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

[Anna N]

22 minutes ago, Smithy said:

The few sourdough recipes I've seen discussed have included commercial yeast.  Do they explain why?  I thought that was considered cheating. 

The team do not apparently consider it cheating but the amount that they use and the reasons make it fairly clear that it is just another way to reach a similar result. For instance they suggest that if you have some doubts about the strength and maturity of your levain then adding a minute amount of commercial yeast will get you to a decent loaf of bread.  I guess if you were a purist then you would not do this. Their levains, for the most part, are made without any commercial yeast.  I am sure they will be taken to task by some people for their attitude. I won’t be one of those people. 

[Chris Hennes]

27 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Do they explain why?  I thought that was considered cheating.

They do explain why -- to cheat  . As usual the Modernist team doesn't really care if purists complain. They provide many recipes that do not contain commercial yeast, of course, but in their efforts to produce the best possible loaves of bread they experiment with all sorts of techniques, including adding both commercial and natural leavening. To each their own...

[Chris Hennes]

Speaking of cheating...

 

 

This is a photo of the Modernist 100% High Rye dough after its one and only fold. The book promised this dough was a strange one, and they weren't kidding. When you first make it it's like a weird gluey clay. I had to knead it by hand after destroying my stand mixer last weekend (note to self: don't make double batches of pretzel dough in a home mixer!) which was quite challenging. However, after resting for 45 minutes the large amount of vital wheat gluten they add to the recipe (cheaters!) was hydrated enough to actually make the dough behave almost kinda sorta like a wheat dough. A really stretch, oddly smooth wheat dough. 

[Kerry Beal]

Couple of boules of lean french bread at work today in CSO

 

 

 

 

[Anna N]

 

Four tiny (125 g) ciabattas. This is a direct dough using only commercial yeast.  It is 76% hydration.  Apparently my geometry is not one iota better than my math.  These were supposed to be either square or rectangular. But round is such a lovely shape even if it’s a little wonky here and there. 

[Chris Hennes]

@Kerry Beal, What did you do differently between the two?

Edited December 2, 2017 by Chris Hennes (log)

[Anna N]

  I was assuming Chris was talking to me but now I wonder if he was talking to Kerry.

 Not much. One pair stayed in the oven a bit longer than the other. One obviously proofed a little longer than the other. The ones on the cooling rack over the brownish background were baked first. 

Edited December 2, 2017 by Anna N
To try and determine who Chris was talking to (log)

[Kerry Beal]

1 hour ago, Chris Hennes said:

@Kerry Beal, What did you do differently between the two?

 

Basically just time and slashing technique - mind you I might have increased the temp to 450 on the second loaf from the 425 on the first 

 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Modernist 100% High Ryes

This is a combination levain- and commercial yeast-risen rye bread using the Bob's Red Mill Light Rye flour. The Modernist variation adds 12% vital wheat gluten to their 100% rye recipe, so this is really more like an 88% rye loaf, but you do get the flavor of a basically completely rye loaf with the texture and rise of a wheat loaf (more or less). 

 

Here is the loaf after proofing: notice the seam on the top edge of the bread. In many of their rye breads they forego slashing and instead shape the loaf so that the seam ends up on top and forms a natural split line.

 

Here is the freshly-baked loaf:

 

Finally, the crumb shot:

 

This was an interesting experiment here in my household: my wife has long thought she didn't like rye, but we started to suspect that maybe she just didn't like caraway seeds. At nearly 100% rye this bread would tell us pretty definitively whether it was in fact rye she didn't like. Judging by how little of this loaf is left, I'd say it's pretty clear that caraway seeds were indeed the culprit!

[Chris Hennes]

French Lean Bread Shootout

A couple of days ago @Anna N posted about the A+ Baguette recipe and commented that she couldn't really discern any corn flavor in it (the recipe calls for twenty grams of corn flour per kilogram of dough, half of which is toasted). For comparison purposes today I made both the standard French Lean Bread and the A+ variation. The A+ has a bit of levain in it in addition to the corn flour, but is otherwise nearly identical to the standard French lean recipe. They both start with an overnight poolish and get six four-folds over the course of about four hours. The two doughs handle quite differently, however, with the A+ variation being quite a bit more slack and a little bit stickier. It ultimately needed to proof a little longer than the standard variant so I baked them one at a time instead of together, which had been the original plan.

