I baked Hamelman's Vermont SD with Increased Grains today.  It was, literally, a flop.  I've baked this bread before, and with higher hydration, and had excellent results.  Today I ended up with a slack sticky dough that stayed slack throughout - flat loaves with a spongy crumb.   True, I held back 4 oz of flour from the recipe but that was based on previous experience.  I also used an AP flour of unknown protein instead of my usual 12% protein flour.  But I suspect the reason might be the bizarre weather we've had in Seattle the past couple of days.  Record breaking humidity -- it's like Jersey hot and humid.  Apparently we're catching some tropical air current (the Pineapple Express).

I'm not used to baking in humid weather, so my question is...how big a factor is it?  Do people who cook in humid climates routinely up the proportion of flour?

Over the weekend I decided to crack open my new copy of Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" and branch out from my year-long self imposed focus on perfecting a few selected artisan bread recipes. I really wanted to try a few high hydration recipes to get more comfortable with them. Rich Man's Brioche looked and sounded pretty exotic, so off I went to buy the truckload of butter called for in the recipe.

I decided to switch from the DLX mixer to the ancient Hobart mixer & its paddle to tackle this dough. I was glad I did . . . man, that dough is wet! I double checked the quantities to make sure that it really called to that much butter and yeast. I wasn't sure it would actually come together. After mixing a few minutes longer than Reinhart suggested, I scraped/poured the dough onto a pan and placed it in the fridge for an overnight chilling.

The dough had doubled in volume overnight and seemed fairly firm. Attempting to form this dough into something that resembled a loaf was a bit of a challenge. It still felt so soft, kind of like room temperature butter. I tried to work quickly; I was afraid the heat from my hands would melt this dough. Anyway, I formed three dough loaves and left them out to rise in an 80 degree kitchen, warmed by the 100+ temperature of summertime in Phoenix.

Despite what I considered a fairly high temperature for the final rise, it took about 3 1/2 hours for those loaves to double. They baked for about 40 minutes and despite my lousy shaping technique did not look to bad (sorry no pictures!). Crum was fairly open. The loaves were very light and soft. Lots of oil in the loaf pan after removal of the bread. The taste as well as the look of the crust, was a lot like a giant croissant. Like some other posts I have read here, I will probably opt for the alternate recipe in BBA that uses about half the butter on my next attempt.

A couple of questions for those of you who are more familiar with this type of bread -

         Is 3 1/2 hours abnormal for a final rise with Brioche? Is that because of the high butter content?

         Any tips on how to shape dough that is so soft? (It really was like working with cold, soft clay rather than bread dough)

         Anyone ever accomplish Brioche completely by hand? Would Hammelman's "no-knead" technique work?

Phxdog.

Hi,

Any chance to save a rotten-smelly 85% Wholewheat / 15% Rye dough that has turned slacky when it

has undergone natural fermentation in a cool oven for 4 days (no feeding, nothing, only a mixture

freshly milled grain and drinking water)??

Mebake

I made the Team USA ciabatta from the BBA and was amazed at the results.  I started with BBA's 178% hydration poolish, which hardly had any activity compared to be usual 100% poolish.  The next day when I made the dough, I folded 3x over 3 hours and the dough seemed barely alive, and hydration levels were like pancake batter.  When I went to place it on my parchment, it poured from my hands like silk--by far the most slack dough/batter I've ever worked with.  I decided to retard the dough in the fridge overnight and bake it this morning before work.  The dough had hardly changed and was about 1" thick and flabby, like a deflated toad.  I had zero faith it would turn out.  However, the ciabatta sprung to life in the oven, more than doubling during the oven spring and turning into something incredible.  The smell was heavenly--creamy, salty, and rich.  I won't be able to cut into it until tonight, but I think my faith has been restored.

Has anyone else made this recipe?  It was a complete morale killer right up to the first 15 minutes of baking when it transformed.  I'm thinking the overnight stay in the fridge may have improved flavor, but I don't have any comparison.  Thoughts?

When people hear that I make virtually all our bread, they nod in approval and invariably ask what kind of bread machine I have. Here is how the conversation generally continues:

Me: No, I make it by hand. I don't have a bread machine.
They: No bread machine??
Me: No, all by hand.
They: (awestruck) Wow... that must be hard... and take a long time...
Me: No, not at all!
They: (incredulous) ...really?

Yes, I always knead by hand (except once when I made the mistake of using our food processor to make $35 bread ...not a good idea...). The choice to hand-knead is not necessarily because I'm a luddite. I just don't happen to have an electric mixer large enough to accommodate the amount of dough. And I'm too cheese-paring with counter space (and my wallet) to get one. Besides, it's much easier to wash my hands than it would be to wrestle with a mixer to take it apart, clean off sticky dough and then wrestle it into its storage area.