First loaves of bread

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: First loaves of bread

sounds like a great recipe,, will definitely give it a shot,, Love garlic.. And I will make sure to properly season my skillet before i use it

Mark

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

BTW Mark...

I haven't used a cast iron skillet in my oven for steam but I use them all the time for appetizers and stuff so having one convenient is a good thing. Only problem will be making sure it doesn't rust.

Sunday night as an app I did a pound of shrimp. 1/2 cup olive oil, 1/2 cup of butter, two cloves of garllic sliced, bay leaf, salt, pepper, cayenne (dash), a dash or Worcestershire sauce, about 1 T of rosemary (or thyme is good too, or both). Marinate the shrimp in this for about 1/2 hour (don't worry if the butter is solid). When ready to cook move the marinade to the skillet. Put in oven to cook the garlic - will be hot in about two minutes. Add shrimp and white wine - say a cup. Stir, put back in oven. Cover with an aluminum pizza pan (make great lids - I use them all the time down at the oven). Cook about three minutes. Pull the skillet. Stir and check for doneness. Probably go another minute. Pull just before done and let sit for five to ten minutes. Pretty good!

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: First loaves of bread

thanks jay,, I will pick up a little cast iron skillet to leave out by the oven,,

Mark

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

Hi Mark!

Sure! You could do that. Probably best to put it in 3-5 minutes before loading so it is boiling when you load. You want it to boil away by the ten minute point of baking. Probably a cup of cold water would be about right. Set it to the side, away from where you will put the bread. It might be good to pull the pan after 10 minutes of baking so the oven can dry out (if there is water left) (and until you figure out how much water to put in the oven.

In conventional ovens steaming is a highly discussed art. When I bake on stones inside I use two methods. I put a handful of ice in an aluminum pie pan about five minutes before loading. After loading I pour appx. 3/4 cup boiling water in a cast iron skillet full of lava rocks to provide "super steam" for the first ten minutes or so.

BTW... I would use a cast iron skillet for the steam in my WFO. Just put cold water in it and load it in the oven cold. (don't pour cold water in a hot skillet - it can crack)(voice of experience). It should boil in about 2-3 minutes.

Try it!
Jay

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: First loaves of bread

Excuse the bread beginners question, But if i may,,,, When I bake a cheesecake in my home oven I always put in a bowl of water to keep it from cracking, seems to work well for me... Would it be adviseable to put say a small metal can full of water in the oven when baking bread hoping it will steam ?
Mark

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

On another bread site there have been some hilarious baguette photos uploaded. I may have some pretty pictures of bread but I have made my share of misshapen, weird, and strange frisbees, snakes, clubs, blobs, and, of course the accidental calzone and other charred delights!

Thanks!
Jay

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: First loaves of bread

You the man Jay! That's great info I can really use. It makes sense to spray after the loaves are in since you want that many pounds of dough to go in it. It will take a few minutes to lay them in and arrange. I never thought about the moisture you'll get from multiple loaves in the oven at the same. Also, I didn't realize I need to go to pizza temps then "load" the wfo. Again, thanks for explaining.

I'm going keep at this same recipe and tweak the firing until I get sourdough boules worthy of Davids "exquisitely crafted loaves" category .

Thank -Dino

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

Hi Dino!

Clearing relates to getting the oven up to "working" temperature. When you fire up your oven the inner walls will turn black from soot and tars from the wood. The black will burn off and the interior of the oven will be clean ("clear") when the dome reaches 750 degrees F. That's not quite as hot as you would like to have it for pizza but its close enough for government work (besides it will keep heating anyway if you have a fire in the oven). Most of our ovens seem to take about 45 min to an hour to clear. There will be no soot in the oven. Just clean brick/refractory. At that point you can reasonably begin removing embers and ashes and setting the oven up for pizza (which will include cooling off the hearth a bit for it should be too hot after the coals have been sitting on it.

To do bread, you want to drive more heat into the oven so you have more heat that the oven can give back during the baking. That was the "loading' I referred to - keep a big fire going another half hour to hour so you have packed more heat into the refractory. When you take the fire out though the oven will be too hot (on the surface) and cooler on the "outside" of the refractory, so you let it equalize until the hearth reaches around 550. At that point it is ready to put the bread in.

As I indicated I mop to both get ash off and to slightly humidify the oven. I usually don't spray the oven before loading bread but it is a function of how much bread I am doing. I like to make about 4-5 pounds of ciabatta (really wet) and I load that first to start humidifying the oven. Then my boules and other loaves. Then about a 10 second mist that hopefully doesn't land on the bread. I want it to vaporize. Then close the door.

I personally do not like the crust when one makes a couple of loaves in a big oven. I have tried spraying a lot to get the humidity high enough but it just doesn't work for me. The approach above gives me crust and look I like.

