Zoe Francois

By all means use the "old" dough in your next recipe. It will be great in the rye dough. Just dump the next batch right over the dough and mix it all together! It will jump start the flavor in your fresh batch. Zoe

Hi Kouign, I'll be interested to see what you think in a couple of days. If the bread continues to be dense, after the dough has sat for a few days then I would suspect that the dough is too dry? Keep me posted. Zoe

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Hi Kerry, I'm glad you have tried the method and I'm sure with a little tweaking you can fix the crumb issue that you had in your first loaf. If the dough was dry, over handled or baked within the first 24 hours it will effect the crumb. you want to make sure that the dough is slack enough or it will fail to give you any nice holes in the bread and it won't store for as long. If the dough was dry enough that you could handle it without a good coating of flour on your hands and on the dough, I suspect you are correct and the hydration was too low. Lastly if you mixed the dough up and baked it off in the first 24 hours the crumb will be much tighter than in will be after a few days of storage. It gets better with age, as long as the dough is wet enough. The high protein flour will work beautifully in the rye recipe, as long as it is wet enough. The higher protein flour absorbs much more liquid so you'll have to add more water to the recipe. You can add up to a cup of the altus to the dough as well, this will help to compensate for the high protein flour. You don't want to do much more than a cup because it has no gluten and will start to make the dough leaden when baked. Please keep me posted! Thanks, Zoe F

Hi Anna, Great minds think alike, I made these same exact breads for a dinner I went to last night. I was having dinner with Suvir Saran, one of my mentors in the food world and a friend. He had tried baking the bread but had mixed reviews. We later came to realize that he was using a very soft flour he had brought back from England. Not nearly enough protein. Suvir tried the two breads (master and caraway rye) I had baked for him and he was thrilled. We then baked a boule and some naan together and I think he is a convert!!!! Thanks for sharing these pictures with us! Yes, I do have a dorm fridge for dough in my basement! Zoe F

Hi Marc, Oh, this too is very encouraging! You've got me back in the kitchen tonight with my banneton. Have I mentioned how much fun this is!!! Thank you! Zoe F

WOW! Thank you so much Pat! I hope you have an easier day today! I'll pass all of that on to Jeff. We really had a lot of fun writing the book and testing all the recipes so it is wonderful to hear that you are enjoying it! I'll look forward to more feedback as you start baking more breads. Zoe F

Hi. I'm so glad we can start talking about the sweet breads. I'm a pastry chef by training and so the desserts in the book were my real passion! Try the brioche. For those of you who have made brioche before this method is quite different! Perhaps you could try hydrating the cherries before adding them to the dough. Soak them in some port or just water to plump them. This, of course, will take some of the chewiness away. If you want to add water to the dough instead, then I would just start with a few extra tablespoons. I don't think the dried fruit will absorb too much of the dough's moisture. Thanks, the bread sounds great! I'd love to see a picture if you bake another batch! Zoe F

Hi Deb, People have suggested that we include a gym membership with the book! I say, just make small loaves. I look forward to your feedback! Zoe F

Hi Zoe, Thanks for trying the bread. I know it is hard to go back to AP when you're used to the finer things in life. Do tell how it goes! If you follow Anna's lead you should be just fine! Thanks, Zoe F

Funny you should say that as it's exactly the last thought I remember before I fell asleep last night! ← Good luck with the banneton, I've had mixed success with it but in general I find the dough a little too wet to make a lasting impression on the bread. But, I've learned not to discourage people from trying things with this dough, they often make discoveries I wouldn't have! Let me know how it goes! Zoe

I shaped the loaf before I went to bed, put it on cornmeal and wrpped it loosely: The next morning I preheated the oven to 450 with a stone on the middle rack. The dough had spread out but had not risen at all, as is the case with this dough. Didn't look great at this point! But I slashed it, put it in the oven and crossed my fingers! The crust was amazing! But how about the crumb? Honestly I was expecting it to be a bit dense having only a cold rise and no time on the counter before hitting the oven. It was fantastic!!! I jumped up and down, then ran for the butter! Hey Marc, thanks for the inspiration. This was so much fun!!!! and tasty! Zoe

Hi Anna, I hate to even say it, because your loaf is near perfection, but you can play with the hydration level if it is too hard to handle, shape or slash. But, I thought it looked great and if the flavor is there than keep on doing what your doing! Zoe

Hi Anna, This looks amazing! Lovely crust and the crumb looks fantastic as well! Thanks for all the pictures. I look forward to what you think of the bread after a few days. The dough looked incredibly wet, but it doesn't seem as though you had any trouble handling it? Keep us posted. Zoe

Hi Marc, Great question! I do believe you will have the same good luck with our dough. In fact I wonder if this won't solve many of the problems of over handling while shaping, because it will have such a nice long cool rise. Very interesting indeed! If I understand correctly you also were wondering about leaving the dough out all night at room temperature? It is worth a try, but I suspect that it will over proof and will have no oven spring? I've never tried this so it would be a good experiment. As soon as I leave this computer I'm going to shape a loaf and then set it to rise in the refrigerator. I'll report tomorrow what I come up with. Thanks for the inspiration! Zoe

Hi. Thanks for trying the bread and sharing it with so many people! The reason we put the honey and oil in the whole wheat recipes is to tenderize the bread. We were finding that a bread with straight whole wheat was a bit dry and if we added an amount of fat and/or sweetener it helped the texture. Having said that I have made the bread with White Whole Wheat Flour from KA with great results. It is both lighter in flavor and color and seems to not dry out quite as much. I increase the hydration to about 83% when I do this bread. The other thing to play with are soaked grains that will add some moisture to the bread. I'm testing some doughs right now. Let me know how it goes. Hope this answered your question? Zoe

Hi Anna, Keep me posted on the bread. I have pictures of my bucket of dough on my website if you think that will be helpful to compare. The visual is a good way to go, too bad you can't smell the bucket as well! I had meant to document the dough for the full 14 days but then I ended up with 7 boys at my house last night and had to feed them, so I made pizza with that dough. I'll have to start over. Do try the rye next time, but don't replace much more than a 1/2 cup. Rye has no gluten to speak of and it will become paste if the ratio of white flour isn't high enough. Thanks, Zoe ps I have to figure out how to get your quotes in the box?? It seems not to work every other time!

