Baking with Myhrvold's "Modernist Bread: The Art and Science"

[JoNorvelleWalker]

16 hours ago, Duvel said:

 

Crumb shot, please …

 

 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Has anyone else tried making the Oreo-filled bread they show on page 2•422? The filling is easy enough, but their photo (which looks great) shows a frosting on the outside of the bread covered with crumbled Oreos. Do you suppose they actually frosted the entire loaf? I'm using the recipe for the Cinnamon Raisin bread as the base, but swapping the fillings.

[Chris Hennes]

On a completely unrelated note RE: maintaining a levain...

 

The Modernist team is pretty adamant about maintaining a regular daily feeding schedule, and they include a host of options for how to keep your levain alive for a few extra days if you have to deviate, etc. Things like adding salt to slow down its activity, etc. I'd like to call "shenanigans" on the whole notion that a levain is as fragile as they suggest. I'm sure from a commercial baking perspective the absolute reliability and consistency of their method is great, but for a home baker it's total overkill.

 

First, I've adapted my normal feeding schedule to a once-per week, refrigerated levain schedule. I only feed on Friday evenings (I typically only bake on the weekends). I simply took a perfectly healthy levain constructed and maintained exactly per the MB instructions and tossed it in the refrigerator. No special modifications. I take it out Friday morning, and in the evening I divide it into a baking portion and a maintenance portion, feed each, and put the maintenance portion back into the fridge.

 

Second, I discovered this summer that if I fail to feed for, say, the entire month of May (I was out of town), I can just feed it as normal when I get back and it works fine. I actually fed it on a Thursday and left it at room temp before feeding again on Friday in anticipation of difficulties. But no difficulties arose. It just "woke up" and was ready to bake on Saturday, and probably would have been ready to go Friday. It probably needed a little extra rising time, and probably tasted a bit different, but for a home baker this is sort of a non-issue.

 

So, at that point it was June. And like 100°F outside. So I just put it in the fridge and ignored it until September. A few weeks ago in the fridge it definitely looked bad: "hooch" on top, smelled not so great, etc. I stirred it up, fed it as usual (25g levain, 100g flour, 100g water) and left it overnight at room temp. At which point is was a happy, healthy levain ready for baking. I frankly don't know what it would actually take to kill it at this point. The bread is still delicious, and now that it's back on its normal weekly feeding schedule it behaves exactly as it used to.

 

Obviously this is all entirely anecdotal, and would require a great deal of time to analyze properly, but in my experience you can be pretty cruel to those poor yeast and lactobacilli and they bounce back just fine.

[Chris Hennes]

Oreo Bread

 

They don’t really have a recipe for this specific bread, but I made it by following their instructions for Cinnamon Raisin bread, and their recipe for Oreo filling. I decided against frosting the entire thing, but I’m not sure that was really the right call. The filling doesn’t really read as Oreos without the frosting component. Still, it looks and tastes pretty good.

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

Nice job on the no air space!

 

[HempOil]

On 10/6/2019 at 4:30 PM, Chris Hennes said:

On a completely unrelated note RE: maintaining a levain...

 

The Modernist team is pretty adamant about maintaining a regular daily feeding schedule, and they include a host of options for how to keep your levain alive for a few extra days if you have to deviate, etc. Things like adding salt to slow down its activity, etc. I'd like to call "shenanigans" on the whole notion that a levain is as fragile as they suggest. I'm sure from a commercial baking perspective the absolute reliability and consistency of their method is great, but for a home baker it's total overkill.

Hi Chris,

 

I agree with you. Here are a few good links I have gathered that challenge the conventional thinking on starter management:

 

https://breadtopia.com/challenging-sourdough-starter-convention/

The Scrapings Method, No Waste, No Discard - Bread Tip 71 - Bake with Jack - YouTube

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/a-smaller-sourdough-starter-recipe

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2018/10/30/maintaining-a-smaller-sourdough-starter

[Chris Hennes]

Chocolate Brioche (KM p. 160)

 

This is a mid-fat-range brioche, clocking in at about 38%, not counting the chocolate chips. Since it calls for a Dutch-processed cocoa powder I used Hershey's Special Dark, which is easily available, and for the chips I used the Guittard 64% baking chips (IMO the best general-purpose chocolate chips out there). Other than the chocolate it's basically a straightforward brioche. The taste was good, but I might try it with the (non-Dutch-processed) Valrhona cocoa powder next time, which is what I normally bake with. That said, it did get rave reviews at work today.

 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Walnut Bread (KM p. 98)

 

This is a minor variation on their Country Style bread, with ingredient ratios tweaked a bit and walnuts added. I particularly liked the very large quantity of toasted bran (scaled at nearly 9%) which gives this bread a ton of flavor. This is an excellent variation, even if you are only so-so on walnuts.

