Bread - What are you baking today…..

[Chad]

Made my first loaves from pre-ferments this past weekend. Went with the white bread with poolish. I definitely prefer it to the Saturday white from the book.

[neph93]

@Giles same here. My starter is ridiculous and it seems to burn through the flour very quickly. Regardless, I’ve held on to a four hour bulk ferment. I will avoid that today.

[Giles]

Yeah, IMO the Poolish and the Biga are way more tasty….

[Chap]

50% whole wheat biga

[Chap]

… and the 80% Biga

[Giles]

80% Biga with 8 seed flour….(all my loaves tend to look the same )

[Chap]

What really improved my breads was the use of a cast iron pot

[Giles]

I'll give that a go next bake.  I used one for a while, but I have a steam oven and I've been determined to make it work 

[Stuart.T]

I've taken to looking at this thread instead of watching porn. It seems to fulfil a similar desire 

[Stuart.T]

@Giles it's the Regular Chef recipe that I used for my 1st bake. I like his style, very easy going and simple to follow. I didn't get much oven spring, but I think I know where I went wrong thanks to Rueben's help.

[Giles]

Those who have tasted this bake, reckon it's one of my best….I've yet to try....

[Giles]

Problem? Moi?

[Chap]

famous vienna restaurant Steirereck https://www.steirereck.at/en/restaurant/
has a bread sommelier… if you ever come back to vienna, you got an INVITATION (not only for the bread  ;))

[Giles]

[neph93]

Arrrrggghhhh.

As noted yesterday I am trying to perfect my spelt loaf, and struggling to get the kind of oven spring I have had earlier with spelt, and regularly with wheat loaves.

Initially I thought it was too much hydration causing the issue. I lowered this bake to 75%.

After yesterday’s discussion I suspected the issue was the length of the bulk ferment. This dough had a three hour bulk ferment (down from four and a half), and a 10 hour fridge retardation (down from 14 hours).

There is plenty of life in the dough. The over night fridge proofing saw a 40-50% increase in volume. Straight from the fridge:

They came out of the banneton’s just fine, but deflated meaningfully after scoring:

There is oven spring. The volume of the dough increases during the first 20min. Here they after 20min. They have been covered and the oven has steam. The problem is that the volume increase is much more lateral rather than vertical.

Finished:

The crumb is not the greatest I’ve had, but isn’t bad at all:

So these loaves turned out more or less exactly the same as my last batch, which had a longer bulk ferment and fridge proof, and higher hydration. What the actual yeasty-fuck is next?!

[dinobarnesberlin]

You guys are killing it on the Bread Frontier.
I would pay good money to have a sandwich with that bread.

[neph93]

@dinobarnesberlin:

You guys are killing it on the Bread Frontier.

In all honesty, mine tastes great. My mother-in-law who has been baking all her life now weeps in envy when she tastes mine. Buy it doesn’t fekkin look like it should and it is a righteous pain in the ring.

[Giles]

I'm with you.  I think my bread tastes wonderful and loads of my friends are now using recipes that I have given them.  But I still can't get the oven spring that I would like….A work in progress.

I've watched some tart on YouTube taking about 15 minutes to score the most amazing and intricate patterns into her proofed loaves.  If I a) took that long and b) scored it so much, my dough would be about the thickness of a Rizla paper....

[neph93]

@Giles:

But I still can't get the oven spring that I would like….A work in progress.

The bastard thing is that if I put the dough into a tin it would be forced to rise upwards and look awesome. But I’ve now become a slightly obsessed, macho «free-baker» and the idea of using tins makes my teeth itch and arse clench.

And the real kicker is that I’ve had good oven spring before, I’ve just lost it somewhere in the tweaking.

[dinobarnesberlin]