Fired up the oven today for the first time this year, and the first time since late october. I had imagined baking on a wintery January day, but as it happened, we had record highs of nearly 50 degrees (in wisconsin) so it wasn't that much colder than the last time. Today's breads: Ciabatta and the Columbia French bread
I baked an olive levain today.
This was basically like Hamelman's Olive Levain: 10% whole wheat, no yeast, just starter. I loved it:
Wow is right! Mountaindog recommended this bread, and I have to agree it tastes fantastic! I haven't used Glaser's "Artisan Baking" very much, I think like mountaindog, it was a little too advanced for me when I got it, and then I learned from other books and it was left on the shelf. I also get stuck in ruts, and get lazy and ignore recipes with 5 hour rises, etc!
After making a decent BBA Pain Polaine the other day, I next made two breads from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking" book that use a very firm starter. I've made Thom Leonard's Country French bread before (p. 133) and that came out very good, but I was really blown away by how good the Essential's Columbia bread (p. 82) came out! After tasting this Columbia bread, it was disappointing going back to taste the Poilane, I liked the Columbia much better, although granted they are somewhat different styles of bread:
I made this last night from BBA. My slashing is improving but I don't seem to get them deep enough to get "ears". Here it is right out of the oven:
After getting some good advice from this site following a failed first attempt at wild yeast sourdough, I continued to feed my starters every morning and moved them out of my 60F kitchen and into a 70F location. I finally saw what an active sourdough starter should REALLY look like (notice the rise above original fill lines in marker):
At the moment I am lingering between the recipes from lessons 1 and 2. Slowly improving my skill in kneading and learning my observing the dough as it rises and with little things I do differently.
I made a double batch of lesson one basic bread dough two days ago. One loaf was for us, the second for Xmas day at the brothers house.
Santa came thru last night with a couple of items from the Baker's Catalog and I have a few questions:
Received a round clouch and the instructions all say to put your dough into the cold clouch and then put it in the oven. Has anyone used a ceramic clouch with the kneadless batter, putting the batter into a hot clouch. Will the ceramic crack?
Also received lidded pain de mie for making square loaves. Does this give a crisp crust or no crust at all?
Thanks.
Happy holidays eveyrone and may all your dough rise next year.
