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

[Kerry Beal]

Chocolate cherry sourdough

 

[teonzo]

On 26/11/2017 at 6:44 PM, Wholemeal Crank said:

Before I go too far down the rabbit hole of canned bread.....wondering about the safety of it.  I've read the sections in volume 3 about pressure cooking loaves, and the section about canned breads, both baked in canning jars and pressure canned in the jars, but there is only one or two sentences about the safety of doing so, which describes how the anaerobic environment in the jar, if it properly vacuum seals during the process, keeps molds from growing. 

 

I don't have the books, but I'm a bit puzzled reading this. If it's made properly then the final jar is not vacuum pulled, they are air-tight closed and pasteurized. Shelf life is longer for this reason. They are not vacuum closed like what happens with a vacuum chamber machine at full force. For example you can put biscotti in a jar, close the cap not tightly so air can escape, put it in a vacuum chamber machine, let it run at maximum, when it's finished you get a tightly closed cap (due to the difference in pressure the cap gets pulled down when the machine let air returns in the chamber) and vacuum (well, almost vacuum) in the jar.

With leavened dough in the jar you still have gas inside the jar, including oxigen. It lasts more because it's air-tight and pasteurized.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Anna N]

22 minutes ago, teonzo said:

 

If a standard brioche is crumbly then usually it's due to overmixing.

This has cocoa (at least I suppose so, I don't have the recipe / books), so it's a normal effect. When you add cocoa to a dough it becomes crumbly. You notice the effect from 2% (baker percentage) and rising, the higher the % the crumblier the final dough.

 

 

 

Teo

 

Thank you. Yes it does have cocoa powder.  It calls for 8.6% Dutch processed cocoa powder. 

[Duvel]

39 minutes ago, Shelby said:

I wonder if frozen cheese would make a difference?

It doesn't ... I've tried 

[teonzo]

16 hours ago, Anna N said:

The directions were clear:

 

to preheat the oven at 500°F for at least an hour — check.

 

to switch the oven to the high broil function five minutes before you plan on placing the pizza in the oven — check

 

to place the baking stone 8 inches from the broiler element — hmmm

 

This presented a problem and it’s one I am sure will face others. Home oven shelves are not infinitely adjustable. I chose a position that most nearly matched the one recommended but in fact my pizza stone is closer to 7 inches than to the recommended 8 inches. 

 

My bake time was exactly 7 minutes. 

 

 I find it very difficult even with my oven light on to see what is happening in there. I have smoked glass oven doors which hide the mess but also make it difficult to see what things are doing in there. 

 

 My next attempt will be with the shelf one step lower — that is a further away from the broiler — in the hope that the crust will have more of an opportunity to bake while the cheese doesn’t get quite so brown. I know some people who put cheese on halfway through the baking but you would lose so much doing that in this situation. 

 

Uhm, most probably I will sound caustic and pedantic, but I'm puzzled by reading this too.

To cook pizza properlyit need to receive the heat mainlt from the bottom. You need to lay it on something really hot and with a high thermal mass, trying to avoid heat from above. Using a thick stone is perfect. Putting it at the middle of the oven not so much, it's better to put it the lower you can. Turning the oven at the broiler setting for the 5 minutes before cooking the pizza, well, far from optimal since it's going the give the opposite effect (more heat from above).

I would strongly suggest to move the stone to the lower position you can achieve (the nearer to the lower oven's heating element the better), totally avoid to turn the oven to the broiler function at any time (best thing would be to use only the lower heating element, just the opposite of the broiler function, but almost zero ovens have this function), check the temperature of the stone before cooking the pizza (you need a "touch" thermometer like Thermapen but that can support temperatures above 200°C, the ones you are using measure the air temperature, not the stone temperature). With such a thick stone it's possible you need to pre-heat the oven for much more than an hour. People get better results with a steel sheet because it reaches the temperature in less time, so it's always hot enough when they use it, with a baking stone 1 hour can still be not enough. Judging from the photo of the bottom of your pizza I would say that almost for sure the stone temperature was well below the desired temperature (the one of the rest of the oven)..

So next time try to put the stone at the bottom of the oven, pre-heat it for more time (I know, it costs more money) and check its temperature.

If you still get burnt cheese, then (just after laying the pizza on the stone and before closing the oven door) place a cold baking sheet on the top position (near the top heating element), this will act as a shield and will retard the cooking of the cheese.

 

Another solution: ask your granddaughter to buy you a Ferrari. A G3 Ferrari.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Anna N]

3 minutes ago, teonzo said:

Another solution: ask your granddaughter to buy you a Ferrari. A G3 Ferrari.

Ha ha!  

[Anna N]

10 minutes ago, teonzo said:

Uhm, most probably I will sound caustic and pedantic, but I'm puzzled by reading this too.

