glennbech

I did a 100% Wholemeal experiment yesterday with a yaest sponge. I tried to rise the loaves in a linnen lined basket, but When I flipped them over to my peel, the "skin" started to tear. In the oven, the loaf just turned into a pancake. Here's my recipe. 900g Wholemeal wheat 560g water 200g sponge (2g yeast, 100g water, 100g bread flour) Any Idea on how to improve this situation ? - Reduce hydration ? I Introduced some water during kneading by wetting the surface, and my hands repeatedly because I though the initial hydration level seemed a bit low when I started kneading. - Bake in pans? Is 100% wholemeal doomed to fail in a banneton? The gluten content isn't all that high I guess, and the dough isn't as coherent as a normal bread flour dough. - Add Dried gluten powder? Is this cheating? How much can I add without ending up with chewing gum loaves ? Help! :-)

Ouch, LOL! Incidents of food poisoning have been reported associated with the consumption of raw or undercooked red kidney beans. My mistake completely, As the meat eater and food fryer I am, I didn't think of the fact that beans are actually cooked before consumption .-) *big big blush* Wow.... As I've understood Beans are one of the major protein sources for vegans/vegetarians. Raw vegan/vegeterian can't possibly be healthy!?

Some people have the same relationships to diet, as some to religion. They just chose forget, or chose ignore the things that they don't like, and make a lot of stuff up to better suit their needs. following a strict Raw diet and taking out the meat sounds a bit dangerous. If she's an expert in human nutrition, and know what she's doing Im sure she'll be okay though. I'm no expert myself, but about 250 grams of kidney beans for exmple, should alone cover the protein need for a medium build female. (0,75 grams per kilo of body mass a rule of thumb for protein intake) It shouldn't be too diffuclt for her to get all the nutrients she needs without boiling or frying meat :-) ... If she knows what she's doing that is...

... I talked to a mexican collegue of mine, and he definitly suggested Chiilli Mayo. They use it on sadnwiches, pizzas and everything over there... I should probably also mince my chillies to a paste after draining them. Hmm... Not bad... 1 Liter of chilli oil, and half a kilo of paste for $8 .-)

I've got some very armoatic Red/Green chilli oil brewing in my kitchen. I made it by chopping up about 500g of red and green chillies into random size chunks, and dropping them into about 1 liter of vegetable oil. It's been swimming around in the oil for 3 days. The oil now has the characteristic "capsicum/red pepper" aroma, with a real evil sting at the end .-) Im not sure how Im going to use 1 liter of super hot chilli oil though Did anyone try to make chilli Aioli/Bernaise/Mayo?

I'll Take a look McDuff; After baking my "24 hour" low yeast/low temp loaves with a great result taste wise, I still can't get that Italian bread from the restaurant last week out of my mind; My last baking session ended up with great bread, Crisp crust, a very "even" crumb, open and a nice taste of wheat. However, I think I need more work on the the crumb. It is still "spongy". By Spongy, I mean that If I press a finger in it, it bounces back in a few seconds, leaving no dent. I think what Im trying to achieve is, a very crips crust, and ver soft interiour. It's a bit hard to explain, but It's like the walls in the network of cells making up the crumb should be softened. Does anyon have any clue on how I can make this happen? Some suggested adding oil or other fats upthread. I'll definitly give that a go. I'd also really like to know how high gluten content vs. low gluten content flour affects the crumb texture. Im also very curious on how the water content affects the result. I might do some experiments myself, but any insight offered will be valued!

CajunGirl ; It looks like I'll need that book -.) What do you all think fo the book "The Italian Baker" (Field) by the way? I feel It's time to draw more inspiration from some new books .-)

CanadianBakin'; I have already tried some recipes using your technique, using 2g yeast to 100g water/100g flour to make a poolish. Then combine this with the rest of the dough, and adding about 8g more yeast. Im not quite sure, but I believe 10g total yeast was enough for a pretty big recipe Among others I've tried is the famous "Kneip" bread :-) If you have any other interesting recipe's im of course interested!

