not quite right...

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

Here's a picture of the bread done with bleached flour. Very dense.

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

I did have much better luck with the ciabatta recipe. I think I only mixed it for 10 minutes at the absolute most. According to the directions I was supposed to stop when it looked more like dough and it was climbing up the hook. It did both. (Although, I wonder if the fast mix time was due to the water temp which was 80*). Tasted great with butter and still a little warm.

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

Oh, and I did have much better luck with the King Arthur AP flour for the last batch of ABIF bread. Still takes almost 45 minutes to bake though.

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

I've been giving the bread more tries. The main problem, as I see it, is duration (time still 45 minutes) in oven and the fact that it doesn't seem to be baking all the way through. I still get some dough on the temp probe when I pull it out even after that long bake. The unbaked dough is always on the bottom.

[texassourdough]

Re: not quite right...

Hi TMan!

I will almost guarantee you the bottom element of your oven is burned out. the top is well done and the bottom crust looks barely baked... (either that or you are baking it on a cold insulating stone!) And it goes with having the bottom of the loaf be doughy.

Note: Your dense bread has uniform crust color top and bottom - it simply looks way underproofed or with near dead yeast. The last images are very different in appearance (top and bottom).

Jay

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

Texas: I thought you might be on to something when I mentioned your response to my wife. We turned on the oven and the bottom element did become red. I don't know how to check it beyond that though.
I'm using a Pampered Chef stoneware cookie sheet. I leave it in the oven for at least 20 minuted to warm up. I think it's this one.

On the dense bread: I'm not sure if that was still with bad (bleached) flour or not (that was a while ago). I have been making a better attempt at placing the loaf in a spot to get some actual rise out of it and not being so time specific (the recipe says to wait 40 minutes, I'm switching over to letting the bread tell me when it's ready).

[texassourdough]

Re: not quite right...

Most stones seem to need an hour to reach temp. Online literature for the Pampered Chef stones are a bit confusing for they seem to tell people to put their cookies on a COLD stone and put the stone in the oven.... That may work with something really thin like a cookie but not with a loaf of bread. Their adds don't quite add up but the stones seem to get great reviews from the cookie crowd.

I have to question that 20 minutes is getting the stone warm enough. If you have an infrared thermometer you need to check the temp. If it is below 425 or so it is too cool in my experience. Over the past two days I did an experiment in which I heated my cloches for an hour and for 2 1/2 hours (this was longer than necessary but I wasn't sure when my retarded dough would be ready to bake) and there was a definite difference in the look of the bottom of the loaf and a touch to the top which tends to support that with my cloches an hour isn't quite enough to fully load the ceramic.

Bread cannot be reliably proofed by time. Period. If the dough feels heavy and dense the bread will be heavy and dense. As I commented to another person, dough that is ready to bake will have a softness to it - and softness should not be confused with ooziness (which is a sign of either excess hydration or inadequate development. (The bread I did yesterday was 80% hydration semolina and flour boules and they only spread a bit as the slashes expanded. They roughly doubled in height.) (Picture bbelow!) (And yes, they are dark - deliberately though not as dark as they appear for there are a lot of black sesame seeds and poppy seeds on the surface.)

Assuming you don't have an IR thermometer, try heating your cookie sheet longer - say 45 minutes as a first pass (since I think it is thinner than most bread stones). If that doesn't work try a different stone (borrow one or use bricks or anything) and heat it a lot longer - at least an hour.

I have a sneaky suspicion that your stone is more insulating than normal baking stones but that could be wrong....

WRT your remembering baking a boule in 25 minutes, it is near impossible to bake a 1 1/4 lb or larger boule in 25 minutes (unless it spreads into a cookie). It takes about 35 to 50 minutes at 450 for round boules depending on the darkness/internal temp you desire.

Good luck!
Jay

[Faith In Virginia]

Re: not quite right...

