It was a very good day

Our son made one of his rare trips home for Thanksgiving.  He likes to bake bread for parties, gatherings of friends and for pot lucks at work, but has not studied it much.  He has a tendency to do what I always did:  knead in enough flour that it's not stickey anymore, and produce a flavorful but dense and dry loaf.  I wanted to teach him some of the techniques I've been learning for handling wet dough to help him avoid this.  That, and I believe one of the best ways to anchor knowledge for yourself is to try to teach it well to someone else.  It works for me, anyway.

We baked his usual loaf of plain white french style bread together today, using his usual recipe:  "French Style Bread" from "Beard on Bread".  I showed him "autolyse", and then "Stretch and fold in the bowl", and then stretch and folding on a very lightly floured board.  We shaped the loaf as a boule, and proofed it while we all played some 3-handed pinochle. 

When we baked it in my La Cloche baker (we gave him one for his latest birthday) it had explosive spring and a nice bloom, even though I had cut the yeast to less than a third of the ADY the recipe called for.  (IMHO, Beard uses too much yeast, and too much sugar, but still produces very tasty and lovely breads).  We split it and sent half home with him, along with leftovers, for sandwiches.  We'll eat the rest with sandwiches ourselves.  The crumb came out very tender, and although it is still a little dense it shows some nice holes in a good variation of sizes.  My son noticed those right away, saying "Mine has never done that.".  Here are a couple of pictures of our results.

And, of course, a crumb shot...

I have not baked this recipe in a long time, but mine always came out dense and dry for the same reasons my sons have done so.  This time we got significantly better results in the loaf, but the very best result was the time we got to share in the kitchen, talking about a common interest.

Baking bread with our son.  It was a very good day indeed!

OldWoodenSpoon