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My ultimate bread - learn the secrets of "slow baking" by t.rohner on May 22, 2008 Table of Contents License: Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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Intro: My ultimate bread - learn the secrets of "slow baking" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 1: Preliminary thoughts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 2: Ingredients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 3: Preferment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 4: kneading the dough . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 5: Forming the bread and final rest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 6: Scoring and baking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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step 7: Books, links and stuff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
License: Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) Intro: My ultimate bread - learn the secrets of "slow baking" A complete HOWTO on baking bread that tastes better, than most breads money can buy.
Image Notes 1. Nice texture, huh?
Image Notes 1. My favorite white bread.
Image Notes 1. I was too lazy to fetch white flour from the basement, so i used some 30 percent whole wheat.
step 1: Preliminary thoughts This is my 3rd instructable about baking bread. Baking bread means more to me, than just preparing something to eat. As soon as you smell the bread baking in the oven, you know what i mean. Last year, i baked twice a week, give or take. Most of the time, i prepare a "poolish" preferment Friday morning or around lunch time. At night, before i go to bed i add the remaining ingredients, and let it knead by my bread maker. The next morning, i preheat the oven, then maybe go to bed again until the oven reaches the temperature. This way, even a full time employed guy like me can do it without interfering with my other hobbies, or money gathering activities (like working ;-). Many people tell me they tried to bake bread, after reading a recipe. Then their bread turns out dense like a stone. It's really not that hard to bake bread with a yeast leavened dough, if you have a basic knowledge. 1. Yeast works in a temperature range from about 5 to 35 deg. C or 41 to 95 deg. F. (At the lower end, the activity is almost stopped and it works very slow but you can raise the temp. to speed it up. At the upper end, it works very fast, but if you overshoot this temp. you could kill your yeast.) Professional bakers normally try to reach a dough temp. of around 28 C or 83 F after kneading. (The temp. is reached by adjusting the water temp., the temp. of the flour can change from seasonal storage temperatures. Kneading causes friction and heats up the dough some more.) This may sound awfully complicated, but if you take tepid water, all will be ok. (If you don't have 200lb of flour to knead, your bowl temp. has more impact on the rising time.)
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2. Yeast doesn't like fats or salt. But then, i don't like bread without salt. The yeast tolerates some salt, but i wouldn't add it to a preferment. If you make a dough with lots of fat, add it after you mixed the flour, yeast and water or milk. Take more yeast.(As directed on the yeast pack will be enough.) Normally, i only take a quarter or even less than the amount suggested on the yeast package. But i give it more time to work. After you master the white wheat flour bread, making whole wheat and breads with other grains are easy to adapt. I would suggest you use 25-50% white wheat flour in any of these breads. This makes sure, you get a good rise. If you use coarsly milled or crushed grains or other dry, hard ingredients, you need to soak them. With the following method, you can soak them in the preferment.
step 2: Ingredients For a plain white bread, you don't need fancy ingredients. It's just flour, water, salt and yeast. The most important ingredient is the flour of course. It's differently named in different countries and this can confuse things a little bit. A gluten-rich flour is a good thing to start with. Gluten is a wheat-protein and we need it for the gas holding capability of a dough. It's essential for a nice rise. So if you find a flour with a protein content of around 11%, you should be ok. I normally buy my flour at a local mill, but once i didn't have any of it, i went to the supermarket and bought plain white flour. The result was also very good. I would stay away from "bread mixes", since they normally have obscure additives you really don't need if you follow these procedures. I use a digital kitchen scale to weigh my ingredients. I will add volumetric measures later, stepped up or down, so you won't need 3.731 cups of flour... Bakers state their ingredients in bakers percentage in their receipes. This way it's easy to step a receipe up or down. This makes two batards.(thick short baguettes) 500g white flour 100% 350ml or 350g tepid water 70% (unchlorinated, and not too soft) 15g salt 3% 1g active dry yeast 0.2% Baking unit conversion utility: http://pantsblazing.com/convert/vol_weight.php 4 cups bread flour (560g) 13 fl.oz. water (384ml) 3 tsp salt (15g) 1/6 of a 1/4 oz yeast packet Depending on the moisture content and the type of flour, you may need to adjust the amount of water a little bit. You can add some flour, if your dough gets too moist. If you always need to add more flour, reduce the water a little bit.
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Image Notes 1. "Mass production" for a event
step 3: Preferment A preferment is a part of the final dough. It is made in advance and it adds considerable flavour and texture to the bread. For this bread, i make a so called "Poolish". Well it's a bit too liquid for a traditional "poolish" but for the simplicity of it, i add all the water to the preferment. Put half of the flour in a big enough bowl, sprinkle the yeast over it and pour in the water . Then stir/mix it until you have everything evenly distributed. It should be of batter-like consistency. Leave it covered at room temperature. Don't use a absolutely tight container, or it might explode from CO2 pressure. I normally make the preferment 12-24 hours before my intended time of baking. There are other yeast preferments or starters like the biga, which is a very dry preferment. Then there is the whole world of sourdoughs. Sourdoughs are a combination of lactic and acetic bacteria and a acid tolerant yeast. You need the acidity for the development of the gas holding capability in a 100% rye bread. But sourdoughs also make wonderful wheat breads. There are very good instructables available on this topic, but maybe i'll do one more... http://www.instructables.com/id/Sourdough-Bread/
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Image Notes 1. The preferment after mixing
Image Notes 1. The preferment after a couple of hours. The yeast is happy.
