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I've had several encouraging successes following the advice I received here a few weeks ago - particularly from Benny and Mariana. Thanks again, folks :-)

One area where I still have difficulty, though, is in successfully turning my proofed dough out onto Challenger parchment paper and then lifting it quickly onto/into my Challenger pan before baking.

I'm usually proofing overnight in Sugus House bannetons.

I sprinkle the cloth liner with either rice or tapioca flour.

But my dough still tends to flop onto the flat surface and spread.

Should I:

1. try less hydration to help the dough keep its shape better?
2. use more flour to stop the dough sticking to the cloth and so help it drop from the banneton?
3. be prepared to turn the banneton upside down with greater speed so as not to have the dough lose its shape?
4. something else?

Thanks in advance for anyone who has experience/answers to this!

I'm still having trouble making crumpets.

No matter what I try, high heat or low, my crumpets turn out seriously underdone in the middle. I'm getting the little pores on top from gas bubbles bursting, which a proper crumpet is supposed to have.

I'm cooking them in an ordinary skillet with no lid. Even with ridiculously long cooking times (15+ minutes) the insides are invariably undercooked and squishy, about the consistency of mashed potatoes. The taste of this raw dough/batter is quite unappetizing. I've watched several YouTube videos to no avail.

I had the bright idea to try some kind of sandwich maker/waffle iron-type device which would heat both the top and bottom at the same time. Can anyone recommend such a device? It seems the cheaper units lack any kind of temperature control. I imagine this would be a desirable feature to have.

A standard crumpet recipe is quite simple, so I doubt that's the problem. There are many crumpet recipes on line and they are all very similar. Usually crumpets are cooked on one side only in an open skillet with a little oil or butter.

1 C all-purpose flour

1 C water (or milk)

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 packet instant dry yeast

Combine ingredients and let batter rise for 1 hour

Hello,

I keep my 100% hydration starter in the fridge. 

I top it up with the active starter left over from my next bake.

When I take it out of the fridge I activate it by adding about a cup of flour and a cup of water to a half cup of starter. I let that sit for 12 hours (where it's usually risen to double) and feed again with another cup of flour and water. 4 hours later I have a starter that has doubled in size and that's what I use to bake bread.

On this forum I read of people who can activate a starter to grow to three or four times in volume. This absolutely never happens with mine. Once it goes to double it usually starts to sink again and I know that is a bad sign.

So the question is, how do I get this volcano starter happening and what am I doing wrong right now?

As an addendum. My current starter bakes good bread but I am never quite satisfied with the oven spring and, as some of you might have realised if you read the forum, I am obsessed with getting good ears from my loaves, something which sadly still eludes me. I am wondering if this could be because I'm using a starter which hasn't been activated enough. Anyway. Enough about the ears again. I would just love to know how to produce volcano starter.

Any help gratefully received.  

Hi all,

First a thanks to everyone for the helpful information I have read through and the inspiration I have gained, but now I feel the need to get specific . . .

I had it in my mind to make some approximation of a (small) baguette. My first attempt (4 at various oven-friendly sizes) was acceptable but, for me, lacking a bit of flavour. To be sure, they were streets better in both flavour and structure than any baguette I could find at a supermarket or regular, non-artisan bakery and they passed the most important test (my partner,) but they fell a touch short of what I would consider properly tasty.

For context, my background and situation is as follows:

• I am an experimenter at heart who has difficulty following a recipe that seems arbitrary when no explanation is provided - I want to break things down and not only know what differences a given change might make but why.
• I am in (metropolitan) Sydney, Australia, where access to specialist baking flours at the best of times is underwhelming. My current flour is Laucke's Wallaby at 11.5% protein - a fairly high number for accessible flours over this way.
• Australian flour is un-malted and I do not have any diastic malt.
• With the exception of a 100% rye loaf or two, I never add sugar or honey or the like.
• All my doughs are flour, water, salt and yeast - either wild in the form of my starter or using commercial yeast.
• I don't understand when people suggest that un-malted flour won't brown properly as I seem to have the opposite problem more often than not.
• I tend towards sourdough and have a nice (plain flour) starter which is neither strong nor weak but is resilient and somewhere over 4 years old now.
• I like wholemeal, rye and spelt flours added in to my breads as my preferred way of eating it is plain; my partner strongly prefers hers 100% white, often with butter (Pepe Saya for those down my way,) or as a sandwich.

Anyway . . .

Creating my own very simple recipe, the basics were:

(Room temp at the moment is 13-18c during the relevant times)

1. 70% hydration, 1.8% salt, 0.4% yeast.
2. ~20 hours autolyse (no yeast,) comprising: ~8h at room temp, ~10h refrigerated overnight; 2h returning to room temp the next day.
3. Mix in yeast first and then salt (each dissolved in a little water, bringing it to the 70% number) with a Kenwood 'K' beater for 5 mins or so on a low speed.
4. Room temp for about 4.5 hours with 4 slaps and folds of varying durations and intensities as seemed good in my eyes - around 30-60 mins apart each and stored in a sealed container inbetween.
5. In the fridge for ~16h overnight.
6. Divided cold and roughly shaped.
7. Rested at room temp ~2.5-3 hours.
8. Shaped and into a couch for ~1h as the oven warmed.

Baking was in 250c on a pre-heated pizza stone with the oven's steam function for 15 mins, then on fan-forced (in my oven, that's a separate heating element around the fan) at 230c for another 10 mins without steam, using the transition to open the oven and rotate the two loaves while letting out the steam.

For the second set, I kept the temp at 250c the whole time but did an even 10 + 10 mins.

Now, to the real meat, which is using this bake as an opportunity to understand the difference between a commerical yeast-based preferment (poolish/biga) and a straight dough simply fermented longer.

A long fermentation time allows flavours to develop. Great.

To my mind, given a fixed time frame for fermentation (e.g. 24h,) the most flavour would be achieved by fermenting the entire dough and therefore a pre-ferment (poolish/biga) would be seen as a more convenient but less effective method of doing so, or one that might be preferred for other, non-flavour reasons (e.g. strength or extensibility, etc . . .).

Am I on the right track here?

If I am happy with the development, workability, time-management and resulting crust and crumb of a whole-dough ferment, what differences should I expect to see with a poolish? (Again, given a fixed time.)

To sum-up, I am looking to improve the flavour while still creating a 100% white baguette and wondering whether swapping the long (partially refrigerated) bulk for a poolish and short bulk would do that. Other options are to add in some sourdough starter after the autolyse or extend the bulk. (Or some combination.)

Here are the obligatory pictures, though they're not really relevant to the flavour, of course!

bag_01.JPG

bag_02.JPG

Many thanks all, in anticipation/hope.

Dan