KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks

[MacKenzie]

53 minutes ago, Pequod said:

That’s a raisin!😷

Sure sure. 

[tekobo]

Lovely looking loaf @Pequod, raisin and all!  

 

[Syzygies]

We really like this loaf. 100% home ground grains. We cook the potato in the autolyse water, blitz it with an immersion blender, and top up the weight with more water. Mix in a stand mixer. The potato has a really nice effect on texture, and smoothing out the grain flavors.

We actually bake 385 F for 35 minutes in the loaf pan, then 10 minutes out of the loaf pan.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Syzygies

[MacKenzie]

That bread must have lots of flavour and it certainly has a nice rise. 

[Basher]

That’s way too complicated for me syzygies.
The loaf looks good.
I’m scratching my head with the flour, water, yeast mix!


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[Syzygies]

1 hour ago, Basher said:

I’m scratching my head with the flour, water, yeast mix!

Yes, sorry, I'd probably design the spreadsheet differently if my primary goal was to show it to others. It would be too complicated for me if I were doing this once. I'm going on a hundred loaves, and I want to home in on new recipes as quickly as possible. To give one example of the dozens of issues that a spreadsheet resolves for me: I can change my sourdough starter from 100% hydration to 50% hydration, then back to 80% hydration, without changing the true hydration of my bread recipes. The spreadsheet adjusts for me. I find it mind-boggling how many recipes out there just ignore the hydration of the starter. The authors have no idea what the true hydration is for their recipes.

Mathematicians find it easier to figure out what someone else is doing by learning their goals, then reverse engineering their methods. Only by trying to figure it out by ourselves can we understand what someone else is doing.

Here, my goals are these: I'm making bread from potato and 100% home ground grains, using a sourdough levain and an autolyse step.

The spreadsheet takes bakers percentages and similar inputs (smaller print in upper left box), and converts them to the grams I need to measure (larger print in upper right box).

1. Grind the grains for this loaf. While I have sourdough starter food made up for many days at a time, I need to grind grains for this loaf. I find that with the current state of my grinder, and the sieve I use, I get a yield of 82%. The spreadsheet computes how much grain to grind, based on this.

2. Feed the starter. There's a minimum I want to feed the starter each time, but when I'm making two loaves using lots of starter, I want to make sure I make enough starter. I'd rather code this and follow directions each time, than try to remember to do this in my head. Of course I did this in my head for years. Having numbers prepared for me, to check off, is easier and more reliable. Even if I only screw up this calculation in my head once every six months, I'd rather not.

3. Autolyse the flour. I cook potatoes in water, top up the water to correct for what boiled off, and add it to my dry ingredients to soak overnight. I love the effect of the potato. Soaking overnight has a big effect, particularly on whole grains. I've tried leaving out this step. I always return to it, even when adapting recipes that don't call for an autolyse.

4. Knead the dough for the bulk rise. The next morning, I assemble and knead everything together. Then bulk, bench, proof, bake as usual. The timetable helps me start early enough to also be able to walk the dog when Laurie gets off work.

Grind, feed, autolyse, knead, this is a straightforward and common way to make bread. I need numbers to check off as I work, or else once every six months I leave out the salt. For this style of bread, anyone's recipe would look something like this.

 

 

 

[tekobo]

1 hour ago, Syzygies said:

3. Autolyse the flour. I cook potatoes in water, top up the water to correct for what boiled off, and add it to my dry ingredients to soak overnight. I love the effect of the potato. Soaking overnight has a big effect, particularly on whole grains. I've tried leaving out this step. I always return to it, even when adapting recipes that don't call for an autolyse.

I was interested in this when I looked at your spreadsheet Syzygies.  I too have a spreadsheet and, because I am not yet varying recipes, it primarily exists to give me some sense of what time things will be done and to adjust if that looks like being the middle of the night.  Since I learned about leaving dough overnight in the cellar at the bulk fermentation stage I have not worried so much about timings and stopped using the spreadsheet.  What is interesting about your approach is that your long "in cellar" stage is the autolyse stage.  Helpful to know because I have been going max 4 hrs on autolyse when, sometimes, it might have been convenient (and better) to let the autolyse run for longer say if my levain isn't quite where it should be.  

Maybe one day I will get to the stage of tweaking to compensate for the hydration levels in the levain but for now I will simply steal your recipe and see how it works for me.  Thanks.  

[MacKenzie]

I have made one of Sygyzies' bread recipes, it was a few years ago and I still remember the taste. Awesome, awesome awesome, I can say that it was the only bread that I ever wanted to sit and eat the whole thing with butter right then and there. 

[Syzygies]

I do feel like I've lost my convictions, using a loaf pan, but they're more forgiving and the bread is more useful.

We always add a bit of yeast as insurance to sourdough recipes. Laurie buys it by the pound, using it in many other ways. (She also has a separate yeast for sweeter breads.) We got lucky that our health food store had stock today.

