Blog posts

After not baking bread for weeks – The Houston Miche

This one is a big boy.  It went into the oven at 1,871 g and came out at 1,675 g losing 10.5% of its water weight as it baked.  It turned out with the 3 B’s but we won’t cut into it till Thursday or Friday to see if it is OSM.  We baked it to 208 F, 20 minutes under Mega Lava Steam at 450 F and 36 minutes at 425 F convection.

A new breakfast place just opened up in town and my wife took her Dad who is visiting with us to eat some brunch the other day.  They went without me, so that will need to be remedied in the future :).  They came home with some leftover cheesy grits which were screaming to be added to a some dough.

I had made a version of this bread a while ago and decided to change it up a bit using some fresh milled whole wheat and spelt.  I used some roasted fingerling potatoes which added to the super soft and moist crumb.

I haven't baked bread in awhile. When I do, we eat way too much and I have a beach wedding coming up that I need to prepare for. So, why am I posting here? Because I have interior musings that nobody on any other site would be interested to hear. I'm here to gather with other bread nerds about something that has been occupying my mind for the past several weeks.

Objective: To see how the length of bench proof after shaping (before retardation) impacts on crumb. 

 So here is my formula  & method for 2 kg dough (enough for 5 x 400g batards):

Levain:  Refreshed yesterday, final build overnight.
34 g starter + 20 g wheat bran + 160 g water  + 140 g flour 

Today 11 am:  Autolyse 45 minutes
662 g flour + 282 g wholewheat freshly ground + 26 g gluten + 654 g water

This is not my first baguette, but definitely the best effort.  Used Hamelman’s Baguette with poolish.  I have upped the hydration a bit to 72% and replaced a bit of flour with some soya flour 2% (after reading Abel’s comment I thought why not!) so here we go..
Last night mixed poolish and left overnight.  
156 g flour + 156 g water + 0.3 g instant yeast
Today: Mid morning poolish looking good, mixed final dough ingredients together and added poolish. 

301 g flour + 7 g gluten flour + 9 g soya flour + 9.5 g salt + 1.5g instant yeast.

Sourdough donuts....some coated with cinnamon sugar, some with a cardamom honey glaze.  I used an egg, milk, sugar, butter dough with a sourdough levain; slap and folded, proofed at room temperature for 5 hours; refrigerated over night; rolled/cut into rounds and proofed at room temperature for another 2 hours before deep frying at 350 F for about 2 minutes per side.  I didn't spend a lot of time folding and shaping each donut so they turned out pretty "rustic" looking but I think they tasted pretty good, nice soft bready texture too.   

Fellow TFLers,

 I decided to have some fun this week creating a new stater based on 100% whole wheat and blending my own flour in a vitamix. This is the first bake using the new starter.

Now that I've been able to protect the bottom of my loaves well, I'm trying to get darker crusts without burning the bottom.

Hi friends,

I baked 80/20 mainly white loaves letting it go to 50% rise in bulk based on the recent thread discussing the difference between a 30% and 50% rise and considering the thoughts from Trevor and Maurizio....I realized that I probably was more a 50%ish baker.....as it happens but also experimented with 30% rise in the past...

If you go 50% rise then this also affects retarding and 2nd proof and Trevor mentions this actually in his book at the very end....reading it yet again afresh....

I always make a bit more Levain than I need because some sticks to the walls of the container and then I would end up short. This time, I guess I made a bit too much, and since I hate throwing away something I nurtured along, I figured a quick 1-2-3 bread with left over durum semolina and a touch of honey would do the trick. 

155 g mature Spelt Levain (100% hydration made with Spelt bran and sifted Spelt flour)

325 g water

90 g durum semolina 

375 g unbleached flour

11 g salt

10 g yogurt 

25 g honey