baking bread

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

Will you be baking this weekend with it?

sunday is the day to make bread lately for me

this bread is not so sour, but i am not sure i made it correctly as i didn't have a scale until today but
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0005.jpg?t=1265081572

That is some handsome bread. How did it taste?

Those are really beautiful loaves!

Nice pair.

i was not able to correctly identify how much of the levain i put in there and b/c of this the loaves are at best subtly sour. i had a sandwich yesterday with salami and mustard and thought the bread tasted like normal bread. then last night i had a slice by itself and still could barely taste any acidity. however my proof times were right in the range which makes me happy about my mother culture. the crumb on the batard is a bit tighter than i would like, but it's soft and not too chewy. i guess i will update again once i cut into the boule.

yeah i tried that starter thing and got the fizz and bad smell but it just died after that, even though i followed the instructions

what starter you tried?

flour and water in a jar

i guess you might be able do it with regular flour, but most of the stuff i have read calls for 'whole' forms of ground grains; either wheat or preferably rye (organic even). them yeasts be on the outsides of them grainz, yo.

i dunno i got yeast from the air, it was obvious from the smell and bubbliness but it died after the second feeding. i think i just have bad luck with bread in general.

"During milling, however, up to 95% of the microbial population may be
removed with the feed fractions (6). When counts are compared (Table I) in flour
and in wheat from which the flour was milled, the bacterial population in most
flours was about one-tenth that in wheat. This indicates that modern flour
milling operations are efficient in reducing the number of bacteria."
from here

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/th_DSC_0016.jpg
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/th_DSC_0057.jpg

er
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0016.jpg?t=1268494677
http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0058.jpg?t=1268494736
listening to rndy nwmn now

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0057.jpg?t=1268494877
the one on the left is made from the afformentioned muffin recipe

had a dismal failure this week. forgot to feed my sourdough culture the day before baking and fed it like 3hours before use. this did not work at all. also was trying to maintain it at less than 100% hydration which i think compounded the effect of not letting time go by after the feeding. the loaf i didn't throw away looks sad and limp and tastes like a bagel for some reason. gah! lesson learned damnit

shoulda made soda bread

DAMN those are beautiful loaves! Your house must smell amazing.

One day I will bake challah. One day. Probably not soon.

thanks quincie

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0226.jpg?t=1275887520
8% bran to help the digestion, 12% whole wheat sourdough

is there any way to measure the hydration of my sourdough starter? i've been feeding it (and using amounts of it) for a couple of months now, but my flour-to-water ratio has been roughly 1:1 (but ROUGHLY), and i'm wondering what hydration it is, as a number of the bread websites i've been checking lately have been varying the hydration percentages for different loaves...

Weigh an amount of it, then dry it out in the oven and weigh it again. The missing weight once it's dry is the water.

jaq as usual otm. also i reckon if you mean 1:1 you talkin volume, and in this situation i would guestimate 125-150% hydration which is to say for every gram of flour theys a gram and a quarter to a gram and a half water. ime it matters very little what hydration one maintains they starter at, just keep the bakers math on point

thanks both!

http://i224.photobucket.com/albums/dd210/jdchurchil/food%20porn/DSC_0110.jpg?t=1278865044
anton levain

big lols

I don't belong here but I got a jones to make bread. After research decided chapatis would be easiest to start with. Disaster ensues. My kitchen is covered with flour and so am I. The "breads" looked great stuck to the rolling pin I bought for this occasion but I could not get them off it looking so great. Followed a recipe, WTF. F*ck a bread, so frustrating. I will go back to my NN roots which doesn't include it. Want A+ tasty food homemade. Mad respect for all you eminent bakers, jdc A+. I will continue to admire your skillz. Thanks for showing your pro results and getting the cooking proletariat inspired to try even a little. Baking ambassador.

Odd that this thread gets bumped just minutes after I finished making a loaf of bread for the first time. It actually turned out really well.

I followed this recipe FWIW: http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Bread-without-a-bread-machine/

if we're sharing recipes... this is wonderful, idiot-proof white bread (http://www.danlepard.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2593) and a recipe i wish i'd started with when i started making bread, as it is a great, easy loaf, with great results. and these rolls (http://www.danlepard.com/recipes/2010/07/2851/semolina-bbq-buns/) are a little trickier, but so delicious...

Followed the same recipe as before, with better results this time (and cut a fancy X in the center :D)

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash2/hs156.ash2/41117_419188966537_687686537_4961523_2906430_n.jpg

I let it proof for an hour, then kneaded it again and let it come back to size on the pan, and later brushed on some olive oil for the last five minutes — the crust turned a lovely brown and is deliciously crispy. :)

!

for the easiest bread in the world, do soda bread

http://www.howdidyoumakethat.com/content/marnas-soda-bread

agree soda bread is mad easy and good to do

I made this buttermilk cluster as two loaves instead of a pan of rolls -- very nice, fine-textured crumb, better for sandwiches than the italian loaves I'd been making. And like all homemade bread, it makes great toast.

for my chi-town peeps i am involved in teaching bread classes as part of http://www.sourflour.org/chicago/

How important is putting bread dough into a preheated oven? I use the oven as a proofing chamber because the kitchen stays pretty cold and the pilot light keeps the oven warm but not too hot. When it's time to bake, could I just turn on the oven without taking the dough out? I'm proofing it in the dutch oven that it bakes in.

there's a discussion her
ehttp://community.kingarthurflour.com/content/starting-cold-oven

i think it ultimately depends on if the dutch oven is ceramic or cast iron --- it seems that a cold oven is suggested for ceramic receptacles/baking stones etc so that they don't crack, but if yr using cast-iron or enamelled cast-iron, you wouldn't need to do that & it may change how the bread turns out?

it's been years since I made bread from scratch, so idk

It's enameled cast iron. It's rising very well in the oven, and I don't want to accidentally de-gas the dough with the impact of moving it around a couple of times, especially into a colder environment, so I'm going to try just turning the oven on. Thanks for that link!

It depends a lot on the dough - for most, you want a hot oven so the steam/gas in the dough can puff it up before the crust forms too much. A slower oven dries out the dough more during the rising/crust forming stages, again for most.

My last couple of bakes have been absolutely beautiful. Letting the preferment sit overnight was not working -- cutting back to four hours tops meant it was still very active and raring to go when I mixed the dough. Finally getting the hang of the Kitchenaid mixer. For this last batch, I had new silicone loaf pans. Got a huge oven bounce.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/aprilbread2.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/aprilbread1.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/aprilbread3.jpg

Gorgeous!

Thanks! I'm learning that little things can mean so much -- barely warming the oiled bowl that the dough rises in, and making a slightly wetter dough. But not exhausting the preferment has been the most important lesson.