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

[Anna N]

9 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

My thought was similar - the picture didn't have that shine of the boiled version and all they talked about was baking - it's almost like the whole thing was an afterthought in the book but I recall Nathan saying how impressed he was by the gluten free bagel when he talked at George Brown. 

 You’ll have to scroll a long way down here  but it does seem that gluten-free bagels were an afterthought. 

[Kerry Beal]

15 minutes ago, Anna N said:

 You’ll have to scroll a long way down here  but it does seem that gluten-free bagels were an afterthought. 

Guess the 'patent pending' was serious!

[Kerry Beal]

Gluten free bagels

 

 

 

The dough is solid! 

 

 

 

But wonderfully easy to shape because it's solid!

 

 

 

Not very brown - but to be fair I forgot the sugar so that's probably why. 

 

 

 

 

Didn't think they'd have a crumb because they seemed like solid little blocks - but they did and were described as having potential by the hubby for whom they were made. 

 

 

[underproofed]

On 2/10/2019 at 1:01 AM, Kmanim said:

When Myhrvold was talking about taking pictures of the cut-in-half wok for Modernist Cuisine and how it kept lighting on fire, he said "it only has to look good for 1/1000th of a second!"

 

The problem I had with my crumb was that it seemed tougher than the crumbs I got on other sourdoughs prior to working with Modernist Bread.

 

Your crumbs honestly look very good though, and I'm sure they taste excellent! I think Instagram has spoiled our appetite for open crumbs...

 

What size loaf are you working with? I generally bake 700-800g loaves for batards. I started to move towards it because that seems to be the right size for my banneton, but I have also found that if I go for 1kg, I tend to lose a bit of volume. 

 

 

I've been using 850 g. How do you manage to get your loaves to have that tight volume after baking? Mine tends to spread and become flat. I'd love them to look a bit taller.

[underproofed]

On 2/10/2019 at 1:27 AM, Kmanim said:

I just managed to get Vol. 2 & 3 from my public library (thank you!). Very helpful for informing some assumptions I had made from just Vol. 4. But it has also raised some questions I was hoping someone could help me with. 

 

I capriciously bought some (expensive) calcium ascorbate thinking it would work the same as ascorbic acid as it had vitamin C labelled all over it. Does anyone here know if it should work more-or-less as well as ascorbic acid? I'm not good enough at chemistry and I'm not sure how to conduct an experiment to check that it is doing it's job. I have made their ancient grain bread and daily bread which use it but I had no control, and I'm not sure how pronounced its effect is supposed to be on the dough either. 

 

Does anyone else find the batard preshaping and shaping instructions confusing? I can't even understand their preshaping instructions on 3.154, and the shaping instructions that follow on both pages are also relatively complicated to understand. I seem to end up with a much longer batard than in their pictures.

 

Has anyone managed to make a food processor work for the lean doughs from vol. 4 that are higher than the hydration from the Van Over formula? Every time I've tried mixing another dough formula (including ones that they have food processor instructions for), I've ended up with a batter that stops mixing properly and overheats my Magimix (and rides up the inside of the blade and makes it really annoying to clean). Does anyone have any experience with higher (than Van Over) hydration doughs in the fp?

 

 

 

I did find them confusing at first. But then I watched a few different shaping videos that correspond to the MB descriptions pretty well. For step 2, "Roll the dough away from you, and continue to gently roll it back and forth until it just comes together", I found confusing. But I *think* it's the same technique as seen in this video below, where the instructor tells you to "roll and push."

 

 

[underproofed]

Made another attempt at the MB sourdough and I made some progress. It was obvious from previous attempts that it was underproofed. I realized that I'd been bulk fermenting the dough at far too low of a temp (70 F). I use that temp for bulking baguettes, so I thought I was supposed to use the same temp for levain dough. But I re-read the bulk fermentation section, and saw that it recommends a bulk fermenting temp of 80 F. Doh! Would it be too much to ask the authors of MB to have listed the recommended bulk fermentation temperatures on the master recipe page? I bulk fermented the dough at 80 F for 3 hr 30 m with a total of 4 folds. The dough was quite elastic after that. I'm still hesitant with scoring and my shapes are still not symmetrical but i'm happy. I'm not going to try and make sourdough and baguettes again until I become a lot more organized. I was all over the place. My baguettes really suffered from it although I'm happy with the crumb.

 

 

 

Edited February 12, 2019 by underproofed (log)

[underproofed]

1 hour ago, Kerry Beal said:

Gluten free bagels

 

 

 

The dough is solid! 

 

 

 

But wonderfully easy to shape because it's solid!

 

 

 

Not very brown - but to be fair I forgot the sugar so that's probably why. 

 

 

 

 

Didn't think they'd have a crumb because they seemed like solid little blocks - but they did and were described as having potential by the hubby for whom they were made. 

 

 

 

How'd they taste??? Was it reminiscent of regular bagels despite being gluten free?

[Kerry Beal]

46 minutes ago, underproofed said:

 

How'd they taste??? Was it reminiscent of regular bagels despite being gluten free?

Vaguely - still a bit of masa flavor.

 

 

[Kerry Beal]

 

 

Version 2 - just made two bagels. Added the sugar and more yeast. 

 

Better than version 1

 

 

[Chris Hennes]

Ancient Grain Bread (KM p. 102)

 

The "ancient grain" section of the book contains, as usual, a "Master Recipe", a "Modernist Variation," and a dozen or so specific ingredient combination suggestions. It also contains a basic formula for developing your own. So for my first attempt I made the Master Recipe exactly as written. The basic idea is to blend 60% high-gluten wheat bread flour and add 40% of the "ancient grain" flour(s), plus standard wheat-based liquid levain. Their recipes mostly use blends of three different alternate grains: in this case, Kamut, Emmer and Spelt. As an inclusion the Master recipe has you add sprouted sorghum, and it uses pearl millet as a topping.