Hay Jay,

Never say impossible. My boule at 1-1/2 lb do tend to cook in that time range of 20 to 25 minutes.

In an electric oven (all vents closed off) I have a pizza stone and four fire bricks. Under that a cast iron pan for steaming. I preheat at 500 for about 45 minutes once the oven hits temp. When the bread goes in I knock the oven down to 450 and put water in the pan. At about 20 minutes in I stick in the probe and cook to 200 and usually it's just a few more minutes until it hit's the temp. By the way I get great oven spring so no bread cookies here.

I make some W/W sandwich bread in a bread pan and at 375 take about 35 to 40 minutes. But it has sugar in it and it takes a slower cook to prevent burning.

I have had an unsatisfactory bread come out of the WFO. Here as of late I've been over cooking them. The outside is perfect in color and the bottom has a good thump sound but the interior on the second day (sourdough by the way) is much dryer then I prefer. New to the WFO I have probed the bread when the outside had a nice color and the internal bread was about 165, If I left the bread i any longer I would have called it burnt so I took the bread out of the oven and the temperature continued to rise to 190. Granted that there could be many contributing factors to this but the bread in a WFO does not behave like it does in the electric oven.

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

Texas- I don't get nice gringe (I think that's it) like you have. I've tried cutting deeper, but it doesn't seem to make a difference. They all end up baking flat. Doesn't affect the taste I guess, but it looks nice.

[texassourdough]

Re: not quite right...

Hi Faith!

You are baking to a pretty low internal temp (assuming that, in Virginia, you are below 2000 feet elevation or so). I bake to 209 to 211 and I don't particularly have a dryness problem but I am doing really wet doughs (70 to 80 % hydration). You are right in that for lower hydration doughs and lower internal temps one can bake a boule in 25 minutes...but TMan is doing fairly high hydration the crumb in yesterday's photo and that won't bake to 205 in 30 minutes in my experience.

It ultimately comes down to finding the technique that gives the look and results you want. I clearly prefer "hard finished" loaves with deeply caramelized crust and a glossier, drier crumb than you.

WFOs take some learning. It sounds like you are starting your bread in too hot an oven. I personally don't like to bake in a WFO with less than about 15 pounds of dough for I can't get the crust I want in a lighly loaded oven. I like to start with the oven at about 565 F but my big load will REALLY cool down the oven. If you load lightly (say 2 or 3 loaves) you may well want to be at 500 on the hearth or even lower depending on your specific oven and its heat loading.

Your indoor baking set up sounds good! How about uploading some images!

Thanks!
Jay

[Faith In Virginia]

Re: not quite right...

Hay Jay

You got my number...correct 2,300 feet or so and the bread at 65% hydration. I did not see the elevations or hydration in the above posts I just saw the "impossible".

About the WFO I agree with your assessment. I need to allow for more time between taking out the coals to baking. I always do a full oven. Between family,friends and the freezer I could not get away with just a few loves.

Thanks for the advice, Faith

[texassourdough]

Re: not quite right...

Hi TMan!

Your lack of grigne would appear to be contributed to by several factors... I will try to integrate your images and successes and failures to arrive at an answer.

In yesterday's photo the loaf has a good color which suggests both steam and the presence of some residual sugar (from the breakdown of starch by enzymes). Both the seeming presence of sugar as evidenced in the crust color and the rip in the slashes suggest that the dough was technically very slightly undreproofed. That is actually my preferred look, so IMO GOOD!

The crumb in yesterday's loaf is pretty random (good) but seems to lack organization - and the biggest holes feel too big/out of proportion. I don't know if you punch down your dough but if you don't, punching down about halfway through the bulk ferment will tend to help reduce the biggest bubbles. If you do punch down - say at one hour - doing it a little later will also help. If you have an extended proofing time for the loaves (say over three hours) lenghthening the bulk ferment and shortening the proof should help as would being a bit more aggressive in forming the loaves. The loaf looks as though it was not very well tensioned during loaf formation and this shows in the roundness of the holes. The crumb in well tensioned loaves tends to look more organized in elongated, almost parallel bubbles. (The dense loaf from 2/27 shows some of that.) Poorly tensioned loaves tend to spread more than well tensioned loaves and have flatter less interesting slashes.

