tekobo

I have been struggling mightily with my bread making recently. I had got to a stage where most loaves came out well and then things started to go wrong about a month ago and I have been delivering variations on shrunken, flat loaves consistently. Aaaargh. There were so many variables that I struggled to fix the problem, no matter how many times I tried to test an individual stage or method. I even resorted to re-reading other's posts and noted that @Syzygies talked about his flat as a pancake period and how minute doses of ascorbic acid helped him out of it. I didn't want to add yet another variable so I persisted with one last experiment over the last two days. Here is my journey for those who are novices like me. First I mixed and scoop kneaded the dough, using Trevor J Wilson's method. Got that tip from one of @Pequod's posts. Actually, that wasn't the first thing I did. Begin at the beginning. This record is going to be important for when something goes wrong again. This experiment was to test whether my move from one method of making leaven to another was part of the problem. I had been using a stiff leaven, made with 1 part starter to 1 part water to 2 parts flour. My loaves over the last month used Chad Peterson's leaven recipe which is made up of 1 tablespoon of starter to 200g of flour and 200g of water. Weird juxtaposition of tablespoons with grams and much less starter relative to flour in Chad's method. I ended up being busy and left the leaven to rise for longer than my usual 6 hours. It was much closer to 15 hours by the time I got to mixing the leaven in to the dough. I milled the spelt and wheat grain and hydrolysed with 85% water for about two hours before adding the salt and leaven. Adding the leaven and salt later is another Trevor J Wilson recommendation. Works for me in that I can get the flour hydrolysing in parallel with waiting for the leaven to peak. It was 9pm by the time I had finished scoop kneading the dough so I was in no mood to stay up all night folding at half hourly intervals for four hours before shaping so I put the two, separate lots of dough with the Chad leaven on the left and the Bertinet stiff leaven on the right, in bowls in the cool cellar. Cool bulk fermentation like this is great for allowing you to bake sourdough when you are ready and rather than having to stick to strict timings. The dough looked good when I got to it in the morning. I then formed it into balls for the bench rest. I used damp hands to avoid adding too much flour . Here are the balls after the bench rest. Relaxed but the not too flat so I figured they were good to be shaped to go in the banettons. I have been having problems with sticky dough adhering to the banettons so I liberally floured the top of the dough balls and the banettons before laying the balls in the baskets. The good news is that the dough already felt less sticky than normal at this stage. I got the extra rack in the proofer to allow for proofing two loaves at once. Here they are, going in for four hours or so. And here they are looking wet but plump after proofing. I had a load of calls for work yesterday but had marked out my schedule to say when to put the oven on, when to put the dough in and when to get it out between calls. I dashed down to check on progress and this is what I found. It was a dance around the kitchen moment. The lower loaf was better risen than my more recent attempts but it was still flatter than the beautifully plump loaf on the top rack using the stiffer leaven. Letting the leaven go for longer may have helped both bakes but the stiffer dough was the clear winner for me. I wondered if the lesser amount of starter in the Chad leaven will have been expended sooner but, given all my previous attempts used his leaven after about six to ten hours I don't think that the timing is the main reason for the difference. Looking lovely during the agonising two hour wait for cooling. You can't have everything. Still some big holes in the crumb. Something to work on. In the meantime, The Husband delivered half of the plump loaf to my father-in-law as part of his lockdown care package. Father-in-law was very happy with progress and remarked on the softness and plumpness of the loaf. At last.

Yes, I mill the flour shortly before using it. At first the idea of milling was a bit daunting but it is now just part of the routine. Put machine on the kitchen counter, ask Alexa to divide the weight of flour required by the percentage extraction, weigh the grain, pour it in to the hopper to grind and choose the right grade of sieve to get the amount of flour I need. I use a mix of high extraction and whole grain flour in different combinations, depending on the loaf I am baking.

My little bit of hoarding has been to replenish my stock of plain white flour a little earlier than normal I found out that my local health food store would order bigger bags of grain so I picked up this 5kg of spelt on Friday. And these beauties and more came from Austria the other day. So far the einkorn has been very tasty but I have not tried the kamut yet. I bought these "wheat seedlings" and "spelt seedlings" out of curiosity but have no idea what they are. I guessed they might be sprouted or malted grain but those words don't check out in any German translation that I can find. Does anybody have any idea?

You sound like you were offended by my comments. You shouldn't be. I was simply revealing the secret that I have been using my KK as a fire starter. I actually bought a chimney like yours about a year ago but I sent it back to Mr Amazon without using it because I decided I didn't want yet another piece of kit hanging around my (small) garden. Anyways, my current fire play has made me think again about getting that weird leather outfit you liked so much when I last posted about it. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B078N4XZBX/ref=ox_sc_saved_title_2?smid=A1P3LD41QEH1RS&psc=1 Ha. What surprises me is how much it takes to get and keep an Argentinian barbecue hot. Heating half a basket of coal/briquettes in the KK is a good start but not enough for a long cook. I am getting used to a less efficient use of coals in return for having the opportunity to play, with fire.

