The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

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May 11, 2021 - 3:16pm
Gadjowheaty's picture
Gadjowheaty

steam with WFO's?

In planning out a mud oven, I just realized it seems steam is a deal-breaker, no?

I wouldn't mind if I knew I'd be loading the oven each time, but I don't believe that will be the case.  I suspect it's a problem we all face - wanting to size a hearth that will handle larger bakes, but not so big that we don't get the benefit (steam, from a packed oven)?

Anyway, yes, steam.  For that matter, though I know The Bread Builders talks about it and plenty of bakers successfully steam their masonry ovens - anyone experience issues with steam, and either their mud or masonry ovens?

 

Paul

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May 11, 2021 - 9:06am
artizone's picture
artizone

New Recipe calculator app

People please try it out if you struggle with calculating and manage recipes.


its called 'Recilator' and currently available on android. trust me it will save your life and increase your speed and creativity

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May 11, 2021 - 4:31am
SunnyGail's picture
SunnyGail

Over-proofed, isn't it???

Hello everyone,

 

Here is the bake of the day: Beautifully flat and deliciously over-proofed :-((

 

The glitch is that the dough temp was 6.6° when I took it out of the fridge after an overnight retard..As I pushed the bulk up to 55-60%, my guess is that it continued to proof slowly but surely in the fridge as the temp wasn’t cold enough to stop the fermentation...

Can anybody confirm my doubts?? Or maybe there’s something else that I have overlooked...

 

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

 

The recipe is the one I’ve been following for weeks now, with a few tweaks:

https://blog.the-bread-code.io/recipe/2020/12/22/the-last-sourdough-recipe.html

 

350g Strong white bread flour / Organic / 75%

150g Red Fife Anita’s organic / 25%

375g Water /75% (instead of 70%)

100g active sourdough starter  /20% / 50/50 Bread flour + Whole Wheat – Fed twice the day before

11g salt (about 2%)

 

Autolyse 1h RT 20° (instead of overnight)

Mix and rest 15mn

Gentle kneading

6h30 Bulk at 25° / 3 coil folds during the 3 first hours / Until vol*55-60%

I decided to use my oven as a proofing chamber, but at some point, the oven reached 37C for at least an hour before I noticed it..It didn’t seem to bother my dough very much though, it was still looking very much alive!

Shaping (really challenging ...)

30mn proofing at 23° then fridge for 15h

Baked in a Dutch oven at 240°C for 30 mn with the lid on + 3 ice cubes / then 15 mn without lid at 230°C

 

Here is a picture of my dough sample at the end of the bulk fermentation stage:

 

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May 11, 2021 - 2:44am
Anonymous baker's picture
Anonymous baker (not verified)

Restoring Heritage Grains - Eli Rogosa

This book gives some of the history of wheat and it's development going back to Neolithic times and coming forward to the 'Green Revolution' of the 60's and the emergence of monoculture and chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Spoiler: The 'Green Revolution' was anything but green.

It examines the traditional concept of landraces (traditional mixed variety planting) and the way in which this obviates the need for so many chemicals to protect and grow crops.

 

There is a good chapter on the main different families of wheat.

She flags up the way in which modern wheats are bred for consistency, high speed milling and machine driven baking and not for traditional stone milling and hand baking. This she says was done at the cost of flavour and variety.

I have recently started buying landrace wheats, milling them at home and baking with them. The first thing I noticed was that it has required me to develop new skills to manage the higher proportion of stretchy gliadine to strong glutenin ratio. Otherwise blending with modern strong flour helps if you want a 'modern' loaf. The second thing that stands out is the exceptional flavour of these wheats. The flavours are outstanding. 

As an aside, I have also found a source of a good Norwegian Rye landrace. Again fantastic flavour profiles way beyond what I get from modern Rye flour.

I hope to post elsewhere on the forum about my lessons of baking with these softer wheats.

Back to the book. It's a complete eye opener about wheat and the flour with which we bake.

Negative comments: I nearly put the book down after two chapters. Some of the research in them was sloppy. For example she wraps the Romans in with Early Mesopotamia as if they were more or less the same time and not the two thousand year gap between them. Later the facts become more solid.

At times the book can be over-romantic or fanciful at others it can read a little like repetitive proselyting.

