Dave R

@PatrickT great looking loaves. Love the look of that slice! Dave

Yes. I'm using the USA 9 X 4. Dave

@PatrickTThose are beauties! Dave

Always glad to share. I may alter this later but right now I'm pretty happy with it. The yeasted starter actually has less than 1/16 t of yeast but I use a template I've made and haven't changed it yet. Just a very small amount sprinkled over the water. If you scroll up this page on some of my responses to @PatrickTyou'll get an idea of my process. I only do two stretch and folds for the rye bread, since there's less gluten there to develop. I'll be happy to answer any questions and feel free to point out any errors I've made. I post this as a picture. I'm not sure I can post a spread sheet. Adjust water temperature so dough after mixing is 76°. Usually start at 69°-70°. Mix 3 min using Bosch mixer or 9 min in bread machine. Ferment covered on board for about 1 hour, turning (stretch and fols) at 30 minutes. Ferment in bulk in ‘fridge, folding to degas at 4 or 5 hours. Leave 12 to 18 hours. If baking that day, ferment about 90 minutes, folding once half way thru,, before scaling and shaping. Take out of fridge and allow to come to room temp for about 1 or 2 hours, no need to pre shape. Pre-heat the oven to 425°. Flatten dough, shape. Place in pan and cover with plastic wrap, allowing to rise to about 1/2" of top then remove the plastic, cover with lid and let sit for another 10 minutes. Total proof time is about 30 to 40 minutes. When the loaf is proofed, bake 25 minutes then remove lid and bake another 10 minutes. Take out of pan and bake to a total of 55 minutes. Internal temp should be about 194 Remove from the oven and cool on a rack. Note: I'm at 7,800 feet above sea level, your final dough temp may vary. Dave

I've been experimenting with my Pullman pan off and on and today I baked my first rye Pullman. Used my usual wheat pre-ferment started on Saturday, mixed the dough Sunday for an overnight cold ferment and baked this morning. I'll have to make note of this formula because when my wife tasted it she said "Damn that's good!". I cant do any better than that! Dave

@JoNorvelleWalkerThat's something I'd love to do but logistics kept me from doing it. About 6 years ago when our oven was just about to the end of it's life cycle, my wife and I decided to get an "upscale" oven rather than the contractor grade ovens we'd had. We live in a rural area so we drove close to two hours to one of the better appliance stores and were ready to buy when I asked about parts and repair. They only scheduled repairmen every three weeks to our area and parts were proprietary and they were not available to non-professionals. So we left without buying, but were not deterred. My wife went on line to the local community forums, and found that many families in our are were needing repairs and doing without ovens. So it was back to contractor grade ovens for us. Even though prices for parts have gone up, at least I can repair my own and be up and running in a day or two. Dave

@PatrickTI'd be happy to look at you formula and schedule . Just like shaping, time and repetition will be your best teacher. Before you buy something expensive like a Challenger remember that you don't need that heavy top. I think @Ann_T was experimenting with lighter covers back on page 103 of this forum. If you want to verify that and you have two bread pans, put your dough in one pan, mist it with water and cover it with the other pan (upside down) for the first 15 or 20 minutes of baking. Then remove it for the remainder of the bake (no convection fan if you have one). If you have one pan larger than the other use it for the top, and be careful handling hot pans. Dave

@PatrickT sorry for the delayed response. I was outside knocking down some weeds. I don't really use steam. I know most people have some sort of procedure for doing it, but I just give my loaves a misting before they go into the oven. That gives them enough moisture to keep the crust soft enough for a decent oven spring. I guess I'm lazy, but I don't want to spend the time trying to get my oven to do something It wasn't built to do. You can see by the picture of my hearth loaves above that I have a crisp crust but not one like you have coming out of your Dutch oven. That's why you're getting more oven spring and more open crumb on your Dutch oven bake. The dough is kept from crusting over until you remove the top. I do think scoring will help your loaf in it's expansion and keep it from bursting on the side. I'll post a picture of how my pan loaf is scored. It's not a deep score, and you can see the surface also bursts a bit on it's own at the edges. Some of the higher hydration no-knead loaves could only be scored well if they're baked in a Dutch oven. If baked on a stone there wouldn't be enough surface tension once scored to hold the loaf together. It'd be pretty flat. Otherwise, scoring is like guiding the loaf in it's growth. If you have any questions about my process I'd be happy to help with a formula or technique. One important thing to remember with the cold ferment especially, don't over yeast. My doughs are about 0.70 to 0.80% of the formula. Both of the loaves you posted look good to me. I'd be happy to eat either one! Yes, I do get up early. Just old habits but they serve me well. Keep up the great baking! Dave

