glennbech

That aproach makes sense. The high heat makes sure that the exterior of the bird gets real hot, the browning process releases nice tasting juices from the skin fat into the meat. The heat then slowly transfers to the rest of the bird. I guess cooking times are a bit reduced, and you let the bird rest for a while using this aproach. Am I right? I fry chicken breast fillet that way. Heat all up. Golden and crispy crust, and then put the fillet away for the heat to evenly distribute itself. works every time. :-)

A Sourdough "Pain de mie" could be interesting, I'm looking forward to hearing about your results! The "Sweetness" in the pan de mie might work well the the sour element of sourdough. Go for it ! :-) In the mean time; This his how my Pan de mie turned out. It's glazed with an egg and sprinkled with sesame seeds. It tasted great! (especially if you're a sweet tooth.) Almost no crust, buttery, and very soft and spongy crumb. I would really recommend the recipe. I couldn't bake it last night, so It spent the night in the fridge. It actually rose almost 100%. (Yeast sure is forgiving when it comes to rising) ... Proofed it for an additional hour or so after I took it out of the fridge, and baked at 200c for about 45 minutes.

When making a steak with good meat quality, the optimal core temperature, when the meat is most tender, is about 55c/131f. Microwaving boils the water (takes to 212g/100c) in meat 1-2 cm from the surface. Boiling is never good, and is a recipe for tough meat. Microwaving leftovers is something completely different. I'd invest in a thermometer, and rely on it to see when the meat is finished. It can be used for all kinds of meat, costs about $15. Different meats have different optimal temperatures. Information on this is available all over the place -) good luck !

I'll try to answer this a bit more in detail than "yes, you did something wrong" :-) Chicken and turkey needs to be handled carefully, and should be roasted at low temperatures to avoid/reduce the process of hardening muscle tissue. It's also a very diffucult animal to roast in one piece, because the redder legs are tougher, and require more time in oven than the delicate white meat of the breasts. For successfull chicken or turkey ; - Always let rest to room temperature. (You didn't use a frozen one I Hope ?) - Preheat ovcen to 200 c (392 f) This is the WARMEST temperature you'll ever use for a bird! - Place a pan in the bottom of your oven. - Put the bird on it's side on a metal rack, place it in the middle of the oven with it's right leg up. - Roast for 10 minutes. Turn the bird around, and roast if for 10 minutes with the left leg up. - Reduce temperature to 140c (284 f), put the bird on it's back, and roast for about 40 minutes more. The times mentioned will vary on the size of the bird, and your oven. The reason why you want to fry it at a higher temperature in the beginning, is that most of the flavour in a bird is located the the fat close to the skin. Frying on high temperatures liquidizes this fat and let's it go into the meat. Use a thermometer. Put it in the meatiest part of the leg (but not touching bone). Turn of the oven when the thermometer says 65C / 149F. Take it out of the oven when the temperature passes 70/158. What I think went wrong in your case was ; - If the meat was cold or even worse frozen, you have boiled the outside with steam (from the water you put in), and later in the micro wave oven. Leaving the inside cold. (red) - Never use the micro wave. For later ; If you over-do a bird like this, and the meat goes real tough. Make a cream sauce, and put the meat into the sauce. The fat will make the impression of juicy meat .-)

One of the more scientific books I've read on cooking lately, states that Meat will absorb water if left in a salt water lake for some time before roasting. This is the opposite of what you are saying here right ?

Last week when dining out at an asian place here In Oslo, the people sitting in the table besides us ordered Rack of lamb. It looked fantastic "stacked" on the plate. So, last time I went to the supermarket, I ended up with a venison rack, and I though I could cook that "Asian" style as well. I'm thinking a thick sauce, sweet, hot... Any ideas for an "Asian style" Venison Rack? The meat is from new zeland, probably not game, and frozen. I guess the game taste isn't too striking. Other recipies not "Asian style" also very welcome! :-)

Im using this recipe for Pain de mie as we speak .-) 700 g milk 1000 g white flour 50 g sugar 30 g yeast 20 g salt 100 g butter Diced. Mix everything together, but hold back 100g of milk. (If you're using a kitchen machine). Mix for 3 minutes. Then mix for 5 minutes adding the last of the milk. Slow down, and add the diced butter in small amounts at a time. Let the dough rest for 1 hour, divide into three pieces, and let them rest for 20 minutes. Form loaves and rise do double size. Bake.

