Bread Thread

I’m beginning to feel like I have at least some clue what I’m doing. Decided to try Trevor Wilson’s Champlain Sourdough. Premixed yesterday, added the starter this morning. It uses a smaller amount of starter, about 11%, and is supposed to take about 6 hours bulk and another 2-4 hours proof at 78 degrees. I use the oven with the light on, about 77-80 degrees, but then needed the oven for breakfast. I let the oven cool after breakfast and put the dough back in, but when I checked again my dough temp had got up to 82. From the feel of the dough, I preshaped at 4 1/2 hours, shaped at 5 hours and then baked at 6 hours. First time I did not do a cold retard. I’ll be doing this one again.
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My baking always slows down this time of year, it's just too hot to run the oven at 500 degrees for multiple hours. Fortunately, we had a good marine push yesterday so I was able to bake off a couple of loaves. It's about 20% whole grain of various kinds, I'm trying to use up the bottom of several bags of flours before I do another big order.
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Made a regular sourdough loaf again today. I’ve been working on making sandwich bread (not sourdough) the last few times. I did learn that if you are going to use a bread pan, get a metal one. I tried making the sandwich loaf in a ceramic pan a couple times but the bottom of the bread just doesn’t bake well enough and it stuck terribly.
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Gary Knowels said:
That is a killer deal, unfortunately I have 35 lbs of my last 50 lber remaining and I'd have to spend the savings on plastic containers to store it in
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I know. I have about 15lbs total of the 100lbs I ordered in April. I still might pull the trigger and just keep them in their sacks. I have big cambro tubs
 
I bake bread often, but I'm not too experimental. If I think of it in time, I use the famed NYT "No Knead" bread, which really takes about 18 hours to fully rise.

Up until recently, I had just formed it into a boule and baked it inside my Dutch oven in the main oven. The other day, though, I thought, "What the hell, I might as well use that double baguette form that I got for nothing from Temu." So I cut the dough in half, rolled it into two baguette shapes as best I could (the dough in this recipe remains VERY loose and sticky, and is not meant to be kneaded, hence the name), and put the form in the oven. Wow, great baguettes! They were ready for dinner and were gone by morning.

Next time, I decided to just put the bread into a regular bread pan and see what happens. Again, it worked great and I had a wonderful tasting sandwich bread.

A couple things: I use a proofer, which assures a steady temperature and humidity. And speaking of humidity, when I cooked bread inside my Dutch oven, I just had the top on, but for the baguettes and sandwich bread I had a pan of water on a lower rack to ensure humidity while baking.
 
First bread I've made in months. I had to spend 2 days rejuvenating the jar of starter in the back of my fridge, first. It's amazing how resilient starter is; it hadn't been fed, touched, or talked to for months and a couple days of feeding brought it right back.
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Zak said:
First bread I've made in months. I had to spend 2 days rejuvenating the jar of starter in the back of my fridge, first. It's amazing how resilient starter is; it hadn't been fed, touched, or talked to for months and a couple days of feeding brought it right back.
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Welcome back! I once left mine unattended in the fridge for 4 months and it came right back as well. I don't quite understand how people kill them.
 
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