C6Bill Posted February 23, 2022 Report Share Posted February 23, 2022 As we are discussing bread. Here is my basic extra tangy sourdough recipe. Use at your own risk lol Sourdough 200 g Sourdough starter 325 g Water, (90°F to 110°F) (start with 275 g) 525 g Flour (425 White and 25 Whole Wheat to start) 11 g Sugar 12 g Salt 50 g yellow cornmeal, for coating the paper Stir together all of the ingredients except the cornmeal and salt in a large bowl. starting with 450 grams of the flour and 275 grams water. Let the shaggy mess rest for 20 minutes covered. Then add remaining 75 grams of flour 50 grams of water and salt. Let rest an hour then stretch and fold. Stretch and fold two hours after that and another 2 hours after that. Then refrigerate overnight in a sealed container The next morning let the dough come up to room temp for two hours and stretch and fold one more time. Then place loaf in a floured Banneton bowl, covered for 2 to 4 hours. It should become nice and puffy. Gently poke your index finger into the top of the loaf, if the indentation remains, your bread is ready to bake. Towards the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 450°F Put parchment paper on a cookie sheet, and cut to shape for dutch oven with tabs for handles. Put the cornmeal on the paper and gently roll the loaf on to the sheet and score the loaf however you like. Immediately put it in the oven. Put loaf in oven and turn temp down to 435. Bake the bread for 30 minutes and remove lid, then cook an additional 20 minutes until the crust is golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when you tap it on the bottom. The interior temperature of the bread should register about 205°F on a digital thermometer. Turn the oven off, crack the door open, and allow the bread to remain inside for 10 additional minutes; this helps the crust crisp. Remove the bread from the oven and cool it on a rack. And wipe any additional cornmeal off the bottom. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted March 19 Author Report Share Posted March 19 (edited) On 3/11/2024 at 6:15 AM, tekobo said: Ha! Liar, liar, pants on fire @Pequod. I learned a lot from you and am missing your bread and pizza game. What have you been cooking? Please share! I am in Italy at the moment. Made great wholewheat spaghetti yesterday but my focaccia dough failed overnight. Thinking it must be temperature related (too cold). Not sure I can justify a bread proofer here so will see if the warming bowl in my mixer will help. You need a bread proofer. Or you're a hack. 😏 You mill your own flour, right? RIGHT??? The above, rude exchange with @Pequod reminded me of this thread. Just spent a lovely 15 minutes or so re-reading all the old posts. Really must get back on the bread making horse. And yes, I do own a Brod and Taylor bread proofer in my home in the UK (thanks to @P and the KK shopping channel) but cannot bring myself to spring for another for the place in Italy. Will try the warming bowl in my Kenwood Chef when I am next there. I have visions of turning into @Syzygies, duplicating kit for his two homes before finally consolidating into one and having to find homes for it all! I really must try @C6Bill's recipe - you seem to get such reliable results. And I still have not got onto @Syzygies's spelt loaf. All in good time. Edited March 19 by tekobo 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C6Bill Posted March 20 Report Share Posted March 20 Sometimes i'll just leave it out on the counter for 6 hours while i go for a walk and it will be just fine. You don't need fancy tool to get good results. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted March 20 Author Report Share Posted March 20 8 hours ago, C6Bill said: Sometimes i'll just leave it out on the counter for 6 hours while i go for a walk and it will be just fine. You don't need fancy tool to get good results. Yeah, I know. I had a friend come round who made beautiful bread in the most casual way possible. I have got comfortable with my loaf tin breads but still have something to prove (tee hee) when it comes to sourdough. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted March 21 Report Share Posted March 21 I recently redid my spreadsheets to match current practice. First is "worksheet", second goes on wall while I work. It doesn't really matter if you're consistent and don't care about comparing notes with others, but I account for board flour, shrinkage, to nail actual hydration as if this were a chemistry lab experiment. I've seen other accomplished bakers who ignore the starter hydration, for example. Their effective hydration is a local fantasy. We grind some of our flour. We've been buying white from Acme Bread, famed in Bay area. They have Guisto's make this for them, but likely a different blend than one can buy elsewhere. I learned to accelerate the hydrolyse for each step by 60 seconds in a vacuum sealer chamber. This makes an obvious difference for pasta dough, and I believe a difference here too. I rediscovered "bassinage" where one kneads the dough at a comfortable hydration, then adds water at the end using Chad Robertson bowl folds. I like to knead a long rope, fold it over and twist, knead again to a long rope... My theory here is that one does better with a kneading technique that doesn't cause the bran to cut through the developing gluten. We use the KK in summer to avoid heating the house, and a convection oven in winter. I used to worry about filling the oven with ample steam. We now swear by the Challenger Bread Pan. