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Hi 

This weekend we have celebrated my son's first birthday. for the occasion I have prepared three breads:

- Baguette's (which did not came out that good...) - Jeffrey Hamelman's Baguettes with poolish

- Golden Raisin and Walnut Bread - again from Hamelman's. which was a huge success, 

always is.

- "Mixed-Flours Olives Bread" - my development. which it's formula i will list here.

But first some photos:

  Before:

After:

Mixed-Flours Olives Bread Crumb:

And my One year old Son!

Mixed-Flours Olives Bread

Formula: 

For the Pre-Ferments (Poolish)

100g Bread Flour

100g Whole Wheat Flour

100g Whole Rye Flour

300g water

A pinch of Instant yeast

For the final dough:

200g Bread Flour

60g water

2g  Instant yeast (half a Teaspoon )

10g Salt

100g Kalamata olives 

Technique:

1.Mix all of the poolish's ingredients until smooth. Place in a lidded plastic container and et stand for 12 to 16 hours. 

2.Add all of the ingredients (except of the olives ) of the final dough to the bowl of a stand mixer. mix on the first speed for 2 minutes until a uniform dough is from.

3.Knead the  dough for 5-7 minuets on the second speed.

4.Proof the dough for 40 minuets in a sealed container  - fold.

5.Proof for another 40 minuets - fold.

6.Proof for another 40 minuets - shape.

7.Proof for 60-75 minutes.

8.Bake in a 230° oven for 50 minutes - apply steam in the first 10 minutes.

This is my other version of ciabatta. A very holy version.
I find it very speical and different in texture. 

Poolish KA organic bread flour 33%
water 33%
SAF GOLD instant yeast (I am out of the red one) 0.1%

Main Dough
KA organic bread flour 67%
Himalaya pink salt 2%
ice water 40%
olive oli 5.8%
SAF GOLD instant yeast 0.2%

Steps:﹕
1. poolish mix until no dry flour, about 30 second, Room Temp until full of bubbles but not collapse back yet, about 6 hours
2. Refrigerated > 12 hours
3. Mix in 80% of water and flour, yeast using mixer. Add olive oil, salt and left 20% water when a ball forms. Keep kneading until the dough show very very thin membrane when doing the windowpane test, like below. The temperature of the dough should not exceed 22C at the end of mixing. So ice water was used. The dough should not show wetness on surface now.
 

4. Room Temp rise until 2.5-3 times in volume﹐ Transfer to refrigerator for > 12 hours. The 2 containers I used are like this below, I would avoid using large area, shallow containers.
http://www.webstaurantstore.com/cambro-34cw135-clear-camwear-4-deep-one-third-size-food-pan/21434CWCL.html

5. Take dough out of refrigerator, The dough is about to the top of the container. Leave it at room temperature for 5 hours

6. Now the dough is over the edge of the container and the lids are being pushed open. Pour the dough very careful not to degas it onto a well floured surface. Try to shape the dough from under it into a rectangular shape. Each container dough I divid to 6 parts (about 10cm x 10cm each). flour them well and transfer to couche.

7. Room temp 5 hours again. (My room temp is about 20C)

8. Preheat oven to 260C for over an hour to make sure the stone temp is up enough.

9. Flip the dough right before bake, I made steam using lava stones in cast iron griddle. Drop temp to 230C, turn convection bake off. Take stones/griddle out after 10 minutes, turn convection back on, and continue bake for 12 minutes.

I tried to think of as much details as possible here. question welcomed! ^^ 

Many of us get rather, well, steamed, about our inability to produce steam in our home ovens.  Some good techniques have been posted here on TFL.  While I doubt that any of us will be able to produce anything close to the blast of steam that commercial ovens can provide, we may be able to do better than we think we can.

The few seconds of video, above, show steam venting from my electric oven.  From all appearances, nothing much was going on inside the oven.  From the outside, it is evident that quite a bit of steam is present as it hits the room-temperature air, cools, condenses, and becomes visible.  Despite the apparent velocity of the steam exiting the vent, the oven fan is not turned on.  The background noise is the fan in the vent hood above the oven, which has no effect on the rate of steam production or egress from the oven.

My steaming set-up is extremely low tech: a broiler pan on a shelf below the baking stone.  It is preheated along with the oven and stone.  When I'm ready to load the bread, I pour a cup of boiling water into the pan.  A lot of the water flashes instantly to steam.  (I stay well out of the way of the erupting steam!)  The bread is loaded as quickly as possible and the oven door is closed.  Within seconds, I start seeing the steam wafting out of the oven vent.  Needless to say, I won't be blocking the vent; I don't want that steam finding its way into the electronics.

So, nothing new here, really; just an observation that confirms both steam generation and steam venting.  

Paul

These are some of my recent breads. I've just bought dan lepards book, so hope to have lots of fun with the recipes.

Catherine

Interesting read, I think I will make some Baguettes.

http://parisbymouth.com/behind-the-scenes-at-paris-best-baguette-competition/

Cheers,

Wingnut

hello.. i like to share a sourdough bread baked by my lovely friend HK. i did mentioned and shared one of her loaf she made the last time. proud to say that i shared my starter with her. i can't remember how long ago, 6 months maybe. and she is baking marvelous bread since. one day, she asked me to recommend some bread books to buy. and i mentioned Ken Forkish and Peter Rainheart. i myself did not owned any but would love to one day. i did went through the reviews of the books at Amazon. and i liked both. any opinions or feedback about this bread book by Ken Forkish? 

this is the exact words she said: Just baked, my house smell like roast pork , hahaha!  

and she asked: You think the top burnt ? 

i replied no.. 

what do you think ?

to me, it is just lovely ...

evon

Another pic of my first real success with the new method. Fresh ground Whole Wheat and Rye starter married with Pain a l'ancienne techniques to make a wonderful and unique loaf.

I've been working on a way to combine the Reinhart "Pain a l'ancienne" technique with a 100% sourdough from a fresh ground whole wheat starter for some time. I'm incredibly proud of this little personal breakthough, and looking forward to cutting into this bad boy! Ah bread... the stuff of life!

Just a short note to share some recent bakes.  We love Hamelman's 5-grain levain - it's flavorful, moist, healthy, and it freezes well.  We always keep a loaf in the freezer, sliced and ready to toast for spreading with (choose your topping: cream cheese, yogurt cheese, jams) for breakfast.  It also makes a great sandwich bread.  I follow the basic recipe from Bread (1st edition - I don't know how it compares to the recent release), with just a few small additions.  First, I add 100 gm of toasted pumpkin seeds, and second, I substutute yogurt whey for the water in the final dough.

Another recent bake is Horiatiko Psomi, which is based on this recipe.  David (dmsnyder) also made a version of it here.  I tried the batard version that is coated with sesame seeds.  It had a fairly closed crumb with a few larger holes.  But the crumb was creamy and it had a soft, chewy crust, it is also quite tasty with a hint of tang.  Unfortunately, I have no crumb shot because it was brought to a friend for dinner.

Have fun baking!

-Brad

Sorry for the duplicate post however I realized I posted this bake accidentally in the forum but wanted it on my blog.

Today I finally had a chance to bake the Tartine loaf with my new baking gear.  This is the second bake with the gear.  I strongly suggest to anyone experiencing the same issues as I had with bakes, GET THESE SIMPLE ITEMS.  It has taken my breads up a few notches and fixed all my problems immediately.

And the larger loaf with crumb.