Bread - What are you baking today…..
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Thank you.
I did exactly as per this:
https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/pan-de-cristal-recipe
Which is effectively the same as this:
Hydration was the same, and all other ingredients had the same ratios, so I suspect crap flour or old yeast.
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Not over until it's slathered in butter, or something along those lines. The house is cool today and it's raining outside making for a difficult process. Had to use the oven with the light on trick and the warming drawer to get the temps right. Hoping it proofs well...
We'll see.
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@neph93 To be honest, I was lucky as hell, used every trick I knew to make this work, and don’t know if I can replicate it. The conditions today were bad: cool house, damp, no real warm spots until I used the oven light and warming drawer.
I’m glad that you guys mentioned the folding technique as I would never have got it right otherwise. I’m still not happy with how my folds looked vs. the ones in the video, but the product turned out well, even with my shortcomings.
As to taste, it’s a lovely bread and will be added to my list of breads to make. Super light, fantastic crust, and will go well with a soft warm cheese (Brie?). Wife loves it and the kids say it’s lighter than a croissant in weight.
The Forkish book and the addition of a proper kitchen scale has changed my skill level dramatically. I was not able to measure accurately using volume and have my results turn out well. Salt, yeast, and flour are always measured with the scale to the recipes recommendation. The water is give or take. The book has taught me that over hydration is not a bad thing and that hydration levels need to take into account your environmental conditions.
Taking all of that into account, it’s still the accidents that make me the most happy with today being one of them. I went into it expecting failure, didn’t know if anything I was doing was right, and the results exceeding my expectations (which were very low).
I hope it’s not a fluke accident, but either way, something that I will continue pursuing.
"I don't give a shit what anyone else is doing, we will do what is best for us and our customers" - Giles P. :)
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only way to know if it was a fluke is to do it again!
Your bread looks picture perfect to me @goosehd. I found hydration to be extremely forgiving as well. It's not as critical as people say it is unless you're trying to make pan de cristal with pastry flour
Even then, that might be a fun experiment..... -
@Tago-Mago you don’t expect me to waste my cat herding focus on something like the science, art, and enjoyment of baking breads. Of course it’s store bought…
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Here is a fairly local mill that produces some different flours and I was wondering if you could give me some input on what you would try.https://arvaflourmills.com/pages/our-flours
The two in particular that I'm looking at are:
- Daisy Unbleached Hard Flour
- Area White Spelt Flour
Love to hear your thoughts if you have a minute or two.
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@goosehd, this is an incredibly easy choice
Get both, and if you can, buy it in a larger bag of daisy and a smaller bag of the spelt.
Then use something like a ~90/10 or even 70/30 ratio of the two flours. Spelt is among my favorites to blend in.
Also know that you can buy whole grains of spelt, sometimes called farro, and mill it yourself. It will keep much longer this way. In either case for spelt, be sure to store it in a tightly wrapped bag, double protected, and in the freezer to make sure it keeps longer. Count on a year of good life for the spelt flour and maybe as much as 2-3 for the whole grains.edit: Also, their Emmer flour sounds amazing! That one might actually be top of my list. Then again, I'm still working through a 50lb bag of KA Sir Lancelot so my need of more AP or a base flour is fairly limited.
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