The Fresh Loaf

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December 28, 2020 - 4:25pm
boopacabra's picture
boopacabra

What might cause baguettes to look dull and white-ish?

I just made a batch of baguettes, and they seem fine (crispy, fine shape/rise, etc), except for the color is really dull and there's almost a white-ish film (see picture), instead of them being golden brown. Any idea why this could be?

Some details:

  • I used the King Arthur recipe with King Arthur AP Flour.
  • As per the recipe, I steamed the baguettes with hot water at the beginning of the bake.
  • I used a floured couche, but didn't use extra flour for any of the other steps. I covered them with plastic wrap on the couche so the flour should've only touched the bottom of the baguettes, maybe the sides a bit, but not really the top.
  • I baked them at 450F for a full 29-30 minutes and they seem crusty and fully baked, so I don't think it's about them being underbaked.

Perhaps it's about steaming? However, reading similar posts, I've seen some comments about under-steaming, and some comments about over-steaming, which makes me a bit confused which direction might be right.

Thanks for any pointers!

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December 28, 2020 - 8:14am
texasbakerdad's picture
texasbakerdad

How to intentionally get chewy crust?

I am tasked with baking sourdough bread bowls for dinner tonight. The dough is already in bulk and here are the ingredients:

  • 280g sourdough starter
  • 100g spelt
  • 300g whole white wheat
  • 1000g AP flour
  • 35g salt
  • 85g oil
  • 85g honey
  • 1150g water

Most posts on tfl ask how to NOT get chewy crust. But, I want the crust chewy. Although, I'm not sure how to achieve chewy crust on purpose.. Any advice is appreciated.

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December 25, 2020 - 11:53pm
Yippee's picture
Yippee

20201224 Le Cordon Bleu Pain des Rois with CLAS

 To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

 

 

 

 

    Happy Holidays! I wish everyone a safe and healthy holiday season. Let's look forward to a better year in 2021!

 

 

 

A gigantic 1.2 kg loaf! A perfect holiday gift!         

After decoration

        

Before decoration 

     

Crumb

   

 

 

89%    T55/Beehive AP                                                                          

8%      almond flour

3%       whole rye CLAS

13%     water

37%     milk

17%     butter

10%     egg

1%       dry yeast

5%       sugar

1.3%    salt

12.5%  rum-soaked raisin

12.5%   candied orange

 

 

Bulk

30-33C x ~45 mins until doubled

 

Rest

 

Shape

 

Proof

30-33C x ~75 - 90 mins until doubled

 

Egg wash

 

Score (scissor-cut)

 

Sprinkle pearl sugar

 

Bake (1.2kg)

410F x 20 

rotate

410F x 10 

cover with foil

410F x 10

rotate, cover with foil

410F x 15

skewer test for doneness                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   As I was about to settle in at the end of a busy day of baking,  at 11 pm on Christmas Eve, I suddenly realized that almond flour = NUT!!! One of the families to whom I was gifting the Pain des Rois has kids who are allergic to nuts!!! I had planned to give the bread to them at 8 am on Christmas morning. What should I do  I frantically searched the bread books and settled to bake a Cramique.  So, I pulled an all-nighter of baking to kick off my 2020 Christmas.  By 6:30 am, the loaves were cooling; by 7:45 am, they were packed and delivered. Whewwww!  
        Some beautiful scenes of autumn.     

 

 

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December 25, 2020 - 3:33pm
Ehbread's picture
Ehbread

Choosing a new mixer

I currently have a kitchenaid artisan mixer. It’s about nine years old and up until a little over a year ago only made bread a few times a year. Now I’ve been making bread more and I’ve noticed it seems to be starting to struggle with the bread dough. I normally make small batch sizes less than 700g flour. I’ve never felt the bowl size is too small, just that the mixer is under powered. I started looking into a new mixer and am just feeling lost so looking for suggestions and recommendations.

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December 24, 2020 - 7:35am
Benito's picture
Benito

Rum Soaked Cranberry Walnut Sourdough


I made a cranberry walnut sourdough loaf sometime in the past year or so and thought that although it was good, not soaking the cranberries made them less than they could be.  So this time I decided since it is Christmas why not soak them in some fine Flor di Cana 12 year old Rum.

What follows is the formula with the double batch weights in parentheses.

For one 906 g loaf 78% hydration 

311 g white bread flour.    (622)           

46 g whole wheat flour.     (92)          

21 g dark rye flour.           (42)             

266 g warm water, then         (532)   

21 g water for mixing later       (42)  

7.5 g salt  (15)

77 g levain   (154)

2 g diastatic malt powder 0.5%  (4)

 

76 g (152 g) Dried Cranberries 20% soaked overnight in rum drained before use

76 g (152 g) Lightly toasted Walnuts 20%

 

Total final weight 906 g 

 

Overnight levain 1:6:6  13 g starter 78 g flour (39 g each red fife and bread flours) 78 g water  started at 8 pm 74ºF with cold water to start, rose x 3 but starting to fall at 5 am

At the same time as the levain build do a Saltolyse mixing flours, diastatic malt, salt and water except hold out water.