By Hydration levels, I mean the amount of water in your dough. So If your recipe hasn't changed this hasn't changed either. After you shape your loaves, how much time do they get to rise? And how do you rise them? My initial though Is also that 22 hours of initial dough fermentation is a bit "over the top". I havn't heard about any method with more than 4-5 hours of initial rise/bulk fermentation. (That's dan Lepard's white leaven bread that takes 8 hours from dough assembly to bake. Having a fully activated starter, and about 20-30% of all the flour in the starter.) However; Im not sure how this may affect your results.....

How is you oven spring? What is your baking surface? What kind of hydration levels are you using ? Have you had big fluffy loaves until recently, and now something suddenly happened? Using the same process and same ingredients ? Looking at the bottom of your loaf, I see a lot of compressed cells, In my loaves the cells are usually largest at the bottom. This makes me think of a few things ; 1) Over-proofing 2) Heavy loaves? Did you change the weight of your recipe? 3) Do you bake in the top racks of your oven?

Thanks for the tip, I actually startet thinking of the pre mixing without yeast as I wrote my previous post. Do you think anyone would detect a bread made from a 24 hour flour/water mix, in a blind test? Compared to a 2 hour loaf with the same ingredients I mean. I really want to try this on myself .-) I only use Fresh bakers yeast, very cheaep and available in all grocery stores in norway. They're sold in packs of 25g, and keep in the fridge for about a week or two.

Hi Jack; I've been keeping the yeast levels way down and temperatures low. The Idea is to get more flavour development by allowing more time. I've baked yeasted bread, rolls and baguettes, like you describe, in less than 2 hours with fresh yeast earlier. Now I want to find out if there is a difference with a slow vs. quick process when it comes to flavour, texture, presentation (colour of crust) etc.

Other general bread questions that came to mind, is how many times it is possible to knock down a dough, and get a full recovery? I guess this depends on available starch to feed on? If the dough is "over fermented" and the starch gets eaten up by the yeast; How does this affect the texture of the dough, and taste of the loaf ? And... Yeast orgamisms multiply and multiply... Does anyone know the time for a fresh baker's yeast colony to double it's size in different temperatures ? If I start with 7g yeast, and ferment for 24 hours, how much yeast in my final dough? I was now inspired to do a low yeast, long duration baking .-) So I now have a two Durum/Plain white mixed loavesin the fridge. I am Baking it when I get back from work. These two laoves will then get ~ 24 hours total fermentation time. The dough spent the night outside on my balcony overnight, and was starting to deflate when I brought it in for shaping this morning. I guess that's not a good sign? It's summer, and about 15c-20c during the night. I am hoping the fridge will keep the loaves from over proofing for the next 6-7 hours before I get home. I'll post the results .-)

Thanks for the input. If you make yeasted breads the way you describe, the process is much the same as for baking with sourdough, only the kind of yeast is different, and you have no by-products of the process giving a sour taste. As for my good tasting loaf at the restaurant... Fats might have something to do with it yes... It was an italian style white bread with crunchy crust. Do you have any Idea how much oil I would have to use to get a significant effect on crumb texture ? What is Italian Pasta dura ? A Kind of Flour ? Durum Wheat ? I've tried baking with it, but I think Its very low gluten, and (hence) good for pasta making. (??) I remember beeing very enthusiastic about the dough, It was extremely easy to work with.

Having been working with mainly sourdough bread in the past, I have now turned my attention to yeasted bread. As I recently became a father of a little boy, my schedule is a bit crammed I try to apply the same basic techniques as in sorudough with rest/knead cycles (Dan Lepard, hand made loaf) , autolysis, slow fermentation etc. Comments on my experience will are as always welcome! - I use 25g Fresh yeast to 1 kg of flour (Half of suggested recipes) , and use ice cold water to slow down the process. Doing this I'm able to give my loaves 2-3 hours of bulk fermenting, and 1-2 hours of proofing, even longer if I put'em in the fridge. This is enough to get some aroma development I guess. Does this make sense ? (to delay the process to get better aroma?) - I finally found bread flour! (Hurray!) However, Italian bread flour costs about $3/kg. thats x3 "normal" flour, and about the same price as organic. How dows this compare to other countries? 1kg flour will give me about two laoves, making each loaf about $1,5. The economic motivation for baking for my family is starting to vanish... - My lates creation was 600g wheat bread flour 300g sifted rye 100g wholemeal rye 20g salt 660g whater. Honey I know some comercial bakers claim loaves to be "rye" as long as thet have 10% Rye Would you consider this a "Rye" bread? How about my recipe? - Visiting a restaurant last weekend, We got very nice tasting slices of bread with the meal. The crumb had an interesting texture I want to duplicate. It's a bit hard to explain, but I guess that If you put a slice on the table and poke your finger in it; A permanent dent is made, It wouldn't "bounce up". And yes, I tried this in the restaurant .-) The texture was not rustique, but very even, and light. The first thing that came to my mind was weak flour, am I on the right track?