There is a "preferred" temperature profile during a bake. I don't know what it is exactly, but by the time I "mop" the hearth the oven will have lost quite a bit of heat (in the form of hot air, and the hearth is probably down to 525. By the time I get twelve to 15 pounds of bread in the hearth surface is probably down around 350 or cooler. By the time I spray the interior the interior air is probably not much hotter than 250. What happens then is that the bread is releasing steam rapidly and the oven slowly heats up to probably 450 - 475 with the heat to do so coming from the interior of the refractory. When I finiish my bread I usually get a temp in that range. If I let the oven sit for a half hour it will bounce on up to about 500 to 510 and it is ready for another batch.

The reason for heat loading the oven is so it can bounce back in temp. If you only heated the oven to 550 and immediately took out the fire and put in the bread there would be no heat stored up and the temp would drop to 350 or so when you loaded and you wouldn't get the WFO bread look and quality. It wouldn't caramelize right becasus there would not be enough stored heat to bounce the temp back up into the baking range.

That was long but hope it helps!
Jay

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

ROFL!
Jay

You know I am sick of all these baking books/blogs with one impossible picture after another of exquisitely crafted loaves (Reinhart, Glazer, Bertinet, TexasSourdough et al.) One day, I will publish the world's ugliest but most useful baking book: every recipe will be accompanied by at least four disaster photos with captions explaining what went wrong. Believe me, I will have no shortage of illustrations.
__________________
-David

[Gromit]

Re: First loaves of bread

You know I am sick of all these baking books/blogs with one impossible picture after another of exquisitely crafted loaves (Reinhart, Glazer, Bertinet, TexasSourdough et al.) One day, I will publish the world's ugliest but most useful baking book: every recipe will be accompanied by at least four disaster photos with captions explaining what went wrong. Believe me, I will have no shortage of illustrations.

[Dino_Pizza]

Re: First loaves of bread

Sorry to ask , I'm a total newbie on this: Jay and Elizabeth, you mention the word "clear". What are you clearing? And what is loading? I don't want to commandeer Davids thread on his bread so I'll start a new one on my wfo loaves I baked yesterday with pics and hopefully you all can help me out too. It turned out pretty good but David and Jay seem to say the oven is sprayed with water AFTER the loaves are put in? I assumed you sprayed seconds before but with a fine mist. It looks (as David says), like I need to get the dome white hot (burn the carbon off) so the spray wont deposit black particles.
Thank, Dino

[egalecki]

Re: First loaves of bread

Hi David. I agree with Jay on the firing of the oven. It never got hot enough if it didn't clear.

Don't worry about putting sourdough on hold- although you do want to feed the beasties every now and then. Getting a feel for other breads will help you a lot when you are ready to start up again. Sourdough will always be less predictable than IDY, though. With a lot of help, though, I've learned how to deal with the seasonal vagaries of sourdough. Mostly.

If you want to try a nifty breakfasty loaf, try a white regular dough (like you'd bake in a pan) and add in cracked sugar cubes which you have coated in cinnamon. About 1/2 c per 9x5 loaf will do it. I knead them in after mixing. You get these cool pockets of sweet cinnamony goodness...

[texassourdough]

Re: First loaves of bread

Hi David!

Big chuckle at the black snow! If your oven hasn't cleared you can't possibly have loaded the oven enough to do bread right! For bread I go 150-200% of clearing time. I.e. clear in an hour, go an extra half hour to hour to load the oven - with real fire, not a pizza fire. Then clean the oven out (but don't mop yet, just get most of the coals and ashes. And let it heat soak a bit - typically an hour or so until the temp gets down to baking range (for most people that seems to be about 550 on the hearth). Then mop with a damp (but NOT WET) rag to get the excess ash and to humidify the oven a bit. Then load, spritz, and bake.

There are advantages to starting with commercial yeast in the WFO until you understand the oven.

I make bagels every once in a while too. The homemade ones make all commercial bagels I have ever had pale by comparison! Wonderful stuff!

Hang in there. The stars will eventually line up and a miracle will happen! )
Jay

[Gromit]

Re: First loaves of bread

I was so inspired by the beautiful pictures posted by Jay & Dutch here recently, that I promptly went out and baked my worst loaves yet Saturday a week ago. A free tip for all you bakers: if you want a nice black speckle all over your bread, then simply mist your oven when you have not burned all the carbon off the dome first. Black snow!

SO, I have left my Yeasties & Beasties in the back of the fridge and have dialed back my ambitions a bit. I've been using the kitchen oven to make bagels, sandwich loaves, and even hot dog buns. The 2nd time around, the bagels turned out pretty nice, but being a Protestant boy from Texas, who has never been to NYC, I am in no position to judge what is a good bagel.

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Re: First loaves of bread

!!! wow !!!