Bread - What are you baking today…..

[Gulliver]

Thanks @neph93, it tastes better the day after too

[pechelman]

@goosehd said in Bread - What are you baking today…..:

@neph93 @Giles

Bake Temp: 475f
Pizza Stone
15 minutes on the pizza stone
12 minutes on the upper oven rack

Total cook: 27 minutes @475

While this will yield solid results, most other techniques suggest a hotter oven to start for the first 10, with loads of steam, and then dropping for the last 15ish mins until done. My go to was 500F on a baking steel for 10 min with a hotel tray full of lava rocks on the side with boiling water poured on before closing the oven door followed by 15m@450f and removing the hotel tray of rocks. Then also leave the bread in the oven for two minutes after it was done with the heat off, bread on a higher empty rack, and the door cracked open to generate a strong connection to really dry off and crisp up the outside. This also reduces the cracking you might hear when removing it straight away.

Though if you've never tried baking using the cold oven method it's worth a try. Basically don't preheat anything, place dough into a covered cold Dutch oven, place into a cold oven, and then bake at 500F for 50 mins. Remove lid, inspect, and bake uncovered till your desired color. I still do the last step as above with removing the Dutch oven, placing loaf on a high rack in the turned off oven, and leave the door cracked for 2ish mins.

[Giles]

Start of the 2 hour rest (I hope the lazy fucker does a bit more than rest). I'm not over the moon, but a significant improvement over the last disaster learning experience.

[neph93]

@goosehd mine didn’t get anywhere near as brown and I used a higher heat. The oven is new to me however and may not be as good as my old ones. Today’s overnight white was… quite white and I didn’t have time to brown it any more.

[neph93]

Looking good G.

[neph93]

Just for shits and giggles I inverted one of these to use my new lamé and give it an ear. The other went after standard Forkish lore. It’s all a matter of personal taste of course, but which does everyone prefer? Scored or au naturell?

[goosehd]

@neph93 Au naturell but both of them are ending up in my belly. Just commenting to G that I still can't get my poolish to explode open like that. A few cracks are all I can manage...

I'm thinking that I'm not getting the surface tension right. I added moisture to the dough to see if it needed more internal pressure, but that didn't give me the effect that you guys are managing.

[goosehd]

@Giles The craziest part of the pan de cristal was how extremely light they are and that they rose considerably when I placed them on the stone to bake. They almost doubled in size from when they went in to the 15 minutes shift to the upper rack.

[Giles]

I have a lamé, used it once or twice and was underwhelmed with my lamé skills. So now I only go natural. I'm pretty good at getting surface tension into the dough (but nothing like as good as @chap )

[pechelman]

If oven spring is the same it all comes down to preference. I like the thin crispy texture where the bread splits open in contrast to the thicker but they're fantastic looking either way.

[goosehd]

@neph93 100% correct call on the Brie with the bread…It worked but wasn’t the perfect combination. Used the bread last night to clean up my butter chicken dish and that was a much better pairing.

[Giles]

[Giles]

[goosehd]

…much better! How do they taste?

[Giles]

Room for improvement, but better ( or as @Madame-Buttonfly would say “couldn’t be worse”)

[Giles]

@goosehd said in Bread - What are you baking today…..:

…much better! How do they taste?

Tell you after dinner (supper, tea?)....

[goosehd]

@Giles Laura wants to know why it’s still covered up…

Edit: I want to know where the wine is?

[Giles]

Because we have a couple of courses to get through first.....

[goosehd]

In chatting with G about protein content, the flour I’ve been using for the poolish and Pan de Cristal is 13.3%.

@neph93 Any idea what your content is? I’m wondering it that’s why my poolish doesn’t explode open or if it’s my technique.

The one flour that I’m considering buying has a content around 15/16% which seems pretty high.

Love to hear your guys thoughts.

[krebsy]

Just FYI, I've had success adding Vital Wheat Gluten to all purpose flour to boost the protein content. There's a good calculator around somewhere online that was a tremendous help in determining how much to add. I mostly went this route to simplify how many types of flour I had piled up in the pantry. It was getting out of control, ha ha!