JT's 85x3

This bread with an improbable name is the one which won its creator John Tredgold (aka JT) a spot on Bread Team USA 2010, so you'd better believe it's good. It is in fact awesome, so much so that it will become a fixture in my house on baking days. You should have seen the speed at which it was wolfed down by my grandchildren when I brought the loaves over. Everyone went back for seconds and thirds, from the 3-year old twins to their teenage brother and sister. Of course the older kids were completely unaware when devouring it that they were ingesting the very same healthful whole grains as the ones they scorn when listed on the wrapper of a supermarket sliced loaf. Nothing like a deliciously crunchy crust and a complex taste to make you forget your dearest principles!

The 85x3 gets its matchless aromas from a high-extraction flour as well as from the use of three different preferments, a biga, a poolish and a levain. The biga and the levain are made with 100% high-extraction flour while the poolish uses regular bread flour.

JT used Artisan Old Country Organic Type 85 malted Wheat Flour (ash content: 0.85%) from Central Milling. I didn't have access to that flour, so I used La Milanaise's "farine tamisée" which contains just a tad more bran. La Milanaise flours are not sold retail in this country. I got mine from a friend who owns a bakery. If you don't have access to a high-extraction flour, a reasonable substitute would be to use 80% organic white flour and 20% whole wheat flour.

I didn't have raw wheat germ, so I left it out of the recipe. Also because it was cool in my house (much cooler than in the bakery at Semifreddi's), the poolish and the biga took their own sweet time to ferment and I ended up mixing the final dough too late in the day to contemplate baking before night. So I left the dough at room temperature (about 64 F/18C) for one hour, folded it once and put it in the fridge (on the top shelf where it is a tad less cold). The following morning, I took it out, gave it a fold and let it come back to room temperature (one hour and a half to two hours) before dividing, shaping, etc.

JT's original formula can be be found here. The recipe below is my interpretation.

Ingredients: (for 2 bâtards, 1 fendu, 2 crowns and 1 boule)

Biga 190 g high-extraction flour 114 g water 0.003 g salt (a tiny tiny pinch, basically a few grains) 0.003 g instant yeast (a tiny tiny pinch too) Poolish 190 g organic white flour 209 g water 0.003 g salt 0.003 g instant yeast Levain (mine was 40% whole-grain, mostly wheat and spelt with a little bit of rye) 380 g high-extraction flour 209 g water 190 g firm starter Final dough 631 g high-extraction flour 353 g organic white flour 761 g water (I used slightly less water than JT, probably because my flours were less thirsty than the ones he used) 34 g salt 0.17 g instant yeast 305 g biga 400 g poolish 780 g levain

Method (this bread is made over two days)

1. Mix the biga, the poolish and the levain and leave them to ferment at room temperature for 10 to 12 hours
2. When the preferments are ready, mix flour, poolish and 80% of the water in the bowl of the mixer until the flour is completely hydrated and let rest for 30 minutes (autolyse)
3. Add the biga, the levain, the yeast, the salt and remaining wateras needed and mix until the dough starts to develop strength, then add more water until medium soft consistency is reached (JT says: "A second water addition is used for this mix. I tend to prefer this style of mixing. Instead of holding back say 5-10% of the water and dribbling it into the bowl when you feel comfortable. I like to create the final dough and on the last minute throw all the water in one go. The dough will start to shred and start 'swimming'. Do not panic and add flour! It’s a bit like accelerating through a skid, Don't put your foot on the brake")
4. Transfer the dough to an oiled container, cover it tightly
5. Give it a fold after one hour then put the container in the fridge overnight
6. In the morning, take the dough out of the fridge and give it a fold
7. Let it come back to low room temperature and divide by 500 g, preshaping as cylinders or boules according to the desired shapes
8. Shape and let proof, covered, for one to one and a half hour
9. Pre-heat the oven to 470 F/243 C one hour before baking (my oven doesn't heat very well. A lower temperature setting might work just fine in your oven), taking care to put it in a baking stone and, underneath, a heavy metal pan for steaming (mine contains barbecue stones which we bought solely for steaming purposes)
10. Dust with flour and score as desired (as can be seen from the above pictures, deep scoring and angled surface scoring yield very different "ears" in the final loaves)
11. Pour a cup of water over the barbecue stones in the steam tray, lower the oven temperature to 450 F/232 C and bake for 40 minutes
12. JT recommends turning off the heat after 30 minutes and leaving the bread an additional 15 minutes in the oven with the door ajar. I will try that next time as I found the crumb a little bit moist when I first sliced open one of the cooled loaves.

Related post: Meet the Baker: John Tredgold

JT's 85x3 goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast for Yeastpotting.

Pavé au levain

Have you ever wished you could just bake (part of) your levain and eat it, so that you can savor its pure unadulterated flavor? Every time I feed it and breathe in its fragrance I wish I could do just that. But of course I resist the impulse (since it probably wouldn't turn out too good as is anyway) and I just keep on enjoying the scent. Recently however I have been feeding my liquid levain (not the one I made with Gérard) some high-extraction organic flour from Québec I received as a present and the levain started producing such aromas that the impulse to just bake it became irresistible. That's when I remembered the pavés au levain we made last spring at SFBI in Didier Rosada's Whole Grains workshop. So, yes, you can have your levain and eat it too. And I cannot even begin to describe how delectable the result is. Pure heaven! Didier said hazelnuts and/or fruit can be added to the dough. But I don't see how it is possible to improve on the flavor. Ingredients (for 4 smallish free-form pavés): 295 g white starter @95% hydration, fed three times with high-extraction flour (if no high-extraction flour is available, use 80 % organic all-purpose flour and 20 % organic whole wheat flour after sifting out the coarser bran particles) 736 g high-extraction flour 573 g water (I started with 442 g and added more water on the go until the dough reached medium soft consistency) 18 g salt 7 g diastatic malt powder (if no malt had been added to the flour at the mill, which was the case for this Quebec flour) Method:

1. Mix flour and water (at the required temperature to get a final dough temperature of 70-73ºF/21-23ºC) and let rest (autolyse) for about 45 minutes
2. Add the levain and more water as needed, mix until very soft
3. Add the salt (I love the way watching the dough tighten up once the salt is added and I now always add the salt towards the end of the mixing as I find it makes it easier to get the right consistency)
4. Add water if needed after incorporating the salt
5. Transfer dough (which will be rather slack) into an oiled bin, cover tightly and let ferment at warm room temperature for two hours with one fold after the first hour (since the room was cool, I let the dough ferment three hours with one fold after two hours)
6. Invert the dough onto a table dusted with flour, then cut squares or other shapes free-form using a sharp dough-scraper
7. Transfer to a baking sheet covered with flour-dusted parchment paper, dust with more flour and let rise, covered, for an hour and a half
8. Pre-heat the oven at 450ºF/232ºC after putting into it a baking stone and a heavy-duty metal pan (for steaming)
9. Gently slide the breads onto the hot baking stone, add one cup of water to the metal pan and quickly close the oven door
10. Bake for 35 minutes (a bit longer if you made big loaves, a bit less if you made individual ones). Check at mid-point to see whether or not you need to rotate the loaves (Didier advises keeping the oven door ajar for the last 10 minutes of baking but I think that mostly apply to professional ovens. If there is one thing that my home oven does well, it is exhaling steam full-speed the minute it detects any. So I didn't open the door)
11. When done, let cool on a wire rack and prepare your taste buds for rapture!

The pavé au levain goes to Susan, from Wild Yeast for Yeastpotting.