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The Doctor posted:My weekly challah exploded! Do you have a recipe for this? For some reason, I seem incapable of making really really soft, airy, fluffy bread. I even bought wheat gluten, and that didn't help. It's one of my ultimate cooking goals to be able to make bread that I'd be willing to make everyday and eat the entire loaf and get really really fat off of.
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Oct 28, 2012 23:49
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Ahhh, that's amazing! I'm so sad now that I have to wait til Christmas to have access to my baking tools. Just a couple questions: The Doctor You gave the recipe in volume, do you have it in weight, or do you know what the hydration % is supposed to be? Secondly, you punch down and re-knead before the second rise - have you tried just doing a french fold to keep as much of the air as possible? Charmmi Did you use a mixer or did you hand knead? Just wondering if using a mixer would gently caress it up. edit Going to make this someday too. http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/recipe-for-80-hydration-baguette/ 
Rurutia fucked around with this message at 15:05 on Oct 30, 2012 |
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Oct 30, 2012 14:30
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daggerdragon posted:So... most recipes are given in cups, not by weight. How do you convert? fl oz is a volume measurement. But note that it is exactly the volume of 1 oz of water at SATP. (actually just looked it up, oddly its 16 degrees C, not 25) But really, get a scale if you're making bread. And use a recipe that gives weights or ratios. If you really really have to use a volume recipe, use scoop and level. Scoop the flour, level with the back of a knife, don't compress or shake or do anything. Julia Childs says that's usually accurate. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Nov 4, 2012 |
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Nov 4, 2012 01:50
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I'm going home to my kitchen tomorrow. Guess what the first thing I'm doing is?  (80% hydration/butter rolls/challah) (in that order)
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Dec 11, 2012 00:11
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mediaphage posted:Am I the only one who never measures yeast? I just...pour a bunch in. It's all log growth that you can just figure out when something looks, you know, done. It's the only ingredient I don't weigh. I still use a tablespoon spoon because I need to dirty a spoon anyways, but it's usually pretty rough. Unrelated, my boyfriend threw out my entire quart of yeast that was in the freezer for good knows what reason. But I've been wanting to calculate relative "hydration" of that challah ingredient breakdown you posted and alter it for 80% hydration and see how it goes. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Dec 15, 2012 |
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Dec 15, 2012 17:21
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Sometimes I feel like I bake in a different dimension than everyone else. I recently made The Doctor's eggy loaf recipe: 4 large eggs 2 cups warm whole milk 1/2 cup warm water 1 tbsp yeast 1 tbsp brown sugar 1 tbsp oil or butter (optional) 1 tsp salt 8 cups whole wheat flour OR 7 cups flour and 1 cup gluten And the dough was ridiculously hard by 5th cup of whole wheat flour. I stopped adding flour at that point and still ended up having to add another .8 cup of water for it to be kneadable. I let it rise twice, and tossed it into a 350F oven for 30min and it ended up just not tasting very good and from the crumb it looks like it rose some - there're holes... So, I have a few things I might've done wrong: 1) I use the same instant yeast I always have that The Doctor also uses(saf's), but I usually add this directly to the flour as per the instructions on the package. In her post, she proofs it - I thought this actually lowers its yeasting power? 2) How to scoop 1 cup of flour. I use the scoop and level method but maybe my flour was packed particularly tight? I don't know why I can't bake a loaf simple bread. 
