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Hi fellow bread bakers.

I've now had three failed attempts at making Horst Bandel's Black Pumpernickel from Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. Each time the bread has broken apart after the baking and 24 hour rest period.

The first time I followed the recipe as written. The second time I cut back the water by about 50%.  The third time I cut back the water and replaced the rye meal with rye flour.  

During my latest attempt I slowly lowered the oven temperature as instructed but instead of completely turning off the oven I left it at 200 degF.  After 16 hours the bread had sunk a bit and become cracked.  Testing between the cracks the bread was completely wet and raw.  I decided to increase the temperature to 250 degF and remove the pullman lid.  In the end I left the bread in for an additional 4 hours in an attempt to firm up center. 

Once cooled and rested the loaf quickly broke in several large chunks.  A slice revealed the center crumb to be still be quite wet but the outer edges/crust were very tough.  Most attempts to cut the loaf resulted in the outer 1/2 inch of tough bread pulling away from the center.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!  Here are my thoughts on possible causes: 1) I over cooked the rye kernels resulting in them absorbing too much water and thus adding too much water to the loaf;  2) I over proofed the loaf -note the open crumb in the photo; and 3) the oven temperature was too low.

Again, any insights you can provide would be appreciated.  I really want to make this recipe turn out but I'm getting disappointed and frustrated!

Adrian

Hey,

So ive been following Tartine No.3 starter. Its been around 3 weeks now and my starter has been rising and falling consistently but im worried I dont have enough yeast. 

It doesnt smell yeasty or beer like.

Ive been feeding it every 24 hours 75g starter and 150 grams water and 150g 50/50 flour mix.

Im just unsure how i can promote that beer like smell, at the moment it doesnt smell of much at all.

Does water or more food promote yeast growth?

Here are some photos of it after a feed 8 hours on

http://imgur.com/BCi9aHB

http://imgur.com/G0hRrQP

Hello all,

I have created an web app to manage bread recipes. I originally came up with this idea as a way to not deal with spreadsheets, have my recipes centrally located, and available on any device with internet access. I couldn’t find anything that was exactly what I was looking for and was free, so I decided to have a go at making my own :)

 I am hoping the bread community can help in developing this app. I am only one baker, so I need other bakers to help determine what they are looking for in a bread recipe management app.

I am releasing the app as a beta, you will need a key to sign up. You can email me at geekbreadapp@gmail.com to request a beta key and I will send one to you.

The site is www.geekbread.com 

A video demonstration of the app can be found here: https://youtu.be/AqtKx9oQeC8

The questions I am looking for beta testers to answer are:

• What do you like about the app? What do you not like?

• What features would you like to see be added to the app?

• Did you encounter any bugs? (i.e. I clicked this button and nothing happened) Please leave a detailed acct of what you did so I can try to recreate

• Do you see yourself using geekbread as a way to manage your bread recipes? If not, explain why

Hopefully this isn’t taken as selfish promotion, I am developing geekbread as a way to help the bread community manage recipes and want to involve the bread community in its development!

Let me know if you have any questions.

Here is a screenshot as well:

Hi all

I was wondering if anyone could suggest a good beginner recipe for me. I've had a few attempts now, some were great, others not so much. I think I'm attempting to run a little before I can walk trying high hydration doughs before I've got the basics down.

I have a starter that is 50% rye, 50% strong white flour. This will be at 100% hydration at the point of baking. This has been in the fridge all week, so I will activate some of it this evening to make a levain that I will make over the next 24 hours. I think the problem with my last loaf was that I used too much levain and it overproofed for this reason, so some help on the amount of this I need for the loaf would be helpful. 

My ingredients are:

Extra strong Canadian white flour (around 15% protein)

Strong wholemeal flour

I would like a light, white feeling loaf with some wholemeal in to make it healthier. Can anyone suggest a good easy recipe I can use with these ingredients, with an easy to manage hydration level?