My sandwich loaves were terrific, but pale despite an overnight stay in the fridge.
I made a variation of Syd's Poolish Sandwich Loaf, but instead of making a poolish, I made the dough directly, fermented it in bulk half-way or perhaps more. I then retarded the dough. The next day, the dough had expanded 3 to 4 times it's original volume. I preshaped the loaves, let them reach room temperature and baked them at 375F.
My first attempt at making these apple fritters was an unmitigated disaster.
Thinking "I know dough", I decided to make the dough the night before. I mixed the dough, let it bulk ferment, added the apple filling (a silly concoction that called for a vanilla bean, sparkling cider, and apple cider vinegar. Oh, the hubris!), and retarded the dough overnight.
Easy enough.
Should work just fine, right?
Ha! Ha! Ha!
Nope!
I am due to have a mastectomy early in New Year, but cannot bear the thought of giving up bread baking. Am I unrealistic to think that I could use the stretch and fold technique over several hours with very little heavy physical work? I've been told to expect tiredness or even exhaustion. But if people can help with the washing up and carrying I reckon I could do something? Any ideas please?
As as apprentice sorceror I feel obliged to make some experiment, once in a while :-)
This time around the object of my study was sodium bicarbonate (baking soda). I prepared a poolish with 10 gr of rye starter, 60 gr of white flour and 60 gr of water with 0.6 gr of bicarbonate dissolved within. The poolish doubled in the usual amount of time, but contrary to the usual it had a thicker consistency than when I prepared it (generally it's much thinner).
I have been baking a lot of REALLY enriched breads this holiday season and they are behaving differently than my usual enriched doughs and I am wondering if anyone can shed some light on what I am experiencing.
I have been making Panettone, Stollen, Julekage and Challah. I am using a sourdough starter and I have been retarding the doughs overnight after mixing in the evening.
Carol Field ("The Italian Baker", revised) says that Rapid Rise and instant yeast are not the same. That's a new one on me. I always thought Rapid Rise was Fleischman's instant yeast as opposed to "active dry yeast". ???
RB
Hi,
in this period I'm preparing a lot of panettones with a lot of sugar and fats in the dough:-)
What I noticed is that after several hours the first dough (very slack at the end of the kneading) gets much stiffer, it can even be handled by hands. I wonder if this effect is due to the acidification that comes with fermentation, or to the nature of the flour (W 410, 14.5% proteins) or -possibly- to vitamin C (not listed in the in bag, but almost surely present in the flour).
Basically, does anybody have any tips on how to keep the bread from coming apart at the cinnamon swirl? The taste was pretty spot on but my swirl was less than seamless...
I got interested in using a starter for breadmaking several months ago. I sent for a good sourdough dry start through Friends of Carl (Oregon Trail Sourdough) and while I was waiting for it to arrive set myself up to learn the process using commercial bakers yeast. I use regular dry yeast, not instant dry yeast.
I was very happy with the result! It worked well for a long time, until suddenly it didn't. My yeast starter started going down and finally dying. I had to re-start the starter from scratch 3 times, each time it lasted a shorter period of time.
