Lighter sourdough bread; Samuel Fromartz bread book
Someone else recently posted re sourdough bread that has a crumb that is too tight and dense, So does my sourdough bread (Peter Reinhart pain au levain recipe, great sourdough starter that I have been nurturing for years).
The crumb got even tighter after one of the heating elements in my oven died, so that the oven will not go over 360 degrees F. Stove is old, element cannot be replaced, need a new stove, too poor, so I cope. I cannot start with initial high heat and steam. I just keep the oven as hot as it will go and bake twice as long.
I recently checked Samuel Fromartz's book, In Search of the Perfect Loaf, out of the library. I wish I could try some of the things he does, but, being poor, I cannot afford the equipment or the specialty flours. However, there was ONE thing I could do.
Rather than completely flattening and degassing my retarded dough before shaping it, I simply nudged it into a rectangle and separated it into two loaf shapes with a blunt straight edge. I didn't cut the dough; I pushed down at the seam, stretching it thinner and thinner, until I pushed down hard enough to seal the seam on both sides. No more shaping.
Resulting loaves had a much more open crumb. Not a lovely crumb full of great big holes like the loaves I see here. I think I would need to have the hot oven, the steaming pan, and the baking stone to do that. But the crumb was better.
Just ate too much bread with unsalted butter and organic raspberry jam :)
Nice that you found something that works. Nice work. Necessity is the mother of invention. Way to go!
hester
I would find a oven proof pot at Goodwill, or a large stainless steel mixing bowl on Dollar Thursday'a and put it in the oven to heat with it and then bake the bread by using either as a cloche, That small space would probably give you the more steam and highest lift you will get.
I also bake bread in a toaster oven that puts the best crust on bread using 2 pyre measuring cups half full of water and dish rag rolled up in them ala Sylvia's steaming cups. I have also used a stainless steel mixing bowl overturned over the bread too. You just have to limit the bread to about 750 G in size, depending on teh toaster, and turn it over if the top starts getting too brown (or cover with aluminum foil.
I was buying bread machines at Goodwill to donate too several groups that help out physically and mentally disabled folks but have also been buying toaster ovens for the same purposes since they make way better bread than a bread machine and are more flexible.
'You don't really need a lot of expensive things to make bread and necessity is the mother of invention.
Happy Baking
Hmm, that's a possibility. I have a cast-iron dutch oven, with cast iron lid. If I retarded the bread dough in my big bread bucket, divided it, and returned half to the fridge, then proofed the other half, I would have the right amount of dough to tip into the pre-heated dutch oven.
I could even bake every other day -- if electricity weren't so dang expensive here in Honolulu.
Or, I could just make flatbreads on the stovetop, in one of my other cast iron pans :)
interchangeable? If the lower element died, can you switch it with the upper element? That way you could get heat below the bread and have a more efficient broken oven.
Upper element died. No more broiling.
putting a baking sheet upside down (lip down) to catch the rising heat above the baking bread? That would also make the inside oven space smaller so it might heat higher.
I think that the dutch oven route might be less work, and less oven refitting to undo if, say, I want to bake brownies. But thank you for the suggestion.