Coleman and Carver and Pizza

Mose Coleman grew onions. In 1931 Georgia, onion farmers were not paying their bills, but, Mose Coleman grew onions. At harvest, as I think all people who work with food will do, Mose cut one of the flat, yellow bulbs and tasted. This onion was sweet!

Part of the American dream is to prove to the world you can make lemonade when life deals you a lemon. But for Mose Coleman, he had to prove to the world you could do something with a sweet onion. Finishing the harvest, he began to sell his onions to the roadside passers-by. "Vidalia Sweet Onions", the onion that was not hot, the onion that was good in a cool summer salad, the onion that would perfectly match a fresh grilled hamburger... Mose Coleman ended the season selling Vidalia Sweet Onions for $3.50 a fifty pound bag, a remarkable price, and an industry was born.

Mr. Mose Coleman was white.

A few years before, George Washington Carver at the Tuskegee Institute, pondered how to remedy vitamin deficiencies in rural Alabama. He wrote "every normal person should make the tomato a very prominent part of the weekly diet". Inspired by his friend and co-worker Adella Hunt Logan, he published a circular on 115 ways to prepare the tomato for the table.

Mr. Carver was black.

Mose Coleman and Mr. Carver possibly never met. However, the onion Mr. Coleman cut on that summer day in 1931 and the tomato that Mrs. Logan convinced Mr. Carver was a solution to malnutrition had crossed several times in the prior 400 years...

The Crossings

Scientists do not know the exact origin of the tomato. However, if we believe Vavilov's theories, the region with the widest genetic diversity of a species will most likely be the area of its origin. If this is the case, tomatoes come originally from Peru, where numerous variants to Lycopersicon peruvianum are found growing as berry bushes. These berry bushes were carried north by natives so that by the time of the arrival of the Conquistadores in 1509, the Aztecs were making a mix of tomatoes and chiles as the first 'salsa'.

Cortez's scholars (for Cortez was only interested in gold) took the tomato back to Spain where it diffused through Europe, missing England. In Spain, the fruit was called pome del Moro, the Moor's apple (you could tell what was on their mind). The French, not understanding Spanish very well, corrupted this to pomme d'amour, the love apple (you could tell what was on their mind). The Italians shortened this further to pomodoro (mangia! mangia!), and published the first recipe using tomatoes in 1698. For some reasons, the English could not pronounce either the Spanish or French name and considered the tomato "rank and stinking", and so continued centuries of culinary excellence.



The onion that had been cut open in that Vidalia field in 1931, sighed, and recalled its beginnings as a transplant that came from Texas. If it could have remembered further, its ancestors came from Bermuda, an island whose human inhabitants were skilled at building fast schooners from native cedars. Fast schooners were good for trade, and the US Civil War made Bermuda a haven for smugglers and their providers who valued the anonymity of the island as well as the speed of their boats.

However, in the 1870's, smuggling had collapsed with the Southern states and Bermuda was in an economic crisis. A bright soul noted the islands temperate climate and a surplus of fast boats suggested Bermuda become New York's garden. Seven hundred sea miles separated the two, but this was only three days sail for the fast island schooners. A new industry was again born. Hamilton, the capital, was known as 'Onion Town' until another bright soul in Texas noted that they could also grow 'Bermuda' onions there.

The reason 'Bermuda' onions could be grown in Texas is that their seeds came from the Canary Islands, the world's source for onion seeds until 1949, since the Romans and Spanish brought the onion from Europe in 100 B.C.

Texas became the new onion capital of the western hemisphere by 1900. Its universities began to cross breed onions. One particular experiment crossed the 'Excel' onion from Valencia, Spain, with the 'Grano' Texas-Bermuda-Canary Islands onion to form the 'Granex'. Texans exported large quantities of Granex transplants (seeds were uncommon before the use of herbicides--weed seeds grew faster than onion seeds), one of which, when planted in the low-sulfur soil of Vidalia, Georgia, grew to be very sweet and unfortunately, would end its existence cut open by Mr. Mose Coleman.

Pre Treatment

We will prepare a standard 100:60 (60% AR) bread with the difference of using re-hydrated #1 bulgur to give the dough nutty wheat bits. The large size of the bulgur compared to wheat bran should protect the glutens and give an good rise and crumb.

