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Crust help

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I desperately need help with crust. what I want is a paper thin, shatteringly crisp crust. but all I can achieve is moderately crisp but thick, hard, turtle shell crust. I have tried everything imagineable. dutch oven, cloche, steaming, misting absolutely everything I can think of.  KA AP, Gold Medal AP, bread flour ..got desperate and  yesterday I even used 1/2 C rice flour .. got the shattering part, but under it was 1/4 inch of turtle shell. (great rise and crumb) Fortunately my sandwich loaves are most always good. specially James Beard's sour cream bread.

Caramelized Onion, Rice and Sage Bread (a variation of Mr. Reinhart's Wild Rice and Onion Bread)

Hello,

Mr. Reinhart’s Wild Rice and Onion Bread is back on the front page; the picture and the recipe tempted me to try making some :^)

Not having any wild rice, black-and-mahogany short grain rice (a blend) was substituted, and a mixture of caramelized sweet onion, leek and shallot used in place of raw/dried onion.
In place of all bread flour, I used 1/3 each bread, 75% Red Fife, and 100% whole-wheat (locally-grown) flour.

More Trouble with ITJB Vienna Bread

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After last night's poor results on the Vienna Bread recipe from Inside The Jewish Bakery, I received some excellent tips and advice.  I wasted no time putting them to work tonight in a fresh bake.  Unfortunately I am still not getting it right.  I have the same result, albeit less severly, in this next bake. 

Seedy Whole Wheaty Sourdough

Profile picture for user wassisname

I haven't been able to get pumpkin and sunflower seeds out of my head since Franko posted about the combination here.  In the end I went in a little different direction, using 25% whole wheat instead of rye and adding flax seeds.  No special reason for either change - the flax seeds just happened to be beside the other seeds in the freezer, so in they went, and I've been on a light whole wheat kick lately that isn't quite out of my system.  So, I came up with this:

Whole Wheat Sunday

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I've been homing in on a 50% Whole Wheat sourdough loaf, made with a levain built entirely with Whole Wheat flour. This quest has been ongoing (but relaxed) for about a year, and recently I've been close: flavors are especially to our liking, crumb al dente as we like, and nearly as open as desired, but still room to improve. Today, I think I've hit it.

 

Soft butter honey rolls

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Hello,

Here is another attempt of soft butter honey rolls.  I used the following hydration estimates for the following ingredients:  Butter = 17%, Honey = 75%, Eggs = 75%, Milk = 90%.   My targeted overall dough hydration was 66%, and fortunately the dough was spot on.  Nice and pliable, not sticky at all, but not too stiff/dry either.

Here was the recipe I made w/pics.    All flour was KA bread flour, all weights in grams.