I've been baking the no knead bread for about 3 yrs now from the original recipe of Jim Lahey. I've had real good luck with this recipe and used it for Ciabatta, Focaccia and pizza dough. I also have Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois's book Artisan Bread in 5 min a Day. I never tried their method till yesterday. I now know why. Although you have enough dough for 2-4 loaves of bread in the fridge, that particular dough is only good for being the master recipe or basic. I took out a portion of the dough to make olive bread but found I had to incorporate the olives, rosemary and oil in the cold dough. The dough never rose like Lahey's dough so it was kind of dense maybe from being cold. Lahey's dough method is made for a peticular recipe. I believe I prefer making no knead dough to suit a recipe as in the basic no knead method. I have made Lahey's dough and could not bake it the next day, put it in the fridge and baked it 2 days later with no problem. 

Another thought is the Artisan method, you cut off a piece "the size of a grapefruit". To me this is not to exact and with Lahey's method, you know 3 cups flour, 1.5 c water etc goes in a 5 qt dutch oven for X amount of time. This is a science. The sizing "grapefruit" can vary so therefore I would imagine baking times would change.

I would like to get your opinions and maybe I can elaborate more as to my findings.

Hi Everyone,

Unfortunately, I haven't been a regular contributor to the forum, but I'm a daily observer and just love learning new things about bread.  As I get settled and start baking again, I hope to contribute a little more often.  I currently live in Warsaw, Poland, and just can't get enough of the wonderful breads here.  I followed up on some of the bakeries that I found near by, and I'm glad to see that they've got a home on the web too!  These are some bakery and TV links (with short videos in Polish), but definitely worth a look.  The product galleries are also nicely displayed.  Hope you enjoy!

(My daily bakery):  http://www.lubaszka.pl/

http://www.piekarniagrzybki.pl/

http://www.piekarniagromulski.pl/

http://www.putka.pl/

http://vimeo.com/9122970

http://www.tvp.pl/styl-zycia/kuchnia/kuchnia-z-okrasa/wideo/ze-staropolskiego-chleba

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b97MprGy3mI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb9psWTFTz4&feature=related

Susan and I spent the weekend eating and drinking well with Brother Glenn, family and friends on the North Coast. On the way home, we stopped at Della Fattoria Bakery in Petaluma (near Santa Rosa, CA) for lunch. Della Fattoria is a small enterprise run by a mother and son. They make about 10 types of bread, as well as pastries, cakes and cookies. They were the example of a small, family-run bakery in Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Breads."

The bakery is small, but they have a number of tables and make a nice variety of sandwiches, piadini and breakfast dishes. We had sandwiches on their levain and their seeded levain and took loaves of the levain and their fig-walnut baguette home for dinner. Della Fattoria's breads are all sourdough and are baked in a wood-fired oven, and their breads are all boldly baked. The crusts all have a deep caramelized flavor I love. The crumbs are all remarkably moist, chewy and assertively sour. Each of the three breads we had the opportunity to taste ranked among the best tasting breads I have every had. Truly amazing stuff!

Regretably, we were not able to also sample their semolina bread, pan integrale, polenta bread, or several others, all of which were tempting. We will just have to return.

David

I have a zillion (or it seems like) books, mostly pastry and cake oriented, textbooks, and King Arthur Flour. KAF is aimed at the American home baker, which is fine, but I really want a book aimed at the professional with larger quantities, gram measure, maybe less story and more technique.  I see reference to a lot of books I don't have.  The only book I have with real bread is "The Italian Baker" by Carol Field.  I want to buy a bread book, that deals with bread conditioners, gram measure, more than 1 or 2 loaves and scaling, by a Master Bread Baker.   I want to know why something is done and why something is better than something else or what I can use if I don't have it.   In essence.. 2,000 years of bread baking experience in one book under $30.  Maybe this should be in books, but I thought a bread forum would have the people who actually use it. 

Suggestions???

Hello I'm new here. I've been baking bread for about a year. Recently join our local farmers market with good success. I love reading all the helpful information that is on this site. This reason I'm posting here is hopefully someone can help me local a recently video I watch on the site. I can't for the life of me find the link and on what section of the forum it was posted. The video was about small wheat farm and bakery that was run by these men might have been brother (they spoke in french)it looked like they were giving a tour or a class on bread baking (from cultivating the wheat they grew straight through to the baking of the bread). What interested me was the way they mixed their dough. They used a huge wooden table like box maybe 4'L x2'W x8"H it was a very interesting video everything was done by hand nothing electrical was used including the oven it was a brick or clay oven used outside their building. I would like to replicate the wooden mixing table they have (not that big of course). I like to do thing as basic and natural as possible. If anyone has seen this video and could help with any suggestion  as to what type of wood they may have used and what they put in the bottom to hold in the water. I would highly appreciate it.

Tamara

You can go nuts trying to find the perfect pizza dough formula. The cookbooks and the web are full of recipes for various types of dough and full of opinions regarding the type of flour to use, the ingredients (beyond flour, water, salt and yeast) and the mixing and fermentation methods that work best.

