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 I made some bara brith (Welsh bread with dried fruit, warm spices, and tea). It's pretty tasty! I'm looking forward to having a thick slice with some butter tomorrow morning. Also recently made King Arthur's rugbraud recipe, which is really tasty and extremely good for open-faced sandwiches, and was extremely easy to make. I want to try a Danish rye next, which involves sourdough starter and a multigrain soaker. The Icelandic version tastes great and is easy, but it has a pretty high sugar content. The white whale I'm chasing after is a bread I can make every week that is extremely healthy and delicious. also pullman pans rule.
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Jan 4, 2024 06:23
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| # ? May 15, 2024 02:26 |
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I made my first loaves with freshly milled flour and they came out well, not as airy as normal ones but tasted great. This was a walnut and cranberry loaf. 20% fresh wholemeal flour. 
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Jan 4, 2024 10:24
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God I wish my bread would come out as airy as that Aramoro. Ok, that does it, i'm making another batch of bread now, going to try to go for 80% hydration. 
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Jan 4, 2024 16:09
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Well, that fell flat. Literally. 300g King Arthur white flour 240g water (80% hydration) 2 tablespoons yeast Pinch of salt, about a tablespoon of sugar Mixed together, then kneeded until ball came together and was smooth. Let rise about an hour, perhaps about 1.5 hours (I ran out to do some errands) Punched down, put into a proofing bowl, let rise another 30 minutes. Set oven to 475, transferred to a baking sheet gently. Dough fell after I moved it to the sheet, and when I baked it did have a bit of rise, but not a heck of a lot. Baked 20 minutes and made sure the oven was very moist. Sprayed dough with water as well. This is my end result.  So where did I go wrong?
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Jan 4, 2024 20:15
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2 tables of yeast for 300g of flour is like 10 percent
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Jan 5, 2024 13:37
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Aramoro posted:I made my first loaves with freshly milled flour and they came out well, not as airy as normal ones but tasted great. This is a gorgeous bread. Love some walnut for that purple 
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Jan 5, 2024 13:49
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Submarine Sandpaper posted:2 tables of yeast for 300g of flour is like 10 percent So way too much yeast and I should have done much much less?
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Jan 5, 2024 13:53
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That is a lot of yeast. For 300g I would use half a teaspoon.
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Jan 5, 2024 14:37
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In my 1kg bread loaves I use 5-9g of yeast, depending on the weather and my mood and how much I drop in by accident. In my pizza dough, which is gonna be in the fridge for a while, I do 3-5 and it's probably a bit much. I need to get some drug scales, and I miss having access to fresh yeast. I don't think I posted these, and they're only tangentially bread, but I made Cheese Scones as a new years lunch at my grandmas. They went down super well, much better than the biscuits I was originally planning on. This was enough to feed four people, once we added butter and extra cheese on top!  I only had a couple of hours to get ready and make something, and they didn't need to rise or chill. Came out perfect. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Jan 5, 2024 |
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Jan 5, 2024 15:17
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I think this ciabatta is my first bread with basically no recipe. I mixed the flours based on the texture and flavour I wanted (20% whole wheat, fancy), used a middle of the road formula (3% oil, 2% salt, 82% water) and only sourdough culture (20%). I didn’t do a bassinage or biga. It’s a bit too chewy for the meal I was planning of, uh, hamburgers but I assume that just means more oil or less kneading.    
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Jan 5, 2024 16:14
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tuyop posted:I think this ciabatta is my first bread with basically no recipe. I mixed the flours based on the texture and flavour I wanted (20% whole wheat, fancy), used a middle of the road formula (3% oil, 2% salt, 82% water) and only sourdough culture (20%). Crumb looks perfect for ciabatta! Nicely done.
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Jan 5, 2024 16:24
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Someone gave me a sourdough starter last week. So far I have made three loaves ranging from mediocre to bad. Been watching a bunch of videos and I think my most recent one wasn’t folded/shaped well. Flavor is fine but I wanted an airier crumb. Also don’t have a dutch oven so I’m using either a pot/lid combo or just a sheet pan. Any tips/tricks or essential viewing recommendations?