step 4: kneading the dough 4-6 hours before i intend to bake, i add the other half of the flour and the salt . You can mix it with your hands or take your mixer with the kneading hooks. After incorporating all the ingredients, the dough needs to be kneaded properly. When you do it by hand, it will take around 10-15 minutes. Using a hand mixer with kneading hooks or a KitchenAid or Kenwood type of machine, it it takes around 5-7 minutes. When you overdo the kneading, the dough will go from springy to slack pretty quickly and you need to start over with a new dough. It is very unlikely to overknead it manually, with a machine, it can happen easily. As you can see on the pictures, i use a bread maker to mix, ferment the preferment, add the remaining ingredients, knead and ferment again. This way i only need one container with integrated mixing and kneading hook and it is covered while fermenting. The only task i don't use the bread maker, is for baking.
Image Notes 1. The final dough shortly after the remaining flour was mixed in. Beginning of the kneading phase.
Image Notes 1. At this time, you can judge the consistency of the dough. Add some flour if needed. A good time to taste a little bit of it. In case you forgot the salt, now is the last chance to add it... it happened before
step 5: Forming the bread and final rest 4-6 hours after kneading (you can prolong this time in the fridge), the dough looks like on the first picture. It has risen nicely and aromas, flavours and texture had time to develop. If you wait for much longer, the "yeast-food" gets depleted eventually. But with such minute amounts of yeast used, the schedule is quite forgiving. Compared with insanely high amounts of yeast in many bread recipes, which double in size in 45 minutes, this is really slow baking. Although it may sound tempting to save some time, the resulting bread smells of raw flour and yeast and has a texture like cardboard. Give slow baking a try , you won't be disappointed. It has been done this way for centuries and good bakers still do it. Forming the bread: I like free formed breads, because of the crunchy crust and the plain sight of it. And you don't need to clean a form afterwards ;-) To form a bread, you can't just push and shove it into the desired form. It would flow to a blob during the final rise. Here we use our good protein friend gluten again. This protein makes the dough springy.
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First i flour the working surface, then i take the dough out of the kneading bowl and flour the dough from the top, so it won't stick. Use only so much flour, that it doesn't stick, because the flour you add here is not incorporated into the dough. Next, i flatten it and try to make a sqare area of dough. While flattening, you also drive out large bubbles. This is also called degassing. Without degassing, you get really large holes into your bread. Then i divide the dough into 2 rectangulars. I put one out of the way and take the other one with a short side towards me. Then i think of three sections on the long side and fold it from the far side towards me. In the end i have a "roll" with 3 layers and i push down the seam. Then i flatten that "roll" again, but only so wide, that i can give it one more fold and push down the seam again. When you do that you will realize how springy the dogh got by folding it. This is the work of the gluten protein. If your dough is very slack, you can give it another fold. If you overdo it, the dough can rip. Finally i put them on a cookie sheet with the seams down for the final rise. Cover it with cling wrap and let it rise for 60-90 minutes.(or overnight in the fridge) The time of the final rise can be adapted to the environmental temperature and also how dense the crumb should be. During the final rise, you also have to preheat your oven.
Image Notes 1. The dough has risen over the rim of the container and fallen back after i took it out of the bread machine.
Image Notes 1. degassed dough formed into a square
Image Notes 1. the dough divided
Image Notes 1. the 1st third is folded over
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Image Notes 1. folded again towards me to make a three layered roll
Image Notes 1. stretched the dough, only as much, so you can give it another fold
Image Notes 1. folded and pressed the seam together
Image Notes 1. Batard shape 2. Baguette shape 3. Whatever shape ;-)
step 6: Scoring and baking Baking the proofed loaves the right way needs a bit more consideration, than only shoving them into the oven. First, use a baking / pizza stone of a sort. You could use unglazed spanish tiles, but you can get gaps when they're not aligned nicely or when you move them while shoving the loaves onto them. This helps to heat up the loaves quickly from the bottom. This is important for a good oven spring. It also gives more thermal mass into the oven, so the temperature doesn't fall so much, when you open the door or shove the cold dough in. But you need to be aware, that it also takes longer to preheat. As a next thing, you should have a steam saturated environment during the spring phase of baking. This keeps the surface elastic, since the steam condenses on the cold dough surface and keeps it from drying out too early. There is more than one way to achieve this. 1. Put a heavy skillet on the oven floor, before you preheat the oven. Just before you put the loaves into the oven, add a cup of boiling water into the skillet. 2. Spray the oven walls and the oven floor with a water sprayer, when you put the loaves in. Repeat it after a minute. 