I've been operating for several months under the assumption that the higher the protein level in the flour, the better the bread I make would be. I guess I can blame Daniel Leader for this a little bit. But in the past few weeks, I've finally started noticing all the recipes on TFL that call for AP flour, and when I saw Anis Bouabsa's baguette recipe I realized my assumption must be wrong. What I need help understanding is when to use high-gluten flour and when to use AP. I thought that higher gluten levels meant more elasticity, more strength, and a better rise. But if the best baguettes in Paris use AP, I have to be wrong. Right? Help me, please. I'm hopelessly confused.

I'd been struggling a bit with overly-moist crumb.  After trying varied and long proofs (which did not significantly improve the crumb), I focused on making sure my levain was fully ripe and my dough properly developed in the bulk rise, plus a full proof step.

Problem solved.

Hi All,

I'm new to sourdough baking, having just ordered a sourdough culture, and attempting sourdough bread twice.  Both times I made a 100% whole wheat loaf, that had wonderful flavor, and a nice crust.  However, the bread was dense.  I'd like to achieve a more open crumb.  Basically I mixed up the dough, using the stretch and fold method and let it rise in the oven over night, about 12 hrs.  It rose very nicely, at least doubling in size.  Then I added enough flour to make a sticky/tacky dough that was just barely kneadable by hand.  After a few minutes of kneading I formed a couple boules on parchment paper then allowed for a second rise for about 1 1/2 hrs.  During this time I preheated the oven to about 485.  I sprayed the top of the loaves with some water and then baked them on pre-heated baking stones. 

What suggestions would you have for increasing the crumb hole size to make a lighter, less dense loaf?  I'm wondering if I should have allowed more time for the second rise.  My sourdough starter is really healthy, but it rises slowly.  Another thought I had is that maybe I need to use a covered baker or somehow increase the steam in my oven.  Maybe I need to try another recipe.  I'd appreciate any suggestions you might have. 

One more question- is there any reason I couldn't add more starter than the recipe calls for (which I've been doing) so I don't have to throw so much starter away and to inrease the flavor of the bread?  I've been trying to compensate to keep the dough hydration the same.  If I add extra starter should I shorten the rise time?

Thanks!

As my pilot entry I just want to do a little background about my bread baking, and then show pictures of my latest success.

So, I won't tell you that I used to always stand by my mom or dad's side, and eagerly noted every motion of everything they did, and passionately exclaimed "Ooh I want to be a CHEF when I grow up!" because that would be lying. No- my story is certainly not a Disney-esque, awe inspiring one, unless you want to hear about someone who spontaneously took on this new hobby, or lifestyle if you will. Hell- sounds a lot more interesting to me!

All throughout my life, anything I would see would firmly plant itself in my hand, and be hard to forget. Yes, as a kid I was definitely a "scaredy cat", little things would get mentioned, and like cement, it just stayed in my mind, all day. Especially nowadays, when there is a lot of work to come, and I am stressed out, man- I obsess over my work! I have minor OCD, what can I say?

But hey- it's not always a bad thing! I tend to have a great memory, which means good things and hobbies stick in my mind also. Before I talk about bread, I just want to really give an example by talking about my poker habit. One day, I was watching a documentary which followed around a professional poker player, and there sparked the new big thing in my life. All I could think about was POKER, POKER, POKER! Yikes- I didn't even know how to play poker.... But soon I was online, working to create a bankroll out of nothing.

Likewise is the story about baking (except that I have no idea what initially sparked my interest). Suddenly, I had the starting of a passion for baking. When talking to my mom about the idea of making bread, she exclaimed something like, "Why would you do that? We have a breadmaker that can do that all for you!" Yes, this was true, but it made bricks more than bread. Man over machine, I don't think she understood that concept for a while.

As my passion for bread grew, I took a very expensive private lesson with a baker in San Francisco as my holiday gift from my family, while at the same time I started to neglect my sourdough starter, but that's for another story. Anyways, now that you've read this "novel" I want to show you my latest creation, inspired by txfarmer's 36 hour baguettes! I made these baguettes with a poolish instead of sourdough starter, and a lot went wrong, but the outcome was great. As you'll see from the pictures, this was the worst looking baguette on the outside, but the best looking on the inside.

Hope this wasn't too wordy of a first blog. I know that with most blogs I just scroll right down to the pictures and only read the blog if I like the pictures! By the way, I'm only fourteen. So yes, I play poker illegaly every day, I am an opinionated liberal, and I'm an innocent breadbaker. Bite me haha.

Greetings -

After a couple of years' hiatus, it appears that I'm (getting) back on the sourdough treadmill.
(The sourdough starter in question is my home-grown, Brookline-based starter.)

Today's loaf is shown below (behind the remnants of last week's undercooked (but wonderful toasted) loaf):

After filling the pan about half full, I got (I think) a reasonable (single) rise,
which took 3-4 hours (which took it to the top of the pan), and another inch
or so with the oven spring (a 500 degree F oven, reduced immediately to 400,
for 35-40 minutes):

Here's the crumb:

It tastes delicious.

