As you probably know, there's a technique for improving bread which involves adding some quantity of "old dough" to the new dough. Some dough from the last batch, that's 6 or 12 or 4 hours old, or something. While this is great for commercial bakers, it's a little bit less great for the home baker. Here's what I've started doing:
I baked this bread for the second time and made a couple of changes. Here is the ingredient list as printed.
Buttermilk White Bread
Recipe By: James Beard in Beard on Bread
Changes I made were to use instant yeast and reduce the quantity to 1 tablespoon, next time I'll use even less.
Well, actually, I do love my new job. It's not as boring as the previous one and so much better than studying @ uni (at least my uni). But it has like two major drawbacks: firstly, we are not allowed to wear jeans in the office, and the second, which is really depressing - I have practically no time to bake bread!!!
This is baked from Hamelman's "BREAD", levain breads.
I knew that the radiant heat from a preheated stone will result in an unmatched ovenspring, so i played with my steaming technique a bit to accomodate the stones.
Here is a picture:
This was my bread project last weekend. I really enjoyed making it and it was delicious! I slightly modified the recipe found here. I didn’t do the sponge; I added the sponge measurements to the dough ingredients and halved it. Next time I will omit the red pepper from the herb & cheese mixture (the following includes the adjustment). Here is what I did:
Dough:
2 ½ tsp. Fleischmann's RapidRise yeast
3 - 4 ¼ cups all purpose flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp black pepper
http://www.brightbakes.wordpress.com
The latest bake...I used an overnight starter with a pinch of SD, then finished off the dough the next day. Nothing complicated, but this sure was tasty!
Love,
cathy b. @ brightbakes
I have been attempting to begin a sourdough starter. I have tried a few methods from the internet as well as the guru Reinhart's, and the old man Clavel's method. I have been successful up until day three, then nothing. I have gotten my starter to the point of bubbling and regular feedings, but as soon as I take half to replace the new barm the whole thing separates into goo and hooch and goes slack. I have tried to "wake" the starter with small amounts of flour and water. I have even tried cider vinegar, but to no avail. I can't seem to keep the starter alive.
To give my old KitchenAid a break I normally prepare two smaller batches of dough in a row, instead of one large batch. Unfortunately I forgot to account for the flour of the sourdough starter and adjust the flour of the first batch accordingly. No problem lets adjust the water with the second batch. What a stupid idea!! But with the slap and fold method of Bertinet (http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/video/2008/03/bertinet_sweetdough) I was able to get myself out of trouble and the result was pretty good.
