Homemade Bread Thread

[Gadjobrinus]

Well shameless plug for my festbier, first lager in like 30 years, with an easter lunch of cured German meats, French Savoie (cow's) and Basque (sheep's) cheeses, and a Roggenschrotbrot mit Sonnenblumkerne, no flour, just 100% freshly cracked rye ("fein, mittel und groß," fine/pumpernickel, middle and coarsely cracked), sourdough, toasted sunflower seeds.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

I am happy with my first attempt at a sourdough bread. I had a hard time determining if it had risen enough when I got home. So I let it go another couple hours. I think it may have over proofed slightly. I had to make a ham, egg, & Swiss sandwich for breakfast. Yum!

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Congrats! I don’t think the crumb says over proofed at all.

 

[Oldskewl]

^Thanks for the feedback Hoppy2bmerry! Tried to compare it to results I've seen online. No complaints here though and it held up nicely for nearly a week.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

^Thanks for the feedback Hoppy2bmerry! Tried to compare it to results I've seen online. No complaints here though and it held up nicely for nearly a week.

I hope this helps.

After a couple days in a linen bag, my loaf goes in plastic and into the fridge for toasting.

 

[Oldskewl]

Thank for the gallery. Nice to have the examples in one spot.

 

[Jaybird]

Been playing around with really high hydration. Such a fun hobby! I was given 500# of really good bread flour. I gave 400# of it away to friends. Playing with bread has never been more fun!

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Baking a few for a meditation retreat beginning tomorrow. Mehrkornbrot, an Austrian sourdough with home milled cracked spelt (fine and middle-grained), cracked rye (middle-coarse), medium rye and wheat flours, oatmeal, flaxseed, roast sunflower seeds, touch of "brotgewürz" or bread spice, a blend commonly used in German/Austrian/Swiss alpine bread baking. Other one is just a rustic levain boule - 70% bread flour, 9% hard spring wheat, 9% hard winter wheat, 9% spelt, 3% rye (all whole grain, home-milled).

Baking one more this morning, a Kasseler Würstchen. "Würstchen" or "spicy" just implies this version has more rye than the "mildes" or "hell" version, which has more wheat. Kasseler is a common German daily, household bread. One from the past.

 

[Kent88]

Those look fantastic, Gad

 

[BongoYodeler]

Baking a few for a meditation retreat beginning tomorrow. Mehrkornbrot, an Austrian sourdough with home milled cracked spelt (fine and middle-grained), cracked rye (middle-coarse), medium rye and wheat flours, oatmeal, flaxseed, roast sunflower seeds, touch of "brotgewürz" or bread spice, a blend commonly used in German/Austrian/Swiss alpine bread baking. Other one is just a rustic levain boule - 70% bread flour, 9% hard spring wheat, 9% hard winter wheat, 9% spelt, 3% rye (all whole grain, home-milled).

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Baking one more this morning, a Kasseler Würstchen. "Würstchen" or "spicy" just implies this version has more rye than the "mildes" or "hell" version, which has more wheat. Kasseler is a common German daily, household bread. One from the past.

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Bakery quality breads.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Those look fantastic, Gad

Thanks buddy. Here's the third for tomorrow, the Kasseler, just out of the oven.

Have a good Sunday all.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Bakery quality breads.

Well that's really kind of you man. I do love it, and work at it. There's been some community interest in a sort of nano-bakery....I have a neighborhood listserv of a few hundred people who have come forward, and I'd bake weekly and sell the breads in a van out of a local parking lot, lol. Thankfully, in WI, there is no prohibition and very little hoops to jump through to do just that, provided I keep it small. Far easier than doing a nano-brewery!

 

[BongoYodeler]

Well that's really kind of you man. I do love it, and work at it. There's been some community interest in a sort of nano-bakery....I have a neighborhood listserv of a few hundred people who have come forward, and I'd bake weekly and sell the breads in a van out of a local parking lot, lol. Thankfully, in WI, there is no prohibition and very little hoops to jump through to do just that, provided I keep it small. Far easier than doing a nano-brewery!