Another very usefull leasons learned today ; Never (completely) trust a recipe! Since Im new to the sourdough baking, I tried to be true to my recipe that got me good tasting bread the last time; However, the results were disaster. My pre-ferment/sponge were stored 8-12 hours, just as my good working recipe. However, when baking today, i stored it at about 32-33 C. Last time, I guess the temperature were about 26-28. This makes a huge impact the the pre-ferment! Today, after storing at 32-33, the pre-ferment were liquidized. I could pour it out of the bowl. It aslo had the best rising ability I've ever seen in a sourdough. My guess is that the processes that feeds on the statch is running a lot faster at the 32c temperature, producing a more liquid dough. Since Im new, I didn't dare to alter my initial recipe and went for the same amounts of additional flour and water... This was a total disaster, with yet another extremely sour "pancake" bread :-) I ruined a linnen cloth. Even stuffed with rye flour, the dough stuck to my improvised proofing tool. I couldn't even slice it, since the breads were so Wet. So it cracked up all over during baking. I guess I have to practice practice practice. Im was a bit frustrated today. Since i got real excited seeing the great rising power of my dough, the dissapointment over the extremely bad result was extra hard. But, I'll keep doing it untill I get it right, and develop a feel for how it's done !

You're reply is perfectly technical enogh -.) I was just wondering if you had made a "special" type of focaccia .-) I'm very new to this, and were confused to see breads with hydration levels less than 50% .-) Happy baking... Mmm... It sure looked good .-)

This is probably a Pain de mie (Crumb bread) If I remember correctly it was made by the french bakers to satisfy tourists and customers who didn't apericiate the typical hard crusted french bread. Now the french love the bread as well. It's often made and sold in rectangular shapes. The lack of crust comes from the fact that a lot of milk and butter is used in the recipe. One recipe I found, called for about 10% butter. I think most of the liquid is milk, and the additional fat helps soften the crust even more. It also contains sugar, which can explain the sweet taste... But more importantly.. Why do you want to know? Was it good? I'm thinking of making a batch for the Saturday breakfast, as my wife is no big fan of hard crust .-) Rgrds,

Hi! A Question about your total hydration... Putting your recipe into my fantastic Baker's percentage calculator Shows me that this is a very dense dogh, with a total hydration at about 40% Is this typical for foccacia recipes? Rgrds

Looks great! How on earth dou you handle a 100% hydration dough?!! .-) I've been struggelig to keep my 75% doughs from sticking to everything in my kitchen .-)

More issues As I continue my sourdough experiments ; A) In today's batch. one bread was burnty while the other was not. How is this possible ? Both of them are in direct contact with my Pizza stone that is at bottom of my electric oven. I guess it was burned because of hight temp. Right now I'm warming my oven to 482F/250C... I might reduce this to 230C ? How one escaped this faith, but not the other amazes me. B) Dough WILL Stick to a floured linnen cloth in a basket !! Why didn't anyone tell me this ? *grin* Will I need a "professional" battenton.. (Spelled correctly?) where can I buy those? C) I measured 34 degrees C in my kitchen at some point when the doigh were proofing.... How will this affect the result ? Any ideas ?

Yeah... Sponge devleopment while I'm at work. Should have thought of that one .-) While we're at it; I guess the sponge/dough ratio affect how sour the bread gets? . As well as how much starter there is in the sponge, and how long you let it ferment?) Mm... I guess I have a lot to learn. Yesterday, I experimented with a sponge, with equal amounts of starter/flour/water and short fermentation time. ( 3 hours). However, I ended up with a sponge of 450g, and a total dough weight of 700. That was really sour bread ! .-) The taste, crumb and crust were not bad though. Tomorrow, I'll try a sponge that is 30% of total flour weight, with a small amount of starter, and leave it while at work. I'll Proof/ferment as you suggest. I'll be back with the results! Another thing ; I'm getting tired of handling doughs at > 70% hydration levels. They're so sticky. Do you get real big holes and soft crumb at 60-65% hydration ? Thanks again all for excellent feedback.

Should have been.... A) 3 hours starter refresh, 1 hour bulk fermentation and 3 hour proofing. or B) 3 hours starter refresh, 3 hour bulk fermentation and 1 hours of proofing.

