Hello all,

I have been working with leaven raised breads for the past month with some varying results.  I hae been experimenting with different hydration amounts mostly, however inadvertently with fermentation times as well.  While I have many quesitons the one I would like to focus on now is when to feed my leaven.

  Is a 16 fermentation period for leaven too long? Even if it does not smell sour? 

  Should I try to cut that  time down? 

  I currently refrigerate my starter, which I have read leads to a favored amount of acetic (stronger sourness) acid production.  And therefore I use large 90/10 ratio at 166% hydration feedings of whole wheat flour for my leaven.  I try to bake every other day, but sometimes I don't have the ability too and on the weekends I can not feed the starter.  To refrigerate or not? 

 Will at starter fermented for 8 hours be more vigorous during bulk fermentation than one fermented for 16? 

Thanks! 

My starter will celebrate his first birthday next month. It seems to be very robust, however two issues have plagued the process since starting. These issues are flavor and proofing, which may be related.

Process overview:

Flour (KA Bread) 100%

Water 65%

Starter 20% (have varied the hydration levels from 50% to 150%)

Salt 2%

Autolyse 20 min, add salt, first rise 2hrs, strech and fold, another 2hr rise, strech and fold, preshape, overnight in refrigerator, warm up then shape with final proof up to 3hrs.

The kitchen is typically ~70 F for the proof. Loaves look good, but oven kick can be as much as 50% as displayed in the attached pics. Minimal SD tanginess.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

John Ambrose

A good loaf of bread cannot be rushed........ qahtan

The Secret of Great Bread: Let Time Do the Work

Hey there,
These are some of my observations regarding baking times and temperatures as related to different products.  Please feel free to add your own observations as these are based on my own equipment, ingredients, and techniques.

These are convection oven temperatures, so in a standard oven, I would add 25 degrees to each.  I'll be referencing the photo below and referring to both tables above.

Here are four types of bread that were cooked in the oven at the same temperature at the same time: (top left) Rustic White, (top right) Kalamata, (bottom left) Sour Rye, (bottom right) Multigrain.  All 12 ounce loaves were cooked for 22 minutes, all 24 ounce loaves were cooked for 35 minutes except the Rye (33 minutes).  All were misted before they went in (the Rye had an egg wash) and steamed when they went in the oven. 
As you can see from the picture and the color table, most of the coloring came in the first 22 minutes.  However on both of the top loaves there was a 'browning' that occured in the final 10 minutes that created a crispness and cracking in the loaves that didn't occur in the 12 ounce loaves.  Since I was baking a variety of loaves with low volume, I decided to compromise and end up with (in my eyes) perfect loaves and pretty good 12 ounce loaves, in order that I could 'save oven space' and minimize the time I had to fuss with the bread.  If I were to want smaller loaves with a similar crust and structure, I'd need to jack up the temperature to speed up the coloring timetable.  Keep in mind, it would still progress in the same fashion, just speeded up. If I wanted to, I could cook all of the rolls or small loaves at once at a higher temperature, cook the small stuff on the top rack of the oven to give them more color...
These are all work-arounds to get what I want, but in this case the easiest was what I did which happened to be a compromise that probably only I will notice.
Hope that answers some questions, but if it opens up some new ones, feel free to ask.
-Mark

I am fairly new to baking, especially yeast breads, so I've joined this forum to meet people with the knowledge and experience to help me become a better baker.  I have taken an intro to baking class at culinary school, but I'm still a total novice at bread.

I plan to make a challah to serve on Monday, 9/29/08 for Rosh Hashanah.  The trouble I'm having is determining when to prep and bake my loaf.  I work all weekend and have an important event on Sunday night.  I have all day Friday, Saturday night (6:30-12:00), and about 1 hour very early Sunday morning free for baking.  If I prep and bake my challah on Friday, will it be good on Monday?  If I proof the dough on Saturday night and retard the shaped loaf in the fridge overnight, can I expect it to be ready to bake on Sunday morning?

I imagine many artisan home bakers nowadays have trouble finding a block of free time long enough to make bread, and I'm wondering how the rest of you manipulate the process to fit into your schedules.

Thank you,

Adam S.

I started to make bread yesterday with a very active starter which I had fed about 6 hours before starting.  I used 1 c. of the starter, 1 c. of water, 3 c. of flour and 1 tsp. salt.  I mixed it then did 4 stretch and folds 45 min.