Bread

Nothing special, just this:
https://www.appliancesonline.com.au/product/chef-54cm-electric-freestanding-oven-stainless-steel-cfe547sbb

This year I went HAM on converting our household to fully electric. Meaning more solar panels, proper ducted AC, EV, EV charger, electric heat pump and cooker to replace the gas appliances.

With the previous gas oven I always got the bottom burnt. This electric one is much more even and predictable. Shame that the actual cooking fields suck in comparison, but that's the trade of for getting rid of gas. Sadly I couldn't find an induction cooker that width. So I made due with this and and additional IKEA plug in number for fast cooking/frying on induction.

Any Londoner still sour dough baking?

Are you willing to give me some of the starter?

If you were round the corner I would. But rye flour will give you a starter in three days. It'll plateau after that and establish itself to the environment and when its 'feeding' is.

My experience is that it's hard to get a starter going in the middle of winter unless your house is heated most of the time.

Our kitchen is 12-14 degrees or less for most of winter. Much easier to get a starter going when it's 20s.

I leave mine in the oven with light on, proving draw essentially.

Who’s got the no k wad recipe? I had it, stopped eating bread, now I’m back on the bread

My standard is
600g Decent White Bread Flour
7g Instant Yeast
15g Salt
450ml Water

Mix it all up in the evening and cover (I use a big tupaware).

Then following morning I put a cast iron dish in the oven on 270c. Whilst that's heating I shape and prove the loaf (I leave it for 40 mins whilst the oven gets the pan super hot). I then put the loaf inside the hot cast iron pan turn the oven down to 240c and bake for 40-50 mins with the lid on.

Sorry “sourdough”

I have starter incoming

https://www.lfgss.com/comments/17332071/

Adapted from Tartine and perfect loaf. Tartine is a great book.

My almagamated no knead

80g leaven
500g water
450g strong white flour
300g flour wholewheat (can use any mixture of wholewheat/grained flours as long as it’s 300g worth)
13g salt

Mix water and starter in a bowl, add flour , and salt, and mix together until it’s doughy, roll into a 4l+ lidded tub, which you’ve rubbed with olive oil.

Wet hands and stretch and fold in the tub, do the four corners, once an hour for the first four hours. Put lid back on after every stretch and fold.
Cover with lid and leave overnight to ferment.

Take out of tub in the morning, dough should be fairly holey, and stretchy, pour dough onto floured work surface, shape into a ball and leave for 20mins under a tea towel.

Flour surface, shape dough into a ball, place in floured banneton, leave to prove for 2hrs,

I turn on my oven as high as it’ll go after an hour of the proving, put my lidded Dutch pot in and let it heat up.

Return to dough after two hours, take out Dutch pot, sprinkle polenta onto the bottom of the pot, tip dough into pot, score with razor blade, keeping the lid open a crack spray spray spray spray water into the pot to produce some steam. Close lid, put in oven at 325* for 15-20mins, take out and see if it’s risen, split, has a light golden texture, add some water into a sauna stone that has been in the oven since it’s been heating to get some steam going, put pot back in without the lid, turn oven down to 300* and leave in for 15-25mins.
When it’s dark brown, but not burnt, take out and put on rack to cool.

Try putting an ice cube into the pot with the bread. It’ll produce steam for a little longer than what you can spray in.

That’s a really nice clear recipe.

Nice thanks for that. Seems very straight forward. No doubt I’ll find an inventive way to fuck it up

Too late but my dad got me this a couple of years ago and has lots of variations, or I looked at the second one just before Christmas, also looked good

https://www.sustainweb.org/news/oct22-new-baking-book-raising-dough-for-ukraine/

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-dusty-knuckle/max-tobias/rebecca-oliver/9781787137745

Hope it works out for you. If you don’t want as much wholewheat in there you can substitute it for an equal amount of white flour of your choice.
You can also stretch and fold as many times as you like. Ive been experimenting with it to see how holey the dough can become and it doesn’t seem to matter when or how often you do it, just as long as you do it four or five times.

