The Bread Topic (2016–)

[PatrickT]

25 minutes ago, Ann_T said:

I bet your guest was thrilled with a gluten free bread that looked and tasted wonderful.   I think they are hard to come by.

 

Thanks! I agree with you - definitely hard to come by, but thankfully, she absolutely loved it. She shared the cookbook with me when we last visited their house, so I knew that I wanted to try a recipe from there. There's also one for sourdough boules using a sourdough starter and sponge that I'm going to try next time we get together with them.

 

Your scoring and crust color on that loaf of yours is next level! Love it.

Edited December 30, 2022 by PatrickT (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

This is my humble offering for today. It is a loaf of Amish white bread. I bake bread about twice a week and I am currently trying to come up with a decent baguette. It is still a work in progress. I am working with fermented refrigerated dough instead of sourdough. I can't seem to keep a starter alive if I can even get one going to begin with.

[PatrickT]

2 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

This is my humble offering for today. It is a loaf of Amish white bread.

Anxious to see the pics!

 

4 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I am currently trying to come up with a decent baguette. It is still a work in progress.

@Ann_T is a baguette master. I’m sure she will happily assist you. 😃

 

5 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I can't seem to keep a starter alive if I can even get one going to begin with.

Happy to try to help you with that, if you like. I haven’t built one from scratch in over a year and would be happy to do it along with you. We could compare the process, time frames, temps and how they appear along the way. Might be a fun and interesting experiment! 🧐

[Tropicalsenior]

Oops, forgot to add the picture.

 

This is my latest attempt at a baguette. Taste is right, texture is about right but the crust is like trying to cut through an inner tube.

[PatrickT]

11 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Oops, forgot to add the picture.

Holy wow! Gorgeous! 😍

[Ann_T]

@Tropicalsenior @PatrickT is right.   That is a gorgeous loaf.

 

Do you have the CSO oven?   If so, you might want to bake your baguettes or at least start them on the bread steam setting.

 

If not, try baking your baguettes on a stone in your regular oven, but cover with a roast pan for the first 10 or 15 minutes to get some steam on your crust. 

Also, you might want to check out one of the videos on scoring the baguette.  The slash is angled down the middle rather than across the baguette. 

 

 

I have always had success with Amy Scherber's (Amy's Bread Bakery) starter.  It has never failed me and easy to get started and maintain.

Even if neglected for months.   If you are interested in giving a starter another chance, all you need is organic rye, bottled water.  Once the

starter is established you continue to feed with the same.    Or you can spin off a white.  I feed both at the same time, one with  organic rye

and one with my regular bread flour.   I started my starter over almost 4 years ago. 

https://thibeaultstable.com/2019/02/06/new-sourdough-starter/

 

Today's bake sliced tonight for dinner. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

9 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Oops, forgot to add the picture.

 

This is my latest attempt at a baguette. Taste is right, texture is about right but the crust is like trying to cut through an inner tube.

 

You need steam!  For the baguettes I would suggest an Anova Precision Oven if you can find one where you live.

 

[Tropicalsenior]

I have better luck when I stick to just soft bread. This morning I made some hot dog rolls from this recipe for chili dogs for dinner and made cinnamon rolls with the leftover dough. I got a little heavy on the glaze.

Edited December 31, 2022 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[Ann_T]

5 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

I have better luck when I stick to just soft bread. This morning I made some hot dog rolls from this recipe for chili dogs for dinner and made cinnamon rolls with the leftover dough. I got a little heavy on the glaze.

 

Great looking hot dog buns.   And for me there is no such thing as too much glaze.  Is that a cream cheese glaze?

 

  Decided to make a raisin bread using my regular dough, but sweetened with brown sugar and a little cinnamon.  Dough was made last night using 4 g of yeast in 500g of flour with the stretch and fold method and then left

out on the counter overnight and baked this morning.   

 

I call this loaf an act of love because I hate raisins as much as I hate carrots.   

 

 

But I know that Moe is going to love it. And so will Matt.  It smells wonderful.

[Tropicalsenior]

9 minutes ago, Ann_T said:

Is that a cream cheese glaze

I use the Costa Rican version of sour cream. It's just a little thinner with a little more bite than sour cream up there.

Edited January 1, 2023 by Tropicalsenior (log)

[PatrickT]

Happy New Year, everyone. Wishing all of you health, happiness and great bakes in 2023. 🍞

 

First bake of the New Year, which I made to bring to lunch today with friends. This is Trevor Wilson's Champlain Sourdough. I followed Tom Cucuzza's new process for this bake, which he recently shared on Instagram (he is creating a YouTube video of it later this month):

• Mixed all of the ingredients together and immediately put them into a BF container. Not a single stretch, fold or lamination of any kind.
• Allowed the dough to proof on the counter for 24hrs (avg temp 60F; dough had just about doubled).
• Turned the dough out, pre-shaped it, final shaped it and placed it into a floured banneton.
• Sealed the banneton in a plastic bag and put it in the fridge. CR turned out to be a total of 83.5hrs.
• Removed the loaf from the banneton, scored it, and baked it in a DO at 450F for 25 min covered and 15 min uncovered.

Will share a pic of the crumb later today when I cut it at our friends' house.

 

EDIT: Crumb shot added below. 

 

 

Edited January 2, 2023 by PatrickT
Added crumb shot. (log)

[heidih]

Can someone tell me why the "ear" is a prized feature? TIA

[JoNorvelleWalker]

6 hours ago, heidih said:

Can someone tell me why the "ear" is a prized feature? TIA

 

The baker is like a matador.

