The Bread Thread

[Ham]

I have decided that home made bread makes shit toast.
For the record, I don't like toast the way most other people seem to like it. I don't want it to be as dry as Ulrikakaka's crispbread and to shatter into a million tiny crumbs when you bite into it. I like my toast to be like warm golden bread. Which is not what happens when I toast my bread.

Summat is wrong here, and not the concept of home baked toast.

Your taste is spot on, all the Chorelywood crap creates true shit toast. Bakers loaves can be good, but homebake is the best.

I confess I like toast more done than most do, but homebake typically has a higher moisture content and is heavier than shop bought. My wholemeal caramelises beautifully in the toaster and white goes right tasty. Consider:

- toasting from frozen.
- 'sperimenting with different thinckeneseses
- using different flour. For something lighter, I'd try T55 with a bit more yeast than normal

Worth the perseverance

[citoyen]

I often use it for breakfast things like kejriwal…

[citoyen]

As mentioned in the Gregg's Hot Cross Buns thread I thought I'd have a go at sourdough hot cross buns.

Cor! They look great, although you do need to work on your cross action.

When I made sourdough hot cross buns, I just adapted a standard recipe - think it might have been a Paul Hollywood one. Worked well. You just have to adjust the flour and liquid quantities slightly to compensate. Also up the butter content to make sure they’re lovely and soft.

I really need to get a new sourdough starter going. The last one was kicked off with an apple freshly picked from my garden, but I’ll have to wait a good few months if I want to do that again.

[perpetual dan]

…

I really need to get a new sourdough starter going. The last one was kicked off with an apple freshly picked from my garden, but I’ll have to wait a good few months if I want to do that again.

I did one with an apple that just went progressively more off. My last starter was just on the kitchen counter for a couple of days (in open window weather) and got itself going. Though it eventually petered out - I was being busy, so a loaf would get bought, then Mrs Dan ate less bread for a bit. Eventually I was feeding it to keep it going more than I was using it, and evidently even that was not enough. So it’s been a tin of yeast for me lately.

[Flite]

I have decided that home made bread makes shit toast.

Used to have the same problem with my basic half wholemeal / half white loaves (not sourdough).
The crusts were so hard we risked cutting our mouths.
Now I add some oil to the mix and then when it comes out of the oven I wrap it in a teatowel and pop a bowl or silicon cover over it for a while.
The steam softens the crust, so the slices toast more evenly.
Toasted on an AGA of course...

[Feanor]

Regarding the Levain starter...
We binned ours before going to South America for 12 weeks, and kicked off a new one when we got back.

I'm following the Ken Forkish method.
It's started with nothing other than a 100% hydrated wholemeal flour and water slurry on day 1.
On day 2, you bin around 75% of it, and add more flour and water.
This continues for around 5 days, at which point the levain is possibly useable.
It took a bit longer here.
This will feel quite wasteful of flour as you ditch so much each day.

Once it's vigorous, the hydration is reduced and it's maintained at 80% hydration.
(Many recipies will maintain the levain at 100%, because that makes for easy calculation of the hydration of your final dough, but I just go with Ken's 80% because I don't then have to re-calculate his flour and water weights for specific hydrations.)

Once you've used some of the levain to bake with, the remainder goes in a ziplock bag inside a plastic tub in the fridge.
It can happily sit there for several weeks with no intervention or feeding.

It's a two-day thing to revive the levain out of it's hibernation, so needs a bit of forward planning.
A typical timeline would be:
Day1 AM: weigh out a specified quantity (typically 100g) of levain from the fridge into the leavain tub, feed with measured quantity of flour and water.  It will triple in volume towards the end of the day.
Day2 AM: It will have run out of food, and fallen back a bit. Bin all but 50g in the tub. Feed again with measured quantity of flour and water.  It will triple in volume towards the end of the day.
Day2 PM: Mix final dough using some of the levain, do folds, overnight bulk ferment 12 to 15 hours.  Remaining levain goes into fridge, replacing any left over from day1, becoming the new stored levain.
Day3 AM: Shape into loaves, into banneton, proof for around 3 to 4 hours. Bake around noon.

It does seem to stand being hibernated very well.

[citoyen]

needs a bit of forward planning

Alas, that's a significant stumbling block for me.

It does seem to stand being hibernated very well.

Presumably due to the lower hydration?

Think I need to get myself a copy of the Forkish book.

[Tim Hall]

Being a creature of habit, Saturday is normally Baking Day. Or at least Stretch and Fold and Proving Day. However, for one reason or another I found myself baking mid week, where I also found I didn't have enough strong white flour, so ended up going off piste and making a half white half wholemeal soudough loaf.

It is Very Nice.   

[Tim Hall]

I have a mind to try sourdough baguettes. I've been algorithmed towards a recipe that looks do-able. I seem to recall Ham has a bit of a baguette baking habit,but anyone can answer:

I usually bake onto a great thick, like 10mm, lump of steel. Should I use that for baguettes too, or a regular thin baking tray?

[Feanor]

Not done baguettes myself, but don't they need to be done on those perforated U-shaped trays?
(Which in my case I do not have...)

[Ham]

That's what I use, I suspect you would struggle to baguettify without, you would get a stick, but there would be inevitable slump and not be the round thing you mostly associate. Thinking about it, that's actually how you often see a baguette au levain



so really no reason not to do it.

To summarise what I do: I use T65, high yeast, multiple rise, high hydration (70+%) dough. I achieve a simalcrum of a baguette something like a french supermarket one/better than most English bought. I par bake and freeze.