Hi Pam, When you go to make the pizza try to get it nice and thin and bake it at 550 degrees, putting your pizza stone on the bottom rack. If the stone is on the bottom the crust will get nice and crisp and the toppings will not burn! Enjoy! Zoe

Hi Anna, Thanks for the welcome! I'm so happy to get a chance to talk bread with people that are passionate about food! If your loaves are 1 pound and your room is 68-70 degrees than 40 minutes should be enough time to get a decent loaf. Having said that, it certainly won't hurt to let it rest for an hour. We came up with 40 minutes as the minimum rest time in order to stress to people that they didn't have to wait all day to bake a loaf of bread. One thing to think about is the actual size of a 1 pound loaf, it is really pretty small! So, if your loaf is any larger than that than you need to increase the rest time. One other tip is to replace 1 cup of the all-purpose with rye flour. For some reason we find that this not only makes a more interesting taste but it really seems to improve the crumb of the bread. And it makes the bread last longer once it is baked. You can replace the all-purpose flour with bread flour but your hydration will go up to as much as 83% depending on the flour. From what I have been hearing from bakers in Canada the flour tends to be harder and contain more protein? I need to research this a bit more. If it is true than you may need to add more water still??? Let me know if this helps! Zoe

Hi. The crumb of your bread looks a little tight, this is probably no news to you! A couple of things I think may be at play. It may be fresh dough? But, I don't think that is it. I think your dough is too dry. If you are one to weigh your ingredients this is how we break it down: Our 1 cup measure is equal to 5 oz of unbleached all-purpose flour or 2# for the master recipe. If you are used to weighing, which I would imagine most of you are, I'd try this and see if the dough seems wetter. The dough should be so wet that it conforms to the container it is in. Use plenty of flour when forming it into a boule. The flour is only to keep your hands from sticking, it is not to incorporate into the dough. Be gentle with the dough, do not work it much other than to form the boule. It is better to have a misshapen boule than to have the perfect shape with an overly tight crumb. If you are used to traditional bread baking this will take a few tries in order to feel comfortable with it. Less is better! Keep that gas in tact so you will get the nice holes in your dough. This will be more pronounced as the dough ages. The type of yeast that you use should not have a large enough effect to notice a difference. In other words we used instant and regular yeast and because of the long storage the result was the same. Salt is another story all together. Go with your palate on this one. We tested all the recipes with Morton's kosher salt. I've had as many people complain about it being too salty as I have of them saying it isn't salty enough. This is an individual taste issue. Although salt is often added to denature or relax the dough we find that after the dough has retarded for a few days the salt doesn't play a significant role. So just add what tastes good! Also let the crust really get a deep brown. Ignore the times we give for baking. This will depend on your oven and it is safer to go by color! Keep me posted! Thanks, Zoe

Hi Randi. Thank you for starting this discussion and inviting me to join in. I read through the emials and have tried to address many of the questions that I saw. If I've missed anything please let me know! I think most of you are using a recipe that was printed in a newspaper article and I'm not sure how well they stressed to handle the dough as little as possible. The trick to getting a really nice crumb with this method is three fold. Well there is probably more but this is a good start: One, let the dough store for at least 2 days to really let it ferment. It improves the taste considerably and the crumb. If you bake it on the first day you will have a mild flavor and a tight crumb. Two, handle the dough as little as possible. We say to shape it for 30-60 seconds but that is even too long. It should be about 20 seconds. Experienced bakers have a tendency to want to knead. This knocks out all of the gas that has built up during the storing and will make the dough dense. So less is more in this case. Three, the hydration level of our dough, although we avoid terms like that in the book, is about 75% if you are using average unbleached all-purpose flour. If you switch to KA all-purpose the protein level is much higher and you will want to increase the hydration to 81%. This means you will be adding about 1/4 more water to the dough. It should be wet and sticky, unlike traditional doughs. If it is too dry the crumb will be dense and it won't store for as long. This is also true of WW flours that you add to the dough. If you replace some of the AP for WW then increase the hydration. WW absorbs way more water and will make for a dry dough. The crust: We say to bake the bread in the middle of the oven on a baking stone preheated to 450 degrees (flat heat). Throw a cup of hot water on a broiler tray that is on the bottom rack and shut the door. I read your debate about water vs ice cubes and I have to say that as long as you are doing it in the beginning of the baking process we haven't found much of a difference. I personally prefer the results of the water over the ice, but do what you like best! Someone mentioned using less yeast. You can do this but just remember that you have to increase all of the resting times significantly. The resting times in the book are based on a 1 pound loaf which is really pretty small. If your loaf is any bigger than that then you need to allow more resting time on the peel before it goes in the oven. This is also true if your kitchen is particularly cool and the dough isn't warming up quickly enough. We say that the dough can rest for as little as 40 minutes for a 1 pound boule of the master recipe. It certainly won't hurt it to rest for up to an hour, longer for a cool kitchen. I'm sure I missed some things you have been discussing. I'd love to hear from you and answer any questions I can. Thanks again for trying the bread! The pictures you have posted are fantastic. It is so much fun to see how people are using the recipes. Thanks, Zoe Francois For those of you who are using the book please check out the errata sheet at our websites: www.zoebakes.com and www.artisanbreadinfive.com