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Jan 5, 2024 22:32
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Dutch oven is huge and required Rice flour is essential Proofing baskets are essential (put the rice flour in these, more than you think) Something very sharp for scoring, like a lame, is essential Weighing ingredients is helpful A probe and ir thermometer is helpful A bench scraper and bowl scraper are helpful Tartine Bread is a great book for starting out In post form, I’d say make sure your starter culture is healthy. It should rise after you feed it and roughly double in about six hours. Measure this by keeping it in a jar and putting a rubber band around the jar when it’s just been fed. When it floats in water, it’ll technically make bread. Starting dough recipe: 12 hours before you want to mix, prepare 200g of levain by adding a tablespoon of happy starter culture to 100g of water, mix with 50g whole wheat and 50g all purpose (AP) flour. In the morning, mix together in a large bowl: 850g AP flour 150g whole wheat flour 200g levain(the whole thing minus a tablespoon for maintaining your culture) 750g water (reserve a tablespoon or two) You want the dough to stay at 76F throughout. This should be the stickiest sorriest pile of white goo ever at this point, but don’t add flour unless the loaf doesn’t turn out. Now leave it to autolyze (auto-lease). It should rest in a warm place, covered with a clean wet towel, for 20-60 minutes. Longer = more strength. Add 20g of salt to the dough, using the reserved water to help incorporate it. Do this by pinching the dough apart until it starts to incorporate it again. Let it rest for 30 minutes, then fold it. Repeat this 3-6 times until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl nicely, holds its shape and has a visible crease from the fold for awhile. Lots of guides on folding sourdough online, the perfect loaf has a good one. Once the dough is wobbly and airy and generally feels alive and warm and active, it’s ready to be divided and shaped. I recommend looking for a video for this part because it’s pretty complicated. You weigh the dough, cut it in half on the bench and flour the top of it and then use your scraper or hands a specific way to shape it into a tight ball. Takes practice but it’s a lot of fun once you get it. Wait 20-60 minutes for the dough to rest. Hard to be exact here, you have to experiment. Shape the dough into a batard (videos are good for that) or by folding each side into the middle like a package, then flour the surface and put it, seam up, into a well-floured proofing basket. Let it rest for an hour or three, preheating the oven with your Dutch oven inside about half an hour before the bake. As hot as possible for your oven. Use the IR thermometer and wait until the Dutch oven is up to like 425 before using it. Careful! Pull the bottom of the Dutch oven out and either gently dump your bread into it or onto a parchment paper cradle. Score the loaf by cutting three stripes across it or something. I like spirals. You hold the blade at a shaving angle to the dough, takes practice but super satisfying when it works. Put the top on the oven and put the oven in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes and remove the lid. Bake without a lid until your bread is dark, be assertive and get a nice crust. Takes longer than you think. Let it rest for a bit after you remove it, but don’t worry about puritans telling you to wait 12.6 hours before cutting for some reason.
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Jan 5, 2024 23:04
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tuyop posted:Dutch oven is huge and required I don't use one, mainly because I make batards not boules, I just use a steel and it's fine. The Perfect Loaf book has good info about it but his method of using ice to make the steam is a bit wacky if well intentioned.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:06
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Aramoro posted:I don't use one Wow, good work! I do wonder how much different ovens matter here. Like a little steam goes a long way and some ovens just don’t ventilate as quickly as others?
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Jan 6, 2024 00:15
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I'm sure there's an almost endless variety of different ways to make sourdough, considering its history. Personally, my biggest "a-ha" moment was giving the starter another feeding the night before I use it. (The King Arthur recipe referred to a "ripe" starter and I wasn't sure what it meant initially.) More specifically, I feed it and then put it back in the fridge (the one time I tried it without refrigeration, it bubbled over). Then I take it out the next morning (this is very roughly 10-12 hours) and let it warm up for another 1-2 hours. If it's a cold day I might use the oven to give it a little kickstart. When it's grown noticeably in the jar, I know it's ready to use. Then I give it a "real" feeding after making the dough, and put it back in the fridge for a week. I started mine from scratch and it definitely took about half a year for it to become truly reliable. But these days the results are very consistent.
