KNEADLESS's blog

Santa came thru last night with a couple of items from the Baker's Catalog and I have a few questions:

Received a round clouch and the instructions all say to put your dough into the cold clouch and then put it in the oven. Has anyone used a ceramic clouch with the kneadless batter, putting the batter into a hot clouch. Will the ceramic crack?

Also received lidded pain de mie for making square loaves. Does this give a crisp crust or no crust at all?

Thanks.

Happy holidays eveyrone and may all your dough rise next year.

George

Well we just made our annual trek from the Chicago area down to Fort Myers where we will ride out the winter until May. I am into day 5 of a pineapple juice/whole wheat flour sourdough system and so far, so good. Today I made Floyd's rustic bread recipe again and it turned out very good. What I really want to talk about is a new tool, which I haven't seen mentioned by anyone else. That is, an electric knife.

Like most of the people participating on this excellent site, I have periodic problems slashing. I have had my best success with serrated knives, but for very wet doughs they are too grabby. Today I tried an electric knife and it was like cutting butter. The tops of the loaves were stationary as the blades sunk in.

I would be interested to hear if anyone else has tried this approach.

George

In the summer I live in the Chicago area but I spend seven months of the year in Fort Myers, FL. Down here I greatly miss the great Asiago bread made by Panera (formerly St Louis bread company.) Nobody makes it in this area, so I thought I would give it a try. I was sort of on my own, because I couldn't find a recipe.

I chopped up 2 1/2 oz. of the cheese in a mini blender. I used three cups of flour and followed exactly Floyd's lesson number five for making french bread. I used 1/2 tsp. of dry yeast (bulk from Costco which I keep in the freezer) in the starter and 1/2 tsp. more in the mix. I made the wettest batch I have tried so far. It almost poured like a cake batter.

I didn't put the cheese in the mixer, I incorporated it by spreading some over the surfaces during folding. I put the loaf in a long french bread pan like the one sold by King Arthur for $20.00, but which I bought at a kitchen store in a Tanger outlet mall for $3.00.

When I shaped the roll it was about 2" in diameter. After a 60 min. rise and with the jump, it was over 5" in diameter. With a 500 start, then 450 oven it was done in 15 minutes. It was very light with large holes and a thin crisp crust. Perfect.

The flavor was very good. Next time I will use perhaps another ounce of the cheese to get a little sharper flavor.