Baking Much?

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Jeff B
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by Jeff B »

So Ray, if you shipped me a loaf you think it would still be fresh by the time it got here? 🤔 Sure looks Good!
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by arthurfowler »

mauichef wrote: Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:27 pm Boules for the weekend!

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Beautiful bread as always Ray.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by jbart65 »

My first effort at sourdough fell entirely flat. Hockey puck flat. The starter wasn't quite ready in retrospect - it didn't pass the float test - but I proceeded anyway.

My second effort was better, but the dough still sagged. Interestingly, the crumb and flavor was actually pretty good.

Image

The starter did pass the float test when I made the preferment, but barely. It passed the float test much more easily a few hours after after the deed was done.

Dough still seemed too wet and didn't have enough gluten structure even after folding four times and preshaping. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Using a recipe from Josey Baker, whose book is really a beginner's one. Only calls for a tablespoon of starter in the preferment. The recipe overall calls for 480 grams flour and 360 grams water.

I plan to try Forkish's breads soon, but he creates and uses so much starter and a fair bit of it in his premix. Would be a pretty penny if I followed his recommended routine all the time! And Robertson's recipe for a starter is somewhat vague, surprisingly. I'll figure it out, but it is more complicated than I thought.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by arthurfowler »

Firstly Jeffry, there are far better bakers than me but here’s a few points that may help and that work for me. I used the Tartine method to get my starter going. It is quite vague and mine took about an extra 4 or 5 days to get really going. So stick with it. Once mine was up and running, I fed mine daily with a 1:1:1 ratio - starter, water and flour (equal blend of strong white, strong wholemeal and rye). During lockdown, I was baking lots and therefore fed each day. I would use 35g of starter to make my levain if I was making bread that day and use a 1:3:3 starter,water,flour. This would give me 245g levain and I use 180g (20%) for that batch with 65g (ish) carrying over to the next day. If not baking, I would use about 30 to 40 g of starter and feed1:1:1. Managing this way, I would keep the discarded starter in the fridge and twice a week I would have enough to make some waffles and/or pancakes and not waste any starter. Now that I am back in the office more, I am only baking once or twice a week. If it is only once, I will feed the starter as normal And then put it in the fridge around 4 hours after feeding. I then put it on the counter 36 hours or so before I want to make a levain. This allows the starter to come back up to room temp overnight, then feed the next morning and ready to use the following morning. I think the key is ensuring that your starter is consistently rising and falling each day before attempting to bake. I think for me it was about 2 weeks before I actually baked any bread. Also there are lots of different methods out there around levains, bulk fermentation, retarded proofing and lost of flexibility but I feel you end up finding your own rhythm and what works best for you. Here is the outline of how I make mine.
Day 1
6am build levain - 35g starter, 105g water, 105g flour blend as above
10am - Autolyse - Mix 800g strong white, 100g strong wholemeal and 675g (75%) water. Water temp around 32c depending on ambient temp. I want a dough temp around 26 to 28c
12pm add 18g salt and 180g levain. Mix using Stretch and fold and pincer movement like KF. Apply 4 to 5 sets of stretch and folds in the first 2 hours then bulk for 4 hours maintaining the dough temp within reason.
6pm - turn dough out, split in to 2 and rough shape in to 2 boules and rest on the counter top and cover for 20 mins Then reshape in to chosen shape and place in proofing basket. Leave at room temp for 30 mins and then place in the fridge.
Next day at some point in the afternoon preheat oven with your cooking vessel for 45 mins at 245c. Turn out dough slash as required and cook with a lid on for 40 mins and then cook 10 mins uncovered and then remove and allow to cool.

One final tip, someone recommended Canadian white flour as the protein levels are higher and this is what I use.

Hope this helps.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by jbart65 »

Thanks, Arthur. I have just finished reading Tartine and already read Forkish, Lahey, Baker and Reinhardt (Apprentice). I think I have a good grasp of what I am supposed to be doing, but it will take some time as you say to figure out my own schedule.

My goal is to keep a smaller starter in the fridge, say 100 grams or so of both water and flour. Then ramp up to 150 or 200 grams each when I pull out of the fridge two days before making my preferment. That way I'd keep my use of flour on the smaller side. But I don't see that mentioned specifically as an approach in any of the books I read.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

jbart65 wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:59 pm My first effort at sourdough fell entirely flat. Hockey puck flat. The starter wasn't quite ready in retrospect - it didn't pass the float test - but I proceeded anyway.

My second effort was better, but the dough still sagged. Interestingly, the crumb and flavor was actually pretty good.



The starter did pass the float test when I made the preferment, but barely. It passed the float test much more easily a few hours after after the deed was done.

Dough still seemed too wet and didn't have enough gluten structure even after folding four times and preshaping. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Using a recipe from Josey Baker, whose book is really a beginner's one. Only calls for a tablespoon of starter in the preferment. The recipe overall calls for 480 grams flour and 360 grams water.

I plan to try Forkish's breads soon, but he creates and uses so much starter and a fair bit of it in his premix. Would be a pretty penny if I followed his recommended routine all the time! And Robertson's recipe for a starter is somewhat vague, surprisingly. I'll figure it out, but it is more complicated than I thought.
I bake from Forkish and agree that his suggestions about starter volumes are not at all practical. I cut it back to 25G of starter to 100G AP flour and 25G or so whole wheat. Actually I don't stress about the precise blend of AP and whole wheat so long as it adds up to 125G, and 100MG of water.

