I have finished reading the Reinhold (BBA)and Beranbaum books on bread and would like to know what the resident pros such as: FloydM, SourdoLady, Mountaindog, Jim, Jeffrey, et. al. actually normally do when it comes to retardation and misting.
Jim’s Basic Bread
Makes two large loaves.
65% Hydration.
I found a link to some neat instructional type videos on a number of shaping techniques so I did a search to see if it was already linked somewhere on this site but I didn't find any quickly so here it is:
http://www.fornobravo.com/video/hearth_bread.html
demegrad
This is the Flax Seed Wheat Bread from Dan Lepard's The Handmade Loaf (a great book, but one not easy to find in the US).
Can anyone help me with the correct way to use the Magic Mill DLX to knead? When researching to buy it, it was touted at closest to hand kneading when using the roller and scraper. For me, the dough just sticks to the roller and spins around with it. No kneadinig goes on at all! I've contacted Magic Mill and they say for under 8 cups of flour to use the dough hook, but all of their literature and everything on line says the opposite. I don't know how to use this $500 machine and it was a waste of my money. Can anyone give me some advice to stop the dough from just spinning with the roller? I'd appreciate it. Alternatively, anybody want to buy a virtually unused Magic Mill DLX 2000???? :-))
I have read so many pieces about this bakery or that where they say this oven makes so many batches over a certain period or this bakery holds the record for consecutive batches...
So, having not been trained by a school or a professional baker, how big is a batch? Is it 2, 10, 20 or what? For me 10 loaves in a row at 2 pounds each was a great workout kneading but the time really flies when you are having that much fun!
Happy baking!
My favorite local-to-me bakery is Hungry Ghost Bread on State Street in Northampton, MA. All their bread is made by hand with sourdough culture, organic flour and filtered water, and baked in a huge wood-fired oven. Well, made mostly by hand: there is a large and noisy dough mixer to bring together each 75-lb. batch of dough. From time to time there are dynamite cookies and pastry goods in addition to a variety of excellent bread.
Some photos and a write-up from the fall of 2005 is available at http://www.boston.com/travel/explorene/massachusetts/articles/2005/09/21/it_takes_a_village_baker/ . Hungry Ghost is an interesting place to hang out briefly whole choosing which bread to buy. There's often John Coltrane of Bob Dylan music filling the space, and the weekly bread schedule usually has a poem by lead baker Jonathan Stevens printed on the back. Stevens and Cheryl Maffei are the proprietors, ever-ready to explain their wares or comment on the passing scene.
