Bread - What are you baking today…..

[neph93]

That crust is a thing of beauty. Thick and clearly delineated.

[Giles]

The law of really really unintended circumstances…...

I left it in the oven with the door shut (but the oven turned off) after it had cooked.  After about 2 hours whilst I was watching TV I suddenly thought wtf did I do with the bread, could not even find it to start with

[dave28]

We make Potato Bread. Sounds odd but its very nice in my opinion.
Good with home made roasted carrot or pasta + tomato soup.

[neph93]

It is Valentine’s Day, Norwegian Mother’s Day and Fastelavn (Scandinavian Shrove Tuesdays, on a Sunday).

In an effort to combine all traditions I took Hot Ingrid out for dinner last night and I am made traditional Semlor today, but we had them for breakfast instead of tea.

Started by making a standard sweet bun dough:

Then hollowed them out, a mixed what was removed with boiling milk and marzipan to
make this mix:

I then filled the hollowed out bun with the mixture:

Then added whipped cream, the “lid”, and some icing sugar:

[Giles]

They look amazing, but why does hottie have her head in her hands?

[neph93]

I informed her of their calorific value after she had already eaten two of them [emoji23]

[Giles]

Yeah, being Norwegian, she'd have had no idea…..

[Giles]

My idea of a lo-cal breakfast (no sausages, fried potatoes, beans, or black pudding)…...

[ROman]

Only 4 rashers of bacon? Poached eggs look great.

[neph93]

Did my first bake with the baking steel last night. My normal baking routine had been disturbed by preparing for the sale of my house so I fermented a poolish in the day time and used the evening to get to grips with the steel. First, the results:

This is what they looked like in the oven straight after launching from the peel:

Using the steel cut the baking time by 10mins.  I didn’t leave the loaves to go dark, but the colouring is much more even. If I left them to go dark brown, then the baking time would have been 5 mins shorter.

The oven spring was decent, quite uniform and controlled. The final shape of the loaf was quite pleasing, more symmetrical and rounded. One really fun thing was being able to watch the loaves rise in the oven. It will be interesting to see how the pure levain loaves I have planned for the weekend fare.

Launching was easy and fun too, but the process made a lot of mess, leaving loads of flour everywhere. Definitely one of the things I’ll be focusing on improving.

The bread was good. Decent crust, moist and tasty but the crumb was unspectacular. It was airy, and fluffy in texture but the bubbles were quite evenly spaced. How much of this was due to the fermenting and flour mix (I used bran and wheatgerm), and how much was the baking steel I do not know, but again, more bakes, with different doughs should clarify this.  I’ll do a Biga this weekend too, so I can knock off a couple of pizzas.

[Giles]

I cant tell, did you introduce steam?

[neph93]

@Giles:

I cant tell, did you introduce steam?

I did. Cup of water in a heated baking sheet at the bottom of the oven.

[Chap]

Wednesday is Biga day… one half of the dough is in the fridge for pizza tomorrow

[Oaktavia]

@Chap that looks glorious man!

[Giles]

I'm going to stray from the Forkish path today/tomorrow…I'm going to give version 3 of the bread in this vid a go...Well, the guy does have great hair.....

[Giles]

Not sure that it looks much different/better than my Forkish Poolish, but I enjoyed making it immensely….

[Stuart.T]

Good looking bread there fellas. I tried a hodge podge 50% white, 20% wholemeal, and 30% white rye 75% water today. Not such an open crumb. Might be due to the rye? The dough was stickier than usual. Tasted great with cheese, dill gerkhin, and cumin saukraut

[neph93]

Biga on my baking steel. The oven rise is much more even when using the steel. I’m excited about doing sourdough on it, but won’t get the chance until next weekend.

[Chap]

Out of the oven this minute… that smell

[ROman]

I think I can smell it in North Carolina.