@PatrickT another fine looking loaf! The shaping looks like it went well. I've never baked in a vessel other than a loaf pan, so I don't know how much that added to the final shape, bit I'd guess that that loaf would have looked as good just baked on an oven stone. The surface tension created by shaping usually sets the tone there. I think I've said before that with shaping you're creating a dough bag to hold the ingredients. Good tension holds them better. That brings us to scoring. The surface tension will hold in the carbon dioxide gas created in baking and causing oven spring, but the gas will find a way to escape. That's where scoring comes in. Without scoring the sides will usually split to a degree, unless there is a weakness in the shaping. The gas will take the path of least resistance. I even score my pan loaves, although it's not that necessary in that case. Bakers can take advantage of the escaping gas to create patterns that are individual or traditional, like the pattern that you see on @Ann_T's baguettes. Sone breads, like rye have scoring side to side to help the weaker dough (less gluten in rye) hold it's shape. When I was still baking on an oven stone last year I had to score the loaves baked on the left side of the oven differently (front to back) than the loaves on the right side of the oven (side to side) because the heat was different in those areas. I did that to get consistent oven spring. Normally you want consistency, like the baguettes. I'll post a picture of my usual scoring on an oven stone, baked without steam. When to cold ferment? When I stopped using sourdough, about 10 years ago when I retired, I started using cold proofed pre-ferments and cold proofed doughs. I generally make a yeasted starter (poolish) during the day (70° F water) let in sit at room temp for an hour and then into a 40° F 'fridge overnight. I take it out around 3 or 4 AM and it has fully developed by 1 PM and ready to me mixed into my dough. Mixed dough goes thru a series of four stretch and folds every 20 minutes for an hour and then into the 'fridge. I de-gas and fold the dough at about two hours an then again about 4 hours later. Dough comes out of the fridge at about 3 AM and warms for an hour or so, is pre shaped and rests for 30 minutes, shaped and proofs for 45 minutes or so and then into the oven and done. This produces a loaf that is every bit as flavorful as my sourdough was and it will last un to 6 days if wrapped in plastic. We finish them sooner than that though! Sorry to be so long winded, but you asked! Feel free to point out what I nissed or should have left out. Dave

Yes. Babka Muffins. They are a little more work with the braiding but finish more quickly. Definitely worth it. Dave

Thanks! I think I like the babka muffins I made more, but my wife is into the loaf for now. Dave

In addition to my regular pan loaves this morning, I finally got around to Babka. My wife made the filling out of almond butter, cocoa powder and cinnamon. I took care of the rest. We even baked the cut ends for Babka Buttons. Now back to pizza prep for tonight. Dave

@heidih that's a beautiful bread board! I've never been lucky enough to have that kind of history. I do, however pre-date you by 10 years. 😁 There was no osmotolerant yeast that I knew of in the late '50s when I was first working. A friend gave me some to try in the late '90s when I was adding cinnamon to some dough and not getting a good rise. Then when Hamelman's "Bread" came out he wrote about tree bark spices having a negative reaction with yeast. It was news to me. Just lately I've heard of people using osmotolerant yeast in all their doughs, sweet or not. Just wondered if you had an insight. @PatrickT That's a good looking loaf. I wish I had some right now! It looks like your shaping is getting to where you want it to be and the crumb looks great. I don't know enough about the bake to comment on the crust, but with the moisture content you could probably bake a little longer. I do vote for more walnuts over more craisins! Dave

@heidih that's an important point to remember in just about all kitchen work. Thanks! I have sort of an off topic question for you. When you did your sweet doughs did you use osmotolerant yeast? With the occasional sweet doughs I've made over the years I've just boosted the amount of IDY by about another half with good results. Just wondering if it's worth keeping around in the freezer for occasional use. Dave

I agree with you ln that. Getting your hands on the dough is one of the best ways to know what's going right and what's going wrong with your dough. A couple of years ago I was making pizza dough and something just didn't feel right. I looked at my containers and sure enough, I'd forgotten to add the salt. I usually collaborate with my wife on sweet doughs. I don't have a feel for how much sugar of flavoring to add. I usually put in too little Looking forward to your next cranberry walnut loaf! Dave