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May 13, 2013 17:14
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therattle posted:Stuff like hydration and rise times depend on ingredients (different flours and yeasts) and environment (eg relative humidity). Start simple! I'm afraid I don't know the meaning of the word. Yeah, I've made the no-knead and some other breads before that came out ok. I think the crumb always comes out a bit dense and the bread a bit dry for my taste so I'm trying to do more enriched and fluffy breads. I decided to start over from first principles. I think part of the problem is that I'm using whole wheat bread flour. So going for a ~70% hydration, I'm starting with: 250g whole wheat pastry flour 63g whole wheat bread flour 52g vital wheat gluten to make up for the missing gluten in the pastry flour Total solids: 365g For my own purposes, I consider eggs half liquid, half 'flavor' addition. So then I used: 56g (1) egg 33g olive oil 160g warm milk 44g warm water Total liquid: 265g liquid Hydration: 72.6% I just finished the first knead and the dough came together surprisingly well. I had to do some slap and fold kneading to get it to come together, but now it's sitting in my stand mixer for the first rest. I'm planning on resting it for about 1.5 hours in between kneads until it passes windowpane and feels like a workable smooth dough. Any criticisms of my thought process/method is welcome. edit Whoops. 3% yeast and 2% salt. So 11g of yeast, 7g of salt. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 20:25 on May 13, 2013 |
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May 13, 2013 19:27
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The Doctor posted:I have a weird feeling you must have missed a measurement somewhere. This dough is practically cake batter until the fifth cup of flour is added, any less than eight cups and it would be extremely sticky, something to fold rather than knead. I have screwed it up before by not measuring out my milk properly, I've also noticed that if you do all the eggs and milk cold out of the fridge it's a pain to knead. I have a hard time believing it was cold ingredients though, hard by the fifth cup of flour just doesn't seem possible. I'm convinced it's because of how packed my flour is and I didn't sift it before I did spoon and level. But I made sure everything was warm. I suspect your dough is supposed similar to what I did today by weight which worked great. It was rich, very soft, and very tasty. I did end up overkneading the dough because I kept trying to get window paning but with how much fat was in the recipe I think I was expecting a bit too much transparency. But I think I realized it early enough that the bread still came out well. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 06:08 on May 14, 2013 |
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May 14, 2013 06:05
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Oh my god, I finally did it. I finally made my ultimate loaf. It is so airy with uniform large holes in the crumb. The crust is flakey and almost pastry like. The flavor is complex and rich (it is a sourdough enriched 80% hydration sandwich loaf). It only took 14 hours of retarding, 8 hours of proofing, and an hour of autolyzing and kneading. Jesus christ. It is so soft and airy I have to place it on its side because the mushroom head is collapsing in on itself. It quintupled itself during proofing.   (Sorry for the green poo poo, it's pesto.) Rurutia fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Aug 24, 2013 |
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Aug 24, 2013 23:25
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Ingredients: Flour (100.00%)- 405.3177691 Milk (50.24%)- 203.6316472 Eggs (30.00%)- 121.5953307* Sugar (12.31%)- 49.89461738 Soft Butter (12.31%)- 49.89461738 Salt (2.46%)- 9.970817121 Starter (37.40%)- 151.5888457 Yeast (2.00%)- 8.106355383 Total 1000g +Vital Wheat Gluten The starter is 50/50 so if you don't want to make sourdough, you can just replace it with just flour and water. Flour is white bread flour. For my 1000g loaf, this is just 2 eggs. I estimate about 50-60g per egg. Sift the dry ingredients together without the yeast, in a separate bowl mix together the wet ingredients in a way that gets them to about room temp. I generally just mix together hot milk/butter and cold starter - mix in the eggs after so they don't cook. Mix the dry and wet ingredients together until barely incorporated and autolyze (let it just sit there) for 30min. Slap and fold until smooth, then if you have stand mixer throw it in with the yeast and about a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten* and let it knead until it not only passes windowpane but it tears smoothly and the gluten strands are very strong (takes about 15min at least) - usually at this stage I'm windowpaning every 2 minutes. All told, kneading should take 45min-1hr. *(The amount of vital wheat gluten depends on the slackness and composition of the dough without. I put in about a tsp at a time and test the feel of the dough and the strength of the gluten strands until the dough really comes together and the gluten holds.) Let it rest for 2 hours, then retard in the coldest part of the fridge for 14 hours (overnight). Take out of the fridge and let it come back up to room temp for about an hour. Stretch it out into a big disc (I do this usually in the air with gravity pulling it down - the gluten should be very strong at this point so that it won't tear even when you make it very thin.) then fold 2 opposing edges in and roll up lengthwise into a jelly roll. Place inside a loaf pan and proof (can take from 4-6 hours). I take a spray bottle and moisten the outside every hour or so - if I'm going out for a few hours I'll just do it before I leave and then when I get back it's not that sensitive. Proof test is just the poke test - it will usually quadruple or more. Heat the oven with a large glass bowl of water on the bottom rack to 450F. Do not trust your oven beeping, wait for the water to start bubbling/simmering. Once it does so, turn the oven back down to 350F, spray the bread one last time, and stick in the loaf pan. Bake for 45min. Note While resting/retarding (not proofing!) you have to deflate whenever it hits 2x inflation. With deflating, you don't want punch down - you want to gently lift the dough all around so that air escapes from the bottom. This helps preserve the integrity of the gluten structure and it prevents yeast from drowning in CO2. This is especially important during the retarding process. I start the retarding process in the middle of the day, then deflate before I go to bed. Usually the dough won't inflate at all again in the fridge, but this gives you extra oomph for the proof. Finally, don't expect much oven spring. Most of the growth and hole formation happens during the proof. Generally speaking the timings aren't super important to get exactly right. What is important is getting that strong gluten structure (kneading) and a healthy colony of yeast for the final proof. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 15:21 on Aug 25, 2013 |
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Aug 25, 2013 14:59
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The Doctor posted:google "how many grams is a cup of water". Most common baking ingredients have conversions online. I find these conversions poor at best since it's dependent on your brand and type. Also note that these conversions for flour assume that you're sifting the flour prior to scoop and leveling. A scale costs $25 and is a one time expense that will save you a lot of headache, I just don't see why you wouldn't just get one if you were finding that baking recipes just aren't working for you for whatever reason. It should be the first troubleshooting step.
