Doh! I fed it by saving about 1/4 cup and adding another cup each of flour and water, and a tiny bit of yeast. I'm going to bake in about 6 hours...we'll see what it's like!

The poolish from yesterday had been sitting out for about 17 hours and had developed a skin on the top. What do you do with that?

Why?

Bleedin simple instructions .....

You can't follow bleedin' simple instructions can you. What did you not understand about me saying this is simple. :eek:

Equal water with flour a few grams of yeast stir it a couple of times put a shower cap over it to keep the cat out and leave it until the following morning. That is it. Nothing more. No feed. No moisturiser. No piles creams.

If it has skin on it either live with it or if you are overwhelmed with the desire to interfere and do something then stir the bleedin' thing. But I promise you no one ever died of a little skin on their poolish. :rolleyes:

:D:p

ps you may of been confused because of us sort of seeing it as digression from sourdough starter. :)

Yes, yes, sorry, O Wise One. I have failed. But we may still save the day. I will follow Bleedin Simple Instructions next time. I just had all the warnings from The Internet cycling through my head about not overfeeding the yeast, which will eat all the gluten and make the bread not good.

But I will still take photos of what today's efforts yield!

OK, so let me re-summarize the whole thing here:

1. Make poolish of 100ml water, 100 g flour, and a pinch (3g or so) yeast.
2. Let poolish bubble overnight
3. When ready to bake, mix the poolish with 250 g flour, 150g water, 6-8g salt, and perhaps a tiny pinch more yeast.
4. Let rise, then envelope folds
5. Let rise again
6. Spray the dough with water and put the dough onto a surface (foil on top of a preheated pizza stone perhaps? Or just a normal cookie sheet?) in a hot oven (220C = 425 F) with steam
7. After 5 mins, remove dough and let the oven dry out
8. Increase temp to 240 C (450 F or so) and bake for 20 mins or so.

Am I getting it all?

Dave,

Out of interest, are you a techie by any chance? :p A bloke who likes a clear manual with nothing left to chance. :eek:

Seriously, all my bread making fell into place once I discovered it was nothing to do with recipes but more to do with feeling underlying principles. I struggled for years, gave up loads of times and my success rates were a lottery. Just like you in fact. But once you think of it with as dealing with living breathing feeling stuff and try to understand how it feels about time, heat, water, handling etc it becomes natural and then it is really easy. It is about having an affinity. It is a bit like driving by either a flow chart set of procedures and instructions or doing it instinctively or naturally and making it second nature. If you do it by instructions and procedures you will always need them. If you instead concentrate on what everything does and why then you really are in control as you experiment and play and learn.

This approach gives much more joy because then you can make anything. pizza, flatbreads, wholemeals, French, brioche etc. .... and it is a genuine learning and creative process rather than following manuals. I just have a suite of basic spreadsheets to just record what I did and then learned and then can adjust for next time.

I'm going on a bit. I'm sorry.

:)

Hah, yes, I'm an engineer by training. Ordinarily when I cook I do it all by feel and taste, but it's been drummed into my head by my mother the baker that baking is a chemistry experiment where nothing can be left to chance, and all must be exact.

You've mentioned the feel of how the flour, water, and yeast interact several times. What are the general principles I should know in starting out? I understand from what you've said that more water in the dough results in a crisper crust. What else?

BTW - the bread tonight will go with the boeuf bourgignon that will shortly start simmering on the stove. :D

Thanks!

We crossed. Let me try:

Let's take this as a bloke without anyone else to feed so 600gms of finished dough at 70% hydration finished dough.


1. Make poolish of 100ml water, 100 g flour, and a pinch (3g or so) yeast.
2. Let poolish bubble overnight
3. Some time before you are ready to bake, mix the poolish with 250 g flour, 150g water, 6-8g salt, and perhaps a tiny pinch more yeast. Mix for 7 minutes or so until you have shiney surfaced dough.
4. Let rise, then envelope folds with relaxes in between.
5. Let rise again as final shape.
6. Spray the dough with water and put the dough onto a surface and cover if you want.

(foil on top of a preheated pizza stone perhaps? Or just a normal cookie sheet?) in a hot oven (220C = 425 F) with steam

No ... heat the stone and put the bread onto the stone with a peel (make one or cheat) ... and do what you can underneath re steam. If you have a steak griddle or something similar great. The whole idea of the stone is to absorb some of the water and crisp the base. If you put foil down it will not absorb and crisp as well.

7. After 5 mins, remove dough and let the oven dry out

No, just open the oven door for a few seconds to let the steam escape. Donb't touch the bread.

8. Increase temp to 240 C (450 F or so) and bake for 20 mins or so.

Yes, but just look at the bread and when it looks brown take it out and tap the bottom. If it sounds hollow it's cooked.

