December 8, 2011 - 4:05pm
Photos from Dec 4th "Taste-and-Tell" with Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers
Since July we've been rather remiss about posting recaps of Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers events. In meantime, our membership has grown, and our bakers have grown in skill.
Our focus topic for the December 4th "Taste-and-Tell" was "A Bread You've Never Baked Before" -- a topic suggested by one of our bakers. Eleven bakers attended, and all of them took up the challenge.
I'm trying to go heavy on the photos this time, a departure from my typically verbose recaps. Despite the poor quality of the below photos (taken with husband's phone), the "breads never baked before" were impressive. There were first attempts at . . .
. . . Peter Reinhart's Tuscan Bread, unusual in that it's made without salt. Into the dough goes a paste of boiled wheat flour and water, which lends the crumb a subtle sweetness. Both loaves, above, are Tuscan Bread, while the loaf on the right has been painted before baking with Peter Reinhart's Dutch Crunch topping. These loaves were made by baker M.K. Beautiful scoring!
In another example of beautiful scoring, baker M.P. creatively combined two bread formulas to create "multi-grain transitional hearth bread" (2 photos, above). Everyone remarked about the crust, in particular, which was full of flavor.
I'm having some trouble formatting the HTML of this post, so I will stop here. For more photos, please visit the original post at http://bit.ly/Dec2011Recap
Twitter: @AmateurBakers
Website: http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Amateur-Bread-Bakers
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Nice looking breads! Especially from that "M.P." he must be some kind of guru!
Got another loaf of that one rising on the counter right now, FYI to others, got some great tips at the last T&T as to why my bread is deflating when I score.
Mike
Yes, we're quite convinced that M.P. is a bread-baking genius. With each passing month, his loaves are more and more creative, each tastier than the last :-)
How's your spent-grain dough coming along? We're munching on our spent-grain loaf right now, buttered and still warm from the oven. I'm working on a blog post with our formula.
bagel_and_rye
Great! But how's it taste? We like olive oil with some fresh cracked sea salt/pepper, on the whole grain loafs.
Baking the spent grain tomorrow, just weighed the grains and I have exactly enough for two loaves. Got the soaker going on the counter and the starter is bubbling. I'm going to use sourdough starter in place of the biga (one of Reinhart's suggestions) - a full blown 14 ounces of sourdough starter in each loaf!
Best loaf ever made in this house, in all seriousness. It's moist, ever-so-slightly chewy, and full of flavor.
Wow, that's a lot of starter!
If you would like to drop by and pick up more spent grains, just let us know. We'll be around all weekend, baking, and there's plenty of grain left.
Here is our loaf:
Formula posted here: http://www.designingmyday.com/2011/12/whole-wheat-sourdough-with-spent.html
That looks great!
Mine last night was a little underproofed (deliberately) because I was trying to compare to what the folks called "overproofed" on my boule. I wanted to see if it would collapse when scoring - it didn't. Tasted fine, just a little dense. Now I need to try to hit the middle for a perfect loaf.
Good idea!
Or maybe a "Goldilocks experiment:" Make enough dough for 3 small loaves, then try to under-proof the first, perfectly proof the second, and over-proof the third. What do you think?
I think in hindsight that's what happened for the T&T - my loaf was mostly proofed just right (maybe a little overdone), but the boule had to sit for another 50 minutes while the loaf was baking. What I really need to do is bake both loaves at the same time. That'll be my next experiment, I can fit a full baking sheet, barely, in my stove, so I should be able to fit two loaves.
... and here is our loaf fresh out of the oven, I got Kate to work with me, and we used the spent grains and the organic whole wheat you gave us yesterday, smells great:
I'll be lucky enough to be in Chicago while you're having a meeting!
Glad you found a new spot for your meetings - the breads all look quite wonderful!
Lindy
Hi Lindy, you and your family are always welcome! We hope to meet you on one of your future trips to Chicago.
Meet me at Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers.
Follow me @AmateurBakers.