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

While perusing MB for something else I came upon a footnote (2-277) which advised to use 25% more instant yeast than specified if the instant yeast was stored in the freezer (as is mine).

 

Thoughts?

 

[Chris Hennes]

Meh, yeast quantities are always sketchy, and are basically a trade off with rise time. I freeze my yeast, use the quantities specified (with no increase), and just let it rise as long as it needs.

[PositiveMD]

Hello,

 

I was looking to make the french lean bread with the raspberry fluid gel. The recipe that they have uses gellan gum, but they don't specify if it's high acyl or low acyl. Does anyone know which one to use? Or would it not matter in this case? 

 

Based on this link, it looks like I want low-acyl ? https://www.chefsteps.com/activities/fresh-orange-fluid-gel

Edited May 3, 2020 by PositiveMD (log)

[Chris Hennes]

On 5/2/2020 at 10:30 PM, PositiveMD said:

I was looking to make the french lean bread with the raspberry fluid gel. The recipe that they have uses gellan gum, but they don't specify if it's high acyl or low acyl. Does anyone know which one to use? Or would it not matter in this case? 

 

Low-acyl -- HA gellan yields an opaque, and usually brittle, gel.

[Chris Hennes]

Parmesan Sourdough

 

It's been a while since I tried a new recipe from MB! I've made almost all of the other standard-hydration sourdoughs, but I had not yet tried use cheese stock as the liquid. Their sample recipe uses a parmesan cheese stock with chunks of parmesan incorporated into the dough. It smells amazing when it's baking, but the fat from the cheese tightens the crumb up a bit: it's not terrible, but it's not as good a texture as a normal sourdough, in my opinion. The flavor of the finished loaf is overwhelmingly of caramelized (Maillardized?) cheese, so this bread has sort of limited applications. It did make a good grilled cheese, of course! I might try this again without the added chunks of cheese, I don't think they were very beneficial, and they make a sort of ugly finished loaf.

 

[Chris Hennes]

Modernist Brioche (p. 4•222)

 

This is a fairly minor tweak to a standard 50% fat brioche recipe, adding pectin to increase the volume and lecithin to ensure a stable emulsion. It's pretty hard to go wrong with that much butter involved, though I waited too long to take it out of the loaf pan so it collapsed a bit. The taste and texture are perfect. And as you might expect with that much butter, it makes a pretty spectacular grilled cheese sandwich!

 

 

[Mutleyracers]

On 11/7/2017 at 10:11 PM, Raamo said:

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:

 

Hi, this looks great. Thanks for sharing. When you use the steam setting on the oven, how long do you use it for and then what temp just on convection?

 

Thank you 

[Chris Hennes]

Waldviertler Jausenlaiberl (KM p. 225)

 

Spellcheck is not super happy with this bread! It's a yeast-raised rye bread with a large amount of rye levain added for flavor. It also uses a soaker, which for me used a three-day-old sourdough, and includes a pretty large quantity of bread spice (caraway, fennel, anise, and coriander). In addition to the rye, it's also got a pretty large amount of spelt flour, as well as some wheat flour for structure. The quantity of wheat flour is low enough to yield a pretty flat, dense bread, however. I've never had this anywhere, so I can't really compare, but the flavor was quite good, and though it is dense, as long as that's what you are expecting I didn't find it unpleasantly so.

 

[heidih]

6 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

Waldviertler Jausenlaiberl (KM p. 225)

 

Spellcheck is not super happy with this bread! It's a yeast-raised rye bread with a large amount of rye levain added for flavor. It also uses a soaker, which for me used a three-day-old sourdough, and includes a pretty large quantity of bread spice (caraway, fennel, anise, and coriander). In addition to the rye, it's also got a pretty large amount of spelt flour, as well as some wheat flour for structure. The quantity of wheat flour is low enough to yield a pretty flat, dense bread, however. I've never had this anywhere, so I can't really compare, but the flavor was quite good, and though it is dense, as long as that's what you are expecting I didn't find it unpleasantly so.

 

 

 

My understanding of the name is "games keeper lunch bread" So - a sturdy bread one could put in the Rucksack (backpack)

[Mutleyracers]

5 hours ago, Chris Hennes said:

Waldviertler Jausenlaiberl (KM p. 225)

 

Spellcheck is not super happy with this bread! It's a yeast-raised rye bread with a large amount of rye levain added for flavor. It also uses a soaker, which for me used a three-day-old sourdough, and includes a pretty large quantity of bread spice (caraway, fennel, anise, and coriander). In addition to the rye, it's also got a pretty large amount of spelt flour, as well as some wheat flour for structure. The quantity of wheat flour is low enough to yield a pretty flat, dense bread, however. I've never had this anywhere, so I can't really compare, but the flavor was quite good, and though it is dense, as long as that's what you are expecting I didn't find it unpleasantly so.

