The AP loaf is much better today than it was last night. I rested for 4 hours before cutting in to it, but today it's like it's a completely different loaf.

Composting! Love it. I've spent too many hours on that subject.

Breads looking good.

I live on a pretty small lot and don’t have a garden so I’ve never been into composting. The GF is getting real big into limiting waste so I’ve hired a company that picks up composts. I couldn’t believe it. They give you a 5 gallon bucket, liner, liner band. They come pick up your bucket once a week for $10 a month. They must be selling my garbage on The secondary market or something.

We have to sort out our biodegradable waste and the city collects it for free.

I just got my diastatic malt and want to try it out right away but maybe the 3 loaves from yesterday and a week of 90+ temperture can keep me from baking for a while

gregorio makes the rye loaf
BigDaddyDVO smokes some corned beef
foobar quick pickles some kraut and makes the russian dressing
i'll provide the swiss and handle the rest from here, thanks folks.

How long will it keep without freezing? I'd have assumed if it was within a week, freezing would be unnecessary. I'd only freeze if I want to eat it quite a bit more than a week after. Also, I find that frozen bread really loses quite a bit of flavor after defrosting. Got any tips on that?

I've been freezing commercial bread for years. I leave a few slices out and put the rest of the bag in the freezer and when I've eaten those I take out a few more slices. I prefer eating bread that's been frozen for a week then eating bread that's been sitting out for a week. I baked Saturday. Tonight I'll take some of that bread out before I go to bed and tomorrow I will have bread almost as fresh as the day I baked it. The flavour and texture might be a little different but I prefer it to the flavour and texture of stale or moldy bread which I used to end up with a lot. When I buy milk I also almost always freeze a bag unless it's got 2 weeks before it expires

I'll never buy milk that's not organic again. The expiration is so much longer than regular milk and I use very little. Bought a half gallon today that doesn't expire until September!

That's not a thing is it? Like you've bought long-life milk by accident or something?

Organic milk always has a much longer life than regular milk. I only today realized that Albertson's brand has an organic milk that is a couple of bucks cheaper than the Horizon I usually buy. If there's such a thing as long-life milk, I've never heard of it and don't think I bought it. Here's what I got today:



Edit: I WILL be giving it the smell test if it's still around in a month, lol!

I believe it’s because that milk is ultra pasteurized, not because it’s organic.

You're right. Learn something new everyday.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...the%20country.

I think bolded is where my leak is. I can't anticipate my bread needs a day in advance in order to let it slowly defrost overnight. Well, I guess I could, but I just never thought to do it. All of my frozen bread has gone straight from freezer to toaster.

I thought once you open it, it’s only good for a few weeks regardless of the expiration date?

Time for a Drinking Good Milk thread!

I’m thinking about trying my first loaf of sourdough. Saw the recipe from Mother Jones posted a while back that I’ll probably try, unless anyone has a similar but maybe more straight forward recipe.


https://www.motherjones.com/food/201...d-pretty-easy/

That’s definitely not the first recipe you should make. Whole wheat and high hydration are tricky and when you have both you are looking at a disaster.

I like this recipe for beginners. (And it’s my most commonly made loaf, and I still mess it up occasionally.)

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/begin...urdough-bread/


You might consider dialing the hydration in that recipe back to %65 to give you a better shot at a decent first loaf. These wet doughs are intimidating at first. I also find that 4 sets of stretch and folds isn’t enough I. That recipe so I go with 6 3 at 15 min intervals and 3 at 30 min intervals.

Can you guys please limit your bread talk in the Milk thread please?

Agree with Hoagie that that's is a good recipe and it outlines all the steps in detail. If you don't have Rye, just substitute with more WW. The one you linked to is really high hydration (85%) and is going to be a pain to handle and shape. Here are things I wish I knew before I got started. Forgive me if I'm mansplaining stuff you already know.

Think in terms of baker's percentage rather than grams (or cups--but never use cups, always use a scale). My basic white recipe is 80% AP flour, 20% WW, 80% hydration, 20% starter, 2% salt. 80% AP to 20% WW is obvious. The other percentages are based on the amount of flour. So if you use 500g flour, 80% hydration is 400g water, 20% starter is 100g starter, etc.

The recipe Hoagie posted is 72% hydration which is probably fine to work with, but you could dial it back a bit (the more hydration the less dense the crumb will be). I was ****ed the first time I tried 80% hydration but now it's not bad. Do you have a scraper? If not get one and learn how to use it. Otherwise your dough will stick to your surface. I have a silicon scraper for my proofing bowl and a stainless steel one for my bench (ie counter) and I would fail without them.

How big a loaf do you want? For my big loaves I'm using 400g flour, which yields about an 800g loaf in total. That's pretty big (grocery store bagged loaf is 650-750g). If you use the recipes you or Hoagie posted, you're dividing and baking two loaves, so you need to baking vessels or have to bake twice.

I follow the timeline in perfectloaf recipe Hoagie posted--not the absolute start at Xam time but the relative time between steps, though I do the bulk fermentation for about 5 hours instead of the 4 they use, as under fermenting/proofing was my biggest leak early on.

I preshape like this:


and shape like this (that's to Bro for this one), but also use the scraper for the dragging part at the end.



Baking this afternoon so will have results post later

I posted that link for nit so he didn’t make the mistake of an 87% WW loaf. Then I got to looking around the rest of their recipes and decided to make....%87 mixed grain loaf. Do as I say not as I do I guess.

The recipe happens to hit on some of the interesting flours I’ve been looking to use; Whole kernel red fife, spelt and a tiny bit of rye. Should be tasty if I can get it to come together.

I can barely type on my phone after 8 minutes of slap and fold! My bakers muscles are weak.

Right is shaped, left is pre shaped(it looked like the one on the right 10 mins previously). That high hydration’s a *****.

Hoagie SBS Greg thanks for the tips. The pictures and the real detailed explanation is very helpful.

Well I’m in the process of a hybrid of the two recipes that I’m hoping to throw in the oven in a couple of hours. I’m expecting not very good results but hopefully something I can eat with cheese after a steak dinner.

I’m also doing the recipe you provided with the same times and everything for a bake tomorrow. Am doing half the proportions so we’ll see how it goes.

No idea what it will taste like and the shape isn’t great but much better than I expected.

Now how do I make some awesome Polish cottage rye like the loaf below?

Your bread looks better than my first try shaping a boule. My baked loaf looked like Hogie's pre-shaped. GL on the inside!


Don't know what a Polish cottage rye bread it, but first you need a banneton to get those flour stripes. Here's the rye I did last week