• 150 gm King Arthur Whole Wheat
• 450 gm King Arthur All Purpose Flour
• 360 gm water at room temperature

Mixed at second speed 7 minutes to form a thick dough

• Bulgur #1 120gm rehydrated with 240 gm water

Both dough and re hydrated bulgur were maintained warm at 40C for 12 hours













Rehydrated #1 bulgur wheat




Mixing

Prepare a mixture of

• 1800 gm water at 40C
  
• 7 gm yeast La Vahiné
• 30 gm melao

• 72 gm salt (=3600 gm total flour @ 2%)
  

This is allowed to mix for 5 minutes, then blended with the bulgur and pre-treated flour using the paddle attachment for 20 minutes. At 5 minutes before the end of mixing, add the 72 gm of salt. The entire mixture should be foaming. Then:

• Add 3kg of KA Bread flour

and mix using a dough hook for 7 minutes or as needed to meet the farinograph specification of the flour, typically 7-9 minutes.

Forming

La Vahiné is very slow yeast and it is used at about 0.2% concentration, well below the 'quick' recipes that use 1%. Therefore, this dough will need to rise and be knocked down repeatedly. Fortunately, all the risings add flavor and stretch gluten.

This batch rose (at 27C) 2.5 hours (real estate agent was here), 1 hour, and 1 hour before forming.

Formed into

• 40 100 gm rounds= 4 kg +
  
• of which 8 were formed as Parkerhouse rolls with a drop of tomato and onion paste in the center
  
• 5 250 gm mini-loaves = 1.25 kg
• 3 200 gm pizza rounds = 0.6 kg
  

The rounds were allowed to rise 40 minutes before being formed into French pistolet rolls and immediately baked.

The mini loaves rose for 40 minutes before docking and baking.

The pizza rounds were allowed to rise approximately 1 hour

Parkerhouse rolls looking at you

Baking

Rolls were baked at 230C for 12 minutes
Mini loaves were baked at 230C for 18 minutes (and could have used less)
Pizzas were baked at 230C for 9 minutes. (Unused rounds were baked for 4 minutes, then frozen for later use.)








Very good bloom and grigne on the stones








Thin sliced topping

Structure on a pizza is more interesting. Marinated tomatoes and onions will be moist and spicy and will resist the heat of baking, concentrating their flavors.

Use:

• Two vine-ripened tomatoes (they should smell like the tiny hairs of the tomato leaf)
• One half a larger Vidalia onion
• Salt
• Dried basil
  
• Balsamic vinegar

Thinly slice the tomatoes and onions latitudinally. In a small bowl, layer tomatoes, salt sprinkled on the layer to taste, basil, then a layer of onion. Repeat until the bowl is nearly full, then add 15-30 ml of balsamic vinegar.

Allowing this mixture to stand for 2-3 hours will let the salt draw the water from the tomatoes and mix with the spices and balsamic vinegar.












Results

Parkerhouse rolls with a touch of tomato and onion paste baked inside

Mini loaves and raw pizza

Secale Cerale (D=7)

From the Finnish Rye Institute

Rye is alone. Rye is used to the cold steppes of northeastern Europe. It can be abused. The tiny kernel germinates, and in doing so, knows it will have a difficult life. Four root branches reach out for water; wheat (Triticum aestivum), the summer grain, has three. Dry, it survives. Cold, it survives. Rye sown on cold, over-cultivated soil can be 'eternal', giving a crop every year.

Rye is old, untouched. It is a diploid (2n) grain. Weeds are diploids. Weeds that crossed with emmer made wheat. Rye can remake itself with only 14 chromosomes. Wheat takes 42. Left alone, it returns to being weedy and invasive.

Rye does not waste. Its seed makes starch, and starch only for the next generation. There is no gluten and few other proteins that wait for milling and mixing to be turned into bread. Pliny the Elder, raised on the baking art of Roman Spain, scorned it, called it a poor food, "serving only to avert starvation."

Rye is Shiva. Its destruction is its creation. Within it, rye alpha-amylase is heat resistant, a strange thing for a plant used to cold winters. Left wet, rye begins to decompose its starches into sugars. With yeast, these form alcohol, and gave northern man beer, and when northern man met Arab science (al kohl), rye whiskey. With no yeast, the sugars met lactobacilli, which soured the rye, and conveniently, stopped the action of the amylase. No amylase, and the starches remained intact. Intact starches meant a loaf could be formed and baked. Northern man put down his beer and considered the problem...

Base recipe and approach

Rye amylases are more temperature stable and act upon the rye flour's starch structure, limiting dough strength. Amylase activity is inhibited at low pH, requiring the use of citric acid in the dough or by souring the dough in an anaerobic environment. (see p. 24 of Handbook of Dough Fermentation, CRC press/Google Books). The amylase activity and starch content of rye flour recommend a two step process:

1. Add water and large quantities of yeast and let the 'porridge' mixture ferment between 20-30C for 24 hours. Lactic acid decomposition will make the mixture acid. Baker's yeast will keep activity in a lower pH medium. The intent is to have an acid yeast mixture for mixing into step 2. The classic term for this is the poolish.
   