I don’t think you sound caustic and pedantic and you are probably much more knowledge than I especially about baking pizzas. However, I somehow have to believe that their method was well tested and produced satisfactory results. Otherwise I have to dismiss a whole team of very qualified scientist and bakers.

 

I will give the method in the book another couple of turns before I dismiss it completely and attempt your solution. 

 

I do have an infrared thermometer which I’m guessing should tell me the surface temperature of the baking stone. Next time I pre-heat the oven I will use it to see how hot each of those stones get. 

 

 Please understand I am not dismissing your suggestions. I am merely trying to pursue one step at a time. I continue to appreciate your insight. 

Edited November 28, 2017 by Anna N (log)

[teonzo]

5 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Ha ha!  

 

If the price on Amazon.com was the same as on the .it then it would make for a fine joke/suggestion. Unfortunately the price on the .com is almost like a car, so it has no sense for you.

 

Here in Italy it has a great success. It reaches 400°C so you get a much better result than with a home oven. Price is reasonable (82 euro). You spend less money about electricity consumption. It's quite small for what it does. So families who like to eat homemade pizza frequently buy it and are happy.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[teonzo]

7 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I don’t think you sound caustic and pedantic and you are probably much more knowledge than I especially about baking pizzas. However, I somehow have to believe that their method was well tested and produced satisfactory results. Otherwise I have to dismiss a whole team of very qualified scientist and bakers.

 

This is the side I was more concerned about buying this set of books. The Modernist team are not the only ones that studied bread baking, so I need good reasons to part with more than 400 euro. I need infos that I can't find on the dozens of books I already have, I need them to be reliable.

Reading that they wrote that brioche in a jar are under vacuum makes me rise more than an eyebrow, from a scientific team I'm expecting something much more accurate.

Cooking pizza in home ovens is a well studied problem here in Italy. There is a whole online community, a good amount of them have university degrees in physics, chemistry, engineering and so on. Putting the stone at the half of the oven is a no-no. It's something tried and re-tried by hundreds of people.

I'm not happy to write this, because I have a lot of admiration for Myhrvold and even more for Migoya (I really love his previous 3 books), but from what I'm reading here it seems this book set is not what I was hoping it to be.

 

 

19 minutes ago, Anna N said:

I do have an infrared thermometer which I’m guessing should tell me the surface temperature of the baking stone.

 

That's perfect.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 Please understand I am not dismissing your suggestions. I am merely trying to pursue one step at a time. I continue to appreciate your insight. 

 

Don't worry, I'm not forcing anyone to do what I write. We are here to discuss and learn together.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Chris Hennes]

38 minutes ago, teonzo said:

To cook pizza properlyit need to receive the heat mainlt from the bottom.

You need faster heat transfer at the bottom, to be sure, but properly cooking the top typically does require significant radiant heat from above (which you get in a brick oven naturally, but in a normal home oven needs a bit of an assist). I've done the broiler/baking steel method many times with good success. I've also never really been happy with baking stones at normal home oven temperatures, whereas the steel can give very good results... but not without top heating. That said, there's a huge difference between fresh mozzarella and the bricks of "mozzarella" they sell in the stores here in the US, and I find that they need different treatment.

[Anna N]

Ok. Confession time. Mea culpa. 

 

 I read and reread the instructions once again and see where I made my mistake. The instructions I was using were for a home gas oven.  I have an electric oven!

 

The instructions for an electric oven are to preheat at 500°F for one hour then to switch to high broil for five minutes but with the baking stone 4 inches from the broiler (not 8 inches). 

 

 According to the kitchen manual, and I am quoting directly:

 

“Finished Neapolitan pizzas are golden brown with some black blistering on the crust. The cheese should be browning in spots, and the bottom of the pizza should have some spots or leoparding...”

 

 My thought experiments based on this do not at all convince me that it is better than what I have been doing but the only fair thing is to give it a try. 

 

 

 

[Anna N]

As I suspected

 

 

 Burnt crust and toppings 

 

 sorry about the blurry picture but obviously very little leoparding. 

 

And a not very exciting crust. 

 

 The upper pizza stone, the one which was in use, measured 544°F before I slipped the pizza onto it. 

 

 Initially I baked it for seven minutes and decided it was not quite done. In another minute it was quite obviously burned.  But I still wanted to see what would happen if the cheese was dumped on at this point. It obviously survived somewhat better but it barely spent any time in that heat. 

 

 Back to the drawing board. 

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I've been happy enough with pizza cooked on the DeLonghi griddle.  It won't win any pizza contests but it beats what I've been able to achieve in the oven, and with much less mess.  I've been using leftover MB French lean dough.  Pizza was last night's dinner.

