Bread - What are you baking today…..

[Giles]

Step one of the WTF went wrong analysis.....

[goosehd]

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:

2. Daisy Unbleached Hard Flour
3. Area White Spelt Flour

Love to hear your thoughts if you have a minute or two.

[pechelman]

@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.

[Gulliver]

Does Banana a Chocolate bread count as a bread here?

[goosehd]

@Gulliver It does for me

[neph93]

Its a baking thread @Gulliver so for sure. And that looks delicious.

[neph93]

@goosehd been meaning to ask... how long and at what temp did you bake that pan de cristal? And did you use a steel or stone?

[Giles]

Answers on a postcard as soon as possible please (I'm trying again today). I tried starting with a 25-minute autolyse (almost per @pechelman , but I did not read how long to do it for until after I had mixed the other ingredients

[goosehd]

@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

[goosehd]

I followed the King Arthur recipe to the letter with fold times (total 4 folds) every 20 minutes, and rest for 80 minutes. The last two folds and rest were done in a warm environment (oven light turned on) and 80 minute rest was in the warming drawer.

Proof for two hours on the parchment paper and slid onto the stone when ready.

[Giles]

Thanks Dennis.

This one is looking so much better than last time already (1 coil fold done).......

[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 )