Blog posts

To taper or to not taper ?

Profile picture for user kendalm
kendalm on 19 Feb 2017 at 09:26
Decided to mix it up a bit today. 2 tapered baguettes with thin ends and two as perfectly cylindrical as possible baguettes. I once read that Raymond calvel hated tapered ends and, to a degree can understand why, but every time I watch a video where a chef tapers out a baguette I start to fantasize about that voluminous middle section. One thing that's abundantly obvious is that this particular shape (the baguette whether tapered or not) is unbelievably difficult to master.

Toasted oat porridge SD - Freestyle :)

Profile picture for user Ru007
Ru007 on 19 Feb 2017 at 08:53

The plan was to return some sort of normalcy to my baking this weekend. I was going to find a nice formula, dust off my scales and bake a loaf that I could actually say whats in it. .

It didn’t happen that way. I was running late and I needed to start the first stage of my levain build before I left for work so I ended up just throwing together some flour, water and starter. I think the last couple of bakes gave me the confidence to know that it’ll all work out.

Crumb problems

Toast
Turs on 19 Feb 2017 at 07:01

Hello,

lately I've been having issues with my crumb. I haven't changed anything in my baking process.Flour, temps, leaven or folding is all the same. The only difference is the season.

As you can see, the top part of my loaf has a very large air pocket. This doesn't happen all the time and mostly with larger loafs (3,5 Lb)

Ancient Grains with Black Sesame Seeds

Profile picture for user Danni3ll3
Danni3ll3 on 19 Feb 2017 at 05:38

This is an adapted redo of last week's loaf where I put way too much water in the dough. Changes were to add some leftover local organic yogurt and to only use toasted black sesame seeds as an add-in. So this is the recipe:

50 g toasted black sesame seeds

100 g yogurt 

567 g water

578 g unbleached flour 

87 g Spelt flour 

Creme de la Crumb (pt deux adventures in soy flour)

Profile picture for user kendalm
kendalm on 18 Feb 2017 at 15:30
Presenting today's replication attempt from yesterday's epiphany whereby I discovered that a little more confidence adding soy flour produces am amazing crumb structure. If you've eaten authentic baguettes you should know that they cut open and look just like this (consistent bubbles about 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter throughout the loaf). I have been on a quest to perfect the authentic baguette and I've found the crumb structure is a bit of a crap shoot.

A long time coming, but finally success! A Naan I can be proud of.

Profile picture for user TaiMai13
TaiMai13 on 18 Feb 2017 at 04:51

One of my earliest food memories is of eating a delicious, buttery Naan, al fresco on the patio, somewhere in an outdoor cafe in an Indian city, probably Mahabaleshwar or one of the stops on the way there from Pune, when I was just 8 years old. I can still taste it today. My senses were enchanted by this unexpected delight, both familiar and yet different to the breads of my American youth.

Fougasse - first try at this yeasted bread

Profile picture for user leslieruf
leslieruf on 17 Feb 2017 at 19:59

 

 

 

We are off to a BBQ tonight so decided to try out making Fougasse.

I used Paul Hollywood's recipe but made totally by hand.

500 g strong flour

10 g fine salt

7 g instant yeast

 Mix in large bowl and add 350 g tepid water and 2 tbspn olive oil.

Mixed by hand, added 1.5 tspn each finely chopped thyme, sage and Rosemary (on light side as hubby not so keen on rosemary in particular)  then did a lot of slap and folds/ stretch and fold and did get a window pane (with SD I don't usually bother).

Creme de la Crumb

Profile picture for user kendalm
kendalm on 17 Feb 2017 at 16:27
Now this is the way I like my crumb to turn out ! Not going to bother posting any shaping pics because as it always seems to be the case that a nicely shaped loaf will suffer internally and vice versa ... Such is the quest right now to perfect both shape and crumb at the same time. A few points to note - I've always added a pinch of soy flour to my recipe but this time I decided to go with the recommended dose which is max 0.25% (actually I did more like .2%) and wow what a difference this makes to the dough.
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