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted March 21 Author Report Share Posted March 21 Thank you @Syzygies! When I tagged you in my message above I hoped that it would trigger a response from you. There is no way I am going to attempt to reproduce your spreadsheet. Is there anyway you could post it somewhere it could be downloaded, if you are willing to share? On a much less complex level, do you have an up to date version of your spelt bread recipe that you can share for use and further tweaking as necessary? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PVPAUL Posted March 21 Report Share Posted March 21 Yes, @Syzygies I’m with @tekobo and would appreciate the SS / spelt recipe! I’m looking to up my bread game. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequod Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 I’m also a fan of the Challenger Bread Pan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted March 23 Author Report Share Posted March 23 I see what you are doing there @Pequod and I am not falling for it. Proposed by S and endorsed by P doesn't equal an immediate buy signal. Give me a month or so.... Are you still baking bread, making pizza? Any new (or old) techniques or discoveries to share? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
C6Bill Posted March 23 Report Share Posted March 23 Recent loaf of whole grain sourdough, don’t laugh but I made that for my dentist. They made me some spaghetti sauce that was absolutely amazing!!!!! 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted March 24 Report Share Posted March 24 On 3/21/2024 at 1:25 AM, tekobo said: Thank you @Syzygies! When I tagged you in my message above I hoped that it would trigger a response from you. There is no way I am going to attempt to reproduce your spreadsheet. Is there anyway you could post it somewhere it could be downloaded, if you are willing to share? On a much less complex level, do you have an up to date version of your spelt bread recipe that you can share for use and further tweaking as necessary? I never made a spelt recipe? Here is my most recently revised Numbers spreadsheet. Sourdough Bread.numbers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted March 24 Author Report Share Posted March 24 4 hours ago, Syzygies said: I never made a spelt recipe? Here is my most recently revised Numbers spreadsheet. Sourdough Bread.numbers 1.23 MB · 1 download Thanks a lot for the spreadsheet @Syzygies. There is some cachet in having your bread maths done by an uber mathematician! I think I called it spelt and you called it farro. Tomato, tomato? Maybe not. It is this recipe. Just wanted to know if you had refined it any further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequod Posted March 29 Report Share Posted March 29 On 3/23/2024 at 12:31 PM, tekobo said: Are you still baking bread, making pizza? Any new (or old) techniques or discoveries to share? Yep, still making bread and pizza. Always sourdough. New/old discoveries…Challenger Bread Pan not allowed as an answer…hmmm… 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequod Posted April 10 Report Share Posted April 10 @tekobo -- new toy you need to up your breadmaking game. Note the photobombing grains in the back, ready for milling. 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted April 13 Author Report Share Posted April 13 On 4/10/2024 at 7:27 PM, Pequod said: @tekobo -- new toy you need to up your breadmaking game. Note the photobombing grains in the back, ready for milling. You are a bad bad boy @PQ! I have looked this up. Good reviews. Expensive in the UK and out of stock in the US. As I noted to a friend who said he thought it seemed a bit clinical: there are two ends of the spectrum in the sourdough world - nerds and naturals - and both make excellent bread. I am in neither group sadly. All of the above is just stalling activity, I know. If/when I ever get back into making sourdough bread this would be a good tool. In the meantime I am going to focus on my pizza game this summer. There are some awesome doughs to use up those grains of yours in this book: https://amzn.eu/d/03mX8pi You will just have to brush up on your Italian. Or use Google translate. