Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2009 08:38:44 GMT -------------- BEGIN bread-bakers.v109.n013 -------------- 001 - "Mary Fisher" Subject: RE: crusty rolls & starter Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:54:02 +0100 >--------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n012.1 --------------- > >From: "Allen Cohn" >Subject: RE: Looking for crusty & chewy rolls >Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:20:34 -0700 > >... > >Home ovens (especially most gas ovens) have a harder time creating >and holding steam in. Most bread baking books describe a variety of >methods to do so with a home oven. But I've never found any of them to work :-) Mary >--------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n012.2 --------------- > >From: "Allen Cohn" >Subject: RE: starter >Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:30:51 -0700 > >Yes, it's not "necessary" to feed your starter regularly...but to >create the very best results you should. > >If one really wants to perfect a recipe and procedure for a >particular bread, then you should measure and optimize every >variable: amount of each ingredient, temperature of dough, >temperature of oven, mixing speeds and times, folds, fermentation >time, proofing time, etc. The more you measure and control, the more >consistent your results will be. (And, as you can imagine, >consistency is vital in a professional bakery. Of course it is - but not at home. Here at least we enjoy variety. That's the difference between standard products which supermarkets say customers demand, they are always the same texture, flavour and colour. I'm not thinking just of bread but, for instance, honey. Supermarket honeys are blended so that what you buy one month or even year is exactly the same as the last. Only large producers can do that. Local beekeepers' honeys vary sometimes weekly, according to the crop the bees have worked and you can never deliberately reproduce it. That's the way I like my honey, eggs, bread, cakes, jams ... even meat. We buy ours from a daughter who has rare breeds and the variety between them is noticeable as is the difference between seasons, whether they've fed on rich pasture through the seasons or hay in winter - and of course the sex and age of the animal. Variety is the spice of life :- >... > >I'm not thrilled about "wasting" flour by throwing out the unneeded >starter... But I bough some Gold Medal flour on special for $2/5 >lbs. bag. I use 6 oz. of flour each time I refresh the starter. $2 >*6 oz/80 oz = $0.15 for each refreshment cycle. So it's not that >extravagant a waste. It's not a matter of economy, it's a matter of not wasting the product of others' labour. As well as the environment ... Mary --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.2 --------------- From: Mike Avery Subject: Re: old starter Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:21:46 -0500 Dr. Ed Wood wrote that he's never had a starter he couldn't revive. A number of rec.food.sourdough folks have wondered if he's always revived the same starter that he started with. Kinda like Stephen King's "Pet Semetary". Still, his washing technique does seem to be very promising. I think you can find instructions in his second book and on his web site. The idea is.... Discard all but 1 cup of starter (Mary - it's not good starter or good food at this point) Add enough warm (not hot) water to the quart container to just about fill it, stirring vigorously. Discard all but one cup of the diluted starter. Add 1 cup of unbleached all-purpose flour and 3/4 cup of water. Stir, cover and wait 12 hours. Repeat the steps above until the starter takes off. In some cases, Dr. Wood says, it can take 5 or 6 days. This is a thinner starter than I usually use, which means that it will respond more quickly than my usual starters would. I'm trying this technique on a starter that turned bad on me, and it seems promising. Notes at http://www.sourdoughhome.com/breadblog.html Mike *Bake With Mike * Mike Avery A Randomly Selected Bread Saying Of The Day: Hope is the poor man's bread. -- George Herbert --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.3 --------------- From: Haack Carolyn Subject: master dough -- "5 Minutes" Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:25:16 -0700 (PDT) Lynn, your question on the cornmeal is the easy one to answer. Just BURY your peel (or whatever) with cornmeal -- maybe an eighth of an inch thick. You shouldn't see any part of the supporting object peeking through. Spread it wider than you think you'll need. When ready to toss the loafin the oven, you can brush away excess corn meal that's in front of the loaf, and there will probably be some remaining on the peel after the loaf is scooted into the oven, you can put all that right back in the corn meal container for next time. Anything less than this glorious excess results in the dough touching the peel which, as you already know, results in it sticking. As for how slack the dough should be ... mine produced a nice loaf, here's how it handled. The dough in the bowl in the frig was perfectly flat on top, no "dome" from rising as a knead-able bread would have. I used my plastic dough/bowl scraper to cut out about a quarter of it, the dough immediately started sagging (though not flowing). I quickly pinched the cut edges together on what would be the bottom, and plopped it onto the tons-o-cornmeal on my peel. There it did hold its round shape, rose nicely and made a lovely, crusty-on-the-outside/creamy-on-the-inside loaf. So I'd suggest first being sure