I saw Facebook live video on the quest for sourdough event, sponsored by Puratos, Brussels (Belgium). I was really in to it and would like to have this kind of event in Bangkok.

Here are their recently published video.

I talked to some friends who are passionate bakers and thought about this few months ago. Until October 2018, I attended Chef Beesham sourdough baking workshop in Bangkok, and had chance to meet many friends, also Chef William.

After the workshop, I was still thinking about the event, and asked advice from Chef William. Finally, I set the date and made it happen.

15-16 December 2018 was my very first sourdough bread baking event, I invited some friends. Unfortunately, Chef William couldn’t join the first event because he had a trip to Hong Kong.

After I got all participants, we chose what breads we’d like to bake, to challenge, to learn and develop our bread baking stills. I asked them do you have any breads that you’d like to achieve, any breads you baked it many times but still fail, any breads you want to try, any breads you are really interested to learn, etc.

From our discussion, here the lists of breads;
– 100% whole wheat sourdough bread (this was one of my list too)
– Panettone with pasta madre
– High hydration and holey, open crumb bread
– Sourdough croissant

The objectives of the event are to bake, learn, share. Every participant, including me, will learn each other. We create community for sharing knowledge and passion about baking good breads. Finally, our bread baking skills are developed and we have better breads for our family, friends, or customers.

We didn’t aim to have all perfect breads, to fail or succeed, it’s a part of learning.

The Event Name

I can’t figure out the final name for this event. At the moment, I’m still open and seeing how it’s going to be in future. I might keep changing and adjusting, so I haven’t yet settled it. So, I just use the word “Roaming” for the 1st version. I’d like to express the idea of bakers visiting, baking and sharing together.

Here’s our timeline from this event.

Dec 14, Day 0

I prepared all starters and preferments;
– 100% whole wheat starter 65% hydration for 100% whole wheat bread
– Liquid starter 100% hydration
– Stiff starter 50% hydration for sourdough croissant
– Pasta madre 40% hydration for panettone

Dec 15, Day 1

Morning

When all participants arrived, we started from the bread formulas and weighed all ingredients.

We started mixing all dough.
1. Sourdough croissant dough, mixed it first, bulked ferment in room temp and chilled about 4-5 hours before laminating butter in the afternoon.
2. 100% whole wheat breads, 2 recipes for lean and enriched dough, we mixed and baked in afternoon.
3. White breads with some other different flours; Italian flour Tipo 0, Semola flour, Multicereal flour, Kamut. We mixed, did some folding during room temp bulk fermentation and retard overnight.

We also refreshed pasta madre and waited until it’s ready for mixing panettone 1st dough.

Afternoon

100% whole wheat dough were ready to be divided.
We started laminating croissant dough in afternoon, 1 double and 1 single fold, then divided, shaped, and chilled it overnight.

We also baked and tasted 100% whole wheat breads. I was quite happy with this experiment, both on lean and enriched dough.

Evening

Once pasta madre was ready, we started mixing panettone 1st dough. Now all tasks were done.

Day 16, Day 2

Last night, I was nervous, woke up to check panettone 1st dough since midnight and I couldn’t sleep so well. In the morning, everyone could see how often I checked the 1st dough on the note I marked.

Morning

Very early in morning, I took croissant dough to room temp.

When everyone arrived, we started mixing panettone 2nd dough. Then we did short bulk fermentation in container and put in on table to rest. We divided, preshaped, shaped and proofed panettone.

We had many of liquid and stiff starters, that we didn’t use I had to discard it on next feed. So we created new formula to use all of them making one high inoculation bread dough with hand mixed. We made it 200% starter to flour, to see how fast it fermented.

Afternoon

We divided the other 2 dough, that were bulk fermented in the fridge since yesterday. We found that both dough were a bit over fermented, dough had too much bubbled and lost some strength. In stead of making good Baguettes, we had some fun on cutting to Epi and other fun breads.

Another dough that were more wet, so we shaped it by using stitching technique. I didn’t feel that both dough were in good condition, if we wanted to play safe, we would just make easy shaping like ciabatta. But we came to learn, challenge and play. So we just did it. We could learn from all situations, success or failure.

Last, we divided and shaped the high inoculation dough, made it to pretzel. This dough was also too fermented. It proofed very fast too.

By the way, sourdough croissant didn’t rise at all.

Late Afternoon

While panettone was proofing, we started baking 3 dough that we shaped in afternoon.

Croissant dough rise very little.

Evening

Panettone was proofed about 5 hours and it was ready to be baked. We cut the skin and put some butter on it, some loaf we glazed and topped with sugar. It was really excited to see how panettone rising in the oven. This time, I also tried baking it in home oven.

After finished baking, another exciting moment was to hang it upside down. All of us did it one by one, with some cheering and laughing, it was very fun.

Well … but croissant dough still didn’t rise. We all were tired from 2 days long event, so we decided to bake it anyway.

Finally, we tasted all breads we baked today. Some were really good, some were just OK, and some were failed. But all of us were really happy to get together, to share and learn.

Conclusion

We learned a lot from the event, especially from our failed breads.
I think it was about time and fermentation. We had good ingredients, we mixed the good dough. But we failed on managing the fermentation time.

Due to inexperience of making some difficult bread or ingredients we never used before.

About sourdough croissant, If I could correct it, I would proof the croissant dough right away after shaping in air condition room (I have no retarder). Actually, in recipe I already adjusted amount of starter to be high inoculation, but it wasn’t enough.

Due to bad management, I didn’t arrange enough working space for all dough. So I let the white dough retarded too long in the fridge until we finished panettone. To correct this, I should adjust the working space or if I couldn’t, I would adjust formula to use less starter to have proper fermentation.

And last …

Thank Chef William who guide me and listen to my idea.

Thank you all friends who joined this event. When I contacted them, they just said “Yes” and always participated, gave me details I needed and provided some ingredients I didn’t have.

Before they left my home, they collected money together, giving it to me for all expenses occurred during these few days. My husband and I couldn’t reject their intention, so we accepted it but not for ourselves. We also put additional money to the fund for donation.

Our family are so happy and grateful. We had this event to share our passion about bread baking. We had a wonderful time baking with all friends. They share it back. Finally, We all again share to others.

References

• Chef Beeshame facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/Beesham-The-Baker-1277179889043777/
• Chef William facebook : https://www.facebook.com/william.woo.73
• Asian Artisan Bakers Facebook group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/442229025907757/
• Perfect Sourdough Facebook group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/perfectsourdough/
• The Quest for Sourdough website : https://www.questforsourdough.com/
• Lynn Loaf, my Facebook page : https://www.facebook.com/LynnLoaf/
• My Facebook personal page : https://www.facebook.com/sakullak