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Crumb problems

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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

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
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

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

 

 

 

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
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.

10 Grain Sourdough With Wild Rice Anise, Figs, Pecans, Pistachios, Pepitas and Sunflower Seeds and Poolish Brioche Buns

Profile picture for user dabrownman

Lucy really went to work this week to come up with a bread that would fit the Oriental Pullman pan perfectly – with the lid on!  A more complex kind of bread so she didn’t specify sprouting the whole grains so we got off a bit easy this week.  Every time I turned around she was pulling put another grain, seed or nut long hidden away that pantry she guards with her life.

20% Rye Sourdough batards

Profile picture for user aly-hassabelnaby

My basic wheat flour starter (known affectionately as Golfedan) has been doing some nice work recently and I guess it's finally decent enough to share here. I just baked these two today. I started off with a poolish to which I added everything else the next day. Here's the breakdown.

Poolish:

50g starter + 175g water + 175g bread flour (to create a basic 200-200 poolish)

I let that sit at room temperature for about 13-14 hours until it was quite bubbly on top and able to float.

Dough: