As shared elsewhere at TFL, I'm a returning baker, aspiring to The Full Tartine, hoping to grow instincts for making lean airy loaves, lured into this unexpectedly addictive passion by the gift of Lahey from my wise beyond his years son last year.

Pertinent frustration:  Doughs persistently floppy (is this what writers call "slack"?) when they should be taught and eager to leap onto the peel, so reluctant to make the plunge that they desperately cling for dear life to my  rice+wheat flour dusted, towel-covered makeshift wicker bannetons.  The path to that point has been a 75% hydration hybrid of (some) PR's Pan D'Ancienne + (mostly) a basic Tartine country boule -- with storebought yeast, no starter yet -- enough variables to juggle for now (But what's this?  How did pineapple juice get on the shopping list?  Somebody stop me!).  Long cool bulk ferment with beaucoup Robertsonian turning in the bucket and billowy, moderately bubbly dough at initial shaping time.  Red Mill Organic white : Golden Buffalo, 9:1 per Tartine.

But my dough refuses to toughen up with lasting surface tension and a workably non-sticky surface after my dutiful folding and dragging against (but some sticking to) the bench as too many YouTube videos make appear WAY too easy.  Has it failed to develop sufficient "strength"? --  an interesting term that nobody I've read ever quite defines.  Perhaps "strong" doughs are those that can be pulled from the bucket intact without breaking.  Mine qualify, but remain floppy when couche or banneton proofed.  fwiw, they're free of "drippy edges" about which Robertson warns, after bench rest and before final shaping.  Nice round edges.

I envy the YouTubes of self-assured doughs merrily rolling out of bannetons (e.g. chez Tartine) when mine are desperately clinging to the towels like Linus to blanket ("Oh no, not...The PEEL!  Anything but...The PEEL!" they cry).  The biochemist in me whispers "free, unbound water in the dough, osmosing into lower water potential of dusted cloths" (as well it should), but 75% hydration is nothing compared to the macho boasts of "Dude, 90% hydration doughs are my middle name!" here and elsewhere.  What am I missing here?

Full disclosure: resulting loaves are surprisingly wonderful (god bless forgiving hobbies) despite above whine.  Big classy shiny cavities, promisingly tuneful crusts, undeniable palette joy.  So all's fairly well that ends well, but the process ... tweaking needed.

To pay forward and in keeping with Sarah Weiner's brilliant (cf. Robertson, p. 144), "I like bread, and I like butter -- but I like bread and butter best":  Good bread deserves butter.  I gave French Butter Keepers (google it) over the holidays.  Infinitely recommended.

Thanks for reading. And apologies if it's an old and tired complaint. Believe me, I've tried to RTFM.

toad.de.b

In recent weeks I've been kibitzing a friend who's starting up a new restaurant where he's been trying out a recently purchased, second hand, commercial "combo oven".  The oven is proving a bit cranky and he's working out the bugs and tinkering with bake times and temperatures.  I got a chance to bake a couple test loaves in the oven and was very impressed with the "jump rise" achieved in "combo" mode (heat with superheated steam in the oven).

^My friend's big "combo oven" (not something for the home kitchen!)

^test loaf from the big "combo oven"

You can clearly see how the loaf lifted itself the sheet pan when cooked in the combo oven with a lot of steam.

Impressed, I tried "cooking with steam" in my home oven by dumping a cup of hot water in a pan near the bottom of the oven and slamming the door.  I'd previously thought (erroneously) that this would keep the oven near the boiling point of water, but that's wrong.  The oven runs near the set temperature (usually ~450F) and there's simply a lot of humidity in the oven, near saturation.

Here's a loaf I baked with steam at home:

^loaf baked with steam (with my beloved wife's home-made tomato jam on a slice)

Notice that the above loaf is round on the bottom as well as on the top from lifting itself off the baking sheet!

In my home oven experiments I notice when I cook with steam this way I'm getting much more browning on the top of the loaf than the bottom.  I'm delighted with the jump rise I get with steam, and I think I should be able to get the top and bottom more similar with some more tinkering.

Now, on to shopping for  and using brotforms/bannetons. 

A shopping report first. My friend with the new restaurant mentioned needing some inexpensive baskets for forming/proofing loaves.  I did some shopping and found a big selection of inexpensive baskets at luckyclovertrading.com including three kinds of "brotform" basket and also some willow "banneton"-style baskets.  They don't sell cloth liners for the brotforms.  That's OK because my friend with the restaurant usually lines his proofing baskets with cloth restaurant napkin which I found cheap at another site.

I ordered some brotform baskets and some napkins from the above sources.  My friend with the restaurant really likes the brotform baskets and I do too.  The napkins just came a few minutes ago; I like them because they have a very tight, shiny weave that should be hard for dough to stick to.  My friend has used similar napkins with good success.

I've had a little trouble occasionally in the past with dough sometimes sticking to custom made brotform liners. The ones I have fit very nicely but have a softer, slightly less tightly woven fabric than my new napkins.  Recently it occurred to me part of the reason dough stuck to the liner sometimes I've had problems scoring loaves was I'm not used to letting a loaf "rest" on the counter until the surface dries out a bit and a skin forms.  I tried doing exactly that, let the dough rest uncovered until the surface didn't feel sticky, dusted it with a little rice flour, and plopped it inverted into a lined brotform.  It worked great!  The dough showed zero inclination to stick coming out of the brotform, and scoring was a breeze as the "skin" on the loaf parted under the razor blade!

