/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>8133043
I'll start one later today. I just milled a couple pounds of flour.

>>8133205
It was a whole wheat version of my standard dough, which is 100% flour, 80% water, 2.5% salt, 0.2% yeast. I think this one had a 60/40 split of bread flour and whole wheat flour. It was a little dense compared to my normal dough, but was very tender.

>>8133234
>>8133272
Cutting the personal pizza into slices seemed silly. A knife and fork made it easy to eat the floppy middle before moving to hands for the remainder + crust.

>>8131641
Sure. Finally picked up a flour mill a few months ago. Have been out of town for work for 8w, but back now and ready to hit the ground running with some whole grain bread.

I've had a wood fire oven for the last 4 years. I've been using almond for the last few months because it was what was available, but prefer olive. Any good, dense hardwood will work just fine. In general, I'll fire mine up 2 hours before it's time to cook pizza to get it up to 900F, then let it settle down to 800F and even out across the floor and dome. Otherwise, it's easy to get floor temps of 800F but completely scorch the pizza. I cook pizza at 800F, bread at 550F, and meat at 400F overnight with the door closed. The oven stays hot for about 12 hours at that point, so it's a good opportunity to slow-roast large cuts of meat and have them ready in the morning.

I've experimented with a huge variety of doughs, but find the best one to be 100% bread flour, 80% water, 2.7% salt, and 0.03% yeast.

Best of luck. There's a definite learning curve, but it's a very satisfying hobby.

>>8030885
I have no secrets. Happy to answer any questions.

>>8008783
It's true that underdevelopment of your gluten or inadequate fermentation can result in a loaf that does not have an open crumb structure. Comparing the bread in your link to your bread, the major difference is in the crumb structure, where the source's crumb is more open with much larger air inclusions. You also assembled a bread with 5% less hydration, which means less steam to enter seed bubbles created by fermentation, and less subsequent oven spring. While it is certainly possible to achieve great oven spring with loaves with a wide range of hydrations, a dough with less water will have a tighter crumb than a dough with more water. Multi-factorial, to be sure, but that's where my money is. Another thing to consider is loaf size, since a smaller bread will facilitate a more open crumb than a larger one, owing largely to the amount of weight it has to support during oven spring.

My process varies based on the kind of bread that I'm making. In general, I walk through all the basic steps for my lean doughs: autolyse, mix to windowpane, bulk retard, bulk ferment, portion, preshape, bench rest, shape, proof, slash, bake with steam.

>>8008418

While there are a number of things that could explain it, it probably didn't achieve the same amount of oven bloom because you shorted the hydration.

>>7840705
>>7840706
I appreciate the kind words, but your bread is every bit as beautiful as mine.

>>7576882
Baguettes, in my opinion, are the hardest of the artisan breads to master. The ideal dough is high hydration, which makes shaping and slashing difficult. Backing off on the hydration to 65-70% improves aesthetic outcomes, but you lose the big open crust.

People always make sourdough more complicated than it needs to be. In reality, it should be simple to make and simple to use. It's been my experience that people do not have sufficient experience with bread before moving to using a levain, and are too impatient to get good results.

To make a sourdough use a scale and put together a 1:1 mix of whole wheat flour and water. Feed in a 1:2:2 ratio (starter:flour:water) with whole wheat flour every 24 hours regardless of activity, discarding excess starter as needed. When the starter shows activity (leavening and bubbles), transition to feeding twice daily. Bread flour can be substituted at this point if a white starter is preferred. Once the starter is reliably doubling within 4 hours of feeding (assuming ambient temp >70F), continue twice daily feeds for another week and then the starter is ready for use. This process may take two weeks, it may take two months. The starter will go through various stages, sometimes with a pretty funky odor. So long as it doesn't have any abnormal discoloration (green, pink, etc), it's okay to keep feeding. Some dark-colored liquid (hooch) will develop after it hasn't been fed in a while. This is normal. It's important to let the starter fully mature prior to use. An immature starter will result in poor product every time.

Using a starter to leaven bread requires patience. It can generally be used in amounts ranging from 20-100% (baker's percentages). No need to add additional leavening agents. The key with using a natural levain is to bake to volumetric endpoints. What I mean is that it is important to let the dough bulk ferment until doubled and proof until just under doubled regardless of the amount of time it takes to reach these goals. Sourdough doughs are very sensitive to temperature, so if you want to supercharge the process, use marginally warm water in the dough, and bulk ferment/proof at 80F.

>>7442193

Magic.

In my experience, the best crust is a simple crust. I keep my formula very, very simple, unless i'm trying to make something like a deep dish or cafeteria-style pizza. I stick to 100% flour, 80% water, 2.5% salt, 0.2% yeast. Makes a pizza that can handle being very thin under the toppings, with an open crumb structure in the crust.

As for sauce, I never screw around with cooked sauces. The sauce cooks while you bake the pizza, and I prefer the taste of fresher ingredients. I blend a can of crushed san marzanos, a quarter onion, a clove of garlic, some fresh basil, and salt/pepper into a fine puree, then just use that directly on the pizza. No muss, no fuss, and a great base for a variety of toppings.