 

In the morning add levain and gradually add hold out water.  

 

Bulk Fermentation 1215 to 530 pm

 

  1. + 30 min Bench letterfold remove dough for aliquot jar
  2. + 45 mins Lamination.  Place dough on wet counter and spread out into a large rectangle. Spread walnuts and cranberries on the dough in thirds. 
  3. + 45 min Coil Fold
  4. + 30 min Coil Fold
  5. + 30 min Coil Fold

Bulk fermentation ended with aliquot jar showed 60% rise.

Shaped dough into batard and placed in bannetons.  Allow further bench rest at room temperature until aliquot jar showed 70% rise.  

Cold retard in 2ºC fridge overnight.

Preheat oven 500ºF with dutch oven in place.

When dough loaded into Dutch oven drop temperature to 450ºF and bake with lid on for 30 mins.

Remove lid and drop temperature to 420ºF and bake without lid for additional 15-20 mins watching colour of the crust, compensate if getting too dark by dropping temperature to 350ºF if needed.





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December 23, 2020 - 10:58am
WatertownNewbie's picture
WatertownNewbie

Abe's Spelt and Rye Bread (My Bake)

Abe recently posted about a bread he put together from some flour and seeds, and the combination appealed to me as a change of pace from the usual breads that I bake.  Here is my version (pretty much following his steps).

     The ingredients in my version of his bread are:

Spelt Flour -- 400 g

Whole Rye Flour -- 100 g

Salt -- 8 g

Pumpkin Seeds -- 15 g

Sunflower Seeds -- 20 g

Flaxseeds -- 10 g

Sesame Seeds (white) -- 15 g

Starter -- 23 g

Water -- 420 g

As Abe described, I mixed the flour, seeds, and salt and made a well, into which I added the starter (which had been fed about five hours earlier).  I then poured in 350 g of water and mixed a bit until that water was absorbed.  More water was needed, and I added a little more until the consistency felt right (sticky, but holding together).  In all, I used 420 g of water.  I mixed the dough some more while feeling a bit of gluten development.  The dough temperature was 76 F, and I covered it for the first of the thirty-minute periods between four stretch-and-fold sessions.

After the fourth S&F the dough went into the refrigerator, and then about five hours later I took it out for an overnight bulk fermentation at room temperature.  In the morning, the dough had sat for a tad over ten hours (but had not expanded much).  I wet my hand and worked the dough gently to feel some resistance in it, shaped the dough into a log, and put it into a 4-1/2" x 8-1/2" loaf pan that I had greased with butter.  The loaf pan then went into a plastic bag for a little over an hour-and-a-half while the dough proofed.

Meanwhile I heated the oven to 450 F.  After the proofing, during which the dough expanded noticeably, I put the loaf pan into the oven and left it there for 47 minutes (rotating after twenty minutes).  After thirty minutes the internal temperature was only 179 F, which did not surprise me because of the hydration level, but by the end the internal temperature was about 208 F.  The loaf split on its own along one side (no scoring).

The crust is very crispy and crunchy in a good way.  The crumb is a little dense, but not heavy like a pure rye bread.  Instead, the crumb is soft and allows the various seeds to be tasted.

This is a neat bread.  My wife is not a fan of spelt, but she really liked this bread.  It is simple to make, and I will do so again sometime. If you are looking for a bread with spelt and rye and some seeds, you will enjoy this one.  Thanks, Abe, for your post about this bread.

Happy baking.  Stay safe and stay healthy.

Ted

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December 22, 2020 - 9:33am
appendix's picture
appendix

trying to recreate a specific bread

There was a bread I used to love when I was growing up.  It was a seedless rye that had a dense texture w/ a very tight crumb & had a crust that was soft & very chewy.  Unfortunately the bakery we used to get it at went out of business. 

When I make bread now, I can get a nice crisp, chewy crust, or a soft one, but I can't seem to get that combination of chewiness & softness.  Also not sure how to achieve the density I am looking for. 

Any suggestions?  Not even really sure where to start.  Any help would be appreciated.

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December 21, 2020 - 2:40pm
ChairmanWill's picture
ChairmanWill

100% rye dough a disaster despite 'healthy' starter

I am trying to make a loaf with 100% dark (wholemeal) rye flour. I have a healthy white flour starter and over the last week have been using that culture as a base to make a rye starter.

This is the appearance of the starter. I would describe is as smelling and tasting sour, but it has a "spongy" texture that is very different to my white starter. It passes the float test and is reliably doubling or tripling in size after a feed.

I've used a recipe that calls for 400g dark rye, 10g salt, 200g rye starter, 40g honey, 300g water. However, even after a half hour autolyse and fifteen minutes of attempted slap and fold, my dough looks like this - no texture at all, just total mush. 

I would say that i've had a lot of problems in the past working a wet dough, I'm not experienced enough to understand why my dough sometimes doesn't form, and I've had some that have started to develop gluten and just fallen apart. Even the sourdoughs that I am happy with are often more pancakey than I'd like although I'd say I'm generally getting a decent rise now with white dough.

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December 20, 2020 - 3:40pm
headupinclouds's picture
headupinclouds

aspergillus oryzae: overnight oats + bread, koji, miso, sakadane

Aspergillus Oryzae is at the heart of many delicious East Asian ferments, including miso, tempeh, sake, etc.  I have been reading through The Noma Guide to Fermentation, where Rene Redzepi and David Zilber of Noma fame lay out a number of aspergillus oryzae ferments critical to much of the success of their restaurant.  This is really a fusion of a culinary practice with an incredibly long history in East Asia, with local ingredients and flavors of Denmark -- their culinary terroir.  Somewhat surprisingly, bread is almost completely lacking from the book, except as a "food" for their ryeso recipe.  From my understanding, it produces little to no CO2 as a byproduct, and is therefore not effective as a levain in bread making.  It isn't clear this exclusion indicates they haven't used it.   After some online searches, it seems a sakadane starter can be produced from koji that apparently can be effective at raising bread.  This is apparently commonly paired with a yudane practice (similar to the commonly used tangzhong scald approach used for soft fluffy loaves). 

One of my favorite breakfasts is overnight miso oats or muesli.  In this dish, oats or muesli are cooked to make starches accessible and a small amount of active miso (I like sweet white rice miso) is introduced to the mixture after cooling to a warm temperature.  If left overnight in a warm place (estimated 80-90 F), come morning the oats will have a lovely mildly sweet miso taste.  I've been curious about ways to introduce this as a complementary flavor oriented fermentation in sourdough bread making.  Some searches have pointed back to some interesting miso flavored sourdough breads posted on TFL.  Active miso seems particularly effective at breaking down grains, and I'm not sure whether it will be detrimental to starch quality and/or gluten development required for proper loaf form, oven spring, etc.  It would be nice to find more literature discussing this aspect.

Miso test dough:

Overnight saltolyse of two dough mixes at approximately equal hydration with matching sodium content, where mix 1 contains 15 g miso and mix 2 contains none.

100 g flour, 75 g water, 15 g miso, 1.7 g salt (sodium = 2g)

100 g flour, 90 g water, 0 g miso, 2.0 g salt (sodium = 2g)

I made some poppyside buns to make this an edible experiment.  The one on the right had the miso.  They were extremely similar -- this miso had no noticeable adverse affects on the dough, although II didn't notice a significant different at 15% (bakers percentage).  I can push it further next time.  Things to try:

* increase the percentage of miso

* increase the temperature so the miso culture will be more active

* include a scald or porridge soaker so the miso culture

This was a very quick before pre-bedtime experiment, but it seems that including 15% miso (baker's percentage) at room temperature for 12 hours or so does not lead to noticeable dough degradation.  If anything, the dough with the miso seems a fair amount stronger, although this was a fairly hasty experiment and my quick assumption that miso paste was approximately 100% hydration is obviously not correct.  I was primarily interested in how dough would hold up over long periods of time with miso in the mix.  It seems to be fine.

Since there is apparently already a tradition of making bread with a koji based sakadane culture, it would make sense to try to reproduce this next, and perhaps see how this combines with my current sourdough starter.  It will be a good excuse to use the koji in my freezer I originally intended to use for tempeh.

How To Make Sakadane

 

TFL bakes:

Benny's Koji Rice Porridge Sourdough: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/65332/koji-rice-porridge-sourdough

 

Resources:

https://youtu.be/sEUokdUqE2M : How To Make Sakadane

https://sourdough.com/posts/japanese-sourdough-1-koji-sakadane-and-yudane

https://www.eater.com/2018/10/1/17923034/richard-hart-rene-redzepi-hart-bageri-sourdough-copenhagen

https://www.questforsourdough.com/sourdough/recipe/100-sakadane

https://cookpad.com/us/recipes/151189-natural-leaven-made-with-amazake-sakadane

https://hiro-shio.blogspot.com/2013/05/sakadane.html

http://www.provence.com.sg/new-products/

https://sourdough.com/forum/rice-koji-mold-used-ferment-bread

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December 20, 2020 - 1:11pm
albacore's picture
albacore

Baguette Production Video

I chanced upon a video made by Grands Moulins de Paris describing the production of baguette by the straight dough process - ie no poolish or other preferment.

Grands Moulins de Paris are the same company as Moule Bie - a French volume flour miller, but I think they are trying to up their artisan credentials.

What I liked about the video was watching the pre-shaping and shaping process, which I thought was shown with more clarity than I have ever seen before.

I gave the method a whirl with some Foricher T65 flour I already had; I reduced the hydration to 67% and used IDY at 0.38%. It made a nice baguette with good flavour - not as interesting as a poolish or SD bake, but fine for a quick and simple bake.

Lance

 

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