Is this the same exact product? The KAF catalog doesn't list the manufacturer. The stone on Amazon is less $ and free shipping. Thanks in advance for your comments/advice.

Hi All,

I tried again with the baguettes.  This time I used 1.25 cups of flour and .5 cup of water, 1/4 teaspoon of active dry yeast (i bought the glass jar in spite of some of ya'll's advice so i'll be using it for a while.) and 1/4 teaspoon of salt (i should've used more salt)...

So, does it count as an autolyzing if I've already added the yeast and the salt? Since i've got the active dry stuff i have to soak it first and since i'm using so little water i don't have enough to divide it.

Anyway, the dough was a lot firmer than I'm used to and I'm thinking I might try an extra .25 cup of water to see what happens.  I transferred the shaped baguette onto a hot cookie sheet and that seems to have helped with oven spring.  This time the shaping was a lot better-- I took occidental's advice and dusted the flour with a sifter and that combined with how the dough was a lot more dry than what I've been using so I managed to shape a pretty pretty loaf.

My knife obviously isn't cutting it ;) when it comes to scoring.  I went to the local wal-mart to look for straight razors (is that what they're called... oops, double edged razors) well, the saleslady looked at me like i was crazy.  I also went to the hardware store to find drop canvas-- more on that in a bit-- and some quarry stones.  All the tiles they had were glazed.  There's this place down the road that has a lot of rocks and stuff so maybe they'll have some.

The bread came out a bit darker than I like and i'm not too crazy about the taste of it.  Also it's missing some salt... actually, i've got some more dough in the fridge, let me go add salt to that now...

I'll let you all know what happens when you add salt 10 hours into a cold fermentation/rising.

Here's the crumb

The bread came out sort of dry but that may have been because i tried baking at 500 for the first 10 minutes-- i won't try that again...

I don't reckon I'll count this as a victory-- except for the shaping; it's the best shaping i've been able to manage so far...

I think i put too much salt in the dough for next time... it'll be a half teaspoon for ~1.25 cups of flour.

anyway, regarding couches-- i went to the hardware store and got canvas drop cloth.  It says it's heavy-duty tight cotton weave, absorbent, washable and reusable, 8.oz. 4'x5' finished size

sorry about it being sideways... and here's as good a closeup of the weave as i could get with my camera

It's still in the plastic in case i've made a terrible mistake I can return it.

Does anyone know whether it'll work or not?  By the way, I need to wash it (with bleach as well as detergent?) then once it's dry rub flour into the weave?  is that how one turns it into a couche?

Has anyone made baking stones from clay?  I have a convection oven and am thinking of making tiles from stoneware clay.  There would be 4 tiles that would fit my oven rack, leaving 1" of space all around for air flow.  I am thinking of adding some minor designs into the tile so the bottom crust of my breads would pick up the design elements.

Any thoughts?

I would like to let my breads rise on a baking stone and place this in a pre-heated oven when the loaves are ready to bake.

Would this work OK? I only wonder because I usually read that baking stones should be pre-heated too.

What happens to me rather often is if I let loaves rise on a peel (on top of parchment paper) and then  as gently as possible slide the loaves from the peel to the pre-heated baking stone, they often fall 20-40%, even though they pass the proofing tests. This happens with many recipes.

So I'm trying to find a way to get around this.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

I bought a new baking stone at Sur La Table last week. It is a lot heavier and thicker than your ordinary baking stone (14 x 16 x 5/8). I'm really impressed with how it is performing. My oven is definitely getting and staying hotter and my breads are cooking more quickly and getting browner. My new stone, made by Best Manufacturers in Portland, OR, is lighter in color than ordinary stones and seems to be made of a different type of material. Anyway, I highly recommend it. It was worth the $42.

--Pamela

A member of Peter Reinhart's bread forum posted a link to an article on how to make your oven capable of producing a great pizza published in the LA Times today. Read it here.

--Pamela

Reliably, every time I bake just about any kind of bread, the tops contrive to darken too much well before the bread ought to be done. Generally I end up pulling the loaves out early, but I always feel like they'd be better baked longer. I've checked the oven temperature with an over thermometer, and it doesn't appear to be at fault.  I generally bake with a 14x16 inch stone on the middle shelf, and a steam pan underneath.  I've tried putting the stone on the bottom rack, but this results in the bottoms burning quite thoroughly before the tops get any color    Lately I've noticed that breads not baked on the stone (bagels, in particular) don't seem to have this problem, and I'm wondering if the stone has something to do with it.

So, my question to the forum is this: What's going wrong here, and how might I fix it?

I am having problems with even heat in my oven.  The loaves baked on the top rack pop up just fine, but the loaves on the lower rack tend to spread out a bit rather than springing upward.  The difference is easily noticeable.  I use stones, but I'm thinking that's not enough.  I've been looking at the HearthKit, and Fibrament stones, and also at someone's homemade HearthKit (tiles lining the oven walls in addition to baking stones).  I've also thought about convection, but to get even heat, I'm thinking I'd have to turn on the convection at the beginning of