KK Bread Making Tips and Tricks

[tekobo]

1 hour ago, Pequod said:

There are no pics,

No pix = Didn't happen, just sayin'!

[Syzygies]

17 hours ago, Pequod said:

There are no pics

In defense of "no pics", my last two loaves of sourdough have radicalized me. They looked like I'd been set back five years, and they tasted the best I've ever made. Now I'm on a Desem bread bender.

For a period I joined a pottery studio nearby. One open house evening, I bought five "lottery" tickets when it looked like no one would, just to support the place. Eventually, many tickets sold. Yet, somehow, all five of my tickets won. I got kidded about this for months.

One of my prizes was a bowl the owner had made but couldn't sell. My neighbor is now very happy to have it. The bowl extended for an inconceivable distance. It displayed a mastery of technique, the impossibility of which would only be clear to someone who had spent years trying to master the potter's wheel.

I have a strong aesthetic bias, that in fact it's easier to display exceptional technique than true originality. This is certainly true in math. Every artistic endeavor gets distorted by this, to the point where we teach ourselves to judge the difficulty of something, rather than its artistic merits.

My favorite piece that I made at that pottery studio was a pen holder. In India, before styrofoam cups, disposable cups were made of clay, and after use they contributed to the road. I tried to imagine what a pen holder would look like, made a few seconds each in the millions, if that India instead needed pen holders. Needless to say, this work was divisive. At least no one could accuse me of flaunting my skills with clay.

This applies to food, which can be tricky to assess by appearance alone.

Edited May 2 by Syzygies

[tekobo]

I have actually tried to make sourdough crumpets using left over starter.  The results were disastrous.  I made sure there were no pix.  Jealous to hear of @Pequod's instant success, if the truth be told.

Liking your bread Dave.  Although I might prefer the pen holder.  I love the idea of individual slots for each pen.  No fighting to separate them to determine which is working and which is not.  

 

Edited May 2 by tekobo

[Pequod]

13 hours ago, Syzygies said:

In defense of "no pics", my last two loaves of sourdough have radicalized me. They looked like I'd been set back five years, and they tasted the best I've ever made. Now I'm on a Desem bread bender.

I shouldn't have stopped by here today. I recently came across Desem in the "Southern Ground" book and am trying to resist the need to develop a Desem starter. Resistance is futile, it seems.

Southern Ground tells the story of Carolina Ground, which works with farmers to restore historic grains, mill them, and supply the flour to regional bakeries. One of my favorite local bakeries, Albemarle Baking Company, uses their flour. Next month, I'm doing a workshop with Tara Jensen, a renowned baker and Carolina Ground advocate (@bakerhands on Instagram).  

[MacKenzie]

Just noticed this new piece of gear, interesting but it won't replace a KK. Could be fun to play with though.

https://www.fourneauoven.com/products/fourneau-wood-fired-grill-16-deluxe

[Syzygies]

3 hours ago, Pequod said:

Southern Ground tells the story of Carolina Ground, which works with farmers to restore historic grains, mill them, and supply the flour to regional bakeries. One of my favorite local bakeries, Albemarle Baking Company, uses their flour. Next month, I'm doing a workshop with Tara Jensen, a renowned baker and Carolina Ground advocate (@bakerhands on Instagram).  

Ha! My wife Laurie is my muse, saw where I was going with the Brød & Taylor Sourdough Home, and recalled reading the Desem section in The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, back in the 1980's when it came out. I sensed a seminal work, akin to Richard Olney's Simple French Food spawning the Chez Panisse diaspora. Sure enough, Jennifer Lapidus read that same passage back in the day, and tracked down Laurel Robertson's dear friend Alan Scott, who became her mentor. She bought his 5,000 pound, 48-inch stone mill when he died before receiving it, and used it to found Carolina Ground. Her book Southern Ground is my new bible; as @Pequod discovered it's basically about Desem bread. I'm working through the Kindle edition until her signed copy arrives.