2. Mix the poolish into the remaining flour, adding some bread flour in this case for structure.

The mix below shows a very 'soupy' Poolish that becomes a 100:60 dough as the final ingredients are incorporated. All units are in baker's measures, with 100 begin equal to the total rye flour weight.

Ingredient	Poolish	Mixing	Total	As % of total flour
Rye Flour	55	45	100	100
Bread Flour	0	43	43
Water	53	33	86	60
Dry Yeast	3	1	4	3
Salt	0	3	3	2

Pre Treatment

The first water, yeast, and rye flour poolish was mixed at noon before the baking day. Some minor changes to the poolish were:

• Adding a bit of regular bread flour (30gm) to take advantage of the barley malt. [This was due to a misunderstanding of rye flour chemistry. If anything, rye flour needs an amylase inhibitor rather than additional amylase.]
• The yeast was proofed in 40C water with 10 gm of melao.

The poolish was allowed to ferment at 27-30 C for 20 hours.

First mixing of poolish

Ingredient	Poolish	Mixing	Total
Rye Flour	480 gm	395 gm	875 gm
Bread Flour	0 gm	375 gm	375 gm
Water	465 gm	285 gm	750 gm
Dry Yeast	24 gm	12 gm	36 gm
Salt		25 gm	25 gm

After 2o hours at 27-30C, a foamy mass with a tart, pungent smell

Mixing

185 grams of a total 285 gm of water was heated to 40C, mixed with 10 gm of melao and yeast, then left 10 minutes to proof. After showing good activity, the liquid was added to the poolish with an additional 100 gm of pickle sour (a culture of 3% NaCl w/v with lactobacilli cultures taken from pickling vats). The intent of the sour was to add flavor. Unknowingly, the additional acid helped maintain the rye starch structure by inhibiting alpha-amylase activity.

Lactobcillus culture in salt from pickle vats

Mixing with a dough hook proved interesting as there are no gliadins or 'sticky' proteins to make the planetary dough hook on a Hobart K5SS 5-quart mixer 'grab' the dough. After five minutes of futile slapping of the dough hook, the dough was kneaded by hand for six minutes. Without glutens, the kneading made a homogeneous dough, but a dough without much strength.

Rising

With nearly 3% yeast the dough rises immediately. The dough more than doubled in volume in a sealed mixing bowl when proofed at 40C. The lack of gluten is obvious by the cracking of the dough ball:

There is no knockdown. Knockdown is useful in wheat doughs to 'stretch' the glutens and create further strength.

Forming and second rising

Dough was divided into 100gm boules and formed into balls. The balls were placed on oiled sheet pans and allowed to rise approximately one hour. As shown in the pictures below the boules expand nicely with a second rising of one hour at 27C.



Baking

The risen boules were delicate. You had to handle these carefully to avoid creating finger marks on the dough (that would not have been pushed out by baking). The rolls were placed lightly onto a peel dusted with rye flour and slid onto the baking hearth.

Rye breads are baked at a lower temperature and for longer periods than wheat doughs. The rolls were divided into four groups to test docking and steam injection. All bread was baked at 200C convection, with baking stones soaked for at least one hour at temperature. Baking time was 16 minutes.

Steam groups

• Group 1 -- Baked on stone in boules
• Group 2 -- Baked on stone with one slash (to test 'push')

Dry groups

• Group 3 -- Baked on stone in boules
• Group 4 -- Baked on stone with one slash

Results

There was little 'push'. The rolls elevated slightly from the baking stone or weakly broke open at the slash. The steam baked rolls had a darker crust, as expected, with a slightly more caramel aroma after baking. Weight loss in baking was about 5-7% for the steam injected baking and 10% for the dry baked rolls. The crumb was small and tight.

Steam injected (l) and dry baked (r)

Click on the picture for a close up

Next steps

• Do not use bread flour in the poolish. This adds unneeded amylase. The rye flour has more than sufficient sugars to attract lactobacilli.
  
• Think of adding the lactobacilli earlier in the poolish stage to start an culture to co-exist with the yeast.
• Do not stress mixing. This bread has weak glutens. Stress keeping the starch structure intact and handling the dough delicately.
  

Sponge and Gear

Pre Treatment

This mix of bread will use a sponge method, where a small amount of yeast is allowed to ferment overnight, then mixed with the remaining flour and water.


