February 19, 2016 - 7:09am
New from England - dough gets carried away during proof, can anyone help?
Hello,
I'm pretty new to bread-making - could someone please tell me where I'm going wrong? see attached pic of dough after just over an hours proofing.
Is the brotform just to small? it takes up to 750g according to the instructions and my dough should have weighed 830 according to the calculator on the recipe i used (weekend bakery website - 500g flour, 300 water, 8 salt, 7 yeast and 15 oil))
Or is it because i didn't shape the bottom correctly?
Grateful for any tips :-)
Share
really hard to tell from the scale of the photo how large the brotform is, but it looks too small. YEs, tighter shaping of the bottom would help. You really need to pinch the bottom seam closed.
FYI 7g yeast is a lot, especially if it's rising in a warm place. It will rise really fast and not give much time to develop flavor. If you're going for a qucik bread with minimal flavor, stay with 7g. If you want a slow rise with more flavor, try 3.5g - 4g yeast instead.
Thank-you very much, next time I'll experiment with one in the smaller and one in the larger brotform.
I was wondering whether to try half of the yeast and maybe leave it overnight to rise? if I do that should it be on the counter or in the fridge?
This is the end result, the loaf on the left was made using supermarket organic bread flour, and the one on the right using organic flour (not as strong) from a local farm that mill their own grain on site.
Yes, I'd agree with the points made - use the larger form, make a tight ball with the seams pinched closed, and yes, use less yeast. I bulk retard my dough overnight in the fridge and often proof after shaping in the fridge overnight. If you do this, then put the whole thing inside a plastic bag first. A bread made with commercial yeast should probably go in the fridge, not sit on the counter at room temperature for that length of time. You'll get better flavour too!
Great thanks, I will try that on Saturday night / Sunday morning - possibly with one in the smaller Brotform and one in the larger.
Can I ask one more question :-) what should the internal temp be when done? mine was 96c after 45 minutes at 230c, but I've read anything from 93/98 - different websites seem to have different ideas.
Probably anywhere in the 93 to 98 range will do. 96 sounds just about right to me!
by the looks of it, so anything that doesn't go in the bin is good in my books :-)
Where did you get the brotform from? I'm just curious. Most ought to take more dough than you've used, but that is obviously smaller than I've seen. (and your 830 dough is more than the 750 they suggest - the cane banetons I use take 1Kg of dough - I usually scale my big loaves to 915g which leaves plenty of space)
500g flour and 7g dried yeast is a very standard amount - less yeast will take longer. Use cold tap water next time and keep it away from radiators. Remember to keep the bowl/brotfom covered with a linen towel or shower cap.
If you want to leave it overnight reduce the yeast down by much more - for 330g flour I use about 0.8g dried yeast. (small loaf) so for 500g flour I'd suggest 1.2g - if you have scales that do 0.1g that is...
do keep baking!
Cheers,
-Gordon (in Devon)
Hi Gordon,
The brotforms came from Bakery Bits, and your right the instructions on the yeast do say 7g - and I used 32c water to give me a dough temp of 26c - this was as per the instructions on the weekend bakery website, I will try making one with 1/2g and one with 3/4g - cold water and leaving overnight tonight in the fridge.
Can I just take out and shape/proof immediately in the morning, or do i need to leave to come up to room temp?
Many thanks,
Simone
For most home baking I'd suggest just using water out of the tap. 32°C water is nice and warm, but it's a bit too warm really. Monitoring the dough temperature is good when you want/need everything to be reproducible time after time after time - so in a commercial production, but for most home bakers its not needed.
The key with bread is that time adds flavour, so slowing things down, even just a little can do quite a lot.
If you're retarding (ie. putting it in the fridge overnight) then I'd just shape/prove/bake in the morning. No need to let it come up to temperature. Some techniques even bake directly from the fridge.
