I was looking at the oven a few nights back. I was contemplating my navel a mean steam in my home oven. There is high temp.silicone rubber tubing available that seems to have a rather large tube wall with a faily small ID. I thought, why not make a couple of brackets that when bent into an "L" shape would be held in position under the left and right side of my baking stone. I've seen small brass nozzles somewhere and thought that running a tube in through the oven door, through a "Y" to feed the two nozzles that would be facing more to the rear of the oven to keep the water off the door glass. Hook the whole thing up to a spray bottle with out the nozzle. You have steam in the oven with out having to open the door a let the heat out. A little Rube Goldberg but what do you think? Waste of time??

Hope you could follow the rambling....'^)

Hi,

Anyone know where high gluten flour is available in Chicago? I used to see it (KA Lancelot) at Whole Foods, but that was awhile back. I know the sources where I can order it from but for those last minute inspirational urges it would be nice to just get it at the store.

I appreciate any respose.

Nevertheless, Bake on...

Dosi

Did I get a shock today, as I am almost out of yeast I phoned around to see who sells the one pound vacuum packs of it.

 A couple of places only sold fresh cake yeast which I did not want at this time, I do use it on the odd occasion.

Any way  I finally found a place that sold it at $7.99 a pound, last time I bought it was $4 some thing. wow. so I continued to phone around and the next place was $9.99. Blow that.

 Then I called National Grocers , yes they had what I wanted , and yes I could buy it from them, $5.99.

 So shop around if you are in the market for yeast.... qahtan

Susan’s Simple Sourdough with a few modifications

Combining several of Susan’s excellent recipes and techniques for a simple sourdough I’ve tried over the past few weeks, I made two large boules this morning with excellent results. 

I began by tripling the recipe for her small boule, and substituted rye for whole wheat (personal preference).  So my formula was:

128 g stiff San Francisco sourdough starter

548 g water

741 g All Trumps High Gluten Flour

64 g Hodson Mills Rye Flour

16 g salt

To this recipe I also added ¼ teaspoon of diastatic malt powder.  To be honest, I’m not sure why I added the diastatic malt, but I seem to remember it showing up in a recipe and thought I’d try it. 

This produced a little under 1500 g of dough, and I probably should have divided the dough into three loaves, but I opted on two large boules instead.

In a large bowl, I combined the starter with the flour, then added the diastatic malt and the water and autolysed for 60 minutes.  I then added the salt and did three stretch and folds in the bowl, spaced at 10 minute intervals.

At the end of that time, I lightly oiled my counter surface and did a full stretch and fold, which I repeated after 45 minutes.  After that I allowed the dough to double at room temperature (which took several hours) and then prepared the boules for the bannetons. I worked the dough by stretching and pulling the dough over the counter surface until I got a good tight skin, then placed the dough upside down in the bannetons, sealing any cracks that remained.

The two bannetons went into a large plastic bag, into which I blew a bit of air so that the plastic stayed well above the surface of the dough.  Retardation time was approximately 12 hours.

Next morning, I removed the boules and allowed the dough to rest on the counter for an hour.  I then began to preheat my oven, which I knew would take at least another hour.  By that time the dough was ready to score and load.

My baking stone went on the bottom third rack in the oven to make certain I had the height I needed for the covering bowls.

For a scoring pattern, I used two “nesting apostrophes” going in opposite direction from one another, one starting on the outside edge of the boule moving inward; the other starting in the center and moving outward in the opposite direction.

I used a large rimless cookie sheet with a sheet of parchment paper to load the boules, placing a stainless steel bowl over each. As you’ll see from the photos, I used my two Kitchen Aide mixing bowls, which I like because the handles make for easy removal.

I baked the boules covered at 500 for 30 minutes, then removed the cover and lowered the heat to 475 for another 20 minutes.  The boules stayed in the oven for an additional 5 minutes with the heat turned off, then removed to a cooling rack. 

I know the heat level might seem excessively high, but I think it’s because I use a one-inch cordelite baking stone, which absorbs a lot of heat.  Even though I pre-heat my oven for an hour, I still can’t seem to get the thermometer to read 500 degrees. 

The crust was a beautiful deep brown, something that till now has eluded me.  The crust was crackly and remained so as the bread cooled.  The crumb was perhaps not as open as I would have liked, but the texture was still tender and moist, and the flavor was exceptional, but not particularly sour.

Please be patient with me, I'm just a beginner, this one may be a very obvious question.

