The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

How to deal with monsters

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

How to deal with monsters

Having got a bit into baking big miches recently (Hamelman's Miche Pointe-A-Caillere and Shiao-Ping's interpretation of Gerard Rubaud's formula), one of the big obstacles I faced in my home environment was to transfer a 2300g loaf into the oven.
Here is how I managed to do it:

1. The shaped dough (2300 g) sits on a couche

After Shaping


2. I wrap the dough very loosely with enough space to spread a bit

Wrapping it up 1


3. The dough is proofing, fully enclosed in the couche, and it can spread to 30cm width, just the width of my baking stone

Wrapped and proofing


4. The dough is proofed and ready for transfer - I transfer it onto a silicone baking sheet, which is very easy - just turning over the whole thing: dough inside couche

Ready for the oven


5. This is the still wrapped dough on the baking sheet, upside down

Transferred to a baking sheet


6. In the process of removing the couche

Unwrapping the monster


7. Slashed

Slashed


8. This is the loaf, 15 minutes into the bake. Not much spare room in my oven ...

In the oven


And this is the finished product

Finished

Cheers,
Juergen

Comments

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

in me wanted to rent a crane for you but then you make it look so easy! That is a big loaf or you are baking in a easy bake oven :-)

Happy Baking

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

or some kind of traction vehicle, the kind they use in Cape Kennedy

Floydm's picture
Floydm

Nice looking miche!

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

Thank you!

DavidEF's picture
DavidEF

That is a nice looking miche. I don't even know what a miche is. Well, now I know what it looks like. I'm still a newbie to bread baking. But, I do know (this is for you, dabrownman) that 2300g IS a fairly large loaf! A 900g loaf would grow to 5 or 6 inches high in a 9 x 5 loaf pan. This would be over 2 1/2 times that.

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

David, a couche is a very practical thing if you want to make shapes other than tin loaves.

Linnen just doesn't stick.

Juergen

FlourChild's picture
FlourChild

Beautiful miche, love the rusty brown crust!  Must admit I was curious as to what sort of "Monster" your post was about, thanks for the smiles :)

Juergen Krauss's picture
Juergen Krauss

also has been used to tame a little hungry 6 year old monster ...

Thank you,

Juergen