ETA I would NOT bake on a thick steel, as you are chasing an all over, even, crust so I would not want much differential in baking condition between top and bottom. I think the perforations in the U-trays help in this respect. Be prepared to experiment, as ever (https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=68753.msg2547005;topicseen#msg2547005  for eg)

[Tim Hall]

Hmm. Food for thought.  The recipe I found suggests proving between either scrunched up floured tea towels or a couche. Baking is done without support.  I seem to recall that's how it was done when I did a one day course at E5 bakery too.

Here's the recipe I found
https://homegrownhappiness.com/easy-sourdough-baguette-recipe

[Ham]

As I said, I think the emphasis on the round sticky baguette is probably as much in the mind as anything. The qualities I was looking for when I was experimenting were: #1 The crust - I think the high temp bake with high moisture is prime in delivering this, likely as not will not be affected too much by the raising medium,  I see your recipe has this, too. #2 The crumb - this is where the raising medium plays a part. Here are two frog-like googles - yeast bake and sourdough bake. This shows the expected difference, in crumb with the sourdough having the big bubbles. I'm pleased to say mine have a high correlation in texture to the pictures, I don't see why you wouldn't do the same baking with sourdough. My experience is that T55 worked better than UK white, I experimented with all manner of types and mixes (Strong/plain etc) and concluded that T55 and T65 gave me the most authentic results.

OK, on to shape. The baguette tradition shape, which is what you are suggesting, is obviously a real thing. The balance between crust and crumb is a key part of what makes a baguette, for me, the tradition shape even as bought in boulangeries can be too thick in the middle and too thin at the end, but that doesn't stop it being great bread. The regular cylinder shape gives you those perfect circles to marry up with, say, an omelette fines herbes, or a moules mariniere.  Horses. Courses. Doovers.


ETA the T55 I've used most recently is this, I need to buy some more and I'm being tempted by this *WARNING* that last link is  a bakerybits one, the author cannot be held responsible for excessive clickage, your home is at risk if you do not keep up payments on a mortgage, serving suggestion only.

[Feanor]

*WARNING* that last link is  a bakerybits one, the author cannot be held responsible for excessive clickage, your home is at risk if you do not keep up payments on a mortgage, serving suggestion only.

You are a very Bad Man and I am now several Moneys shorter than I was.

[Feanor]

I par bake and freeze.

Can you elaborate a bit on that: I think I want to do the same.
I might want bake one fully, but remove the others to finish on another day.

- How long do you give the par-baking? Say as a percentage of the full bake time?
- How do you store the par-baked baguettes? Do you freeze them? Or leave them un-frozen for use in the near future?

[Ham]

The first bake is to "set" the loaf, so just on the turn to start to brown is perfect, which will depend on your oven. I am baking at 240 circotherm, ie higher than regulo 9.

In this picture the loaves on the right are perfect, the one one the left possibly slightly over what might be needed, this takes about 15 minutes in my oven https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=68753.msg2547005;topicseen#msg2547005 My Neff oven is pretty good at even cooking, I can see that if not, you might struggle. The loaf on the left I would probably use that day, I've not had issues with quality of crust baking it up again that same day, but equally you could finish it there and then.

When you remove from the oven and cool, they will become soft but not lose any volume, if you are using baguette tins like in the pic (FYI they are 2 x 2 tins, rather than 1 x 4), remove before they cool otherwise you may have removal issues - on occasion I have had mini-struggles based on the loaves integrating into the perforations, but that has a lot to do with the quality of preparation/resilience of the dough as you might expect. I freeze these and defrost before baking, often in the microwave. The second bake I do at 200 fan for about 15-20 minutes.

[Legs]

I’m attempting Chelsea buns this evening.  Will report back.  The little bits of uncooked dough and fruity goodness that got snipped off the ends of the roll were certainly very scrummy.  Photos of end product if and only if success has been achieved!

[Legs]

Very nommy.  9-8=1.

[citoyen]

Photos of end product if and only if success has been achieved!

Looks pretty successful to me - not the neatest but I bet they taste great! 

[Legs]

Yeah, they tasted divine.    I used my breadmaker to make the dough and do the first prove for me.  Once in the tin, I did the second prove in my oven, which is an oven function I've never used before, but it seems to have worked really well.  I gave them 10 minutes at 200C and 5 more at 180C.  They were really light and fluffy inside. 

The boys enjoyed helping me to measure out the ingredients, roll out the dough, spread the filling, and roll it up (which probably accounts for some of the wonkiness, but, if anything, being 'made with love' improved the eating experience!)

[Feanor]

Yes, they do look good!

Meantime, I have Ham to thank for this delivery today...


Baguette Stuffs by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

[Ham]

 

[Ham]

Turkish bread today, high hydration, no knead, high yeast content. Unusual glaze: tablespoon of flour with 20ml water combine, add 70ml boiling water, stir, add egg yolk.

[Feanor]

This is my second attempt at baguettes, the first one being made with rather ordinary quick fermented play-dough. (They were surprisingly OK!)
These are Pointage En Bac. T65 flour, 75% hydrated, overnight slow ferment in fridge. Happy with these. I need to be a bit bolder and let them darken a bit more next time.


Baguettes by Ron Lowe, on Flickr

Recipe here:
https://dawghousebakery.com/2021/06/10/recipe-chef-markus-farbingers-pointage-en-bac-slow-rise-baguettes/

[Mrs Pingu]

Nice