Thanks a lot sirch1980. The tips regarding rye substitution was very helpfull. Now... Experimenting a an "express sourdough" ( I want to see If I can cram a baking session 7 hours in between end of work at 17.00, and bedtime, around 00:00) What is better; Long bulk fermentation, or longer proofing? If we consider two aproaches, where only 7 hours is available. A) 3 hours starter refresh, 1 hour bulk fermentation and 3 hour proofing. or B) 3 hours starter refresh, 3 hour bulk fermentation and 1 hours of proofing. Im doing this experiemnt right now, So I guess we'll soon enough see if 7 hours will produce good bread .-)

My Experiment is now complete. Every step along the way documented, and I now have a baseline to experiment furhter on. Mission accomplished! Here was today's program. 09.00 Baking I put my pizza stone in the bottom of my electric oven, and preheated to 230 c for 45 minutes. I took the shaped breads out of the fridge, flipped my improvised bantenton onto my hand crafted peel Im proud of this one. Big Ugly Heavy thing. But I did make it! After 40 mintutes. I took the bread out. It looks like this ; Results and reflection/conclusion - I cannot trust my electric oven. The Breads were not done in 40 minutes. Since this is my first experiences, I was unsure exactly how long to leave them in there. I took one out, and left one in there. - I should have added some steam to the oven, for example by putting a cup of water in the oven with the bread in the beginning. I have gotten better crust earlier doing this. From now on, I wil always do that. - I damaged the loaves when taking them out of the plastic bag they had been resting in overnight. (In the fridge). The dough were sticking to the plastic bag, and I lost some air when I peeled removed the bag. - For some strange reason, I didn't get much oven spring. However, the dough fermented real well during bulk fermentation yesterday (20.00 - 22.30). Even in the fridge. maybe shorter fermentation period would have given me more oven spring ? - My goal was 68% water in the comple dough. I however, suspect that my actual percentage is closer to 65 as I absolutely HAD to add a few fistfulls of flour to handle it during the fermentation (I took it out of the bowl, flipped it, folded it and put it back in the baking bowl). - I was aiming for more air pockets in the texture. I'll try to get more oven spring next time. - I believe the fact that I let my kitchen machine work with the dough for 10-15 minutes (5-6 minites more than I usual do) had a positive effect. - The bread tasted ok, but nothing extraordinary :-) I'll keep working on my process. Vary fermentation times, sponge size, hydration levels until I get this perfect .-) I guess I also need to go to a decent artisan bakery and see, and taste how a real sourdough bread looks like. It's been a while since my last visit .-)

- In a dough with about, let's say, 1 kg og flour. Is there a magic formula to determine how much refreshed starter / sponge to make? Can I compensate for a small sponge by bulk fermenting the bread longer ? - In norway the supermarket flour contains 10,7 % protein. This is gluten right ? Is it protein content that determines the water absorbtion abilty of a flour ? Is this what is refered to as "strength" ? Or are we talking about how fine the wheat is milled ? How does this attributes affect the bread ? - How much oven spring can I rely on getting from a dough? Let's say I bulk ferment my dough for 5 hours, shape the loaves (they will collapse a bit during this process), and put them straigh into the oven. Will the bread rise at all ? - I've seen vitamin C in some recipes. What's the right way, and reason to apply witamin C in bread baking ? - I have some recipes on wholegrain soursoigh breads, and bread with a coarser ground flour. Can I use my nice and acitve fiine starter for these breads ? The recipe states to use another starter. (From rye). Is this only for taste ? Will the bread rise just as well with a fine flour starter ? Hope someone can help me shed some ligh on this magic .-)

Don't make fun of my peel! :-) thanks for adding a new english word to my vocabulary ! .-)3

This is what my schedule have been so far today.... 12.00 Preferment time I mix this into a glass bowl, and try to make my kitchen 30 degrees c. 230 g of lukewarm water 230 g of flour 114 g of sourdoug starter (57g water/57g flour) Please note that I the eGullet tutorial state to use equal amounts of starter, water and flour in the refreshment phase. That would have emptied my Jar completely. I used about half of my starter in the pre-ferment. To compensate for this, I guessed that a couple of more hours in 30 c would do the suffice. Im not quite sure on this point. If anyone could shed some light, i'd be glad! I also made sure to increase the size of my starter. So I now have more next time. This is how it looks like after 5 hours. Nice and bubbely! 19:00 Dough time ... The refreshed starter from 12.00 413 grams of flour 190 grams of water This gives me a total hydration of about 68% (total water to total flour ratio). I have a Kenwood Kitchen machine, and used it to mix the dough. I let the machine work for about 10-15 minutes on the dough, and added the water a little at a time. After 10-15 minutes I have a real sticky dough. Actually, I've never experienced wheat flour this sticky before! The gluten is also highly developed, and I can easily do the "window test" . I kept the bown with the dough in room temperature covered with plastic. 20:00 Turning the dough The dough is rising a lot ! I tried to handle the dough with only oiling my hands and my work surface, but I had to add a couple of handfulls of flour after a while, as the dough were sticking to absolutely everything. At this time I added the salt. (10g, or ~ 2.1%) It was quite hard not to knead all the air out of the dough, and mixing in the salt at the same time. 22:30 Shaping and Putting it back in the fridge It's very funny, I've never seen a sourdough (Since Im a beginner at this) rise like this ! It's incredible! I lost a bit of volume at 20.00, turning the dough. Now it's right back up, or higher! I put it in the fridge so that I can bake it for breakfast tomorrow morning. I'll post pictures of the finished result then!