 

First things first: it's fantastic. Definitely one of the best breads I've ever had. I found the millet topping a bit too crunchy, and I added too much of it, I think (it goes everywhere when you slice!). But the basic flavor of the bread is superb. I have not been on the ancient grain bandwagon up to this point (I guess the marketing rubs me the wrong way), but at least this particular combination is absolutely worth making. Using high gluten flour I had no trouble getting to a windowpane stage, and the crumb of the bread is every bit as good as my standard sourdough. I'm definitely looking forward to the next few months of baking... I have a lot of different grains to experiment with, and I know I've got at least one winner on my hands.

 

[Kmanim]

On 2/12/2019 at 9:17 PM, underproofed said:

 

 

I've been using 850 g. How do you manage to get your loaves to have that tight volume after baking? Mine tends to spread and become flat. I'd love them to look a bit taller.

Well the weight definitely isn't it. I've actually been having a spreading issue since I've started trying out their shaping methods last week... If I were smart, I'd go back to the way I was doing it before but I'm trying to give their instructions a chance.

 

@Chris Hennes how do you shape your batards? You always seem to have nice tall loaves (like that amazing-looking ancient grain loaf!). 

[Kmanim]

On 2/12/2019 at 9:30 PM, underproofed said:

Made another attempt at the MB sourdough and I made some progress.

Wow both those loaves look amazing - better-looking baguettes than most of the ones I had in Paris over New Year!

[bos]

I love bread 😋

[Chris Hennes]

5 hours ago, Kmanim said:

@Chris Hennes how do you shape your batards? You always seem to have nice tall loaves (like that amazing-looking ancient grain loaf!). 

Depends on how sticky the dough is. The ancient grain bread is quite sticky so I just sort of pull the outside around with my thumbs to pull it taught, rolling it a bit to get the shape right. I am proofing in bannetons, which also helps.

[Chris Hennes]

Ancient Grain Bread: Buckwheat, Corn and Sorghum (KM p. 105)

 

This follows the same basic recipe as the Master Ancient Grain bread. The grains are swapped out, vital wheat gluten is added, and the hydration is tweaked. The inclusions this time around are sprouted buckwheat and freeze-dried corn. Overall I'd say the bread is good but not great, and I don't care for the freeze-dried corn inclusion (it gets gummy). Their photo appears to show a much darker crumb than I ended up with, which is interesting.

 

 

Edited February 24, 2019 by Chris Hennes
Grammar. (log)

[Kerry Beal]

On the right the gluten free brioche.  On the left Shokupan made with modernists gluten free flour mix with added vital wheat gluten. 

 

 

 

 

Waiting for them both to cool to get crumb shots.

[Kerry Beal]

 

Shokupan

 

 

Brioche 

[Chris Hennes]

6 hours ago, Kerry Beal said:

On the right the gluten free brioche.  On the left Shokupan made with modernists gluten free flour mix with added vital wheat gluten. 

Well, they look like bread. How is the texture?

[Chris Hennes]

Ancient Grain Bread: Teff, Einkorn and Millet (KM p. 103)

 

This week's "ancient grain" entry uses predominantly einkorn (25%) with a little teff (5%) and a little millet flour (10%). The inclusion is chia seeds, and the topping is millet (which I went lighter on this time). Overall I didn't get much oven spring, so while the flavor was fine, the texture was a bit on the chewy side. Not a bad bread, but I probably won't rush out to make it again.

 

 

[bos]

22 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

Ancient Grain Bread: Teff, Einkorn and Millet (KM p. 103)

 

This week's "ancient grain" entry uses predominantly einkorn (25%) with a little teff (5%) and a little millet flour (10%). The inclusion is chia seeds, and the topping is millet (which I went lighter on this time). Overall I didn't get much oven spring, so while the flavor was fine, the texture was a bit on the chewy side. Not a bad bread, but I probably won't rush out to make it again.

 

 

Look good

[Kerry Beal]

31 minutes ago, Chris Hennes said:

Well, they look like bread. How is the texture?

Pretty darn good I must say!

 

I'm thinking Bostock with a couple of pieces of the brioche. I sliced both loaves up and put them in the freezer with the pieces divided with deli wrap. That way hubby can make himself a sandwich. 

[John DePaula]

23 hours ago, Chris Hennes said:

Ancient Grain Bread: Teff, Einkorn and Millet (KM p. 103)

 

This week's "ancient grain" entry uses predominantly einkorn (25%) with a little teff (5%) and a little millet flour (10%). The inclusion is chia seeds, and the topping is millet (which I went lighter on this time). Overall I didn't get much oven spring, so while the flavor was fine, the texture was a bit on the chewy side. Not a bad bread, but I probably won't rush out to make it again.

 

 

Well, the LOOK pretty tasty to me!

[Kmanim]

Could someone confirm that the recipe at the bottom of this article is the same from volume 5 for their everything everywhere bagels?

 

https://m.mic.com/articles/amp/185648/food-scientist-nathan-myrhvold-figured-out-how-to-keep-everything-bagel-toppings-from-falling-off

 

For those who have worked with this, how much slurry do you find you need to make for a recipe of bagel dough (1kg/7 bagels)? I need an idea of how much ultra Tex I need to be ordering... 

[Chris Hennes]

@Kmanim I didn't check the exact proportions, but that's the gist of it, anyway. You only need enough to get the bagels dipped, but it can be hard to deal with smaller quantities, so I typically make 1kg batches, as that recipe suggests. I'm sure you could get by with a half batch easily enough, though.

[lindag]

On 2/19/2019 at 6:19 PM, bos said:

I love bread 😋

ME too.  In fact, it’s disturbing just how much I love bread.