3. Buy a oven with integrated steam generator ;-) 4. Use a very small oven, like my small electric one. Sprinkle some water on the cookie sheet and on the loaves. The environment gets moist enough this way. As you can see on the photos, i scored/slashed the loaves differently for you to see. Slash them with a very sharp blade about half an inch deep. Sprinkle the the loaves with water, i do it by hand with tap water. But you could also take a water sprayer or a brush. When the oven has reached the temperature and is steam saturated, i shove in the loaves on the sheet with the cookie tray. Then i let the sheet with the loaves fall on the baking stone by quickly pulling out the tray. Work quickly in order to keep the heat and the steam in the oven. Start baking rather hot 275C / 530 F(if your oven can't get that high, take the maximum), then after about 3-5 minutes (when you see the first brown spots on the forming crust) reduce the temperature to 180C / 355F for the rest of the bake. It will take a while for the oven temp to fall, but that's ok. If you have a oven with a convection function, use it. It helps to heat up the loaves quickly for a nice oven spring and in a even browning of the loaves. If you don't have a convection feature, i'd raise the temp to around 190C / 375F in the second baking phase. And maybe you have to turn the loaves for even browning. Every oven behaves a little different, so you probably need to make some temp adjustments to get optimal results. Breads of this size need about 35 minutes to bake. The baking time needs to be adjusted for thicker and thinner breads. If your bread gets too dark too early, reduce the
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temperature in the second baking phase and/or turn down the heat earlier. If you want a very thick crust, vent the steam by quickly opening and closing the oven door when you turn down the heat. You can repeat it after a coule of minutes. (Stand away from the oven, as hot steam can scald you!) Final thoughts: Many things about preferments, long fermentation times and baking are almost universal in making good to outstanding breads. It takes me a maximum of 15 minutes of actual working to make a delicious plain wheat bread.(cleaning of the equipment included.) The time it takes from start to finish varies from 6 hours(with some shortcuts) to 24 hours with retarding, but it's not much work actually.
Happy baking
Image Notes 1. Loaves after the final rise, slashed and sprinkled with water.
Image Notes 1. After baking 2. Maybe i should have slashed a little deeper, so it wouldn't have ripped open here...
step 7: Books, links and stuff Here some very good books about baking bread.(Not ordered after preference...) Bread by Jeffrey Hamelmann The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart They have written more books about bread and also a wonderful pizza book.
A very nice site in german http://www.petras-brotkasten.de/ My other bread related instructables http://www.instructables.com/id/Spent-Grain-Sesame-Bread/ http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-make-a-Braid-%22Butterzopf%22-or-Challah/ http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-build-a-Pizza-Oven/ My entry in the pizza contest http://www.instructables.com/id/Flammkuchen-the-other-type-of-pizza/ Some photos with comments.
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Image Notes 1. Flammenkuchen
Image Notes 1. Selfmade buns and patties
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Image Notes 1. buns
Image Notes 1. extremly wet dough 78% water
Image Notes 1. wet dough on the pizza stone
Image Notes 1. finished wet dough bread
Image Notes 1. bread in the wood fired oven
Image Notes 1. fire,fire!!
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Related Instructables
The Unkneaded Bread by Siljestam
Spent Grain Sesame Bread by t.rohner
4-Hour NoKnead bread. by daniel_reetz
I Bread by pmetro
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Sourdough Bread by My Sisters Kitchen
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suckrpnch says:
Aug 24, 2010. 10:04 AM REPLY I am a convert to the preferment. My first batch is probably my best bread ever. It is still a little heavy, so I need to work on it, but it is pretty light compared to most of my no-knead breads. I left it sit for a long time though. It sat for 25 hours in preferment. then about 8 hours after kneading and then it was pretty normal from there. I will try to follow the recipe closer next time. I also used about 60% wheat flour and some vital wheat gluten. It had a lot of flavor and even a nice sourness to it. The flavor was MUCH better than previous breads. This was just what I needed. Now if I can only get those big beautiful pockets of air...
t.rohner says:
Aug 25, 2010. 2:56 AM REPLY That's what i mean. If you ever tasted it, you'll stay with it ;-))) Now to the big and irregular beautiful pockets of air. Maybe the photo in the intro is a bit a fake for this recipe. I'm really not sure anymore. For a while, i made a recipe with up to 80% water. But it worked best with 75-78%. This depends on the flour used. Although the recipe in this instructable makes a pretty moist dough with 70%, i also love my "Flow-Dough" (small TM). This dough is so wet, it almost flows out of the kneading bowl. For handling the dough, i use water instead of flour to keep it from sticking to the surface or hands. The other important difference is, i don't degas it and i don't give it a final proof. I just let it flow onto my working surface, divide it and somehow form it. Then put it onto a baking paper on a peel and shove it into the oven as fast as i can. (it would flow into a blob, given enough time outside the oven) I also set my oven to the maximum for the first couple of minutes.(300 C / 570 F) The rest of the recipe and procedure is the same as in this instructable. You can see photos of it in the last step of this instructable. (6th, 7th and 8th picture) It would be nice, if you post a photo of your results here.