¾g of yeast in 500g then left in the fridge probably won't do anything much at all. My overnight breads are left in a coolish place in the kitchen, but not the fridge.
-Gordon
This is what they look like on the inside :-) it's interesting that although they are both made with white flours the unbleached one looks more like wholemeal.
but just a quick note about "unbleached" ... All found in the UK is unbleached - even the cheapest stuff in a supermarket. The one from your local mill will have been bolted/sifted after being stoneground which is good in many respects, but will still contain some wheatgerm which is what's darkening it.
-Gordon
Thank-you very very much for answering my questions.
Sorry, i didn't mean 0.5 or 0.75g i meant 1g to 2g or 3g to 4g as I don't think my scales are accurate enough to go down to 0.1g although i might be able to dig out some jewellers scales.
The flour info is interesting, my other 'local' mill is Marriages - their organic flours are made with only 10% UK wheat, they do have other flours which are not organic but are largely local or UK sourced. I like the idea of using local flour, but everything I've read suggests that organic is superior. Any thoughts on that welcome :-)
Not originally from here, however I now live in Devon and have been here for 14 years - home of UK organic farming (so they tell me). I live in one particular part of Devon that really is the home of Organics and a relatively alternative culture - close to Totnes..
So we know about organics and beyond (biodynamic).
All the bread I supply for sale (I do the microbakery thing) is made from organic flour - unfortunately that means it's not 100% sourced from the UK, however my customers appreciate it.
I also use non-organic flour - but grown in the UK. Despite my location, there are some (well a lot, really) who don't really care - but that's mostly for my cakes and pastrys.
What do I think ... I think it's a tricky situation to be in - on the one hand I'd have everything organic, but on the other there's the cost and there's also the local impact - I want to buy locally (or as local as possible), I also want to uspport UK farmers. We don't grow much flour in Devon and mill even less )-: But I've had discussions with some who want 100% organic everything - and if that means buying honey from Mexico or Bulgaria then so be it. (I live on the edge of Darmoor - as natural as you'll get and the local honey is amazing - but not organic)... For other things - sugar for example. We grow sugar in the UK, so I want to support UK farmers by buying UK sugar.. But it's not organic, so who do you please...
It's really hard to get right.
Currently I use Shipton Mill for my bread flour and the co-op for my cake/pastry flour (who buy from British farms) I'm looking at moving to Marriages - probably after Easter as they have bulk delivery options (500Kg at a time) which Shipton Mill are reluctant to talk to me about. Marriages have organic and non-organic flours and I'll be looking to buy their organic for bread and depending on price also organic for cake flours. I've tested their bread flours and they work well for the breads I make.
My "local" mill - the only one in Devon producing bread flour that I know of - Otterton Mill is too far (45 minute drive each way) and too expensive (£38 for a 25Kg sack of stoneground wholemeal vs. £21 for the same from Shipton Mill who I get free delivery from)
One of the issues with UK flour is that it's relatively soft and low gluten. Great for cakes and pastry, not so good for bread. I want to give some of the heritage flours a go though - Bakery Bits sells some nice ones, but they still come with suggestions to add some conventional strong white... And even then, if they do produce outstanding breads, they are not cost effective at all - costing 3 times more than the bulk organic stuff I normally get )-: Would the locals I normally supply buy it? I don't think so...
So always hard to get right.
For home use? I'd use the best you can justifiably afford. Where "best" is a somewhat subjective judgement between organic and local.
-Gordon
Just use what you think tastes / performs best :-) There're lots of different flours to try from - organic or otherwise.
If you've got a Waitrose near you, they have a nice selection - their Leckford Estate and Duchy Organics ranges are worth trying.
P.S. Another UK bod here, north-east Cambridgeshire.
Thanks Reynard and Gordon, - Reynard the bread on the left in my pic is Waitrose own brand organic bread flour, it actually seems to have kept better/fresher on day 2.
