Feedback on new 'low entry barrier' bread kit

[pastrygirl]

52 minutes ago, chromedome said:

LOL Have you ever seen the movie "The Accidental Tourist," with William Hurt and Geena Davis? He's a very uptight travel writer (who actually hates travelling) and she's the free-spirited dog groomer who inexplicably falls in love with him.

 

In one scene she's helping his equally buttoned-up siblings (Kathleen Turner and David Ogden Stiers) put away the groceries, and is confounded to learn that they organize the dry goods alphabetically. She holds up a box of macaroni and asks them if it goes under P for Pasta or M for Macaroni, and is greeted by an uncomfortable and incredulous few moments of silence before Kathleen Turner says pointedly that it's E, for Elbow macaroni.

 

Ha, I'll have to watch that again.  I'd say P for pasta, macaroni goes between the linguine and the orecchiette

[IndyRob]

31 minutes ago, pastrygirl said:

 

Ha, I'll have to watch that again.  I'd say P for pasta, macaroni goes between the linguine and the orecchiette

Elbows next to ears?  Hmmm.

[trfl]

Thanks everyone who pitched in with helpful comments and feedback.

We are happy to announce that the LoafNest Kickstarter campaign is now live.

You can see it on this link.

Please back us and help to spread the word to your contacts and social media.

Thanks again!

[kirk9000]

Interesting idea.  Personally I would be interested in just buying the liner to fit in a standard dutch oven rather than adding another pot to the collection, but I see you are trying to make a complete package.  

[kirk9000]

I was just reading Modernist Bread.  One interesting point they make is that you actually don't really need to preheat the cooking vessel to have excellent bread results.

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, kirk9000 said:

I was just reading Modernist Bread.  One interesting point they make is that you actually don't really need to preheat the cooking vessel to have excellent bread results.

 

Page reference, please.

 

[kirk9000]

3 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Page reference, please.

 

Kitchen manual, P. 53. Note at bottom.  There's probably something in the main text too.

 

I'm impressed with myself that I found it!

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, kirk9000 said:

Kitchen manual, P. 53. Note at bottom.  There's probably something in the main text too.

 

I'm impressed with myself that I found it!

 

Thank you, interesting.  Seam side up they said though.

 

[kirk9000]

19 minutes ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

 

Thank you, interesting.  Seam side up they said though.

 

Good point....I am not very detail oriented and read things too quickly! Thanks for pointing that out.

[trfl]

9 hours ago, kirk9000 said:

Interesting idea.  Personally I would be interested in just buying the liner to fit in a standard dutch oven rather than adding another pot to the collection, but I see you are trying to make a complete package.  

Nice thought. In fact this was one of the first things we tried. It works reasonably well but not as perfectly as we would like to see in a good product.

The liners themselves are not new.  You can buy them here. It is the same company that makes Silpat mats. We worked with them to make a custom liner for us.

 

But we had three problems that necessitated a custom cast iron pan.

1. The liners are very flexible and just about support their own weight. So they are unable to retain the shape when heavy dough is within them. This is normally not a huge problem for lower hydration dough since the dough can support itself to retain its shape. The use of this liners is in professional bakeries that use ~70% hydration at most. We use 80-90% hydration that makes the dough basically a slurry. Also, we skip the second raise step completely so the dough have even less strength when it goes into the liner. So we needed to support it with a liner with a custom shape until the bread became solid enough.

 

2. The whole idea of using cast iron is to maximize the conductive heat transfer. For a round loaf the bottom area is large enough. But since we wanted to keep a more practical oblong loaf shape, we would use a much smaller contact area at the bottom of the loaf if we did not use a fitted cast iron around it. Now we use the sides as well as bottom for direct heat transfer.

 

3. Cast iron casseroles come in various sizes, shapes and forms. It was impossible to make one liner that will work even with a majority of them.

 

Finally, the liners themselves are quite expensive (as you can see from the Demarle page I linked above). So beautiful cast iron at slightly higher point is quite a value for money. Hope you will like to support our campaign by backing or sharing with your contacts.

[trfl]

5 hours ago, kirk9000 said:

I was just reading Modernist Bread.  One interesting point they make is that you actually don't really need to preheat the cooking vessel to have excellent bread results.

