January 12, 2022 - 12:00pm
Hamelman - bake every one?
Just curious - figured, why the hell not, I'd like to do the same with Calvel - has anyone baked every formula in Jeffrey Hamelman's book (I have the second edition, not the latest)?
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Just curious - figured, why the hell not, I'd like to do the same with Calvel - has anyone baked every formula in Jeffrey Hamelman's book (I have the second edition, not the latest)?
I did not do that with the Hamelman's book, but with two other books.
It took me years with one, it had about 300 recipes and I will never stop learning by baking from that book. It was for the industrial bread baking. It took me a long time to figure out how to adapt them for home baking. The rewards of such exercise were immense. I learned to bake bread and we ate a lot of tasty breads and a variety of them for years and years.
Another one was the book of recipes for my bread machine Zo Virtuoso and not a single recipe was successful from the first try, some needed up to four test bakes in a row, all on the same day, thank God, because bread machine IS quick, to obtain good results and the breads were out of this world good. It really made me appreciate subtle differences between flours and impact of their freshness, differences in yeast, in water quality, in hydration, etc. Things that you would never notice otherwise. But in bread machines with their strictly controlled environment and set times for each stage it was so obvious, how tiny changes in ingredients or subtle shifts in their amounts translate into huge consequences in bread. Since then I concluded that a bread machine is THE tool to have at home if I want to have great bread for breakfast or dinner, the kind my husband and son love to eat.
I am not into crusty, rapidly staling French breads that much, and we have decently baked ones sold in our city bakeries and in Montreal, so I only baked sourdough bread from Calvel. And his amazing rustic bread, yeasted. Wow, wow and triple more wow! To this day I find his recipes hard to understand, though. The way he organizes information in the tables confuses me.
And I baked two or three breads from Hamelman. They are all excellent breads to eat with a unique flavor profile due to the rather cool room temperature fermentation requirement and moist air, around 70-72F, 72% average RH. My kitchen is very warm, about 80F, and the air chez nous is very dry, about 20-30%RH, so it is difficult for me to bake using Hamelman's recipes, let alone all of his recipes.
Mariana, thanks! Would you mind sharing the industrial baking one - unless perhaps it's a Russian text? Not that I could ever hope to scratch the surface, but it sounds just like the bedrock text to work from. Probably beyond my ken, and out of reach if it's in Russian. Thanks for your thoughts.
That is really intriguing on the bread machine trials, never thought of it but it makes perfect sense. I don't have one but my FIL loves his and TNH, he kicks out some wonderful, deep, dense, black Estonian ryes our clan demands so much. What a cool idea, to turn it out (it reminds me of a problem both in brewing, and cheesemaking - especially the latter - it sucks to have to wait for extended fermentation and cellaring to find out what effect one's tweaking does. I can't even think of wine, which I'd love to make, but pinot noir, being my obsession, wouldn't get close until I'm probably ready to leave this mortal coil. So, great idea. Oh FIL.....!
Hear you on the crusty French breads. Mine stale by day's end. Our oven is small and I'm always limited to very short "baguettes," and I do almost exclusively levains. But I enjoy the ones I make from Hamelman's book.
On Hamelman, I wasn't aware of his RH condition. My starters are all in 1 or 2-qt containers with tight-fidding snap lids but now you've got me thinking....I used to run cheese "caves" with various means to control for 542-54F and up to 98% RH (not easy). Perhaps it might be worthwhile seeing if I could just put together a jury-rig retarder-proofer. The biggest problem was condensation, as you can imagine. Right now, for proofing, I merely have a 72-QT camp-cooler with germination mats controlled by Inkbird controllers, with a cup of water on the mats for at least some humidity. Results aren't bad, but space is limited.
I find the Calvel formulas very difficult as well. I have to go through and try to back-match the various amounts. I've "converted" some, but not many, into a more readable, standard format. In fact I think it was your thread on his pain au levain that started it all for me!
Per Abe's comments below (thanks Abe), in terms of how close many of the formulas are in Hamelman's book, that was actually one reason I'm wondering if Calvel's might be a better book to exhaust. I absolutely love everything about Jeffrey's book - it's been my primary bible since starting to serious baking, and Don, yes, that is one of the coolest aspects of his book, the decorative breads, and I've never done them and want to. But I'm wondering if a better book might just be Calvel, as a "project." What do you think?
However there are quite a few that follow the same formula. Once you have baked the Vermont Sourdough that will be a template for a lot of other similar breads. By no means have I even gotten close to completing the whole book but whatever I have tried i've really enjoyed.
And I've been kind of slowly working through it, but keep getting distracted by other things.
Hear you!
When so much of the book is about Braiding Techniques. I love the Russian proverb subheading. “Better bread with water than cake with trouble.”
I have baked quite a few of the recipes and the yeasted ones are my go to but the amounts of levain and low hydration of his breads with a 120%starter didn’t work so well for me. They almost always over proofed if I retarded them in the fridge.
Good luck in your quest
Don
Per the above comments to mariana, thanks Don. The 120% work for me, as long as I don't proof too long at all before putting them in the frigo. What seems to work for me is about 45 minutes out, then overnight, and bake right from the frigo.
One thing I've done a bit is tweak lower on his levain inoculation. I'm doing it knowing I'm not doing Jeffrey's formula anymore, but just because I prefer a longer bulk and its consequent development of more complex flavors. Though I personally don't find it dramatic and often just do his 2 1/2 bulk. I almost always have to develop the dough further, usually by FF's and more folds during bulk. I suspect it might just be that the KA, as opposed to the spiral he defaults to, can't get there as well. I've tried all kinds of regimes, including low-intensity, counting revolutions, up to 17 minutes, or mixed-intensive mixing, but generally I develop further in the bulk. I know he gives mixing equivalents by type in the book and I recall somewhere here he exchanged with someone on the relative weakness of the KA v. another home mixer, I think? So he gave times specifically for the KA but I cannot find the thread and have misplaced the info in my notes.
Anyone have those - Jeffrey's comments on time equivalents for the KA (not just what's quoted in his book, but specifically addressing the relative weakness of the KA, here on this forum?)