a)I improvised a battenton with a basket and a linnen cloth. The dough started to fall down and spread outwards the moment I took it out of it. I guess the Idea is to work fast then ? The original Recipe I worked with sait absolutely nothing about support for a rustique bread with 72% water. Book authors should really try their recipes. I ended up with a pancake the size of my baking stone 1 cm thick :-) b) I have a pizza stone, heat my electric oven to max (250c), and put the stone on the floor of the oven. I let the stone heat for 45-60 minutes. I guess this aproach is ok ? By the way jackal10; I saw that you had made some kind of makeshift shovel for plywood or something to insert baguettes into your oven (Not sure what the proper english word for that is).... I saw the picture in the baguette demo thread. I got Inspired and made my one from oak. A bit heavy, but works like a charm .-) http://www.glennbech.com/2006/04/making-sh...ting-pizza.html

Over the last few days, after completing a starter I'm happy with, I've been experimenting with sourdough baking. I guess I make a lot of the beginner mistakes, before finding a routine that works. Inspired by this excellent forum, and this thread in particular ; http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=27634 I'm making another atempt, all will document it here and hope for some feedback. In the mean time, I can tell you all about what went from at my last atempt, finished about 60 minutes ago. - To counter the "pancake effect" on wet dough (mine was at 70%), I've read that it can be smart to throw in a glass or so of water on a cast iron pan or something to provide steam and better heat transfer during the first few minutes. This is said to help developing the crust. Since I don't have room for pizza baking stone, cast iron pan AND bread in my electric oven, I used my turbo fan for a couple of minutes instead..... BIG Mistake !! :-) After 20 minutes I had to take it out of the oven. It was turning black and burnt! The botton, resting on the pizza stone, was turning into black carbon. And the top were also turning darker and darker. 40 minutes, and It would have been a black heap of coal :-) Anyway.. I ended up with a bread that looks real good, a bit on the "over finished" side, but with an apealing a nice and airy crumb. Taste wise however... This is a disaster! The crust tastes burned, and the crumb is not baked 100%, so it "swells" in your mouth when you eat it. My guess is that all this is the turbo-fan's fault. I swear to never to that again .-) Edit: After posting, I noticed that there Was a Q/A Thread fro the tutorial, with posts from 2006. Admins, feel free to move my post at will .-)

I guess the tawing tactic "back in the oven" is great for taste, but have you tried masuring weight after leaving them uncovered 10-15 minutes in the oven ? I just did a very and unscientific experiment with a loaf I'm about to have for breakfast, and lost nearly 10% hydration .-) I might a a math/science freak now. Who cares if it tastes good...Nice looking bakery on display by the way! Inspiring!

I freeze them in the plastic bag. After thawing I notice that there is some dampness/humidity on the insides of the plastic. I guess this is only a very small percentage of the evaporated water. That's why I suspect the crust has not absorbed "all", and that there actually is a microscopic "loss" even when thawing in a plastic bag. Thanks for all the tips here. I'll try thawing in plastic and re-baking. Sounds like that is the process that will give the best tasting result. Toasting is of course another option, but beeing north european.... Well... Toast and tea is just not our thing (at least not mine!) :-)

I recently did a small study on thawing bread. Since you cannot use a plastic bag when thawing it (Crust gets real bad), some kind of "breathing" material must be used, meaning dehydration. So, how much water is lost during thawing ? Here are the results. (Total weight loss over approximately 12 hours.) Plastic: 0% (start weight 149g, end weight 149g) Paper: 1.9% (start weight 104g, end weight 102g) Cloth: 4.9% (start weight 122, g end weight 116g) Other details; the bread was baked with a 65% hydration, baked into round loaves and cut in halves. Three halves have been used in this "experiment". This means that all loaves have a “cut”, and is not totally surrounded by crust. This probably has an effect on the total result, but the comparisons should be valid. I conclude with the cloth/fabric giving the overall best results, but at a higher dehydration cost. (I like crispy crusts!) I guess the overall best approach would have been to put half baked loaves in the freezer ? Any other thoughs on preserving bread ? (Complete details of my "experiment" can be found on my homepage/food blog. Go by clicking here