I have enough dough for 4 loaves.

I only have 2 round bannetons (which I've never used, though they've made pretty wall decor, oy!)

And the bigger kicker, I only have one baking stone and oven.

How in the world do you juggle multiple loaves like this? I'm doing the first rise now. Once that's done, I'm guessing I'm going to stick half the dough back into the fridge, unshaped, then shape two boules in the bannetons and stick one banneton back in the fridge. Wait about 20 minutes or so while the first loaf rises, then pull it out so that it has time to rise while the first one is cooking.

I suppose the worst is that I have to turn my oven off rather than waste electricity while waiting for bread to rise after coming out of the fridge and taking longer. On the other hand, it's nearly 80F in my apartment. I might not have long to wait.

Recently I've been finding tiny bugs nestled into the cracks between the strips of cane on my bannetons.  To be honest, it's really disgusting.  I am meticulous about brushing the old flour off before I put them away, and I've never had this problem before.  But over the past few months,  it has become a consistent issue.  Luckily, the bugs are tiny and very slow, so it's easy to tap them off.  But it's still an unappealing situation.  I can't tell if the insects are coming in from the environment, or if they're coming from the flour itself.  Has anyone had this problem, and if so,  have you found a solution?

Maybe someone can enlighten me here. I had the grand idea of finding some lovely bannetons, both new and antique, during a recent trip to France. Well, I searched far and wide throughout Paris and Beaune. Not only did I not encounter a single banneton, but most persons I asked, whether it be at a boulangerie or antique dealer had no clue what a banneton was or how it was used. Furthermore, I noted that none of the breads for sale at the boulangeries seemed to have been risen in a banneton. Are they essentially a thing of the past in France, and if so, how can they make the breads they do w/o them, particularly high water content breads? There were a couple of people that knew what I was asking for (and yes, I was speaking in French), but most had no idea.

--Rick

I've always been a little sad that because I use a linen tea towel to line my baskets, very little (if any) of the pattern of the basket shows through in the flour on the finished loaf. (I do have one small round basket that looks very natural / foodsafe, so I have tried that one without a towel, with good results. But my other baskets kind of look like the wicker may be chemically treated, so I didn't want to try them.)

A little while ago I had an idea how to get the nice pattern without a brotform, and I finally remembered to try it in my last bake! The recipe was the ubiquitous Norwich Sourdough from Susan's Wild Yeast Blog.

My idea was to use a "ribbed" linen placemat to line the basket, instead of a tea towel. I have some natural (undyed, or at least appear so) placemats which have been through the wash several times, so I was pretty sure they were foodsafe. Here's a poorly-lit picture of the one I used:
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I sprinkled some rice flour on the placemat first, before dusting with quite a lot of white (AP) flour. This worked very well, the loaf turned out cleanly after proofing, no sticking at all. And the resulting pattern on the loaf was great! Picture:

In the next picture you can see this loaf with its "dough-brothers", one of which was proofed in the aforementioned foodsafe basket, the other three in baskets/bowls lined with tea towels. I kind of like the variety!

(Note: the loaves have a bit of a golden color to them which I attribute to substituting some of the white flour in the recipe with kamut flour, which is an ancient relative of durum.)

Happy baking,
Mike

Hi Folks,

Though all of you might be interested in another great selection of Bannetons (many shapes, sizes & types)

http://www.fantes.com/brotforms.html

Robert

When I reached for my banneton this morning I was in for a big surprise. The entire bottom of the banneton was covered in blue mold! Obviously, I decided to hold off on using it for now.

Has this happened to anyone else? I keep my banneton in a a plastic bag, but it isn't sealed like a ziploc. From what I'ver heard, it seems most people allow some flour to stay in the grooves of their bannetons. I leave some flour in the grooves, but not an excessive amount. I'm not sure what caused the mold. The only thing I can think of is that it should have been in a sealed bag.

I think I'll end up throwing out this banneton, but if anyone has a suggestion to save it I'd appreciate it. It's a round willow banneton, with no linen lining. How can I clean it? I'd also take any suggestions about why this happened and how to prevent it in the future.

I just scored a huge willow banneton from the local Goodwill.  $2.00 and in great condition so I just had to rescue it.   Inside dimensions are 12 3/4" diameter and 5 1/2" deep.  Any ideas on how much dough to put in by weight for a banneton this size?  I would also like to hear opinions on whether you use them with or without cloth. FYI  I'm just a home cook who is a few months away from finishing a backyard wood fired oven.  I do have another banneton that is much smaller but this huge one would be fun for family gatherings or to just cut in half or quartered to share with friends.

Mark

I've been raising my standard loaves in brotforms for quite a while.  Lately I've been getting blowouts rather than nice expansion.  It almost seems as though the top crust (the one that rests on the bottom when the loaf is rising in the basket) is drying out a little.  Feeling the tops of the loaves confirms this.  They dough is reasonably hydrated, but not at crazy ciabatta levels or anything.  I'd be more specific, but this is happening with a variety of recipes.

I bake on a stone, and use ice melting in a hot pan for steam.

I have not changed the way I cover the loaves during rising - oiled plastic wrap with a tea towel over that.

Should I brush the tops of the loaves with water?

-  Jessica