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Jan 6, 2024 00:23
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See for me I'd reorder the list:
You can make breads that use both sourdough and yeast, pick up a big pack of dried yeast and store it in the freezer and it should last for a year or two, as long as you're not cursed. My partner makes vegan sourdough pancakes and they come out awesome. Enjoy bread, it's fun! Even if it doesn't come out looking so great, it'll taste good, and the next one will be better! Once you've got a starter going as well, it should be fairly hard to kill. My partner feeds ours with basically anything he finds. Matzo meal, starch water from making Seitan, he's used cooked rice a couple of times but I've vetoed that one. I looked at it the other day and it was a weird colour because he'd poured in a tub of golden breadcrumbs he'd found in the back of the cupboard. They take a while to break down, but it'll eat what you give it. Nettle Soup fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Jan 6, 2024 |
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Jan 6, 2024 00:24
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Getting back into GWS from the break, very exciting. The frontier I want to conquer now is bread. Last time I made real bread was some loaves for banh mi 10 years ago. I just had a friend drop over a sourdough starter from his stash this morning, about 25g. I fed it the 70g AP, 30g rye, 100g water an hour ago because I figured I'd want to charge it up after the travel (5 minute drive lol). It's currently sitting on the counter. I'd love to make some loaves this weekend, but I don't grok the whole starter/leaven thing. Can I take the brew on my counter, save 20g to put in the fridge, and use use that as part of a sourdough recipe? I should have read more before I started doing stuff  Just use the KA sourdough recipe?
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Jan 6, 2024 17:47
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Hed posted:Just use the KA sourdough recipe? That looks like a great guide, yeah. Starter is the culture you make by mixing flour and water together daily for awhile. Levain is the specific preparation for leavening bread, afaik anyway.
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Jan 6, 2024 18:23
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Hed posted:
I don’t think I have a pound of starter. Probably about 300g total. I’ll have to feed it extra to give this a shot. I have been using this recipe which only takes 40g of discard and goes for a long ferment. https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pain-de-campagne-country-bread-recipe
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Jan 6, 2024 20:29
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Brain Curry posted:I don’t think I have a pound of starter. Probably about 300g total. I’ll have to feed it extra to give this a shot. At least in my interpretation of the recipe, the 454g is after doing a 113/113 feeding the night before. I was really confused by that number as well, originally.
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Jan 6, 2024 20:49
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Whelp, making a sourdough starter. Today is day two. It looked like...paste. Looked like paste and nothing much else.
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Jan 6, 2024 22:41
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Since it seems to be on topic, I'm starting a gluten-free sourdough starter today. As far as I can tell you pretty much follow the same process as the regular stuff, but just with a different flour. I'm using sorghum. Yeast is yeast, I guess. We were hoping our son would outgrow his wheat allergy this past year and it was kind of a punch in the gut when we saw no positive change whatsoever. So this year I'm just going to try to make the best drat gluten-free bread I can. I was kind of resting on my laurels thinking I wouldn't have to do it much longer, but now I'm really committed to making it just as good as the normal sourdough bread I also make every week. We'll see. Sir Lemming fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jan 7, 2024 |
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Jan 7, 2024 00:36
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Cimber posted:Whelp, making a sourdough starter. Today is day two. It looked like...paste. Looked like paste and nothing much else. You're getting discouraged by day two? Give it a little time to get going.
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Jan 7, 2024 09:25
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Cimber posted:Whelp, making a sourdough starter. Today is day two. It looked like...paste. Looked like paste and nothing much else. RUINED
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Jan 7, 2024 12:49
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Yeah and if you're in a climate that's cold this time of year, it'll probably take twice as long as whatever recipe you're using. I wouldn't even be surprised if you saw no activity at all for like a week. The worst part is you'll generate a lot of discard. I like to basically keep that in its own jar and let it do its thing also, as long as they look different so I don't feed that with the good stuff by accident. You can also just use it in discard recipes every day, but ain't nobody got time for that. Either way, find a few good sourdough discard recipes and have fun with it. No need to panic at the discard.
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Jan 7, 2024 14:25
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Oh yeah, I didn't figure I'd get much yet. Its cold, yucky weather and there are probably not that many wild yeast floating around. The rubber band I have to measure any growth of the starter isn't showing any growth yet on day three. No big deal. I purchased a cast iron enamled dutch oven from Amazon that said it was rated up to 500 degrees. When I got it today and opened it up, it said it was actually only up to 400 degrees. :/ I'm returning that poo poo and ordering another one that actually is rated to 500.
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Jan 7, 2024 16:36
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Cimber posted:Oh yeah, I didn't figure I'd get much yet. Its cold, yucky weather and there are probably not that many wild yeast floating around. The rubber band I have to measure any growth of the starter isn't showing any growth yet on day three. No big deal. What kind of knob does it have? Most likely you can swap the knob for a metal one and it will be good to 500.
