
Proofing


Mystery yeast
What the hey? The plan was to make a batch of ciabatta bread but even though the bag of yeast from Costco had an expiration date six months from now, when I proofed it, it showed no signs of life. The yeast dissolved just fine but all I got was cloudy water - no "blooms" floating to the surface like I'm used to seeing. I made a poolish from it anyway.

Proofing
I am trying to properly proof a nice super fluffy white loaf (Hensperger's White Mountain Loaf) and my gear nerve is twitching. I had jury rigged a warmer that works fine for initial fermentation (http://bakeyourown.blogspot.com/2007/03/few-new-things-this-week.html) but it doesn't work for proofing. I have a gas oven, so I can't do the pilot light trick, and my steaming methods seem to break the light fixture, so that doesn't work either. I have seen some neat arrangements for proofing at home, but I need something that is especially (1) cheap (2) compact (3) works wi

newbiebaker - 2nd rise, dough spreading out
Hi newbiebaker,
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with a very wet dough, how do you get it to hold its shape during the second rising period? because, while letting a loaf do its second rise, it turned into like a giant pancake almost... or was this too wet?
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Bread 'ripped'?
Hello,
I just made 3 french baguettes, and scored them on top. To give a more indepth insight this is what I did: