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Cristina's picture
Cristina

Students baking sourdough - please help a teacher out!

Hello! I am starting a project with my IB biology class (advanced biology, 11th grade) where I will have them create their own sourdough starters and then bake sourdough bread with it. I am new to sourdough baking but I have been doing some experimenting over the last few months to prep for this project. I received a donation from King Arthur Flour for so I have been using their recipes and resources. 

I would love to have the students bake naturally leavened sourdough bread (no commercial yeast), but I'm not sure how this can be done on a school schedule.  I would also like to have the students do as many of the steps (building levain, mixing dough, folding, shaping, baking, etc.) as possible.  But if its not possible, I can do some of the steps for them.  Here is the schedule that we're working with. 

The students are with me everyday at 12pm. We are on an alternating schedule were I have them for 40 min one day and 80 min the next day. I am at school from 7:30 - 4pm, but can stay later if necessary. 

In my limited sourdough experience, it seems like even with the most relaxed sourdough schedule, you still have to do something to it at least every 12 hours.  However, these students will only be with me every 24 hours. My contact at KA Flour says that using a recipe that calls from some commercial yeast may be the way to go in this situation (sad face).

So my questions:

Can anyone suggest a schedule for naturally leavened bread that would work? 

What type of recipe do you suggest (e.g., white, whole wheat, etc.)?

Should I give up on trying to do a naturally leavened bread and use commercial yeast?  If so, what schedule is suggested for this?

Finally, my other obstacle is that we have two ovens for 5 groups of students.  That will be 10 loaves of bread.  I'm thinking putting them in loaf pans and baking in 2 batches will be the best way to get them all to fit?  Any suggestions here?

Thank you for any and all help!

Cristina

 

Valdus's picture
Valdus

Point me to a Sourdough Rye?

I have the craving for that rye tang. Could someone point me to a good sourdough recipe? Preferably not using prepackaged yeast?

Skibum's picture
Skibum

NY Deli Rye, (once again) baked Forkish style

Greeting fellow bakers and happy Canada Day to our Canadian friends and happy Presidents Day to my American friends!

Sorry for the repetition, but this P. Reinhart recipe has become my favourite sandwich loaf. I use a whole light rye starter and it is delicious sandwich bread!

I have baked this recipe in a loaf pan, free standing in the oven with the pizza stone but this time decided to try baking in a hot cast iron Dutch oven, 20 minutes covered and 20 minutes uncovered.

Now Forkish style invlolves proofing in the banneton seam side down and baking seam side up. On this bake, the way the seams broke down, the finished loaf had less loft the the final proofed dough. So when I next bake this bread, I will proof seam side up and bake seam side down. I hope this change in method will give the dough more volume.

Happy baking! Ski

Martin Crossley's picture
Martin Crossley

Spying on your starter...

Just sharing a tip...

If you've got an old iPhone or tablet lying around, it really is dead easy to use it to take a time-lapse video of your starter's response to feeding or the inflation of your dough :)

I can't speak for other devices, but on the Apple ones you just bring up the camera, swipe left at the bottom to get to 'time-lapse', hit the record button and that's it. There's no need to adjust any settings, it just automatically reduces the frame rate depending on how long you leave it running (ten mins, a couple of hours, overnight or whatever). Obviously you probably need to leave it plugged in to the charger or the battery will go flat.

Personally I put an old wristwatch next to the container so I can see how much time's gone by at any point in the video.

An interesting thing to do is to get a few clear containers (e.g. shot glasses) and put them in a row. Put some discard in a bowl, feed it 1:1:1 and put a dollop in the first glass. Then 'feed' what's left in the bowl again (so you now have 1:2:2) and put a dollop in the next glass... etc. Set the camera up so it can see the whole row, go to bed - and then in the morning watch the video to see how long your starter takes to 'peak' for different feeding regimes. That's quite useful knowledge, if you want to adjust your timings.

Equally you could adjust the hydration level of the starter between the different glasses, or make a row of scraps of dough with different amounts of salt, percentages of wholewheat vs. plain ... ... ...

One final note though - friends and family seem (for some curious reason) to be not so interested in my home videos of overnight starter growth. No accounting for taste, eh? 

 

startercook's picture
startercook

the perfect muffin!

Hi,

This is my very first post.

I am trying to make the perfect chocolate muffin - light & fluffy with an attractive dome.

So i am trying to going to a period of trial & error to find the optimal ingredients and wondered whether TFL community could assist.  In short the ingredients are as follows;

100g plain flour, cocoa powder, egg, 50ml oil, 50g caster sugar, 100ml milk, 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch cinammon and choc chips. Gas mark 200deg for 20mins.

