New baker love the site From Chanel Islands Ca
As a kid My brother was president of Chez Panisse, and he let me start by cleaning Alice,s kitchen and entire restaurant.
What a brother! But one great thing Is I worked the 1st year cleaning as Steve Sullivan from acme developed his recipes for the restaurant.
I finally made it to bus boy on the night shift to get fired by alice for telling someone what was in a dish, not a busboys job.
Lesson well learned but have come back to baking after 4o some years. After build 8 or 9 different loafs I am so pleased with the learning venture of yeast and flour
From the different Starters I have made and there use in a mix of different addition in the bulk build, to there fermentation and the 3 different way of building gluten every loaf comes out better and better. Still not acme but loaf 8 using slap and fold with a white starter 2 preferments and a 20% whole wheat with 75 % hydration was beyond belief in complexity and made the best roast beef sandwich since Fanny,s
On build 9-10-11 today 2nd perf need a few more hours then I build my bulks. Going to do 2 slap and folds,and one periodic light folding 30 min intervals till 60% of total bulk fermentation and rise.
One thing that helped me a lot was using glass bowls and seeing what your bread will look like prior to baking, with different hydrations
Again great sight. Thanks
PS
I started here with a recipe that said it was from Julia Childs and steve,s youtube episode, but her bulk build was off,@71% hydration steves is 75% and from what I glean he has a table for different hydrations for temperature affects .
It was a good learning curve as by first 3 builds were to dense and chewy and taught me to double check recipes, but a great learning experience on hydration.
cleaning the place for telling a customer what was in the food they ate seems a little harsh - actually it seems like Alice was a very nasty person. I can see a reprimand to not do it again bur firing for this was just plain stupid. Better to move on from this awful employer and never look back.
Welcome and happy baking after a 40 year reprieve.
I Was dating her at the time so believe me it was all for the best and there were never any hard feeling. She is a lovely person that is super dedicated to her restaurant I and my brother adored her and the experience for a 20 something year old to be taught food and wine by the best, well a gift of a lifetime!
Alice is a true artist and demanded perfection!
@repete,
Glad you found your way here. Sweeping and busing at Chez Panise at a young age had to be one of the greatest gastronomy awakenings I can think of. Alice can be extremely difficult over the pettiest of things - it's one of those complicated character defects that the employees have to put up with.
DBM's infatuation with time is also a tad staggering to acknowledge - yikes 40 years!
On improving your sourdough I'd suggest taking a look at the ancient French method "Le travail sur trois levains" or "The work of the three levains". The method begins with a starter and incrementally enlarges through successively larger ferments till there's enough to make up 20-30% of the dough volume. This is what I've been using for the last five years as the base recipe for production of Pain au Levain (Restaurant Pain de Tout - Daily Bread). It by far is the best tasting and long lasting of all the methods I've tried.
Happy Baking,
Wild-Yeast
Thanks Wild,
Just going to buy a second hand Kitchen Aid Mixer on craigs list( 175.00 hey I,m retired)
Yes all my loafs 2 though 11 are with preferments, I did 2 stage,s well 3 on some that went into the refrig and got retarded
A glass bowl for fermentation was a godsend, when loaf 3 was still to dense, I remember in Vidria, grow it in glass and see what your bread will look like, and to Quarry tiles and my faithful Iron skillet for steam (and my non food sprayer)from the dutch oven to get my crumb right and not burnt bottom,s
I learned the 3 ways of developing gluten here, it seems all my google questions get directed to this sight why fight it !
Thanks ALL
Repete lol
@repete,
I've found that mixing the dough for ~4 minute periods followed by rests helps develop the gluten. The first rest is the autolyse (30 minutes) where the water is allowed to be fully absorbed by the flour. This is followed by a mix of 4 minutes followed by a 15 minute rest. The final mix is 4 minutes. The levain is then added and mixed until it windowpanes in the mixing bowl indicating that it is ready for the superfine sea salt. The slack dough then tightens up from the bottom of the mixing bowl and finally firms into a final satiny finish. Yes, no salt till the very end! Removed from the bowl it is given approximately 6 or 7 folds before being placed into a plastic container for the bulk ferment.
After bulk ferment it is weighed and formed and placed in proofing baskets until doubled. The proofed baskets are then placed into 40dF refrigeration for 12 hours prior to baking. Baking is accomplished with stainless steel cloche covers I've had made out of steam pans. It simulates a loaf crowded wood fired oven in that the loaves generate their own steam environment. I use kiln shelves to bake on at a preheated 500dF oven. 15 minutes into the bake the cloche covers are removed. After 10 minutes the oven is cracked open to let all steam escape crisping the crust for 3 additional minutes which ends the bake.
I use glass bowls for the preferment too - something about seeing the activity of the ferment is too important to lie hidden from the eye.
Strange but true TFL is the locus of the most useful information on natural bread making on the entire planet. Imagine that!...,
Happy baking,
Wild-Yeast