A good weekends baking! Apart from the bread.

Well I'm back off to work tomorrow (Easter Sunday, boo!).

The last few days have been spent baking and sitting in the sun in equal measures. With mixed results (minor sunburn, 3 good loaves, 1 great loaf, 1 pretty bad loaf, a few burnt hot cross buns and a steroid induced mega currant bun!).

Tasty white sourdough!

Beer barm bread!

 Slightly wonky, but tasty beer barm bread.

Yep, they're definitely done....

Kind of nice looking but forgot the salt! Tastes like mdf.

The behemoth bun!

Sodding hot!

As it's about 500c today and I've spent the afternoon kneading & rising 2 batches of dough I thought I'd sit out in the garden - well, patio - and take my bread with me to prove in the sun!

It could be a success. Or a complete disaster (a betting man would look at my efforts to date and lodge a large sum of money on the latter...!). Let's see the results in a few hours...

Traditional English barm bread

Made with beer, yay!

I am the El Bulli(sp?) of Surrey!

Warmed dark beer, a tad of flour and a wee bit of wheat starter. Smells bloody lovely! The barm has to sit overnight to ferment then is worked into dough. Baked as a round methinks.

Damn, now I'll have to finish the rest of that bottle of beer....

Tiger Tiger

Tiger bread, grrr! Though hopefully mine'll last a little longer than the half day the shop ones do, rock hard.

Here's my formula (as per last post) flour-spotters:

2x 27 (desired dough temp) - 23 (flour temp, warm day!) = 31c water temp.

Nice strong white yeasted dough, smothered in sesame oil & slashed artfully before being flung into the oven...

Grrrr!

Degrees of success

After doing some research prompted by a few loaves that came out with the personality of roof tiles I came across this little formula:

2x desired dough temperature - actual flour temperature = correct water temperature

Hang on, I'll give it a go...

Tuesday and the continuing Quest of Dough

Oh dear. I burned the first one. The second one was ok but half dissapeared during the night in a sleep and hummous induced snack.

Still, oven's on for the next batch from yesterday! And the coffee's going on the stove!

Ok, the results are in:


Iceland - nil points, Iceland - núll stig

 
Germany - 2 points, Deutschland - 2 Punkte 


Lithuania - 8 points! Lietuva - 8 balai!                       

More from Monday (busy!)

Basically I did the same as the last one from today - I'm not writing all that again! Though I could cut & paste. Hang on.....

Click

200g leaven (wholemeal)
350g water
500g strong white flour
10g salt

Temp. (ideally all three should add up to 54c according to some very good French baking bloke I saw on YouTube)
Water 15c
Flour  22c
Room 22c = 59 (close!)

Mix everything together & leave for 10 mins (To develop gluten. Apparently)

Knead - this time using the lazy and much less messy bread machine! Why didn't I think of this earlier?! Anyway, knead after;
10 mins
30 mins
60 mins
60 mins
120 mins

Divide dough into two.

Shape into rounds

Prove one in basket (seam side up) with lots of flour so it doesn't stick.

Shape other into baton, lump onto baking paper (lots of flour again) and prop up sides with rolled up tea towels so it rises up - not into a doughy puddle!

Chuck both into fridge (around 4c) overnight - the long, slow rise will keep the dough under control and should (should!) be very tasty and a bit chewy. Also it will make me have to get up early to whack them in the oven. No big lie-in tomorrow, oh no.

In the morning take them both out and let them warm up to room temperature while putting the oven up to 220c (about 1 hour).

Bake individually for c50 mins.

Have a strong coffee while waiting. Nice.

White leaven bread

Should be reasonably easy but one little mistake...

200g leaven (wholemeal)
350g water
500g strong white flour
10g salt

Temp. (ideally all three should add up to 54c according to some very good French baking bloke I saw on YouTube)
Water 15c
Flour  22c
Room 22c = 59 (close!)

Mix everything together & leave for 10 mins (To develop gluten. Apparently)

Knead after;
10 mins
30 mins
60 mins
60 mins
120 mins

Divide dough into two.

Shape into rounds

Prove one in basket (seam side up) with lots of flour so it doesn't stick.

Shape other into baton, lump onto baking paper (lots of flour again) and prop up sides with rolled up tea towels so it rises up - not into a doughy puddle!

Chuck both into 'proving receptacles' (plastic under bed storage boxes, cheap from B&Q) for 4-5 hours.

Oven to 220c

Slash loaves artistically (& gently) and bake on pizza stone for c50 mins.

Fingers crossed.........!

Monday's efforts

Despite that this is the first time I've written (blogged?) about it I'm now in my second or third month of continuous bread making & experimenting. Really, I should be a bit better at it by this stage but there you go. I'm going to try and remember to record all my future efforts here so that I can refer back to it, brag about successful loaves to bored family members/friends/girlfriends and give myself something to do when I should really be performing minor DIY or cleaning the windows or similar.....  

First of many obsessive posts

As the web address hints at I'm covered in flour! There's a new goopy leaven fermenting on the windowsill next to the geranium cutting. Bits of wheatgerm on the floor in the kitchen & lounge. Blobs of extraneous dough dotted accross the work surface. A sourdough baton and round proving in seperate plastic underbed storage bins blocking the path to the kitchen. More sourdough in the bread maker bin. About 15 opened bags of assorted flours crammed into the kitchen cupboard, each with hardened dough clinging to the paper. I think this is becoming an obsession! Still, nice bread though. Hopefully!