Bread Assessment Results
Probably everybody who was reading my recent posts is interested to hear how the bread assessment finished. As this will be a slightly longer post I am revealing now the most important fact: I got the gold award.
So you can stop reading here, you already got the crucial part of information. However, maybe you would like to continue and read some background information and some interesting facts about this kind of assessment.
This is the crumb shot of my bread. I have degassed it as much as possible.
First of all I must go back in time to explain the traditional bread baking in rural areas in Slovenia and nearby countries. For centuries the traditional bread baking was mostly performed once per week on Saturdays in order to have fresh bread for Sunday's meals. Most of the time there was no bread baking during the week as there was not enough time for this. Most of the bread was kind of a whole grain or high extraction flour milled in stone mills. At that time there were many water powered mills operating along the creeks and rivers. Better bread from white flour was made only for big feasts like Easter, Christmas and family holidays. Back in past »white bread« was highly appreciated as it was so rarely on the menu. Still today this special kind of bread is on the menu for the same holidays, therefore there was almost no breakup of this tradition.
Almost all of farm houses were equipped with »Kachelofen« (German word), a clay stove / oven that burns wood extremely efficiently. The heat is stored in the clay brick thermal mass, and then slowly radiates into the room for the next 8 to 24 hours. These “Kachelofen” were mainly used for heating during the cold season and were also regularly used for bread baking. The smoke from such an oven was used also for smoking meat products during the winter season when they were mostly produced.
It is not so easy to prepare »Kachelofen« for baking bread – it must be of the right temperature, not too hot and not too cold. If you don't fire long enough it will cool down quickly and bread will not bake at sufficiently high temperature.
Typical "Kachelofen" from the outside. In order to increase the heating area the tiles are specially crafted.
Back in 2009 when I have built my pizza oven (see the picture below) I made this video from pictures taken while watching an old lady baking bread in such Kachelofen. She is making her bread in an authentic way with exception of the mixer which she uses only because she is now too old to manually prepare dough for 15 boules. Each of them weights more than 1 kg when baked. I am also singing (not solo) in the background song used for his video (I am singing tenor).
So this is the tradition of bread baking in rural areas of Slovenia and now there are many assessments of home baked bread in Slovenia each year. This last one was special due to the limitation that bread has to be baked in wood fired oven. This was the first time that such limitation was in place and I sincerely hope this kind of assessment will become traditional because it helps to keep this tradition alive.
My DIY pizza wood fired oven in my party room in the basement.
I decided to prepare a SD loaf with oat flakes porridge and seeds from sunflower, pumpkin, sesame and flax. The requirement is to make a boule from 1000g of flour. Just two days before assessment I got a call from my relatives from other part of our country that I should attend a funeral ceremony in the afternoon when I was supposed to bake. My plan was to prepare bread and after final shaping put it in the fridge for final proofing while I can attend the ceremony.
After bench rest.
When I started my journey back to home I called my wife and she fired up the oven. Unfortunately it took almost two more hours after my return to equalize temperature in the oven and cool it to 240 dC. At that time my dough was already slightly overproofed although the result of finger poke test was still ok.
When I tipped the dough out of banneton I realized that I am already too late as the dough wasn’t able to keep the form and became very flat. I used three ice cubes to generate some additional steam in the oven and when I opened the oven after 15 minutes I saw that the boule is pretty much flat with decent oven spring but not as much as I would like. The picture of that phase is posted below.
Bread before taking it out of the oven.
I was really disappointed but there was nothing to do as it was already too late to reshape it and bake it within several hours.
When I heard that I got gold award for the bread for which I was really hesitating whether to deliver it at all I was really happy. Looking afterwards at the detailed results I saw that I have ended absolutely at fourth place. At the ceremony next day I got just positive response from the members of the jury.
Breads awarded with gold award.
Needless to say that my bread is number 19 on this picture.
Analyzing assessment report I found that I got fewer points in areas where I was actually expecting more points and got all possible points in areas where I was expecting fewer points. The results together with the assessment criteria are in the below picture.
I am not complaining about the results but there is a systematic problem with the assessment of crumb and possibly also with the (sour) taste of sourdough bread because the judges never make a distinction between SD bread and bread leavened with baker’s yeast. In the below picture is the crumb shot of the winner bread and I must say that I wouldn’t be happy when my SD bread would have such a dense crumb. Maybe I am wrong in this opinion, but my plan is to do some educational work in order to change this in the future.
Absolute winner with the highest score.
Any comments or thoughts about assessment SD are highly appreciated. I would really like to hear opinions of other TFL members.