Gordon I'd love to hear more about how your micro-bakery enterprise, I live on an old smallholding and currently sell fruit and eggs at the bottom of the drive to passers by so it would be lovely to add good bread to that.
The organic flours from both Marriages and the other local mill are priced exactly the same, but one is 40 miles away and Marriages is 5 minutes away so easy to collect - Marriages non-organic flours are cheaper and local, perhaps I need to do a side-by side taste comparison :-) It's interesting and perhaps a bit sad that your customers prefer organic to UK wheat.
There's quite a few posts/threads here on them - this one http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44346/microbakeries has some interesting stuff and a description of what I'm doing too - and some photos...
I used to sell eggs too when I had chickens, but no-more.
Selling bread ought to be OK if you have passing trade - I know someone in Cornwall building a bread hutch for this purpose.
The main thing is probably getting registered with your local authority and (optional, but I recommend it) doing a level 2 food hygiene course.
Then you need to more or less standardise your recipes to make them repeatable and easy for you to manage...
And before you know it, you'll be supplying local community shops and attending markets... :-)
And if you're ever on holiday in Devon, drop by, or attend my microbakery experience/course to see how to make 40 loaves in a low-impact manner...
Cheers,
-Gordon
Sad in that there isn't much in the way of local Organic wheat that is strong enough for bread.
I did look into doing a course on setting up a home micro-bakery but not sure that I can justify the cost right now.
Then I use the best flour I can justify buying - I want to put great bread on the table for mum and for me. Some, but not all of the flour I use is organic. For instance, the stoneground wholemeal from Tesco is really superb - better than several of the more expensive organic wholemeal bread flours I've tried...
If I'm baking for charity functions and charity fundraisers, then I will go for the cheap options. Ingredients costs have to come out of my own pocket, and when you're catering for a bunch of people whose only aim is to shovel as much cake / buns / rolls etc down the hatch in as short a time as possible, using expensive flour is kind of pointless. No one has ever complained about the quality of my bakes though - I doubt they notice I've used bog-standard supermarket own brand (or even value) flour LOL
I keep meaning to try the flour from a mill that's just a few miles up the road: http://www.wicken-windmill.com/page13.htm
So this time I added 3g of yeast and left for about 13 hours in the fridge and it came out way smaller!
Probably to small :-( I shaped and left it for 1.5 hours and it's currently in the oven and I have just remembered that I forgot to slash it!
maybe a little denser though - good for thick slices toast :)
A fridge will essentially slow down yeast to the point of stoppage - depending on how cold the fridge is, but typically at 4C not a lot is going to happen once the dough has cooled down.
I'd suggest you keep going with the standard 500g flour + 7g dried yeast & 7g salt recipe - cold water 300g - make it a little wetter as you get used to handling the dough - up to 350g, but start on the lower side.
If you want to get fancy with kneading, then look at Bertinets stuff - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjSp5_YiF0
-Gordon
The end result, split across the top and much taller and narrower than my earlier attempts - I wonder if it's tall and narrow because I didn't slash it?
Split or not, it looks gorgeous.
Aw thank-you - i will be performing the taste test later with my 5 year old and some jam :-)
Thanks Gordon, I didn't spot your comment earlier - I guess leaving the dough out on the counter overnight is the next thing to try and I will watch the video in a moment.
Whether it was the switch to the Marriages Organic (imported) Bread flour or the coldness of the dough I don't know but shaping was much easier, personally I prefer the taste of the local mill with the wheatgerm, but that might just be me i like tougher baguette like breads, speaking of baguettes i was overjoyed to randomly come across some T55 flour in my local farm shop recently but did my baguettes come out anything like baguettes? no :-( but that's a challenge for another day.
I might swing by Marriages tomorrow and see if I can try either their local Chelmer flour or their Breadwinners flour.
... temperature becomes a factor. I think I'm lucky in that I've found a spot in my kitchen that's at a temperature that works for me - about 18°C overnight, so my usual mix of 530g flour for a large loaf with 1.8g of dried yeast works out quite well. You may need to experiment here.
