The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.
welldigger's picture

steam pan placement

March 22, 2013 - 6:08am -- welldigger
Forums: 

I'm wondering about putting my steam pan on a shelf ABOVE the baking stone. Mostly, directions say to put the steam pan on the bttom shelf. But I saw a photo of Peter Reinhart making baguettes and he had a lipped baking sheet on the top shelf ABOVE his baguettes. Any thoughts on this? 

It would be quite a bit easier to pour in the hot water if the baking pan were on the top. But then I'm wondering in the steam would be properly disbursed. Am I being too anal about this?

PiPs's picture
PiPs

I am completely amazed every time I look up from my bench and to the left and see the oven. I talk to it as I walk past it in the early morning. I feel like I know it already as I have seen it formed from the ground up. We will make great bread together ... will just take time to get to know each other.


Enzymatic Preferment

Most of my efforts have been in the kitchen this week. Extending an autolyse for flavour via increased amino acid build up is something that ars pistorica talks about on his blog ... and it is something he suggested I try.

Ars explains this process with knowledge (much more than me ... that's for sure) and vigour on his blog ... so let me just say it that it baked into some of the most delicious sourdough I have had made in a long time ...

Leaven
65% Hydration
29-30C
T80 sifted fresh milled wheat
10% inoculation
aerated 4 times
12hrs

Final Dough
Autolyse 12 hours 
75% Hydration
Inoculation 18%
Fresh milled wheat 10%
Bulk 4hrs at 25C (1 stretch-and-fold + 1 really, really gentle fold within first hour)
Final proof was  30 mins at room temp and 5hrs in cool room
Baked in very ordinary ovens :) 

YUM! ...

Cheers,
Phil

p.s. whew ... my work is finished for the week ... but have to share a pic of the sourdough from this mornings bake ... Shame that I didn't get to taste one ... they all disappeared up to the restaurant before I had the chance :(

LisaE's picture

Starter stays peaked for 5 hours

March 21, 2013 - 8:40pm -- LisaE

Hi All, I was wondering if maybe someone else has seen this in their starter. My starter (100% hydration white starter) has started to stay peaked for hours and hours, I fed it this morning at 7:00 AM. It has been peaked since 3:00 PM and as of yet (8:30 PM) has shown no signs of falling. It's quite perplexing and I am wondering if any of you fine bakers have seen this in their starter. Is it normal of a good established starter or not? I might need Debra Wink for this one.....It smells normal and does not show any difference from when it would sink an hour after peak.

Lisa

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Miche made with High-extraction Flour

March 20, 2013

I have been meaning to bake another miche for some weeks. Yesterday, I made one. It is quite similar to the one on which I blogged in This miche is a hit!  All the flour in both the levain and the final dough was Central Milling T85 flour. The differences were: I did the initial mix in my Bosch Universal Plus, rather than by hand. I scaled it to 2 kg, and I omitted the toasted wheat germ.

The miche was baked with steam at 450ºF for 15 minutes, then at 425ºF convection for another 45 minutes. I left it in the turned off oven with the door ajar for another 30 minutes. After cooling on a rack for 3 hours, I wrapped it in baker's linen and let it rest for 24 hours before slicing it.

 

The crust was crunchy and the crumb was tender. The flavor was wheaty and sweet with a moderate sourdough tang. Very tasty. Highly recommended.

David 

 

 

SylviaH's picture
SylviaH

I made the Pain Au Levain 'sourdough' pg. 158 from the book 'Jeffery Hamelman Bread'.

What a lovely delicious bread that has been enjoyed by many who have baked it.

When preparing my wfo for this bake, timing was very important because, I also make dinner in it before doing my baking.  

I call our dinner on Mike's work days 'time orders'.  

When he arrives home from a cycling exercise ride.  He has just enough time for showering and eating before, leaving the house.

So dinner is on table usually about 4:15.

 

I fired the oven up, mixed my bread and, roasted the chicken after the first logs burned down.  I only needed to add one log at a time to burn  a low flame for the roasting.

When the chicken was done.  I placed it into my elec. oven to keep it hot.  I made the salad, tended to my bread strectch and folds and made the pizza's.

Dinner was ready.  The pizza's only take a few minutes.  Everything was timed great and tasted delicious.

Just after dinner.  The loaves were shaped.  

Now there only some hot coals to rake over the oven floor.  Then I cleaned up after dinner.

After cleaning up the kitchen, I raked out what was left of the dying embers and ash.  Mopped my oven floor, placed the door on and left the oven to stablize for one hour and 15 minutes.  

The oven and loaves were both ready.  The timing worked out very good.

Everything was done.  Now the fun.  Baking my bread and I also put in some yams.

I had plenty of stored heat in the oven and could have baked longer.  But, it was a long day and I was tired and didn't really need the extra rustic pies I was thinking about adding to the days bake.  Easter and my birthday will be here soon.  How time flys.  Plenty of time for sweet eating and calories.

 

The neighborhood farmers market was full of fresh greens.  I should have brought my camera.  I especially wanted the Cara Cara Oranges for my roasted beet and goat cheese salad, basalmic glaze, all were topped over spinach.  Roasted walnuts were forgotten :/ would have added a nice crunch.

 

 

Whenever I fire up my oven.  I always include an organic chix.  Good for dinner, sandwiches or, what have you!

 

Lemon, Garlic and Herb Chix.  Delicious and very tender.

 

 

Mike's favorite  -  Pepperoni

The dough I had already frozen and used it today.  It was 100% Caputo 00 flour.

 

Heirloom tomato from the FMarket on this one, with a little pepperoni that was left.