suckrpnch says:
Aug 30, 2010. 2:06 PM REPLY The first two pics are from my first batch last week which was the wheat batch I mentioned. The crum isn't bad, it just wasn't as light as the white, but perhaps that it just how it goes with wheat. There are some big pockets in there though. I put sesame seeds and flax seeds on top. The second two photos are from my white bread batch this week. It was by far the best bread I have ever made, and it, to me was finally completely as good as anything I could buy even at the high-end store. The flavor was rich and it was very light and airy. Light and airy have been my goals all along, so I can't thank you enough for your great help here. You can see lots of big holes in the white batch and overall the hole sizes are much bigger. I added a little rosemary and chives to the second batch, but they weren't very noticeable. I am working on a third batch now with a lot of herbs to try that out. I also forgot to slash the top of the second batch with a knife. It was ok, but it looked like it was suffocating since it couldn't open up as much. :) I am working on getting a bigger container to make a double batch and test out refrigeration, but haven't gotten one yet. But really it does go so quick to make the bread... it doesn't take much time at all. My wife (the professional baker in the family) recommended I just cook up multiple loaves and then freeze them once baked if I want to make a few loaves at a time. That seems like a pretty good idea. I might expirement with par-baking like the stuff you get at the store that is "mostly baked" and then frozen, so that it can be thawed out in the oven and finish the crust, but seems complicated to get right.
t.rohner says:
Aug 30, 2010. 11:37 PM REPLY This looks great. It's normal, that whole wheat or breads with rye don't get so fluffy. If i give the dough a long final proof,(90-120 minutes) i often don't slash the loaves. If i need to rush things, i heat my other oven to 40 C / 104 F and switch it off to proof the loaves for 60 minutes. I'm actually working on a "freezing dough/bread" instructable. I even have a microwave for testing, but my first microwaved dough ended on the compost. It was still frozen in the core, while it was too hot on the outside. My favourite in frozen dough at my current knowledge is freezing it after the main rise and patted flat before freezing. It freezes fast and also thaws fast, even without the use of a microwave. Then form and final proof it. But the most practical way seems to be 2/3 baking. Start baking hot, but reduce the heat early.(2-3 minutes, before the browning starts) Also reduce the main baking temp by 10 or so deg. and stop after 25 minutes. Bag while still hot, let it cool in the bag and freeze it. Take it out of the freezer, wet
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it with water and bake it at 210 C / 410 F for 10-15 minutes, or until brown enough.
suckrpnch says:
Oct 1, 2010. 2:28 PM REPLY I also recently doubled the recipe, and put two loaves in the freezer after baking. I wrapped them in plastic wrap. I let them thaw on the counter after about 1 week and 2 weeks. They were great. The crust isn't crispy anymore, but it is hard to maintain good crust for any period of time. Either it gets stale, or, if kept in plastic, gets soft. I didn't mind. It was great. I will probably try partial baking, like you mentioned, next time of smaller loaves so that i can finish them after they come out and eat while the crust is fresh.
suckrpnch says:
Sep 17, 2010. 7:51 PM REPLY I had my first experience with over kneading. not fun. it was gluey and very hard to work with. i have a kitchenaid, and all of a sudden, it just collapsed. Still learning the finer points of machine kneading... I baked it anyhow. It was bearable, but... weird. I also have started converting this recipe for other applications. I made a pretty great anchoy bread where I folded chopped anchovies, fresh oregano and chives in. I then coated the bread with the anchovy oil. That was a big success. This really is the perfect recipe.
t.rohner says:
Sep 17, 2010. 11:33 PM REPLY Haha. Over kneading is pretty nasty. Especially if you have planned something for your slow bread. This recipe is really just a starting point. It shows the impact of a long fermentation. In fact, it's all about the procedure of making it. Using this procedure on other recipes is absolutely recommended. I love focaccias with olives and rosemary for example. Use more water and don't degas comlpetely while forming.
sleepsadream says:
Sep 11, 2010. 2:23 PM REPLY
Thank you for the easy-to-follow steps... I'm eagerly awaiting tomorrow morning when my batter is ready for more flour. :]
gemjunky says:
Sep 6, 2010. 8:21 PM REPLY
can one use a bread machine to do the kneading, and if yes, how long to knead? Thnx.
t.rohner says:
Sep 7, 2010. 5:14 AM REPLY This is a Panasonic SD-253 bread machine. I use the pizza dough program. This program takes 45 minutes, but the kneading time is around 10-15 minutes.
Skip says:
Sep 4, 2010. 1:24 AM REPLY I'd started using preferments as experiments and then saw this instructable. Made me happy to see I was on the right track. Love bread. Bread is the awesome. But while I'm commenting.... What is the best way to get a loaf that smells and tastes strongly of malt? I've tried using malt extracts and even soaking malted barley and using the water and grains, but the flavour and smell just disappears. Any suggestions?
t.rohner says:
Sep 4, 2010. 1:59 AM REPLY In commercial bakeries, malt is added as additional yeast food for better rising in short time. It can also enhance the crust by caramelizing of the sugars. I used malt extract for baking as well, that was before i started to use preferments and slow baking. If you want malt flavour in the bread, try caramel or crystal malts. You can buy them in homebrew stores, or order it online. They are available differently roasted. I would start with medium to dark for flavour. I once made a two colored toast bread with dark malt extract. (This was for coloring only) I'd use Caram端nch type one or two malt from the Weyermann malting company. If your shop sells a different brand, try it. I'd use Weyermann because it's readily available here and it's very good malt that i also use for brewing beer. Mill it, or crush it finely and add it to the final dough, not the preferment.
