Verdant Farm

Verdant Farm rests quietly on a dead end road in the northwest lower peninsula of Michigan. It is this geographical location my husband and I have chosen to build an agricultural facility to house our skills in natural leaven bread baking. Getting to this place was nomadic, let me explain:

Bread is so available when one does not have bread in the pantry it is easily bought or made. I do not promote any bread as best: Man lives on bread but not it alone. I prefer the simplicity of natural leaven for mixing bread dough. Purely this method does not use packaged yeast bought at the store. It is a fermented culture grown in a natural environment.

My husband began a study of grain and its use in bread in 1989. His enthusiasm was contagious so we have studied together over the years. Making and managing natural leaven and and its use in bread dough has become part of our family's education. All have gained some experience grinding grain into fresh flour, beginning a culture, creating leavens, observing fermentation, mixing bread dough, working dough bases, creating bread varieties, firing up a wood fired brick oven, building a clay oven (see side bar), reading from the well-touted experts, and helping others with their bread skllls as we improve upon ours.

David and I were born and raised in the Metropolitan areas of Detroit. We met at a Michigan University as our parents affored us an education. I have a degree in elementary education he in mechanical engineering. We married in 1983 and it was Dave's trip overseas that encouraged our hands on leaven journey. He liked the bread over there and even kept 1/2 a loaf for me when he arrived home saying: its really good fresh!

My independent tendencies kept me purchasing bread off the shelf, as he pursued a friends bread book and learned about wheat grinding, bought a 16 dollar thermometer and began probing bread. Before you knew it, the whole family was grinding and keeping a crock of fresh ground flour in the basement where our natural leaven was growing. It was a living science experiment for our three youngsters at the time.

Leaving a high paying position as a reputable mechanical engineer was a thought as we continued to learn about bread and a desire was planted in our heart then to build a bakery and have a wood fired brick oven.

We lived in the city of Midland at the time we were getting better bread (1/2 high, dense and sour-but it had a natural leaven in it. I laugh now about the late evening I pulled it out of the oven and even woke Dave up to taste it. He
didn't complain as his enthusiasm was just as bursting as mine. Our loaves spring higher now.

So did our children,as Dave progressively left his workplace going partime and doing a construction project on our Midland home before we sold. We had aspirations to move into the countryside but not yet. So, we thought about the new addition: Maybe we should put our oven here, and then we could have .....only thoughts.

We moved in 1999 to our first farm in Buckley, MI. It was a 3 1/2 acre homestead with a nice log home resting on it. It is here that we thought, "Here, this is where we will build it..." Instead we gained animals, lots of animals, a cow that began to outgrow the farm. David took prayer walks to talk to his Father about where or when or should we move on... we remained on Verdant Farm until the time came to move onward.

It did, we happen to come upon the sale of the Litzen Road farmhouse in the Winter of 2004, and moved in March 2005. Before buying David and I were in the upstairs- very small bedrooms for a now growing family of six children. We both peered out the south window and pointed ouy the wooded landscape and apple orchard and a lovely spot to the west for a barn. We were happy to get started...except there was another place to move to... becoming parents of a married daughter. Our eldests matrimony took a considerable amount of our early days at Litzen and the construction of a Sugar House and storage building for other needs.

Now we have begun to build our agricutural barn. I am glad for the nomadic lifestyle of living. It seems that wherever we go we are blessed and things increase in abundance- children, grandchildren, but most of all the love of God. It is my hope that as I have taken the time to share our finds in natural leaven you will take the time to make yourself a great loaf of bread.

Someone once encouraged me saying: "Learn a skill, learn it well and help someone with that skill." Regional Bread: The Art of Simple Bread is my way to help you if I can.

HANDS ON LEAVEN
My management of natural leaven has not been difficult when viewed as a “personal discovery”. What I found most frustrating was my inability to “learn the work by heart.” I think this was because I did not find the basic rudiments of making and managing natural leaven in the spine of one book. I could create fresh bread, but often I did not like it because I was unaware of what my hands were really doing, and what the leaven was doing. I wanted to possess the art of the work not just “what do I do.” For this reason, I created detailed notes each time I baked.

I have created a side bar that gives a thumbnail view of these posts so you can organize yourself to begin the time worthy adventure of taking a little leaven and creating something good for yourself and others.

Read on first and then return to the side bar informatoin title: Hands On Leaven: Preparing Fresh Bread that is Well Liked and Doing it By Heart to help further clarify what you should do first.

Regional Bread: The Art of Simple Bread not a recipe to share, but a basic outline taken from my many detailed notes. I have studied natural leaven with my family for about two decades. Loaf after loaf I am continually learning. Our farm is in the stages of building a a beautiful gambrel barn in the quiet countryside of the northwest quadrant of the lower peninsula of Michigan. Inside this barn, we will continue to learn about natural leaven and its use in bread dough.