 

[tekobo]

I made another sprouted loaf using buckwheat.  Here is the sprouted grain after 3-4 days.

There were more sprouts than I needed to make two loaves but I didn't think to scale up the recipe to make an extra small loaf.  Bakers percentages would have made that very easy.  Next time.  

I did take @Pequod's advice about beeswax paper and bought this from amazon with the bonus bread bag.  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0845PRTXX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1  The beeswax works really well for keeping these moist loaves for at least a week. 

Tried the bread out yesterday afternoon.  I am just loving the moist, nutty flavour of these breads.

Have no fear, the empty glass problem was fixed straight after I took this photo.  

[tekobo]

You guys were talking about European loaf tins with lids.  I went and hunted mine out. I found out that it is called a Pullman bread pan.  I The recipe that I have made in it is for a sandwich type loaf.  I think it keeps things nice and square and the top flat but, having said that, the mix never rises to hit the lid.  

[tekobo]

21 hours ago, Syzygies said:

I do feel like I've lost my convictions, using a loaf pan, but they're more forgiving and the bread is more useful.

I missed this post earlier.  Very funny.  Yes, boxy bread with fewer holes does have its advantages.  

[Braai-Q]

On 4/6/2020 at 3:03 PM, tekobo said:

Run while you can, sweet child.  I was once like you.  I made jokes and mocked the Mockmillers.  Bread came from the Czech couple down the road who have built up a fabulous bakery and business and our guest flours came in the form of einkorn loaves from our monthly farmer's market.  And now?  I am a bread obsessive, finding people to foist my bread onto so that I can make more, ever more, in the search for that elusive, perfect loaf. Run, run, run!

I'm not mocking anyone on this thread just to be clear. The commitment is fantastic and intimidating. I feel we should do a bake off and humbly offer myself up as judge. If anyone wants to send 'convincer' loaves to me, I will provide a full report extolling the virtues of said loaf. I can see the KK Load Olympiad becoming a thing.

[Syzygies]

 

Our favorite loaf pan bread yet. Lots of farro available from unrealized past aspirations, and it really works as a guest flour here.

And it dawned on me that I can have lots of rows in my history spreadsheet for every possible ingredient combination, yet I can automate only showing the ingredients in use for my recipe printout.

Sourdough Whole-Recipe.pdf

[Basher]

Syz that’s a tasty looking loaf.

I’ve been sanding and oiling wood all day, bringing beautiful grains, knots, bouls to life, it’s been fun.

Do I see a swirl within that crumb?

Almost like I’m looking down a tasty piece of timber?

I think I need to step away!

 

 

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[Syzygies]

4 hours ago, Basher said:

I’ve been sanding and oiling wood all day, bringing beautiful grains, knots, boules to life, it’s been fun.

My last trip before quarantine was to take a weeklong woodworking intensive with Jeremy Tomlinson at The Urban Woodworker in North Vancouver. I met him at a Lie Nielsen hand tools expo in Oakland, and knew the weeklong would be well worth the trip.

I'm not in a hurry, I came out of this deciding to prep and finish (resaw, true) my wood by hand, like our ancestors did. Not that it's warm enough to work outside in California, I'm just waiting to finish other pressing chores. Today I finish reworking our garden irrigation system, to take out some corroding unions and add a flow meter, and inline strainers before each valve. Not my idea, the valves were getting stuck open. I'm good enough at plumbing for "handy" friends to ask for my help, but I enjoy sweating pipes the way one enjoys a prison sentence. Like, not.

Wood, and bread, on the other hand, invites and responds to love.

[Pequod]

Yesterday was brioche buns for burgers. Today is sourdough cinnamon raisin with 30% fresh milled hard red wheat.

[ZooBeeQ]

Wow. just wow.

You guys are all awesome bakers, these pics are truly gorgeous and yeah, I had to move my KB outa the way so as not to drool on it;-)

I read most of this loooong thread, its tough coming late to the party, and I had some comments to add but, im tired and I dont think it would make any sense lol.

The pic of those  " spelt seedlings " is sprouted wheat berries and look pretty well modified  by the looks of them.

Bake on!
 

 

Sue

[Syzygies]

COVID has cost me all of my personal integrity. Stand mixer, loaf pan, no steam. At least we still grind our flour. I even ordered an upgraded loaf pan with straight sides, the Vollrath 4V.

We've storing more grain than ever before, but working through it feeding sourdough starter, making bread twice a week, fresh pasta and other baking.

For this loaf I swapped in Guiness stout for water, cooking it down as I cooked the potatoes, then topping back up to the target weight. We like this recipe, a lot.

Sourdough Whole-Recipe.pdf

Edited May 7, 2020 by Syzygies

[MacKenzie]

Syzygies, you really have gone to pieces but that bread looks delicious.