Skip says:
Sep 4, 2010. 7:02 PM REPLY
ta, I'll give that a shot
boky2405 says:
Sep 2, 2010. 12:27 PM REPLY
I'm going to modify this recipe to create bread as large as the one the woman was holding in the pictures!
t.rohner says:
Sep 3, 2010. 9:02 AM REPLY
If you have the oven for this size ;-) But maybe she's just petite...
boky2405 says:
Sep 3, 2010. 9:13 AM REPLY
It would be hilarious if she was tiny and the bread she was holding was the size of a hamburger bun.
gladys45 says:
Aug 19, 2010. 11:15 PM REPLY ok, bread really isnt that hard. you dont need to worry about the temperature so much. 2 parts flour, 1 part water, yeast to rise, salt to taste. people have done this for thousands of years, there are no secrets to this.
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
t.rohner says:
Aug 20, 2010. 7:35 AM REPLY Bread is never hard, no bread is hard.... The ingredients are plain and simple, the procedure is easy as you say. Bread has been made for a very long time, but the awareness of the existence of yeast isn't so old. Most breads made throughout the millenia, have been sourdough breads of some sort. But why is there tasty good bread one one side and so bad breads, that calling them edible is stretching the word? Why would a commercial baker be interested in making a mediocre product? There is more bad than good bread around. Fresh out of the oven, most selfmade bread is tasty. I have been baking bread for almost 20 years, i read many books on the subject, but it's only about 5 years, that i stumbled over the "secret" that took me into another league. In a preferment with very little yeast, enzymes from the flour and the yeast create flavourful byproducts. This takes time and won't happen to this extent in a "overyeasted" quick rise bread.(alpha amylase for example has a temp. optimum around 150F, so at room temperature it works pretty slow)
JohnnyLaredo says:
Aug 21, 2010. 9:53 PM REPLY I respectfully disagree that quality bread is easy. It's not my intent to start a flame war, but good bread has escaped me for over 25 years. Especially the airy baguette pictured with this article. I've never had a sourdough starter live; never had an airy crumb develop. Mostly cannot get a good rise out of breads at all. Solving this quite literally took years and scientific help (http://www.bakingandbakingscience.com/) and, believe it or not, the EPA. I live where well water is not potable without EPA supervision, because of uranium mining in the past. The water available to me is filtered nine ways from Sunday and arrives at the tap quite soft. Guess what soft water does to gluten development? Kills it. Most of America has hard water which is good for gluten development but no baking book refers to this phenomenon. You have to find out on your own. I agree with long slow development of a preferment; best flavor going, but it took me a good ten years to find quality flours from Europe which are far superior to American mills. Pizza, for example, should be made with Double 00 flour, never with all purpose. Only recent artisan books mention such things. At my ranch we still can't get the decent rise and airy structure to finished ciabatta, though that's counting over a thousand loaves over a bunch of years. Even built my own adobe horno wood fired outdoor oven to get that thermal shock to the bottom of the bread and superior even radiant heat but still no joy. After all the science and enquiry and trolling bread forums I discovered a simple reason .... atmospheric conditions (desert), coupled with high altitude (7,000 feet) coupled with caliche dust that gets into everything. Caliche is a calcium carbonate often present with sulfur. It's chemical reaction with the enzymes, even in the smallest amount, neutralizes carbon dioxide, the gas given off by yeasts. My point is that for many people ... they have blessedly acceptable conditions and materials for making bread. Some don't . For some making bread is easy. For a number of us ... it is elusive and exceptionally frustrating. I'm glad it's easy for you.
t.rohner says:
Aug 23, 2010. 2:56 AM REPLY My comment above yours, was a reaction on a comment, that has been removed in the meantime. So it may sound a bit out of context. (i'm actually thinking about removing it.) "Bread is never hard, no bread is hard" is a old saying here, that is not about making, but having bread to eat. (Having bread means no starvation, no bread could mean death, especially in the past. And hard bread can be soaked in water, so it's never hard.) Now your problem definitely is hard. I did a little research on caliche and high altitude baking. Because i remember eating wonderful bread in the Taos Ski Valley actually on 10,200 feet elevation. I asked the cook, where he gets this bread. He told me, it's from Santa Fe which is on 7000 feet as well. So it can't be the elevation alone. From what i read, the dough should rise even better in high altitudes.(Less pressure against the co2 bubbles.) But they also wrote, that due to the reduced absolute humidity, your flour has less water content in storage. So you need to increase the water and maybe the salt in the recipe. (I always tend to make moist doughs, they have a nice oven spring and generally taste better) When it over-rises and falls again, you probably have too much water. Now your water and caliche problem: I don't want to be a smartass here and you probably know it already. I'm brewing beer for 15 years and had to think about water chemistry for that matter. In brewing, overly hard water can be bad, but you still need minerals for the enzymes to work. The optimum mash ph is around 5.5, this is needed for the (diastatic) amylase enzymes to work. These enzymes also provide the simple sugars for the yeast in a dough. So, given your soft water together with the caliche, gives you a alkaline water with a ph above 7. The phytase enzyme in the yeast may not be able to overcome the buffering of caliche to lower the dough ph enough. (Maybe the phytase needs other minerals as well, that are missing in your water.) I need to demineralize half of the water for brewing light colored beers, but i need to add calcium-chloride for the ph to fall properly. This sounds a little strange at first, but it has to do with the buffering ability of the remaining minerals in our partly demineralized water. Enough of this. Have you tried bottled mineral water for baking?(After 25 years i guess you have...) I would even try bottled carbonated water, maybe the co2 in the water can wrestle down the caliche alkalinity... and maybe different brands with different mineralizations. I took a look into the book "Bread" while researching, and i found something on water hardness and gluten development on page 31. But in general, i agree with you, there are not many good books about baking. I hope, this information can help you, or at least lead you in the right direction. If i'd need to use bottled water for baking, i'd do it. For brewing, definitely not.
