baking bread

Yeah, we drink it - I was very surprised how good it is, but it's definitely because I use the low temperature process "non-instant" type. The normal "instant" kind, that you can just stir into water and it dissolves, tastes vile because it's run through a high temperature process that cooks it. The keys are using the low temp sort, adding some heavy cream to it, and letting it sit in the fridge overnight before drinking it straight. I use it on cereal and in tea and coffee too.

I started buying dry milk in order to make cheese and yoghurt - it's 1/4 the cost of liquid organic milk, and doesn't take up any space. It's great to be able to mix up a small batch, to not worry about running out of milk, or find out at the last minute that the carton has gone off.

First loaf I've baked in over a year due to moving, hot weather, general not-baking-moodiness:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3469/3943412968_f59afb832e.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2596/3942640175_d26da40340.jpg

looks good jaq, what do you utilize when slashing the tops? and when do you do it? i can never get that damn technique to work.

I've got a 12" slicing knife I generally keep a really sharp edge on. I slash the top right before the dough goes in the oven, so after it's risen about an inch over the top of the pan when I do a sandwich/toast loaf like this one.

bets: would this turn out really gross?
http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/cgi/recipeget.cgi?id=735

Might be okay right out of the oven, but hard as a rock and nasty later.

so jaq (sorry i am so late response time) that's like a serrated knife then?

nope, just a standard blade, like this.

so for my own curiosity what is the advantage of using that knife over say a regular chef knife?

Probably the fact that it's 4" longer, so the way the blade contacts the top of the loaf is different. It's also a knife I use less, so the edge stays truer/sharper. There are these special bread dough slashing tools called lames, but I'm not much for single-purpose utensils personally.

I needed to clear out a cupboard and found some very old baking ingredients - yeast, milk powder, sugar, flour, but unfortunately no butter or even oil or any kind of fats - so I chucked them in the long languishing bread machine anyway to see what will happen...

What will happen if you try to bake bread that should have fats in it, without any whatsoever? Your predictions please. Results in five hours.

I'm ready for, even certain of, failure, but am interested to see what the hell does come out.

probably will be better than leaving out the water, as a friend did once.

I'll eat pretty much anything, so it shouldn't go to waste whatever happens.

it'll be bread of some sort. also the milk powder should help.

well ... ?

It look ok-ish. Kind of like a loaf of bread, albeit a wee balled-up one.

Going to crack it tonight and see what the inner verdict is. Not a complete disaster at least. The age of the ingredients is probably more to do with it, particularly the yeast meaning it didn't really rise, rather than the lack of a wee touch of butter.

Eating verdict later.

when I first started baking bread I sorta jumped ahead of myself and tried to make Broa, the Portugese corn-meal-and-flour bread - my attempt back then didn't really turn out so great, so I haven't tried it since. But that was ten years ago, and I've been cooking and baking constantly since then, so I tried it again last night, using a recipe in the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes A Day book (which, I don't even know what the book is really about since at this point when I get a cookbook I generally just go straight to the recipes & I know enough about the making-your-oven-a-steam-oven stuff from all the Bittman business last year). Anyway.

BROA.

It is incredibly delicious.

never heard of it. love cornmeal though.

do you think you can fit baking bread into a normal weekday schedule (i.e. not having to check on it every few hours)?

maria i usually make bread on saturdays or sundays, that way i don't have to stay up late. checking it is essential at certain points, but how long between those points is generally very flexible.

dudes it's ciabatta time. i have been reading bread by hammelman. look out world.

holy cow ciabatta is good, dudes
most perfect sandwich bread to me right now

i have never made bread with holes in the crumb (except pitta bread which doesn't count)! what is the secret to this amazing trick?

Not sure -- I just follow the Italian bread recipe linked above and shazam, there are the holes. I followed a recipe for "white sandwich bread" -- no holes, smooth wonderbread texture, a good bit heavier though. Maybe it's the preferment to kickstart the fermentation -- the holey bread uses it and the white bread doesn't.

i followed recipe/process from bread by hamelman. it used a biga (stiff preferment) and i think the secret is to handle the dough as little and as gently as possible, as it is very wet. like 70% water, dudes. and hamelman does this thing during fermentation (what most people think of as rising) where you fold the dough instead of merely punching it down. then after 3 hours of fermentation, you cut the dough into appropriately sized pieces and let em proof again and bake it. no kneading, no shaping. in fact i have plowed through hamelman's book without once seeing the word knead anywhere. needless to say i was surprised by the lack of mentioning kneading as i had thought it was a central skill of baking bread.

I know enough about the making-your-oven-a-steam-oven stuff from all the Bittman business last year). Anyway.

BROA.

It is incredibly delicious.

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Saturday, December 12, 2009 4:37 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

dude what technique(s) do you utilize for steam production john? or can you link to the "bittman business last year" you refer to above?

