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Chris Hennes

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  1. Chris Hennes
    I use instant for everything, and have for many years, but they do talk about the difference in the books (see e.g. page 3•13). It's another case of needing to add a bit more to counter the increased amount of dead yeast cells in the non-instant version. ETA: The conversion table is on page 3•9.
  2. Chris Hennes
    I have that one too. And I just dump out of the banneton onto a peel. Make sure you flour them well!!
  3. Chris Hennes
    You will definitely want the vital wheat gluten and the diastatic malt powder, but you can certainly live without the rest. I like the bannetons for sourdoughs, but I just bump the standard yeast measurements by 25% instead of using osmotolerant yeast (I think that's the number anyway, it's in the book someplace).
  4. Chris Hennes
    I use this 10" model.
  5. Chris Hennes
    @Anna N are you maintaining a separate stiff levain, or did you convert a liquid levain to stiff? I seem to recall reading something in the book about that, but I don't remember how long it takes. Maybe just a single feeding?
  6. Chris Hennes
    Modernist Neapolitan Pizza Modernist in the sense that it has polydextrose and soy lecithin in it, and its hydration has been rebalanced to bake better at home oven temperatures. I followed the instructions for this first one to the T, with the exception that, learning from @Anna N's experience upthread I kept a vigilant eye on it and pulled it out of the oven after five minutes and thirty seconds, when it reached the doneness level that I prefer. This was baked on a 1/4" baking steel whose temperature was 250°C/482°F when I hit it with the IR thermometer. So presumably my oven is running a bit cool at these high temperatures. I'll have to tweak it next time, I guess. Here are the toppings, ready to go: The dough, stretched (yeah, I need some practice there, it's pretty much a uniform thickness throughout, without the thicker regions at the edges): Topped: Baked: The underside: I'm a big fan of pizza with a thin, crispy crust, which this delivered perfectly. My technique leaves something to be desired, but flavor-wise this pizza was excellent. Obviously I left off the basil, which is not in season where I live.
  7. Chris Hennes
    A few things I do when I need mine clean now and can't wait for the dishwasher: Make sure to clean it promptly, dried stuff is impossible to get out Fill the sink with hot, soapy water and vigorously swish it back and forth, then rotate X° and do it again (X depends on the size of the sieve) Use a bristled brush to scrub it Hit it vigorously against the counter to dislodge any extra junk
  8. Chris Hennes
    This is the official FB group.
  9. Chris Hennes
    @Anna N -- that's really interesting. A bread that is better the next day!
  10. Chris Hennes
    I also rinse, pretty thoroughly. My understanding is that once the curing stage is done you've hit the amount of salt you want, so you want to remove the extra so it doesn't become too salty.
  11. Chris Hennes
    Wouldn't that be mostly carbon dioxide?
  12. Chris Hennes
    Yes, you are right - I have no explanation for the Modernist team's report that the bread expands slightly when the seal is released.
  13. Chris Hennes
    When you are canning, in an oven or conventionally, you are not ever creating a true vacuum in the sense of a complete absence of any gas phase. As you heat the air and food in the jar, two things happen: the air expands, and some of it gets displaced by water vapor. This removes most of the oxygen from the jar. When it cools back down a seal forms, blocking the re-entry of that oxygen. The headspace is filled with water vapor and the small amount of air that remains. The pressure inside the jar is less than atmospheric pressure (that's why the lid is pressed down and releases when you open the jar), but it's not a vacuum, because even if you created a vacuum it would be quickly filled with water vapor. The interior environment is not totally oxygen-free, but it's pretty close, which is why you might be concerned with botulism. All that is to say: apparently the bread expands slightly when the jar is opened (the pressure inside was slightly less than 1 atmosphere), but it's not like it explodes. Which would be awesome.
  14. Chris Hennes
    @Anna N -- how much yeast did you use when you made the A+ baguette? I noticed last night when I was writing it up that the Net Contents table on page 4•34 lists the yeast at 0.21 grams (0.03%) whereas the actual recipe specifies ten times that amount, 2.1 grams.
  15. Chris Hennes
    I love that they title that sidebar "How to tell professional bakers from real people" (As a side note, I really do enjoy the humor sprinkled throughout these books, it makes them very readable. A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek, and I'm convinced that the entire page on inflating pizza dough is intended as a joke. And maybe the total inactive time listed for the French lean bread...)