 

Both breads are terrific, with a very light, open crumb and a crisp crust that persists well after cooling. I slightly underproofed the standard recipe, resulting in a bit of an unsightly loaf, but overall I think the taste comparison is fair. I agree with Anna that you don't really taste corn per se. But side-by-side there's clearly something extra in the A+ variation. I find that the crust in particular tastes better. It doesn't seem like there was enough levain to really make it taste sour, so I'm not really sure how much of the difference is the corn flour and how much is the levain. 

 

Here they are out of the proofer: the original is on the left and the A+ on the right.

 

The standard loaf:

 

...and the A+:

 

The standard crumb:

 

...and the A+:

[JoNorvelleWalker]

My last two batches of French lean dough have been mixed and proofed in the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl, because I didn't want to make a huge batch of dough.  Unfortunately the dough does not mix as well as in my bigger kitchenAid bowls.  Or at least it seems so to me.

 

I'm thinking it is function of the mixing hook.

 

 

 

I have three KitchenAid dough hooks.  The one on the left is for the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl.  The one on the right is for my circa 1985 bowl lift mixer.  Center is the dough hook for my newest KitchenAid that is a few years old.

 

Note that the hooks on the left and right are basically two dimensional, almost flat, whereas the center hook is actually a spiral.  I can't find a discussion of this in MB, but I'm convinced the geometry of the dough hook has an effect on mixing.

 

Thoughts?

 

If it helps, one picture of a dough hook in the book looks just like my dough hook in the middle.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Tonight's French lean boule was overproofed.  The rise was risible:

 

 

 

OK, I exaggerate only slightly.  The problem was the dough was almost at proof when I noticed I had not preheated the CSO with the Lodge pan inside.  Oops.  850 gm boule mixed in the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl and baked in said CSO.  The Lodge pan worked well.

 

This time I went for 32 minutes of 450 deg F. steam bake, two minutes more than previously.  Internal temperature was 208, up from 204 last time.  After a mai tai I was sorely tempted to throw the boule in the chamber vacuum sealer to cool down.  Sadly I don't have the courage of my convictions.

 

But now it's been three hours, and cool or not here I come!  Don't expect a crumb shot.  Maybe tomorrow.

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Very well...

 

 

 

Yes, the crumb was not as pretty as one would have liked but the taste was nothing lacking.

 

[teonzo]

2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Note that the hooks on the left and right are basically two dimensional, almost flat, whereas the center hook is actually a spiral.  I can't find a discussion of this in MB, but I'm convinced the geometry of the dough hook has an effect on mixing.

 

Thoughts?

 

The hook shape definetely affect the mixing results. Wide hooks (the ones with the bigger distance from the rotation axis) give the worse results, since the dough almost always sticks to the hook. If the dough sticks to the hook then the gluten development is not optimal, the dough is beaten continuously, not stretched and compacted alternately, this way the dough parts that are in contact with the hook get few / null gluten development. To try to avoid this you need a hook with a narrow and circular spiral, like the one at the center of your photo (as you correctly pointed out). Kenwood makes a dough hook that's more akin to a bar than a hook, of the ones I tried that's the one where the sticking effect was more limited (but still present).

Overall a planetary mixer is far from being the best choice for bread dough mixing. It's the best compromise for home users, since spiral mixers and other kinds of machines are much more expensive and can make only that job. But it's still a compromise: you will never be able to get the correct strech-compact movement.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

After a mai tai I was sorely tempted to throw the boule in the chamber vacuum sealer to cool down.  Sadly I don't have the courage of my convictions.

 

You needed to drink another mai tai. When in doubt this is the solution.

 

 

 

Teo

 

[Kerry Beal]

5 hours ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Tonight's French lean boule was overproofed.  The rise was risible:

 

 

 

OK, I exaggerate only slightly.  The problem was the dough was almost at proof when I noticed I had not preheated the CSO with the Lodge pan inside.  Oops.  850 gm boule mixed in the Precise Heat Mixing Bowl and baked in said CSO.  The Lodge pan worked well.

 

This time I went for 32 minutes of 450 deg F. steam bake, two minutes more than previously.  Internal temperature was 208, up from 204 last time.  After a mai tai I was sorely tempted to throw the boule in the chamber vacuum sealer to cool down.  Sadly I don't have the courage of my convictions.

 

But now it's been three hours, and cool or not here I come!  Don't expect a crumb shot.  Maybe tomorrow.