So when I mix the dough in the morning it’s the small lump and by the following morning it should be about the size of the big lump. If it’s a bit smaller I just leave it for another couple of hours in the tub so it gets closer to that size before taking it out for shaping and proving..

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Also belated but looking at this, I would say it's bordering on over-proofing. You might get better results doing your S&F earlier and then letting it proof for longer in its final shape

Yeah I’ve started to S&F after I’ve mixed the dough, usually every hour for the first couple of hours, or if being lazy whenever I can before I leave it to ferment overnight.
Then shape, and prove for a couple of hours the following morning.

Nice 👍

Overproved you say!; well check out this muck up,, not sure the ducks will have - it so it's mine

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Had a run of substandard loaves, I am pretty certain it is the most recent batch of foricher t65 at fault.

I cannot get the strength of dough to hold shape. Given that my bread making has settled into a really dependable recipe and technique and I have been using a stand mixer for a set amount of time it feels like the flour is the problem.

Bakery bits have suggested I reduce the hydration, stop using freshly milled grain, add additional stretch and folds, autolyse the flour. Or that the t65 isn’t an appropriate flour for sourdough. None of these interventions have solved the problem. But this stage it feels like the flour is the issue. Because my recipe and technique have been working with the same ingredients for a while now.

This is further compounded by the uncertainty as to the protein % in foricher t65 it is listed variously at 12 or 11 %, 10 % on bakery bits and 8% on forichers own website

I think their wheat supply has been compromised by the changes in weather patterns. My wife works in agricultural soil health and it appears much of the sector is finding crops are not behaving as per usual.

agricultural soul health

Was going to send this straight to the Waitrose thread before I realised the typo.

Ha! Change made.

S'up, bread people.

Why is my crust so thin?

White, rye & malt ~65% hydration.

Bulk ferment during the day, shaped & fridge proved overnight.

Oven is at 225 for 20 with a tray of boiling water below, hen dropped to 200 for 20.

I don't really think it is and it has lovely sugar spots.. but in theory that steam (water) in the oven is preventing/ delaying the crust forming and increasing oven spring -
Maybe skip that water part and have a lower longer second part 180 35min

Yeah what @bluehuw is saying I think. Steam to keep the crust pliable and to provide oven spring, (in my case lid on in Dutch pot), then less steam, (lid off Dutch pot) to firm up and darken the crust.
Not sure how that relates to thickness but I’m sure someone will know, but looking at my bread photos, my crust doesn’t seem any thicker than yours, just darker

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I have the opposite problem and my crust is too thick and chewy. How do people get thin crusts? Mine is a right pain to slice through, particularly at the bottom. I also generally find that my crumb tends to be gummy (lots of residue left on knife when slicing into it the next day) but I'm already baking the loaf for an hour as compared to other people who seem to get away with 40min bake times...

Photo of today’s loaf attached and a previous loaf for example of crust thickness. Loaf is obviously under-risen because I don't take good care of my starter (it lives regularly for 2+ weeks in the fridge, gets refreshed once with rye and I can't be bothered to wait any longer to use it) and so it is very underactive (takes 12h or so in my 15-18deg kitchen to proof a loaf).

Recipe is roughly 185g Allison's wholewheat, 250g Marriages white strong bread flour, 8g salt, 320g water (for approx 75% hydration). Mix together, leave to sit for indefinite amount of time, stretch and fold, sit for longer, coil fold, sit for longer, at some point around 4h later (give or take) I laminate (roughly; it doesn't get that thin), shape and chuck it in a banneton to final proof. If I can leave it to sit for another 4h I do then it goes into the fridge overnight, if I am making bread in the evening in winter working with a sluggish starter (as with this loaf) I might leave it out on the counter.

Baking is 200deg for 20min in a covered preheated cloche + 20min lid off + 20min at 180deg.

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