The basic pre-mix (100:60 flour:water)

• 300 gm King Arthur Whole Wheat (WW) + 700 gm King Arthur All Purpose (adds wheat fiber and amylase)
• 600 gm water heated to 40C
• 7gm La Vahiné yeast (relatively slow acting)
• 15gm Melao

Mix the water, yeast and melao, let proof for 20 minutes. Then mix 7 minutes at second speed to make a tight ball of dough.

Cover mixing bowl with wrap and let stand at 26C (Miami room temperature) for 8-10 hours.




Mixing

The following morning, take the risen sponge:

and mix with the required water for the additional flour

• 3kg King Arthur Bread Flour
• 1.8kg water at 40C
• 80 gm salt (based on 4kg total flour)

Heated water to 40C and dissolve salt. Then added to sponge in mixer and mixed for 20 minutes. Add flour and mixed 9 minutes at first speed.

Use a serious mixer; sponge being mixed in water and salt

It looks like this after flour and water are incorporated at 9 minutes

Rising

Since the yeast has limited mobility in a stiff dough, the first risings will be weak.

Raised at 25C for one hour, then knocked down. Repeat twice, but after the third knockdown, begin dividing and forming bread.

A Note on Non-Stick Spray

Non-stick spray simplifies handling divided dough on rising trays. A light coating keeps plastic wrap from sticking and individual boules sticking to each other. This is a simple recipe for making large amounts of non-stick spray for baking sheets.

The mix depends on water, alcohol, lecithin, and vegetable oil. Water and alcohol are used to dilute the oil so it is capable of being sprayed. Lecithin emulsifies the mixture to prevent it from separating in the sprayer. Lecithin has an immense emulsifying capacity, provided it is whipped highly enough to provide a large, effective oil emulsifying area. Harold McGee has a good treatment of the effect here.

Ingredients

For 100 parts of non-stick spray:

• 47 parts vegetable oil (canola is a good high temperature oil)
• 48 parts cachaça, or vodka. (Cachaça is Brazilian cane alcohol that can be purchased in Brazil for 60-95 cents per liter. You can also drink it.)
• 5 parts liquid soy lecithin. (This is overkill, but you are not going to drink non-stick spray)

In a blender, mix the soy lecithin with the cachaça until the lecithin is fully dispersed. This is critical since the small lecithin droplets in the alcohol-water suspension will emulsify the oil.

Lecithin in Cachaça

Add the oil slowly with high agitation of the lecithin-cachaça mix. The oil will emulsify on the lecithin droplets. You can add HUGE amounts of oil to this mix and it will not separate. Since the idea is to keep the non-stick spray from becoming too oily, I stop at a near 1:1 mixture.

Oil emulsified and finally put into the sprayer

Sprayed on baking sheets--Note the even sheen

Forming

This baking was intended for shipment. Therefore, Kaiser style rolls were formed by overhand knotting. The 6.4kg load was divided into 64 100 gm balls, allowed to rise for 35 minutes, the rolled into strands for knotting.

Scaling and rolling into balls

Baking

Baked at 230C, oven stones soaked at temperature >45 minutes. Bake time 13 minutes on stone.


Results

Olive, aglio, pane, pizza

We need to make about 3kg of bread until the son comes home. One of the questions before us is the potential loading of a type '00' flour dough (100:60:2:~0.2 / flour:water:salt:yeast)

Olives

The first cultivation of olives is believed to come from Semitic peoples in the near east. The word 'olive' derives from the Greek, ἐλαίς (elias), which may derive from Agean (ewi--oil). Strangely, this is not an Indo-European root, which suggests the olive was discovered, rather than brought with the Indo-European migrations. The Romans spread the word for olives through Latin (oliva-Italian, olive--French, etc.) Thanks to the Arab invasions of Iberia in the 700's, Spanish and Portuguese have aceitunas and azeitonas as their words for olives. The meaning is the same:

Aceituna=az + zait=the + 'olive' or the + 'oil'

We will use Kalamata olives for the bread. Kalamata olives are cured when the fruit is purple and nearly ripe. The curing technique is washing in water to remove bitterness, followed by lactic acid fermentation in 8% NaCl brine. Kalamata olives have lower sodium and more oil than green Spanish Olives (prepared by leaching bitter compounds in lye, NaOH, followed by brine fermentation). For more information, click here.

