Hello fellow bakers,

I baked some sourdough today. The bread tastes fine but doesn't look very good. The sides and bottom were nice and brown but the tops never browed. They look lake dirty brown water. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Alan

This is a rye bread I baked yesterday. qahtan

Hi

I'm a newbie to the bread making hobby, and so far have made a basic rustic / pugliese type bread a few times using an overnight "biga" starter. The breads always come out very tasty, good crust, etc, but the dough is just unbelievably sticky! Kneading is almost impossible, and I end up with about a half inch of dough coating my hands up the wrists every time I touch the dough. My wife just thinks the whole show of me trying to get it off my hands is hysterical. I do use a little flour / greased bowl per the recipe, but it seems I would have to add way too much dry flour to really solve this problem. Is there another way?

I have a question about others experience with crust. I have made several batches of Rustic Bread (excellent recipe by the way). I have found that when my bread comes out of the oven it is nice a crunchie crust, but as it cools it often becomes soft until fully cooled at which time some cruch returns.

I have been baking on a stone in 450F oven with steam.

Anyone with a similar experience? Is this what to expect as the bread cools?

JM

Hi all,

I received a banneton for Christmas, which was pretty cool. I've just finished my first loaf with it and had... mmm... let's say "moderate" success.

I made a pretty standard direct-yeasted 60-2-2 type of dough, using about 25% whole wheat/75% all-purpose. After primary fermentation I shaped a boule, relatively gently, and popped it into the very heavily floured basket. (I wanted to be sure it wouldn't stick!)

After proofing, I unmolded it as gently as I could by putting my floured hand on the top (bottom, really) of the loaf, flipped the basket and sort of rolled it gently onto my peel.

just purchased bernard clayton's 'breads'. susrprised that most of his recipes don't require a starter as peter reinhardt generally recommends in his 'apprentice' book. is the qualitative difference that great to favor one method over the other. i personally haven't noticed much of a difference. please advise.

So I attempted to make Pain de Champagne based on a recipe from Julia Child's "Baking with Julia".
Basically: 1)Make dough from 1/2cup flour, 3tbs water, 1/2 tsp milk, let sit 2 days 2) add 1/3 cup water, 3/4 cup flour, let sit 18 hours

Now at this point I was supposed to add more flour and water and let sit again, but it was horrible. The dough after the first 2 days had risen a little and smelled like a slightly sour dough, but after that third day, it was really sour, had the consistancy of stiff yogurt, and reaked of rotten milk perhaps? Now, leaving something with milk in it at room temp for 3 days seems like a bad idea, but it is the recipe.

King Arthur Flour is sponsoring a free baking education tour around the USA this fall.

There are two sessions each day: one on "Sweet Dough Basics and Whole Grains" and another on "Artisan Breads."

Check the schedule to see if they are coming to a town near you.

I baked these this weekend. It doesn't get much simpler.

Does anyone have a recipe for a bread with more gluten content than normal bread? I know that you can extract the gluten from starch by washing the bread dough but i'm not too sure how much of the extracted gluten and the normal dough i should use. If possible i would like a high-gluten french bread recipe, more gluten than normal.