gladys45 says:
Aug 20, 2010. 5:09 PM REPLY I didn't say anyone should "overyeast" the bread, and i didn't say you had to add commercial yeast product. Your claim that awareness of yeast isn't that old is a little hard to fathom. Wikipedia - "Archaeologists digging in Egyptian ruins found early grinding stones and baking chambers for yeasted bread, as well as drawings of 4,000-year-old bakeries and breweries" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeast For at least 4000 years people have understood the principles of baking and brewing. The 'secret' you refer to is nothing more than a scientific description of the contents and process of baking. Finally, from wikipedia - "Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods, dating back to the Neolithic era" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread
suckrpnch says:
Aug 22, 2010. 3:38 PM REPLY Understanding yeast and using yeast are two entirely different things. Yeast was basically a contaminate that nobody knew was there, but happily created the results that brewers and bakers were looking for. It was common practice to save some of a previous batch, which was used to ensure that the next batch fermented or rose properly, because it wasn't known exactly what made it work. Once the microscope was invented, yeast began to be understood. So yeast has only been understood for maybe 150 years to-date. That is definitely not very long. Fun fact is that the Reinheitsgebot or "German Beer Purity Law", created in 1516, which laid out what ingredients had to be used in the beer-making process only listed water, barley, and hops. It didn't list the most important ingredient, yeast, because nobody knew about it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot
t.rohner says:
Aug 23, 2010. 3:27 AM REPLY That's the way i also see it. The "contaminate" can easily be seen on a unpolished apple or a grape. This white layer, you can polish away, is wild yeast. And by saving some of the last batch, our ancestors have not only "cultured" yeast, but also lactic and acetic bacteria. (maybe together with chants and invocations...) This mix is called sourdough. The understanding and pure culturing of yeast goes back to Pierre Pasteur 1861. He not only proved the existence of it, but also found out about it's ability to live aerob and anaerob.(with and without oxygen) Even today, when you read sourdough recipes, they tell you to add some raisins or. (this is for wild yeast and hopefully they weren't sulphur treated..) A cultured baking-beer-wine-yeast is a wild yeast that has been cultured pure for it's features. But they also tend to mutate to live in the environment, they are. In a sourdough, the yeast needs to be acid tolerant. (this is normally not a cultured baking yeast) As a homebrewer, i can assure you about the importance of the yeast in beer. I can imagine, how the beers tasted in the "good" old days. Yikes, i have a old book on how to save sour beers, by adding ash or hanging chickens(or even more obscure stuff) in the barrel. I guess, having sour beers was more the rule, than the exception in "good" old times.
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
gladys45 says:
Aug 23, 2010. 2:59 PM REPLY its highly unlikely that it was only Pasteur who concieved of the reason for fermentation. he discovered the mechanism for it, but that does not mean no-one prior to him had any concept of fermentation or levening. many people today still buy and ENJOY sourdough, so i fail to see your point about bread or beer made with wild yeast being unpalatable. Lambic Beer for example http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambic most beer also contains hops or a herb to impart flavour and no-doubt to help mask the yeast taste, wether the yeast is wild or cultured. But with the range of beer and bread available i suggest it ultimately comes down to personal taste. suckrpnch said about beer brewing under german purity laws "It didn't list the most important ingredient, yeast, because nobody knew about it". If no-one knew about yeast as a distinct organism, nor had and idea something was causing fermentation or rising in bread, how can it have continued as a practice for more than 4000 years.... also, this has become a very interesting debate, thank you for keeping me excited aobut bread, and its history :D cheers!
t.rohner says:
Aug 23, 2010. 10:52 PM REPLY I made a "Berliner Weisse" this year. This and the Lambics you mention and some other beers in Belgium and Germany are the only beers, that are fermented with a cocktail of yeast and bacteria today, I don't know, if they tell you the market share of those beers in wikipedia, The main cause, of it's extremly low share, is the predictability of what you get. For our "Berliner Weisse", we used the natural "wild" lactic bacteria on the malt. This worked well for the first 3 batches, but made us dump the 4th. You write, that most beers use hops or "herb" to mask the yeast taste. Do you know of any beer that uses "herb" today? I'm thinking of making a "gruit" or herb beer for a while. This was common until the 12th century, but the hops is a natural antibioticum that helped to keep bacteria at bay. By the way, the "herbs" used had their supporting psychoactive qualities, together with the alcohol.(besides bittering) Making bread with sourdough is another story. I think, it's highly interesting and definitely more predictable, than making beer with bacteria. It's because you kill them by baking after a certain (relatively short) time, before they can wreak havoc. ( There are exceptions, i made a instructable on souring veggies with mainly lactic bacteria. Sauerkraut is a good example of it.)
