Schwiddel

is the Rhineland slang for a large natural bristled brush used to apply water or eggwash to breads, rolls and pastries. I'm thinking about ordering some through my sister in Germany and have them shipped to me. If anybody else is interested, please let me know. I don't know yet how much the shipping will cost (since I don't know yet how many I will end up ordering) - just checking to see if there's interest.

This website has four sizes available. In the past, I have used a large one for breads and the smallest one for eggwash.

http://www.alleszumbacken.de/produktdetails/SN200234::brotstreicher-lange-24-5-cm-holzstiel-rosshaar

Stephan

Greeting;  

I am knew to your nice page here and have a question.  Is there a generic water to flour ratio for most breads.

Thank You

joe

Does anybody have a good rule of thumb for calculating the hydration of a dough when it includes plain, cooked and mashed potato?

According to the USDA: Potatoes, baked, flesh, without salt (100 grams) contain on average 75.42 grams of water. That sounds right I guess, but how much of that moisture is available to the dough, and how should I adjust hydration in relation to potato content?

Thanks

I have a recipe that requires dry (instant) mashed potatoes.

Can you substitute:

• Potato starch?
• Cooked mashed potatoes?
• Potato water?

If so, any recommendations on how best to work out the substitutions?

I am wondering something.

I made Peter Reinharts' whole wheat bread with soaker and biga.  In the soaker, since I didn't have any buttermilk (and my buttermaker died on me - and I didn't have time to make butter by hand) I used some fresh (but older milk).

My bread turned out wonderful!  I was so pleased.

Well, now that I am back to square one with no butter milk, I am wondering how water will fare in a soaker in my bread?

Can anyone share some insight with me?

Becky

Hi,

I'm new to baking bread, but I've made  a few different breads from a few recipes by now.  Every time I make bread I end up with the same problem: The recipe always specifies too little water.  usually by a lot (25-50%).  This is the case if i measure the flour by weight or volume.  Why is this?

Related to this question, often times I end up with a dough that is too dry but I don't know how to fix that other than throwing out what I've got and starting over.  How do you add water to a dough that has turned out too dry?  Maybe I'm realizing I have too little water too late.  how do I know early enough to do something about it?

Thanks for the advice!

~CT

Hi All.

First post here, although I've been a home baker for a while.

I've often grappled with the best way to generate steam, which we all know is needed for a yummy artisan crust. I've tried the water bottle spritzer and pouring water in a heavy pan, all with mixed results. Yesterday I came up with something good that I thought I'd share. It prolongs steam generation for approx 3 to 5 minutes, and avoids the big and sometimes dangerous "poof" that comes from dumping a large amount of water at once.

First the result, which turned out OK:

It is a typical four-ingredient French loaf, started with a poolish.

Now the method:
I drilled a small (approx 1/16") hole in the bottom of a small SS mixing bowl.

For an evaporator, I used a round pizza pan below the bottom rack.

Immediately after placing the loaf, I dumped about a cup of water into the bowl, which gradually drained through the small hole during the first few minutes of baking. As the water landed on the hot pizza pan below, it provided a nice steady cloud of steam.

Happy baking,

Scott.

Ok, this is my first entry into my personal blog and hopefully not my last one (excuse my syntaxe as French is my first language...).

It has been a long journey into trials and errors, but I kept my passion for making the perfect sourdough bread and today, I believe I have achieved the beginning of the perfect sourdough loaf, for myself anyway.

So here it is... I follow these instructions from Susan from San diego, up to the 'T' without changing a thing.  Et voilà, my perfect sourdough bread is borned.

It was made with my homemade starter 'Bécacine', borned May 05 2010.  The smell of sourdough is very present and I am so pleased with the easiness of this method.  For baking, I used the method 'Roasting lid' because this method seems to work the best for my condition at the moment : living 6,000 feet above the sea level in high altitude, in central Mexico, and I have to make breads with what I have around me and not always run to the store, which is pratically, non-existant here. 

For the colander, I replaced it with a straw bowl for tortilla, well floured, and cover with a coton dish towel, it worked like a charm. I don't have a pizza stone so I used the back of my cast iron pot to deposit the bread to be on it.  It did the job also.

Now, my big problem was to understand the process because here, everything with yeast in it will raise very quickly but also go down very fast because of the altitude, some days are better than others...  So the manipulation of the dough had to be restricted to a minimum and had to be studied closely to know the right time to move it.

It has been a long journey since May 05.  This bread is my 13th bread.  All the others ended up in the field for the birds, the snakes, black widow, scorpions, fire ants, etc... around me.  I could have kept them for building a wall of brick actually.

So it shows that it is not only a recipe that makes the perfect dish, it is the 'knowing how to cook, bake' that makes the difference, the location we live also and the passion for it.

thirsty flour. is there such a thing? i live in sweden and have just become involved in artisan baking. i am having a real problem with following the recipes as far as water is concerned. it just doesn't seem to be enough! this problem is even more acute when wholegrains are involved. i made a loaf with rye, barley and white and needed so much more water that i gave up measuring it! i was just trying to get the soft, sticky mass as described in the book. being a newbie in this game i have no idea why this is so, all i can think of is that the flour over here is very thirsty! so can anyone help me with water amounts? is the flour over here really that different? 

Hi all,

Newb here and I hope my questions not been covered before so here goes.  When I disolve my yeast recipes typically say 110-115f degrees but then after mixing (kitchen aide stand mixer) my dough temperature is very much warmer than what I understand it should be.  90 as opposed to 75ish?  So, what's more important here, my water temp to disolve yeast or dough temperature...or am I completely mixed up?  I'd really appreciate some help and clarification here!

Thanks,

Darryl