  16. Chris Hennes
    French Lean Bread Shootout A couple of days ago @Anna N posted about the A+ Baguette recipe and commented that she couldn't really discern any corn flavor in it (the recipe calls for twenty grams of corn flour per kilogram of dough, half of which is toasted). For comparison purposes today I made both the standard French Lean Bread and the A+ variation. The A+ has a bit of levain in it in addition to the corn flour, but is otherwise nearly identical to the standard French lean recipe. They both start with an overnight poolish and get six four-folds over the course of about four hours. The two doughs handle quite differently, however, with the A+ variation being quite a bit more slack and a little bit stickier. It ultimately needed to proof a little longer than the standard variant so I baked them one at a time instead of together, which had been the original plan. Both breads are terrific, with a very light, open crumb and a crisp crust that persists well after cooling. I slightly underproofed the standard recipe, resulting in a bit of an unsightly loaf, but overall I think the taste comparison is fair. I agree with Anna that you don't really taste corn per se. But side-by-side there's clearly something extra in the A+ variation. I find that the crust in particular tastes better. It doesn't seem like there was enough levain to really make it taste sour, so I'm not really sure how much of the difference is the corn flour and how much is the levain. Here they are out of the proofer: the original is on the left and the A+ on the right. The standard loaf: ...and the A+: The standard crumb: ...and the A+:
  17. Chris Hennes
    Modernist 100% High Ryes This is a combination levain- and commercial yeast-risen rye bread using the Bob's Red Mill Light Rye flour. The Modernist variation adds 12% vital wheat gluten to their 100% rye recipe, so this is really more like an 88% rye loaf, but you do get the flavor of a basically completely rye loaf with the texture and rise of a wheat loaf (more or less). Here is the loaf after proofing: notice the seam on the top edge of the bread. In many of their rye breads they forego slashing and instead shape the loaf so that the seam ends up on top and forms a natural split line. Here is the freshly-baked loaf: Finally, the crumb shot: This was an interesting experiment here in my household: my wife has long thought she didn't like rye, but we started to suspect that maybe she just didn't like caraway seeds. At nearly 100% rye this bread would tell us pretty definitively whether it was in fact rye she didn't like. Judging by how little of this loaf is left, I'd say it's pretty clear that caraway seeds were indeed the culprit!
  18. Chris Hennes
    @Kerry Beal, What did you do differently between the two?
  19. Chris Hennes
    Speaking of cheating... This is a photo of the Modernist 100% High Rye dough after its one and only fold. The book promised this dough was a strange one, and they weren't kidding. When you first make it it's like a weird gluey clay. I had to knead it by hand after destroying my stand mixer last weekend (note to self: don't make double batches of pretzel dough in a home mixer!) which was quite challenging. However, after resting for 45 minutes the large amount of vital wheat gluten they add to the recipe (cheaters!) was hydrated enough to actually make the dough behave almost kinda sorta like a wheat dough. A really stretch, oddly smooth wheat dough.
  20. Chris Hennes
    They do explain why -- to cheat . As usual the Modernist team doesn't really care if purists complain. They provide many recipes that do not contain commercial yeast, of course, but in their efforts to produce the best possible loaves of bread they experiment with all sorts of techniques, including adding both commercial and natural leavening. To each their own...
  21. Chris Hennes
    Today's projects have kicked off: From left to right: 100% High Rye (Modernist Variant), French lean bread, A+ French lean bread, and Farmer's Bread (Modernist Variant) The High Rye is a 100% rye bread leavened with both a rye levain and commercial yeast. The A+ French bread is similar to the standard French lean but includes a small amount of mature levain as well as a bit of corn flour, half toasted and half untoasted. The Farmer's bread is a rye-flavored wheat bread that includes both a wheat and a rye levain with 80% wheat and 20% dark rye flours (no commercial yeast).
  22. Chris Hennes
    That's the standard I'm using, too.
  23. Chris Hennes
    That just means you need to eat it faster
  24. Chris Hennes
    I think that's OK, I'm not sure if you are really supposed to taste the corn directly, or if it just tweaks the base flavor a bit. The Modernist team is all about perfection, after all, even if that means tiny incremental changes over a baseline. Maybe I'll try to do a side-by-side this weekend. I certainly wouldn't mind having another boule of that basic French lean around to snack on while I'm baking all those ryes.
  25. Chris Hennes
    @Anna N -- have you tasted it yet? I've got the ingredients for that one, but haven't gotten around to making it. I was planning on making this a rye weekend, but maybe I can squeeze in a baguette or three .
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