i'd be interested to see the inside of that, because i made the sourdough starter and sparayed the loaf on a stone and it looked similar to that, but it was dense and hole-less inside every time and not chewy and holey



not saying yours isn't, looks great

This was a different loaf, but it pretty much turns out like this every time on the inside if you let it rise long enough.

Also it's not sourdough... haven't tried sourdough so I'm not sure whether I could get the same results.

edit: and these were baked in a dutch oven, not on a stone.

Know how i know ur gay? I saw u make a loaf of sourdough bread and a spinach dip once

sweet

This recipe is for a dough that you can sit in your fridge for up to 14 days, break off 1/4 of the dough cook it then keep more dough on hand. I tried it --- the bread was great and it improved over the time it spent in the fridge (giving a more complex flavor over the course of the week that it lasted in the fridge.)

Artisan bread for $.40 a loaf

The holy-ness depends a lot on shaping.

Generally boules will have smaller holes than baguettes or loaves.

27 off: sounds like you might be undercooking your bread a little.

this is a good place to start......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTIr...ure=plpp_video

can you post a recipe and technique, including the dutch oven use? i'd love to have some good crusty bread like that at home on the cheap.

My wife makes good bread. instead of a spray bottle she puts a pan of water in the oven. Seems to work well.

starting a sourdough starter tonight

Yeah, I've posted it before. It's super easy.

For a loaf of those proportions:

3 cups flour (unbleached white)
2 tsp yeast
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1.5 cups lukewarm water (slightly warmer than the back of your hand).

Stir the flour, salt and yeast together. Add the water and stir with a sturdy spoon (it will get thick and sticky right away). You want a dough that has a little bit of moisture to it but isn't crazy sticky to the touch. If it's too dry (not all the flour is mixing in), add a little water. If it's too wet, add flour.

When you've got the moisture right and it's basically one piece of dough, knead it for a few minutes on a floured surface. Don't overdo it, 3-5 minutes is plenty. You just want to work out any major clumps.

Sprinkle a little flour in the bottom of a container (plastic, glass or metal) put the dough in there, cover the top of the container tightly with saran wrap and let it rise in a reasonably warm space for a couple hours (probably 2 minimum, 3-4 more ideally).

After the dough has risen, take it out and knead it again on a floured surface. Only a few minutes. Then generously coat a cotton kitchen towel with flour and put the dough on it. Generously top the dough with flour and fold the cloth over the top of the dough. Let it rise (this is called the proofing stage) for another ~2 hours (or more if you want).

When it's time to bake, preheat your oven to 500 degrees and toss your dutch oven in there. I use a Lodge brand one that is pretty much identical to Le Creuset as far as I can tell. But I did replace the plastic knob with a metal one so it wouldn't melt. It looks about like this:



When the oven reaches temperature, your dutch oven should be nice and hot. Take it out of the oven, carefully put the whole cloth with the bread in it into the dutch oven. Then gently remove the cloth. Sometimes the best way to do this is to gently flip the dough+cloth over once it's sitting in the dutch oven. I find this is the easiest way not to "deflate" the dough prior to baking (results in airier crumb).

Oh yeah, if you want the top of your bread to have a cool pattern, this is the time to slash it with a knife. You can do an x or a couple lines in a row, or something random. Not too deep, but enough that the slash doesn't immediately close when you remove the knife.

Put the cover back on your dutch oven and stick it back in your regular oven. I don't time my bread anymore so I can't say exactly how long to let it bake, but 20-25 minutes covered is probably a good guess. When you start to see a little color in the dough, remove the cover and bake another 10mins or so.

This seems like a lot of directions but when you get used to the process, the first stage takes maybe 10 minutes including cleanup, and the second stage even less than that.

OP, I was in the exact same spot as you: the local store sold a roasted garlic bread that was fantastic but it was $6 and not that big. So we bought a bread machine at the thrift store, got the manual on line and started following the recipes. The results were good - probably in large part because it is hard to go wrong with bread coming right out of the oven.

It has evolved over time. First I stopped baking in the bread machine because the crust comes out to thick and chewy and started baking in the oven. Then I started tweaking recipes to be more to our liking, making more breads with wheat, more garlic, etc. I also began to try different coatings (I don't know the real term) such as melted butter, olive oil, egg, etc before they went in the oven. Next was experimenting with shaping, and non-pan recipes: bread sticks, hamburger buns, soft pretzels, etc.

I wouldn't call myself a baker because I still use the bread machine to mix and do the first rise. But I am having lots of fun doing it and everybody seems pretty happy with the results, they always count on me to bake for dinner parties, thanksgiving, etc.

You can't beat a freshly grilled hamburger put on a garlic herb hamburger bun that came out of the oven 20 minutes ago - ftw!

Good luck

The only time I'm unhappy with the bread I make is when I have very specific intentions as to what I want it to be-- then I always seem to be a bit unsatisfied. It's a tinkerers art that if you are easy on yourself, you'll find that you routinely made something pretty darn good, even if it wasn't precisely what you imagined.

Quick question, ive heard mention you should use glass bowls for mixing dough , yeast fermentation.
True?
Stainless ok to use at all?

I would imagine this has something to do with heat conduction - you want the rising dough to be warm, but not hot enough to kill the yeast, so if it's going to rise in an area subject to a lot of heat, glass is probably best. Well, moving the dough is probably best.

I don't imagine it's really a problem most of the time, TBH. I've seen both used without problems.

so i've really tried to make sourdough a couple times, but failed miserably. this thread convinced me to give it another shot.

made the starter. looks much better now


first go looked decent


but sucked ass. i kneaded and it was stiff and it never really rose and it sucked.

next one i tried less kneading and more rising. some progress



but still not what i'm looking for. a little underbaked too.

i look into into it and see a lot of people doing no-knead sourdough and they let it rise overnight. i give that a try



again, decent but still not what i'm looking for. i want minimum panera-grade sourdough at $.40 a loaf. underbaked a little again too, ****.

i look deeper and find this bakery in Hell's Kitchen that bakes their bread in enamel pots. i give that a go and i've also been tinkering with the Iggy's Francese Bread recipe i've been using. feeling confident at this point

after 30 Minutes with lid on



after 12 more



verrry close to what i'm after. rustic crust, 213-214 on inside. a little burnt on bottom, but i'll fix that. have a full batch proofing tonight and planning to make a big one like the video tomorrow.

thanks to SomethingClever for re-inspiring me!

Picked up some bread flour and plan on making some bagels this weekend. Going with a recipe from seriouseats. Anyone have any tips or experience?

You definitley dont need to be kneading so much with sourdoughs. In fact i would just do a dryer poolish the night before and then autolyse with minimal mixing the next day.

My typical sourdough process might go something like:

night b4 poolish,

autolyse

long primary fermentation (2 folds)

degas and secondary (depending on sugar content of that bread)

preshape/shape,

rest for at least 90 minutes then in the oven.

weird. you posted in this thread as i was in the kitchen feeding my starter. probably gonna try to bake a loaf tomorrow evening or saturday.

Nice looking bread 27. I really think the dutch oven (enameled cast iron pot w/lid) is key.

remember, an unboiled bagel is just a donut with a hole.

Perfect 18 hour double rise and I crank it a little over 500 in the oven and inadvertently put the broiler on and burn the everliving **** out of the top of the bread and the lid handle on the dutch oven. **** **** ****.

tomorrow

I really don't think you can.

FYP probably.