Can someone advise whether they would change any of the above to achieve the perfect muffin. For instance, i have increased to 1 tsp baking powder.  But recently tried bicarbonate soda instead which made the muffins look good.

But what switching to self-raising flour, or leaving the mixture to rest before placing in the oven?

Thanks, Jay

 

 

 

 

 

trailrunner's picture
trailrunner

Chocolate Yeast Water levain / rye with cherries & pecans

and orange zest with semi-sweet chocolate chips. I took bits and pieces from TFL posters Shaio Ping and Beatrice as well as Jay on Perfect Sourdough a Facebook bread blogging site. I used his formula with a major twist. I made the levain with AP and cocoa and YW . I added another 100g of YW to the dough . This was a very large batch of dough. A two hour autolyse with everything except add ins. One s&f and an hour later one lamination for add ins. That’s it. No shaping just folded the edges under this the gorgeous free form bursts. The crumb is open and tender and so rich. The loaves were retarded 18-20 hrs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wild Ewok's picture
Wild Ewok

Bosch help- dough always wraps around center pole, never forms ball. Gluten development rough

Hi all,

I've always had problems with my bosch kneading. Can you help me out? The only time I ever got the perfect dough ball was when I borrowed a bottom drive bowl, but surely that can't be the only way to get a decent loaf to form?

I'm just using AP flour with a pretty high protein content (11%). I attempted to make 4 loaves of bread with the following recipe:

  • Flour-1680g
  • Water-1110g
  • yeast-50g SAF Instant (I know this is very high, I'll decrease it in later experiments, but it shouldn't affect gluten development should it?)
  • Sugar-80g
  • salt-40g
  • oil-50g

I mix all the ingredients except flour and let it sit for a minute or so until the yeast begins to bloom. Then add half the flour and mix until smooth. Add the rest of the flour in parts. Check windowpane. Begin kneading. I keep it pretty low, around 1 or 2, but it just wraps around the center from the get go! When I make smaller batches, I can get a decent windowpane test after 10 minutes, but it's still wrapped around the pole. This time with the double recipe (4 loaves), every time I checked the windowpane, it looked like it was getting stringier and stringier until I gave up at 10 minutes. It was never not "stringy," however. So it's almost like it started out being overkneaded. 

Below is the video of what it looked like at 6 minutes of kneading on speed 2:

 

 

Can anyone tell me what's happening in my machine??

Thanks!

chocobo_ff's picture
chocobo_ff

Bread measures 95°C in centre but seems underbaked?

Hi,

Having some issues with the centre of my sourdough being underbaked. I use the 1-2-3 ingredient method so dough is just over 70% hydration, stretched and folded over 4 hours, then goes in the fridge over night. It gets another ~3 hours at room temp in the morning before baking on a pizza stone, preheated for ~45 mins at 250°C. After 35 mins the centre measures about 95°C, I then waited for about an hour before slicing into it. Two possible problems/solutions I can see:

  1. Preheat the oven for longer.
  2. Let the bread cool completely before slicing.

Is there anything else that might be causing the bread to be underbaked?

Thanks! ?

 

CUISINED's picture
CUISINED

Is there that much difference between Spiral Mixer and Planetary Mixer

for mixing bread dough?

or::me buying Haussler Alpha will do my dough much better results?

currently I'm using an 2008 KitchenAid mixer, Artisan KSM150. it's beginning to be too small for my current dough mixes and I feel like upgrading. I understand from the web that this is quite highly recommended mixer and I can't tell by those reviews if that's true or there's other stuff not talked about on those forums and web videos.

I've seen a TFL post that stated that the Alpha had or still have electric problems. Can you confirm this or the other?

frankly I am looking for the best and honest reply you can assist me with because I will be ordering this mixer to ship overseas so factoring in the expense of repair, I'd like to know as much as possible before ordering. 

So..Is the Haussler Alpha (2 speed) Mixer a good dough Mixer/Kneader?

Thanks and best,

 

 

Valdus's picture
Valdus

What should I bake?

I want to bake something with the goal of immense oven spring. Here are some things I want to focus on:

  • focus on oven spring, so lots o steam but any recipe would be good for that. 
  • I am very curious about the 1-2-3 ratio method. But I am not sure of the measurements. I did one that started with 60g of starter and that thing was barely a bun. 
  • I am fascinated by the slap and fold method, and would like to try that out as well. 

Suggestions for a simple sourdough recipe?

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