Should the oven cast iron baking tray be hot or cold before laying the bread over it? I'm asking because I don't want to use any synhtetic/aluminium mats or trays so I have to lay the bread directly over the iron tray(with some olive oil), but I can do that only if the tray is previously out of the oven since if I try to take that tray out hot and move the dough "à la last minute" I ruin the rising resulting in a cracker more than a nice high bread. How can I solve this problem? But here comes another question: is heating the extra virgin olive oil(between the tray and the dough) safe at very high temperatures?

Thanks in advance

I'm in the middle of getting this wonderful sounding desert put together and only need 300g of the dough. I don't have time to make some cinnamon rolls out of it at this time so I was wondering if I can freeze it for a few day or just keep in in the fridge?

Hi.

I am pretty new to the world of baking and I'm looking for a nice website containing working recipes from the best professional bakers, possibly with some images. Could somebody advise me some?

Thanks in advance

I've not made much bread in my life and the time that i do, it's nothing to brag about.

My question is, there is a recipe that I want to make for thanksgiving.  I would like to double it so I don't have to make it two completely different times.  Is it okay to double a bread recipe?  It's pretty basic, 3.5 cups flour, 2 teaspoons yeast so could I do 7 cups flour and 4 teaspoons yeast without screwing it up?

Thanks.

Hello,

Here is a great recipe for not to sweet but delicious cinnamon buns.  If anyone else has any good recipes please let me know.  I am looking for something ideally a little flakier than this and more along the lines of a danish spiral, but with a cinnamon filling.  Enjoy the recipe!

Skylar

BBA Cinnamon Buns (adapted from Peter Reinhart)

3.25 oz granulated sugar
.25oz salt
2.75oz butter or shortening (at room temperature)
1 large egg (1.65oz) slightly beaten
1 tsp lemon extract or 1tsp lemon zest
16oz unbleached bread flour or all-purpose flour
2 tsp (.22oz) instant yeast
9-10oz whole milk or buttermilk at room temperature or 1oz dry milk and 8oz water
½ cup cinnamon sugar (6 ½ Tbsp sugar plus 1 ½ Tbsp cinnamon)

Mix together the sugar, salt, and shortening on medium-high speed in an electric mixer with a paddle attachment.  The recipe said to "cream" them, so I mixed them until they seemed smooth and well blended.  I never liked the word "cream", because it always seems so ambiguos as to how thoroughly the mixture should be blended.  If you are using the powdered milk, mix the milk with the sugar, but add the water with the flour and yeast.  Mix in the egg and lemon extract until blended.  Then add the flour, yeast, and milk.  Mix on low speed (or stir by hand) until the dough forms a ball.  Switch to the dough hook and increase the speed to medium, mixing for approximately 10 minutes, or until the dough fairly smooth, tacky but not sticky (I wound up adding a little extra flour to make the dough not stick to my hands completeley.  You may have to add a little flour or water while mixing to achieve this consistancy.  The dough should pass the windowpane test (and it did!) and register 77F to 81F on your fancy little thermometer (I wish I had a thermopen so I wouldn't have to wait a half minute for a reading!)  Lightly oil a large bowl and turn the dough in the bowl to coat with oil to prevent a skin from forming.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.  Ferment at room-temp for approximately 2 hours, or until the dough doubles in size.  Mist the counter with spray oil and proceed as follows

Roll the dough out into a rectangle 2/3 inch thick and 14 inches wide by 12 inches long for large buns or 18 inches wide by 9 inches long for small buns.  Don’t roll the dough too thin or it won't be soft and tender like a cinnamon bun should be.  Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the dough and roll the dough into a log (I like to roll in towards myself so the finished roll is right in front of me).  With the seam down cut the roll into 8-12 pieces for larger buns or 12-16 pieces for smaller buns.  Place the buns approx ½ inch apart so that they are not touching but are close to one another.  Proof at room temperature for 75 to 90 minutes, or until the buns have grown into one another and have nearly doubled in size.  You can retard the buns in the refrigerator for a couple days supposedly.  I baked them straight away.  Bake the buns at 350F for 20-30 minutes or until they are lightly brown.  Cool the buns in the pan for about 10 minutes and then smear or drizzle the glaze over the top of the buns.  To make the glaze combine: 4 cups sifted 10x sugar with 1 tsp lemon extract or juice and about ½ cup warm milk.  Enjoy the buns!  (Preferably the day they are baked, they stale pretty quickly!)

Notes:
I had to add a bit of extra flour (quite a bit actually) to make the dough workable.  This could be because I used A.P flour versus bread flour, hence lower absorption.

You can put raisins and nuts into your buns!

I used 1% milk versus whole milk.  Is there a difference?  I can’t tell you that, perhaps you can tell me!

I thought this was a great video and information on wild rice!  http://www.cawildrice.com/video.php

Sylvia