If after studying this log you feel you would like more assistance in your personal discovery of making and managing natural leaven. Seek the Side Bar titled: "Each One By Hand" for consultation fees. People learn differently and perhaps these pages may be helpful in your quest to make Natural Leaven Bread, but you feel as if you need more help. "Two are better than one they have a better return for their labor."

Recipe Development : If you are anticipating a food service in which you would like to incorporate a product made with natural leaven in your region, you may contact the farm via phone or e-mail by leaving your name and number and say you have interested in the farm developing your recipe. See "Each One By Hand" on side bar.

~Christine Flaugher

Tools

Keep in mind that making and managing natural leaven is an old skill. Use your sense of sight, touch, smell and taste as the leaven progresses to bread. Use tools if they keep order to your work without discarding personal discovery of the work. Your hands should touch the dough as much as possible.

Scale: Natural Leaven should be measured by weight! because one cup of leaven with big gas bubbles will weigh less than a cup of leaven with small gas bubbles. This method is also good for flour and other dry ingredients because they tend to settle. A scale that can zero balance the ingredients as active leaven is refreshed and mixed into bread dough is very helpful. All measurements are in grams!

Thermometer: Knowing the temperature of your workspace, flour, water, leaven, and final dough helps you to manipulate fermentation. Oven, room, and long-stemmed thermometers should be used to keep your work regulated for success. Eventually it will become second nature for you to know when your leaven or naturally leavened dough is fermenting too quickly in too warm a place or fermenting too slow in a cool place. A moderately warm temperature is suggested for most of the work unless suggested otherwise.

Fresh Active Leaven

Natural leaven, defined simply, is a fermented culture from a natural environment. Natural leaven is used to raise bread dough. Making bread dough with a natural leaven also uses the whole grain to its fullest potential. Generally leaven progresses in these stages once a culture begins:

1. Immature Leaven-to-Leaven Sponge
2. Leaven Sponge-to-Unripe Leaven
3. Unripe Leaven to Active Leaven

Leaven is a microhabitat. It has a flora, of microorganisms: wild yeast and lactic bacteria that use little energy and grow slowly. These living microbes are present in leaven in all the stages listed above.

Specific conditions of moisture and temperature help to generate the slow multiplication of the multi- micro flora present in leaven. Refreshments of tempered flour and water are the ingredients used to create these conditions.

When a culture is begun correctly, it is easily converted to an active leaven through proper refreshments. These refreshments will activate fermentation in an immature leaven, leaven sponge, or unripe leaven. You need to keep your hands and eyes on the progressive stages to know that you have activated fermentation.

Active leaven feels somewhat elastic, and will have bubbles that softly fracture the inside and outside surface. Rimples or creases are a mark that it has just fallen after reaching its maximum measure.

Repeatedly handle refreshments, mixes, and dough with this kind of leaven. In this way you will learn over and over again the principles that manage fermentation:

When the dough and its surroundings are moist and warm, the dough is inclined to be more active. When the dough is less moist and cool it tends to be more inactive.

If your leaven is lazy, unripe, and lifeless you most likely will be discouraged by the behavior of the dough. This cannot be overstated! Make sure your leaven is fresh, active and mature BEFORE you refresh it for “Dough Day.”

Creating A List of Ingredients

Less work in mixing bread dough comes through understanding the ingredients that are going into the mixing, not what can go in the mix to make the dough easier to work. A non-caring approach to whether the ingredients are clean, fresh, unchlorinated and chemical – free is simply illogical. Few ingredients in the dough mix allow for a good effort to find clean, fresh, and chemical free ingredients. This is not a philosophical statement just a common sense approach to a simple bread. When I mix my dough I create “Dough Bases.” Changing the flour type in the Base Recipe, Leaven, Refreshments or both, creates these bases.

Calculated Additions:The savor of the dough base can change dramatically with the addition of many other natural ingredients, but not its working characteristics in my hands.

I have a Basic Recipe that includes:

100 grams of leaven

The Leavensare made from either rye, whole wheat or a minimally processed wheat flour, or spelt depending on the dough base and bread variety I am creating.

Furthermore the Base Recipe includes:

350 grams of water
500 grams of flour
9 grams of salt

I have "Dough Bases" in which I calculate additions such as:

Fresh Ground Rye Flour, Whole Wheat Flour, Minimally Processed Wheat Flour, Corn Meal, Spelt. Seek the Side Bar: Dough Bases and Bread Varieties for more notes on this aspect of my bread making.