your cornmeal is spread in advance. Then think through the physical steps you'll execute -- grabbing part of the dough, pinching into a ball, inverting onto the cornmeal -- a few times as mental practice. Then focus on speed in the execution ... it's going to rise in the end, and rising evens out lots of aesthetic flaws from earlier in the process. And, in all good humor, even if the darn loaf comes out looking utterly mangled -- slice it! It'll taste great and any bold diner who criticizes can certainly volunteer to apprentice with you the next time! --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.4 --------------- From: "Tom" Subject: Re: I need some advice about Bread in 5 Minutes Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 09:59:32 -0700 Lately, I make 2 loaves a week using this method. This dough is very wet, so wet you don't "handle" it like a more traditional dough. I would never think of trying to use a peel with this dough. There are numerous videos on-line you can watch to see how this dough is handled. I use a technique where after the 18-24 hour ferment, I stretch and fold the dough then place it on a piece of parchment paper (about 18 x 18 inches). I then place the parchment paper and dough in a colander for the 2-3 hour rise. I then lift the parchment paper and dough out of the colander and place the whole thing in my preheated vessel, cover and bake. --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.5 --------------- From: "Schmitt, Barbara E." Subject: moving bread from peel to stone; another question on 5 minute basic recipe Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:02:17 -0400 Lynn noted that she had difficulty moving the bread dough from the peel to the stone in the oven. I have never mastered this either -- but if you put parchment paper under the dough, you can slide it, paper and all, right onto the stone. Then you can remove the paper partway through the baking process or (what I do) just leave it there and peel it off when you take the bread out of the oven. I know there are purists on the list who will be horrified, but it works like a charm for me. : Now for my question -- I have made the 5-minute basic recipe a number of times (and yes, Lynn, I keep the dough very wet; I don't so much shape it as plop it). While the crust is fabulous, the interior is gummy, even though (i) I am using all purpose flour rather than bread flour, and (ii) I am cooking it to an interior temperature of 205 degrees. Anybody have any suggestions? Barbara --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.6 --------------- From: Sue Prescott Subject: Tortillas Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:09:48 -0700 (PDT) Many Hispanic groceries and some grocery stores where there's a large Hispanic population carry masa dough. According to Rick Bayless's books it doesn't keep well, though, and needs to be used fairly quickly. Sue --------------- MESSAGE bread-bakers.v109.n013.7 --------------- From: "Dave Jimenez" Subject: RE: old starter Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:45:49 -0700 Just wanted to share that as a result of trying to be the best dad, husband, employee, and relative I let my sourdough sit in a sealed mason jar in the fridge through 3 homes for a total of almost 10 years. It never molded and I did manage to refresh it a few times the 1st two of those 10 years. I may have refreshed it a couple of times the next year or so, but I am positive that I never touched it over the past 6 years other than to move it from one fridge to the next! Well, in February of this year I pulled it out looking for mold or other nastys, poured out the hooch, and let it come to room temperature. Then I refreshed it and let it sit in the same mason jar with the lid cracked one day. Then I figured I'd browse some books and see how others feed their sours. Well it appeared Nancy Silverton recommends "tightly covering" the sour container; So I did. I didn't think an old sour would rise much if it was only 1/3 of the jar. I anxiously waited to see some activity and found myself taking a look at the darn jar throughout the day for 3 days and saw little activity (or wished I did, not sure) perhaps some tiny bubbling the size of pinholes. I drew a black line on the jar and knew it hadn't risen. I was starting to get bummed when at my job at one of the large commercial bakeries I work (actually a new start-up) I got a distressed voicemail from my wife, "Hey, that jar you have on my kitchen counter is starting to ooze out everywhere right through the seal! What do you want me to do!!!!" Yeah, that put a smile on my face. I made sourdough from this a couple days later after I refreshed it one more time. The bread was great and had no off-flavors. Now my little sour sits in the fridge neglected again for over 2 months. Hopefully my kids/wife/job/family cut me a break so that I can make some bread at home soon!! In case you were curious, I believe I bought the "starter" from Sourdough International, and they called it the Original San Francisco. I doubt it is the same as when I first started it. I activated it for the first time in the Clovis, California area (Central Valley/Foothills); Then it sat in the fridge in the SF Bay for 1/2 a year, and finally it was refreshed in my new home in the mother lode, Valley Springs, California where it's been for 5 years. Kind of ironic that it would end up in the old gold country! Dave J motherlode, CA --------------- END bread-bakers.v109.n013 --------------- Copyright (c) 1996-2009 Regina Dwork and Jeffrey Dwork All Rights Reserved