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Jan 7, 2024 17:56
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bengy81 posted:What kind of knob does it have? Most likely you can swap the knob for a metal one and it will be good to 500. I read up on it and saw that at higher temps some cheaper dutch ovens have the enameling scorch or even start to flake. I'm doing a bit more shopping around before I order again. Since my starter is going to take probably 2ish weeks to get going I have time and don't need to impulse buy.
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Jan 7, 2024 18:50
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I have this one and I like it a lot https://cuisiland.ca/products/dutch-oven-jj510
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Jan 7, 2024 18:55
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Cimber posted:Oh yeah, I didn't figure I'd get much yet. Its cold, yucky weather and there are probably not that many wild yeast floating around. The rubber band I have to measure any growth of the starter isn't showing any growth yet on day three. No big deal. Most of the yeast will come from the flour itself, which is why people often use rye and/or wholemeal.
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Jan 7, 2024 19:30
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2 sourdough things: 1) Whole Rye flour (dark rye, pumpernickel, etc) is a huge yeast and nutritional boost. Goose it with that, or even use it exclusively until it is established, to give it a better shot. 2) Lodge cast iron camping dutch oven (like the one shown above) is a good idea and fairly cheap. It has no knobs, just two flat surfaces of varying volumes. The "lid" males a nice skillet itself!
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Jan 7, 2024 19:46
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I have a lodge combo cooker, can confirm it's great for bread and I use the deep end as a chicken fryer a lot, A+++ purchase. I also have one of those food network branded enameled dutch ovens, it's close to 20 years old at this point, and it looks like poo poo, but it's held up pretty well to bread baking, I did swap out the knob for a metal one at some point. It's also a great little pot for frying chicken in.
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Jan 7, 2024 20:23
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It's bread day. Made a 50/50 wholemeal loaf with the wholemeal I milled myself, but left for a week or so to develop.  I'm pretty happy with how they came out, fairly sour taste more than normal but I like that. I tried scoring them differently and the one I cut across came out a really consistent size, if not as explosively risen. Interested to see inside that one.
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Jan 8, 2024 18:44
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So the local Le Creuset outlet is having a 40% off sale, and I have a shitload of Visa gift cards. Went and got a 5 quart dutch oven for about 230. Not bad. Oh, pro tip. Gift cards have an expiration date. If you have a drawer full of forgotten gift cards check and see if they are still good.
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Jan 8, 2024 19:05
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Checked on my starter this morning and..... Guess its time to start feeding it twice a day.
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Jan 9, 2024 14:36
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Cimber posted:Checked on my starter this morning and..... I've never really done the twice a day thing, I feed -> use -> refrigerate -> feed etc maybe do 2 feeds in a row if its been in the fridge for over week or two and seems a bit sad. If I fed it twice a day that's 1.4kg of flour a week, does anyone do that outsideof professional bakers? could my starter bee even more strong than it is?
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Jan 9, 2024 17:04
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Aramoro posted:I've never really done the twice a day thing, I feed -> use -> refrigerate -> feed etc maybe do 2 feeds in a row if its been in the fridge for over week or two and seems a bit sad. The twice a day thing is during the establishment of the starter, not on a constant basis. From what I've been reading, I do twice a day for a few more days until the volume can double in about 6 hours. Once it can do that its an established starter and you can move onto the use/refrigerate/feed once a week type of thing.
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Jan 9, 2024 17:38
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Never thought to come here looking for a baking thread until just now. I’ve been mostly sourdough for the last couple of years, have had a few weeks of failures after trying to tweak some things so went back to my basic recipe at 70% hydration and managed to make probs it the prettiest loaf I’ve made yet.   I always struggle to get strength in the dough through stretches though, this one was using the slap and fold technique which worked well but I hated every minute of it for how messy it was for me. Next time will be in my crappy stand mixer. Which prompts me to ask - who I’m this thread uses a mixer and what do you have? Thinking of upgrading soon and not sure whether to get a really good traditional style stand mixer e.g. a good Kitchenaid, or the Ankarsrum which I like the look of and is supposed to be great for bread dough.
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Jan 10, 2024 16:23
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Noxville posted:Never thought to come here looking for a baking thread until just now. I’ve been mostly sourdough for the last couple of years, have had a few weeks of failures after trying to tweak some things so went back to my basic recipe at 70% hydration and managed to make probs it the prettiest loaf I’ve made yet. I mostly use no knead, but when I do knead, then I use the KitchenAid. I also use it for general baking e.g. cakes.
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Jan 10, 2024 17:19
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