I have only recently learned the word is "proof" – when I worked at a donut shop, everyone talked about letting the dough "perf."

The owner told me "to let the dough perf 'til it feels like a fat lady's ass."

proof=rising=fermentation
lol about fat ladies asses

haha yeah that's amazing!

It was not maybe the most useful advice in a lot of ways, the main one being I'd never had my hands on a fat anyone's ass. So I'd poke at the dough intermittently and every time my mind would ask, 'Ass? Ass?'

that made me lol at work and my coworker asked what i was laughing at

hahaha. if you poke a fat lady's ass does the hole stay there for a few seconds?

"every time my mind would ask, 'Ass? Ass?'"
lol
mine too!

Baking today...

I swear, sometimes dealine with a batch of dough on the board is like being confronted by a four-pound booger.

turn that booger into a fat lady's ass!

wow 2nd attempt at ciabatta is doper than the first. got much better steam with a bunch of rocks in the pan i was throwing the water in, and noticeable increase in oven spring.

hey guys i want to make a sourdough culture. has anybody done this before? i did a ctrl f on this thread to find 'sourdough' but it seems nobody specifically spells out how to make one of these . . .
i found this and they suggest freshly milled flour. i have whole wheat flour, but i put it in the freezer and i don't know if that fucks up the yeasts that are supposed to be on the grains or what. i have read what hamelman wrote about it in his book but he uses whole rye and rye flours which i don't have. also i have tried just using flour and water left open at rm tmp for a while and that made something that took forever to proof. lemme know yr experience plz

I successfully made starter using wine grapes (yeasts live happily on the skins), but it wasn't especially sour. I keep yeast in the freezer, so would suspect that having your flour in there wouldn't do it any harm.

There's another bread thread in here somewhere, maybe that has more info.

Here is the other bread thread: The bread thread!

i dunno nobody specifies they process of creating a sourdough culture from scratch on that thread as far as i can see from a scan, i am sure i will figure something out tho. and bet yr bread crust i will post what i did

No, just Casuistry, Matt, and me but none posted details. Jeffrey Steingarten has an essay about how he did it with wild yeasts - lots of failures.

ive never made it but in the st john book they have a recipe, he uses rhubarb for the starter

ok dudes i took a scant cup of (KAF) whole wheat flour and a half cup of water and mixed it up in a mason jar. i am following rose levy beranbaum's 'the bread bible' process which says that this mixture should sit for 48 hours at 65 deg-F, which my studio in the back room of my flat which we don't heat is around that temp. I wonder why it has to be so cool . . .
apparently the culture will not do much until day 5

last night i grabbed the mason jar with the "sourdough culture" in it and was happy to see bubbles and expansion. i did as rose levy beranbaum instructs and removed about half of it to the rubbish bin, then dumped in a scant 1/2 cup of regular unbleached flour and 1/4 cup of water, and stirred it in. this morning it had already doubled in volume. I guess this is working . . .

Exciting! Does it smell yeasty? does it taste sour but not bitter?

i don't know jaq it kinda smelled like wheat mixed with cedar or something last night. and this morning i did not have the expansion that occurred the previous day. also yesterday when i fed it, there was a bit of water that had come out of the solution just sitting in the bottom, which i didn't think too much about and mixed back in. but this morning there was a bit of water just sitting on top. however it smelled nicely sour as i would imagine sourdough starter is *supposed* to smell.

the freshloaf says, "It is not unusual for the mixture to get very bubbly around Day 3 or 4 and then go completely flat and appear dead."

i think that may be what is happening to mine.

also what's cooking america says,
"What is Hooch?

As your starter sits or goes quiet in the refrigerator, the mixture separates and a layer of liquid will form on the top. This liquid contains about 12% to 14% alcohol. Hooch is the alcoholic byproduct of the fermentation process. The hooch will have a brownish color. NOTE: The alcohol dissipates during the baking process, Stir that liquid back into the starter before using. Hooch builds up in your starter, especially when being stored in the refrigerator.. You can either pour it off or stir it back in. If your sourdough starter is on the dry side, just mix the hooch back in. If your starter is already too moist, pour it down the drain.

Important: If your sourdough starter or hooch starts looking pinkish or orange color, throw it away and start over as this means that something bad or nasty has started growing in your starter."

Pinkish color is a bad thing when you do other fermented things, like sauerkraut. I think it's some kind of bacteria. I've noticed that watery separation when I've let a biga sit for a few days - never realized it could be alcoholic!

prolly gonna do it like a shot before i feed it tonight!

so the hooch had disappeared into the "mothership" so i couldn't drink it :(
here she is ladies and gentlemen, my 'starter' which some dudes refer to as 'the mother culture':
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0002.jpg?t=1264785043
by extension i guess the loaves could be referred to as daughters