We tried this but only once since it was a disaster

Our hypothesis is that our failure is due to skipping the second raise. So there are no large gas bubbles that can expand further. But may after our Kickstarter campaign we spend some more time with this. It would be great if we can skip the pre-heating step but still get a reliable result. Even more convenient!

[Anna N]

While the book does say you can get satisfactory results using cold cast-iron,  and I know because I have done it,  you will still get better results with it pre-heated. See 3-377. 

“We also tested placing a cold pot with proofed dough directly into a hot oven and found that it worked better than expected, though not as well as a fully preheated pot.”

Edited January 19, 2018 by Anna N (log)

[trfl]

54 minutes ago, Anna N said:

While the book does say you can get satisfactory results using cold cast-iron,  and I know because I have done it,  you will still get better results with it pre-heated. See 3-377. 

“We also tested placing a cold pot with proofed dough directly into a hot oven and found that it worked better than expected, though not as well as a fully preheated pot.”

 

Good to learn our observations were consistent with yours and that of ModBread.

 

If I may go a bit technical in my thinking here:

To bake a good bread, you need certain amount energy supplied to it with a certain rate (power).

With a cold pan, I can imagine the bread has to spend more time in the pan to get the same amount of energy [the oven is heating both the heavy pan and the bread]. This means a lower power. So anything time-dependent will suffer.

I can imagine oven spring relates is time dependent since you need to gellify the outer layer a bit while the inner gases are still expanding and the dough is not fully hardened.

One can probably improve the time factor by using a very light pan so it is not absorbing the energy. But that would still be inferior since with pre-heated pan you get much more power in the initial minutes on the loaf than your oven alone can provide.

 

 

[trfl]

Hi all,

Thanks for the amazing support. The LoafNest campaign is going on with a steady momentum.

 

I thought I would share the first LoafNest product review from a food-scientist/blogger/baker.

The review answers a lot of questions raised earlier on eGullet and other fora. There is also a comparison side-by-side of a LoafNest and Cast-iron+baking paper method from the same recipe.

You can see it here https://foodcrumbles.com/testing-loafnest-smart-way-bake-beautiful-bread/

Hope you find it informative and possibly convincing to back the project (or spread the word) if you already have not.

-trfl

[trfl]

Hello fellow bakers,

Just wanted to thank everyone on this forum for the wonderful feedback on LoafNest earlier in the year.

We also have a really good news to share.

LoafNest was relaunched on Kickstarter yesterday and we were funded in 3 hours! Thanks for many folks who came originally from this forum to make it happen.

See the new campaign at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/trfl/loafnest?ref=ewu6er

 

 

-trfl

[pastryani]

On 1/9/2018 at 9:35 AM, pastrygirl said:

 

That's all well and good, I'm just the kind of person who will straighten a crooked painting on someone else's wall.  My cookbooks are alphabetical by author and I've been known to alphabetize my spice rack as well.  It would bug me too much to look at because I'd constantly have the urge to line up the handles.  But if it works, and you can convince other people, more power to you!

 

@pastrygirl - more and more, I want to meet you!   (Side note:  do you also have an almost reflex-like response to the incorrect usage of "less" vs "fewer", or is that just me?!!) 

 

[ElsieD]

I just re-read this thread and decided to see if this is available to me here in Canada.  Amazon.ca does not carry it but Amazon.com does, at $159.00 US.  With shipping and custom costs added were a Canadian to order it from Amazon.com, it would cost about $270 Canadian.  Too rich for me.

[trfl]

1 hour ago, ElsieD said:

I just re-read this thread and decided to see if this is available to me here in Canada.  Amazon.ca does not carry it but Amazon.com does, at $159.00 US.  With shipping and custom costs added were a Canadian to order it from Amazon.com, it would cost about $270 Canadian.  Too rich for me.

EliseD, you have a fair point about LoafNest being quite expensive. LoafNest is quite a high quality product and we being small, we are yet to achieve economies of scale. That is why we decided to keep the focus on our main markets from Kickstarter campaign: US and EU. That way it is reasonably priced in those markets and includes all duties and shipping.

And the whole import duties thing does not help anyone either.