 

Is using the chamber vac to cool bread discussed in MB?

[Anna N]

11 minutes ago, Kerry Beal said:

Is using the chamber vac to cool bread discussed in MB?

 Yes it is. Volume 3 - 401. 

“Vacuum cooling saves a lot of time. We monitored the temperature inside 500 g/18 oz bâtards and found that they took up to 3 hours to cool to room temperature when left on a rack. Loaves of that size put in a vacuum chamber are cool and ready to slice in just 3 minutes.”

 

 They discuss this further and note some disadvantages of this method of cooling. 

Decreased water content. 

It removes some of the volatile aromatic compounds from the crust  thus affecting flavour. 

 

 They go into details of how to use the chamber vacuum sealer without using a bag. They make use of a desiccant Sprinkled onto a sheet pan, covered with several layers of cheese cloth and the bread is then put on a rack above the cheesecloth.  For a 500 g loaf they pulled a vacuum at maximum for two minutes to cool the loaf to room temperature. 

 

Edited December 3, 2017 by Anna N (log)

[Kerry Beal]

1 minute ago, Anna N said:

 Yes it is. Volume 3 - 401. 

“Vacuum cooling saves a lot of time. We monitored the temperature inside 500 g/18 oz bâtards and found that they took up to 3 hours to cool to room temperature when left on a rack. Loaves of that size put in a vacuum chamber are cool and ready to slice in just 3 minutes.”

 

 They discuss this further and note some disadvantages of this method of cooling. 

Decreased water content. 

It removes some of the volatile aromatic compounds from the crust  thus affecting flavour. 

 

Interesting - so it comes down to how important it is to you to wait until your bread is cool before cutting it. I think one of the two loaves I made yesterday was cool because I baked it in the afternoon and waiting until shift change to bring it out. Other than that - pretty much every loaf has been cut into warm. 

[Anna N]

1 minute ago, Kerry Beal said:

Interesting - so it comes down to how important it is to you to wait until your bread is cool before cutting it. I think one of the two loaves I made yesterday was cool because I baked it in the afternoon and waiting until shift change to bring it out. Other than that - pretty much every loaf has been cut into warm. 

 One of the things the team allows is that despite its disadvantages few can resist a warm-from-the-oven slice of bread.   

[Kerry Beal]

15 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 One of the things the team allows is that despite its disadvantages few can resist a warm-from-the-oven slice of bread.   

Nathan did mention that part of the poundage he gained during the work on the book was warm bread related.

[chefmd]

Pain rustique 4-36.  Glorious outcome with very little effort.  Cut into while still warmish.  Now I will be brave and try to start the levain.

Edited December 3, 2017 by chefmd (log)

[KennethT]

I know it's OT, but the produce industry uses vacuum to chill lettuce in large quantities.  Large packers use a walk-in vacuum chamber where a pallet of lettuce can be cooled from field temp to 40degF in about a half hour, which is much faster than can be done with refrigeration, resulting in a longer shelf life.

[Chris Hennes]

5 hours ago, Anna N said:

One of the things the team allows is that despite its disadvantages few can resist a warm-from-the-oven slice of bread.

I love that they title that sidebar "How to tell professional bakers from real people" 

 

(As a side note, I really do enjoy the humor sprinkled throughout these books, it makes them very readable. A lot of it is tongue-in-cheek, and I'm convinced that the entire page on inflating pizza dough is intended as a joke. And maybe the total inactive time listed for the French lean bread...)

[Chris Hennes]

@Anna N -- how much yeast did you use when you made the A+ baguette? I noticed last night when I was writing it up that the Net Contents table on page 4•34 lists the yeast at 0.21 grams (0.03%) whereas the actual recipe specifies ten times that amount, 2.1 grams.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

6 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

Is using the chamber vac to cool bread discussed in MB?

 

Yes...someplace.

 

[Anna N]

55 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

@Anna N -- how much yeast did you use when you made the A+ baguette? I noticed last night when I was writing it up that the Net Contents table on page 4•34 lists the yeast at 0.21 grams (0.03%) whereas the actual recipe specifies ten times that amount, 2.1 grams.

2.1 grams. (thank heavens for notebooks).   But because I wanted to do them in less time than the 12 hours,  I used .75 g of yeast in the poolish.  I never noticed any discrepancy until you pointed it out.