I wish you good luck should you decide to do that. It's almost close enough to send our son over for your bread. He's in Rochester, MN.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

Been playing around with really high hydration. Such a fun hobby! I was given 500# of really good bread flour. I gave 400# of it away to friends. Playing with bread has never been more fun!

Awesome! If interested, this guy's work is really, really good, and his book, Open Crumb Mastery, is more than worth it. He goes through the how's and why's, including achieving open crumbs with various degrees of hydration, as well as ratios of whole grain flours and fermentation regimens. Have fun!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

First Irish brown bread was gifted.

The first one smelled so good I baked another for hubby and I for Sunday brunch.

 

[z-bob]

I just ordered a new kitchen range with a convection oven. I've never had that feature before, plus the old oven would overshoot the temperature setting so much it was hard to cook anything without burning it. (that worked well for pizza) It gets here in about a week and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Any tips on using a convection oven? I assume that would be good for baking bread.

Also this oven has a "steam clean" feature where you pour a cup of water in oven floor and run a short clean cycle. The pour a cup of water in the bottom part should be good for bread baking too. I don't know if that's compatible with the convection fan or not.

I've tried a couple of times lately to make central Texas style kolaches. (enriched dough rolls with filling in the middle like a danish.) The first batch sucked but the dogs really liked them. Second batch where I proofed the yeast before adding the flour etc and I put a little more effort into the filling looked beautiful and tasted almost good but not quite there yet. I think next time I'm going to start with a yeasted donut recipe for the dough but substitute bread flour for the AP it calls for. Straight donut dough would be too tender; the recipe I was using was a little too tough, but that might be because I wasn't working the dough quite right yet.

 

[Gadjobrinus]

I just ordered a new kitchen range with a convection oven. I've never had that feature before, plus the old oven would overshoot the temperature setting so much it was hard to cook anything without burning it. (that worked well for pizza) It gets here in about a week and I'm looking forward to trying it out. Any tips on using a convection oven? I assume that would be good for baking bread.

Also this oven has a "steam clean" feature where you pour a cup of water in oven floor and run a short clean cycle. The pour a cup of water in the bottom part should be good for bread baking too. I don't know if that's compatible with the convection fan or not.

I've tried a couple of times lately to make central Texas style kolaches. (enriched dough rolls with filling in the middle like a danish.) The first batch sucked but the dogs really liked them. Second batch where I proofed the yeast before adding the flour etc and I put a little more effort into the filling looked beautiful and tasted almost good but not quite there yet. I think next time I'm going to start with a yeasted donut recipe for the dough but substitute bread flour for the AP it calls for. Straight donut dough would be too tender; the recipe I was using was a little too tough, but that might be because I wasn't working the dough quite right yet.

Convection works fine. You probably know this but you'll need to turn the heat down a bit off your normal baking temp (been a fairly long while, but I see 25 F less a lot). And I would go by an oven thermometer, not what's indicated by your digital, if that's built-in.

And yes, the steam pan should work fine (I have a conventional oven and actually use just an old, heavily oxidized crepe pan, loaded with lava rocks, if anything other than a boule; I use a dutch oven for all my round loaves but it sounds like yours would work great). I'd leave the convection off the first 10 minutes or so (wheat or wheat-mixed breads) or 2-6 minutes (rye or rye-mixed breads - rye needs to "set up" more quickly). For both, your convection works against the purpose of the steaming - to gelatinize surface starches and keep the crust moist to allow good spring before setting up, as well as a good, even browning once the steam is off (your maillard - browning - reactions are stunted by the same issue).

Also, be looking at your bread about 20 minutes in on a normal 45 minute bake, especially for wheat breads - oddly, the convection, which is supposed to create a more even surface, can create certain local "blister" area, where I've seen a sort of mottled tendency across the bread (like an overproofed bread can give in a conventional oven - again in my experience).

Your kolaches sound awesome. If you've never come across him, I really like Kent Rollins - the real deal, cowboy, grew up ranching with his dad and eventually ran many chuckwagons. He goes into the idea here, some.

Good luck. Exciting project.