The Fresh Loaf

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34th bake. 01/23/2021. 90% BRM WW.

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

34th bake. 01/23/2021. 90% BRM WW.

Jan. 23, 2021.

Comments

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Dave, you are consistent!

  1. How are your loaves progressing?
  2. What lessons have to learned from the 34 bakes?
  3. Do you freeze your bread?

 

idaveindy's picture
idaveindy

I do bounce around a bit. But it does look to me like I need to bake a series of 3 to 5 bakes to approach or "dial in" a new objective, like a new flour, or add-in, or size.

And sometimes, in between new objectives, I just want to bake something simple, in terms of effort and mental energy, just for something to eat.

#32 was the best so far, and got rave reviews.

This latest series is the first with a majority of commercial stone ground flour, Bob's Red Mill. Previously, I was doing mainly commercial roller milled WW and then home-milled WW.  

The commercial stone milled is a different animal from commercial roller milled.

I also finally did a series of unsoaked chia/flax, cold soaked chia/flax, and hot soaked chia/flax.  If I have a high enough hydration, unsoaked is okay because the chia is small and absorbs water quickly, and the flaxseed is ground.   Cold soaked is slightly better. But hot soaked really brings out the sticky mucilage of the chia and ground flaxseed, and helps maintain moisture in the loaf and makes it smoother.  The mucilage is a binder, like gluten, so it likely helps the crumb too.

The bread spice adds flavor when you don't have time to do an overnight bulk ferment or overnight final proof.  Without the spice, an overnight, 12 hour, either first rise or second rise is needed to get flavor, IMHO.

Also, a minimum 12 hour wait, from end of bake to cutting open is needed for my spiced bread, 22 hours for not-spiced, to develop flavor.

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No, I don't freeze the bread. Though I may start to as I begin to experiment with larger boules/miches.  I got some 2 gallon plastic storage bags, so now I can go over 1250 grams of dough, and use my 9.1" inner diameter banneton, and the combo cooker's lid (~9" dia inside at bottom) and have something to store the loaf in.

For when I want to use the 1 gallon bags, I am limited to about 1200-1250 grams of mostly WW dough, the 8" banneton, and the deep part of the combo cooker (8" dia inside at bottom). 

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I also recently got a 11.3" inner dia (11.9" O.D.) banneton, and will see how much I can fit in that. That will have to be baked bare, on a stone, or on my cast iron pizza pan, in a steamed oven.

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I've been too lazy to grind wheat lately (it's mostly a manual process for me), so that's why I got some BRM stone ground WW.