Tarwe Volkoren Suurdesembrood
Have just taken this baby out of the oven. Boy am I relieved. Well, so far... ;-)
Have given up (temporarily) on my fractious Pain de Campagne - there's only so many of them that you can eat before getting bored. I thought I'd try another recipe that caught my eye, as my mum is Belgian and has been hankering after breads that we can't get here in the UK...
http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/our-favorite-whole-wheat-levain-loaf/
What I liked was it has some things I haven't done before (poolish, whole wheat sourdough) and some things that I'm having trouble with in the Pain de Campagne recipe (stretch & fold, shaping).
I used the website's recipe scaler to give me a 600g loaf, so that I could bake it in my chicken brick. The only changes I made was instead of using all wholemeal flour, I used half wholemeal, half granary, and I proved the shaped loaf in the chicken brick. Otherwise I followed the method and recipe pretty well much exactly.
After a 45 minute bake, I have a loaf that smells good and has a nice crispy crust. And if it tastes as good as it smells, I think I'm on to a good one...
Crumb shot will have to wait till tomorrow as I still have some bread that wants eating. Am keeping everything crossed that I won't have any whopping big holes in it. At the moment, I'm just so thrilled that it isn't wonky! :-D
As promised, crumb shot. Definitely better than my pain de campagne. And this bread is stunningly good with cheese :-D
Looks great and the crumb looks wonderful too. That chicken brick works great, doesn't it!
very nice inside and out! Well done and
Happy baking
Thanks Kathy, dabrownman, it's just a relief to get things right for a change :-) Or at least make fewer mistakes... Made me feel a lot less frustrated about my baking. The bread got the thumbs up from mum, so I think it will be a regular on my repertoire.
I baked another one today - larger (I scaled for a 1000g loaf) - and shaped it as a boule so I could prove it in my banneton. This time, instead of using the shaping method that's in the handbook, I watched the video on the weekendbakery website and did it that way instead. I think it seemed to work better for me. I changed the scoring pattern on it too.
No explosions, no wonky bread, no unsightly cracks underneath. It's a bit on the flat side, but then I guess with the percentage of wholegrain flour, it won't spring as much as a predominantly white loaf. I won't be able to fit that much dough in my chicken brick, but I have discovered a pizza stone in the cupboard, so next time I might try using that and see if it makes any difference. Part of my problem seems to be that the top crust sets too early.
I also baked a batch of Kaiser rolls over the weekend - my first attempt. They went down a treat with smoked salmon... ;-) The neighbours must have been cursing me, you could smell them halfway down the road...
My favorite way to bake on a stone is to use a pot to cover the bread for the first 20 minutes so it seals in the moisture like a Dutch oven does making for a crust that doesn't set until you take the lid off and th spring has sprung. If you have a gas oven you just can't get enough steam in it, even using Mega Steam, because of the venting of the exhaust gas. it is better to just cover the bread with a pot or roaster that fits.
Happy baking
I'm assuming you mean something like a stainless steel cooking pot? If so, then the one I use to make jams and chutneys should serve admirably. Will certainly give it a go next time I bake a large loaf.
My oven is actually electric, but it's pointless putting steam in it because there are air vents in the door... :-/