Riffing on @txfarmer

What the heck do you do with a surfeit of egg whites? Why do I have so many? Between ice cream, crème pâtissière, cream of mushroom soup, carbonara, etc., I seem to use many more yolks than whole eggs. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep from just dumping those whites into the disposal, so I store them, sometimes freeze them if we’re traveling, until the container in the corner of the refrigerator gets full.

So, a few years ago, when @DanAyo introduced me to @txfarmer’s amazing (and huge!) collection of TFL instructables, I jumped on Danny’s enthusiastic report on her Extremely soft sourdough sandwich bread, what I’ve lately been calling my White Brioche.

Here are the essential Baker’s Percentages to recreating her most excellent enriched bread:

Flour 100%

Hydration 73.7%

Salt 1.8%

Other 44%

AP Flour 50%

Bread Flour 50%

Salt 1.8%

Sugar 10%

Butter 10%

Egg whites 24% (88% water so important to include in total liquid component)

A 67% hydration sourdough levain is the engine that develops the dough. @txfarmer advises that 15-20% of total flour should be included in the levain. I build this levain with a small seed (5-10 g) of my sourdough starter over 36 hours, feeding it 3 times to achieve the required amount. Most times the liquid component is buttermilk unless I run short, in which case I’ll substitute whole milk per @txfarmer’s original specification. I’ll often prepare a biga or poolish as an additional preferment, just because…

Variations on a theme

I once bumped the butter up to 20% to make it more Brioche-like. Toasted great, but I don’t think the bread was that much better for it. I also occasionally, if rarely, run out of egg whites so have used whole eggs. Interestingly, the crumb color change from whole eggs is fairly subtle.

So onto my latest variation of the recipe. Because the egg white container was topping out, I munged my Buttermilk Bulgur Sandwich Bread into @txfarmer’s framework, which features some whole wheat flour, rehydrated bulgur wheat, raisins, rolled oats and pecans. Bumped up the hydration to 78% to adjust for the whole wheat and rolled oats. Reduced egg whites to 20% and increased salt to 2%.
 

Here’s how I made these 3 loaves that turned out great:

1. Built the levain which is kind of halfway between a biga and a 100% hydration sourdough levain. I built the levain in 3 feedings over 36 hours.

Sourdough starter 10 g

AP Flour 175 g

Buttermilk 115 ml

2. Night before mixing, built a 250 g poolish using equal parts AP flour and water with a pinch of ADY.
 

3. Rehydrated 100 g of bulgur wheat in 300 ml of boiling water. Strained and cooled to room temp, this yielded 192 grams of bulgur soaker.

4. In food processor, ground raisins, rolled oats and pecans by pulsing into coarse sandy, if moist and sticky, texture. This was theoretically in lieu of @txfarmer’s 10% sugar though it obviously exceeded that by weight and added some dry possibly thirsty ingredients, pushing me to up the recipe hydration.

raisins 100g

rolled oats 50 g

pecans 75 g

5. Placed all the egg whites and additional buttermilk in the mixer bowl along with the levain, poolish and raisin-oat-pecan melange. Mixed briefly to a smoothish wet batter.

Liquid from levain and poolish ~250 ml

Liquid from 164 ml egg whites 145 ml

Additional Buttermilk 240 ml

6. With an initial dough target of 2 kg for 3 loaves and a 220% ingredient total, after subtracting the bulgur soaker weight, I had a target total recipe flour calculated at 822 g. Mixed flour in at low ANK speed by fourths. Left to sit for 30 minutes.

WW Flour (@10%) 82 g

Bread Flour (@50%) 411 g

AP Flour (@ 40%) 329 g (but decremented at mix by the levain and poolish flour of ~320 g)

Plus salt 16 g added with last 1/4 of additional flour

7. Kneaded dough with hook at ANK speed 2 for 10 minutes, adding bulgur after 7 minutes. Then kneaded at ANK speed 4 for 15 minutes incorporating butter about halfway in.

Butter 82 g

8. Bulk ferment on counter for 2.5 hours with coil folds every 30 minutes. Refrigerated dough for 18 hours.

9. Shaped dough and placed into bread pans. Final proof about 5 hours at 70° F.

10. Egg-washed and baked loaves at 375° for 40 minutes, rotating pans halfway through. Removed loaves from pans and returned to baking stone for 10 minutes.

And once again I have to thank @txfarmer, @DanAyo, @dmsnyder, @benito, @Floydm and the many TFL folk who make up this great community of bakers, teachers, cautious beginners, showoffs and lurkers for many hours of education, and entertaining interaction. Love you all.

Phil