This morning's bake.

I feel you greg, part of me still wants a more open crumb, even though I think this style is in many senses "better" (e.g. practical)

What's the flour content and hydration of that loaf? If I could pump that out reliably to eat along with an open crumb to take pictures of I'd be content.

IMO Hugo in this particular bread thread is somewhat entertaining and can be begrudgingly endured, but Hugo expanding his reach to other threads has become more than a bit challenging. if i have a vote that matters it would be for containment.

Bread flour: ~70%
Whole wheat: ~15%
Spelt: ~5%
Rye: ~5%

Starter: ~7.5% (total dough weight, @ approx. 100% hydration)

Total hydration: ~72%

I've recently also started to add ~2% (baker percentage) of gluten powder, to compensate for non-bread flour content.

Funny. It has been a while since I have calculated this recipe (which I have been tinkering with for quite some time) into baker % and total hydration. Seems I could relatively easily work towards that picturesque more open crumb by increasing the hydration a bit.

That sounds good. I didn't like my loaf with spelt instead of ww/rye, but I usually go 15% ww, 5% rye and will try adding 5% spelt.

Got an oval dutch oven yesterday:



Loaf on left is 50% WW. I thought my rounder oval banneton shape might fit in a round dutch oven but it didn't and got mishapen. Really happy with the shape of the longer loaf in the new dutch oven though.



Left them in a little longer to try to develop the crust but a got a little char in places so I need to check more than every 5 minutes.

I made the 50% ww by combining two separate doughs so it has a bit of a marble look





Crumb on the other, which I did the same way but with 20% ww



Kvass tasted like cider but a bit too sweet. Not much carbonation, less than a cask conditioned ale, and not as good as beer, but will try again with less sugar and see what happens.

Like the cast iron. KVASS looks good but yeah too sweet and lack of carbonation is a bummer. Is there any funk too it? Like a good funky cider or farmhouse style wild yeast beer?

It tastes more like a good cider than whatever the bud light of ciders is. I'm not sure what the chemistry is. If I use more starter do I need to give it more sugar to eat which makes it sweeter, or does that make it more fermented when the starter does whatever it does after it eats the sugar? If I use less starter does it need less sugar and then not be as sweet? I don't really care enough to experiment a lot, but I'll probably try again and see what happens.

It depends if it goes to completion or not. Since yours is sweet either it's high alcohol, or not completely fermented. More starting sugar typically yields more alcohol, but only to a point. Yeast at some point die for producing too much alcohol, so there is a hard cap.

Other end of the spectrum is a full fermentation where yeast use all the available sugar, then die, and the resulting product is very dry.

Man the 3rd (I think) episode of the chef show is pretty awesome. Sadly it’s not particularly informative, but when it comes to fun and cool bread porn it’s pretty damn great.

for some reason season 1 has three volumes and the 3rd episode of S1/V1 doesnt make bread

do you recall the name of the episode?

Apologies season 2 4th episode “tartine”

tyvm

I like the taste of Francese Bread, just search online and you should be able to see its recipe, its pretty common.

Took me a few failed attempts to get the fermentation time adjusted for room temp of 70 these days vs 77 during the summer. This is 7hr bulk ferment, with dough temp starting at 72 and getting up to 75 by the end.

I've been doing everything in the oven with the light on and the door open to make things more consistent. Gets to ~82-84 or so. My ear game is not strong, but not too worried about that. I'm baking a single boule about every three days now

Do you keep your starter out in between? I would love to do that but I usually go 3-4 days between bakes and it's just too much discard.

I start the autolyse at a little over 80. It's down to about 78 when I add the levain. Then it ends up around 72 when I'm done slap and folding. I guess all the cold air gets mixed in. I pop it in oven with light on to get it back to 74 but then it drops a degree or two each time I work it—adding salt, bench kneading, lamination—and back up in between. Then I try to keep it between 74-75 by opening the oven door more or less. I don't mind the extra time, but it's a pain to try to keep the temp consistent. This time I actually turned the oven on for half a minute to warm it up a bit so I could get the temp back up after the S&F.

I keep the starter in the fridge and feed it once the night before. There isn't too much discard, and I usually end up making crackers after a few bakes.

I've been using the "old" foodgeek method and it's pretty consistent at this point. Mix levain in the morning, autolyse flour after ~3 hours and let both sit for an hour. Mix levain, salt, autolysed flour and a little water, then 4 stretch and folds every half hour. Bulk for 4 hours, preshape only because I usually have to push out a bunch of bubbles, rest for 15 mins, final shape and into the fridge. Bake the next morning.

Real happy with this one. First time trying 84% hydration--added a tsp vital wheat gluten so it'd be strong enough to hold the extra water. 7hr bulk ferment at 74F.

That’s a beauty.

Question for you, my last loaf came out with a weird squishy “crust” I don’t recall doing anything different than on the previous 50+ loaves. Any ideas as to what caused that?

I actually forgot to score the loaves so that was a difference but seems like it would be irrelevant.

looks great gregorio. if you put it up to your ear can you hear the ocean?

Thanks!

Hoagie I think I know what you mean. When it happened to me I think it also had poor spring and maybe it wasn't scored well and as a result burst a bit down towards the bottom. I don't know if not scoring/poor scoring prevents the steam from escaping which inhibits crust formation, but that's my guess with nothing to support it.

Maybe not as much steam is able to escape and thus makes the crust softer from the inside out?

That’s a good shout guys. I actually got excellent spring, but the steaming of the crust makes sense. I’m actually not all that mad at it. While I really love the hard crunchy crust for a lot of applications, it’s nice to make a piece of toast that doesn’t rattle your brain stem when you bite into it.

Beauty G!