Hammelmann's Country Bread

[timo]

Here are 24 pounds of country bread in one shot. My goal was to make one bake and end up with 24 one pound loaves. I was guessing on how much over a pound to make the loaves so the water weight would bring me back to one pound. It seems I had almost two ounces of water steam away per loaf.

I ended up one half ounce UNDER a pound because I started at 17.5 ounces. Pretty close for my first try. The loaves are under proofed, but better than over proofed. They took about 50 minutes to bake. I didn't steam at all.

[WJW]

Re: Hammelmann's Country Bread

Very cool! Loaves look great.

What flour?

Based on color and length of bake it looks like the oven temp at loading was 450 or less....that or it was higher initially, but was seriously under-saturated with heat and all that dough cooled the oven down dramatically. What was the oven temp at loading? Any idea what it was when you pulled the bread?

Bill

[texassourdough]

Re: Hammelmann's Country Bread

The loaves don't look particularly underproofed to me - maybe 15 to 20 minutes. but the color is too light in my opinion. Agree with Bill. Looks like the oven was undersaturated, and too cool at loading. No doubt it tasted good but I guarantee it can be better! The dough color also suggests the oven was dry. As Bill has shown, if you load fast and close it up you don't have to go through the humidification rigmarole. But if you are slow you should humidify the oven...

Hang in there. Baking big batches to a great look is NOT easy or trivial!
Jay

[timo]

Re: Hammelmann's Country Bread

You boys are spot on about the color and the temp. I had saturated the oven for 4 hours the night before baking pizzas. The oven was 780 when I went to bed that night, but by morning, in the mid-teen outside temps, it fell down to 430. So, I had to hurry before it fell even more.

It was a delicious experiment! The bread still tasted fine, but you and I both know these were not the best. Sometimes baking the perfect loaf is a myth, but one to follow and to enjoy the trials.

I was really surprised the oven fell so much, most likely just a bit more moisture in the oven than I thought. I built a nice pavilion last spring to keep moisture off of it, but I think it still absorbs moisture just due to the nature of the masonry.

Does anyone know if there's a certain standard percentage of moisture loss when baking? I wanted a one pound loaf, so I had 17.5 oz. doughs and ended up with a 15.5 oz. loaf.

[texassourdough]

Re: Hammelmann's Country Bread

Moisture loss is usually estimated at around 10 percent but it varies with loaf shape with boules being the lowest and baguettes and thinner variants the most. Also a function of how hard you bake it. With experience you should be able to standardize.