon of water
Method:
Place the flour on a clean work surface.
Cut the butter into 1/4 thick slices by cutting from the narrow end working along the length of the stick.
Lay the slices in the flour and turn to coat. Pick up each dusty piece and squeeze between your thumb and forefinger. Some will break, some will just dimple but in any case you won’t have incorporated much flour. Once you’ve squeezed all the slices, slide your hands under the mass of flour and let it fall through your fingers.
Press the mass flat and repeat. You’ll be squeezing some of the pieces together. Don’t worry if it is not completely uniform, it is not supposed to be. Repeat until you have combined about 1/3 of the flakes together and the rest looks like sawdust.
Drizzle the ice water on evenly. Work with your hands until the pieces start to look like Grape-Nuts. Then work the whole thing into a mass. Knead, gently but quickly, into a ball.
Place the ball between sheets of plastic wrap and roll out into a disk. Fold the plastic over so it coves all of the disk and refrigerate for 30 minutes before rolling into your tart or forming the pockets. This will let the gluten relax.
I’ve considered trying your croissant recipe for this purpose in the past, so I’ll try that one first. I have never tried that butter/flour technique before, so I am a little intimidated.
Have you ever tried (is it even possible?) to cut out shapes of croissant dough with a cookie cutter, or would that inhibit the flakiness at the edges? I want to make Halloween shapes stuffed with a healthy, savory filling for the kiddies Halloween carnival this year. (Gotta outdo last year and think ahead. Heh.)
You can. It will make the edges shorter but not that much. Be sure to use a really sharp cutter, it will cut down on the crushing.
Thanks!
Your bread recipes and techniques continue to amaze, Bill!
Great stuff and pix!
Thanks!