zachyahoo's blog

Gave croissants another try. Definitely getting better at them.

I messed up and didn't have milk on hand when making the dough, so I substituted water and milk powder. I was eating some plain whole yogurt at the time and decided to toss some of that in too!

I used a new butter for this, a European-style 83% butterfat one. 

Still struggled with the rolling out – I think part of the blame goes to my french rolling pin. So, I went to home depot and picked up a 2" diameter wooden dowel that I'm going to cut down to about 19" long. Gonna try that for the next batch. Ended up measuring the last step wrong and cut 11 croissants instead of 12 so they were a little bigger than normal (none of my customers complained about that!).

You can tell that I overproofed them a bit by the cross section. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the honeycomb. Gonna try again with Plugra soon. And of course they smelled and tasted delicious!

These are two Tartine-style country loaves. 

Used the same formula as I have before, found here http://www.theperfectloaf.com/best-sourdough-recipe/

Only thing I changed was using the entire levain instead of saving some for the starter. I'm pleased with my results, but I want to get a more sour flavor – which I realize isn't the point of this kind of recipe! I'll be looking into a more stiff levain in the future

This past week, I tried txfarmer's Poolish Croissants again with great success. This time I used Kerrygold butter and all King Arthur bread flour. I had to let the dough relax a couple times to be able to roll it out, but was able to get really nicely defined layers.

Only issue was with the final rollout – I ended up cutting more smaller croissants than I wanted instead of 12 standard size. Also, I tried something new with this batch. I cut out the triangles the night before and rolled them up in the morning. Made it very easy to get them starting to proof in the morning. As far as I can tell, it didn't negatively impact any aspect of them.

I also made an enormous (3 lb) challah for fun. woo!

I've also been baking sourdough bread using different recipes with varying degrees of sourness. I really need to start keeping a bread journal if I'm going to learn from all these batches!

I'm in the middle of a batch of sourdough croissants now. Will post tomorrow when I bake them.

The two on the left are sourdough and the two on the right are Hamelman's Roasted Potato and Onion loaf. 

I tried a different blend of flours with the sourdough this time. Had much better results. 

400 g AP

400 g Bread

75 g WW

I think I cut too deep with my spiral scoring on the boule. Either that or didn't shape tight enough. Didn't get as much spring as I was expecting. But then I got a TON on the sourdough batard which got baked even later (so it's not over proofing)

And holy cow those blisters are huge! I'm really liking my new oven setup with the tiles on top and lava rocks on the bottom. 

Ok, I've been posting a lot.. but I'm just too excited about this loaf. This is everything I'm looking for in a sourdough loaf. I roughly used the recipe at theperfectloaf.com 

I used significantly more levain than he called for cause I had it leftover from making Ken Forkish's field blend #1 (see pictures below) so I decided to use it in a mostly white "pure" sourdough loaf. What a cool feeling to leaven purely with wild yeast!

This is also the shiniest loaf I've ever baked – not sure if that has to do with the good fermentation or not.. Check out how different the other loaf turned out even though they were scored (I think) the same way. It burst!

Well, here's my very first sourdough loaf! I've had the starter going for a couple of weeks now. Started with a 100% rye one and then forked it off into a 100% bread flour one. I had a kinda unusual time table for this loaf.

Built levain at around 4:30pm. Let that rise for 6 hours in a warm oven (pan with hot water in it)

Then, I mixed the final dough (there was an hour autolyse of the flour and water in there too) and let that bulk ferment for about 4 hours with some stretching and folding (only did about 3 but should have done more). It was about 3 am when they had finished being divided, pre-shaped, shaped, and went into the fridge overnight.

Then, this loaf (pictured above and below) got taken out at 8:30, went into the oven at 10am.

The other stayed in the fridge until about 5:45 pm when it went into the oven.

Definitely learned a lot from this experience. And will definitely be trying it again!

Does it look like it was shaped too much by how it pulled off the floor of the oven (the football shape)?

Alright, so this is Hamelman's Country Bread (50% preferment).

To me these two loaves look really over shaped. The cross sections would be far rounder than I think is appropriate. Also, the scoring to me looks as if it needs to be far deeper (I was trying to get ears and boy this is far from that!).

Can you help me diagnose what went wrong here?

Oh, and the two loaves were unfortunately a little close to each other in the oven and ended up producing that unsightly growth where they bridged together. This was my first time trying to fit two loaves in the oven at the same time with my peel, and the unloading process didn't go completely smoothly.

Some input, please and thank you!

I think I'm finally getting the hang of the shallow scoring at a low angle. I love the gradient of light to dark I'm getting on the batard. And even some blistering from the several hours in the fridge..

This was using Hamelman's Country Bread recipe (with the 50% pre-ferment)

This was my third time attempting croissants. I used txfarmer's adjusted recipe but I used bread flour instead of the AP suggested. I was really going after those thin layers, the honeycomb, etc.

Unfortunately I didn't have access to a higher quality, high fat, european-style butter, so I tried the "beat some flour into the butter" method. Not sure if this helped or not, but I imagine it helped absorb some of the water from the butter I used, also helping it to plasticize more easily.

The taste with the poolish was really interesting actually. To me it seemed noticeably less sweet and more complex than the recipe I'd been using before (Paul Hollywood's). 

The layers were pretty good, but still not what I'm looking for. However, the shaping was FAR superior than my previous attempts. I was actually able to get the "7 steps" that I was going after- rather than the 5 or even 3  (AH!) from previous batches.

For some reason (more liberal use of resting?), this dough was way easier to stretch and roll up than the other two times I'd done it. I used KA Bread flour instead of the Gold Medal Bread flour - but I changed too many other variables to conclusively say this had anything to do with it.

 Notes for the next time:

• Mix the dough more thoroughly.
• Don't forget to add the sugar until the last second! (Boy that was hard to mix in)
• Maybe add more yeast to make up for the fact that I don't have any osmotolerant yeast
• Be very rigorous about tidy, accurate folds
• If there's any doubt, let the dough rest in the fridge. This can only help the final product
• Be careful with the egg wash! Don't let it drip into the layers! (I tried to do this, but wasn't as successful with the second egg wash, right before going into the oven)

Here are some pictures from my previous attempts at shaping (oof, they're rough!)

I've made Ken Forkish's White Bread with Poolish several times, but this was my first time attempting his 80% Biga. This dough was incredible! So bouncy and full of life!

Unfortunately, because I've yet to get any bannetons, I'm still using a cloth lined bowl/cloth on the counter. This time, although I floured the cloths (with what I thought was) very heavily, both batards stuck to them, and there was some tearing when putting the loaf on the peel. 

I didn't have super high hopes because my scoring was so ineffective, given the messed up surface of the bread..

–but OH MY GOD the crumb is amazing! I've never ever seen such a glossy crumb. There are these ultra thin shiny gluten membranes that are blowing my mind. (It tastes great too!) 

Given the size of the holes I have in there, I definitely should have pressed some more air out of the dough while shaping, but I'm very excited by this new development!

Here's a quick video looking at the gloss as well