My question - should I be trying a second rise?  My experience has been that the dough
starts to get awfully 'fragile' after 3 hours, starting to disintegrate.  I'm wondering --
if I flipped it halfway through, might I get more uniform crumb? (One can see from the
image above that the top half of the loaf is 'airier' than the bottom half).

Or is that more trouble than it's worth?

And any thoughts on how might I avoid that dip in the middle at the sides of the loaf?

Insight welcome.

Thanks,

 - Richard

I recently made a loaf of Challah for my family. It was my first Challah and it came out with great flavor. It was a six-braided loaf which I did not let proof long enough, which lead to a bit more oven spring than you'd want from a Challah. The texture was light and fluffy, with a bit of creaminess to it. However, at the end of most bites there would be a gritty crunch to the bread. Any ideas?

I have two thoughts:

1.  I used honey, which had crsyallized. I did however, warm the honey back up to a liquid state before adding to the dough.

2. I also made Sourdough Rye and I had a bowl of flour set aside for dusting. And some rye flour may have mixed into the bread flour. Thus may have found it's way onto the the strands as I rolled them out.

Any ideas on this texture?

Thank you.

When the crumb is nice and open towards the border of the loaf, but is dense in the middle?

Thanks!

Quite frequently I see picture posts on this forum of baguettes cut in cross-section to show off the openness of the crumb.  For instance, see the post of txfarmer's gorgeous sourdough baguettes which presently grace the homepage of the site.

What I don't quite understand is why one would do this, and if one did, how do you go about eating the baguette afterward?  I get that it shows off the crumb nicely, much more so than a single vertical slice does.  I thought it seemed perfectly natural that there were color photos of like this in Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread--a lot of the bread pictured in bread books doesn't get eaten anyway, I'm sure.  Likewise in dmsnyder's posts about his time at SFBI it seemed sensible that one of the set of baguettes would be cross-sectioned to show the crumb results.

But many on the forum do a cross-sectioned cut--in one recent post that I'd lost track of, it seemed like every one of the baguettes from that bake had been cross-sectioned.

So, what does one do with a cross-sectioned baguette? How do you generally eat it? And while we're at it, how might I go about convincing my wife I haven't gone (more) totally bread-crazy were I to try it? :)

EDIT: To be more specific, I should say that it is the longitudinal (longways, horizontal) cut that perplexes me. Thanks to Mark for pointing that out.

So I decided (with help from people here) that my starter was ready to bake with (link to that discussion: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16928/my-starter-ready-baking). And I decided to try Peter Reinhart's 'basic sourdough' in BBA. I think the starter itself was fine, but for one reason or another (or more than one reason) I got so so results. The bread was tasty and not a complete disaster, but the crumb was definitely denser than I think it should be and the loaves were a little flat. The crust was very nice and crispy though. For a first attempt I think this is pretty good but something definitely needs to improve and I was wondering if anyone could give me any suggestions.

Here are the loaves I produced:

And here is a crumb shot. As I said it's not a disaster, but how do I get those nice big holes? If anything the dough was wetter than the recipe called for. I thought wetter dough made for bigger holes? Do you think I didnt ferment the shaped dough long enough? Too long?

And here's one other problem I had. I used this thingy pictured below. I dont know the real name for it but I used it to ferment the shaped dough and then put this whole thing with the dough on it into the oven right onto the baking stone. I use this because when I try to imagine myself sliding those very messy wet loaves into the oven and onto the baking stone I just can't convince myself that they'll slide nicely off of the sheet pan and onto the stone without sticking or getting misshapen, or falling off the stone onto the oven floor, or any number of other possibilities, no matter how much cornmeal I lubricate it with. The problem I have though is that although the loaves I made were not very big, as they fermented, the side of each loaf started spilling over the side of the pan, and the problem became much worse after they were put into the oven. I managed to tuck the side of each back up into the pan, but I cant imagine that that helped the bread rise properly in the oven. Am I missing something here that I need to know about these things in order to prevent this from happening, or is the only solution to make smaller loaves? I'd be willing to try to learn how to put the loaves directly onto the baking stone if anyone has any good advice on how to do that without a tragedy occurring. Anyone?

It is so frustrating to spend more than a whole day of preparation to bake and then turning out something mediocre. 

So I have been messing with my non acidic starter to see if I could correct that and get some sour to my sourdough.  I added 1 tsp of cider vinegar to one starter and fed it after 12 hours, then 1/2 tsp to another starter and fed it 3xs (every 8 hrs), and then made a control loaf that was with the original starter.  Now I don't have proofing baskets so when I put them in the fridge they were in greased glass bowls, so I think I can correct the shape.  The one loaf that had the best shape I just plopped out of the bowl onto the stone and didn't try to gather up the bottom before placing it on the stone, like the others.  Live and learn, and hope for baskets for Valentines day.