 

[heidih]

Ya lost me

[Anna N]

12 minutes ago, heidih said:

Ya lost me

Here.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

18 minutes ago, heidih said:

Ya lost me

 

For a particularly fine performance the maestro is rewarded with an ear.

 

[PatrickT]

On 1/1/2023 at 10:01 AM, heidih said:

Can someone tell me why the "ear" is a prized feature? TIA

I’ll offer you my thoughts, for what they’re worth. I am definitely no expert - I am a lowly home baker and have only been baking sourdough for a little over a year, so take all of that under advisement. 😃

 

Sourdough bakers seem to heavily prize a number of aesthetic qualities in their bakes, including prominent ears, blistered crusts, crunchy crusts, dark mahogany crust colors, visible gluten strands in the crust, tall loaf profiles (high shoulders), pronounced oven spring, an open/irregular crumb (small, medium and large holes across the full width and height of the baked loaf) and a pronounced “tang” that characterizes a sourdough loaf.

 

A few of these things I can reproduce fairly consistently - and I’m glad I can because I enjoy them (ears, crunchy crusts, tall loaf profiles). Some I cannot reproduce at all - and I really wish I could (an open/irregular crumb). Others I don’t even like, so I never bother trying to achieve them (the dark mahogany color, the strong “tang”).

 

At the end of the day, while all of these elements can add to the beauty of the final loaf, they don’t significantly alter the taste - and that is what’s most important to me. I think an ear makes a loaf more beautiful to look at - but I’ve baked a lot of “earless” loaves that have tasted divine. And that suits me just fine.

 

Pantry Mama has a good article about sourdough ears and how to achieve them, which also might interest you. 
 

Hope those thoughts are helpful!

[heidih]

@PatrickT Thanks for your thoughtful response. I grew up with San Francisco stye sourdough and the ear was not a thing. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2019/01/san-franciscos-sourdough-a-bite-of-history

Edited January 3, 2023 by heidih (log)

[PatrickT]

@heidih Great and interesting article - thanks for sharing!

[Kerry Beal]

6 minutes ago, heidih said:

@PatrickT Thanks for your thoughtful response. I grew up with San Francisco stye sourdough and the ear was not a thing. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2019/01/san-franciscos-sourdough-a-bite-of-history

Really?

[DianaB]

Although I have baked bread for a long time I have never before attempted a sourdough loaf without the addition of any yeast.  In recent years I have followed Eric Kayser’s recipes from the Larousse book, these work well but I do want to attempt a loaf minus the small amount of yeast usually added.

 

A new series of Le Meilleur Boulangerie de France has just started providing additional inspiration!  As I write I have flour and water doing their autolyse thing, planning a 70% hydration with French T65 organic bread flour.  
 

i have used the fold technique in the past and it has worked well.  On reflection though, I find it more demanding than letting my stand mixer do the work to get gluten working as suggested by Eric Kayser. Once the dough comes out of the mixer bowl I plan to give it 4 hours in my proofing box at 26c (as recommended by Brod & Taylor who produce the proofing box); then refrigerate overnight.  Tomorrow morning I plan to preshape at room temp then leave 30 minutes, lastly final shaping and back into the proofing box at 26c until it is ready to bake in a preheated “Dutch oven”.

 

Does anyone predict any particular problems with the method planned?  Any hints or tips will be much appreciated.  

[PatrickT]

20 minutes ago, DianaB said:

Does anyone predict any particular problems with the method planned?  Any hints or tips will be much appreciated.

Sounds like fun! 😃 When I use my mixer like this, I always pull a windowpane at the end of mixing. It doesn’t have to be perfect but it should be reasonably good (the dough will continue to develop in BF). 4hrs in the B&T at 26C seems reasonable, but if it were me, I would watch for an increase of 50-75% and use that as my cutoff point for BF. A sourdough loaf I just did this way (all starter - no added yeast) increased to 75% in 14hrs at 17C. I bake straight from the fridge, though, so you might do better with @Ann_T’s process if you’re going to do a room temp proof after your CR. 

[Ann_T]

Today's bake.

Sourdough Kalamata Olive Boules.

Made a biga with discard before leaving for work.

Divided into two batches , one at 500g and one at 600g batch.  The 500g went into the 

fridge and will be baked tomorrow and the 600g was left out on the counter overnight and two boules baked this morning.

 

Edited 

to add crumb shot.

I should have waited until the loaf at fully cooled rather than slicing while warm.  But I wanted a photo before

leaving for work, because I'm pretty sure that the sliced loaf will be long gone before I get home and the other

loaf just went out the door. Matt is taking it to a friend.  

Edited January 6, 2023 by Ann_T (log)

[blue_dolphin]

Eric Kim's Milk Bread with Maple Syrup from his book, Korean American, and also here in the NYT. 

 

 

When comes to bread, I go for rustic, crusty loaves with an open, chewy crumb, not soft, sweet breads with a fine crumb so this is not my jam but after reading Eric's NYT article about it, watching his video and reading a recipe review on the kitchn, I decided to give it a try.  I may have overproofed it a bit and should have shielded the top since my oven uses both the upper and lower heating elements on the bake setting and this loaf really rose up.  The bread is sweet, but not as bad as I was expecting, given it contains a year's worth of maple syrup - there's a full cup in that one loaf!

 

[Tropicalsenior]

Well, I tried baguettes again. My dough had been in the refrigerator for 4 days. I finally decided to take everything I was storing in my big oven out because it reaches a higher temperature than my small one. I put boiling water in a pan on the bottom so that I had a lot of steam. Taste is great and I'm happy with the crumb. The crust is pretty tough. But I think I'm happy with it.