This is the Miche from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice” (BBA). I followed the instructions Reinhart provides, with the following modifications:

1.  I used “Organic Type 85”flour from Central Milling as the high-extraction flour.
2.  Rather than using 100% high-extraction flour, I substituted 10% Whole Spelt flour in the final dough.
3.  I did two S &F's at 1 and 2 hours into a 3 1/2 hour bulk fermentation  
4.  I pre-heated the oven to 500ºF with a baking stone and the oven steaming apparatus recommended by the San Francisco Baking Institute. I bake with steam at 450ºF for 25 minutes, then turned the oven to convection bake, set the temperature to 425ºF and baked for another 40 minutes. (This is a higher effective temperature than Reinhart calls for, because of the convection setting.)

It produced a boldly baked, high risen loaf with a dark, crackled crust. It has a wonderful aroma.

The crust stayed crunchy as the bread cooled. The crumb was dense, which was not surprising at this hydration level, but it was not as well aerated as I had hoped. The crumb was somewhat chewy, and the flavor was wheaty and moderately sour. There was no grassy-bitter flavor.

Poilâne said that the flavor of his bread was best on the third day after baking. I'm taking some of this loaf to San Francisco for a taste comparison to the Miche that brother Glenn baked today, and we'll see how the flavor develops over a day.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

I just posted a blog entry discussing the bagels I've been making and wanted to follow it up over here in the forums with a couple questions.

Chewiness

I've used longer boil times and have compared KA Sir Lancelot HG flour to bagels made with KA's Bread flour and find there's only a slight difference in chewiness. These bagels are good, but the inner bagel is still surprisingly soft. What aspects of bagel making can affect the chewiness outside of boil time and gluten content of the flour?

Surface Texture

After increasing the amount of baking soda, and adding malt syrup to my water, the exterior is getting much closer to what I expect from a bagel, but it's still quite soft/chewy. Shouldn't a bagel have a bit of a crackle or crispness to the outside? Is this something that only moving to a lye bath is going to achieve?

Crumb

Since these are the best bagels I've ever had, I'm guessing that I've never really had a good, traditionally made bagel. What should the crumb look like? Should it have a tight crumb, or should there be some noticeable holes to it?

That's it for now, I think. Although I can't recall all the various posts I've found that have helped me this far into my bagel making, I want to thank the members of The Fresh Loaf forums as a whole for all the great info. I've been lurking until now, but have found the site incredibly helpful. It's helped me improve my bagels, fix my sourdough starter, and given me some ideas on how to deal with kneading and pain in my hands and forearms. Much thanks to all of you!

Christopher

UPDATE—2010-06-12 10:26 AM

I made a batch of dough up Thursday afternoon using King Arthur Sir Lancelot (High Gluten). I retarded it while the bagels were still extremely sluggish to float. Rather than spraying the bagels with oil to keep them from sticking to the plastic bag they were stored in, I sprayed the plastic bag, itself, and arranged it so that it wouldn't make contact with the bagels; i.e. the spray was just insurance in the event that the bag was moved so that it touched. This morning I boiled them for 90 seconds per side. And rather than sticking the whole tray of bagels in the oven, I removed the bagels from the tray and cooked them directly on my quarry tile. I cooked them for approximately 15 minutes.  The bagels were a rich brown with a slight reddish tinge. They had crust—there was a discernable crackle as I passed the knife through them. Biting into them, there was resistance—at first a slight crunch and then chewiness. The upper half which was covered with my everything mixture—Maldon sea salt, black and white sesame seeds, dehydrated garlic granules, and poppy-seed—was less crusty, both because of the seed coverage and because my range just isn't able to achieve an ambient temperature beyond 450ºF. The bottom, which was in contact with the baking stones, was perfectly crusty. There was a slight pretzel-like flavor to the bottom crust. I assume that's because pretzels and bagels both have a gelatinized crust from an alkaline bath. At any rate, the bagels were as close to perfection as I think I can come with this particular formula and my existing range. In fact, they were so good that my wife and 3 daughters wouldn't shut up about them and some of the sounds being made were rather alarming.

Next I'll try some different formulas. I should have Jeffery Hamelman's Bread any day now, and I picked up Mike Avery's small book, Back to Bagels. I want to thank everyone here for your comments and suggestions. It was a huge help. Thank you!

Back in March my wife sent me to a food blog to read about the "Best Pizza Dough Ever Recipe." In the post, Heidi Swanson gives some background to her discovery of Peter Reinhart's Neapolitano pizza dough along with an adapted version of the recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It seemed a bit detailed, but it sounded good and a few days later I gave it a go.

I'll admit I had a rough time of it. It was my first time working with wet dough—to date I'd only made some quick breads and some rather disappointing bread sticks, and this was a whole different beast. The first pizza went everywhere. The second was little better. Did I mention the smell of carbonized semolina flour? Altogether the pizzas were a mess, but they were still good enough that it showed promise, and it got me interested in checking out Reinhart's books.

Ten days later my wife surprised me with copies of The Bread Baker's Apprentice and American Pie. I switched to the AP Neapolitano dough and I've now made the pizzas 3 times. It's the best pizza I've ever had. Our favorite pizza so far is the Pizza Rosa al Bianco.