Does that help at all?

:)

It does help a lot, thanks! Will keep you posted.

I knew you were. I spent so much of my life as a salesman being protected by people like you who knew what you were doing .......

The issue is bread isn't a machine or a programme. It's more living. So once you have the basic starting set of instructions and you master them it's time to adjust etc ...

I wish you hadn't asked ..... but some brain dumpy stuff.

1. The wetter the dough the more difficult it will be to handle but the better the bread will be. Mixing for longer compensates to a degree because you develop gluten and high gluten is easier to handle. This however can make more of a sponge cake texture so under handling after the first rise helps.

2. Steam in the oven creates crisp crust. But too long creates a dumpling.

3. The heavier and denser the flour the more water.

4. The lower the temperature the longer the rise and prove the better the flavour hence sourdough or poolish. Tonight for example I'm using a dough that has been sleepy in the fridge for a couple of weeks.

5. Oil or fats increases life and often produces softness but removes crispiness. That is why the French often buy bread twice a day but don't add fats. A baguette bought in the morning isn't good for the evening. If you have been to Paris for example a lot of people think of it as a city. In fact it is hundreds of villages all with a local baker, butcher etc. The reason why is the "daily bread" but baked all day even if it is only a rebake.

6. Start with really simple bread. Plain flour, poolish, water, yeast and time. Then once you are doing it naturally substitute some of the plain four with wholemeal and rye and increase the water.

Develop affinity rather than prescriptions. Some ramblings. But please ask away. I'm desperate for you to produce a few loaves and then say you understand how you did it.

Et voilà!

The poolish, at its beginning
http://i.imgur.com/uANzuW0l.jpg

The finished product
http://i.imgur.com/sthD49al.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/77qqWynl.jpg

It was great! The crumb was pleasantly chewy and moist....almost like ciabatta. The crust is crisp.

Question: why didn't the bread really brown?

Also, bonus: boeuf bourgignon stewing away:
http://i.imgur.com/K46t5cMl.jpg

That is a nice piece of bread .. and nice bourgignon .... congrats .... :D

I guess some possible answers to your question was that the oven wasn't hot enough or you didn't bake it long enough. Another possibility was too much steam that wasn't allowed to escape early enough. The steam is only to improve crust which takes a short time. Another possibility is that you may have accidently added some olive oil? ;) I steam for 5 minutes release heat with door open for least amount of time and whack up the heat. So steam injection followed by harsh dry heat.

One idea, you will improve the texture a bit if you make some cuts in the surface. For your first few loaves (I'd concentrate on getting one thing right at a time ....) don't use a knife or blade but a pair of scissors and cut into the surface. A series of cuts. This allows the bread to "open" more. Cutting with a blade or knife is a bit of a knack and often the bread collapses or misshapes as one learns - so scissors.

It's all about the taste and a home made rustic appearance experience and it sounds like you scored a hit.

In time substitute some of the final flour so you end up with around 180gm white, 35gm wholemeal and 35gm rye flour and perhaps a squirt of runny honey. I also like adding a few onion (Nigella) seeds. So that means that only 20% of the total flour isn't white ie 70gms out of a total of 350 and replace a few ml of water with the honey ..... eg

That shiney surface comes about as a result of a longer first mix and that steam injection, and for me both the crust, texture and taste is exactly to my personal taste as a "daily bread"..

These small adjustments and changes complements the poolish approach and gives a lot of character and flavour. Once you've made these small changes you'll find yourself thinking about bread a lot of the day ....

Completed weight 600
Hydration 70%

Dry 353
Liquid 247


Dry 100.00%
Italian Flour 0.00%
Canadian Flour 176 50.00%
Wholemeal Flour 35 10.00%
Rye Flour 36 10.20%
Poolish Flour 99 28.00%
Salt 6 1.80%
Yeast 0.00%
Vital Wheat 0.00%
353

Wet 100.00%
Water 141 57.00%
Poolish Water 101 41.00%
Milk 0.00%
Oil 0.00%
Honey 5 2.00%
247


http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...53271AA4A7.jpg

... and some different "daily breads" .... including one similar to yours and another with caraway and the other with a higher amount of wholemeal.

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...65E6130D43.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t.../P1020646X.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t.../P1020641X.jpg


Can you now see why that as a reasonable compromise going the poolish route in favour of sour starter gives a lot of the flavour benefit with no downside? You can almost as an adjunct to your last visit to the kitchen each night, take 30 seconds and make a small poolish even if your plans to make bread the following day aren't firm. It is quick easy and requires no skill or concentration. The following morning you just add the other stuff and put it under the mixer. I much prefer the flavour from poolish starter than sourdough in fact. It's more subtle. In time the flavour will improve from where you are. And how useful it is to keep your own running spreadsheet like the one above to record your adjustments and learn from your own experiments and experience rather than using recipes? In this way understanding and feeling the principles by self-learning you build your own perfect loaf rather than someone else's.

