Sharing today's bake
Sharing today's bake and practicing with photos for the first time.
This originally started out as an 87% hydration white loaf, and I was practicing with Bertinet's slap-and-flip method of kneading. But it was just too wet, and I couldn't get it to develop. Admittedly, this is only the second time I've tried this technique. I added enough flour to get it down to 75% hydration and finally was able to start getting it to form up.
I slapped and flipped for over 10 minutes and it was still an unmanageable mess until I added the flour. Should I have just stuck it out and kept going, or should 10 minutes have been enough to develop the dough?
Side view to show the ears. (Sorry it's a bit out of focus). The loaf rose well, and had great oven-spring. There was just a tiny crust blowout low along the bottom edge, but otherwise the crust came out great. We just moved into a new home (only there for 3 weeks so far) and I had to break the oven in. I think it was probably the cheapest range the builder could find to install, and it cooks a little unevenly. One side of the loaf was a bit lighter in shade than the other. So I guess I'll be rotating my loaves from now on. I just hate how much heat you lose every time you open the door.
This is the crumb shot. I would have preferred it to be a little more hole-y, given how nicely it rose. But all in all it was a good loaf and went well with dinner tonight - vegetable meatball soup. Yum!
There's a project I've been wanting to post for a while now but I've not tried using pictures before. If this comes out well I'll give that post a shot. But it will be kinda picture-intensive so I might have to set up a picture hosting account somewhere else first.
Let me know if you all can see these or not.
You don't say where you are, or what flour you're using - I've found it virtually impossible to develop anything over 70% by hand with the UK flour I use - with Marriages Manitoba flour I can go a bit further, but it's not really the style of bread I'm after.
I think it it were me, I'd have baked it a little longer/hotter - but I like darker crusts.
On my domestic oven, I crank it right up to 250C and let it heat up for half an hour then bake at that for the first 10-12 minutes, then rotate the loaves and turn it down (to about 210C) - that way it's not as important the door opening/temp falling part.
-Gordon
Gordon,
I'm just outside of Denver, CO at 5900 ft altitude. My flour is just plain ol' store brand unbleached all-purpose white, nothing special.
I started the loaf at 450F for the first ten minutes then turned it down to 425F. In my old oven I had my steam pan on the bottom shelf with the baking shelf right above that. Unfortunately, this new oven is just a bit smaller and the steam pan wouldn't fit between two adjacent shelves. So I had to move the baking shelf up one more notch, i.e., further away from the heat. I might try the steam pan on the floor of the oven someday to see if that helps.
As for crust color, I've always preferred the caramel color myself. The dark chocolate brown color in a crust always seems to taste a little on the bitter side to me. I figure I can always darken it up a bit in the toaster too, if needed. To each his own :-)
Thanks for the idea of doing the rotation at the same time as the temp drop. I'll give that a try. It makes sense since the thermostat rechecks the temp when the setting is changed so it'll kick up the power on the element to overcome any significant heat loss faster.
--Mike
isn't like normal bread. For store bought AP flour at around 10.5% protein. 72-75% hydration is about right. Less than 72% and you run into 2 slaps for 1 fold technique.
I do slap and folds for ciabatta but use bread flour at 12.5% protein. I do about 2 minutes, 70 slaps for me, 3 times on 30 minute intervals and then do stretch and folds from the compass points on 45 minute intervals. It really doesn't start to develop the gluten until, the end of the 3 set of slap and folds at the hour and a half mark. It will never act like a loaf of bread though because it isn't a loaf a bread - way too wet for that but you might find pieces of dough all over the kitchen for a couple of months afterwards if you get too energetic.
The bread looks grand for a 2nd attempt
Happy slapping and folding.
So, you're doing 3 slap-and-folds, then 3 stretch-and-folds? So it's like almost 4 hours for the whole thing? I'll have to make plans to try that schedule on a day when I have more time. Thanks for the suggestions.
Bertinet makes it look so easy in the youtube videos, but I'm confident that with more practice I'll get it.
He's at 70% hydration in his recipes - I have his "Dough" book which came with the CD where de demonstrates the technique (which is the one on youtube) and his basic white dough is 70% hydration (500g flour, 350g water)
-Gordon
Did you steam the oven?
87% hydration might be too high to do a straight slap and fold but I haven't tried so I can't say for sure. I know 75-78% is doable. Even then, after 10 minutes I would think that if it was still unmanageable then flour needs to be added.
What I would try if you want to keep the 87% hydration is to do it in stages. Treat it like you would stretch and folds where you let the dough sit for a while then come back to it. So do slap and folds, then let it sit 30 minutes (or whatever timing works for you), then do more, etc.
For the open wholes, a lot has to do with the handling of the dough and how much air is knocked out when shaping (plus not underproofing).
Yep, steamed the oven - I have a cast iron skillet on the bottom rack and an upside-down baking sheet on the next rack up. I preheat everything together and after I slide the loaf off the peel onto the baking sheet, I pour a cup of hot water into the skillet.
I know that higher hydration facilitates the formation of an open crumb, but I don't have any specific attachment to the 87% number. The way I came up with that is from the basic recipe in Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Their 6-3-3-13 formula is easy to memorize and easy to halve or even quarter, so that's what I did: 6/4=1.5 cups water, 3Tablespoons/4=2 heaping teaspoons salt, 3Tablespoons/4=2 heaping teaspoons yeast (I actually only used 1 teaspoon), and 13/4=3.25 cups flour.
Since their recommendation for flour measurement is just dip-and-sweep, in all the times I've used that recipe I've never really been certain of the exact proportions. So this time I weighed it as I was measuring: 415g flour and 365g water for 87.95% hydration. I think I'll just weigh out my ingredients for the sake of consistency from now on.
As I said above, I was slapping and folding for over 10 minutes and it was still not improving, so I added 2 quarter cups of flour for a total of 72 additional grams to end up with 75% hydration.
What I'm wondering is if the initial portion of the flour got worked too much and then the additional flour got worked too little. Because after the flour addition the dough came under control in about 3-5 minutes.
And I know of my tendency to be a tad heavy-handed during shaping. I could hear and feel the squelching of the bubbles as I was forming the loaf and pinching the seams. Working on breaking that habit ;-)
But you and Dabrownman both gave the same advice to work the dough in stages with rests in between, so I'm definitely going to give that a try. Thanks for the suggestions!
By the way, thanks also for the referral to the text you cited for the scoring diagrams.
One other thing I was thinking about is your scoring pattern. It looks like you are going for a sausage cut, but the cuts are spaced farther apart like you would for a more parallel cut. That said, your scoring technique seems to be pretty good so kudos on that.
Here is an illustration of what I mean (Excerpt from Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Saus):