I dig whole grain breads. There's a local flour mill not far away that stocks a pretty wide variety, and I enjoy mixing and matching when I bake.

>>7091153
I'm still alive. Busy, but alive.

>>7049598
I dropped out of a top tier liberal arts school and went to a Le Cordon Bleu program for an AA in the Culinary Arts. I then spent a couple years working in the industry, climbing my way up the food chain. I scored my last job in a restaurant by stealing it from a guy who was in his mid-40s, making $15/hr, working 80+ hours per week, with 3 kids, and 0 benefits. I was younger and did a better job, and ultimately that's what matters on the line. I had scores of friends in the industry who were as talented as any chef I've ever seen, but that doesn't change the reality that over 90% of restaurants fail. Ultimately, you have to have the skills and be in the right place at the right time. It was a harsh enough reality check to convince me to go back to finish my degree at a mid-tier state school, and eventually to transition out of the industry altogether. The job is rough, and the lifestyle is generally very unhealthy. I wound up finding a better career path for me and my goals, but I do miss working in commercial kitchens a great deal.

A couple things to note. First, culinary school does not buy you much when you're out in the real world. Assuming you want to be a chef/owner some day, you'll absolutely still have to start out as low man on the totem pole, probably doing prep work. You'll also come to realize that almost nothing you learned in culinary school applies to how things are actually done in the industry. It buys you a vocabulary and a familiarity with the tools that can be helpful, and that's about it. Second, be prepared to work 60-80 hours per week for 40 hours of hourly pay. It will be grueling manual labor in very hot kitchens surrounded by very difficult personalities, even as a pastry chef.

If your passion for food is substantial enough to override these limitations, it's an incredible job. I would recommend that you start by just working in a kitchen somewhere before you sink $30k+ into a culinary education.

>>6948012
Welcome to the struggle that is baguettes. Higher hydration = better baguette = more difficult shaping. Lower hydration = denser/less pleasant baguette = easier shaping.

I generally make baguettes in the neighborhood of 78-85% hydration. The trick to rolling them is to just BARELY dust the surface with flour so that there is still a modicum of adherence to the surface during shaping. My personal issue is that, although the crumb is superior, an 80%+ hydration baguette doesn't bloom in the way that I would like. Instead of opening nicely during oven spring, the slashes tend to just collapse.

Looks good to me.

Here's some boring bread that I baked last night. 82% hydration with 95% bread flour and 5% whole wheat from the local mill.

>>6910068
Check your inbox.

>>6910056
When you're ready to change that, give me a holler. Baking is the same as cooking once you get over the initial hump of getting familiar with the general protocol. Similar creativity and flexibility. I worked as a chef for a number of years and also used to consider myself baking-challenged.

>>6910058
Baking by weight doesn't equate to incredible bread. I can and do bake without any measures whatsoever on a semi-regular basis. The real reason to bake by weight is for reproducibility and the ability to track how changes made to the formula affect the final product. Otherwise, if you nail a bread one day and love everything about it, you'll have a hell of a time recreating it.

>>6910031
If you want, you can give me your e-mail address and I will shoot you a message so you can get in touch with me directly.

>>6910042
I can get you baking bread like this in short order.

>>6909759
>is the starter itself screwed, or is there some part of the recipe that I should in future modify for my own kitchen, starter, etc.?
If the starter is leavening your bread reliably, then there is nothing wrong with your starter. I don't know how much starter you're putting into the dough, but 12+ hours of bulk fermentation at room temperature seems awfully long. Doughs with levains will often become very liquid if fermented too long, and can develop a very strong (and sometimes unpleasant) sour taste. Even when using only 20% starter, I can finish bulk fermentation in about 4-6 hours if the ambient temp is ~72F. I always tell new bread bakers to ditch time endpoints in favor of volumetric ones. Bulk ferment until doubled, however long that takes. Proof until just under doubled, however long that takes. If you do that, then you'll wind up with a fine bread regardless of the amount of time it's taken you to get to the finished product.

>Your bread looks excellent btw, how do you lame it like that?
Lots and lots of practice. Cut at an angle when you slash so that you create a flap of dough. If the dough is too wet, it will collapse and won't bloom appropriately, though, so I'd suggest practicing on breads in the realm of 60-70% hydration first.

To clean out your banneton just let the dough dry and then get a small brush with metal bristles. In the future, line the banneton liberally with a 50/50 mix of rice flour/bread flour and it should help you fix the sticking problem without having to use excess flour.

Just pulled a couple loaves out of the oven. Used a mix of flours, including einkorn, spelt, white wheat, and a whole wheat milled at the local mill.

>>6908414
It will still be bread. The reason to bulk ferment then proof is for flavor development. It's hard to imagine until you've compared breads fermented for different time periods, but there really is a substantial difference between a bread made from a single rise and one that has cold-fermented in the fridge for 48 hours.

>>6904855
>>6904861
People keep hounding me for volumetric measurements, so I cave and do conversions from time to time. Also, I figure a brand new baker probably doesn't have access to a scale.

The recipe is closest to 100% flour, 62% water, 2.5% salt, and 0.2% yeast. Some of the numbers are fudged to make them easier to measure with cups, tbsp, and tsp.