My goal for today was what I understand to be classic pizza napoletana. The dough should consist of the four basic ingredients only – no oil, sugar, malt or other stuff. The crust should be very thin and crisp on the bottom, not soft or soggy. The toppings should be minimal, so the crust is the main attraction.

After reading through many, many recipes, I settled on the one in Maggie Glezer's “Artisan Breads.” It uses the 4 ingredients only. It is for a Naples-style pizza. It is credited to Emanuele Leonforte of Hosteria restaurant in Port Chester, New York.

Leonforte uses a mix of Doppio Zero and high-gluten flour that Glezer calculates as resulting in about 12.5% protein. He uses a remarkably short mix. He ferments the dough for a long time but only once. Glezer gives the option of retarding the dough overnight and fermenting it the next day, and that fit best with my schedule. The method I used is described below.

Method

1. Measure the flour, yeast and salt into the bowl of a stand mixer and mix them.

2. With the dough hook in place and the mixer at slow speed, gradually pour in the water.

3. Mix until the dough forms a ball and cleans the side of the bowl, about 3 minutes.

4. Cover the bowl and let the dough rest for 10-15 minutes.

5. Mix the dough at Speed 2 for about 3 minutes. It should be fairly smooth but will not pass the window pane test.

6. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured board and divide it into 4 equal pieces of about 200 g each (to make 10 inch pizzas).

7. Shape each piece into a tight ball.

8. Place each ball into a 1 qt Ziploc bag with a tablespoon of olive oil. Roll the ball in the oil and seal the bags.

9. The dough can be refrigerated overnight, frozen for later use or allowed to ferment at room temperature for 5 to 6 hours for use the same day. (I refrigerated two balls and froze two.)

10. For refrigerated dough, remove it to room temperature 3-5 hours before you plan on making the pizza, depending on room temperature.

11. An hour before baking, pre-heat the oven to 500ºF (or more, if possible) with a baking stone on the middle shelf.

12. Remove one ball at a time from its bag and shape into a 10 inch round by your method of choice.

13. Top the pizza as desired, immediately transfer it to the baking stone, and bake for 8-10 minutes until done. Repeat for additional pizzas.

The toppings I used for each pizza were:

1. Brush the entire surface of the shaped pizza dough with olive oil.

2. Sprinkle with a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh rosemary.

3. Sprinkle with a large clove of garlic, sliced very thin.

4. Distribute on the pizza a cup of cherry tomatoes, halved, cut side up or a cup of fresh roma tomatoes peeled, seeded and cut into quarters.

5. After baking, optionally top with fresh arugula or basel leaves.

Pizza with Cherry Tomatoes, pre-bake

Pizza with Cherry Tomatoes, baked

Pizza with Roma Tomatoes, pre-bake

Pizza with Roma Tomatoes, baked

The results were wonderful! The dough stretched easily to paper thin without tearing and baked so crisp there was no sagging when a slice was help up by the corona. Biting into it was a noisy crunch. The flavor of the crust was delicious. The whole experience sold me on minimalist toppings.

Pizza bottom crust

Thin crust

Crust

I don't think adding a few capers, or olives or mushrooms would do any harm, but I don't think making pizzas with heavy saucing, lots of cheese or lots of anything will be tempting again.

 The pizza was a nice follow-up to last night's bruschetta.

Bruschetta with fresh funghi porcini and with tomatoes and basel

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

I'll start with my question, to pique your interests, and then explain why I'm asking:

The Question: What, would you say, are the major events of the "bread revolution" of the last 20-30 years?  By this I mean events which stimulated a great deal of interest in either buying or making at home high quality bread (or both).  For instance, the publication of the Bread Baker's Apprentice, or Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day are recent events that might qualify, although I don't know what the real magnitude of those are.

Why I'm asking: When I'm not baking bread, I'm working on a doctorate in economics.  For some time I've wanted to combine my two interests and write a paper on the economics of bread. Now I'm toying with the notion of examining whether home baking is a substitute or a complement for purchased bread.  That is, when people bake more bread, do they also buy more bread, or less?  Normally one would think that making anything at home would be a substitute for buying it, but in the case of fancy artisan bread it could be that making bread gives you a taste for good bread, which you then buy more of.  Dan Lepard tells that latter story about bread in Europe in The Art of Handmade Bread.

To answer this question, somewhere or other I need to obtain data on sales and pricing of bread (or perhaps flour--I've sent a pleading, long-shot, e-mail to King Arthur Flour Company).  But I also need some kind of sudden shift in either home baking or bread demand.  I'm thinking there are suitably big events in the "bread revolution" that would provide this kind of shift.

Hopefully that all makes sense.  So: What are the major events of the "Bread Revolution"?

Hello,

I'm looking for a white freestanding range with convection oven. I currently own a Frigidaire range which has been in my townhouse, but temperature knobs start being loose and I can't control the temperature anymore, very annoying. 

I love cooking and have participated in farmers market to sell my Asian artisan breads, so oven is very important. My friend recommended me Viking, Wolf, or Jenn Air though they are too expensive for me. My budget would be less than 1K. 

