Raamo

Inside MB we find out MC sold 230k copies (in one spot 225k in another, likely earlier number) That's a crazy amount of money, even if they make only $100 per copy that's 23 million. No wonder they could afford an electron microscope. Here is how I found MB on Saturday, Fedex was nice and placed it on this chair.

I'm 12 hours into my first one - there is a layer of what must be alcohol on mine (yellow liquid) - which means there must be yeast present and feeding. I wasn't expecting anything for over 24 hours so the liquid layer is surprising. Hard to believe T-Day is next week - I have my eyes on the country bread as one of the things I'll make - which requires a Levain... So I hope this works.

So many things in these books require levain.... so I started one - it's cold her so we'll see how well it works, on top of the fridge. I'm going to make some more french lean bread for now while I wait for the wild yeast to do it's thing. I manged to find a number of items on amazon, seems Modernist Pantry needs to get a copy of this book - they had only one thing.

My copy arrived yesterday - This is a crazy weekend for me (aka not much reading time) - but wow just wow at the details in this book. We still have a bit of the artisan bread in 5 mins a day dough in the fridge - that'll get baked up to day and then I'm going to likely go a little nuts. It's nice they have a replacement daily bread I need to order a few things though, I have vital wheat gluten already from the MC noodles. Is there a list of not normally sourced at the local supermarket ingredients most commonly used in this book that one should order to make the modernist versions of different things?

I just wanted to know the other recipe you had issues with - I'll have my books on Monday. I'd never heard of pain de mie but it seems like one I'd want to make myself. No need to post recipes.

Frozen berries are going to contain a lot of water when they are thawed. Better idea would have been to thaw the fruit - dry it off completely and then add it. But even then if you add too much it could throw it off as well. How much fruit did you add?

Grr why don't I have my books yet. It's well below 0C here as well - but we keep the house humidified. We are used to very wet dough since that's one of the keys behind AB in 5 mins a day. Anyway back to the topic - we've found with other high end cookbooks that they sometimes require some adjustment - I was hoping MB would be more precise. But there will be a Corrections and Clarifications page - alas it doesn't seem to be up yet... Are we talking about off by a cup or more - or is this enough to be a factor of flour conditions? I've made plenty of bread in the past where I had to add more flour then it called for. What are the recipes pain de mie and _________?

Hmm the goal is to get the steam out - is there still water in your fry pan when it is time to vent the steam out did some of it actual boil? Goal is to get steam in the oven - and then vent it all out. You won't want to leave the door open as that will affect the temperature. One recommendation I found was to preheat a pan with the oven with the pan empty and then toss in a small amount of water or some ice cubes, this will quickly become steam. It should all boil of quickly since the pot is 470F. The way my steam oven works is there's a spot at the bottom where water is added (from a side tank) and an element is under it - this element heats the water up when steam is desired. When I turned off steam and was only running on convection that water was not longer boiling. And since the oven works by convection the heat is coming from the back and not the top or bottom of the oven. We bake bread nearly daily in our steam oven and have so for 3 years.

This is what I expected a shaggy mass looks like - basically just barely incorporated. Perhaps someone with the books can tell us if they detail what they expect a shaggy mass to be. From http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/breadmaking-101-how-to-mix-and-knead-dough-step-by-step.html Once your flour and water are fully incorporated and there are no dry spots, stop and wait. Your dough should look loose and formless. This is known as the shaggy mass stage. I'm guessing you can't control the speed of the fan in your CSO? My Thermadore Steam oven is the same way - but I didn't blacken the top quite as much, did you happen to check the internal temp of the bread when you pulled it out - might not have had to bake as long. How did you do the proof step? It's listed to be as short as 30 for just that reason. I find if I do it in my steam oven on proof it doesn't take as long.

Did you have the issue with the french lean bread? I also measured in grams and had no issues - the dough was a bit sticky so to help in folding I added small amount of flour to coat - but humidity does play some factor in this I bet. And this is the consistency I'm used to working with for dough from ATK and AB in 5M

Yup that's right - it's not much - but it does the job- this is ~15 hours later: it's not as obvious in the picture but the yeast defiantly had fun!

They should get an auto e-mail saying they got a refund (It's happened to me before). My book hasn't shipped and is expected to ship tomorrow - so I wonder if they are waiting on stock. The price is back up to $455.71... But my order seems to have the $415.35 price locked in.

FWIW the shipping company forgot to put a case of wine on it's truck last week - so I also have wine showing up 5 days late.... Right now just seems to be the time when things go for broke. Hopefully some other folks got the book today!

What was your method of cooking? Basically the vent is to remove steam from the chamber.

We saw the Philips air fryer back when it was brand new at WS - didn't really need more gadgets at home. Now I've read through 9 pages of this thread - the idea of improved tots is pretty cool, but we don't do that that often... Does this actually replace pan frying fish with a coating? And my wife wants to know - can you make donuts in one of these?

Alas LBV is closed - so is there a replacement of this level in the twin cities?

Thanks, I agree with that - I was very sheltered as a child - learned to cook because I'm a picky eater - and eventually found out just how amazing properly cooked and prepared food can be. We're hosting T-Day for the 3rd time now because unlike the rest of my family I know how to cook a turkey so that it's not dried out and (IMO) inedible. Featured will be MC's Turkey Confit and Breast preparation. Now I'm expecting some fun bread out of MC Bread as well. For me the turning point was in college which was in the middle of no where Minnesota - there was a fine dining place 15 mins away - half way to the closet bigger city (40k)- with amazing food. My now wife and I went there a few times, and I learned there was this thing called Fine Dining. That restaurant has long since closed and there's a winery in it's place. But that changed my outlook on food. Without that I wouldn't have found this site later - directly because I got MC@H, then MC, now MB. I have a very modern kitchen - we use pressure cookers and SV all the time. My extended family meanwhile won't cook for me but doesn't seem interested or willing in learning to cook better.