suckrpnch says:
Aug 24, 2010. 7:18 AM REPLY I would love to know more about the history of yeast and will try to look into it myself, so far in my reading, though, it seems like things just worked for people and Pasteur finally explained why. We have been experimenting with hops and herbs in beer lately. We just started messing around. Gruit is the next step. My last two batches I experimented with no hops in the boil and only dry hopping. The second batch, I did use a little rosemary in the boil. But this has all been pretty messing and I am too confident that the dry-hop only will be any good. It seemed watery when I bottled it. I look forward to Gruit next though. I haven't been able to find any Yarrow, however, which seems to be a bit of a cornerstone ingredient. Not absolutely necessary though.
t.rohner says:
Aug 25, 2010. 3:16 AM REPLY Yeah, me too. I just ordered the new book about yeast from the AHA store. But to come back to the good old days. At the time, the lager revolution began, people loved it for the clean taste. I think, the beer wasn't only cleaner because of the bottom fermenting yeast strain used, but also because bacterial infections were inhibited or slowed by the low fermenting temperatures. (7 C / 44 F) This has been done prior to mechanical cooling.
gladys45 says:
Aug 25, 2010. 5:31 AM REPLY all this talk of fermentation, now i have to start brewing beer :) as to the clean taste of lager, i believe your right. tho i think with the understanding of yeast as an organism people may have also understood the need for clean hands and clean equipment. an example of beer that doesn't use hops is Spruce Beer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_beer now to find a large Spruce tree :P
suckrpnch says:
Aug 17, 2010. 9:12 AM REPLY Have tried refridgerating and/or freezing dough? I would like to make a larger batch of dough that I can then take part of to bake fresh when needed.
t.rohner says:
Aug 17, 2010. 11:39 AM REPLY I have refrigerated doughs overnight and i have also frozen doughs. It's actually no big deal. Refrigerating a dough to 35F-40F, more or less stops yeast activity. Freezing a dough will rupture some yeast cells, but there are still enough cells alive. When i take a dough out of the freezer, i normally thaw in the fridge overnight. The main problem i see, is the heating up to ambient temperature. Since a leavened dough is foamy, it also insulates. The outside gets warm, but the core takes much longer. So my idea was to try heating it up from frozen to 80F in a microwave. I would just freeze the formed loaves. Then do the final proof after thawing. But i have first to organize a microwave for testing... i'm not a big fan of microwaves otherwise...
suckrpnch says:
Aug 22, 2010. 3:23 PM REPLY I don't have a microwave either. I will stick with refrigerator or now. Thanks for the input. The microwave is a good idea.
t.rohner says:
Aug 22, 2010. 10:37 PM REPLY I organized a microwave for testing in the meantime. But i have to correct myself in my first comment. After i made some of it yesterday for Sunday brunch, i realized, that it's not such a good idea to freeze the formed breads. The loaves need some springiness in the final proof and i guess they loose it by freezing and thawing. So i would just form balls, that are oiled and put in a bag for freezing. I will thaw them in the microwave, form them and give them the final proof. I will try to do it this week and keep you informed.
suckrpnch says:
Aug 22, 2010. 3:15 PM REPLY I am going to make some soon, and try refridgerating. Even though these things take very little hands-on time to create, I find that even 10 minutes can be hard to bring myself to do sometimes. And the end goal would be to get a good dough with a long rise that I can make when I want it and not have to wait another 20 hours for the next loaf. Will report my findings. :) This is really a great instructable! I have been making a modified no knead recipe that I found on here that has worked well, but tends to be a bit hit-or-miss on the air/hole quality (often very heavy). And it isn't always the most flavorful. It was a good starter recipe, but I have been looking for a next level. Thanks!
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
johnnyr8 says:
Aug 22, 2010. 6:08 AM REPLY It's Sunday Morning in a NYC suburb, and my wife and I just sat down to enjoy my first attempt at your bread. In a word "Great"! I had a few stumbles along the way, but your instructions are excellent and the end result is very enjoyable. Thanks!
t.rohner says:
Aug 22, 2010. 11:32 AM REPLY
Thanks, that's my reward, if you enjoy it.
petuljak says:
Aug 20, 2010. 6:52 AM REPLY Holes in your bread are too big and of different size, I guess you have put too much water. The signs of amateur bread baking. You wouldn't stand a chance in bread baking competition.
t.rohner says:
Aug 21, 2010. 2:20 AM REPLY You are right about the holes and the high water content and also that i am an amateur. As you probably know, there are breads, where irregular and large holes are part of their definition. A real baguette or a very regional speciality in my region, the St. Galler Buerli. The Buerli can't be formed by machines, because the dough is extremly wet. (78% water) Even around here, there are not too many bakers left, that make them the right way. The real ones are formed with your hands dipped in cold water, before you touch the dough. They are formed without degassing the dough and baked very hot without final proofing. If i want to make bread with small regular holes, i do it.