In the same time, I've been exploring a variety of bread recipes from BBA. For myself, the European style breads, and for my wife a variety of sandwich loaves. But one of the formulas has overshadowed all the others. First I made bagels for us. My entire family raved. Then I made bagels for my wife's co-workers. And then my mom wanted some for her school. I have been making between 2–3 dozen bagels per week for the last month or two. And thanks to some snooping around the forums here, my bagels have consistently gotten better with each batch. I have to admit it does feed my ego when people constantly tell me that my bagels are better than anything in town and that I should open up a shop. Most of the bagels I've had around here don't even begin to compete with these. Panera comes closest, but there are a few people insisting that these are better yet. I agree that they're good, but I'm still hunting for the perfect bagel.

In the meantime, I'm very proud of these and love making them with a couple tweaks to Mr. Reinhart's formula. The few changes I make are as follows:

• Liberally add more flour—I need to measure this, because I'm consistently adding more flour as the dough seems fairly wet
• Toss the proof times out the window—since I have to hand kneed 1-2 batches at a time, the bagels are often ready to be retarded just as soon as I have them shaped
• Increase baking soda to 1/4 cup per pot of water—1 tbsp wasn't sufficiently gelatinizing the outer dough
• Add malt syrup to the water until the water is tea colored (with thanks to those who have posted Jeffrey Hamelman's techniques)—without the malt, the bagels come out of the oven very pale

I've also experimented with some different toppings. I liked the ginger, garlic, sesame bagels I turned out, but my wife wasn't a fan of the ginger zing. The favorite topping, by far, has been my adaptation of the Pizza Rosa al Bianco from American Pie. I mince the red onion—is there any reason why everyone seems to use rehydrated onion for bagels?—and chop the pistachio nuts and rosemary smaller than I would for the pizzas. It still gets a huge heap of parmigiano reggiano and gets spritzed with olive oil before going into the oven.

There are still a few things I'd like to figure out. No matter what I do, the bagels don't have the texture I expect—the inside isn't quite a chewy as I think they should be, and I've tried using KA Sir Lancelot HG flour as well as boiling longer. The crust is also surprisingly soft. Chewy, yes, but shouldn't the crust have a crispness about them?

Regardless, these bagels are certainly satisfying. Everyone from my 2 year old daughter to my recently-vegan parents begs for them. And this makes me very, very happy.

I am a newbie bread baker. I enjoyed reading Reinharts BBA and thought I would start with his campagne recipe.

I believe I followed the recipe religiously; my first result looks and tastes as described in Floyd's lesson 3. But I have no holes in my loaf. I let the second attempt proof for several hours. A few more holes but still not what I want or am use to seeing from loaves from my local baker.

In contacting King Arthuer Flour, they suggested a wetter dough.

I have my 3rd pre - fermente in my fridge now. Any suggestions?

-Jim

Hi --

I'm embarking on the BBA Challenge with a couple dozen other bakers around the world. We're going to bake each of the recipes in The Bread Baker's Apprentice, from beginning to end, starting with the Anadama.

I think it'll be a great learning experience. Though I may be changing my tune at some point ...

You can learn more about the project at Pinch My Salt.

And you can follow along at Flour Girl.

Anybody care to join me?

Happy baking!

Flour Girl

Hi all!

Have gotten some good advice here in the past so will see what you think about my recent attempt at Peter Reinhart's Tuscan Bread from the Bread Baker's Apprentice.  I have generally not had problems in the past getting a smooth enough dough using either hand kneading or my kitchenaid.  I tried to make the Tuscan Bread and followed the instructions in the book for mixing in the kitchenaid.  after his recommended time it was not at all as smooth as it should be--in fact the dough wasn't really being kneaded as it was really just too stuck to the dough hook.  So I figured, I'll finish it by hand, it shouldnt' take too long as it's already gotten a good amount of kneading in the machine.

As I kneaded it got better, but even after 20 minutes it was nowhere close enough!  I let it sit and re-knead it (hoping the "autolyze" woudl kick in) and while that helped as well, it still wasn't enough.  I finally gave up and just baked it but of coruse the results were not right at all--not airy but dense, which was not how it should be.  (By the way, Reinhart says you only need to knead by hand for 10 or so minutes.  I know I am out of practice hand kneading, but this was just ridiculous).

Any ideas what the problem was?  I use King Arthur flour and bread flour strength, as recommended.

Before I ever baked a loaf of bread, I read Bread Baker's Apprentice from cover to cover. It definitely provided me a great base of knowledge with which to begin my bread baking, but after a few months and much reading on this site, and many loaves of bread, I think there are 2 main issues that might throw off the beginner trying to make lean breads. First is the description of the dough textures, just what does "tacky but not sticky" mean? It's too subjective and I think that despite the occasional warnings, the beginner's urge to add too much flour to make a dough that is easy to handle will somewhat sabotage their crumb. Second, and related to the first point, there needs to be a bit more emphasis placed on the fact that doughs with hydrations in the higher end of the range given for the recipes yield much better results. I guess everybody figures this out through trial and error, but I was a bit disappointed with my first loaves and couldn't figure out why the recipe didn't produce breads with crumbs like the ones in the picture. I guess the lesson is stick with it, get more info, and experiment. Has anybody here had similar experiences?

I tackled the Italian Bread recipe from BBA again today making some modifications of my own. Making sure to include the maximum amount of water, and adding 2 stretch and fold maneuvers to the fermentation in order to help develop the gluten and make the dough easier to handle. The results were spectacular. Some of the best Italian bread I've ever eaten (and for somebody who grew up around New Haven, CT, where there is an Italian bakery every 7 feet, that's saying something). A nice chewy crust, and a moist, tender crumb that is out of this world.

-Darron from The Teacher Learns to Cook

Italian Bread Loaf

Italian Bread Crumb