You mean traveling the world and trying different things is doing it wrong? My family are a bunch of Swedes (who came to States in the 1850s) - but this means salt and pepper is the spices used. So I grew up eating very boring bad food. Now we travel around the world and I've discovered things I've never had before and are stupid good. Who knows what will be the next staple in our house... So enlighten me - what is the right way ;-) On topic of MC:Bread - turns out Amazon screwed up and didn't tell me my valid payment wasn't valid in their system (likely because the order is 14 months old) so my MC:Bread hasn't even shipped yet - it's coming next day now - because their system messed up - so I'll have it my Monday at the latest. So Until then I hope contest #2 item shows up today since the last one showed up last week on Thursday.

This 1000x - Change is hard for humans Look at how food has changed even in the last 20 years. As I like to remind folks - you don't know what you don't know and no one knows everything! I have an idea what I like and don't like in food but that's taken decades to figure out and every so often I'm surprised at some new revelation. I don't expect that will stop any time soon.

Maybe we should call it a neo-Neapolitan pizza. We make pizza 1-2 weekends a month - using ATK's recipe for the crust (pretty darn thin crust)- made 2 days in advance. Cook at 550 in our oven on pizza mode (heat from above, below and convection)- with a stone (some day we'll get a steel, but while the stone isn't optimal it does work). I've gotten pretty darn good at shaping the dough / rest to get exactly the right thickness etc. The sauce is our own creation as well - starting with marinara from MC. Topics are simple - Hi quality Sausage or Pepperoni for my side, veg for both sides - and fresh moz w/ a layer of parmesan-reggiano buried deep. It's pretty freaking outstanding pizza - beats the pants off anything we can get in the burbs here in Minnesota. I don't fully understand what makes Neapolitan pizza so special - I just want good pizza. So now that I have MC:Bread showing up soon - can they improve on ATK's dough - science must be done! It seems that our oven working at 550 is not super wide spread - so MC:Bread has a recipe for dough optimized to be cooked at 550 degrees, what will that mean. Will we on longer have to make this 2 days in advance to get the depth of flavor we love? So many questions!!!

This morning I pulled the other ~550g of dough from the fridge, let it warm up for an hour, performed a 4 point fold and let it rest 30 more mins. Proofed it in my steam oven for 30 mins, it passed the test and was increased in size. This time I figured lets try program #26 - white bread - I switched the oven to kg and was able to enter a weight of .55kg. It took 40 mins, though I'm pretty sure the temp at the end was not 450 so it might have had some cooling off time. The internal temp was around 200F so not much different from my 1st attempt. Even the coloring seems similar. Here is the loaf just out of the oven: Here is a picture of the crumb, it still tasted excellent - makes me wonder how many days I could get out of a 2x batch (4-5 loafs) - baking one per day.

I put 1/2 the dough in the fridge overnight - is that going to mess it up? I can warm proof it in the morning.

HOST'S NOTE: This post and those that follow were split off from the pre-release discussion of Modernist Bread. ***** Figured I don't need to dump all this into the contest thread - so I'll post here. My journey to making my first MC loaf. Her's the poolish after >12 hours: Not pictured - water with yeast in it below the bread flour and poolish That went into the mixer and not long later I had a shaggy mass: That rested for a while - then mixed until medium gluten formation - a window pane that was both opaque and translucent (no picture for that slightly messy part) Folded and rested, folded and rested, I think this is 1/2 the mass now ready to rest one final time. Proofed it in the oven - I have a picture of that but it's just foggy window oven Then it went into the oven, here it is at max temp - 450 with steam turned on. Completed loaf: \ And the crumb - this is awesome bread:

First attempt is done, turns out my oven self vents so when it came time to vent there wasn't much steam left, I ended up baking until it was over 190 inside - hit about 200, all in less time then 30 mins total. Likely because I can't control the speed of my fan - all in all it's dark but not burnt so I think it's OK. I'll add a picture of the crumb when I cut into it in a few hours. I took a series of pictures of many of the stages in case others are interested - I posted them in the cooking with MC:Bread thread. I really am now looking forward to the modernist version of this bread. I used a stand mixer rather then attempt this by hand, I actually ended up with 1080g of dough, used about 530g for this and the rest is in the fridge to bake tomorrow. I baked at 450 (the highest my steam oven will go) with steam to start - preheated the steam oven first, after about 15 mins I changed it to 100% convection because I saw the oven itself vent twice but I figured there was enough steam still in the oven (which turns out was not true), I think I'll call Thermadore for some more explanation of how the steam with convection mode actually works. i figure I'm going to learn a lot about my oven over the next few months. I used to be big into bread baking - as a kid I loved baking bread - the past 15+ years I've been more of the savory cook and my wife has been the baker so it was fun to work on a loaf again. Here is a picture of the crumb. I'm eating some slices right now with butter on them - it's more tender then the 5 mins a day stuff I'm really used to, really quite outstanding bread. I'm more into the sourdoughs myself - but this is excellent! Oh and I called Thermadore - they were ZERO help - seems only rich people who don't really cook buy this model or something. Least that's all I can find from google searches - these are really popular in NYC for some reason.

Is there more tables for times of proofing at other temps? Proof time is show as 30 mins-2.5 hours - but the two examples are in the middle of that range. I'm on the proof step right now - and the house is 65F so I'm proofing in the steam oven using proof setting, which doesn't go lower then 95F I'll check it per the "how to know it's done" but in case others run into this.