Culturedropout says:
Aug 17, 2010. 9:26 AM REPLY Looks tasty. I might try your preferment technique sometime. I've had very good luck baking bread by just throwing everything into the stand mixer bowl - 3 cups cool water, 1 1/2 tbsp salt, 1 1/2 tbsp active dry yeast (kept in bulk in the refrigerator), mix briefly, then add about 6 1/2 cups of flour - usually about 4 white and 2 1/2 wheat. Let the machine knead the heck out of it for maybe 5 minutes, throw a dish towel over the top of the bowl, and ignore it overnight or longer. The next day, put my old stoneware "crock pot" with glass lid in the oven, preheat to 475 for about 20 minutes, then work a little flour around the dough down the inside of the bowl until it comes loose. Form it into a rough ball, drop it into the pot, and put the lid back on. Leave it in the oven for 30 minutes. Remove the lid, and bake it for another 30 minutes. Dump it out onto a cooling rack for half an hour or so, and _eat_! I constantly get compliments from my house mates, who are both pretty picky eaters when it comes to bread. We've had breads from the farmers market, local artisan bakeries, and so on, and I'd put mine up against most of them. I like keeping things simple; if they get too complicated, I don't do them, so it's important. ;-) I make about two loaves of bread a week this way, and have for the last couple of years. Sometimes I like to throw in crumbled blue cheese, or some rolled oats and sunflower seeds, or crushed walnuts and dried cranberries, or whatever, just for variety. It almost always turns out great. Sometimes I think the really complicated bread recipes are more superstition than science.
t.rohner says:
Aug 17, 2010. 11:58 AM REPLY Your way doing it isn't so totally different from mine, especially if you let it rise overnight. This already makes a big difference to a 45 minutes quick rise dough. But i can assure you, that i can taste the difference between a 12 and a 24 hour dough bread. I also don't think, that it's very complicated. Making croissants with selfmade yeasted puff pastry dough is much more complicated ;-)
johnbots says:
Aug 20, 2010. 11:15 PM REPLY This is the first Instructable to move me to a reply; the others are great - this one is awesome. I must try the preferment technique. Can you expand on the making of croissants please - I make very tasty croissants but I have never been able to get the right flaky texture.
t.rohner says:
Aug 21, 2010. 1:13 AM REPLY Yeah sure, but it could take some time to write it up. I don't do it very often. Actually, the first time i did this dough, was for salted flutes.(Just sticks, i tasted at a customers site. He bought them from a "boulanger artisanale", which means a artisanal baker in the french speaking part of our country.) These flutes really blew me away, so i had to try them. Try this video from the remarkable late Julia Child. She really rocks. http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to-make-croissants-2436/view/ I may be better than my future instructable.
garycindy2175 says:
Aug 19, 2010. 8:58 AM REPLY You mentioned using a baking stone - that's great - and then on the next page you mentioned a "sheet" that you obviously placed on top of the cookie sheet where the bread had risen. You also said you quickly tilted the cookie sheet and slid the bread "on the sheet" onto the baking stone. What is the "sheet" you are referring to? Also, is there a problem with mixing and rising bread in a metal mixing bowl?
t.rohner says:
Aug 19, 2010. 10:42 PM REPLY Sorry for the confusion, but i'm not natively english speaking. The "sheet" is a non-stick baking paper, as seen on the photo in the second-last step. The tray i refer to, is a low rimmed alluminum "sheet" that i solely use as a peel. So i put a paper "sheet" on the tray and the dough on the "sheet". When i shove it in the oven, i don't tilt it, but i rip out the tray and let the dough on the "sheet" fall onto the baking stone.(together with the paper sheet) My bread maker bowl is made of teflon coated cast alluminum. But if yours is made of stainless steel, that's no problem. For "mass production" i also use a stainless bowl on my Kenwood machine.
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
trailleadr says:
Aug 18, 2010. 8:01 AM REPLY This is great. I had pretty much given up on making bread because I always seem to produce bread that is more suited for construction rather than consumption. Thank you very much for sharing this. I'm definitely going to give this a try the next time I feel brave enough.
t.rohner says:
Aug 18, 2010. 10:02 PM REPLY Feel brave now! Don't kill the yeast, don't use too much of it and give it enough time in the final proof. (90 minutes between forming and baking)
midnsun183 says:
Aug 18, 2010. 1:54 PM REPLY
Outstanding Ible! Now only if I weren't deployed in Japan....
t.rohner says:
Aug 18, 2010. 9:59 PM REPLY
What's the problem in Japan?
pmartinez says:
Aug 17, 2010. 10:14 AM REPLY
Fantastic is what I was looking for, you hit it right on it.. thank you, btw... excellent pictures and nice bread presentation
AngryRedhead says: I can't find argument with a crust like that. Nice work!
http://www.instructables.com/id/My-ultimate-bread-learn-the-secrets-of-slow-bak/
Aug 17, 2010. 9:29 AM REPLY