And don't start me off about home made bagels ....

http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...D6F0B53EB6.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...3E055E7689.jpg
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t.../P1020644X.jpg

Well done.

:)

OMG the bagels! I'm going to get incredibly fat if I keep baking bread products.

I don't have a fancy steak iron to put in the bottom of the oven, so I put a pie tin on the bottom shelf. When I put the dough in the oven, I threw a cup or so of water in the tin and closed the door. Five minutes later, I removed the tin and increased the temp to 450 (230C). I wanted to keep the bread in a little longer, but it sounded hollow when I thumped it, so I took it out.

Perhaps my oven just runs cool? Next time I'll set it to 475.

Also, a question about the dough. My dough was very wet - not quite runny, but it had trouble holding its shape. I put it on a sheet of foil and put that on the pizza stone in the oven. Else I have no idea how I'd have gotten the dough in there. Do you use a peel? Dust your dough with cornmeal? How do you handle the mechanics of getting the dough in/out of the oven? Also, if I were to cut it, I'm not sure the cut would stay. Perhaps my dough was a little too wet?

The poolish was ridiculously easy, you're right. I'll do it again. I do love the taste of sourdough, though, so I will also keep trying that.

Bagels aren't fattening! I make mine rather large and only one will do ..they are around 150gms each ... but to be honest they're so good I think filling often spoils them. They are sweet and chewy. I only make them because we can't find good ones any more.

The steak griddles are very cheap and worthwhile because they are cast iron and have lots of surface. When you put a half cup of water on it it produced a fast short injection of steam, just like a commercial bread oven. A tin in the bottom is not going to domthe same thing.

It sounds like your oven may be cool,. time for a temp check!

First try making your fist mix around 10 minutes that stretches gluten more and makes it easier to handle, and if you find it hard to handle then redruce hydrstion a little. Also the way you shop helps define the shape. A ball where you continue to press the sides under and to the middle to form a ball helps. Yes I use a range of kitchen peels that are floured!

Good luck.

Getting better! I think the trick was letting the oven preheat for an extra 30 mins to heat up the pizza stone. I used an infrared thermometer to check the temperature. The oven actually seems to run about 5-10 degrees F hotter than it's set to.

http://i.imgur.com/bg44YBIl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/961jMFtl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/fbgH9Mtl.jpg

Nice color and perfect texture. But it doesn't taste like much. Does this mean I need more salt? Something else?

Another question, uk1: What do you bake the bread on? I've been putting it on foil on top of the pizza stone because I don't have a peel. Given how much the foil sticks to the bottom (which also doesn't brown), there's no way I'd be able to easily get it off a hot pizza stone. How do you get the bread not to stick to what you're baking it on?

This is fun!

uk1 You are going to make me take a special trip to UK, now I request ( no demand) your pizza on a sour dough base.!

For those near a Trader Joes, try their Sourdough Batard.

That is perfect bread and looks really tasty.

The whole point of the stone is that you must heat it for a long time. So you're not heating the oven, until the light goes out but heating the stone for as long as you can say 40 minutes to an hour after the oven has reached maximum heat. the stone draws moisture out of the base of the bread and caramelises the surface and crisps it. Also, use semolina in place of flour for the base of the bread if you can. That adds crispness. if you look at the bagels up thread there is a picture of a base of one . Because bagels are boiled they are wet and so I use semolina to absorb some of the water and add crispness.

Foil cooks bread in its own steam. It is pointless putting foil onto the stone. The stone won't be adding any value. So make yourself a peel or buy one they cost around £10 of amazon in the UK. Buy a wooden one not a steel one. Steel is cold and causes the dough to be more likely to stick whereas wood is warmer and pizza and bread is less likely to stick. A steel peel is better for removing the bread or pizza once it has cooked. Coat it with flour ensure the loaf is moving around by shaking it and then shake it off onto your very hot stone.

You'd also benefit from final shaping using the technique I mentioned earlier ie increasing top surface tension by balling the underneath into the middle. Look for a youtube on shaping pizza balls. So make a big pizza ball ... long in you like and cut the surface to release the surface tension and allow it to bloom. Also some more surface cuts, is stagger them inot a sort of zig zag. The bread is saying to me that it wanted to open more.

Have you yet become convinced at how a disproportionate amount of extra depth of flavour and character is given by using the starter? And how wonderful can such a cheap pastime be. Real men bake real bread!

I really like the inside of that loaf. :)