Tracing back her sources, I found a used copy of The Bread Book by Thom Leonard. It's yet another take on Desem bread, worth reading. I've learned a few things I hadn't put together, such as slack bread could be overly digested by the sourdough starter.

Meanwhile, my grain order from Janie's Mill arrived, to supplement our stocks of hard red spring wheat from Central Milling, and soft wheat and rye from Giusto's. Let the games begin!

[Pequod]

Desem also appears in Tara Jensen’s book “Flour Power.” The workshop I’m taking with her next month includes different levains, so I’m expecting some discussion on desem (or I’ll be raising my hand to ask). She did a stint in Asheville, NC, home of Carolina Ground, hence the lineage from Robertson to Scott to Lapidus to Jensen. Asheville also has a biennial Bread Festival: https://www.ashevillebreadfestival.com. Next one is Spring 2025. I’m thinking I need to make that pilgrimage — Asheville is just about 5 hours drive south of me.

[Syzygies]

2 hours ago, Pequod said:

 https://www.ashevillebreadfestival.com. Next one is Spring 2025.

Alas I noticed. We'll meet there, if not sooner. Oddly, Tara Jensen's web site makes no mention that I can discern as to the location of her upcoming workshop?

[Pequod]

10 hours ago, Syzygies said:

Alas I noticed. We'll meet there, if not sooner. Oddly, Tara Jensen's web site makes no mention that I can discern as to the location of her upcoming workshop?

Tara relocated to Hamilton, VA about two years ago. This puts her about 2 hours north of me, and just west of Dulles Airport.

[Syzygies]

 

My impression is that as a rule, Desem bread uses high hydrations. I was startled, reading Flour Power, how little water she uses. My earlier sources use clumsy Imperial volume measurements, making comparisons less precise, but I believe that Southern Ground is closer to usual practice?

Edited May 3 by Syzygies

[Pequod]

Interesting. Is that 73% hydration with 100% extraction flour? That seems very low for whole, unsifted flour.

[Syzygies]

I added her Daily Desem, which is about the same hydration. Yes, she calls for "full" extraction white and/or red whole wheat flours in the two recipes.

Perhaps some people actually use 100% extraction flour? I put mine through a coarse sieve, ending up with 95% extraction, which can (nearly) handle 90% hydration. I'm going to drop a few percent at a time to see what happens.

[Syzygies]

For today's Desem bread I made a proofing cradle from wood.

I'm at the limit where my dough will sploof out into flat bread. A classic proofing basket is already wider than the wood frames I've been using for years. My frames had no bottom, but now I want to finish proofing in the fridge. For flavor, and as a bonus so the loaf better holds its shape. So now I needed a bottom.

There are gaps by the four corners (which is fine for a proofing basket) so that wood expansion doesn't crack the box. Wood responds to changes in humidity by expanding across the grain. The poster child here is a beginner woodworker who makes cutting boards for gifts, and mixes end and side grains. Their boards crack. If one studies drawer construction, the bottoms float to avoid this issue. I prefer a chunkier solid proofing cradle, for thermal mass. You'd think my design would be everywhere, but I've never seen it before.

In the same spirit as my artistic tirade above, this box uses my favorite cheater joinery. One shouldn't glue end grain without further support. People who understand wood believe that a hand cut dovetail joint displays the pinnacle of craftsmanship, even though box joints are stronger. People who make box joints tend to use jigs, then they look like every commercial box you've ever seen.

What I do is plan and dry assemble my joinery using cabinet screws, then glue using the screws for clamping. Once the glue dries, I remove (and reuse) the cabinet screws, and replace them with Miller dowels. I then sand further and finish with Tried & True Original Wood Finish polymerized linseed oil and beeswax, which is food safe. My box is shown sunning in our yard, so the bread won't taste like linseed oil.

This is dead simple joinery that I'd recommend to any casual woodworker. My friends who don't judge art by difficulty, or who are simply oblivious to measuring difficulty for wood joinery, love this style of construction.

