Bread - What are you baking today…..
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A few loaves from today. Caraway sourdough.
Also showing off my new cutting board that I received as a Xmas gift from my boss.
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Lovely looking loaves @jordanscollected
My standard warm spot levain got doubled today, because it is the most luxurious bread I know of and will work well with the strong and varied flavours of a Norwegian xmas breakfast table (think lots of salted, cured fish and meat, pickled fruit and veg).
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Those look substantial neph.
Fish, meat and pickled fruit and veggies–-sounds great. -
Good luck with your new toys. I use a pizza stone under my Dutch oven. I'm sure it's overkill, but the stone stays in the oven most of the time….I work on the basis that whenever I put something cold in the oven, it'll reduce the oven temp, so having a socking great stone in there that is up to oven temp, reduces the time for the oven to get back up to dialled in temp....
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Not using my new toy yet as it has to be seasoned… but I have read a little about pre-shaping over the holiday and put it to use today.
This was half of one dough (white levain) that was pre-shaped and bench rested for about 20 min before the final shape and banneton proofing. When the final shape was done I noticed a thicker more robust «skin» to the shaped dough, and a rounder, but not tighter boule.
That seemed to carry over to the bake. Despite dough spreading on the oven tray it got a lot of spring and had pleasantly rounded sides. A couple of cm higher than me regular bakes, I would say.
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Utilised the same technique on the country brown. I struggle not to overdo it, and I’m not as smooth or efficient enough yet. The result was a thicker skin which I think may have been responsible for the massive splits that formed during oven spring.
May be worth proofing these seam side up and scoring, in the future.
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So all you did was pre-shape and left to rest for 20 mins? Then what reshape before putting in the Banneton?
Do'h… I missed this, apologies. But yes, pretty much. The idea as I understand it is that you do a "soft" shaping into a boule, regardless of what you eventually intend. Don't get it too tight, but just get just enough movement and friction to get that skin formed so that it holds. Then you let it sit for 20min, seam side down. When that is done, you can do a final shape, either re-enforcing the boule or doing the folded baton routine. The result is a thicker skin, that is less likely to split and gives more support during the bake.
My experience was that it works better for boules than for batons. Probably because you ruin a little of the structure conveyed by the preshape when folding the baton form.
