The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

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Skibum's picture
Skibum

Laser engraved rolling pins! Who knew???

WOW! A friend just shared this link with me. This opens up a lot of creative possibilities!

Happy baking, Ski

sharhamm's picture
sharhamm

what mixer to buy

Had a kitchenaid stand mixer but the gears stripped.  Now looking for something else.  Have a zojurushi (sp?) bread machine that I use mainly to mix and knead bread dough.  The trouble is I like to use a biga once and a while and this taxes the machine.  I miss my kitchenaid mostly for making cookies, cakes, and cheesecakes.  There is only the two of us with occasional company dinners.  I've been looking at the bosch compact.  Is this doable for cookies and cheesecakes?  Any improvements in the kitchaids that I should be looking at?  Any ideas out there would be helpful.

 

KathyF's picture
KathyF

Berkeley Sourdough

So, I found this recipe on the web called Berkeley Sourdough by Fernando Padilla, Boudin's Master Baker. I fudged on his sourdough starter recipe, which is interesting as it is a stiff starter. I made my seed starter using a little of my 100% starter to make one at 50% hydration. The recipes were in volume measurements, so I did a bit of guessing. 

Day one: Created seed starter in the morning and left out on counter all day.  In the evening I mixed the final starter mixture which I worked out to be about 171%. The recipe says to leave it out for 18 to 24 hours, but it has been really warm and it was already bubbling after about 4 hours. Could be because I used an established starter to create the seed starter and it was more active than it would of been otherwise. So I put it in the fridge overnight and took it out again in the morning.

Day two: Left the final starter out all day. It was very bubbly by end of day. I did the final mix, kneaded the dough and put it in the fridge by 9:45 pm.

The recipe called for 2.5 cups. I figured that if I went by the 4.25 ounces per cup, the hydration would be pretty high. I reasoned that he probably scooped and swept the cup and also the type of sourdough like Boudin's seems to me to be a lower hydration formula. So I went with 5 ounces a cup and the final hydration worked out to be about 65%. 

Day three: As it looked like it didn't rise much during the night, I took the dough out at 7:45 am and left it on the counter for three hours. I then shaped the dough and let it rise for five hours. Then slashed and baked it in my dutch oven. 

And here is the crumb shot:

 

I am thinking that if I let it proof a little longer, I might of had bigger holes, but I think it looks pretty good for being a lower hydration formula. I do think all the fermenting did add a lot of flavor and it didn't turn out real sour either... though I think my daughter would of preferred it if it was more sour.

 

alfanso's picture
alfanso

The Greenstein-Snyder Gang’s Rye Sour Bread

Not to be confused with the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Gang.
 
Having no experience with rye sour levains, I thought it was high time to get on the stick and rustle me up a dose.  I think the idea came to me after seeing Varda’s recent comment and quest for NY rye.  So off I went.  

With no First Clear flour, I relied on the Pearson’s Square method to combine differing grains with differing protein percentages in order custom create the high protein percentage that I wanted, somewhere around 15.3%.  The Bread Flour itself is at 13.3% (Pillsbury) and the Vital Wheat Gluten at 56%.  In order to get what I wanted, the Pearson’s Square told me that I need a mix of 95.3% Bread Flour and 4.7% VWG. (95% & 5% for practical purposes here).
 
All I had to start with was my standard kinda-does-everything stiff levain.  Just the discarded throwaways from prior builds, but which I have found can perpetuate themselves endlessly – and rather quickly.  Starting out with not much more in my container than scrapings of maybe two dozen grams I did two builds with just rye and water.
  
Here is the container with 100g of fresh feed mixed together with the 20 or so grams of leftover levain.  On the left is the just fed mix, on the right is 3 hours later.  I discarded ~half and then did another 100g feed, from which I used 50g to start my rye sour levain according to David Snyder’s 3 stage build schedule.

        

Here is what the rye sour looked like just after the first stage feeding, and what it looked like after the 3rd stage at completion.  For the first two stages, the sour matured at the 3 hour mark, and at the third stage it was completely domed over in just under 2 1/2 hours, well ahead of the recommended time of 4-8 hours.  That’s 750g of rye sour in that second picture.

       

I made three 475g batards out of them instead of the two ~750g loaves that David displays.  On the left, they are finished fermenting and ready to be glazed and scored.  These babies grew like something out of sci-fi movie!  

This step took only 45 minutes instead of 1 hour to complete.  On the right, they have received the glaze and are scored.  I decided to score 2 of the 3 length-wise (not wise!), the 3rd across the top as recommended.  The shaping was actually better than what's in the picture, but these grew so rapidly that they wound up mis-shaping each other - as evidenced by the middle fellow who was squeezed from both sides.

       

There are the kids underway.



And the finished product.  

 

The caraway seeds are there, but non existent in the photos.  This is a significantly darker crumb than the rye breads we had growing up in the Bronx, where all three bakeries within 4 blocks of my street sold them.  The crust isn’t anywhere near as “crackly” as those either, in fact a bit on the softer side.  But for the most part they do taste of the rye bread that I knew growing up.  I’m not that excited about the look of these, but for a first time, I’ll take it.  And that just means that there is room for improvement!