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequod Posted April 14 Report Share Posted April 14 18 hours ago, tekobo said: You are a bad bad boy @PQ! I have looked this up. Good reviews. Expensive in the UK and out of stock in the US. As I noted to a friend who said he thought it seemed a bit clinical: there are two ends of the spectrum in the sourdough world - nerds and naturals - and both make excellent bread. I am in neither group sadly. All of the above is just stalling activity, I know. If/when I ever get back into making sourdough bread this would be a good tool. In the meantime I am going to focus on my pizza game this summer. There are some awesome doughs to use up those grains of yours in this book: https://amzn.eu/d/03mX8pi You will just have to brush up on your Italian. Or use Google translate. Don’t think you understand. It’s not a question of whether you’re actively making bread. It’s a question of…do you have this toy, just in case. 😈 Here is today’s loaf of 40% fresh milled white sonora which will be going to my wife’s co-worker. She happens to have prolific chickens, so we’ve been the recipients of excess eggs. Quid pro quo. 2 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted April 14 Report Share Posted April 14 On 4/10/2024 at 11:27 AM, Pequod said: @tekobo -- new toy you need to up your breadmaking game. Note the photobombing grains in the back, ready for milling. Brod and Taylor Sourdough Home Um, wow. This looks radically useful. We see pretty extreme temperature changes in our kitchen, season to season. I can believe that this matters but how much? One of my first lessons in cooking was asking a maven friend in college (now a country doctor) about cheesecake. He told me the four people on our 1,200 student campus who were most proud of their recipes. I interviewed each of them, threw out the superstitions (walk in socks by an ajar oven for an hour afterwards), and intersected their recipes to obtain what anyone now would recognize as one version of a classic cheesecake. This taught me about efficacy. In the kind of optimization that makes companies rich, they get numbers next to each lever revealing how important that lever is. In cooking, most levers are fantasies that hardly matter, even as the best cooks pile up a series of 1% advantages into striking results. So cooking well involves making some deep judgements about what matters, all while relaxing with a beverage of choice. The idea of slowing down my feeding schedule between bakes is very appealing. I hadn't considered seed ratio; I get fine results with less seed, but as always that impression says more about my mental health than whether I'm right. People always say this when they're happy with what they're doing, usually because they're unaware they could do better. The 100% hydration ratio they use in their examples leans hard to one extreme, favoring a certain acid profile. I use this too because it's easy and I'm lazy, but I recognize there's a choice here. Perhaps they address this deeper in their instructions, but I'd believe this choice to be more significant than the variables they do control. Which brings me back to "How much does this all matter?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tekobo Posted April 14 Author Report Share Posted April 14 Beautiful loaf @Pequod. I still think you need to learn Italian - Bonci is a genius. I am holding fast at the edge of this rabbit hole, nose twitching. 43 minutes ago, Syzygies said: "How much does this all matter?" For some people, not at all. I do need longer intervals between feeding because I am not always around and/or I don't bake or eat bread as often as I used to. I suspect a very important variable is the viability (or not) of my starter. We have a good sourdough bakery nearby and I think I will go and ask for some of their starter when I decide to get back on the sourdough horse. Until then, I look forward to hearing what others make of this interesting tool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pequod Posted April 14 Report Share Posted April 14 (edited) Here is Maurizio’s guide to using Sourdough Home. I’m following the “bake one day a week” schedule and it works very well: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/feed-your-starter-less-often-thanks-to-the-sourdough-home/ And it is in stock at King Arthur: https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/sourdough-home Edited April 14 by Pequod Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Syzygies Posted April 14 Report Share Posted April 14 (edited) 1 hour ago, Pequod said: And it is in stock at King Arthur: https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/sourdough-home Yes, as I just discovered. Their 20% off first purchase doesn't apply. I did order one. I'm a bit surprised that they don't help you manage a feeding schedule, now that it's no longer each day. My Joule sous vide unit, for example, uses a phone app because that was actually the least expensive option for them. Edited April 14 by Syzygies Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
