Homemade Bread

[levain]

some dough from the bakery


A hot "oven"


Tomatoes & Fresh Mozzarella


Sauce, maybe a little too much


Mozzarella, parmesan, olive oil & a little salt


Into the oven


And, out it comes


Oh, it's good!

[pilot]

Damn, Jim, I've been really tempted by those eggs. Now you have to go and do this.

BTW, I started some levain today to feed the beast. It came out really dry with that recipe, so I added quite a bit of water and the requisite old stuff. I'll be checking it in a while to see how its doing. Do I just dump it into the can with the other? I plan on baking tomorrow, so I'll use some, but to keep it going, I was going to just add it to the can.

[AngryScot]

Nice tasty looking pie Jim, good to see it not covered in cheese

[henrymartin]

Back to bread. (I bake 2 or 3 times a week). This one is some simple, tasty rolls. Okay, don't hate me, I'm using metric system

1kg of flour (I use King Arthur bread flour -unbleached, never bromated)
1/2 L of milk
1 stick of butter
1tsp of salt
1tsp of sugar
3 tsp of yeast (dry Fleischman)
1 egg yolk

Warm a bit of milk, stir in sugar and yeast, let rise. Melt butter with the remaining milk. Now, I use Kitchen Aid mixer and it works great for this. First i throw in the flour and salt, turn it a little to mix. Then I pour in the yeast, the egg yolk, and the milk with butter. Turn it on 1, then as it mixes on 2. the dough (when just right) will not stick to the stainless bowl or hook.
Set aside until dough doubles in volume. Then braid 3-strand rolls out of it. This usually makes about 20 rolls. Set them on baking sheets, preheat oven to 380F, while i use the leftover egg white to brush the rolls on top. Sprinkle with rock salt and poppy seeds, put in the oven and bake about 20 minutes.

Enjoy.

[LPcreation]

sandwich bread

[levain]

Originally Posted by pilot

Damn, Jim, I've been really tempted by those eggs. Now you have to go and do this.

BTW, I started some levain today to feed the beast. It came out really dry with that recipe, so I added quite a bit of water and the requisite old stuff. I'll be checking it in a while to see how its doing. Do I just dump it into the can with the other? I plan on baking tomorrow, so I'll use some, but to keep it going, I was going to just add it to the can.

The egg rocks. Everything from Pizza, to pulled pork, to steaks. You name it. Awesome thing.

Sounds like you're in good shape for your bread?

[pilot]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

The egg rocks. Everything from Pizza, to pulled pork, to steaks. You name it. Awesome thing.

Sounds like you're in good shape for your bread?

Not great shape. The starter seems to be working, but I'm not doing great on the bread today. I may have divided it too much. I split it four ways and it looks like it would have been better either three ways or two ways. I'll figure it out sooner or later.

[pilot]

Getting ready to slice it.

[SpaceManSpiff]

that is looks incredible

[Romulux]

This thread inspired me to make my own. I'm a carb addict so that's not too surprising.

Jim, your posts have been especially informative and I'm sure I'm not the only lurker who would love to hear more.

Here was my first attempt -- this one was kneaded.




After that, I tried the no-knead style. I had probably 4 utter failures. Based on Jim's photos and comments, more water sounded better. Apparently, there's a definite limit to that. I tried making wet dough several times and they never cooked through or rose. I used several flours and added gluten, tried varying levels of yeast. When I finally reduced the water and made the dough dry enough to handle very easily, they would finally cook through. Here is one of my more recent ones:




I made a loaf of rye yesterday that turned out pretty darn good for a first attempt at rye. It's gone now.


I'm looking for tips because I haven't been able to achieve the large crumb holes shown in many of the pictures in this thread. I use a 7 Qt cast iron pot preheated for 45 minutes or so to ~450F. I wonder if I'm letting it sit too long? The dough tends to get wetter the longer it sits. The house is around 60 to 65F most of the time during the winter and spring and the I let the dough sit around 18 hours. After that, I take it out of the bowl and fold it a few times and then let it rise a second time for a few hours (between 2 and 6).


Any pointers?

[AngryScot]

Originally Posted by pilot

Getting ready to slice it.

That is a good looking loaf

[levain]

Originally Posted by pilot

Getting ready to slice it.

YES!! Not as hard as you thought?! There's always tweaks to be made, but the first thing I noticed was volume and strength. If it was over fermented, over mixed, under mixed, over proofed, it would've been sloppy and flat. Great job. Now to tweak. Keep that Levain going that I sent you, and you'll start to learn how to keep it active. Remember, young and active is good. Old and lethargic is bad. bad. bad. Awesome

[levain]

Originally Posted by Romulux

This thread inspired me to make my own. I'm a carb addict so that's not too surprising.

Jim, your posts have been especially informative and I'm sure I'm not the only lurker who would love to hear more.

Here was my first attempt -- this one was kneaded.




After that, I tried the no-knead style. I had probably 4 utter failures. Based on Jim's photos and comments, more water sounded better. Apparently, there's a definite limit to that. I tried making wet dough several times and they never cooked through or rose. I used several flours and added gluten, tried varying levels of yeast. When I finally reduced the water and made the dough dry enough to handle very easily, they would finally cook through. Here is one of my more recent ones:




I made a loaf of rye yesterday that turned out pretty darn good for a first attempt at rye. It's gone now.


I'm looking for tips because I haven't been able to achieve the large crumb holes shown in many of the pictures in this thread. I use a 7 Qt cast iron pot preheated for 45 minutes or so to ~450F. I wonder if I'm letting it sit too long? The dough tends to get wetter the longer it sits. The house is around 60 to 65F most of the time during the winter and spring and the I let the dough sit around 18 hours. After that, I take it out of the bowl and fold it a few times and then let it rise a second time for a few hours (between 2 and 6).


Any pointers?

Both breads look great! Top one looks under proofed. See how it blew out so radically? Dough looks pretty stiff too. For me, I like to imagine a loaf kind of flattening out in the oven, then rising up through the center, rather than popping straight up.

First off, I know that lots of guys are doing these radically long bulk ferments, but that's not really normal. It works because of minimal yeast, and wet slack dough. If you try to go that long with a "normal" recipe that you might find in a book, or online you'll end up with what it sounds like. When it starts to overferment, it breaks down, and liquifies. It sounds like that is what is happening.

There is a definite limit to how much water you add, but lots of it has to do with how much/little the dough is manipulated, and how much yeast is in the final dough.

You guys are ready for bakers percentage. Once you understand it, you can tweak recipes easily. If things are in percentages I can help more too, since that is what I understand and work with. Everything becomes a percentage of the flour which is always 100%. For example, the no knead recipe has .00075% yeast. Most of my yeasted breads have around .25%. Most commercial, American style bakery breads have around 3%!!!! Massive differences. If you used a recipe with 3% yeast, but tried to ferment it for 18hrs. at a moderate temperature, no matter how stiff that dough was (stiffer dough moves slower, wetter faster) it would be slop. Over fermented, broken down. soupy. For this reason, I hesitate telling you what to do with your gradually wetter dough since I don't know where you started. My guess is its over fermented and falling apart...

Here's a link
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/profe...ercentage.html

[pilot]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

Over fermented, broken down. soupy. For this reason, I hesitate telling you what to do with your gradually wetter dough since I don't know where you started. My guess is its over fermented and falling apart...

That is interesting and probably part of my problem. I'll try to do it less to get more, so to speak.

[Andylaser]

I love home made bread.

Has anyone got any good recipies for camp fire bread? Something that is east to knock up when out in the sticks.