Another plan might be to mix/knead and let ferment out (the usual 1-hour or until doubled type of thing) then degas and shape then put it in the fridge to prove overnight... There's lots of material here about this type of thing too. Lots on books, but experimenting is the way to find something that works for you.
If you do go to Marriages, Chris Wenham is the sales chap who I've spoken with - say hello from me to him if you meet him :)
-Gordon
Hi Gordon,
Do you use the dried active yeast that you need to re-activate or the easy/instant type? 1.8g seems a very small amount.
And what happens in the Summer when it's really hot, do you need to make any adjustments?
Anyway it was my local Marriages animal feed outlet I went to, we're about 25 miles away from the main mill - and all they had in larger bags was this,
but they have ordered me in some Chelmer White which I can collect on Friday, and it's actually cheaper only £11.49 if I collect "Chelmer White is particularly suitable for sourbreads as it is as clean label a product as we can legally produce in the UK (it is still fortified with calcium, iron, vitamin B1 and vitamin B3 as per the bread and flour regulations). It is suitable to use for yeasted breads"
I use .. um ... actually, I've no idea if it's instant dried yeast or whatever the other kind is. Its this stuff:
http://www.shipton-mill.com/flour-direct/organic-dried-yeast-500g.htm
I always mix it in with the flour dry. Seems to be fine. (Or mix it in to the autolyzed flour + water - that's wet, but I don't do the old thing of mixing it in water with sugar, etc.) That 1.8g gets 8-10 hours to work on the dough before shaping/proving and baking though.... For "normal" breads with just one hour ferment, I use 7g per 500g flour.
If you want fresh yeast, then go to your local Sainsburys if you have one. Ask at the fresh cream cake counter for 200g - they'll cut a lump off their 800g blocks and charge you 60p or thereabouts. It's a nice yeast, but not organic. When I use fresh yeast, I rub it into the flour, then add the liquid, etc. No need for mucking about with water, sugar, etc. there either.
In the summer - well I live in a house on the edge of Dartmoor with 2' thick stone walls... The back of the kitchen is always cool...
I'm sure the Chelmer white will be just fine. It's 13.8% protein, so high gluten. It might benefit from a little more water than usual.
-Gordon
Thanks ABaker - do you bulk ferment in the fridge overnight or just leave at room temp?
thanks both - will have another go leaving it on the counter overnight with less yeast tomorrow night / Wednesday.
Dried active yeast and get on ok with it. If I'm just making a poolish, then I'll simply add a pinch to the flour and water mix, whereas if I'm adding it direct to a bread or pastry dough, then yes, I need to reserve some of the liquid to activate the yeast. I don't bother adding sugar to the mix.
Can't say it bothers me to do this - I get the yeast going before weighing out ingredients etc, so it doesn't lose me any time as such. It's just whatever works for you.
FYI I use the Allinson's yeast - the one in the yellow tin. It's cheaper than the instant dried as well.
If you've got a Tesco with an in-store bakery near you, you can blag some fresh yeast for free from the bakery. They'll give you enough for a couple of loaves or so, but if you switch to longer bulk ferment times, then you'll of course get more mileage out of it ;-)
So in the end I went for 2g of yeast and a bit more water (63%) and it ended up like this:
12 hours later it looked this:
So more than doubled - could it have been over fermented? it was fairly wet / sticky to shape but with a bit more of a dust of flour and a bit on my hands it did cooperate.
Fresh bread for lunch :-)
a bit of over-ferment at this stage isn't a big issue, you can just knock it back, shape it and let it prove - that's when you really need to keep an eye on it as you don't get a 2nd chance :-)
If there's a lot of wholemeal in the mix then bake it sooner rather than later too.
Hope it turns out well.
Today is patisserie day for me...
-Gordon
Patisserie day sounds delicious!
