I like mine in the 20-30% whole grain range. You can really alter flavor depending on which flour you add, keep playing around, I bet you'll find 9ne you like
Bread Thread
- Thread starter Gary Knowels
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I'm trying the "artisan bread in 5 minutes a day" thing. I doubled the book's basic boule recipe and added a couple tablespoons of sourdough starter. Here it is one hour into a two hour rise, after which it will go in a dorm fridge. Then, the plan is, I'll cut off a grapefruit sized chunk whenever I want a loaf of fresh bread for dinner. It can stay in the fridge for 14 days, and there's enough for 8 smallish loaves. I'll report back.
After a night in the fridge:
Made a smallish boule in the Lodge combo cooker. The grapefruit sized ball of dough did not rise much in 40 minutes in the counter, but it got some decent oven spring:
Pretty tasty. The crumb did not have airy holes in it like my sourdough, but it did not taste dense or heavy. More like sandwich bread. Very little sourdough tang, I'm hoping to taste more of that as the dough ages in the fridge.
Made a smallish boule in the Lodge combo cooker. The grapefruit sized ball of dough did not rise much in 40 minutes in the counter, but it got some decent oven spring:
Pretty tasty. The crumb did not have airy holes in it like my sourdough, but it did not taste dense or heavy. More like sandwich bread. Very little sourdough tang, I'm hoping to taste more of that as the dough ages in the fridge.
A banneton is on my birthday list! Do you find that wet doughs need the fabric cover in the banneton to keep from sticking to the rattan, or is a coating of flour sufficient to make the dough release when you turn it over?
I've done both. For my sourdough, I tend to flirt with the line of how much hydration my flour and skill can handle so I like the cloth as extra insurance. I do LOVE the pattern the rattan gives the loaves though. I dust with a 50:50 mix of AP and rice flour to help encourage release. Some people use bread/AP flour only, others rice flour only.
For boules you can place a tea towel in a bowl and dust with flour in place of a real banneton.
For boules you can place a tea towel in a bowl and dust with flour in place of a real banneton.
Actually the only time I stuck a loaf was with a fabric liner. With either a lined or unlined banneton, the key is to use ample flour. I use to use rice flour, but it just ends up being one more damn thing in the pantry. Whatever flour I'm using at the time works just fine.
I use a countertop bread box. Cheap bamboo thing from Amazon but will hold 2+ loaves of bread and does a decent job at maintaining moisture while not making the crust gooey. The biggest thing is to make sure the bread is 100% cool before slicing, it'll stay fresh twice as long as a bread cut warm.
I buy these:
I give a lot of my breads to friends, and they are nice for that as well.
Russell
Steelhead
"The biggest thing is to make sure the bread is 100% cool before slicing, "
Is this really realistic?
... Really, there are few things better than freshly baked bread, not long out of the oven, smeared with a good Irish butter. How do you possibly wait for it to cool. Course, home-baked bread lasts abut a day and a half in our household, so staleness is not generally an issue.
Cheers
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It is when you always bake 2 loaves. 1 gets to cool completely
Curious if any of you master bakers use a wood fired outdoor oven?
I don't, but I wish I had one! It would double as a pizza oven.
My dad salvaged a pile of old bricks out of the Willamette about 20 years ago and also somewhere down the line got a whole bunch of fire bricks somewhere. It's a huge pile of bricks stored away on the back 40. So were thinking about finally building an oven... possibly something like this.
My wife saw something on Instagram and asked if I could make it so I gave it a go.
Pumpkin sourdough bread. Made with pumpkin puree and pumpkin seeds. I shaped a regular batards with half and a pumpkin shape with the other.
Pumpkin sourdough bread. Made with pumpkin puree and pumpkin seeds. I shaped a regular batards with half and a pumpkin shape with the other.
Second boule baked today from the 8 quarts of dough that I put in the fridge last Tuesday. Much better taste and crumb than Wednesday's bread. I let it rise much longer after shaping, almost two hours, because I got distracted.
Six more loaves to go from the big batch of dough! I'm liking this "artisan bread in 5 minutes a day"method; it is very easy and quick to cut off a piece of dough, shape it, and pop it in the oven.
Six more loaves to go from the big batch of dough! I'm liking this "artisan bread in 5 minutes a day"method; it is very easy and quick to cut off a piece of dough, shape it, and pop it in the oven.
