Jane The Bakery: Breads and Doughs
Another week on the bread team at Jane The Bakery. Let’s talk about every bread I made this week!
Also this week I realized that different breads might be made from the same dough. Since I’m used to making super small batch sizes of breads (1–2 loaves at a time) it didn’t even occur to me that when making hundreds of loaves there’s an opportunity to repurpose the same dough with different inclusions to make radically different breads.
This California Miche bread is beautiful to look at. “Miche” breads are breads larger than 1.5kg. Traditionally they’re made this large since in olden times breads were baked by each family once or twice a week and these large loaves have a longer shelf life and obviously contain more portions.
What other breads are made from this dough? The miche bread to me is a great example of how Jane approaches breads. It’s made from the same dough as the ancient grains bread and the cinnamon-raisin bread, but it’s so different in flavour, presentation and when customers would buy those loaves.
This Ancient Grains bread loaf is so popular amongst my friends who visit the bakery. It’s based on the same dough as the Miche bread and the cinnamon raisin bread. That dough itself is a mixture of 4 (!) different flours grown & milled in California as well as the bakery’s natural sourdough starter.
What are the inclusions in the Ancient Grains loaf? To make the Ancient Grains bread we take that base dough and add a few inclusions. The most interesting inclusion is are sprouted ancient grain berries. We take those berries, soak them in water overnight, wash them, and let those grow for another night until they’re sprouted. Once sprouted they’re added to the bread as an inclusion. #mindblown
The Cinnamon Raisin bread is my personal #1 most hated and #1 most loved bread. This bread is made from the same dough as the Miche and Ancient Grains with multiple kinds of plumped up raisins and cinnamon
What’s so special about this bread? For me, Cinnamon and Raisin is a sweet flavour combination and having it without any sweetness is just weird. But as soon as I spread some jelly/jam/conserve on top, or make a nice french toast from this load, it’s amazing. For my personal taste, it’s a plain bread (no sugar or butter added) but it’s perfect for using in making sweet desserts.
Oh wow. The Three Cheese and Rosemary Bread is the one bread I bring to every party I go to. The inclusions are just so perfectly balanced. It’s got three different kinds of cheese that each brings in different notes (some are aged/young cheeses, some are soft/hard cheese, etc). Whenever this bread ic cut lengthwise there’s always a beautiful spot of melted cheese.
What other breads are made with this dough? The Cheese & Rosemary bread is made from the same dough as the Fig & Walnut bread and the Olive bread. The different inclusions change the flavour, texture and even appearance of each loaf.
The Olive-Polenta bread is another bread made from the same dough as the Fig & Walnut and Cheese bread. The dough is a high-hydration dough which I look at a cross-section I see creates that beautiful open crumb texture.
How do you add polenta as an inclusion to bread? The polenta in this bread is cooked, crumbled and then added as an inclusion to the bread.
Finally, the Fig & Walnut bread is another bread made from the same dough as the previous two breads. You’d never know from the different crumb texture and colour. The difference between those two breads really demonstrated how different inclusions give bread different personalities.
Jane’s Baguettes are just perfect. In the past I talked about different ways to ferment Baguettes and at Jane they’ve chosen to cold ferment it over night. Making Baguettes at Jane is a process and when done right it creates this beautiful open crumb:
The Sesame Demi Baguettes are just smaller baguettes half the weight of a full baguette and decorated with sesame. Instead of preshaping them with “sleeping bag” triple fold over, they’re preshaped as a boule. After shaping they’re rolled in a wet towel and then sesame seeds.
The Ciabattas are the basis for each of Jane’s savoury sandwiches. I can talk a lot about the savoury flavour combos (cauliflower + pine-nut romesco anyone?) but I’ll focus on the dough. At Jane’s the Ciabatta dough is a derivative dough made from the baguette dough with extra water and oil. To me, that’s mindblowing. I’m used to thinking about Ciabattas as this totally separate product from Baguettes.
This Danish Rye is such a great dense loaf. It’s Jane’s version of Dinkelbrot and it’s this old world bread that used to be baked as ovens were cooling down and the loaves were left to set overnight. Very much in that tradition the Danish Rye at Jane’s is the last bread baked at the end of the day and sits out to set for about 18 hours.
What’s the starter for this bread? All the breads at Jane’s have these beautiful starters. The rye starter is really special because it’s got two consecutive starters. Basically you can encourage either a lactic bacteria or acidic bacteria to work depending on the amount & type of food they’ve got. So to get both lactic and acidic strong notes the Rye starters consecutively make both.
The Sunflower rye is another one of those breads I try to get everyone to eat. It’s such a great example of a dinkelbrot. It’s dense, has strong bready flavours and is packed with sunflower. If you couldn’t guess, it’s the same dough as the Danish Rye with the inclusion and decoration of sunflower seeds.
This sourdough is a great example of naturally leavened breads. That beautiful open crumb, that open lip, that bubbly exterior.
Bread tasting: Everyday at the end of a day of baking bread the entire bread team gets together around a table to taste the breads we made that day. More often than not, we try the sourdough and hearing the amount of insight dozens of years of bread baking have on a single loaf is outstanding. I really want to be able to say something insightful right now , but I’m nowhere near that level and very much still learning the vocabulary used to critique bread.
The Multigrain bread is the sourdough bread with additional grains added to it (e.g. Millet).
How to add grain seeds as an inclusion? Each morning we take the grain seed mixture, soak it in water and then use that “seed soaker” as an inclusion later in the day. The water used to soak the seeds is taken into account in the hydration of the dough when doing recipe devleopment.
It’s a Whole Wheat bread.
The Whole wheat sesame bread is the same dough as the whole wheat bread, just decorated with sesame. Which makes everything better.
The Challah is one of the few enriched breads made by the bread team at Jane’s.
How is the Challah dough mixed? It’s mixed like any other bread dough (wets in first, then yeast, finally flour). The really surprising aspect of it was we first formed the dough to improved development and only then streamed in the sugar and brought it to full window pane development. The reason I heard was that the sugar crystals interfere with the gluten network. True or not, that dough has one of the nicest windows I’ve ever seen in a dough.
This Braided Challah is a work of art. I’ve never been great at braiding and at Jane’s I realized why. Protip: Keeping the challah braids the same length and tapered width really helps building tension as you’re braiding.
How to make consistent Challah braids? Preshape all braids like you would baguettes (“sleeping bag” three fold over), and then shape like you would baguettes (“sleeping bag”, seal and roll out with jazz hands).
This Challah Crown with Golden Raisin is just beautiful. Here’s how to shape it:
- Roll out four strands of Challah to the same height and tapered width
- Crossweave 2 vertical braids and 2 horizontal braids leaving no room between them
- Move one braid from each side over the braid right next to it on the left
- After four braids, do the same thing just moving the braids from left to the one on the right
- Keep alternating until you run out of braids. Keep everything symmetrical by aggressively pulling braids. The important thing is to get the point where braids meet to be in the same spot.
- Once you run out of braids to pull, gently tap the sides of the crown to make it round.
Read more about my adventures at Jane The Bakery’s bread team here:
