Hi, gang.

So, I am thinking about getting something that would allow me to roll oats here at home. I've poked around a little bit, but am not sure what "toy" to get. I probably wouldn't roll a whole lot at once, and wouldn't be opposed to crank 'em out by hand.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Stephan

Well I decided to do something good for our health. Something I did 25 years ago and before when my young family was growing. I used to grind my own wheat and make my own bread from whole wheat grain. Everything we ate was fresh and full of nutrition and fiber. Then I married the Italian (half Irish too) and he wanted white bread or Irish soda bread etc. Not gonna touch the brown stuff. So I sold all my equipment to buy a stove! Big mistake. But seemed the thing to do at the time. Make the hubby happy! I wanted a new stove too! So now 25 years later I made a new investment in our health and bought a new model Bosch Universal Plus mixer with 800 watts of power and the ability to knead 4 loaves of bread in 10 minutes. Then I was on the search for the recipe from 30 years ago! Happy I found the website The Fresh Loaf and Old Wooden Spoon gave me the recipe I used back then ( that gave away our age right away!) My first day in the kitchen was like  the I Love Lucy show. Now I don't like to be on camera but this would have won me enough money to pay for my equipment for sure! Did I say it was an investment, not just a purchase.   Here is what I purchased after much research and past experience.       Now the first day was quite interesting, all seemed easy enough so I skimmed the directions on the equipment. I set up the Nutrimill to grind my wheat. Obviously I didn't have it quite locked in right as flour started shooting out the side, but one quick stop and we got that under control. Not too much mess to clean up. Then on to proofing the yeast. A little honey, warm water and yeast. It starts to bubble so I know it's working. Yay! Next is to start filling the mixer with water, flour, salt and honey, then I turn to find the yeast. It is starting to bubble forth like champagne out of the cup ! So I add that and proceed to add more flour until the dough pulls away from the side of the bowl. (that's how you tell it's ready)    Now my first mixer had 2 speeds, this has 4. I think I must have put it on speed 3. Somewhere someone said I should remove the outer rim of the bowl at this stage.     Now I never did that with the old one. But I figured why not, so removed it.    Then turned my back on the machine and went to the sink. I turned around and dough was breaking off and flying around my kitchen, I kid you not! Splat in the dining room, splat on the counter, splat on the kitchen floor. I put that rim on as fast as I could blink an eye. All went well after that and we got some beautiful tasty bread. Next baking day went smoothly with great results, (cinnamon bread) everyone wants to buy it. Not happening, that executive decision was made the first day. I'm not 25 anymore! I used to make 15 loaves a day, babysit and deliver the bread. $1.50 a loaf in the 80's. Now today was my 3rd day baking. I had to grind 20 lbs of wheat into flour that I sold for $4.00 for each 5 lbs. That took a while. Then I had some left over and decided to start a second batch of four loaves of bread. Needed to grind more flour.    Rule # 2 , don't overfill the hopper or turn your back on it. I'm always trying to multi-task. I turned around and the stove side of my kitchen looked like the first snow of winter!    I'm having to learn lots of patience with this new process, but the rewards are warm soft whole wheat loaves of bread. Guess what the Italian is eating willingly now? At lunch he waited for me to slice bread to make his sandwich. The little white rolls nearby were crying! The pictures tell the rest! I hear there really is an episode of I love Lucy baking bread! Gotta get that one from Netflix. Linda McErlean http://picasaweb.google.com/curvesarein/BreadBaking?authkey=Gv1sRgCMK-v5atusP07gE&feat=directlink   "Until one has loved an animal, part of their soul remains un-awakened."    

When I make French bread I like to shape some of the dough into rolls (petit gras batards) to use for Hoagies. They're very good, but there is one problem with them: When you bite into the sandwich, the filling tends to try and escape out the sides. I was thinking that a cavity in the rolls would provide space for the filling, and minimize this effect.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to an object I might put in the dough, before baking, so that when the object was removed from the baked roll after slicing it that there would be a cavity running almost the full length of the roll? I thought in terms of a ceramic rod, or a cylindrical stone, but couldn't come up with anything specific.

Hi Everyone,

I used to buy baking supplies and equipments from Surfas at Culver City in Southern California. I just moved around UC Berkeley. Does anyone know any baking supplies store is similar to Surfas?

Thanks,

JC

What do you all think about this "Cast Iron Grill Humidifier"?

http://www.surlatable.com/product/661256.do#

The description seems to say that it is just two cast iron boxes with holey lids.  So is it anything? or not anything?

Sometimes in warmer months I will try to bake out on the grill. It is sometimes quite successful, and sometimes not so much. Does anyone believe this might help in baking bread?

I also wonder if this might work in an indoor oven too. I don't like to mess w/ water or ice tossed into a hot oven.

My only concern is that one would be unable to estimate the correct amount of water needed for baking.

In Floyd's recent inquiry asking for the best post of 2009, I could not begin to choose only one. At best, I could narrow it down to 5 or 6 'posters' whose comments I ALWAYS look for. So I thought about what tip, technique or piece of equipment made the greatest impact on my baking?

For me, it was all of your pictures and information about slow ferments in brotforms coated with rice flour (I know that actually 4!). I read relevant posts carefully, finally purchased a few natural cane brotforms, and applied what I learned. Major improvement.

Thank you all for generously sharing your knowlege, experiance, quesrtions, and success. A BIG thanks to Floyd!

So, how did you benefit this year from The Fresh Loaf?

Phxdog (Scott)

For those who are keeping score, I moved from the USA to South Africa in late October to work on a project being managed by my employer.  After spending a week in a hotel and a month in a temporary apartment, my wife and I moved into a leased house on December 1.  We're feeling fairly settled now and can find our way to several different supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants and the like.  It's a different landscape, and I'm not just talking topography.  Still, we're learning to navigate our way around without creating unnecessary hazard to ourselves or others.

Part of the learning process involves getting acquainted with new players in familiar roles.  In the case of bread, this includes different flours, a new starter, a different oven, and a different elevation (approximately 4200 feet above sea level, give or take a kopje).  None of these are especially difficult to cope with, but the collective effect has me slightly off kilter.

Prior to this weekend, I had baked bread three times, with results ranging from dismal to passable.  

This weekend saw some improvement, with plenty of room for additional improvement.  I baked a pain de campagne from Clayton's Complete Book of Breads, a honey oat sandwich loaf and scones from KAF's Whole Grain Baking book, and Mark Sinclair's version of Portugese Sweet Bread (in hamburger bun form).

The pain de campagne calls for a yeasted "starter"; I used my own sourdough starter to build the levain.  I'm beginning to wonder if there is something about the whole wheat flour that I'm using (Snowflake brand Brown Bread Flour at 12.5% protein, if memory serves).  My impression is that it tends to absorb less water than other whole wheat flours that I have used, which produces a stickier dough.  By sticky, I mean almost rye-like stickiness.  The grind is a bit coarser than I have seen in other flours, so it may be that I need to go with extended autolysis to give it enough time to absorb moisture.  And I may need to dial back on water content, too.  The closest thing to AP flour that I've located so far is something labeled cake flour, at 10% protein content.  The initial dough was quite sticky after mixing (did I mention stickiness earlier?), so I gave it a series of stretch and folds during the bulk ferment that lasted about 5 hours.  Temperatures in the house ranged from the low 70'sF in the morning up to about 80F yesterday afternoon.  I shaped the dough into two batards, achieving a good gluten cloak, and set them to rise in a parchment "couche".  When they had expanded about 60-70% in size, I preheated the oven and baking stone, along with the steam pan, then poured in about a cup of boiling water.  I slashed each loaf and jockeyed it as gently as possible onto the stone, using a baking sheet for a peel.  Oven spring was modest, with the slashes opening partially.  The loaves colored up nicely, indicating that the yeast hadn't run through all available food.  I haven't cut into either loaf yet to know how the crumb turned out.