I declare Jason Perlow the winner. This was Carob, AKA / Carob Tree / Locust Bean / St. John's bread. If anyone have dessert recipe's im interested!

I've read through this thread with great interest, beeing a big pizza lover. I'm pretty sure that there is a kind of "manifesto" for making real italian pizza, that says things about max diameter of the crust, banned ingredients (I actually believe that no fat what so ever is allowed in "real" italian pizza dough), ovent types, heat, baking method (no rolling pins allowed) etc etc etc. I didn't see any reference to it in the thread and was unfortunately not able to dig up my reference on short notice. Does anyone else know what Im talking about?

At one of my local grocery stores that are well stocket, I discovered these things in the exotic fruit section. As i would suspect, the guys working in the store had no Idea what this was, even after making phone calls, and consulting his collegues. They were light and hard. I made the store guy open one up. The cane has seeds separated by layers of flaky fibery stuff. The seeds are sweet, and the taste reminded me of dates and tobacco. Can anyone help me with my curiousity?

I hereby conclude that Oxtail is not good for making a beef stock, and that It's too weak to make a soup on its own. I should have guessed really. The centre of the bones look a bit strange, very light in colour, hard, and not filled with marrow like regular bones. Swisskaese: Thanks I'll try it out later!

PCL; Your recipe sounds great, but it requires Veal or beef stock. I though that It was possible to make a meal from just the tail pieces. This is what puzzled me.

I brought home some oxtail the last time I visited my butcher. The tail was cut in 1-2 inch pieces. I was very excited as I usually make my own stock for sauces and soups. Following no recipe in particular (doh!) I browned the tail pieces all over in butter and oil. I then covered with water and added onions, a carrot, bayleaves and a clove or two of garlic. I let it sommer for about 90 minutes. Compared to stocks Im used to getting from other meats and bones, this was very weak. The taste was okay, but I had to reduce to about 1/3 to get the right taste for a soup. That left me with about 3 DL. Barly enough for one person. I imagined that the should have been excellent for stock, did I do something wrong?

Yeasted rolls with whole Spelt grains boiled and soaked in yoghurt overnight. I used the water from the boiling in the dough instead of water. Slashed with a razor and treated with a Eggyolk finish. The image was taken with my phone, and the quality isn't all that. They were incredibly shiny and nice smelling. Yum!

This makes a lot of sense. My process of first mixing in a glass bowl over simmering water, and then mixing by machine, is probably just "bogus". It is fun though; The eggs whisp by hand real well over a simmering kettle of water. It almost feels like making bernaise .-) But, I suspect that end end result would have been just as good mixed entirely in my Kenwood. I think the main goal during this stage of the Genoise cake is to mix very well, to get maximum volume. Does anyone know if it's possible to "overmix" a sugar/egg mix ?

I've baked maybe 6-7 of these over the last week as "practice runs" for a cake for a friend. I've never experiences the thing you describe. I place a glass bowl over a kettle of simmering water, and whisk sugar and eggs by hand intensivly until luke-warm, i then tip it into my Kenwood mixer for full 5 minutes of mixing. So, If you do this by hand; it bet it's good exercise. I also use a rubber spatula for mixing in the flour, using big curcular movements trying not to "beat the air out off" the sugar/eggs. For inclusion of the melted butter, I put a few spoonfulls of the sugar/egg/flour mix into the butter first, and then mix that back into the main batter. I'm not quite sure if the "whisk while heating" technique helps, but since Im a beginner at baking cakes, Im quite supersticious. If something works, Im afraid of not doing it it same way over and over.... If you know what I mean .-) .-) Good luck

Thank you. I'll give you partial credit :-) Thanks for all the advice on glazing and the filling recipe :-)