Lessons learned:

  • As I already knew, rye doesn’t act much like AP flour.  It is thirsty and my French Folds required much more muscle to perform.  In a home mixer, I can imagine the motor groaning and quitting.
  • Note to self - make two 750g loaves next time, not three at ~500g.
  • Don’t plan on doing much else once the final dough mixing starts.  The action between prep, clean up as I went along and attending to the next step was almost constant due to the proximity of the steps and rapidity of the dough’s final rise.
  • Therefore have as much mise en place as possible.
  • In general, the dough was much easier to handle than I had anticipated, knowing rye's sticky reputation.
  • Consistent with my warm-ish kitchen and generally spunky levain base, everything happens faster, and the timings for most steps are shorter duration. This I well knew going in, and timed it as such.
  • Don’t bother with fancy, alternate scoring.  It looks as though rye doughs have a minimal oven spring when it comes to a grigne.
  • Once the rye sour is domed and ready for incorporation, the entire activity can be completed in mere hours.  Total time for the final mix, shape, rise, & bake was under 2 1/2 hours.  Along with the third stage build, all activity today was under 5 hours.
  • I would have liked to have baked these longer, to get a better crust coloration, but they didn’t seem to want to be cooperative, and they were finished being baked without being willing to take another deeper shade. 

alan

sonia101's picture
sonia101

YAYYY!!!!

 

I just worked out how to resize my photos in my post, no more massive photos (I'm high fiving myself) lol. Is this a new feature or am I slow? lol. Too easy, click on photo, resize and drag :-)

 

Baked some white 53% hydration bread in my Romertopf, I seriously love how easy it is baking in these pots, love the cold oven starts! So quick and easy :-)

 

 

 

 

 Other recent bakes, sourdough gozleme stuffed with baby spinach and feta  Recipe Here

Sourdough crumpets Recipe Here 

 

 

 

New York Baked Cheesecake I baked for a family party, with praline and chocolate coated berries.

 

 Cheers Sonia

Alya's picture
Alya

I want to get rid of the wheat flour without sacrificing the good texture

Hello everyone, I would like your help and expertise if you will

Lately i've been baking this bread/cake to make for a healthy breakfast / snack, The ingredients are: 
  • 6 tbsp oat flour 
  • 6 tbsp all purpose white wheat flour 
  • 4 tbsp ground flaxseed 
  • 2.5 tsp baking powder 
  • 6 eggs 
  • 3 tbsp coconut oil 
  • 1 tbsp water 
  • 3 tbsp mable syrup (natural) 
  • 1 cup strawberry jam (natural) 
  • 1 cup peanut butter (natural) 
  • 1 cup nuts 
bake for 50 to 60 minutes at 350.  The result is a good texture, not gooey at all, with the mixture rising approximately 4-5 cm at the middle, the thing is i'm only using all purpose wheat flour so i could get rid of the gooeiness from using an all oats flour  but now i wish to add more oats and less wheat without sacrificing the good texture, what do you suggest i do? 

Thank you

jufhhhk's picture
jufhhhk

roti with an electric oven

hi

i bought "chakki fresh atta" flour to make roti bread.

but in the recipe direction , the final step is to put it directly on the flame (on the gas cooker) so the bread balloons up.

but i only have an electric oven, i tried putting it directly but it does not balloons up enough.

 

KathyF's picture
KathyF

Le Pain Rustique: boulanger de la Ruche de Lavalette

I ran across this video on Youtube and found it fascinating. I guess it's about as rustic as it gets! I know virtually no French, but the description seems to say they use sourdough for their breads.

Le Pain Rustique : boulanger de la Ruche de Lavalette










Frank et Julien sont les boulangers qui livrent la Ruche qui dit "Oui!" de Lavalette en Haute-Garonne. Découvrez le fournil du Pain Rustique et les étapes de la fabrication d'un pain bio au levain natutel et cuit au feu de bois.

mkrott1's picture
mkrott1

Not the shape I was looking for

Any thoughts or suggestions?  Taste and texture was great!

Anonymous baker's picture
Anonymous baker (not verified)

Another successful loaf!

June 6 2015 bake

Recipe based on the Norwich Sourdough from the Wild Yeast Blog.

450g white all purpose flour

60g dark rye

300g Water

182g ~100% hydration starter

11g of salt, dissolved in 50g of water

Water temp is unknown, but room temp was about 25*C

Steps went as followed:

Mix all but the salt, and 50 g of water into a shaggy wet mess. Autolyse for 30 minutes. After that bulk ferment for three hours, with stretch and folds every thirty minutes for two hours, totaling four stretch and folds.

 

At this point, the dough was shaped and was supposed to be final proofed at room temp for about two hours, but due to it being incredibly warm, it rose *much* faster than I had anticipated, so it went into the fridge at about 5:30 pm, and was baked at about 6:20 pm, with 20 minutes of steam, and 20 without.

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