Varieities of Natural Leaven Bread are further created by the addition of:

Herbs
Spices
Soaked Grain
Seeds
Dried Fruits
Dried Vegetables
Olives
Nuts
Cheeses

My formula for bread varieites are easy to calculate: .
I work with 25 % of the flour weight in the Base recipe to calculate the total added amount of any additions.

500 X .25 = 125

A combined total of 125 grams of additions into the short mix to create a dough base.

Example:
Flax Sunflower Bread:

500g flour/ 350 g water/ 110 g sunflower seed / 100 g leaven
15 g flax seed / 9 g sea salt

If after you have studied and practiced you would like consultation in developing Dough Bases and Bread Varieties, this can be included as part of weekly consultations (See Each One By Hand on side bar)

Beginning A Culture: Feedings/ Refreshments

TO DO:
Use fresh ground flours from obtainable grains, a variety of wheat flours ground from hard wheat; where the bran and germ is removed. It has a high protein percentage than all-purpose, not bleached as “white” flour. Or, a combination of these fresh flours. I like to begin my culture with a equal blend of whole- wheat flour and whole rye; and then refresh it with whole wheat, whole rye, and other wheat flours, depending on my Dough Base.

Day One: Mix 50 g water with 25 g of flour; leave for 24 hours in room temperature

Day Two: Add to leaven: 50 g water / 25 g flour, leave for 24 hours at room temperature

Day Three: Add to leaven: 100 g water / 50 g flour. Leave for 24 hours at room temperature.

Day Four: Discard 4/5 of the leaven, add 100 g water and 80 g flour, and leave for 24 hours at room temperature.

Day Five: Discard 4/5 of the leaven, add 100 g water and 80 g flour and leaven for another 24 hours.

Repeat Day Five for seven more days.

By Day Five: There should be some activity in the seed. Texture smell or taste will note activity. You may see bubbles. Whatever you note as fermentation activity at this time, it should increase in the next several days leaving you with a somewhat firm sponge-like cohesive lump of dough.

This is an immature leaven and in time will mature and bread made from it will have good keeping qualities with an open crumb and a well-developed firm crust. This maturity takes place over several weeks with use, and then it will be stable. You should notice a difference in bread dough baked with immature leaven and bread dough baked with a mature leaven.

To Nurture a Neglected Leaven:
Don’t throw it out yet, unless it is entirely moldy or smells really bad: To activate any seemingly dead microflora, stir it, and refresh it according to

How to Refresh Leaven.
Put the following in a bowl and mix it together:
45 g leaven
45 g water*
45 g flour**

Do this twice a day for about 3 days and see if it looks more healthy and bubbly. It is active if it regains its strength after these successive refreshments and doubles its volume twelve hours after refreshment. If not, throw it out and make more natural leaven.

Refresh active leaven 12 hours before you plan to mix your dough.

** Flour: Use fresh ground flours from obtainable grains. and a variety of wheat flours ground from hard wheat; where the bran and germ is removed. It has a high protein percentage than all-purpose, not bleached as “white” flour.
* Water: 80 degree F ferenheit Scoop this clump into a 1 quart covered container

Final Dough

It can be referred to as "Dough Day" when your natural leaven has been properly refreshed and is ready for the addition of flour, water and salt to create the final dough. In other words: ONLY WHEN YOUR LEAVEN IS FRESH AND ACTIVE is it ready for the final dough base.

This is mentioned in the side bar for Natural Leaven, but it is worth repeating for the final dough as well:

Grain
Fermentation
Temperature of Ingredients
Room Temperature
Dough Temperature
The Amount of Moisture Present (i,e Humidity)
Salt Quanity
Method of Leavening
Mixing and Handling of Bread Dough

The success of making and managing leaven to mix in bread dough depends on each of these seperately as well as how they assemble themselves together. Take time to grind grain properly, watch fermentation closely, make accurate measurements by measuring by weight instead of volume and take temperatures. (i,e room, dough, etc)

A change in the type of grain, fermentation schedule, temperatures, and whether the leaven is mixed stiff, firm or wet (i,e method of leavening), and whether you measure by weight or volume will all affect the leaven and its behavior in bread dough.

Natural leaven is only as good as the grain from which it is made. Carefully outline your ingredient ratios as in the side bar schedule to insure a good outcome of your efforts. Note these things to understand what was done incorrectly in order to correct past mistakes:

Bad grain
Poor fermentation
Too warm of too cool water
How the grain was ground
Too much or not enough salt
Too much or not enough leaven
Improper handling of the dough
Too high or too low of humidity.

These will all affect the final dough!

The final dough is made up of these:

_______lbs dough

_______ flours
_______ ( )
_______ ( )
_______ ( )

______ Fresh Active Leaven
______ Water
______ Addiions
_______ ( )
_______ ( )
_______ ( )
_____Sea Salt

Let's say you wanted to make 4 lbs of dough
according to my base recipe listed in the
"Creating a List of Ingredients" Post above.