I didn't know much about oven nor range, so I did window shopping at Lowes, Sears, and Best Buy, and learned about the cool features/specs I didn't know. I learned alot from window shopping, but it also confused me what is reasonable for spec&quality. 

Oven::
-convection (it was new to me... there are also "True convection" or "Third element convection")
-hidden bake element (easy to clean, taking longer time to heat)
-single/double oven (I'm not sure about this... double sounds good to be able to bake more, but no storage space)

Range::
-smooth top (although, I read reviews of some products and learned it's slow heating, such as taking forever to boil)
-touch panel control (instead of knob... sounds like a spaceship feature to me!)

This is the one I'm considering, Kenmore from Sears:
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_02292902000P?sid=IDx20070921x00003h&srccode=cii_5784816&cpncode=24-128021493-2
Although, some people says Kenmore brand breaks after 1 year, and have to pay to fix it if you don't buy extra warranty. 

Does anyone have any recommendations for range to buy? Or any spec/brand I should look for? (oh, it's gotta be an electric one, not a gas)

There has been a flurry of discussion in the past weeks on baking bread in a cast iron dutch oven. Many TFL members use this method. It produces great breads but many find it problematic to lower the risen dough into a preheated pot.

On November 9, 2010, TFL member dmsynder asked whether it was necessary to preheat a cast iron dutch oven prior to baking in order to get a good rise and crust. (His post can be found here).

Here's the collective answer ...

> preheat the oven

> do NOT preheat the cast iron dutch oven and lid

> grease the dutch oven and let your dough rise directly in it

Here's my detailed illustration of this method with photos (with thanks to everyone who went before me)

=== EQUIPMENT ===

I used a two-quart capacity non enameled cast iron dutch oven. For the lid, I used a non enameled cast iron skillet, placed upside-down on the dutch oven. The diameter of my dutch oven and skillet are identical, so I get a good seal during the initial baking. The dutch oven is 3 inches high and the skillet is 1 & 1/2 inches high, so I have 4 & 1/2 inches interior height in total. Here's a photo of the assembly...

CAST IRON DUTCH OVEN AND CAST IRON SKILLET ASSEMBLY

=== INGREDIENTS ===

The bread recipe I use is a fairly standard sourdough. Ingredients are refreshed sourdough starter (at 100% hydration), commercial unbleached white bread flour, organic whole wheat flour, water and salt. Whole wheat flour is 20% of total flour. Dough hydration is 72% (this includes the water in the levain).

I baked two loaves. For each two-quart capacity dutch oven, I had 18 ounces (prebaking weight) of dough.

=== FINAL PROOF ===

The dutch oven was lightly greased. After shaping, the dough proofed directly in the dutch oven. During proofing, each dutch oven was slipped into a food grade plastic bag. (I help myself to these bags from the produce section of my favorite supermarket  - they're just the right size).

When ready to bake, the dough had risen close to the top of the dutch oven.

RISEN DOUGH IN CAST IRON DUTCH OVEN READY TO BAKE

=== INITIAL BAKING ===

The oven had been thoroughly preheated to 500F so it was ready when the dough was ready.

The dough was slashed, lightly misted, covered and loaded into the oven. The oven temperature was lowered to 475F, so it baked at somewhere between 500F to 475F for twenty minutes. At the end of this time, the dough had risen about 1 & 1/2 inches, slashes had opened and the dough was just beginning to color.

BREAD 20 MINUTES INTO BAKING CYCLE

=== FINAL BAKING ===

The lid was removed, temperature was lowered to 450F and the bread baked in the (uncovered) dutch oven for 20 minutes more. At the end of the bake, when removed to the cooling rack, I was delighted to hear the (greatly desired) crackling as the crust cooled. After cooling, the post-baking weight of each loaf was slightly over 16 ounces.

FINAL LOAVES

Hello everyone,

I have been making bread for the last two years on and off, knew it was something i enjoyed but it wasn't until 4 months ago i took it very seriously and am in love with it. I am very thankful to have found this forum, the only guide i had for the last 4 months was my bread book. I have read some of the topics here and it seems to be just the place, as i'm falling into the need to know more category very sharply. I can bake good basic bread and i have a couple of times, though my consistency is not there. My weakest point would be the shaping process , this is what tends to get me all the time. Sometimes my bread "rises" to the occasion other times it just wants to stay flat and wide like a ciabatta, i have done this a few times and mistakenly came out with a very nice tasting bread similar to ciabatta with the big air holes, but not what i intended to shape. Although i never gave up constantly trying again and again to "feel" my way around the dough. The other thing is my slashes were not opening up fully in the oven at first, but with more tries it got much better, this being that i added the steam factor. Can we really bake Artisan bread like the bakers at home in a normal gas oven? Help would be greatly appreciated. I live in Bahrain and  we lack good bread. Am willing to do anything to set me on the right path to great Artisan bread. I read about Todd and his experiance which i relate to 100% and has given me the courage today to keep going after lots of attempts. Thank you. I love the fact that you opened a micro-bakery with just 3 breads, starting off small and you never know where your passion could lead you.  I would love to do a bread course to get my head straight about the science.  Good to be here, i feel i am finally in a good place now.

Thank you all.

ghazi