 

Meanwhile last night I baked a 0.85 kg boule in the CSO, as specified.  I mixed the dough in my KitchenAid Precise Heat Mixing Bowl, as suggested in the proofing chapter.  The first mistake was the choice of dough hook:  I have three KitchenAid dough hooks for different size mixing bowls.  Odds were one out of three.  I lost.

 

By the time the boule came out of the oven it was after midnight and I knew the boule would take several hours to cool.  Plan B was pizza.

 

For better or for worse I am about to cut into the day-old, 0.85 kg boule to serve with fruit and cheese.  Meanwhile...

 

 

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

 

Not much is wanting in the crumb.  I might have given the crust another five minutes.

 

 

Edit:  the final temperature was 204 degrees.

 

Edited November 29, 2017 by JoNorvelleWalker (log)

[Anna N]

@JoNorvelleWalker

 

Jo—  Nice looking loaf. Was this still the French lean bread?

[teonzo]

20 hours ago, Chris Hennes said:

You need faster heat transfer at the bottom, to be sure, but properly cooking the top typically does require significant radiant heat from above (which you get in a brick oven naturally, but in a normal home oven needs a bit of an assist)

 

You need limited radiant heat from above... there's a reason why wood fired pizza ovens have a high roof, while wood fired bread ovens have a lower roof. You don't need a microscope to notice the difference about results. It just takes few trials to see that cooking a pizza near the broiler is one of the first things to avoid.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Kerry Beal]

Farmer's bread - a rye loaf

[JoNorvelleWalker]

6 hours ago, Anna N said:

@JoNorvelleWalker

 

Jo—  Nice looking loaf. Was this still the French lean bread?

 

Yes, the French lean recipe -- though I added my salt as powder directly after autolysis, not as a slurry following further mixing.

 

[Anna N]

5 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Yes, the French lean recipe -- though I added my salt as powder directly after autolysis, not as a slurry following further mixing.

 

Yep. I do the same. It doesn’t dissolve so it is pointless.  I am sure I read in the book that doing it the way you and I do it works just as well so I’m a bit confused as to the reason for trying to make the slurry. 

[Anna N]

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. 

 

 

 I replaced the stone with an upside down sheet pan. (Desperate times call for desperate measures).  Not much changed.   The crust was still disappointing and there was absolutely no evidence of leoparding.  It seemed as if the crust under the toppings was not fully cooked and the crust around the edge had dried out as much as it had baked. 

 

 This was the last piece of dough from the batch I made. I need to give it a break for a few days before I get completely discouraged. 

 

 

Edited November 29, 2017 by Anna N (log)

[FauxPas]

On 11/26/2017 at 3:45 PM, Chris Hennes said:

With the company holiday potluck coming up I figured the Chocolate Cherry sourdough would be well-received, so I made three more loaves...

 

I loved this video! Thanks for making it, it was great fun to see your process. 

 

That bread sounds really delicious. 

 

@Chris Hennes, can you tell me about your spice rack above your counter - is that something you purchased or made yourself? it looks so capacious. 

Edited November 30, 2017 by FauxPas (log)

[Raamo]

So I made Buns for the second time, and they look a lot better.  More like real buns

 

Tasty of course - still working on my 1lb of beef turned into sloppy joes.  

 

[Anna N]

 

 this is the sandwich bread. This time I remembered all the steps including the egg wash and the slash. How it came to develop eczema I do not know.   There was no cold proofing involved at all. 

 

I do know this. Using USA pans with oil and flour is a very bad idea. You end up with beads of floury oil in the pans. I might try butter next time or revert the way that always worked which is just a piece of parchment in the bottom. 

 

These are the pans I am talking about. I love them.  They are sturdy, they are heavy and they seem to be almost miraculously nonstick without any help. 

[Chris Hennes]

19 minutes ago, Anna N said:

Using USA pans with oil and flour is a very bad idea. You end up with beads of floury oil in the pans. I might try butter next time or revert the way that always worked which is just a piece of parchment in the bottom. 

I just oiled mine with a quick spray from one of those cans. Is this another case where I didn't even notice the instructions to do something different?

[Anna N]

34 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

I just oiled mine with a quick spray from one of those cans. Is this another case where I didn't even notice the instructions to do something different?

 I am quoting now from 3–2 10

 

“Pullman loaf pans should be lightly oiled and then floured before use so that the baked bread releases easily from the mold.”

 

 The pan in the photograph is, I believe, a USA pan.  The instructions that accompany the USA pan that I own suggest the same treatment oil and flour. 

 

 Somewhere in the books, though I can’t find it now, it suggests the same treatment for non-pullman loaf pans.

 

Just doesn’t work for me that is for certain and I do not like the residue  it leaves on the bread after baking.