You would then need the following:

500 g of flour
100 g of fresh active leaven
350 g water
9 g of sea salt

Additions would be 25 % of the total flour weight.

Dough Handling Procedures

Only use your hands!
Don't flour the surface.
If your a begininer: Forget everything you learned for a moment about bread dough
and read:

The final dough is mixed and set to rest for about an hour. (Autolyse) This mixing is only, I repeat only enough to wet the flour. Then, and only then, after an hour, it is tucked into a ball and placed in a lightly oiled container and put in a retarding area. (Ideally 48-52 degree F). It is kept here for several hours or overnight.

It is then removed before the time you would like to bake it to a warm place (74-80 degree F). As it warms it is divided into loaf size portions (not in loaf pans), just portioned, given pats and folds wihtout disturbing the gluten structure.

These pats and folds are done at intervals of 10 and 30 minutes, or one hour depending on dough activity and when the dough is to be baked.

After the pats and folds are completed: the dough is left to rest, again for 10,30, 60 minutes depending on dough activity and when it is to be baked. I have not repeated myself in these instructions.

The last handling of the dough is the shaping when it is carefully folded and gently stretched, so as not to tear the gluten structure of deflate fermenting activity in the dough. Shaped loafs are placed in a dusted banneton to proof.

A brief outline of these steps is as follows:

AUTOLYSE
RETARDATION
DIVIDE
PAT AND FOLD
REST
SHAPE
PROOF

The most important thing about this list is to know that the first five steps can be interchanged before the shaping as long as you understand the doughs activity. For examnple:

You can Autolyse for the period of one hour
Then, divide the dough up into loaf size portions
then do the pats and folds, then retard the portions,
then rest the dough, then shape and proof it.

You can even do steps 1, then 3, then the rest up to the shaping, and then retard the shaped loafs in bannetons in the cooler space, then take them out and bring to about 62 degree F dough temp, then bake.

But you can't just blindly follow these if you lack the understanding of the quality of your dough and what it is doing!

The Bake

Knowing When to Do "The Bake" takes practice, so BAKE OFTEN!

These instructions are for baking the dough on a stone in a conventional oven: (Seek the sidebar for a brief run down of baking in a masonry oven)

Take the retarding loaf out of the cool place according to these observations: The dough is ready to be baked when it is about double in volume, and remains indented when lightly pressed with a wet finger and still feels cool to the touch. It may be ready right out of the cool place or waiting in your workspace three to four hours before you bake.

1. Preheat the oven to about 500 degree F.
2. Gently turn the loaf(s) out of the basket into the oven onto a baking stone.
3. Using a razor blade make one or more 1/8 cuts at a 45-degree angle on the top surface of the fully risen loaves just before they enter the oven.
4. The baking of the bread dough with active leaven requires steam. Use a water filled spray bottle to spray the oven. Do this the first three minutes of the baking time.
5. Baking time: 25-30 minutes. Watch your bread dough as it bakes and observe what it does as it meets the heat. A reduction in temperature and rotating loafs (if more than one) is sometimes required during the baking time. Temperature should register about 190-210 degree with a probe thermometer when done.
6. After the loaves exit the oven, place on a paper sacks or cooling racks. Allow a substantial cool before slicing if possible. This does not mean cold. The crust helps to preserve the bread. Don’t store in plastic! Breads made from natural leaven are best stored on their cut side.

Take detailed notes on your finished loaves. Bake often! to insure that you like your bread and that you can do it by heart!

Successive Bakes

A Successive Bake is when some active leaven is kept back in the final refreshment to be refreshed again for another session of following The Bread Schedule

What to do if you are not going to follow one bake to the next:




1. Make a Storage Leaven:

Keep some leaven back in the final refreshment and refresh it. (See How to Refresh Leaven). Keep it in the refrigerator for no more than seven days. :

Refresh it every seven days.( See How to Refresh Your Leaven). It must be refreshed every seven days in this way if you are not using it.

2. Using Your Storage Leaven:

Take out your storage leaven and activate it by refreshing it twice as described in Part Two: How to Refresh Your Leaven. Then begin the Bread Schedule.

What if you want to make more than 2 pounds of dough?:

Make sure you have mastered the skills for a small amount of dough before attempting a greater amount of dough.

A formula for multiplying the Base Recipe:

Amount of Dough// First Refresh/Final Refresh/ Base Recipe (in grams)

2 # 45/45/45 45/30/30 100 g

4 #: 45/45/45 90/60/60 200g

6 # 60/60/60 135/90/90 300g