 

Wow

 

Looks and sounds amazing. I like the crumb. Thanks for sharing

[Al Percival]

7 hours ago, Chris Hennes said:

Waldviertler Jausenlaiberl (KM p. 225)

 

Spellcheck is not super happy with this bread! It's a yeast-raised rye bread with a large amount of rye levain added for flavor. It also uses a soaker, which for me used a three-day-old sourdough, and includes a pretty large quantity of bread spice (caraway, fennel, anise, and coriander). In addition to the rye, it's also got a pretty large amount of spelt flour, as well as some wheat flour for structure. The quantity of wheat flour is low enough to yield a pretty flat, dense bread, however. I've never had this anywhere, so I can't really compare, but the flavor was quite good, and though it is dense, as long as that's what you are expecting I didn't find it unpleasantly so.

 

 

 

Sounds great!    I wonder if adding some VWG would help develop a loaf that could hold its structure more?   I might give this a go but perhaps bake in a loaf tin as it sounds like a good sandwich bread.

[Raamo]

On 6/24/2020 at 1:28 AM, Mutleyracers said:

Hi, this looks great. Thanks for sharing. When you use the steam setting on the oven, how long do you use it for and then what temp just on convection?

 

Thank you 

 

It takes about 40 mins, For last few years I'm using easy cook on the steam oven, I just tell it the weight and it does the rest.  I tried it once manually doing steam / convection times per MB, but that was years ago (And this post).  So I don't recall any specifics.  Easy mode works great!

Edited June 29, 2020 by Raamo (log)

[Chris Hennes]

7 hours ago, Al Percival said:

Sounds great!    I wonder if adding some VWG would help develop a loaf that could hold its structure more?

Yes, for sure. Look at the 100% High-Ryes as an example of this. That dough works almost like an all-wheat dough, there is so much added gluten.

[Chris Hennes]

Hazelnut Pistachio , Cocoa Nib, and Apricot Loaf with Spices (p. 4•427)

This bread is in their section on "brick breads," as a sub-recipe to the Whole Grain bread (where here by "whole grain" they truly mean "left whole" as in, not ground into flour). It actually doesn't have any whole grains in it, but it exists in the same spirit as those breads: just enough flour to hold together a massive quantity of whole ingredients. In this case, nuts (I used pistachios), crushed cocoa nibs, and diced dried apricot. It also has a very large amount of cloves, some cinnamon, and some thyme. I had much more success with this bread than I did with the Vollkornbrot - it's much easier to eat, and you don't need anything special to slice it. In many ways it is reminiscent of a quick bread, though of course it is not one.

 

 

[heidih]

51 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

Hazelnut Pistachio , Cocoa Nib, and Apricot Loaf with Spices (p. 4•427)

This bread is in their section on "brick breads," as a sub-recipe to the Whole Grain bread (where here by "whole grain" they truly mean "left whole" as in, not ground into flour). It actually doesn't have any whole grains in it, but it exists in the same spirit as those breads: just enough flour to hold together a massive quantity of whole ingredients. In this case, nuts (I used pistachios), crushed cocoa nibs, and diced dried apricot. It also has a very large amount of cloves, some cinnamon, and some thyme. I had much more success with this bread than I did with the Vollkornbrot - it's much easier to eat, and you don't need anything special to slice it. In many ways it is reminiscent of a quick bread, though of course it is not one.

 

 

 

Wow quite a an interesting loaf. You may have inspired me to expand my horizons

[Chris Hennes]

Two-Step Sandwich Loaf (p. 4•302)

Sourdough and Whole-Grain Bread with Pistachio, Cocoa Nib, and Apricot

 

One of the reasons I was interested in the brick bread above is because I wanted to experiment with their two-step sandwich loaf. In this bread, you make one conventional high-strength dough, and then treat the brick bread dough as an inclusion (scaled at about 30%). In my case I made a conventional 1kg sourdough, and then added 275g of the pistachio, cocoa nib and apricot dough to it. This gets baked in a loaf pan, as it is ostensibly a "sandwich" loaf, though to be honesty I don't know what sandwich you'd make with it. I thought it made pretty good toast, though.

 

[Mutleyracers]

15 hours ago, heidih said:

Wow quite a an interesting loaf. You may have inspired me to expand my horizons

Wow, sounds amazing. It looks like a terrine.