[Syzygies]

On 5/2/2024 at 4:46 PM, Pequod said:

Desem also appears in Tara Jensen’s book “Flour Power.”

I just searched for Desem in recipes indexed by Eat Your Books. The three books that come up are Flower Power, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, and Southern Ground. This of course misses out-of-print books like The Bread Book by Thom Leonard, but at least we haven't missed anything obvious.

[tekobo]

On 5/2/2024 at 9:48 PM, MacKenzie said:

Just noticed this new piece of gear, interesting but it won't replace a KK. Could be fun to play with though.

https://www.fourneauoven.com/products/fourneau-wood-fired-grill-16-deluxe

Nice toy Mac.  A bit expensive though...

[tekobo]

Hurrah!  I've got my foccacia mojo back.  I realised that while I use bread flour in the UK, the flour available in Italian supermarkets is "flour for bread". I am guessing the latter has less gluten and so when I went for a long 12 hour rise my dough just collapsed into a wet puddle.  Until I find other, better flour I have restricted the initial proof to one hour and got good results on my 16 KK.  Cooking tips - you need a hot dome and a pizza stone to get the desirable crunch on the base and light crisp on the top.  I let the KK dome heat soak for an hour with nothing in the KK and then I added in the grate and stepping stone shield.  A pizza stone would have been better and I will get one for next time.  In the meantime, we all enjoyed this with our chicken dinner last night.

 

 

 

[tekobo]

On 5/3/2024 at 9:40 PM, Syzygies said:

Perhaps some people actually use 100% extraction flour?

I use 100% extraction einkorn for a simple loaf made with yeast.  Delicious.  P.S.  Beautiful proofing cradle.  Nicely done.  

Edited May 7 by tekobo

[Syzygies]

On 5/4/2024 at 3:07 AM, Syzygies said:

The three books that come up are Flower Power, The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, and Southern Ground. This of course misses out-of-print books like The Bread Book by Thom Leonard, but at least we haven't missed anything obvious.

I have another book I overlooked: The Bread Builders: Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens by Alan Scott and Daniel Wing. Alan Scott was Laurel Robertson's friend and mentor to Jennifer Lapidus (Southern Ground). Desem bread is featured, and technical discussions rival those by Suas in Advanced Bread and Pastry (whose commercial orientation skips Desem).

Of these, I want to work through every recipe I can from Southern Ground. Shown is North Carolina Sourdough, to try the '85' flour from her mill. Technically this was a pitch that turned into a passed ball, for so many reasons, but it tastes so good that we want to make it again right away, to see if we can figure it out.

My new aspiration is to figure out Richard Bertinet's slap and fold technique for kneading bread. I need more gluten structure with less effort. It's harder than it looks, which is evident in the videos where someone else picks up the same dough, and can't skit across it like a waterbug.

[Pequod]

@tekobo - Proof of sourdough crumpets!

 

[Pequod]

9 hours ago, Syzygies said:

Of these, I want to work through every recipe I can from Southern Ground. Shown is North Carolina Sourdough, to try the '85' flour from her mill. Technically this was a pitch that turned into a passed ball, for so many reasons, but it tastes so good that we want to make it again right away, to see if we can figure it out.

My new aspiration is to figure out Richard Bertinet's slap and fold technique for kneading bread. I need more gluten structure with less effort. It's harder than it looks, which is evident in the videos where someone else picks up the same dough, and can't skit across it like a waterbug.

I'm interested to hear the results of these experiments. I'm planning an order of Carolina Ground flours, but first, I need to work down some existing stock. I plan to start my desem this weekend, milling some of my hard red wheat stock. Hopefully, I'll join the desem fun in about two weeks.

Oh, and yes to slap and fold. It does take effort, but the gluten structure builds quickly. I had been doing Rubaud method with high hydration doughs, but slap and fold is faster and hurts my hand much less.

Edited May 8 by Pequod