Annoyingly I baked it in to hot an oven or to near the top, I had it heating up at 240c and meant to turn it down to 220/230 after 10 minutes and forgot and as you can see it's a little darker in one area and a bit cracked / burntish on top.
The crumb's appearance is different, bigger holes, especially at the top, is that because I had 63% hydration instead of 60%? or did it need a bit more force in the pre-shape stage?
Tasted pretty good!
I'd not worry about the cracking - the crust doesn't even look that dark to me.
Patisserie was a blast - some of what my student made today:
it was a day for confidence and some technique than anything really big and fancy.
-Gordon
Really looks delicious Gordon.
Well more tweaking and practise for me probably tomorrow night / friday morning, I've still got plenty of wholemeal flour to practise with before i pick up my Marriages Chelmer White on Friday.
I have been adding a cup of boiled water to the bottom of the oven for steam, i've not tried a dutch oven yet because i don't think i've a dish large enough to use.
In the meantime, I'm still thinking about selling a few loaves along with my eggs at the bottom of the drive - it seems I need to fill a form out for my local council so they can come and check me out and as it's been 22 years!!! since I did my basic food hygiene certificate it might be time for a refresher.
Gosh - 75% hydration for wholemeal, that's way more than i would have guessed.
I do have some dark rye flour - your nice country loaf sounds similar to a Pain de campagne so I will give it a try (77% hydration - really!) tomorrow night / friday morning - I'm guessing your in a different time zone to me though ABaker.
I moved to 80% hydration for my wholemeal loaves a while back. It's a different technique - I find that it really needs 2 hours autolyzing - that's move the flour & water and leave for 2 hours before kneading in the yeast and salt. It will have the consistency of wet sand when you first mix it but the magic of the autolyze will give the gluten a boost and soften the bran. I then combine that with an overnight ferment (1.8g yeast per 530g flour), scale/shape/bake in the morning.
Just done 4 large ones tonight for baking in the morning.
This:
is a photo I took recently when experimenting with Marriages flour. That's 100% wholemeal at 80% hydration (before going into the oven, obviously!)
-Gordon
Although I'm just watching richard bertinet's youtube 'white bread masterclass' and he seems to be suggesting 73% for 100% white bread flour - i guess he's had a lot of practise :-)
Tonight's 'before' with rye as per A Baker's recipe- at 67% hydration and 15ml olive oil.
My flour combo:
12 hours later
Still very wet / sticky, hard to shape as it tore easily and stuck to my hands so had to use a tiny bit of flour on them
start of prove
One hour later - and was still sticky when i was making an indent
the end result, all in all it seemed to spread out rather than rise very much but i was using the English flour
"Still very wet / sticky, hard to shape as it tore easily and stuck to my hands so had to use a tiny bit of flour on them".
My suggestion is to wet your hands when working with sticky dough. The minuscule amount of water on them will not alter anything like hydration, but will make your hands "slippery" enough to stop the dough from sticking to them. By flouring your hands you are introducing raw flour into, or onto the surface of already mixed dough and which will not be incorporated into the dough, however little you use.
Ah thanks, will watch that video this evening, bread tasted quite nutty btw
In other news, I re-sat the food hygiene certificated and passed! :-)
Well done!
Our local authority run day-long courses in it with the exam at the end. I've done 2 now (every 3 years, although it's just a recommendation). Always good to get the local gossip (even though they don't tell you!) of who/what/why a particular place got closed down or a 1* rating ...
Next you need to get your LA to inspect your kitchen - treat it as free consultacy! I do all my stuff by the Safer Food, Beter Business guidelines - you should be able to get the pack free from your LA plus a DVD, but who knows.
https://www.food.gov.uk/business-industry/caterers/sfbb/sfbbcaterers
is the pack. You get a daily diary too which you should fill in on days you're doing commercial stuff. Depending on your operation, you might not get an actual published rating - I don't )-: I think because I'm a home-based business and they can't do a random inspection on me. (They need a prior appointment to visit a home-base business)
-Gordon
lol - that makes it sound like i failed it first time, i didn't i passed but it was over 20 years ago!