Happy baking, Joze
Comments
Sounds like a fun process! I wish I had a WFO like yours!
Yippee
Somehow it was a fun process but at the same time it is always a kind of competition when you are trying to do you best.
Happy baking Yippee!
Joze
I'm sorry your loaf over proofed a bit, but you did really well anyway. I'm sure it tasted fantastic.
I agree with you about the crumb on the winning loaf. I think it does come down to personal preference though. My preferences have changed over the past year. I now prefer a moderately open crumb.
I also agree with your assessment of how the judges scored you. I thought you would have lost points on the outward appearance. Although, i prefer the colour of your crust to the winning loaf.
It would be better if there was a distinction made between sourdough bread and bread made with bakers yeast. I don't think the taste of the two types of bread can be compared fairly.
Anyway, well done Joze, I'm very happy for you.
Happy baking :)
for your nice comment . And I share your opinion that there should be a separate SD category and another one for gluten-free bread. I mean here a category that is judged differently according to the nature of the bread. That would be by my opinion more fair!
Happy baking Ru!
Joze
I'm with Ru, sourdough should have a category on its own since it tastes different but very good for us SD lovers!
For me yours is more beautiful and I'm sure tastier than the winning loaf.
Thanks for the video, I really enjoyed it! It's great to see traditional baking in a kachelofen.
What language is the song in the video?
Let me start from the end - the language in the song is Slovenian - my mother language. Only two million people speak that language which has Slavic roots so I understand without learning many words from other Slavic languages like Polish, Czech, Slovak, Russian, Bulgaria, Serbian, Croatian, Macedonian and probably some more. It depends on those languages how many words we have in common. I just understand part of it, but don't speak.
I made that video because I wanted to share the tradition of baking bread in old way as it was done fore centuries. It was also a challenge for me to start baking bread in my oven without actually knowing the procedure. That instructional day was one of the best days in my life.
And of course I agree with you about the separate category for SD just not to put all eggs in one single basket. It should be judged differently by same rules or measures, but the ideals should be different.
Happy baking Pal!
Joze
What languages do you speak? I'm excited when I meet someone who speaks another language because it is my next biggest interest next to food.
Ah! Slavic roots! So Slovenian also have that complex case system with inflections? I have never comprehended how cases in Slavic languages work even though my mother tongue also use an almost the same system. Nouns in our language do not inflect though, instead we use case marking particles; I know there are 3 basic cases but one case marker marks 3 cases so maybe we have a total of 5 noun cases. (Sorry that this is not bread related anymore :D) Maybe that's the reason I can't fully understand Slavic cases with inflections. I think our verbs with many affixes are the most complex because each noun case must agree with the affix of the verb.
Is this song in Slovenian, Brez Besed? Brez besed bova nasla snekje... I can't type the proper accents on the letters and I don't even remember the proper spellings. :) I remember I found this song accidentally years ago and I loved it. I really like to listen to Eurovision songs especially those from the 60's and 70's.
It means "without the words we will find each other somewhere ...." - it is a nice song and you are good that you could type it.
Slovenian language is even more complicated as it is the only Slavic language that has special form for two - so we gave singular (1), dual (2), plural (3 and more). I think that there is only one language on the world that has the same "complication".
Those songs from 60's and 70's were the best, now days they are pretty much different and I don't like most of them.
Happy baking PAL,
Joze
A hearty congratulations from France for your gold award ! That's got to be at least a little bit flattering to know that, even on your not-best day, you can still take home the gold. I can't imagine what kind of award they would have to invent for some of your other breads. You might just get appointed President or Prime Minister.
Also very cool to see your WFO, any chance you have plans or schematics of it ? I'd love to be able to install something like that in my basement (though I don't know if good masonry will do any good convincing my wife).
As they say here, féicitations et bonne continuation !
Thanks for congratulations and you are just exaggerating! I was mostly lucky but part of it was also result of all my efforts. On such events it can so easily happen that things go completely wrong so we always need a lot of luck.
Regarding my WFO - I bought the dome and the floor at this producer:
http://www.spirit-of-fire.com/kachelofen-technik/backofen
They are located in Austria but probably you can get something similar also in France. The rest was designed and built by me. Originally I planned to have a big Kachelofen in that room, but ended up with this creation which is really good for bringing a good spirit to the party. My favorite parties are those when I fire up the oven and prepare pizza dough and all kind of possible toppings and then my guests have to prepare their pizza by themselves. The only thing I help them is how to put it on a peel and then transfer that to the oven. Everybody loves it as this is kind of a challenge of everybody and each time we have a lot of fun with all failed attempts.