Things went quite well with the honey oat sandwich loaves, but for two glitches.  One was that I had intended to make each with a cinnamon swirl but failed to remember that until I was pulling them out of the oven.  The other is that both loaves were over proofed and partially collapsed during baking, even though they did not come close to reaching the volume ("one and a half inches above the pan rim") recommended in the directions.  Eish!  At least they taste good.

This morning's scones also tasted wonderful, but failed to rise as much as they should have.  Maybe the oven runs a bit cooler than the controls would suggest.  Then again, its geared for Celsius and I'm not.  I think I'll pick up an oven thermometer or two while we are back in the States over the holidays.  Then we can find out if it is a calibration issue, or operator error. 

The Portugese Sweet Bread was everything that I wanted it to be, though.  Texture, color, flavor, rise, everything worked just right.  If only I could figure out why!  My track record so far would suggest that it is more of a fluke than an exercise in skill.  Right now, I'm just happy to have had a bake go the way I wanted.

The experimenting and learning will continue.  I will keep trying various flours and methods until I get to where I can produce consistently good results. 

Oh, and if anyone can tell me where to look for rye flour, I'll be grateful.

Paul

As you know, I've been thinking about starting up an e-biz directed at amateur bread bakers and have raised the issue here a few times.

At last, I'm very pleased to announce (with Floyd's consent) the opening of my new company, THE NEW YORK BAKERS, and our website, www.nybakers.com.

The goal of THE NEW YORK BAKERS is to offer home bread bakers a source for all of the the ingredients, supplies and equipment that we typically can't find at retail, in sensible quantities and at reasonable prices.

As hobbyist bread bakers, I think we all understand the challenges of finding what we need, and it was my dissatisfaction with what's currently out there that motivated me to make THE NEW YORK BAKERS a reality. Over time, I'm hopeful that it will grow into a valuable resource for all of us who love baking bread -- not to mention sharing it.

Again, our address is www.nybakers.com. Please stop in and have a look around. There's lots of good stuff there, and more to come.

Elagins aka Stan Ginsberg, Proprietor

 I was getting tired of covering my mixing bowl with plastic wrap to keep the dough from drying out while it fermented.  For me, unrolling, tearing, stretching plastic wrap has always been like wrestling an octopus.  Besides, I hate throwing it away after using it for a few hours.  I wanted to find a dough fermentation bin that had a top that would keep in the moisture but wasn't airtight.  I was buying half sheet pans at my local Smart-n-Final and noticed what looked like the perfect containers. They were plenty big enough for folding the dough in the container.  They had smooth bottoms that would allow the use of a plastic dough scraper and make cleaning easy.  They had tops with little vent thingies that could be opened or closed.  Most amazing of all they were cheap.  They came three in a package for about $20.  The only problem was that I had to get three of them which I didn't think I needed.  I decided to wait until I had scouted around to see if I could find something comparable that I could buy just one of.   Some bins had convoluted bottoms that would make it impossible to scrape out the dough.  They had fancy lids that sealed so well that no gas could escape and complicated seals that would make them hard to clean.  The better ones cost almost three times as much so I finally got the set of three.

Here are some pictures.  The familiar book is in the picture to give an idea of how big they are.  The brand is Reynolds.  The largest batch of dough I've used it for so far was 6 lbs. 

Here's a close-up of the vent.  The almost readable word on it is "Casuals."

Ok, I have an idea and I'm looking to see if anyone else agrees. I have a KA mixer and make alot of wheat breads from my fresh milled grain. My dough has a tendency to stick to the sides of the bowl but, the same recipe won't stick in a breadmaker pan while kneading. My idea is to convince KA to make a mixing bowl with a non-stick coating inside like a breadmaker or rice cooker pan. I think that this would benefit MANY recipes and I want your opinions. I think if enough people liked the idea I may be able to get somewhere. Thanks.