Thanks for the link Gordon, the diary looks particularly useful. I've filled in a form on my local council website and i guess now i wait to hear from them. In the meantime, I've picked up the Chelmer flour and will continue with the practise. Oh if anyone can suggest something - some sort of upright container to store 16 kilo bags of flour in that would be most useful, all the plastic containers at tesco are sort of lie flat ones.
My favourite loaf so far is the marriages organic bread flour, 63% hydration, left out overnight at room temp to ferment.
Thanks A Baker, will give that a try shortly - there was something else I wanted to try tonight / tomorrow from earlier in the thread.
I picked up my first big bag of flour
and I'd cobbled a plan together based on earlier postings in this thread
and I now have this fermenting overnight with 63% hydration
So after a tad more than 12 hours it had more than doubled in size:
Shaped and left to prove for about an hour - and backed as usual
and it's significantly smaller :-( although the quantities were the same, can anyone shed any light on why that might be?
Crumb looks fine - but to me it doesn't taste as good and really didn't rise. I did the indent test - it sprang back out a bit, maybe a third of the indent?
I wonder if it's the new flour, I'm tempted to pick up a little pack of marriages organic bread flour tomorrow and do a side by side comparison.
Didn't taste as good sadly, but it's all more practise. I need to use this up
which i believe is like a granary bread flour? interestingly on the packets Marriages recommend 60% hydration for white and 66% for wholemeal but on this flour they suggest 55%, any suggestions what I should try? I will leave it overnight again and maybe use a teeny weeny bit more yeast than last time.
That looks like yummy flour. Is 'malted' brown flour essentially whole sprouted wheat flour? If so, then perhaps a recipe from Peter Reinhart's "Bread Revolution" book would be useful. Sprouted grain flours behave differently and need different treatment. I know Reinhart adds vital wheat gluten to his recipes for sprouted flours to make sure they get the rise and spring out of the loaves.
That's 75% hydration and my comfort zone is 63%! :-) I've heard of the artisan bread in 5 minutes a day book? website? but hadn't looked it up yet - so I will, i'm intrigued as to what only takes 5 minutes.
I failed on bread-making last night but have mixed some up tonight - using a pair of erm jewellers? drug-dealers? scales that i got from the market which go down to .xx of a gram, so i could add 2.5g yeast and 8.5g salt accurately, unfortunately I got grams and grains mixed up so just after i'd finished kneading had to add in a bit more salt and yeast and throw around for a couple more minutes, I'm actually very comfy with my own scales not sure i trust strange scales from the market but we'll see tomorrow.
Not to much to update, I'm still tweaking / playing with different hydrations and recipes, I do much prefer the Marriages (canadian) Organic flour to their local Chelmer flour, and I had an unexpected visitor - the local hygiene inspector as I'd filled out out a form on the council's website saying that I wanted to sell a few loaves at the bottom of my driveway - however i assumed they would make an appointment not just turn up randomly one morning which they did last week! Anyway they give me a 'Good' rating of 4 so I'll take that :-)
You probably told them you were selling direct - which as I understand it, means they can randomly call. Also, I think it might vary from area to area - but when I was last inspected they gave me a '5' but then subsequently decided I was under the radar as it were and didn't need listing (budget cut-backs here, I suspect )-: However I am now selling direct (via farmers markets) so I'm half expecting a random visit at some point - make sure the diary is up to date ...
Also, check your house/land insurance - they might need to know (I think you said smallholding at one point so might be covered by that, but best to check)
(And then I had weights & measures to deal with - aka Trading Standards as they're called now and had to buy a set of expensive "Legal for trade" scales)
Did they tell you why only a 4? (Which is great, but they often find weird things to knock a point off - e.g. someone I know dropped a point as they didn't have a window that could be opened!)