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Oct 24, 2013 19:39
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The Doctor posted:e: Also, if you're making a totally average sandwich loaf and you can't get it to work out, scales are not the problem, the recipe or the person following it is the problem. When someone complains that a recipe has failed them, the problem is never or extemely rarely "I should have weighed it" until you start getting into serious recipes with features reliant on accuracy. The problem is almost always: terrible recipe, substituted/forgotten ingredients, inadequate proofing, cold oven, cold rise, etc. All other things being equal, in a simple recipe, volume/weight is inconsequential. This has not been my experience, but it might just be because my whole wheat flour is exceptionally weird.
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Oct 24, 2013 20:05
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Xarb posted:This is still baffling me. After my first rise (I usually do a 70% hydration all white-flour loaf) I knock it back, shape it and then immediately do the poke test. Even though it hasn't had a chance to do its second rise the dimple already doesn't spring back. It honestly sounds like you didn't knead it enough. Or if you're doing no knead, it hadn't sat for long enough. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 03:07 on Mar 5, 2014 |
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Mar 5, 2014 02:51
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RECIPE! RECIPE! RECIPE!
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Apr 18, 2014 14:07
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MrYenko posted:I grew my own starter once... SymmetryrtemmyS posted:The other side to this is that within a few weeks, your starter will taste like your local yeast regardless, so it's really only worth it as a quick way to get started. Since it's so easy to make a starter anyway, I don't see much point in buying one. I actually read an article awhile ago that said the yeasts we grow in our starters come from the flour that we use. That's why using a stone milled flour is best or something like that. SO you might want to just change what flour you use.
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Oct 16, 2014 12:38
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mindphlux posted:I can't loving make bread. I tried yesterday and deflated it completely and misshaped the entire baugette when trying to get it off my peel and onto my stone. it's like literally the most frustrating thing ever. I 100% of the time end up with some lovely dense crumb that screams homemade "bread". I've read so many books on breadmaking cover to cover, improvised proof boxes with perfect temperature and humidity, everything. always dense crumb, ugly dusty brown exterior, and hours of work ending in complete frustration. I came close to dumping out my poolish, but I fed it today, maybe I'll try again later this week. I honestly think it's because the home made bread recipes are all too low in hydration for ease. The only bread I've made that is up to my personal standards was the 80% hydration bread. (And this the japanese milk bread which is eugh so good.)
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Jun 23, 2015 01:08
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Wet hands helps, but I personally actually use oiled hands. I find the effect lasts longer. I barely touch the dough at high hydration because it's more like silly putty. I try to limit my contact to mostly my scraper and oiled fingertips. Letting the dough just sit there and autolyze before you do anything will help with stickiness. 80% hydration dough will stick to the most nonstick of surfaces. That's why you use a scraper.  With sufficient gluten development, you shouldn't be degassing it with movement. If you're degassing that easily, it means you haven't developed the gluten enough. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 19:50 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 19:45
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I actually do the opposite. I do a short autolyse (length controlled by whenever the dough levels off in rising), then retard in the fridge for the week (deflating as necessary to prevent too much CO2 build up which can kill yeast), then pull it out in the morning for stretch and folds throughout the day (at long intervals, usually once before work, once at lunch, once after work, then shape and proof right before dinner). But I also do 80% hydration and prefer this because working with 80% hydration dough right after autolyse sucks. Structure of the dough by the 2nd s+f is already very elastic and easy to work with. By happenstance, I'm actually making daily bread this week and took a picture 2 days ago, even though the one yesterday came out better.  I agree though, 12 hours sit without s+f's sounds very long. At 70% hydration, the dough being way too sticky sounds more like lack of gluten formation. I think maybe your expectation for 'elastic' is a bit under? The loaf falling a bit after scoring is normal, oven spring should restore it and more. Rurutia fucked around with this message at 11:58 on Jun 22, 2016 |
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Jun 22, 2016 11:52
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:54 |
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Except water! Work on higher hydration breads with a less dense crumb.
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Jan 3, 2017 23:47
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