It is a bit cheaper on our own webshop (https://shop.trfl.nl/usa) but at this moment we do not have a shipping solution that includes Canadian duties and GST. We are working on it though. Will drop a line here via PM when we have something reasonable for our Canadian bakers.

[ElsieD]

5 hours ago, trfl said:

EliseD, you have a fair point about LoafNest being quite expensive. LoafNest is quite a high quality product and we being small, we are yet to achieve economies of scale. That is why we decided to keep the focus on our main markets from Kickstarter campaign: US and EU. That way it is reasonably priced in those markets and includes all duties and shipping.

And the whole import duties thing does not help anyone either.

It is a bit cheaper on our own webshop (https://shop.trfl.nl/usa) but at this moment we do not have a shipping solution that includes Canadian duties and GST. We are working on it though. Will drop a line here via PM when we have something reasonable for our Canadian bakers.

 

Thank you.

[Smithy]

A discussion over here reminded me of this topic and the Loafnest. Did anyone here ever spring for it? If so, what do you think of it?

[blue_dolphin]

On 3/24/2020 at 11:02 AM, Smithy said:

A discussion over here reminded me of this topic and the Loafnest. Did anyone here ever spring for it? If so, what do you think of it?

 

Yes, I bought one during their Kickstarter campaign for around $100.  It arrived during a long stretch of very hot weather when I couldn't think of cranking up the oven so I put it out in the garage and promptly forgot all about it until I saw your comment pop up the other day. Thanks, os much for mentioning it, there is no telling how long it would have languished out there.  No Marie Kondo-ing has ever happened in my garage!  Having been reminded, I figured I should at least try it before responding so I've done that.  I'll need to play around with it a bit but in general, it works as the promoters claimed and I like it.  Super easy to take the bread out of the pan and peel off the silicone liner.  A nicely shaped loaf with excellent crust all the way around.  

 

The current price of the LoafNest on Amazon is $199, a significantly larger investment. 

 

I re-read this thread there was a lot of concern about the offset handles.  They might look a bit odd, but in practice, they work just fine.  When I pick it up wearing oven gloves and cup my hands around the base unit, my thumbs naturally stabilize the handles of the lid.  It's not a stretch to do so.  

 

All the recipes in the manufacturer booklet use 500g flour which makes a loaf size that is a good size for me.  When I drop a loaf of this size into a dutch oven, it would always spread into a flatter loaf.  These slices are good for smallish sandwiches. Again, good for me. 

 

All the recipes in the booklet are super simple:  Mix, rise, transfer to the pre-heated pot and bake. No kneading, no turns and folds, no shaping at all.  Unless your yeast is dead, they're probably pretty foolproof. They strongly recommend following one of their recipes for the first bake and I did, pretty much.  I used 50% bread flour and 50% spelt flour and used leftover whey from some homemade "ricotta" as the liquid.  Here is my loaf:

The loaf is about 8.5 inches long, 5.25 inches wide and it rose to a little over 4 inches tall.

 

And the crumb:

The interior isn't doughy at all but still moister than I would like.  Next time, I'll remove the lid for the last 15 min or so of the bake as I usually do with a dutch oven and make sure to temp the loaf before I remove it, something I forgot to do here.

This will be fine for toast and sandwiches but I'd like to play around with other recipes to get more gluten development and probably use a second rise.  To easily transfer shaped dough into the liner,  a small, oval proofing basket would be handy.  I'm going to try and rig something up  and if that doesn't work, I'll break down and buy one. 

I'm taking my time with experimenting because of challenge of getting bread flour around here but once that's solved, I look forward to playing around some more. 

 

 

 

 

[AlaMoi]

why is me thinking a clay Romer-Topf excels at this task?

[Duvel]

47 minutes ago, AlaMoi said:

why is me thinking a clay Romer-Topf excels at this task?

Because the term “heat capacity” is not an easy concept ?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

1 hour ago, AlaMoi said:

why is me thinking a clay Romer-Topf excels at this task?

 

The Modernist Bread folks found it an exceedingly poor solution for baking bread.

 

[weinoo]

On 1/18/2018 at 11:56 PM, kirk9000 said:

Kitchen manual, P. 53. Note at bottom.  There's probably something in the main text too.

 

I'm impressed with myself that I found it!

I'm assuming this is the bread series, though. Because I checked the original, and don't see it.