Anna N

Now you are beginning to show your true colours! That is a meal I could schmooze up to.

You do not let it rise in the bag but you do let it autolyse for 30 minutes. So I would assume that sealing the bag prevents the dough from drying out for this 30 minutes. Also they note that you can use either a chamber vac or a food saver type machine. With the latter you must seal to get a vacuum. They said there was little difference between the two machines in terms of the final product. So the steps are Dissolve the yeast in 95% of the water or if using a preferment dissolve that in the water. Combine with the flour. Mix the two together until you reach the shaggy dough stage. Put into vacuum bag (or if there’s too much into a lightly oiled tub or bowl that will fit into the chamber vac (or use a food saver container) Vacuum using the full power of your machine. Then you autolyse for 30 minutes before removing the dough and continuing with the recipe. Hope this helps.

It is a very recent hybrid. It has been named the Longo Supermarket Red.

Home made bread (from Modernist Bread) toasted in the Cuisinart steam oven (CSO). A Johnsonville brat cooked sous vide (Joule) at 68°C for one hour and finished in the Breville smart oven at 400° for 10 minutes. The egg and tomatoes were cooked in an IKEA nonstick pan on a GE Profile induction range. All served on an IKEA platter. Just couldn’t help myself. Now back to some bread baking.

Well I certainly use a grabber (or my very long barbecue tongs) but I’ve never considered a selfie stick. It is most certainly an idea worth considering.

And I can certainly see that happening. But I’m not buying into it for the two loaves that I found out of balance. I will make them again and if I feel the need to confess I will do so.

Holy cow. Those of us who don’t drive and don’t live close enough to a store to walk there will be equals with everybody else. Perhaps even more equal. It’s easy to spend an hour in the store even if you’re only buying one or two things.

Damn. I can’t get fresh food from Amazon but I put in an order for some bread flour yesterday and it arrived on my doorstep around noon today. I can’t get it any faster than that no matter what I do. And it was so much cheaper than from my grocery service.

The sandwich bread. Really nice. Made an onion sandwich for my dinner with it.

My take on James Beard’s iconic onion sandwich here. No parsley.

Ha ha ha. If I put one of those in my kitchen there’d be no room for me.

I was able to eke out just enough of my bread flour to make these. Amazon arrived with more as I pulled them out of the oven! This time everything went according to plan. The liquid to dry ratios were bang on. I would be patting myself on the back loudly if it were not for one small error… Damn! I forgot to score them. But tomorrow I’m going to do it all over again. I will get this right if it kills me and it might. But I’m having so much fun I will die happy. Hoping to see others joining in this cook off as books begin to arrive. But you’ll find the books are only the beginning of the expense. You’ll be wanting more flour. You’ll be wanting more ingredients. You’ll be wanting bannetons and combi cookers and couches and......................

Cuisinart steam oven.

Danish blue, sharp cheddar, radishes and the star of the show — homemade country style bread from Modernist Bread.

Thank you @blue_dolphin More data to add to our tables.

Congratulations! I have two which I guard with my life! And yes ours came with a bottle of Akvavit around Christmas many years ago!

It is not making my mouth water.

Today I plan on really testing the robustness of the recipes. I am going to attempt the white sandwich bread but I have no whole milk, no osmotolerant yeast and not enough bread flour. But I do have shelfstable skim milk, 35% cream, all purpose flour with a protein content of 13.3% and I will make up for the lack osmotolerant using 30% more instant yeast. What can possibly go wrong?

Here is the crumb from the country style bread. I am quite pleased with it given all my missteps. Almost out of bread flour now! More is on the way. If I’m going to do any baking today then it will have to be all purpose flour supplemented with vital wheat gluten. Edited to add: Finally had a chance to taste this and I think it may become my new favourite bread. I like both the taste and the texture. But it’s early in the game and it may well get overtaken by something I like even more.

Thank you. I am going to weigh my Dutch oven today. This is what I have been using for some of my breadmaking for many years and I can just handle it in terms of its weight. If it’s comparable to the combo cooker then I just might spring for it. I find Lodge cast-iron to be exceptionally heavy compared to that from other manufacturers.

Two small boules. Country style bread using the direct method (just yeast, no preferment). Once again the dough was very challenging and I had to add flour in considerable quantities. I also thought I had everything properly organized to use the pizza stone and a lid. In my case it would’ve been a deep hotel pan. But when it came time to put the bread in the oven I realized that there was no room for the lid because of a shelf in there! Duh! Unwilling to risk life and/or limb to pull out a screaming hot oven shelf and find a place to stash it, I resorted to the non-Modernist trick and tossed a bunch of ice cubes on the floor of the oven to produce some steam. Oven temperatures and times seem to me to be somewhat off which may just have to do with my own. I believe if I had followed the recommendation I would’ve ended up with two lumps of charcoal. YMMV. I think I will have to make many compromises with respect to the recommended cast-iron multi cooker. It only works for one loaf at a time for a start unless one is willing to spring for two. But I also think it is going to be much too heavy for me to handle. I will be looking around for a deeper and larger hotel pan I think. Anxious for everyone to get their books and start cooking.

Sorry I just misunderstood you. Pain de mie Is a white sandwich bread made in a pullman pan. I had to adjust the recipe considerably because it calls for the larger pan and I only had to smaller. I wish your books would arrive so you could enjoy them! No idea how we Canadians got so lucky. Edited to add the other and final recipe that I’ve made and had trouble with is the direct country loaf. Direct means it just uses yeast and not pre-ferment. It has bread flour, dark rye flour, whole wheat flour and some asorbic acid and the one ingredient I didn’t use because I didn’t have it is the diastic malt. Was such a sticky dough that I could not begin to handle it without adding much more flour. My final dough weight was 1180 g.

More than half a cup. And I’m not for a minute suggesting that the recipes are at fault. They’re using a very different flour and probably a very different atmosphere. Don’t think it would be too wise to post recipes. And while I know that ingredient lists cannot usually be copyrighted, I am loath to risk any infringements.

Kimchi conquers all! And I don’t have any.

No not nearly so much with the French lean bread but like you I added flour to helps shape it properly. I am accustomed to working with very wet doughs but the last two recipes have given me something very different than what I’m accustomed to. I dumped the pain de mie out onto the bench and hand kneaded it. Even after adding flour during the mixing stage I was forced to add even more as I kneaded it to make it even reasonably capable of being shaped and handled. I do know that humidity plays a role but I can assure you I am living in a very dry atmosphere given that it is below zero outside and my forced air gas furnace is in full operation. Even I am dehydrated.