If I'm backing a double batch, I double that -- 50G starter and 250G of new flour and 200MG water. It has served me well.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by ronnie_suburban »

cliff wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 6:33 pm If I'm baking a double batch, I double that -- 50G starter and 250G of new flour and 200MG water. It has served me well.
I'd say so. Those boules look tremendous.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by Bob Z »

jbart65 wrote: Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:59 pm My first effort at sourdough fell entirely flat. Hockey puck flat. The starter wasn't quite ready in retrospect - it didn't pass the float test - but I proceeded anyway.

My second effort was better, but the dough still sagged. Interestingly, the crumb and flavor was actually pretty good.

Image

The starter did pass the float test when I made the preferment, but barely. It passed the float test much more easily a few hours after after the deed was done.

Dough still seemed too wet and didn't have enough gluten structure even after folding four times and preshaping. Not sure what I am doing wrong.
I have/am having similar issues and it seems the hydration level is just a bit too high, or maybe we dont have enough gluten in the flour we are using to develop the structure needed. I watched "the perfect loaf" vids and ended up doing the flour moisture stretch test and determined my flour (Kyrol 14% from costco commercial) did best with about 74% moisture vs the 78% Forkish recommends for his recipes.
My last loaf looked like this:
I usually do 30 mins covered and another 12 or so uncovered as we like a bit lighter crust.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

Bread flour at 14 percent is heavy. You might try a lighter, more European-style flour, like King Arthur AP, which is more like 11-12 percent. I also think it's hard to get much lift in a 100 percent sourdough. I like Forkish's suggestion to use a pinch of package yeast along with a mostly sourdough.

I have the Tartine book but haven't baked from it yet.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by jbart65 »

Seems a lot of people here are getting that lift, Cliff. The Forkish suggestion sounds sensible, and I'll try it, but I've seen a lot of loaves that rise to 4 inches or even more without. How tall do your loaves get?

I'm using KA bread flour and KA wheat flour right now. In my case, the dough definitely lacks enough strength. Seems to suggest the problem lies in my rising times or folding techniques. Gonna take me awhile to get the hang of it, though, before I can pin it down.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

Yes, I agree. I've only made the 100 percent sourdough a couple of times (from Forkish). I got some lift, but it's a denser loaf than the one with a little package yeast, which, I gather has been traditional in Europe since the late nineteenth century. I wonder if part of the equation -- beyond the protein content of the flour -- is how mature the yeast is. That is, I wonder if a vibrant, frequently fed starter, early in its feeding cycle will get better lift? That's my sense from having perused Tartine. But as I say, I haven't tried that yet.

ETA - I'm suspicious that higher protein flour will help. In my experience, it's the reverse -- it weighs things down. Remind me what size Dutch oven you're using? If your starter isn't active enough, that would be a likely culprit.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by ronnie_suburban »

Her methods seem a bit dated relative to some of the newer school methods out there but I always had success with Nancy Silverton's method(s) as they were laid out in Breads from The LaBrea bakery. Always plenty of lift and never supplemented with any yeast. That said, her starter feeding regimen was extreme and not particularly sustainable for a home baker who only wants to occasionally bake a few loaves. We went through a lot of flour feeding that beast. :shock:
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by polytope »

@jbart, if it makes you feel better, my first attempt at a pure sourdough was this weekend and I made this hockey puck!

My bread knife's a real beater but even so I felt bad using it to cut the bread open. Crust bits were flying around the kitchen like shrapnel.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

IMG-4699.jpg
Here's a Forkish sourdough, which uses 1/4tsp of packaged yeast with 180G of starter (at 80 percent hydration) for a 500G loaf, in a 4qt Lodge.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by jbart65 »

polytope wrote: Wed Oct 28, 2020 9:27 pm @jbart, if it makes you feel better, my first attempt at a pure sourdough was this weekend and I made this hockey puck!

My bread knife's a real beater but even so I felt bad using it to cut the bread open. Crust bits were flying around the kitchen like shrapnel.
Ouch. I think mine was even flatter.

My starter keeps maturing and I am getting a better sense of its rhythm. Re-read the main section on Tartine and Forkish and watched a lot of videos. Next shot comes this weekend.

Cliff, Tartine uses a 50-50 mix of water and flour by volume for starter maintenance. Is that basically what you do?

I was thinking I would only bake sourdoughs once every few weeks after I get going. As such I would try to 1/2 cup flour (bread and whole wheat) to 1/2 cup of water while the starter was in the fridge, then double the feeding a few days before I bake.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

Jeffry, I recall that Tartine is at 100 percent hydration. No, that's not what I do. That should give a more active starter, once its good and going. I'm using Forkish, who uses an 80 percent hydration starter so that the starter and the loaf are at the same hydration level. I bake at least a couple of times a week, so I just leave it out and feed it once a day -- 25G of the last batch and 125G new flour and 100MG water. If I'm not going to bake for awhile, I put it in the fridge. If it's within a week or so, it's usually pretty lively after one feeding. If it's more than that, it takes a couple of feedings to get it back to where I like it.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by jbart65 »

Given the difference in starter hydrations between Robertson and Forkish, I gather that you can't use the starter interchangeably for both of their recipes. You'd have to change the hydration level a day before baking, no?
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by cliff »

I think that's right. Robertson keeps it in the fridge most of the time? How do you renew that? I assume that the activity of whatever is in the fridge would be similar.
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by taz575 »

My wife loves Caribou coffee! Not sure about with baking though. I don't like the taste of coffee at all!
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Re: Baking Much?

Post by Bensbites »

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Here is today’s “bold” bake. In other words I was talking to another maker and got distracted.
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