Bread week is continuing, and I’m working on getting some interesting photos to share, from some of the dough formation and the types of preferments, to shaping and other hand work.  Of interest to me, I’ve also been learning some about the preferments. 

At the basic level, a poolish is equal weights flour and water with a very tiny amount of yeast (less than 1% of the total mass) , which we leave to develop over night.  A levain is equal parts flour and water, with a varying amount of starter (one of our breads is 20% of the flour weight, I haven’t looked at the others), where the starter is our continually fed ‘baby’ or sour (flour and water mixed firm, and allowed to ferment and develop, portions being used in the breads, and the remainder fed more flour and water each day- it provides consistency in flavor and yeast activity, and can be developed to different levels of sourness, ours is mildly sour). 

A sponge is like a poolish, except there is less water added (maybe 60% of the flour mass, depending on the formula), and a soaker is seeds, grains, etc., left to soak in water and/or other liquids overnight or a specific amount of time.  Each type of preferment affects the final dough differently, including the yeast activity, texture, flavors, etc.  What their specific effects are will be the subject of another post.

We’ve been playing with some new types of breads too.  There is an olive-rosemary sourdough round, a whole-wheat with flax and sunflower-seed meal with 4 different preferments (poolish, levain, whole-wheat sponge and a flax seed soaker), and last week we introduced a whole grain bread with minced carrots in it.  The whole-wheat with flax is possibly my new favorite as it reminds me heavily of some breads I had in Germany. 

The new breads are also letting us try out new flours and ingredients.  For example, the olive sourdough includes an organic heirloom rye flour produced by Bluebird Grain Farms in Winthrop, WA.  It’s an excellent flour, and we have other sample flours of theirs that we’ll be trying out as Chef develops new formulas.  If you want to try Bluebird Grain Farms’ products, you can find them in such local stores as PCC and Whole Foods (I could swear I saw them at the Ballard Farmers’ Market one time too).  You can also buy direct from their website: http://www.bluebirdgrainfarms.com/index.html

In non-bread news, Chefs William and Jane visited the warehouse of Rosella’s Produce yesterday.  They were on the hunt for local or regional fruits for our upcoming jam and preserves projects, and were quite successful.  We have apples from the Skagit Valley, blueberries from Oregon, Strawberries from Coke Farms, concord grapes  also from Washington, and possibly others (those are the ones I saw), much of it organically grown.  We’ll be testing the brix (a measure of sugar concentration) in the upcoming days, and working out the formulas for the jams and preserves from there.  Be looking for a new selection of jams and preserves in late October to early November. 

Also, in case you are wondering, we ARE OPEN normal hours on Labor Day.  Long lines are possible, so if you know you will want a dessert or bread, etc, please feel free to call ahead.  Please remember that paid orders are only taken 48 hours in advance and in order to minimize product loss, we cannot make same-day holds, paid or not (in our busy lives, we occasionally forget the baguettes we’ve asked to be set-aside- it happens to us all).  In general, you can assume we’ll be open every day of the year except for Christmas day and New Year’s, and a few days in January for a ’spring-cleaning, painting, maintenance, and back of the house needs to catch-up on holiday sleep’ break.  We do close early for some holidays (although not this one). 

Looks like it’s sunny out there today, so get out and enjoy the long weekend and try out some of the new breads!