A second factor is dough development. More development makes the dough more manageable and help it hold its shape. The bread in the photo I uploaded was 80% hydration (trick - it used durum flour which allows higher hydrations but...it is still REALLY wet and somewhat sticky). Yesterday's loaf looks like it was developed but the dense loaf looks less developed (spread more), better tensioned (organized crumb). I am a bit torn by whether the dense loaf is way underproofed (little oven spring) or overdeveloped (pale not golden crust).

To get a great grigne you tend to want to cut shallow and almost flat to the loaf - a technique that will tend to not work on poorly developed or poorly tensioned wet doughs. I suspect you are suffering from a bit of both.

Your comments indicate you used to use time only for governing baking and that would suggest you probably have had very inconsistent results from a proofing standpoint. Proofing can be a bit tricky. Two days ago I did the same breads as yesterday (same dough batch - the first batch finished in a continuous fermentation/proof and yesterday's finished with retarded dough). I have had a lot of trouble with overproofing following the prescribed times from the author leading me to bake the first batch a bit early for I would rather be a bit early than a bit late.

I kind of suspect your inconsistent results (proofing temp is really important to proofing time!) has made it hard to move forward. I think the best goal is to make one bread until you have it under control and pretty repeatable. Then when something goes wrong you will begin to have an idea of what it was and you can transfer that insight to new breads as you add them. When you do a new bread every time - or a new flour - or.... you simply can't get in the groove you need to make great bread!

Oh...and I should comment...loaf forming is a lot trickier than people want to make it. No knead bread has given people the idea you can simply throw dough in a pot and make bread. Freestanding loaves must be shaped and learning that technique takes time and experience. Illustrations and videos help but hands on is where the real learning occurs.

Hang in there!
Jay

[Tman1]

Re: not quite right...

Thanks for the insights Tex! Some of it makes my head spin, but i get that I shouldn't vary flours until I get one down pat.

I did try some the other day with KA bread flour. I actually had the temp at around 500*F trying to warm the cookie sheet better, but due to having to pick up my son, I forgot to turn down the temp when I put the dough in. When I arrived home, there was a burnt smell in the air. The crust looked pretty dark and I turned the temp down to 425* for the last 20 minutes (still around 45 total). When I put the thermometer in to check temp I thought the crust was thick and very crisp. As it turned out, I felt it was the best bread to date.

It's too bad I didn't know about that baking class in northern MN.. that would have been good for me.

I'm making another change. I'll be moving the oven rack down a notch (hoping for better bottom baking) and putting a pan on the bottom of the actual oven for water/steam. I will go with the higher temp again, then turn it down after 25 minutes. We have some guests coming for a game night, and I'm hoping it turns out well. Although, any homebaked bread is usually a winner to anybody who doesn't 'know' about these things.

Just to think, I'll have to relearn a bunch of this when I try it in the brick oven, then again when I make a permanent version. Oh well, it's good I'm not allergic to gluten!

[lwood]

Re: not quite right...

Have been reading and re-reading this thread and "Tall fire...."Been trying to figure out why my boules don't look like those beautiful ones that Jay is posting. If you post one more of those Jay, I'm going to shoot myself. The first thing I realized was that I was using AP flour and not bread flour. I think that is why I am suffering from dense crumb disease. Kinda like hoof-in-mouth disease. Suffered from that a few times also.

Anyway, I think a combination of not knowing when the dough is proofed and the bread flour is giving me the dense crumb and thick bullet-proof crust. Have pics but too high resolution. Any suggestions?

[brickie in oz]

Re: not quite right...

Have pics but too high resolution. Any suggestions?

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