Happy baking!
Joze
that the judges got it totally backward but yours looks to be the only SD bread there and they are probably trained to judge that the historically dense crumb is the perfect score. It is best to know what the standards are and shoot for them if you are looking for a score as opposed to making the best bread possible:-)
Well done and happy baking
As it is assessment I am running for score while in every day baking I am looking how to make best bread possible. Next assessment will be likely in February 2017 and I will try to prepare some educational material about SD for the judges if they will be ready to read it. At least I can try to do this. On one side it looks stupid to participate in such events but I always simply use the Olympic motto: It is important to participate not to win. By participating in such events I am evangelizing SD and that is my goal. The only bread eaten completely after the ceremony was mine - that was the biggest proof that it was really good.
Happy baking Dab!
Joze
. . . LOVING your wood fired oven! It is a beauty and it is massive. Is this just for home baking and cooking? it looks large enough to support commercial artisanal baking. This oven speaks to great craftsmanship and artisanal skills!
You have now made me and every other TFL baker extremely jealous of your beautiful oven!
Great job and happy baking and eating! Brian
My WFO is not capable for artisan baking because it is too small - only 70cm in diameter and has not enough thermal mass for many batches. Without additional heating I can merely bake two batches and the second one is already in question. The main purpose of it was for making pizzas and for that is simply great. When it is really hot (500dC) I can bake a pizza in 60 seconds and it is already slightly burned so I must choose the right toppings.
For my daughter I have built a bigger oven from fire bricks with much bigger thermal capacity. I was planning to use that oven for this assessment but it is located outside and at that time the outside temperature was below freezing level so I didn't want to use it. Building that oven took me a month to complete.
I am preparing a post about earthen oven I have built end of August this year for children's oratorium in our parish. In one hour I was able to bake 45 12" pizzas. I need some more time to prepare the text. Building that temporal oven was really a big fun.
Happy baking Ski!
Joze
for the video. I grew up in Austria (now live in Australia). It brought back memories, although not my own, but from what I was told by my mother and aunt.
I thorougly enjoyed watching the woman, including blessing the bread before she put the loaves in the oven.
We were brought up to respect bread and not to take 'our daily bread' for granted. I still appreciate each loaf I bake.
Ingrid
so you have noticed blessing the bread before it went to the oven. I think that the home bread making in Austria was pretty much the same as in Slovenia as we were long ago in one common country.
I am trying now to give this cultural heritage to my grandchildren, neighbors and anybody who is trying to bake at home. I am using local ingredients which were the only ones 50 or 100 years ago. Sometimes the gluten content is not as good as I would wish, but it is worth to do your best and use them. I really feel good when I eat bread made from flour that was milled from a wheat growing only 2 km away from my home. At least I know what I am eating. We have a garden as well and we produce during the growing season most of the vegetables we need for cooking. Again I know the source of that and I am sure it is really organic.
I hope you will have opportunity to visit Austria again!
Happy baking Ingrid!
Joze
We had a smallish vegetable garden back then, now it's a bit of a battle with the subtropical climate.
I had a great pantry in our cellar; it was full of preserves and had a very large freezer. We were a big family and it was part of being a proud housewife and mother. The different varieties and colours jam alone! My children grew up on elderberry flower and black current cordial etc.
Now life is easier, but I still cook from scratch and I'm happy that I can recreate the fantastic tasting Landbrot bread we used to get delivered to our house twice a week.
I have been back to Austria numerous times. No plans in the near future.
Cheers, Ingrid
Congrats on your award!
Secondly, thanks so much for posting your video and backstory about your country's baking history. It's always nice to learn about other cultures and see how things were made in the "old" days.
It's a good thing my baking is better than my singing, but it looks like you are adept at both as well as oven building!
Regards,
Ian
My older daughter used the name "Multipractix" when she had a presentation at my 60 year celebration two year ago. She said, that if i would participate in the story of "Asterix and Obelix" my name would be Multipractix as I do so many things.
Honestly speaking, I really got many talents and my motto is, that I have to use them. They were given to me by God with the intention that I will use them. How would you feel if you would give a gift to somebody but next time you visit him, you see your gift laying somewhere on the floor or behind the closet, what would be in your mind. I'm sure you would say that the guy didn't deserve it. So I am trying to use whatever I was given because the talents were given to us to use them. Sorry for saying this here, but that is my opinion.
I like reviving the old tradition and with that in mind I wanted to share this. I know that TFL members respect the history, tradition and old habits so I was really happy to share it.
Happy baking Ian!
Joze
Happy baking Ian!
Joze