It's sacrilege, I know, but I think of my KK as an awesome chimney starter. I light coals for other uses in the KK and then either lift out the hot coals individually (binchotan) or lift out the whole fire basket to dump hot hot hot briquettes and/or charcoal into the Argentinian barbecue. Super efficient and no need to buy yet another fire making tool.

I can only dream of making loaves that look as good as @Pequod's and @mackenzie's. Beautiful crumb, blistering and all round goodness. Bravo!

Hey @Tyrus, your new piece of kit is looking way too clean. It'll be good to see it in action!

That's more like my minimum order when I buy a half or whole animal. These hoarders are amateurs, that is all I can say! And NO, I do not want a power shortage round here! Will have to rely on The Husband's hoard of about X hundred bottles of wine to keep us going. Uh. Maybe not so bad after all.

That looks like a lovely sauce and pot @Tyrus. Yes, we all need to try and keep well. Although others are saying you need to catch a little bit of virus to build immunity. We will see which happens!

I was looking at Dennis' insta feed the other day and saw that someone had two 42" KKs. I missed that momentous unboxing. Where are the goats???

Congratulations! I vote for unboxing and using just as soon as you can. Happy Day.

Nice inspiration @tony b. Chicken here tonight. Might make it a suya roast. Yum.

Of course! The ultimate grill accessory. Congratulations.

Lead me not into temptation. Baby back ribs with suya chicken thighs on the side.

I may never make it to the French Laundry but I have had "mashed" potatoes at the Joel Robuchon restaurant in London. Yes, so silky and with what appeared to be 60% butter content. It's probably a good thing for my heart that I have never managed to reproduce the effect at home.

That looks really delicious @ckreef. I love pink lamb but would never have imagined that lamb shank could stand that treatment. Like @Basher, I am interested how/where it was cut from on the animal.

What he said!

Funny you should mention mashed potatoes Tyrus. I wondered who @Saucier was and so I went and looked up his profile. One of his previous posts was about cooking potatoes for mashing sous vide. That had never occurred to me but the logic of cooking veg sous vide and keeping the nutrients "in" makes perfect sense. Welcome back @Saucier. I look forward to reading more of your posts.

I agree. Learning to make bread takes time and, just when you think you have a good formula, it kicks back at you. Made some buckwheat bread at the weekend and I wanted to cry when it came out, mostly, flat. The good news is that my guests didn't care and wanted to know where I'd bought it! @Pequod, thank you for sharing your rich seam of references. I am already enjoying the read and I'll hopefully learn a lot.

Thanks. I love pasta made with 100% extraction flour but have been a little less adventurous with bread, sticking to Chad Robertson's ever more complicated/varying mixes of high extraction, whole grain and bread flours. Do you have any idea what colour the wheatgerm is? I have assumed that if I simply sift out the brown bran I must be retaining the wheatgerm but that assumption could be completely wrong. Do you have a go-to recipe/hydration level for using 100% extraction wheat flour? I also seem to remember you saying you used a modified Tartine no-knead method. Care to share?

I have been meaning to ask about wheatgerm. A number of the Tartine No 3 recipes call for, say 70g, wheatgerm alongside 500g of high extraction flour. Given the fact that I am milling my own flour it seems to make no sense to be buying additional wheatgerm when the flour that I mill will contain wheatgerm in any case. Thus far I have got over this hurdle by sifting the bran out of my milled flour to get to about 85% extraction. Where the recipe calls for wheatgerm I simply use more of this high extraction flour. What do you think? Should I be looking to buy wheatgerm as well?

Hi @Pequod. Did you ever find the Einkorn recipe you were looking for? I have just ordered this book if you are still interested: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0804186472/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_n0UuEbP9XVG0K

That looks great @Basher. I have finally got my leaven to float reliably and look nice and lively. I have been trying a different loaf from Tartine no 3 each week and I find that the high hydration doughs end up a little flatter. Still tasty but not that plump look that you got there. I think I have had most success when I have refreshed the starter twice and then made the leaven. Will experiment more to see if that is indeed an important factor.

Well done! Sounds like an epic effort. What did the punters think of the pork?

Rumbled! You identified my underlying motivation. I am a roast pig girl and don't much like pulled pork, hence all that distraction activity around crown joints and such. Happily for you, other more sensible people turned up to give better advice. I like this idea @Basher. As you say, no chance to move grates much but it sounds like a good way to vary the cooking times. Only challenge would be how to get the crunch on the roasted joints. Maybe put them in close to the end and raise the temp once you have taken out the pulled pork joints? Help! Didn't realise the choice round here was pix or death!!