 

 

Farmer's Market Squash Blossom's for this Pizza

These were the female blossom's, so I added the tiny zucc's

 

Delicious and tender

 

And now for more bread bakes. 

The lovely JH Pain Au Levain ' sourdough', melt in your mouth delicious 

 

They sprung so fast and started browning.... 10 minutes in the oven... before I got the steam pans out.  Not to much harm done.

 

Browning up nicely... apx. 30 min. in the oven... I removed them.  Let them cool overnight.

 

The bakers hand fell asleep about 3/4 away down the slash on the loaf on the left.

 

Crumb was open.  No extra hydration was added.  I stuck to the books formula

 

 

I was happy with the bottom crust.  The oven floor was a nice temperature.  Oven was apx. 500F and lowering.

 

Oven's clean and ready for the next firing.  Nothing beats a self cleaning oven.

 

Sylvia

 

 

 

Lloyda's picture

Theoretical minimum size for a starter

March 21, 2013 - 12:45pm -- Lloyda

Whilst feeding my starter this evening, for fun I was pondering what the minimum size would be for a sustainable starter.  At the moment I only get to bake a loaf once a week, and use 28g of my 100% hydration starter, which I feed once a week. So in theory I guess if I kept 14g of starter at the next feed and fed with 14g water and 14g flour, my minimum size would be 42g. But would this survive?  (I've no intention of going down this route - just an wandering thought whilst stirring.  Starter stuck to the sides etc., would have a big impact on overall volume)

 

Lloyd

daytripper's picture

Hi from Ontario

March 21, 2013 - 10:41am -- daytripper

After referring to this site for quite some time, I thought I'd finally say hello. There is truly an amazing amount of information shared by a real community of bakers. I'm interested in loaves of all kinds, home milling (which I haven't go into yet, but am learning about), laminated doughs, bagels and, well, everything!

I also thought I'd contribute as I've learned so much here. 

yy's picture
yy

I just returned yesterday from my first visit to Haiti as one of a group of 16 graduate students in public health, forestry and environmental studies, and nursing. Our route took us from Port au Prince, the capitol city devastated by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 2010, through the Artibonite Valley, the epicenter of the subsequent cholera outbreak, and finally to the city of Hinche in the Central Plateau, the site of a suspected sewage dump that set off an epidemic that has killed thousands.

We spent a week in the town of Deschapelles, located in the Artibonite Valley about 70 miles north of Port au Prince. Our group stayed at an inn run by a member of the founding family of Hopital Albert Schweitzer. At each meal, we received heaping helpings of multiple varieties of starch - rice and beans, fried plantains, fried potatoes, and bread - a common cuisine in many areas located in the tropics.

With a paper-white, dense, dry crumb and a hard, smooth tan exterior, this bread can't disguise its lack of nutritional value. Unless slathered in butter, it has no flavor at all. Even when fresh, it has a stale, crumbly quality. The dough is probably made from a low-protein, low-quality flour, minimally hydrated and leavened as quickly as possible.

A 10-mile hike from Deshapelles, through a set of mountains, and to the next valley brough us to Bastien, a small town known in the local area for small, round, spongy boules of bread. Our guide called it "mountain bread," though I'm not sure what the proper name is. We saw a beehive-shaped clay oven next to one of the homes nearby.

In Bastien, we also met a lady selling fry bread. The flavor resembled that of a salty, unsweetened donut. We asked her how she made her bread, and she mentioned flour, water and salt. It seemed to be chemically leavened. I asked her in my horrible kreyol, "eske mwen kapab pran foto ou?" - May I take a photo of you - and she was happy to oblige, proudly posing for a shot with her product. Having hiked 5 miles of winding, hilly trails under the hot sun, we were quite hungry (in the first-world kind of way), and the sensation of fat and salt on our palates gave us a euphoric rush. I can only imagine what it must be like to eat a hunk of fried dough when you're truly hungry.

Ironically, diabetes and hypertension are on the rise in the Artibonite Valley in the midst of malnutrition. It seems to be an emerging trend in many developing areas - disease of excess right alongside diseases of deprivation. It's difficult to avoid starchy, high-fat, high-sodium foods when they are the most affordable and available. We're familiar with the same patterns here in the United States.

It somehow seems fitting that the bread in a place with such a complicated past and an equally complicated present should be so simple; it's a basic food that allows people to fill their bellies and go on with their lives. Spending time in an impoverished area always reminds me what a privilege it is to be able to choose what I eat, and to turn down the things I don't want to eat. It is also a privilege to have had the education to make knowledgeable dietary decisions, and to never have been forced to decide between going to school or eating dinner. For those of you who were lucky enough to have a spring break, I hope it was enjoyable, and I look forward to hearing about your adventures.

boomerang's picture

Looking for a French Pastry recipe called APPLE NESTS

March 21, 2013 - 5:49am -- boomerang

Hi,

A customer has challenged me to figure out how to make Apple Nests.  They used to buy them at a bakery called DiCamillo bakery in Niagara Falls, NY.  I have googled and emailed and no response.

My customer describes them as a flakey type yeasted dough with apple caramelized in them and on top.  She described them almost as a cinnamon roll structure but no cinnamon, just caramelized apple.

Has anyone had one of these and/or familiar with them.

JimmySting's picture

Determining Starter Strength

March 21, 2013 - 4:41am -- JimmySting

Hi all,

I've been feeding my new starter for about a week and a half now (1:2:2, whole wheat flour, every 12 hours). Unfortunately I am either asleep or at work when the starter would be peaking and most active. So when I get home from a long day at work or when I wake up it is hard to tell if much happened. (I do see bubbles and some rise, but this is not totally helpful after 12 hours)

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