Blog posts

The 38-times bread from Czech with whole wheat flour.

I had an inkling that I hadn't baked these in a while but never thought that it was as long as 8 months ago.  SJSD variations?  Yes, but the base product?  No.  

Most of my formula sheets have notes on what the dough feels like at stages: extensible, slack, tight, fluffy...  Do I need to dust the couche more or dust it less post-shaping?  But on this sheet I didn't have any guide, and as it had been a while, I didn't remember what to expect.  

For the 123 challenge bake we chose to do a polish for the 1, NF milk for the 2 and bread flour for the 3.  We also used 10% butter since these are supposed to soft tolls and enriching them is the way to go.  We did not put any sugar in the mix as some would do to make the rolls sweeter.  A pinch of insant yeast was all it took to get things rolling.

Caught up with Zita  TFL (Bakingbadly) in Fremantle today on the first day of spring which delivered us a super day which we were able to enjoy with a couple of new experiences for Zita. No doubt he will post soon on our half day adventure as he did take quite a few pictures  and seemed to have had a good time doing it.

kind regards Derek

As I said when I issued the 123 challenge, I needed an easy dough that I could use to test out new ingredients and compare techniques, etc. So to that end, I decided the other day to make dough for two 123 loaves. I was going to mix them together, then divide them and bulk ferment one in the fridge overnight, then shape and bake the next day, while the other was to be bulk fermented for a few hours, then shaped and proofed in the fridge overnight.

I made a French bread size loaf from a sourdough baguette recipe. It's a recipe I got in a sourdough class that I make regularly but usually in typical baguette form. It has about 50grams of starter and 2 gram sof commercial yeast for a 900 gram total dough. We are having roast beef melt sandwiches for dinner so I made some larger loaves than normal. I did everything I thought would decrease oven spring. I used a lower oven temperature, bulk and proofed longer than normal and held my lame completely vertical.

Ceramic:

Pros: Looks fancy. Shape of loaf is pristine

Cons: Bread typically needed to cook longer as it seemed to trap more moisture especially on the bottom of the loaf. Harder to remove bread from pan after baking. Can not see progress while the dough rises (except for top of loaf). 

Glass:

Pros: Can visualize the dough as it rises giving you a good idea of how well the crumb will end up. Easier to clean.

Cons: Difficult to remove bread from pan after baking at times.

Metal (Steel):

I started to experiment with yeast water made from raisin or pears and wanted to test if it is possible to make 100% buckwheat flour bread that is actually gluten free. Buckwheat is quite popular here in Slovenia. "Ajdovi Žganci", the Slovene word for buckwheat maize porridge, is a typical Slovene food prepared by farmers.