However, with a bit of winnowing and bolting it is a superb and informative read.

I hope this is useful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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May 10, 2021 - 7:28pm
Kistida's picture
Kistida

Carrot swirls and other bakes

I made this carrot swirly bread as one of the things to do with a big bag of carrots. 🤣

Here’s the recipe, just prepare the yudane a few hours ahead of time (some recipes call for it to be chilled overnight). Also it’s easily modified to exclude the sd discard. 

 

Yudane

  • 100g all purpose flour 
  • 100g boiling water 

use 100g for white dough, 70g for carrot dough 

 White dough

  • 100g yudane
  • 120g sourdough discard 
  • 180g all purpose flour 
  • 50g whole wheat flour
  • 5g salt
  • 20g sugar 
  • 3g instant yeast 
  • 1 large egg (50g), beaten
  • 80g milk (I used 2%)
  • 20g lght olive oil
  • 30g unsalted butter, softened 

 Carrot dough

  • 70g yudane 
  • 100g *carrot purée
  • 180g all purpose flour
  • 30g whole wheat flour 
  • 3g salt
  • 20g sugar 
  • 1/2 tsp lemon zest
  • 2g instant yeast
  • 20g egg, beaten (to the balance egg, add 1 tbsp milk and pinch of salt - use as egg wash)
  • 15g milk (I used 2%)
  • 15g light olive oil
  • 20g unsalted butter, softened 

*carrot purée: steam carrot chunks for 20 minutes. Remove from heat, mash the carrot. Weigh and mix 80g of mashed carrot with 40g water (2:1). Blend this mixture until smooth or with tiny pieces scattered (adds nice specks of bright orange). Use 100g in the recipe

180°C Loaf pan (9x5”) 45-50 minutes; freeform loaves like braids, 25-30minutes. Braided version here where one is folded under to make a small loaf and the other not folded 👇🏻

This past week, I made some of my favorite baked goodies: crostata with a woven crust and home made jam, mocha cake and espresso Swiss roll (did a fantastic mess cutting into this one), with espresso ermine frosting and rum raisin sandwich biscuits - lil things I miss baking back home in Malaysia.

 

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May 7, 2021 - 6:50am
idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

46th bake. 05/07/2021. 87% stone-ground WW durum.

May 6, 2021.

 

10:35 am. Mix (by hand/spatula) to homogeneity:  (Thank you, Mariana, for that phrase.)

10:42 am. Put it in the fridge.

3:55 pm.  Take out of fridge. Mix in 40 g cold starter, last fed 3 days ago, 100% hydration. 

4:00 pm. Mix/knead in (by hand) 25 grams more water. I just went by feel to determine the amount.

4:00 - 4:15 pm. Knead by hand.

4:35 - 7:42 pm. Did various stretch and folds, at least 5, maybe up to 7.

8:45 pm. Put dough in lined 8" inner-diameter banneton. Liner was just a thin "flour sack" style tea-towel, doubled over, dusted with 50/50 mix of white rice flour and AP flour.

8:50 pm. Covered, placed in plastic shopping bag, put in fridge.

May 7, 2021.

7:45 am. Remove from fridge and bag. Not any noticeable expansion. Leave at room temp until time to bake.

7:50 am.  Start oven preheat to 475/450* F.  With Lodge 3.2 qt combo-cooker on 3rd rack up from bottom. Bottom rack has a 14" cordierite pizza stone, 1/4" thick, to block radiant heat from the bottom heating element.

8:24 am. Desired oven temp reached.  Give it about 10 more minutes for combo-cooker to achieve desired temp.

8:35 am. Sprinkle corn meal on surface of dough as it sits in banneton. Place 8.5" circle of parchment paper on top of corn meal. Invert the deep pot half of combo cooker over the banneton. Invert banneton and pot together so dough falls in. Remove banneton from pot. Cornmeal and parchment paper now insulate the bottom of the dough from the pot. Dust/scrape off excess rice-and-AP-flour from top of dough.  Score a plus sign with a bare double edged razor blade.  The dry "skin" on the dough is noticeable, and you can see the wetter inside. This will make for a nice oven bloom.