Cheers,
-Gordon
Hi Gordon,
No, they didn't mention anything and the report doesn't really go into detail, I have emailed them to ask where i can improve :-)
Simone
I don't know how things work in the U.K. but here in Canada they always show up at random times. The reasoning for this was explained to me that they don't want to see the premises after being prepared for inspection, they will come at various times of the day so at some point they will see all aspects of your process from prep work to clean up. Seems to make sense to me and most of the regulations are just common sense. Why do you need a window that opens?
Here they usually note things that are hygiene related, availability of hand soap, paper towels, that the hand wash basin doesn't contain utensils to be washed they should be in the three compartment sink, condition of the floor, accumulation of dust, that appropriate measures are taken to control hair, that the public is not allowed in the production area and most importantly that refrigerators and freezers are in the proper temperature range.
Gerhard
In the UK (More technically England as Scotland has separate rules, not sure about Wales & N.I.) they're not allowed to turn up unannounced if it's a residential premises - unless that place is directly selling - e.g. via the "farm gate"/back door, etc. Retail outlets, shops, etc. will have a random inspection. I think this is because the ultimate "buck stops here" is the place the product is sold from and not always where it's made.
So I supply shops and until a year ago never sold direct, so until now I was not subject to a random inspection. I may be now as I called them a week or so ago to ask why my business wasn't listed on the main website.... I also suspect some local authorities have less money than others, so if a food business is considered low-risk and not direct selling, then they can save money by not listing them and not issuing the stickers... (guessing here, but who knows)
England has a 0-5 rating. If you get a 0 then you're shut-down. Scotland is simply pass/fail, and a lot of people thing this is far better. e.g. the window thing - it will be due to ventilation and they'll argue that without good ventilation, "stuff" can build-up and live in condensation, etc. A prominent restaurant in London was downgraded from 5 to 1 a while back because they used the same machine for raw and cooked food (I think it was a vacuum sealer) even though the manufacturer said it was safe as the bits in-contact with the bags, etc. could be removed and sanitised - however English rules say that the whole machine must be sanitisable for cross-use - impossible for any electrical equipment.
And so on.
One of the things I was told here is that the local food hygiene people are 50% education and 50% enforcement. I took that to mean that at my last inspection, I got 2 hours free consultancy :-) Also the (English) ratings are based on three sets of criteria with 5 points in each - one is paperwork! So you can have perfect hygiene and procedures but if you're lax on paperwork then you lose a few points... And so on.
Anyway, todays pastys made, sourdough levians maturing, bread flour all weighed up for tonights mix/knead - so relax :-)
-Gordon
So to achieve a 5 I would have needed a dedicated room for baking or to have got rid of my domestic day to day stuff from my kitchen!
That's huge
Today's 60% hydration effort was slightly burnt on top, to near the top of the oven, and I found it hard to stretch / shape but pleased with the taste anyway. I do have a photo but photobucket isn't playing ball right now!
Here it is :-)
Hydration seems to be a bit of a moving target for me, usually all fine until that last post-proof shaping stage and then it seems to taut and likely to break if i stretch it to hard?
Anyway this is today's less burnt (hurray!) but slightly wonky shaped 62% effort,
Tastes really good actually, the recipe is pretty much the same as earlier with different tweaks, so the one above was 62% water, 11% oil, 1.5% salt and had 2.5g of yeast so about 0.4%. I might try 63% next time then and creep up to 65%. The problem with autolyse is that it's already fermenting for 12 hours adding another step in to do 8-12 hours before that just seems like a step to far.
Thanks for the advice on wetting rather than flouring my hands i will definitely try that. What do you think - if i was to try a wholemeal variation should i use 50/50, 60/40? and up the hydration to 66%?
Also, when flouring the banneton do people ever use rye to get a nice effect?
I think they should be working now!