Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 06:46:44 GMT -------------- BEGIN bread-bakers.v106.n036 -------------- 001 - Ken Sivulich - Re: when to feed starter? 003 - Katie - Rolls That Don't Rise 004 - "Karen Thornton" Subject: raising dough Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 10:53:47 -0400 (GMT-04:00) I've never liked raising my dough in the oven. I want to see it progress and peek above the top of the bowl as I am "multi-tasking", to use a now overworked phrase that any good cook/baker has always performed. Anyways, I place regular ceramic tile (left over from the kitchen floor) on top of the glass top electric stove and turn the burner/s on for ten seconds. I then place a pot holder on top of the tile and the covered bowl of dough on top of that. The radiant heat from the tile works great. If needed, the burner/s can be turned on for a few more seconds later in the raising process. --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.2 --------------- From: Tony Ernst Subject: Re: when to feed starter? Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 10:01:12 -0500 Hi Katie, You should feed your starter several hours before you use it. Ideally, you want the starter to be at peak activity when you use it. Think of it this way - when you make your bread, you are feeding your starter (you're feeding it your bread dough), so you want it to be hungry. Tony --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.3 --------------- From: Katie Subject: Rolls That Don't Rise Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 15:51:46 -0700 (PDT) Hi, I just wanted to thank everyone for giving me suggestions regarding how I can solve the problem of getting rolls and bread to rise in a kitchen that is open to my family room. This weekend my daughter and I plan to be in the kitchen most of the weekend and will be baking bread part of that time. I will let you know how things turn out and what technique or techniques we tried. Thanks again to everyone! Karen Bryant --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.4 --------------- From: "Karen Thornton" Subject: rustic breads and prezel bread Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 09:24:51 -0400 Hi Everyone, I have 2 questions. First, does anyone have a recipe for a rustic bread? You know, the kind with big holes in it. I am also looking for a recipe for pretzel bread. Not necessarily shaped like a pretzel but one that has that "pretzel taste" I make my bread using a dough hook to knead. Thanks so much. Peace, Karen --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.5 --------------- From: "Bill Snider" Subject: RE: when to feed starter? Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2006 21:14:37 -0400 Hi Katie: The answer to your question depends upon how active your starter is and how much you feed it. You are definitely doing the right thing by "waking" your starter up. Three feedings on the day before baking may seem like too many to some, but I think it guarantees the best success. How much are you feeding each time? The flour and water you add should be an order of magnitude bigger than the starter. Many people make the mistake of underfeeding their starter, which leaves too little food for the hungry yeasties. Now, watch your starter. Immediately after feeding, it is dormant. Then the yeasties begin to feed and reproduce, and it begins to grow, often achieving a domed surface. When the yeast have used up their nourishment, the dome will begin to fall. If you wait longer, the starter will begin to small sour and become much gooier than when you started. The ideal time to add starter to your dough to achieve maximum volume is on the uphill side near the peak of activity, before the decline begins. That's also the ideal time to feed. If you use it too early, there aren't nearly as many active yeasties in your starter as there will be later. If you use it too late, they begin to perish in all the alcohol and CO2 they have produced. I have learned to use a stiffer starter because the ideal window for its use is longer than it is for a wetter starter. It takes longer to get started, longer to reach peak, and longer to decline. Picture a bell curve: a wet starter has steep inclines, a stiffer starter has shallower curves. (Apologies to Daniel Wing, who taught me this stuff.) Good Luck! Bill --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.6 --------------- From: aqn@panix.com Subject: Re: Ciabatta question Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2006 12:12:24 -0400 (EDT) "jacobs" wrote: >Has anyone had any luck making chewy Ciabatta buns that are similar >to the ones sold in the Mickie D and Jack in the Box fast food >chains? Shall I just try a mini-version of the loaf? > >[...] > >Jeanette in Scorchin' South Texas I've been on a similar quest as well. My latest experiment was to lower the oven temperature during the baking. Here are my notes from my last try: * oven (with tray with 3 quarry tiles) preheated @ 425F bread put in @ 400F 1 C of hot h2o in tray * after 20 mins: reduce to 350F, turned loaf; removed h2o tray * reduce to 200F @ 35 min, removed cookie sheet * total bake time: approx 45 mins final internal temp: 207.5F The result is *almost* good enough. The crust does go soggy after only about 1/2 hour out of the oven, but that's how I prefer it. The damper crust/crumb makes for a better result when the bread is reheated. For a "show off" loaf where the crust does not go soggy, I'd probably bake until the internal temperature gets to about 210F. Other notes: I put the loaf on a rimless cookie tray with a piece of parchment paper for the final rise. My loaf is 0.75X the ciabatta recipe in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". Andy Nguyen --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.7 --------------- From: FrnknSpine@aol.com Subject: Re: Baking Rolls in a Kitchen that is Open To Family Room Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:48:41 EDT Another trick would be to place your container on top of the cable box, if it is conveniently located. They give off a lot of heat. Louie --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.8 --------------- From: Mike Avery Subject: Re: when to feed starter? Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 09:56:51 -0600 "Katie Kondo" asked: >I've been working with sourdoughs for awhile now, but there is a >question that I have been unable to find the answer to. When using >a sourdough starter, should it be fed immediately before using? Or >should I feed it a few hours before and then use it in my >dough? Before baking with my starter, I make sure to wake it up (I >usually store it in the refrigerator) three days before, feeding it >three times a day until the baking day. Sourdough is a matter of balance. You balance rise with taste. Let the sourdough work too long after a feeding and you could lose rise. Use it too soon and you could lose taste. I prefer to feed it and let it reach its peak before using it. I'll use it anytime before it starts to fall again. Most amateur bakers keep a storage starter in the refrigerator because feeding a starter every day is a major waste of time and flour if you bake infrequently. Like many hobbyists, I kept my storage starter at 100% hydration (1 part flour to 1 part water by weight, or about 1 1/2 parts flour to 1 part water by volume). When I was ready to bake, I'd pull the storage starter out of the fridge and feed it several times, doubling its size each time I fed it. I'd feed it twice a day. Any unused starter would go into the fridge again. I changed my methods when I was running a bakery, and still work the same way now that I'm a home baker again. Sourdough at 100% hydration tends to work too quickly, even in the fridge. It will form hootch, a clear indication that the starter has eaten all the available food and is hungry. Going to 60% hydration on the storage starter (10 parts flour to 6 parts water by weight or about 1 part water to 2 parts flour by volume) makes things work much more slowly. This gives me longer refrigerated storage of the starter with improved viability. When I want to bake, I determine how much starter I'll need, and then start with a very small amount of the storage starter out of the fridge, feed it up twice a day, doubling it's size with each feeding until I have the amount of starter I need. I usually feed it up over a 3 to 5 day period. There is no waste, and the starter is very lively. With my first feeding of the storage starter, I change the starter's hydration to 100%. In 5 days, I can produce enough starter to make 120 to 160 loaves of bread for the farmers market with no problems, so even in a production environment this is workable. I've never had the thicker starter form hootch, through it will turn gray after a long storage. After 3 to 6 months, when the storage starter is looking gray, or when I am running low on storage starter, I take a small amount of the storage starter out and start feeding it up again. My usual feeding regimen, modified from Calvel's "Taste of Bread" is something like this (all measurements are in grams, and I hope the table looks OK): Day/Feeding Starter Water Flour Total 1/1 2 1 2 5 1/2 5 3 4 12 2/1 12 7 11 30 2/2 30 18 30 78 3/1 78 47 78 203 3/2 203 122 203 528 4/1 300 180 300 780 4/2 300 180 300 780 After the first feeding on the fourth day, you discard the excess starter before the next feeding. The starter should at least double it's size after each feeding by the end of the second day. Once the starter is healthy, feed it one last time and then put it into a storage container and into the fridge. Remember to leave enough headroom, as it will rise in the fridge. Even if I have a larger amount of starter and could start at the fourth day's feeding level, I prefer to start at the day 1, feeding 1 level so that I'll dilute any unpleasant metabolic byproducts in the starter to the point where the are insignificant. The goal is to revive a starter to the point where it is vibrantly healthy. I suggest feeding the storage starter just before putting it into the fridge because of some work done by Dr. Sugihara on freezing starters. While a mature starter had more organisms a volume of starter than a starter that has just been fed, the mature starter has more organisms die off in storage. The starter that was just fed before freezing had more viable organisms when thawed than the mature starter. I don't know if the same holds true with refrigeration, but I know my starters revive better since I went to storing the storage starter just after a feeding. As to discarding starter, it hurts me to do that... it's a waste. So, I use the excess starter to make pizza shells, carrot muffins, pancakes or other goodies. Hope this helps, Mike --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.9 --------------- From: irene@trilliumwoods.com Subject: Re: When to feed starter Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 08:55:52 -0700 Katie, If you have a good strong starter, and if you use/refresh it more than once a month, it really shouldn't take so long to have it ready for baking. I take mine (I keep about half a cup in a small glass jar) out of the fridge first thing in the morning, put a dollop of starter into a large measuring cup, add flour and water to create the hydration I want for whatever I'm baking, and also add flour and water to the jar with the starter. I set both containers, covered, in a warm spot, to work. After a few hours I check to be sure that both containers are beginning to bubble up. put the jar with the reserve starter back into the fridge, and add enough more flour/water to the starter in the large measuring cup to bring it up to the amount I'll eventually need for my recipe. It's ready to go early in the afternoon, giving me time to get bread baked before bedtime. Hope that helps, irene in hot and dry WA --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v106.n036.10 --------------- From: "Shirley Lipscomb" Subject: Unsealed breakfast brioche Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2006 09:16:05 -0700 I have enjoyed this site and have learned a great deal as well as trying many of the recipes posted. I just finished baking a breakfast brioche with a sugar and spice swirl. This was a recipe I obtained while attending a week long cooking class in Italy. I followed the instructions leaving a one inch border all around the edges of the dough when brushing with butter and sprinkling the cinnamon and sugar mix on. I rolled it and pinched all seams to completely seal. Placed it seam side down for the second rise and placed the two loaves in the oven. All was going well, a good oven spring and they were browning beautifully. Next thing I smelled was burning sugar. Both loaves opened up a portion of the seam and the cinnamon sugar syrup was escaping and bubbled over the top of the bread pans. Once cooled I cut into the bread and the swirl was there and had not separated leaving a gap which has happened for other swirl breads. It was very pretty but I am asking for help as to why it opened up allowing the mixture to escape. Anyone? The amount of filling for two loaves was to brush with 50 grams unsalted butter and sprinkle with a mixture of 120 grams sugar and 2 T. cinnamon. --------------- END bread-bakers.v106.n036 --------------- Copyright (c) 1996-2006 Regina Dwork and Jeffrey Dwork All Rights Reserved