Previous experience showed that the crust of whole grain durum loaves, which had soaked/autolysed for multiple hours, carmelized too much when initial baking temp started at 475/450. So this time, I'll start at 450/425*.

8:39 am. Bake covered, 450/425* F. 15 minutes.

8:54 am. Bake covered, 425/400* F.  22 minutes.

9:16 am. Nice oven bloom!

9:16 am. Bake uncovered, 425/400*.  14 minutes. 

9:30 am. Crust and ears look browned just right.

Internal temp: 208.8 F.  Passes thump test.

* First number is oven thermostat setting, second is actual.

---

Paper plate is 9" in diameter.

 

 

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May 7, 2021 - 1:14am
iNouf's picture
iNouf

Oven rise problem

Hi guys! 
i really hope someone help me find the issue here, so I bake my sourdough according to the following:

80% bread flour 

20% whole wheat

75% water

20% levain

2% salt

i almost never get an oven rise even though the taste is good. I’ll attach a picture of how my bread usually look like (not much oven rise and no open score)

However. There’s one tImee where it was late and I let my dough continue bulk fermentation in the over for 7 hours, took it out when I woke up let it came to rom temperature then I did pre shape and shaping and left in the fridge to proof for around 10 hours. And it worked! One bread out of almost 50 non rise ones :( 

  1. I bake in a Dutch oven, there’s enough humidity, I make sure the dough isn’t in a warm place and the AC is on giving I live in a very hot place, I make sure the levain is at least doubled and active and hasnt crashed i also autolyse 

i need to understand why though. 




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May 6, 2021 - 2:37am
k2005's picture
k2005

First Fresh Loaf Loaf!


Hey guys!

This is my first post on the site. I started baking sourdough during lockdown and then I moved to a flat with a gas oven and it completely destroyed every loaf I made (burnt bottom, not enough oven spring, not cooked all the way through). Back at my mum's and decided to bring my starter with me to try and bake some bread to see if it was actually my fault or the ovens fault. 

I've gotten quite 'lazy' in my sourdough making, just kind of doing what I can when I can, but I reckon that you can make a pretty good loaf pretty simply. 

350g tipo 00 flour (the only white flour my mum had)

150g strong wholemeal bread 

50g starter

350g filtered water

9g salt 

autolyse 30-45mins, add starter and salt, combine and let rest for 30 minutes, S&F, let rest, do some coil folds if I felt like it and the dough had relaxed during the first 2 hours of bulk fermentation, let bulk ferment for around 10 hours until it had risen around 1.5x, windowpane test passed, one last coil fold, preshape and let it rest, then shape and put into a banneton (in my case a floured teatowel and a loaf tin), then it was put into the fridge for 10-12 hours, baked the next day 20mins in a cast iron pot with the lid on and then 20mins with the cast iron pot lid off and a 'ban-marie' in the oven. 

the loaf has a nice taste and is definitely one of the softest crumbs I have ever made! I was wondering what contributes to this? I usually bake the loaf for 25 minutes after taking the lid off so perhaps that was too long and I am better off baking for less time

would appreciate any criticisms, tips and any comments on how my crumb looks vs how it should/could look! 

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May 5, 2021 - 10:32am
Gadjowheaty's picture
Gadjowheaty

Rubaud Method, bucket folding, coil folds with large scale batches?

I have become quite smitten with hand mixing using the Rabaud method (thank you, Trevor,  Your book and videos are superlative).  My question goes to how this method would be employed for large scale batches, even if only artisanal in scale - especially for highly hydrated doughs.

A related question, I guess:  through Hamelman I know of bucket folding for these batches similar in scale.

I get decent strength employing Rabaud, but so far I've only done it with home-scale batches of 2 kg or so.  How, using the above methods (I can better see how the Bertinet technique, even if taxing, could be and is done commercially) do you get good strength using either the Rabaud or bucket folding ( add coil folds too) technique on large, highly hydrated batches?

Many thanks.

 

 

Paul

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May 4, 2021 - 5:31am
Gadjowheaty's picture
Gadjowheaty

Oval banneton size - 1 Kg boulot

I've 10" oval bannetons that hold 1.5# loaves well, but inadequate for anything larger.  Anyone have a suggested banneton to handle 1 kg boulot dough?

 

Paul

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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