Garlic

The desired effect in this bread is to have a Kalamata olive flavor with herb overtones. The garlic should be muted. One way of muting the pungency of garlic is to destroy the alliinase enzyme that converts alliin to allicin, the pungent component. Full cloves were roasted in olive oil sufficient to coat. This also results in some browning as sugars are caramelized. (Strangely, Professor Tung-Hsi Yu, has studied most of the garlic roasting volatile reactions. He is across the street from Johnson & Johnson in Rutgers)

Pre Treatment

Sponge method using very little yeast. The barley malt enzymes in the all purpose flour should break down starches while the small yeast colony grows overnight.

• 400gm King Arthur all purpose unbleached (protein ~10-11%)
• 240gm water at 40C
• much less than 1gm yeast--dust on an espresso spoon
  

Mix 9 minutes at second speed to make dough ball. Spray dough ball with water and cover. Leave to develop 10 hours at 27C room temperature (Miami).

Sponge at start and after 10 hours

The olive-garlic mix

Mix the following morning

• 100gm whole clove garlic
• 15cc virgin olive oil

Toss the above in a cast iron container and roast at 180C for approximately 15 minutes, until the garlic begins to turn lightly brown. The pungency of the garlic will have changed to a complex, roast-sweet caramel odor. Remove from the oven and let cool.

• 100gm pitted kalamata olives, chopped (100% of garlic weight)
  
• Oregano to taste
• Herbes de Provence to taste
• About 15gm white wine vinegar (15% of garlic weight)

Chop the garlic and toss with the olives, spices and vinegar. Let stand.

Garlic after 10 minutes; it should chop with a sticky consistency

Mixing

The sponge will be divided in two to make a plain pizza dough and olive-garlic bread.

Plain Dough

To make 1kg:

• Use 240gm sponge (about 25% total weight)
  
• 285 gm additional water at 40C
• 475 gm KA all-purpose flour
• 13gm salt (~2% of flour weight)

Mix the sponge and water using a paddle to spread the developed yeast for 20 minutes. Add salt and dissolve. Then add flour and mix 9 minutes for complete gluten development.

Olive-garlic dough

To make 1.6kg of dough (without filling)

• Use 400gm sponge (about 25% total weight)
• 450 gm additional water at 40C
• 10gm melao mixed in water
• ~2gm yeast--a little more dust on the spoon.
• 750 gm KA all purpose flour
• 20 gm salt

Mix water, melao and yeast and mix with sponge for 20 minutes. There will be little activity.

(Please note--dry yeast has best activity when rehydrated at 35-40C as water of this temperature will protect the dehydrated yeast cell walls. For a brief treatment of the lipid cell wall interface versus water temperature see Lallemand Inc. yeast technology.)

Mix salt to dissolve. Then add flour and mix on second speed to farinograph recommendations: 9 minutes.

Special Mixing Note

Vegetables and oil can reduce the binding strength of gluten in dough so these are added after mechanical mixing. This is accomplished by stretching the newly mixed dough on the bench and folding the garlic-olive mixture into the sheeted dough. The folded dough is manually kneaded. This will have portions of the mixture breaking out of the dough ball in the early stages. Keep the bench floured and continue working manually until the mixture is well incorporated into the bread.

Stretch dough and spread with olives and garlic


After first folding, then when fully incorporated

Rising and forming

Both doughs were left to rise in a 40C proofer through two knockdowns. (This dough has very little yeast.) First knockdown was after 90 minutes; development was slow. Second knockdown was after 60 minutes.

Garlic-olive loaves were divided into two 800gm loaves. The pizza dough was made into 5 200gm boules.

The garlic-olive bread is left to rise in improvised banetton baskets made from stainless steel bowls lined with linen. Rising time is about 50 minutes. At the end of rising, their bases are floured and placed on a wood peel for the oven.

Linen lining, newly formed dough (800gm each), rising

Baking

Oven at 220C, soaked for at least 45 minutes. This temperature is lower than usual for the oven and is intended to allow the olive-garlic bread to be dryer than usual. Bake 45 minutes then left to cool in oven with door open for an additional 20 minutes.

After rising and in the oven

Pizza

The pizza was simply prepared with tomato sauce and brined onions (onions brined in 3% salt w/w H2O + 3% brown sugar w/w H2O. Some garlic slices added to brine). Onions rinsed from brine and tossed with virgin olive oil prior to baking. Cheese is cacio romano.

Finished Products and comments:

Olive-garlic bread developed good crumb with 1-3mm bubbles. Bread is aromatic, principally of olives and fines herbes, with garlic flavor in the background. A very good bread for dipping in oil.

Improvements:

• This could use a stronger flour (12% protein) for a lighter crumb.
• Olives and garlic add additional moisture to the dough that is released when baking
• Pizza crust was excellent. Nutty flavor.